Operation Anvil (Mau Mau Uprising) Operation Anvil (Mau Mau Uprising) Operation Anvil was a British military operation during the Mau Mau Uprising where British troops attempted to remove Mau Mau from Nairobi and place them in Langata Camp or reserves. The operation began on 24 April 1954 and took two weeks, at the end of which 20,000 Mau Mau suspects had been taken to Langata, and 30,000 more had been deported to the reserves. In the early 1950s militant nationalism emerged in the United Kingdom's colony of Kenya in East Africa. By 1952 guerrilla attacks against white settlers and indigenous moderates, perpetrated by the "Mau
Mau Mau Uprising operations against Mau Mau fighters in the forests, the British attempt to defeat the movement broadly came in two stages: the first, relatively limited in scope, came during the period in which they had still failed to accept the seriousness of the revolt; the second came afterwards. During the first stage, the British tried to decapitate the movement by declaring a State of Emergency before arresting 180 alleged Mau Mau leaders (see "Operation Jock Scott" below) and subjecting six of them to a show trial (the Kapenguria Six); the second stage began in earnest in 1954, when they undertook a