Mau Mau Uprising reserves. The means to this terminal end was originally suggested by the man brought in by the colonial government to an ethnopsychiatric 'diagnosis' of the uprising, JC Carothers: he advocated a Kenyan version of the villagisation programmes that the British were already using in places like Malaya. So it was that in June 1954, the War Council took the decision to undertake a full-scale forced-resettlement programme of Kiambu, Nyeri, Murang'a and Embu Districts to cut off Mau Mau's supply lines. Within eighteen months, 1,050,899 Kikuyu in the reserves were inside 804 villages consisting of some 230,000 huts. The government termed
Operation Anvil (Mau Mau Uprising) Mau" movement, had proliferated the Kikuyuland region. On 20 October the colonial governor declared a state of emergency, initiating efforts by the British military to put down the insurgency. The first months of the British campaign were plagued by a lack of discipline, communication, coherent strategy, and useful intelligence and little progress was made against the Mau Mau. An assault on the Naivasha police station and a massacre of civilians in the village of Lari in March 1953 dramatically escalated the conflict. Mau Mau activity also began to surface in the city of Nairobi, which had a large Kikuyu population.