Mau Mau Uprising given rise to three native Kenyan political blocks: "conservative", "moderate nationalist" and "militant nationalist". It has also been argued that Mau Mau was not explicitly national, either intellectually or operationally. Bruce Berman argues that, "While Mau Mau was clearly not a tribal atavism seeking a return to the past, the answer to the question of 'was it nationalism?' must be yes and no." As the Mau Mau rebellion wore on, the violence forced the spectrum of opinion within the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru to polarise and harden into the two distinct camps of loyalist and Mau Mau. This neat division
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.