Mau Mau Uprising missing. In October 2012, Mr Justice McCombe granted the surviving elderly test claimants the right to sue the UK for damages. The UK government then opted for what the claimants' lawyers called the "morally repugnant" decision to appeal McCombe's ruling. In May 2013, it was reported that the appeal was on hold while the UK government held compensation negotiations with the claimants. It is often argued that Mau Mau was suppressed as a subject for public discussion in Kenya during the periods under Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi because of the key positions and influential presence of some loyalists in
Mau Mau Uprising enaction of Swynnerton Plan. The villages were surrounded by deep, spike-bottomed trenches and barbed wire, and the villagers themselves were watched over by members of the Home Guard, often neighbours and relatives. In short, rewards or collective punishments such as curfews could be served much more readily after villagisation, and this quickly broke Mau Mau's passive wing. Though there were degrees of difference between the villages, the overall conditions engendered by villagisation meant that, by early 1955, districts began reporting starvation and malnutrition. One provincial commissioner blamed child hunger on parents deliberately withholding food, saying the latter were aware of