Willoughby ‘Tommy’ Thompson
Dedicated colonial officer who witnessed horrors in Kenya and was later Governor of Montserrat
‘TOMMY” THOMPSON, who has died aged 98, ran the gamut of colonial administrative experience from tragedy to comedy; he dealt with the aftermath of 11 prisoners having died at a Kenyan detention centre in highly dubious circumstances; he was in the Falkland Islands when they were menaced by Argentina; he then sorted out a rebellion on the Caribbean island of Anguilla by helping it to become a separate colony.
Willoughby Harry Thompson, known as Tommy, was born on December 3 1919 at Astwood Bank, Worcestershire, the son of an engineer who died when he was two. After first working for a builders’ merchant, he became a civilian clerk with the Royal Artillery, then joined up to rise to battery sergeant-major and was eventually commissioned.
In 1944 he was posted to the East African Artillery in Kenya. When the war ended he remained in the colony, helping soldiers to return to civilian life, while learning the ways of colonial society, such as taking no notice of a pet cheetah licking him at a dinner party.
Working his way up to district commissioner, he had magisterial powers to sit with tribal elders, whose wisdom he came to value over the pipe dreams emanating from the Colonial Office in London. The place to sort out the Africans’ problems, he realised, was not in a frightening office but under a tree.
But increasingly there was talk of mambo mabaya (bad doings), with reports of missing persons and violence, so that he always had an armed escort. The emerging leader of the early 1950s, Jomo Kenyatta, claimed not to know what Mau Mau meant, and missionaries insisted their flocks were not involved. But the card index Thompson compiled of information on the forced oaths of allegiance administered at night was irrefutable.
He once visited an Anglican church where the priest had been beheaded and two pregnant women horribly mutilated. At another time he captured a Mau Mau “record of battle”, which contained a reference to his command of English swear words.
On March 3 1959 Thompson was the nearest officer to a detention camp at Hola in Tana district holding 2,000 high-risk detainees, where 11 Mau Mau suspects had died in curious circumstances. As he later recalled: “The bodies were covered in water. The story I was given – that they had mysteriously drowned by having water thrown over them – didn’t hold.” He could see from the bruises on the bodies that they had been beaten. The white prison officers had poor knowledge of the Swahili in which they had issued unclear orders to the guards, members of the Nandi tribe who considered themselves superior to the Kikuyu.
Thompson sent a message to police headquarters, and ordered officers to say nothing. But the story of the drownings was already being flashed around the world.
Summoned to Nairobi, he overheard the Governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, telling the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-boyd, that the inmates had been beaten to death and Lennoxboyd replying: “I don’t want to say that, because I have already told the House [of Commons] something else.”
The episode was a black mark in Britain’s colonial history. Thompson was appalled and reduced the number of detainees. It was only last summer that he recounted with great clarity his memories of the Hola story to an inquiry that interviewed him for five hours at his old people’s home.
On leaving the colony as independence approached, in 1963 he married Sheelah O’grady, a nurse, before sailing for the Falkland Islands to become Colonial Secretary. The next year he was acting governor when an Irish-born pilot landed on the Port Stanley racecourse to plant an Argentine flag with a call for the inhabitants to “rise against your usurpers”. A message from the Foreign Office urged him not to upset a sale of tractors to Argentina.
In 1966 Thompson was in England on leave when a small Argentine passenger aircraft, carrying among its passengers the governor of Tierra del Fuego (which theoretically included the Falklands), was hijacked and forced to land on the same racecourse. The Foreign Office assured him this was a matter of little concern, which could perhaps be resolved by issuing a few visas. The hijackers eventually gave themselves up after Father Rudolph Roel, a Mill Hill missionary serving on the island, went aboard to celebrate Mass.
Thompson found the 2,000 Falkland islanders to be friendly though introspective, with a deep respect for the Governor and the Queen’s Christmas Day broadcast. They came to appreciate the radio stories he wrote for the children about such characters as Kenneth Kelp Goose and Sidney the seasick sea lion.
In May 1969 Thompson was sent as acting administrator to the British Virgin Islands, but in July he was plucked out for unusual service as Her Majesty’s Commissioner in Anguilla. He arrived on the island to replace an exasperated predecessor who had quit, and was greeted with two cases of Mumm champagne.
The 5,568 islanders were rebelling against a federation with St Kitts and Nevis. The British government stuck by its London-devised constitution and dispatched a series of senior officials with no effect; it then sent two frigates, troops and 84 London bobbies, including overweight members of the Metropolitan Police Band.
Even the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had difficulty taking the crisis seriously. “Oh you’re from that funny little island which seems to be costing so much,” said Sir Alec Douglas-home, the Foreign Secretary (1970-74), when Thompson called.
Thompson had ensured that he would be solely responsible to the Queen, not the British government or the new federal state. He was “advised” by a revolutionary council, which took over the treasury, licensed a profitable business selling Anguillan stamps and was demanding not independence, but the dignity of a single colony.
One problem was that the island’s only law was still that of the federation. Thompson’s solution was an unofficial agreement under which there would be no problem if no crimes were committed. There was a difficulty. A youth charged with murder in a rum-soaked brawl had to be kept locked up until a judge from St Kitts arrived to try him.
However, outstanding civil cases threatened more trouble, and after 20 months Thompson warned that the only happy resolution could be for Anguilla to become a single colony – which it eventually did in the early 1980s. Looking back Thompson described his two-year experience as “Gilbert and Sullivan played backwards – with nobody looking at the conductor”.
After a further three years on Montserrat where he was a Governor at last, Thompson returned home in 1974. He worked first for Voluntary Service Overseas in London and then as town clerk of Brightlingsea, Essex.
Tommy Thompson was appointed MBE in 1954, CBE in 1968 and CMG in 1974. His last task was to write a memoir Only the Foothills, a title alluding to his comparatively lowly rank in Britain’s overseas service.
His wife died in 2007; there were no children of the marriage.
“Tommy” Thompson, born December 3 1919, died January 25 2018