Operation Legacy was a programme of the British

Colonial Office The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created in 1768 from the Southern Department to deal with colonial affairs in North America (particularly the Thirteen Colo ...

(later

Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * United ...

) to destroy or hide files that would implicate the

British Empire The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, colonies, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, mandates, and other Dependent territory, territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It bega ...

wrongdoing A wrong or wrength (from Old English – 'crooked') is an act that is illegal or immoral. Legal wrongs are usually quite clearly defined in the law of a state or jurisdiction. They can be divided into civil wrongs and crimes (or ''criminal offe ...

, as to prevent them from being used by their ex-colonies. It ran from the 1950s until the 1970s, when the

decolonisation Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby Imperialism, imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. The meanings and applications of the term are disputed. Some scholar ...

of the

was at its height, and involved at least 23 countries.

Methods of operation

MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...

Special Branch Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...

agents were required to vet all secret documents in the colonial administrations to find those that could "embarrass" Britain or show "racial prejudice or religious bias." Some 8,800 files were consequently stored in Britain. Precise instructions were given for methods to be used for destruction, including burning and dumping at sea. Some of the files detailed torture methods used against opponents of the colonial administrations, such as during the

Mau Mau Uprising The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt, or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, and the ...

. As decolonisation progressed, British officials were keen to avoid a repeat of the embarrassment that had been caused by the overt burning of documents that took place in

New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...

in 1946, which had been covered by Indian news sources. On 3 May 1961,

Iain Macleod Iain Norman Macleod (11 November 1913 – 20 July 1970) was a British Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party politician. A playboy and professional Contract bridge, bridge player in his twenties, after war service Macleod worked for the ...

, who was

Secretary of State for the Colonies The secretary of state for the colonies or colonial secretary was the Cabinet of the United Kingdom's government minister, minister in charge of managing certain parts of the British Empire. The colonial secretary never had responsibility for t ...

, wrote a telegram to all British embassies to advise them on the best way to retrieve and dispose of sensitive documents. To prevent post-colonial governments from ever learning about Operation Legacy, officials were required to dispatch "destruction certificates" to London. In some cases, as the handover date approached, the immolation task proved so huge that colonial administrators warned the Foreign Office that there was a danger of "celebrating Independence Day with smoke."

Research

Academic study of the end of the British Empire has been assisted in recent years by the declassification of the '' migrated archives'' in the

Foreign and Commonwealth Office The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is the ministry of foreign affairs and a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the government of the United Kingdom. The office was created on 2 ...

(FCO) 141 series. After the UK government admitted in 2011 that it had secret documents related to the

, it began to declassify documents and by November 2013 some 20,000 files had been declassified. These documents can be accessed at the

National Archives National archives are the archives of a country. The concept evolved in various nations at the dawn of modernity based on the impact of nationalism upon bureaucratic processes of paperwork retention. Conceptual development From the Middle Ages i ...

in Kew, London.

References

External links

* 1950s establishments in the United Kingdom 1970s disestablishments in the United Kingdom Decolonization Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office History of the British Empire Information operations and warfare MI5 Government documents of the United Kingdom Secret government programs United Kingdom government information Cover-ups Historical negationism {{Falsification of history

Methods of operation

Research

See also

References

Further reading

External links