Stoneham - Mau - Trouble with the Suk - Dini ya Masambwa - A.B. Simpson, DC Baringo with A.J. Stevens to whom he was about to hand over. R.G. Cameron, Asst. Inspector of Police at Eldama Ravine brought reinforcements. Simpson and Stevens went on to Karpedo. Asst. Insp. Cameron arrived next day and said Asst. Supt. Taylor was on his way from Nakuru with 20 men. Mr E.A. Moore, District Foreman at Baringo arrived. So there were 4 Europeans and 40 Police. In the incident - Taylor, Stevens and Cameron were all killed by spear thrusts.

Barnes - Nakuru North Cemetery - Allen James Stevens, died 24/4/1950 at Kolloa - Colonial Administrative Service. Killed on duty at Kolloa

Web Alan Stevens was the elder twin son of a civil servant from Worthing, Horace James Stevens, and his wife Nora. We know that after he left Brighton College he went to Oxford, and that in February 1946 he was posted as District Commissioner to Garissa in the North-Eastern Province of Kenya. If he left school in 1941, and then graduated from Oxford before training for the Colonial Service, he can’t have been involved actively in the war, which for a man of his age is strange – presumably there was a medical problem. Within two years of his appointment at Garissa he must have returned to England on leave, as June 1948 saw him sailing back to Mombasa to take up an appointment as District Officer of the Elgeyo-Marakwet District, in the Rift Valley. In March 1949 he took up the position of District Commissioner in Teita District, Coast Province, and then in November of that year he was appointed District Officer in Kiambu District, Central Province. Four positions in less than four years, and for the moment we’ll leave him there, at his headquarters in Kabarnet.

Lukas Pkech. With his specific anti-European messages Pkech drew attention to himself, and in August 1949 he and several associates were arrested, charged with belonging to an unlawful movement, and sentenced to thirty months hard labour. Hindsight suggests it would have been wiser to place him with Masinde in Lamu, as early in 1950 Pkech escaped from prison, and returned to Baringo, where he resumed his preaching, promoting the worship of Wele, and prophesying that the Europeans would soon be driven out. s District Officer Alan Stevens could not allow an escaped prisoner, the leader of a proscribed organisation, to promote sedition in that way, and sooner or later there would have to be a confrontation. It happened on April 24th, at Kolloa, where Stevens and a force of police confronted Pkech and three hundred spear-carrying followers. Or maybe Pkech confronted Stevens; the exact order of events is unclear. Whether Pkech’s men actually attacked the British force, or threatened to, or whether Stevens cold-bloodedly ordered his men to fire, or whether someone panicked under the pressure, depends on whose account one believes. What is clear is that by the end of the afternoon Pkech and twenty-eight of his followers had been shot dead, and four of the police force had been killed: Assistant Superintendent of Police, George Taylor; Assistant Inspector of Police, Robert Cameron; an unnamed African policeman; District Officer Alan Stevens. Fair to assume that, whether before or after Pkech’s death, the three British present had been targeted. With the deaths the Dini ya Msambwa came to an end in the region. The local people were disarmed, and forced to sell off livestock to pay compensation. Within a few months a much greater insurrection began among the Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya, and Stevens’ skirmish in Baringo would become a forgotten footnote to a larger conflict. Elijah Masinde would be released in 1960, but then imprisoned again in the early sixties , and again in the late 1970s. He died in 1987, and has a page to himself in Wikipedia. Alan Stevens has to settle for a memorial in his old school’s listed chapel.

 

IN MEMORY OF ALAN JAMES STEVENS, B.A. (OXON) LECONFIELD HOUSE 1936-1941 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICE KILLED IN A TRIBAL RISING NEAR LAKE BARINGO, KENYA ON APRIL 24TH 1950 AGED 27 YEARS "FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH"