Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Introduction
David Steel was Leader of the Liberal Party between 1976 and 1988, steering their merger with the Social Democratic party. He was knighted in 1990 and was elevated to the House of Lords in 1997. A strong advocate of devolution, David became the first speaker of the new Scottish Parliament in 1999 before he retired from politics in 2003.
Born in Scotland, David's life changed dramatically when he was 11 years old. His father, a Church of Scotland Minister, announced they were to move to Africa, to the British colony of Kenya. After four years, with the situation in Kenya becoming increasingly violent the family returned to Scotland.
However, David's father made the journey back to Kenya to continue his work. It was only after his father's death in 2002 that David discovered a briefcase full of documents belonging to the Reverend Steel. They revealed that he played a significant part in the political turmoil that accompanied the birth of the new Kenya.
Browser by chapterOnce a month, David's father's sermon from St Andrews was broadcast live on national radio. On the evening of Sunday 9 January 1955 Reverend Steel used his sermon to broadcast a damning condemnation of the colonial authorities across the country. In it he made public his feelings about the detention camps:
"Of course we don't kill babies: we only put their fathers out of employment and reduce them to starvation. There are 60,000 detainees detained in camps. Detained for what? It will be said that the church should not interfere with politics. That is a heresy. The church dare not and will not stand aside when Christian principles are abrogated and when our great traditions of Government based on those principles are being violated. Whatever the way to end this emergency may be, these are not the ways, because they are unjust ways and unjust and indiscriminate action never achieved anything but a disaster and a grief both for those who practise it and for those on whom it is practised."
The Reverend never spoke so publicly about the injustices he saw, but he continued to petition the authorities in protest. A number of people that David met on his journey to Kenya agreed that the sermons made by his father were significant in shifting public opinion. In lobbying the government he was also instrumental in securing the freedom of some of those detained.
