[21] In the nine months before the declaration of an Emergency, Banda combined opposition to Federation with more popular issues to mobilise Congress supporters into strikes and largely non-violent protests that would disrupt the everyday operation of the colonial government.
At the end of 1958, Banda and other Congress leaders had attended an All-African People's Conference in Accra, Ghana, and had returned to Nyasaland determined to secure constitutional change.
[27] In the first days of January 1959, Congress proposed substantial African representation on Nyasaland's governing bodies to Armitage: as this would lead to a demand to leave the Federation, it was rejected by the Governor.
This apparent stalemate led Henry Chipembere and Kanyama Chiume to demand a more aggressive campaign of disobedience to colonial laws, which was designed to cause chaos.
[28] Banda was more cautious, as a proposal had been made on 4 February for a British minister to visit Nyasaland in March to lower the political temperature, but he did not oppose escalating the campaign of civil disobedience.
[29] Armitage's advice that the Colonial Office should cancel the proposed ministerial visit because of the increasing violence of Congress supporters and its leading activists' inflammatory statements made his declaration of a State of Emergency inevitable[30] He asked for police reinforcements from Northern Rhodesia and Tanganyika, then troops from Northern and Southern Rhodesia, who arrived by 28 February[31][32] Many of the white Southern Rhodesian troops were barely trained conscripts, but Armitage considered them more reliable than experienced African soldiers already in Nyasaland, fearing a possible mutiny.
[34] The later report was the basis for the claim made by the Commissioner of Police that the meeting had planned the indiscriminate killing of Europeans and Asians, and also of those Africans opposed to Congress, the so-called "murder plot".
However, the refusal of Banda and his colleagues to condemn the violent actions of some Congress members, directed mainly toward Africans who failed to support it, gave the reports some plausibility.
[35] Lennox-Boyd and Julian Amery, the Under-Secretary of State at the Colonial Office both claimed during the House of Commons debate of 3 March 1958 that they had seen information making it clear that Congress planned a "massacre" or "bloodbath".
[40][41] On 3 March 1959 Armitage declared a State of Emergency over the whole of Nyasaland and arrested Dr. Hastings Banda, other members of the Congress executive committee and many local party officials.
[42][43] The initial reaction of many Congress supporters was rioting, damage to government and European property and strikes but within a few days, following action by the police and troops, the Southern Province became calm but tense.
In the more remote areas, particularly in the Northern Province, the destruction of bridges and government buildings and rural resistance continued for several months organised by Flax Katoba Musopole.
Williams, then an academic historian, had been a brigadier and Montgomery's wartime chief intelligence officer, Wyn-Harris had much African experience in Kenya and as Governor of the Gambia, although Primrose, a Scottish Lord Provost, was less significant figure.
[52][38] Despite Devlin being vouched for by a Minister, Lord Perth, he was hardly an establishment figure; Wyn-Harris a former governor was described as the personification of decency and fair play and the two other Commissioners were both experienced and independently-minded.
[40] It also condemned the use made of it by both the Nyasaland and British governments in trying to justify the Emergency, and declared that Banda had no knowledge of the inflammatory talk of some Congress activists about attacking Europeans.
[71] He was arrested and interned in Bulawayo: according to his account, he was approached by an Nyasaland Special Branch Inspector and asked to sign a prepared statement on the murder plot in exchange for a promise of release and repatriation to Tanganyika.
[76] The Commission also found that the Nyasaland government's suppression of criticism and of support for Congress justified calling it, in a widely quoted phrase, "no doubt only temporarily, a police state".
[81] Devlin accepted that both the Colonial Office and Armitage should see the draft report before it was signed, although this was not normal practice, and he and the other Commissioners agreed to a number of changes that softened its criticisms.
A section of the Armitage Report drafted by Amery accused the Commission of making a false distinction between a plan to assassinate a relatively small targeted group and one to initiate an indiscriminate massacre as both were murder.
[84] Manningham-Buller used Amery's equation of any plan, however ill-defined or poorly thought-out, with those specific allegations made by the Commissioner of Police, and those put to the Commission, to reject the assertion in its Report that there was no "murder plot".
Callahan also that rejected the Attorney-General's claim that the government did not have to accept the conclusions of this Commission, on the basis that it had been tasked with, and aimed at, setting out the relevant facts objectively and that it made no recommendations.
The governor of Nyasaland, Sir Robert Armitage, was incensed by the allegation, and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Alan Lennox-Boyd, thought the claim was grossly unfair.
Devlin's conclusion that there was no murder plot and that Banda, unlike other Congress leaders, was not involved in promoting violence opened the way for the British government to deal with him.
[94] Macleod's subsequent minute to Macmillan decried the slow pace of the release of detainees, whose number was still increasing through new detentions, and he saw no reason to prolong the State of Emergency.
It considered that the Federation could not survive without at least a major devolution of powers to Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, giving more voting rights to Africans and lessening racial discrimination.
Accordingly, and despite opposition from Armitage, from the governments of the Federation and Southern Rhodesia, and from some colleagues in the cabinet, Macleod released Banda from detention on 1 April 1960 and immediately began to negotiate with him on Nyasaland's constitutional future.
[101] Even before Macleod's appointment, Lord Perth and Colonial Office officials expressed doubts in October 1959 about Armitage's belief that sufficient moderates could be found to supplant Congress or in his ability to negotiate with Banda, assuming the latter were released.
However, the press coverage highlighted to the British public and parliament the strength of African opposition to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and the degree of coercion needed to preserve it, and further discredited Armitage.
[127] McCracken also suggests that Baker's underlying aim was to "set the record straight" by restoring the reputation of Nyasaland's colonial officials of the 1950s and 1960s, while attacking African nationalists and their sympathisers.
Like Macmillan, he notes Baker's reliance on official sources, including Special Branch reports, and the recollections of expatriates, and the reduction of African leaders to stereotypes.