The army's relations with outsiders are far from mysterious when it comes to the leading personalities in the Emergency. The opinions voiced by General Erskine, Governor Baring, settler leader Michael Blundell and Colonial Secretary Lyttelton were diligently recorded. There is little doubt about the impact of personal rapport between key figures in the campaign against the Mau Mau. Such a perspective on the conflict coincides with an appreciation in studies on civil-military relations, which places the soldier–statesman dialogue at the very centre of strategy formation. How should civil-military relations in Kenya be understood? This chapter analyses the relationship between soldiers and civilians in relation to the self-interest of major actors, and the institutional structures which mediated their interactions.

Writings on civil-military relations often address collaborative policy-making at the highest level in the state apparatus. Many accept Samuel Huntington's idea that because war is a political phenomenon, soldiers follow directions from their political masters. The central concept is civilian control, where an autonomous military profession devises means to achieve policy ends enunciated by politicians. This institutional approach examines political interaction, asking whether soldiers have obeyed, and why – or why not? Soldiers ‘work or shirk’, depending upon whether their masters monitor them effectively, and on a system of rewards and punishments. Quite unlike the American experience, which informs most political theories on the subject, the British case has received scant attention. Because the British Army owes allegiance to the monarch, normally abstains from playing party politics and avoids launching coups, it tends to be considered almost totally apolitical. Rather than the control model, the British tradition might better fit the principles of integration and mutual understanding proposed by Morris Janowitz. By aligning the military's internal values and beliefs with those of civilian society, Janowitz thought they could be brought under ‘subjective control’. In assessing whether such convergence exists, scholars examined the close social and ideological proximity between the British military and political elites. But they failed to explain how social composition affected behaviour in wartime. In this sense, the sociological approach offers few insights into British counter-insurgency.