The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland signed a joint agreement in Cardiff on September 14, 2026 declaring their right to self-determination and their shared pursuit of independence from the United Kingdom.
John Swinney of the Scottish National Party, Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru and Michelle O'Neill of Sinn Fein stated that no Westminster government has the right to block democracy or undermine the principle that their people will decide their own future.
Their demand is not greater autonomy within the union but a formal exit from it, pursued through referendums that Westminster has so far refused to authorise.
The joint agreement has drawn attention and support across former British colonies in Africa, where the sight of Westminster refusing to authorise a referendum carries a particular weight. It mirrors the arguments colonial administrations once used to delay and deny self-rule.
In Kenya, it brings back the memory of a struggle that lasted nearly eighty years and cost thousands of lives before independence was finally conceded in 1963.
After the Second World War, the British Empire began to break up. The conflict left Britain bankrupted and unable to sustain its territories overseas.
The 1956 Suez Crisis exposed Britain’s financial and military weakness and destroyed much of its remaining influence in the Middle East.
The withdrawal from India and Pakistan in 1947 marked the beginning of a sustained period of decolonisation, and the same fiscal reality that made empire untenable abroad now shapes the debate over the union at home.
The 1960s saw a wave of independence across British Africa. Pro-independence movements pressured colonial powers and reminded them of promises made during the war. In 1960 alone, 17 sub-Saharan African countries gained sovereignty.
By the mid-1960s, Britain was finding it too costly to protect its remaining colonies and began withdrawing from most of them.
The lesson for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is that independence is rarely granted out of goodwill; it is conceded when the cost of refusal becomes greater than the cost of release.
Kenya’s path to independence was among the most difficult. British influence in the region was established through the Imperial British East Africa Company in 1888. After the First World War, Britain annexed the inland areas of the protectorate and declared them a crown colony in 1920.
Colonial policies displaced the Kikuyu, Maasai and Nandi peoples from their lands to make way for white settlers. The Kenya African Union emerged in 1946 but failed to bring reform.
In 1952, the Mau Mau Uprising began when the Kenya Land and Freedom Army launched a campaign against colonial authorities.
The British declared a State of Emergency following a period of denial and launched a counterinsurgency campaign that mixed military action with widespread detention and land seizures. The response disintegrated into systemic brutality.
Tens of thousands of suspected guerrillas were detained in overcrowded labour camps that lacked basic sanitation, where detainees were routinely tortured to extract confessions.
The show trial of the Kapenguria Six was widely condemned as an attempt to justify the crackdown to London.
At Hola Camp, eleven detainees were beaten to death by guards. The Kenya Human Rights Commission estimates that 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions.
The Mau Mau uprising and its associated violence convinced Britain of the need for reform. On December 12, 1963, Kenya became independent under the Kenya Independence Act and Jomo Kenyatta, one of the Kapenguria Six arrested, tried and imprisoned by the British, became the first Prime Minister.
The Kenyan case demonstrates that independence is achieved through sustained pressure, organised movements and the willingness to endure repression until the colonial power concludes that reform is unavoidable.
It also demonstrates that the end of colonial rule does not end colonial control. It also demonstrates that the end of colonial rule does not end post-colonial influence: a military presence, legal exemptions and the power to shield its personnel from Kenyan courts.
The British Army Training Unit Kenya, known as BATUK, continues to operate in Laikipia and Samburu counties, a military presence that outlasted the empire that created it.
British soldiers have committed documented crimes on Kenyan soil with impunity, and Kenyan courts still cannot hold them to account because Britain has refused to amend the Defence Cooperation Agreement to grant them jurisdiction.
Kenyans are pursuing that accountability through every legal and parliamentary channel open to them, and they have refused to accept that impunity is permanent.
The Cardiff agreement echoes a history of Pan-Africanist solidarity with anti-colonial struggles.
The joint declaration stated that "for people watching around the world, there could be no clearer sign that Westminster's time is coming to an end". For observers in former colonies, the constitutional question in the United Kingdom echoes an earlier era of independence negotiations.
The British Empire did not end in 1963, or when African states won their independence. It left behind military agreements, legal exemptions and unresolved crimes that still shape the relationship today.
What is happening in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland could lead to the UK’s eventual breakup, echoing the earlier dissolution of the British Empire – a process largely shaped by Africans’ fight for independence.
Therefore, pan‑African communities stand in solidarity with the Scots, Welsh, and Irish, viewing their efforts as an extension of the African struggle for freedom
