In 1948, W. C. Johnson, Young's old chief from Birmingham, was appointed to the
Colonial Office, as police advisor to the Colonial secretary. From 1949, he was Inspector-General of Colonial Police. He left that position in 1951 and was succeeded by his assistant
George Abbiss. The post was an innovation, created with as its motivations both
Cold War fear of communist influence, Young was there in 1950, for two months, with Chief Superintendent Wilson of the Metropolitan Police, and wrote a substantial report for
Matthew Collens, the inspector-general of police.
Malaya In 1952–1953, Young was seconded to the
Federation of Malaya as its commissioner of police, during the
Emergency. He arrived in February 1952, bringing again Chief Superintendent Wilson who was to train uniformed police. In broad terms
Gerald Templer and Young conformed to the "Briggs Plan", proposed by
Harold Rawdon Briggs, for resettling rural Chinese-Malayans. Success was obtained from 1952 onwards in limiting the insurgency. Young chose his successor,
William Carbonell, without regard to seniority.
Kenya In 1954, Young undertook a further secondment, in
Kenya as commissioner of police during the
Mau Mau rebellion. He followed the parliamentary delegation that went to Kenya in January 1954, led by
Walter Elliot and
Arthur Bottomley, and reported some months later.
Oliver Lyttleton, the Colonial Secretary, visited Kenya three times in the period 1952–4, before resigning from the
third Churchill ministry in July 1954. Young arrived in Kenya in March of that year, and immediately required that policing should be carried out with minimal physical force. as head of
CID, to investigate allegations against the army, police and
Kikuyu Home Guard. From 1951 CID had been under John Timmerman, a Canadian
RCMP and WWII intelligence officer who was assistant police commissioner, brought in to reorganise it, and who from 1955 worked for the
Department of External Affairs in security. The trial on 10 December 1954 for
perjury of George Horsfall of the Kenya Police, and Derek Searle of the Reserve, was met by demands for an inquiry from Reserve officers into CID methods. Young resigned after less than eight months. He saw widespread interference of the executive in policing. His resignation letter to
Evelyn Baring was suppressed. He had arrived from Malaya in April as a deputy commissioner and police trainer.
John Whyatt,
Attorney-General of Kenya and an ally of Young, was made
Chief Justice of Singapore in 1955. Before leaving Kenya, Young asked MacPherson to compile a concise file of issues with Baring's administration: it was not circulated, but Young used his Anglican contacts to make the content known.
Karl Hack reports Young's resignation as driven by the failure to have murders by the Kikuyu Home Guard investigated. He comments also on the differences between Malaya and Kenya, stating that in Young's view efforts to make policing "friendly to the public" initially had failed in the latter, having largely succeeded in the former. On his return to the United Kingdom, Young met privately with the clerical activist
Michael Scott and the politician
Barbara Castle. He made no move to publicise his views. The
Christian Council of Kenya was split, with
David Steel moved by Young's departure, coupled with a raid on Mombasa's
YMCA, to preach strongly against Baring's administration in St Andrew's Church,
Nairobi; while
Leonard Beecher opposed him. Steel brought the
Church Missionary Society (CMS) into his camp. On 22 December 1954,
Lord Ogmore asked in the
House of Lords if the government would make a statement on Young's resignation. Behind the scenes, while talking to the Colonial Office about a
non-disclosure agreement, Young briefed against Baring to
Kenneth George Grubb of the CMS, and encouraged the CMS missionary Thomas Francis Cecil Bewes to keep up the pressure. Grubb wrote a letter to
The Times, published 22 January 1955.
Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, met Baring during December 1954, but Beecher asked him to leave matters to the churches in Kenya. He was in discussions with
Frederick Crawford, acting Governor, and considered church leaders bound by undertakings of confidentiality. In the House of Lords on 10 February 1955,
William Jowitt, 1st Earl Jowitt cited a
Times report of the
East African Court of Appeal, in which it was stated that the authority of detention teams could not be fathomed in law. He said "It is in that context that I find disquieting the sending out of Colonel Young to investigate the affairs of the police and his coming back for some reason which I do not fully understand." Bottomley challenged the Colonial Secretary, by then
Alan Lennox-Boyd, on 16 March 1955 in a House of Commons debate on colonial affairs, stating that "there has been no satisfactory explanation yet of the resignation of Colonel Young". In a 1959 debate on the
Hola massacre, Castle accused Lennox-Boyd of repeated cover-ups, and suppression of reports including Young's. She also quoted from MacPherson, who had remained in Kenya for two years after Young had left. He had been told by Young's successor as commissioner of police to stop investigations into camp deaths. ==Royal Ulster Constabulary==