Kenyan scale". It was subsequently difficult for ministers to repudiate these statements. Harold Macmillan decided to set up a Commission of Inquiry headed by Lord Devlin, which exposed the failings of the Nyasaland administration, and concluded it had lost the support of those it governed. The Devlin Commission's report is the only example of a British judge examining whether the actions of a colonial administration in suppressing dissent were appropriate. Devlin's conclusions that excessive force was used and that Nyasaland was a "police state" caused political uproar. His report was largely rejected and the state of emergency lasted until June 1960. Macmillan not only broadly rejected the Devlin Report, which had taken several months to prepare, but engineered the production of the rival Armitage Report, which was prepared very quickly so it could be released on the same day as the Devlin Report. The Colonial Office obtained an early draft of the Devlin Commission's report and passed a copy to Armitage, which he used to prepare a document attacking its findings. Armitage then joined a high level working party in London which drafted a despatch to counter the Devlin Report. Leaving Nyasaland The Nyasaland African Congress, which had been banned in 1958, was re-formed as the Malawi Congress Party in 1959. Banda's detention became a political issue in the 1959 general election in the United Kingdom, although the Conservatives retained power. Under pressure from the press, the government decided to release Banda in March 1960. Before Band's release, Armitage was involved in a further controversy. During the visit of Harold Macmillan to Blantyre in January 1960 as part of his African tour, a demonstration led by Malawi Congress Party activists against continued emergency restrictions and the Banda's imprisonment was witnessed by British and other journalists, some of whom reported that the police provoked a riot, which they suppressed with excessive and indiscriminate violence against demonstrators and spectators in which European officers were directly involved. Several British newspapers called for an impartial inquiry into the so-called "Blantyre riot", which Armitage resisted that the journalists had exaggerated, if not invented, claims of police brutality. However, the Colonial Secretary, Ian Macleod agreed under parliamentary pressure to a judge-led inquiry and instructed Armitage to arrange it. The ensuing Southworth Commission by Justice Frederic Southworth of the Nyasaland High Court was appointed by Armitage to inquire into the disturbances and, in particular into allegations of