In 1944, the Kenya African Union was founded, the first organisation that tried to represent Africans from all communities across Kenya in the struggle against colonial rule. Its first president was Harry Thuku. Jomo Kenyatta would become president in 1947 after returning from Britain. The KAU was not a revolutionary organisation in its early years. It petitioned, it lobbied, it published. But it gave the independence movement a national structure for the first time, and it brought Kenyatta to the centre of the political stage he would occupy for the rest of his life.