Gandhi, the Empire’s hero
QUESTION Did Gandhi fight in the Zulu War? The Anglo-Zulu War, which featured famous actions such as the Battle of Isandlwana and the defence of Rorke’s Drift, took place in 1879. Mohandas Karamchand ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India, in 1869 and moved to South Africa in 1893, where he became a prominent member of the Indian community and campaigned for Indian rights.
Gandhi was a stretcher-bearer in the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and the Bambatha Uprising, a Zulu rebellion in 1906. he created the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps for use by the British during the Second Boer War. It consisted of 300 free Indians and 800 indentured labourers, and expenses were met by the local Indian community. By doing so Gandhi hoped to improve the status of Indians in the British empire.
he and his corps showed particular courage at the Battle of Spion Kop (1900). The Indian corps was supposed to be backup, but the British horse-drawn ambulances were unable to cope with the terrain, so the task of getting the British wounded down from Spion Kop and to the field hospital, 25 miles away, fell to Gandhi’s corps.
Working in oppressive heat with little water or cover from enemy fire, they saved many lives. General Redvers Buller mentioned the corps in dispatches, and Gandhi and 34 of his men were awarded the Queen’s South Africa campaign medal.
The Bambatha Uprising was sparked by British imposition of a new poll tax in Natal. When the Natal government sent police officers to collect the tax, two British officers were killed near Richmond, KwaZulu-Natal. The British declared martial law and quashed the resistance at Mome Gorge on June 10.
In the run-up to the battle, Gandhi argued that Indians should support the war effort to legitimise their claims to full citizenship.
The British refused to commission Indians as officers, but accepted Gandhi’s offer to let a detachment of Indians volunteer to act as stretcher-bearers.
Once again the corps was commanded by Gandhi and he displayed a surprisingly bellicose view in the pages of his newspaper Indian Opinion: ‘If the government only realised what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare.’ Twenty years on, Gandhi expressed his discomfort over his participation in this action: ‘even after I thought I had settled down in Johannesburg, there was to be no settled life for me. Just when I felt that I should be breathing in peace, an unexpected event happened.
‘The papers brought the news of the outbreak of the Zulu “rebellion” in Natal. I bore no grudge against the Zulus, they had harmed no Indian. I had doubts about the “rebellion” itself. But I then believed that the British empire existed for the welfare of the world.’ t. Winters, York. QUESTION Why does the English football club Queens Park Rangers have such a strong following in Sweden? A DISPROPORTIONATe number of Swedes over 40 support unfashionable english football teams such as QPR, Coventry, huddersfield and Derby.
This is because the Swedish Saturday afternoon live transmission tipsextra, which started in 1969, always included a game from the english First or Second Division.
The Swedes also had a pools-style game called stryktipset, which fans would fill in before the match to add some excitement. The english had to wait until 1983 before a First Division league game was first shown live on TV in england.
QPR became particularly popular in the mid-Seventies when Dave Sexton’s team missed out to Liverpool by a point for the 1975-76 First Division title.
QPR’s distinctive hooped shirts appealed to the Swedes, and local supporters are known as the Swedish hoops. They still meet in Wistroms Pub in Stockholm for televised live games and regularly organise trips to england for matches, supporters’ games and stadium tours.
There is also a very active market in Swedish QPR memorabilia.
Dave Webster, London. QUESTION I’ve heard it suggested that Cherie Blair (nee Booth) is related to John Wilkes Booth who shot President Lincoln. Is this correct? JOhN WILKeS BOOTh (1838-1865) was a highly popular stage actor of his day, but also a Confederate sympathiser, dissatisfied by the outcome of the American Civil War. This culminated in his assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre on Good Friday, April 14, 1865.
The acting credentials of the assassin and some of the more eccentric tendencies of Cherie’s father Tony George Booth (born in 1931), star of Confessions Of A Window Cleaner and Till Death Us Do Part, have led to a widespread rumour that the family was related. It’s claimed his ancestor was Algernon Sydney Booth, an uncle of John Wilkes Booth.
The proposed line is traced from Richard Booth, who was born in London in about 1755. he married Jane Game and they had at least two sons, Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852), a famous actor who struggled with alcoholism and madness, and Algernon Sydney Booth (born about 1794).
Junius Brutus fathered John Wilkes, Lincoln’s assassin. Algernon’s line appears to go through a John Booth to a Philip Booth and finally to a Norman Booth, who was born in 1883 in Bolton, Lancashire.
The date roughly correlates with that of Cherie’s dad, Antony George Booth, born at Jubilee Road, Liverpool in 1931, but this isn’t backed up by census data.
Tony Booth’s father wasn’t Norman, but George henry Booth (1907-1968), a merchant seaman who married Mary Vera Thompson in 1930.
According to Cherie: ‘he was then the chief steward’s writer on the MV Auriel which sailed from Liverpool to Nigeria, and his tales of the sights and sounds of Lagos brought Africa vividly to life. he only truly came into his own when playing the piano, which he did at every opportunity.’
Vera Booth was matriarch of the family, a staunch Roman Catholic who raised Cherie when Tony left their mother.
Norman Booth was born in 1883 at Westhoughton and is thought to have emigrated to America in 1903 — four years before George h. Booth’s birth.
Colin Day, Chapeltown, Lancs.
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