Era that brought white rule to a close in Africa
In the latest in a series on milestone anniversaries in the coming year, produced with Huddersfield University, David Behrens recalls a startling development in international relations – and the strange bedfellows who came in tow.
IT WAS a chapter that ended four months ago, with the death of Robert Mugabe. But the world will shortly mark the anniversary of one of its most dramatic developments – and pause to take stock of just how significantly the balance of power has shifted.
Rhodesia’s severing of its last ties with the British Crown came in March 1970, some five years after the unilateral and illegal declaration of independence by its Prime Minister, Ian Smith.
It was a move that alienated many of his allies but gained him some unexpected bedfellows.
“It was possible then to defend situations that would be very difficult to do now,” said Prof Brendan Evans of Huddersfield University, who has written extensively on the politics of the period.
“In particular, the Liberals, of all people, under Jeremy Thorpe wanted a military invasion of Rhodesia. He said we should use force if necessary to bring Smith down. The Press started calling him Bomber Thorpe.”
It was with much ceremony, at Government House in the capital, Salisbury, that Smith had signed the proclamation which officially dissolved his country’s parliament and introduced a Republican constitution. His action broke an 80-year link with the British monarchy.
It was a step too far for even the British Conservatives
who had tacitly supported Smith since his declaration of independence and through the economic sanctions that followed.
Labour had taken a harder line, with the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, proclaiming that the Smith regime would collapse in months, if not weeks.
“Wilson did not react terribly sensibly,” Prof Evans said. “It soon became clear that he was
blustering and couldn’t really do anything to tackle Smith.
“The reality was that there was quite a lot of sympathy in Britain for Rhodesia, because decolonisation had been complex in the 1950s and 1960s, and many of the leaders who took over the newly independent African states became dictatorial.
“Added to that was the loss of the Empire, which was difficult for Britain, having been such a
major Imperial nation. So there was latent and sometimes overt sympathy, and the Conservative Party to a large extent went with it. But they couldn’t support Smith’s disloyalty to the Crown.”
The Queen’s view on Rhodesia severing ties with the Commonwealth is not known, but Prof Evans said: “There wasn’t much she could do – and at that stage it looked as if Smith’s regime was entrenched for the
foreseeable future. It was only as the 1970s progressed, and black opposition became more militant, that its legitimacy was undermined.”
Smith’s Rhodesia was an anachronism even in the 1960s. Its white minority largely considered itself British – and there was criticism back home of any talk of recrimination against kith and kin.
As it was, Rhodesians had
been declared effectively stateless by the declaration of independence, and Britain was among many nations not to recognise its passports.
“A lot of the white people over there were very privileged and in many ways more British than the British – living like rich people had done decades before, rather than in the realities of contemporary Britain,” Prof Evans said.
It was Margaret Thatcher’s Government that eventually pulled the rug from under Smith’s feet, with Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington telling him that Britain could no longer support minority rule.
“Mrs Thatcher was sympathetic to Smith and Rhodesia, but she ultimately had to bow to the inevitable. She was much more pragmatic than people realise,” Prof Evans said.