Capricorn Campaigner

David Stirling moved to Africa after the war and founded a social justice movement

David Stirling emigrated to Rhodesia, modern-day Zimbabwe, after the war and in 1949 he founded the Capricorn Africa Society (CAS). The aim of CAS was to merge the six British Territories of North and South Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika into a “single self-governing Federation under the British Crown wherein all men shall live side by side

in concord, sufficiency and freedom”. Because of its location between the Equator and the Tropic Capricorn, Stirling called his society ‘Capricorn’. The project faced opposition from the start from both the left and the right. White settlers in southern Africa feared CAS would undermine their wealth and influence, while the left suspected Stirling’s self-governing Federation was an attempt to maintain the Empire beneath the veneer of greater autonomy for Africa, a view that was articulated by the Socialist newspaper The Daily Worker.

Increasingly beset by financial difficulties, CAS failed to win the support among local populations and Stirling admitted defeat in 1958. He returned to Britain and in 1967 launched Watchguard International, the world’s first private security company, which recruited former soldiers – some from the SAS – to act in effect as highend mercenaries in trouble spots such as Libya following the coup led by Colonel Gaddafi in 1969. Stirling was knighted in 1989 for ‘Services to the Military’ and he died the following year.