In My Own Time

by Jeremy Thorpe

  Heath was advised by his Law Officers that he was only under a legal obligation under the Simonstown Agreement to supply helicopters, four anti-submarine frigates and some naval spares. A month after Singapore, he announced that Britain would sell South Africa seven Wasp helicopters. He ignored any other request. In practice six helicopters were delivered. In 1974 Wilson, following his general election victory, scrapped the Simonstown Agreement. Nigeria, India and Malaysia withdrew from the study group on maritime routes. The whole idea of the study group was dropped. It had served its purpose, granting time for second thoughts.

  Lecture tours in South Africa

  I was invited by the University of Cape Town to give the annual Feetham lecture in the spring of 1972. It was a lecture designed to remind people that there was segregation in the universities which the academic world deplored. It was fully backed and organised by NUSAS (the National Union of South African Students).

  I arrived in Johannesburg and spent the first night in a hotel. Whilst I was dining, my suitcase was broken into and an electric razor stolen, which presumably was intended to persuade me that it was a burglary. In fact I could tell that my papers had been examined, but fortunately there was nothing of any consequence in the case.

  I flew down to Cape Town where I was met by the group of students, who pointed out to me that the two burly-looking gentlemen sitting in the waiting room had been sent to ‘look after’ me. I went over to them and said: ‘I gather you are keeping an eye on me. This is just to tell you that I shall be going straight to the Vice-Chancellor’s house where I am staying and will not be going out this evening. I say this in case you want the evening off.’

  I was in fact due at the Vice-Chancellor’s to meet other members of the university. The Vice-Chancellor of Cape Town University, Sir Richard Luyt, was a very remarkable man. He was an Afrikaner, an international rugby player and a liberal. At one time in his career he had been in the British colonial service as a political secretary in Kenya and also Governor of Guyana, which after independence asked him to stay on as Governor-General. The Nationalists in South Africa could hardly accuse him of being a dangerous Marxist.

  The chairman of NUSAS, Michael Harris, was anti the South African government and pro almost anything British. During the night the news had come through of the death of the Duke of Windsor, who as Prince of Wales had been Chancellor of Cape Town University. Michael had requested that the portrait of the Prince should be placed in the university auditorium where the lecture was to take place. This was done and the portrait was draped in black crepe.

  There is a university song in Latin of which one line is ‘floreat respublica’ (may the republic flourish). Michael changed it to ‘pereat respublica’ (may the republic perish). Very few of the distinguished staff knew much Latin and it was a cause of great amusement to many of us to watch them singing lustily the revised version!

  I also paid a visit to Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg to deliver a lecture. I said that I was familiar with Sir Robert Birley’s (the educationalist and headmaster of Eton) legacy known as Birley’s Law. This stated ‘That the gentlemen from the Special Branch are to be found in the second row’. However, reassuringly I noted that the second row was occupied by Mr Oppenheimer, who was Chancellor of Cape Town, the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of Wits and many other distinguished people. I apologised for the absence of prominent clergy including Trevor Huddleston, Ambrose Reeves, Jose de Blanc and John Collins, none of whom could be present, and indeed would be most unwelcome to the government had they put in an appearance.

  I met some very wonderful people of all races who courageously were carrying on the campaign against apartheid. None of them would have dreamt that it could have ended without bloodshed.

  Seretse Khama

  Two of my closest friends in Africa were Seretse Khama, the Chief of the Bamangwato tribe in Bechuanaland – now Botswana – and Ruth Williams, his wife. He studied at Fort Hare University in South Africa and went on to Balliol College, Oxford, where he shared rooms with Eric Lubbock, now Lord Avebury. Whilst reading for the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1948, he married Ruth – as a white woman, this breached tribal traditions and convention. Despite the support his marriage received from a gathering of the tribe, successive British governments from 1949 to 1956 barred him from returning to his country. I went on a Liberal delegation as a Young Liberal representative in 1951 to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, Patrick Cordon Walker, in the course of which we urged him to end Seretse’s banishment. He returned home, having resigned his chieftainship, as a private citizen with his wife.

  He joined the Bechuanaland Legislative Council in 1961 and in 1962 formed the multi-racial Democratic Party. In 1965 he became Prime Minister and negotiated independence. In September 1966 he became President of Botswana and received a knighthood from the British Crown which he used throughout his life. His fourteen years in office were a model of racial harmony and tolerance, and firm opposition was shown to the racism of neighbouring Rhodesia and South Africa. Botswana was, and still is, the most democratic country in the continent of Africa.

  On one occasion when I was dining with Ruth and Seretse in Gaborone, Seretse asked me whether my college, Trinity, Oxford, still shouted abusively at neighbouring Balliol. I said: ‘You embarrass me. You tell Ruth of these exchanges.’ Seretse replied: ‘Trinity men used to shout over the wall and from neighbouring windows, “bring out your black men”.’ ‘Oh,’ I replied. ‘That’s all changed. There are so few white men in Balliol that they now cry out “Bring out your white men!”’

  Following one landslide election, the opposition was reduced to three MPs. I said to Seretse that the very measure of his success had almost wiped out his Westminster-model opposition. He replied that one problem which he faced was that a salary was paid to the Leader of the Opposition. Any one of the three MPs could qualify as Leader of the Opposition. What should he do about the salary? I suggested that he split it three ways and this he did.

  Kenneth Kaunda

  During the Rhodesian declaration of independence (see Chapter Six), I made regular visits to Zambia, which borders on the Rhodesian frontier. There was no doubt that sanctions against Rhodesia had a debilitating effect on the Zambian economy, but this was a price the country was prepared to pay.

  Kenneth Kaunda, the country’s first President, is a close and valued friend. We used to have a working lunch together – just the two of us in the cavernous state dining room at State House. I became increasingly a means of communication between our governments, and used to appear on Zambian television discussing the political situation.

  When the Commonwealth heads of government conference took place in Zambia in 1979, Kaunda was fulsome in his praise for the part the Queen had played in resolving the Rhodesian crisis. He made an extraordinary gesture when he discovered that the state banquet to be given by the Queen to the Presidents and Prime Ministers was to be held in a hotel. He made State House available to her and removed himself to the State Lodge up-country. Zambian ministers found it a strange experience to go to State House – before independence the residence of the Governor, and thereafter of the President – to see the Royal Standard, with the Queen in residence, and to be received by royal staff. This was a tribute to both President and Queen. A similar gesture was made by Seretse Khama during the Queen’s state visit to Botswana.

  The recent move in Zambia to strip Kaunda of his citizenship, on the grounds that although born in northern Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), he was a citizen of Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) because his parents came from there, effectively declares much of his 27-year rule illegal. This finding is petty, childish, vindictive, and shows a contempt for the initial years of independence.

  Nixon and the Commonwealth

  Harold Wilson, as a good democrat, attached importance to opposition leaders in this country meeting visiting foreign politicians. In 1969 he suggested that I, as Leader of the Liberal Party, should meet President
Nixon on his visit to London. This was arranged, and indeed, since then, these meetings have become established practice. I saw the President at Claridges, where there was a police presence lining the staircase, the hall and the approaching streets even more numerous than the security provided for the Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin.

  Nixon was obviously well-briefed and, referring to Rhodesia’s illegal declaration of independence, said to me: ‘I know that the Rhodesian situation is important, but tell me why you think so’. I replied that if there were a third world war it would not necessarily be a clash between Marxist and capitalist opponents. Ironically, the two bitterest enemies at that time were China and Russia, both of whom were Marxist. Conflicts would be more likely to arise through the polarisation of the world on the basis of colour. Jacob Malik, the Soviet ambassador, had told Lord Gladwyn that, in the eyes of the Chinese, the difference between the Americans and the Russians was that the Americans were the white barbarians who came by sea and the Russians were the white barbarians who came by land. Unfortunately, the world was divided into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ which in general coincided with the division of colours.

  I said that the Commonwealth had come into being almost by accident and was the one organisation covering every continent, creed and colour, which met in conditions of complete equality and relative trust. White supremacy claimed by the Rhodesians was a direct challenge to this concept. The vote in the American Congress to break the chrome embargo to Rhodesia was directly assisting the white Smith regime. Given a substantial black vote in the USA it could become a highly sensitive issue. I think he got the message.

  At the independence ceremonies in March 1957 of the Gold Coast colony, which then became Ghana, Vice-President Nixon, as he then was, was representing the USA. Determined to be folksy, he approached a tall man, whom he assumed to be a Ghanaian and said: ‘I am very privileged to be here for your independence celebrations’. The man made no reply. So Nixon tried again: ‘We were under the British yoke ourselves sometime back, it is true – but we know how you guys are feeling today to have got your liberty and freedom’. The man turned and said: ‘Say, Mr Vice-President, I don’t know much about liberty and freedom. I am just a visiting journalist from Alabama!’

  The Commonwealth and television

  My involvement on the ground throughout the Commonwealth was made possible by acting as a roving reporter to the ITV programme This Week. In almost every case, it involved a report on some aspect of pre-independence developments in the Commonwealth. I went to Jamaica to interview Norman Manley and Sir Alexander Bustamante, respectively Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition. This was to assess the effects of the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962. I interviewed the leaders of Nigeria, namely Azikwe, Chief Awolowo, the Sardauna of Sokoto, J. C. Okpara and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who was tragically to be murdered. I went to Malta during the elections when Mintoff, the Labour leader and Prime Minister, was interdicted by the Catholic Church. Its leader, Cardinal Gonzi, who was as old as time itself, insisted that the church was not interfering in politics but merely defending the inheritance handed down by St Peter!

  In Ghana I went to assess the dangers which the Queen would face on her proposed state visit in November 1961, particularly as Nkrumah, the President, had not dared to venture out of State House for several months.

  He had assumed dictatorial powers and had made many enemies, and it was thought that there might be a risk of exposing the Queen to violence directed at him. My other concern was that the Ghanaian regime would exploit her visit as representing support for Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party. They had already printed, as political propaganda, a photograph of the Queen in the Irish state coach waving in a gesture which quite coincidentally accorded with the logo of the CPP, which was an outstretched hand. Nigeria to the south was making a stab at democracy and was anxious that the true constitutional position should be understood, namely that a state visit to a Commonwealth country did not involve support of the current regime.

  The Ghanaian Minister of the Interior refused to grant me an interview on TV, but I ‘door stepped’ him as he entered Parliament for the opening of the session and asked him how he could justify the growing list of political prisoners detained without trial or charge. He blurted out a few remarks and disappeared inside. Very shortly afterwards I was approached by an official who said that the minister wished to see me. Before going in to see the minister, I told our cameraman to rush to the airport with the film and get it out of the country and that if I didn’t appear within ten minutes, to alert the British High Commissioner. I found the minister surrounded by three other ministerial colleagues and he screamed at me: ‘Did you record an interview?’ I replied that I had. He then said that he had no idea he was being interviewed, to which I replied that it was hardly surprising since at all times he looked away from me. Another minister shouted at me: ‘How dare you behave like this?’ To which I replied: ‘How dare you speak like this to a fellow Commonwealth MP?’ It had a sobering effect and I went on to suggest that we would not need to use the film if he would give me a proper interview. To this he agreed and I duly proceeded to the minister’s house. He was Kwaku Boateng, whose son Paul became a minister in the Labour government in the UK after the 1997 election.

  During my visit, I did what I could to obtain the release of Joe Appiah, the Ghanaian husband of Sir Stafford Cripps’ daughter. He was detained by Nkrumah without trial or charge, and his life was in danger. I went to see Joe’s wife, Peggy, and ironically, next door to their front gate, lying on the ground, was the signboard of a previous neighbour, ‘Dr H. K. Banda, Medical Practitioner’.

  I could not resist commenting on the fact that Banda had been detained by the colonial power, the UK, in Nyasaland, whilst Appiah had been detained by an independent African state, Ghana. Which of these two men would find their detention more of a political advantage as far as their prospects of becoming President or Prime Minister of their respective countries were concerned? Years later, I was to re-visit Ghana on behalf of Amnesty International to report on the condition of the political prisoners then detained. My first visit was to the Christianborg Castle where Joe Appiah had his ministerial office. I told him that the last time I had come to Ghana, I had tried to secure his release from prison. I was now urging him to release those that he and his colleagues had detained! I saw about sixty prisoners in all and struck a bargain with the government that I would make recommendations on the whole question of the rights and conditions of political prisoners, and would only publish the report if the Ghanaian government unreasonably failed to act on those recommendations. In fairness to them, they acted on most of the major recommendations.

  Hastings Banda

  Banda and the bishop

  The reference to Banda leads logically to Nyasaland, now Malawi, which I visited during the state of emergency in the spring of 1959. Banda was then detained and the Governor, Sir Robert Armitage, had somewhat foolishly and insensitively decreed that the word kwacha, which means dawn, (i.e. independence) was a banned word and its use was a punishable offence. Ironically, it is now the national currency of Zambia, formerly Northern Rhodesia. I wrote to Banda – whom I had yet to meet – in prison and asked him whether he would be interested, when he was released, in visiting London with all expenses paid and a fee of, I believe, £150, to give me a world exclusive TV interview. The British, being model jailers, ensured that he got the letter and that his reply was duly received by me, the content of which in brief said: ‘Yes’. I then sold the idea to This Week.

  Banda was due to be released, and it was arranged that he and I would meet in the early hours of the morning of 7 April 1960 at Rome airport, where we would switch planes in the hope of bypassing the press. I noticed that Banda, who arrived very bleary-eyed and still slightly shell-shocked, was wearing a black hat with a black felt rose in the front. At that moment a very tall bishop, who I believe was the Bishop of Uganda, hove to and asked Banda
whether by mistake he had taken his hat. ‘No’, said Banda rather abruptly. I pointed out that the hat he was wearing had got a black felt rose on the front – was this in order? Banda removed the hat and said: ‘All, that fool has taken my hat!’ There had indeed been a mix-up. Exchanges of hats were duly made and Banda started the journey in a very bad mood. To humour him I said: ‘Kamuzu, this is a historic journey. You come out of a British jail before independence and therefore will become President; you arrive in Rome wearing a bishop’s hat and by the time you reach London you will claim to be Sir Roy Welensky’s [former Prime Minister of the Central African Federation] private confessor!’ He roared with laughter and the ice was broken. Another incident which I recall involving Banda was at a state banquet at Buckingham Palace in 1969 for Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth. The seating was imaginatively set out in tables of ten, with at least one member of the royal family at each table. Princess Margaret headed our table and at one stage said to me: ‘You seem to know Dr Banda very well. How did you first meet?’ ‘You tell her’, said Banda. As tactfully as I could, I replied that it was on another occasion when he was the guest of her sister the Queen. ‘Where was that?’ she said. ‘Gwelo Jail’, said Banda. ‘I hope you were well looked after’, she said. ‘Oh yes’, said Banda. ‘So much so that my white jailers complained that they didn’t like having to clean a black man’s bath!’