Guy Clutton-Brock 1906-1995

In the last years of the white regime in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), many hundreds of Africans--and just one white man-- were detained without trial. The lone white was Guy Clutton Brock, who had spent the previous 21 years setting up and taking the lead in cooperative communities which served as training grounds for democracy and improved agricultural methods, clinics for the sick, and refuges for those who needed protection and advice under an oppressive colonial regime. Black and white people worked side by side to create a pattern of freedom and good living for the country's future.

With the eloquent support of Trevor Huddleston, Fenner Brockway, Michael Scott, Mary Benson, and many others, the work done by Guy and Molly Clutton Brock at Cold Comfort Farm in Southern Rhodesia became a widely acclaimed pattern for racial freedom and regeneration in the poverty-stricken countries of Africa. Guy joined in the founding of the African National Congress in Rhodesia and was largely responsible for its non-racial and black/white partnership policies.

In an inspiring book of reminiscences put together by many of the Clutton Brock's friends for Guy's 80^th birthday, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania writes: They played a unique and invaluable part in the long struggle for world peace ... and influenced the minds and the work of many people now dispersed throughout Southern Africa". [Guy and Molly Clutton Brock Longmans Zimbabwe, Harare 1986]

While still at university Guy had been enthusiastically involved in youth work; went on to teaching; later joined the Probation Service caring for young prisoners in borstals; and then, at the outset of the Second World War, became warden of the Oxford House community in East London. He transformed this well-known community into a centre for war victims and social aid of all kinds, supported by a staff of wartime pacifists. He went on to do similar work at the Christian pacifist community centre Kingsley Hall--bringing new life to an institution closely associated with Gandhi.

After the war's end, he moved on to reconstruction work in Germany, but was unhappy with working under British government auspices. Three years as an agricultural worker in western Wales gave him the additional experience he needed to devote his considerable organising skills to working in the Third World. St Faith's, a radical Christian body working for African advancement, offered him work in Southern Rhodesia, where he became associated with the Tangwena people, who sought his help to defend their ancestral lands from government expropriation. This became a long-running and effective campaign of nonviolent resistance, closely followed at the time in Peace News.

In 1971, the white regime exiled the Clutton Brocks from Rhodesia. Guy and Molly retired to a cottage and smallholding in an isolated part of North Wales, but never lost contact nor ceased to encourage those with whom they worked and struggled. Many of their friends and colleagues went on to take significant roles in the first government of independent Zimbabwe.

Harry Mister, London