SPEECH
GIVEN BY A.D.HARVEY AT THE "RAISING OF THE FLAG" CEREMONY IN NORFOLK ON 13th SEPTEMBER 2015.
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Rhodesians,
It is
certainly a great pleasure and honour for me to be invited to address this
ceremony again this year. Last year was the first occasion that I was able to
attend in person, though I had received a number of glowing reports informing
me what a spectacular and inspiring event it was - and it definitely didn't disappoint! Peter Sladden and his
gallant team of supporters are indeed to be heartily congratulated upon keeping
the Rhodesian tradition of "Raising the Flag" alive "in
exile" for so many years. Long may it continue, until one day, I firmly
believe, it will be able to be resumed in Cecil Square, Salisbury, itself.
Probably not in our lifetimes of course, but maybe in our
children's or our children's children's.
Perhaps
the most encouraging aspect of my attendance last year was to be able to look
around Southrepps Hall and to see that it was
festooned with regalia and artefacts not only of Rhodesia itself, but also of the entire British Empire. Rhodesia undoubtedly was the "Jewel
in the Crown" as Peter accurately states in his invitation to this event,
but it is the crown as a whole - the entire British Empire, the greatest Empire which the
world has ever seen - which perhaps we should be celebrating.
The
organisation which I represent today, the Springbok
Club, together with our fraternal organisations the Swinton Circle and New Britain,
are unapologetically neo-Imperialist in ideology. We believe that the British
Empire was the greatest force for good and for civilisation which the world has
ever seen, and fully concur with the immortal words of Cecil John Rhodes "I contend that
we [the British] are the finest race in the world and that the more of the
world we inhabit the better it is for the human race".
When I
spoke last year I told something about my second ever visit to Rhodesia in 1976, when I was a member of
the famous Tour of Rhodesia by five [then] young British patriots who wished to
express their solidarity with their Rhodesian kith and kin. I mentioned briefly
the old gentleman who we met who ran the store at the Matopos
who told us proudly that he had only been out of the country once in his life -
to fight for King and Empire in Flanders during WWI. This year I wish to
mention another remarkable person who we met during the 1976 Tour who equally
exemplified the Imperial spirit. Her name was Betty Wemyss,
and she worked for the patriotic Rhodesian periodical Rhodesia and World Report, a publication which was surprisingly
widely circulated among patriotic circles in the UK at the time. One of our party,
Tony Williams, was one of these UK subscribers, and suggested that
we visited their offices in Salisbury where we met Betty. She proved
to be a revelation, and told us much about her life story. She had been born in
India to a colonial family during the Raj, but
they had left India at the time of the over-hasty
granting of independence, and had re-settled in Africa, eventually locating themselves with a renewed colonial lifestyle in Rhodesia. It was the memories of how the
British colonists in India - not to mention the poor native Indians themselves
- had been so badly betrayed by the Attlee Government which motivated Betty for
the rest of her life, hence her involvement with several patriotic Rhodesian
organisations. Some three years later, by which time I had been appointed the
Organiser of the Durban Branch of the Save
Rhodesia Campaign, I met one of Betty's daughters at an SRC function at Umdloti in Natal. She told me the sad news that
Betty had died a short time previously, but she had been glad that her mother
never lived long enough to see her beloved Rhodesia handed over to the
terrorists (which by then seemed almost inevitable), just as she had seen India
handed over to subversives 30 years earlier. The memory of Betty Wemyss and her proud Imperial spirit will remain in the
memories of all true patriots long after the memories of lesser people are
forgotten.
Whilst
on the subject of the 1976 Rhodesian Tour I would also like to mention that
although the other members of this party remain in the UK, Tony Williams' adventurous pioneer spirit
continues, as he has now relocated to Australia, where he has established a
very successful life for himself and has promised to become as involved as he
is able in the Springbok Club out
there, a structure for which we hope to establish very shortly. I would also
like to add that Tony and I have now constructed a FaceBook
page celebrating our 1976 tour of Rhodesia called simply "The 1976
Rhodesian Tour".
The
next time I visited Rhodesia was in 1978, when I toured on
behalf of the Save Rhodesia Campaign
of South Africa. Here again I met two people
who can only really be described as great Rhodesians, and who again exemplified
the true Imperial pioneer spirit. The first was a farmer from Lalapanzi, right in the middle of the country, by the name
of Alastair Eddington. Although well into his 80s
when I met him, Alastair was still cattle farming, and also ran a butchery and
small-scale chrome mining operation on his property. He also introduced me to a
neighbouring farmer who apparently was even older than he was, and who still
drove around in an ancient pre-WWII Austin. Evidently this neighbour had
copies of the Daily Telegraph
regularly posted to him in Lalapanzi - quite some
logistical feat in the days before the Internet of course! Once again therefore
both Alastair and his neighbour demonstrated not only the Rhodesian pioneer
spirit, but also that they were true sons of the British Empire. Alastair was also very active,
even at his age, with an organisation called the Rhodesia Movement (which the SRC was supporting) which advocated a
last-ditch federal-style solution to try to save Rhodesia in one form or another. The
other great Rhodesian who I met at this time was also an active member of the Rhodesia Movement. His name was Owen Parvess and came from Bulawayo. He had been an officer, rising
to the rank of Major, in the Rhodesian Army (first with the RLI, and then
subsequently with the RAR), but was also a fine all-round sportsman, excelling
at Athletics, Lawn Tennis, Cricket and Rugby - but above all at Shooting, at
which he captained the Rhodesian Shooting Team which once beat their South
African counterparts at the Bloemfontein "Bisley".
After leaving the Army he threw himself into the political struggle to try to
save the country, but alas once the ZANU-PF terrorists gained control he realised
that he was probably a marked man, so as well as Alastair Eddington
he almost immediately moved south of the Limpopo, to Pinetown in Natal. It was
here that I got to know him better, this time together with his wife Phyllis
and his children. He became active in politics for a while in South Africa (where he had actually been
born) trying to prevent that country going the same way as his beloved Rhodesia. He stood for election to
Parliament at the 1981 General Election, before concentrating more upon family
life and building up his increasingly successful financial services business. I
therefore lost contact with Owen during the mid-1980s, but by chance managed to
re-make contact with several members of his family via FaceBook
last year - but tragically I learnt only a few months later that Owen had died,
at the sadly early age of only 71. Last month, however, his widow Phyllis and
his daughter Cindy visited the UK to see one of their
sons/brothers, Mike, who now lives in Surrey, and the Springbok Club organised an informal get-together in order to
welcome them to the country. This proved to be not only a most happy occasion
but also an inspiration, as Phyllis was glowing in her praise of what we're trying to do through the Springbok Club. It turns out that as
well as Mike having relocated to the UK his brother Stewart has now
moved to Pennsylvania in the United States - so it would seem therefore
that the Rhodesian pioneer spirit flowed through Owen's genes! One revelation which
Phyllis told us was that they had brought some of Owen's ashes with them, and that they
had managed to scatter them under the one of the goalposts at Twickenham. Even
in death, therefore, Owen continued to be a true Empire Man!
Since
speaking to you last year a lot of dramatic events have occurred in this world
of ours, most of these developments, of course, have not been for the best. The
current swarm of migrants traipsing across Europe is usually described by the
chattering-classes as consisting almost exclusively of "Syrian refugees".
More honest reports however reveal the fact that less than 50% of their numbers
are Syrian, and that the majority of them are at best simply fleeing from
despotic regimes which they don't like, and at worst parasitical economic migrants - who
come from practically every country in Africa and southern Asia. These same countries - almost
without exception - were of course at one time or another part of the British
Empire or one of the Empires of the other great European nation-states, yet in
the years following WWII they all demanded their independence as they
maintained that they were fully capable of governing themselves and maintaining
order and high standards of living for their people. Recent events have of
course proved conclusively that this was not and is not the case! It is not the
third-world minions themselves who we should blame for the current appalling
situation therefore, but rather successive post-WWII administrations in not
only the UK but throughout Europe who totally abandoned their duties
and responsibilities! What we are seeing today throughout Europe is therefore simply a case of
the "chickens coming home to roost" as a result of this post-WWII
abdication of "The White man's burden".
So what
now needs to be done? David Cameron and his government at least deserve two
cheers for rejecting the German "open doors" surrender policy, as
indeed do the governments of Hungary and other eastern European nations, but
alas none of them go nearly far enough. Some sections of the UK press - particularly The Sun - at least seem to be advocating
some form of military involvement to halt the problem, and this would certainly
seem to be an increasingly popular position among the population as a whole.
But mere military intervention to end the Syrian civil war and to patrol the
borders of the Mediterranean isn't sufficient - although of
course it is infinitely preferable to the German white-flag appeasement
"quota" policy. What is needed are fully
re-established colonial administrations throughout the third-world. Easier said
than done I can hear many people say, and this certainly can't be accomplished overnight, but
a start can be made. Somaliland - the former British Somaliland and the
northern part of Somalia, which has effectively been independent for many years
- should immediately be recognised by the British government and offered
protectorate status, as also should be the southern Yemen (Aden). As soon as
effective Western military intervention in Iraq, Syria and Libya to destroy
ISIS/ISIL has been accomplished then Western presence should not be withdrawn
as was alas the case during the late 2000s, but rather Western hegemony should
be maintained - under British control in Iraq, French in Syria and Italian in
Libya.
To
those visionless people who to continue to say that this would be impossible
let me remind them once again that the White population of Rhodesia never exceeded 300,000, yet
they managed to administer and bring efficient and benevolent rule to a Black
population of over 6 million. Let the positive and determined pioneer spirit of
Betty Wemyss, Alastair Eddington,
Owen Parvess and the old gentleman who we met at the Matopos continue to inspire and guide us all. As I
mentioned last year, that other great Rhodesian Ian Douglas Smith reminded us on several
occasions during his trips to the UK during the final years of his
life that we are "the same people who built the greatest Empire which the
world has ever seen". We've done it before, and we can do it again.
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