My run-in with a most pompous British PM

Harold Wilson, prime minister of Britain and its ever decreasing dominions in the 1960s, would turn in his grave were I not to refer to him as the Right Honourable Harold Wilson MP. He had an ego the size of Canada, and a disdain of those in charge of the former British colonies.

In mid-1960s when the then-Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Smith, declared Unilateral Independence slap bang in the middle of the Rt Hon H Wilson MP’s first term of office, the future Lord Wilson of Rievaulx  was forced to visit central Africa.

He did so not only to fly the flag in Zambia, but also to give that country’s president, Kenneth Kaunda, the impression that Britain was vaguely interested in sorting out Smith and his motley band of rebels.

The Rt Hon H Wilson MP would then pop over the border to try to get Smith and his mob to stop their UDI nonsense which everyone in the United Kingdom, from Queen Elizabeth to the greengrocer’s wife in Upper Slaughter, thought was just not cricket.

I was at Livingstone airport in Zambia on one of the hottest days of the year when the Rt Hon H Wilson MP’s Royal Air Force VC-10 touched down in a cloud of dust, ending up stalled in a mielie field after running out of runway.

When it was eventually towed to the apron where President Kaunda and his entourage were waiting, the door opened and as the Rt Hon H Wilson MP appeared at the door of the airliner, President Kaunda, always the absolute gentleman, said: “Welcome to Zambia, prime minister.”

The Rt Hon H Wilson MP responded with quite awesome arrogance and total disregard for African sensitivities by waving his unlit pipe vaguely in the direction of Victoria Falls and saying: “Kenneth, my boy…”

This was at a time when even in South Africa in deepest apartheid, most white people with an IQ above that of a mentally challenged cicada did not call black men “boy”. Even the architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, was never heard calling any black man “boy”, let alone the bona-fide black president of a sovereign state.

President Kaunda did not allow this mother of all gaffes in diplomatic protocol to diminish his wide welcoming smile, but he must have winced at the muted gasps and guffaws from the nearby media contingent.

I was so taken aback by the sheer arrogance of it all, I dropped the roll of film I had been holding. Before I could react, President Kaunda bent down, picked up my film and wordlessly handed it to me with a smile, as though to show that the only civilised way of countering arrogance was with a demonstration of humility.

A few days later, when the Rt Hon H Wilson MP was busy in meetings in Government House in Harare — then Salisbury — he took time out to have a walk in the garden.

As one of the two pool media representatives allowed into the immediate area on that day, I immediately lifted my camera to take a photograph of the Rt Hon H Wilson MP.

He looked up, saw me and my colleague from Time Life and immediately came storming across, his face like thunder.

How dare we, he ranted, take photographs of him without his pipe? Did we not read the protocol advisories sent out by his press office about never, ever, taking a photograph of him unless he was either smoking, or at least holding his pipe in a prominent and photogenic position?

Now, not being able to persuade Ian Smith and his motley band of rebels to turn over and play dead, the Rt Hon Harold Wilson MP promised President Kaunda a regiment of British troops and radar installation in a sort of pump-up, air-filled blow-up tent to ensure that Smith’s army would not march across the border, nor his airforce bomb Lusaka.

The regiment duly arrived from its base in Aden in the Middle East and took up station at the famous Victoria Falls railway bridge that spanned the border between Rhodesia and Zambia.

When I visited the area I found them to be a very disconsolate and confused bunch.

This was mainly because the British soldiers were dug in on the northern side of the bridge with a Zambian flag flying above them. They faced their “enemy” on the other side — Rhodesian troops with the Union Jack proudly flying over them.

This was probably one of the most bizarre stand-offs in military history.