Guy Clutton-Brock
Arthur Guy Clutton-Brock (5 April 1906 – 29 January 1995[1]) was an English social worker, who became a Zimbabwean nationalist and co-founder of Cold Comfort Farm.
Having been educated at Rugby School and graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge,[2] he had a career in the prison and probation services, youth and community work in the East End of London and in post-war Germany. During the Second World War he ran Oxford House, Bethnal Green with the assistance of John Raven.[3]
He went out to Southern Rhodesia in 1949 as an agricultural demonstrator and missionary, turning St Faiths Mission into a famous pioneering non-racial community. This led to his detention without trial in 1959 as a member of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress.
Cold Comfort Farm
After similar ventures in Bechuanaland and Nyasaland, he returned to Rhodesia. With the eloquent support of Trevor Huddleston, Fenner Brockway, Michael Scott, Mary Benson and many others, Guy, his wife Molly (1912–2013), Didymus Mutasa, George Nyandoro and Michael and Eileen Haddon founded Cold Comfort Farm in Southern Rhodesia which became a widely acclaimed pattern for racial freedom and regeneration in the poverty-stricken countries of Africa.[4]
Clutton-Brock joined in the founding of the African National Congress in Rhodesia and was largely responsible for its non-racial and black/white partnership policies.
He was deported by the Ian Smith government in 1971. By now, though, he was the friend of four African presidents (Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi and Botswana), as well as Robert Mugabe who, as President of independent Zimbabwe, declared Clutton-Brock upon his death to be a National Hero of Zimbabwe.
References
- ↑ Obituary in The Independent 16 February 1995
- ↑ Magdalene College Cambridge Alumni
- ↑ John Raven by his Friends, Chapter 4, eds. John Lipscomb and R. W. David 1981, ISBN 0-9507345-0-0
- ↑ Guy Clutton-Brock 1906-1995 Peace News
|