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.

Born in Norhwood, London, and educated at Rugby School, he 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, 1940–44, with the assistance of John Raven,[3] Peter Kuenstler and later Merfyn Turner, all four being conscientious objectors.

He went out to Southern Rhodesia in 1949 as an agricultural demonstrator and missionary, turning St Faith's Mission into a famous pioneering non-racial community.

Clutton-Brock joined in founding the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress in 1957, and was largely responsible for its non-racial and black/white partnership policies. As a member, he was detained without trial in 1959.

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]

He was deported by the Ian Smith government in 1971, though by now he was the friend of four African presidents, Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Hastings Banda (Malawi) and Seretse Khama (Botswana), as well as Robert Mugabe, who, as President of Zimbabwe, declared Clutton-Brock upon his death to be a National Hero of Zimbabwe.

References

  1. ↑ Obituary in The Independent 16 February 1995
  2. ↑ Magdalene College Cambridge Alumni
  3. ↑ John Raven by his Friends, Chapter 4, eds. John Lipscomb and R. W. David 1981, ISBN 0-9507345-0-0
  4. ↑ Guy Clutton-Brock 1906-1995 Peace News


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