Stephen Hastings

Sir Stephen Lewis Edmonstone Hastings (4 May 1921 – 10 January 2005) was a British Conservative politician who was elected Member of Parliament for Mid Bedfordshire in a 1960 by-election and held it until he stood down at the 1983 general election. He was also a soldier, MI6 operative, Master of Foxhounds and author.

The son of a Southern Rhodesian farmer, Hastings had visited the country only briefly as a young child, but he grew up with tales of the veldt and the farm. A year after he was elected to Parliament, he accepted an invitation from the British South Africa Company to visit the country, and from then on made frequent visits, getting to know the leading politicians of the white minority regime. Over the next twenty years, Hastings devoted his political energies to injecting what he felt was much needed balance into the debate about Rhodesia's future. When Rhodesia's Prime Minister, Ian Smith, unilaterally declared the independence of Rhodesia in 1965, Hastings was a prominent member of the Rhodesia lobby opposing sanctions – against the official party line.

Fourteen years later, he strongly supported the Internal Settlement between Smith and the moderate nationalist leaders under which Bishop Abel Muzorewa became Prime Minister, though effective power remained in white hands. He saw the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which created an independent Republic of Zimbabwe and led to Robert Mugabe's election as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in 1980, as a disaster caused by "unnecessary deference to the delusion of the Commonwealth, the Afro-Asian lobby and to the Americans by a series of British governments".

Although Hastings claimed to have been invited to join Edward Heath's ministry, his stance on Rhodesia effectively rendered him ineligible for office. Even Margaret Thatcher, whom he counted as an ally, kept him on the backbenches, though she recommended him for a knighthood in 1983. In his latter years at his Cambridgeshire home, Stibbington Hall, the only person whose photographs were displayed in more than one room (apart from those of his beloved late wife, Elizabeth) were those of Ian Smith. Provided by Wikipedia