15 Facts About Winston Field

Winston Field was born and raised in Bromsgrove and attended Bromsgrove School as a day student, in Worcestershire, England, and moved to Southern Rhodesia at the age of 17 in 1921.

Winston Field then transferred to the British Forces, joining the Worcestershire Regiment as a Second Lieutenant from 1941, served in the D-Day Normandy landings in 1944, and ended the war with the rank of Major in the 6th Durham Light Infantry.

Winston Field was first elected to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federal Assembly for Mrewa in a 1957 by-election under the Dominion Party ticket.

Winston Field was a solid, trustworthy figure and no racist, even though "nearly everyone else in the new party was to the right of him".

Winston Field's wife said "he didn't really want to take it on, he wasn't really a political animal".

The "imperious and intolerant" Winston Field was elected, to his and many others' surprise, as Rhodesia's first Rhodesian Front Prime Minister at the 1962 general election and served until he was replaced by Ian Smith in 1964.

Winston Field lent an air of respectability to the Rhodesian Front government, though his Cabinet was derided by one newspaper as "by no means an inspiring list".

Many in the Rhodesian Front felt that Winston Field did not fight hard enough for independence, in particular that the British had hoodwinked him on visits to London in June 1963 and January 1964 over promises of independence.

Winston Field's Cabinet included John Gaunt, a former Federal MP for Lusaka and a former District Commissioner in Northern Rhodesia.

Aware of discontent in Cabinet fomented by Gaunt, Winston Field demanded his resignation in the spring of 1964.

In that time, Gaunt and Smith organised a plot against Winston Field, now seen as ineffectual after his failure to win independence.

Ken Flower, head of Rhodesia's Central Intelligence Organisation, an organisation Winston Field had ordered be set up, had in fact warned him sometime previously there was a conspiracy against him, involving several of his ministers.

Winston Field was replaced as leader of the Rhodesian Front and as Prime Minister of Rhodesia by Ian Smith on 14 April 1964, despite the Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs urging him to fight against the rebels in his party.

Winston Field retired from parliament at the May 1965 election, at which the Rhodesian Front under Ian Smith was returned with a greater majority, and was succeeded in his Marandellas seat by David Smith.

Winston Field died at the age of 64 in Salisbury, Rhodesia, in 1969.