Southern Rhodesian Legal Aid and Welfare Fund correspondence

Most of the letters are from the period 1962-1965. The correspondence runs across 9 files.
1. Correspondence including: Amnesty International; appeals of the Southern Rhodesian Legal Aid and Welfare Fund; Atherstone and Cook; African American Institute.
2. Correspondence including: Leo S Baron & Co; A C Bowles; City of Bulawayo.
3. Correspondence including: provision of legal aid, family welfare payments, exam fees etc to detainees; funding from Christian Action Defence and Aid; Guy Clutton-Brock on fundraising difficulties.
4. Correspondence including: letters from detainees at Wha Wha and Gonakudzingwa Restriction camps, describing family welfare issues and payments, and conditions at the Gonakudzingwa Restriction camp.
5. Correspondence concerning the living conditions and welfare needs of particular individuals.
6. Correspondence, including with Ahrn Palley MP.
7. Correspondence including: Scanlen and Holderness (attorneys); Godfrey C Senn, International Red Cross; Edson Sithole.
8. Correspondence including: University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland; Byron versus Ventures.
9. Correspondence about the Wha Wha detention camp.

In 1959 legislation was introduced in Southern Rhodesia which permitted the detention of people in person without trial. In response the Southern Rhodesian Legal Aid and Welfare Fund was started by a few black and white Rhodesians. The aim of the Southern Rhodesian (Detainees) Legal Aid and Welfare Fund was to raise funds in order to pay for legal advice for the detainees and to provide them with legal representation when they appeared before the secret Tribunal which considered their cases. In the period 1959-1965 the Fund spent £30,000 on legal expenses. Meanwhile the number of political detainees increased with the banning of ZAPU, its successor the People's Caretaker Council and ZANU. Legislation was made fiercer and the death sentence was introduced for certain cases. Magistrates' powers were increased. But as well as meeting legal expenses, the Fund existed to help prisoners' families: it paid rent and school fees and took up detainees' enquiries about their welfare. Finally it provided books and education courses for some of the detainees.

Eileen Haddon was born in Boksberg, South Africa, on 9 March 1921. She started to study medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand but could not complete the course for lack of funding. In October 1942, she married Michael Haddon. The Haddons had moved to Britain while Michael saw service during WW2 with the Royal Marines. Their first son, Bryan, was born in 1945. At the end of the war they returned to South Africa and Michael resumed his work in mining. Increasingly aware of injustices and the need for social change it was while in South Africa that Eileen’s involvement in the South African Institute of Race Relations began. With the success of the Nationalist party and beginning of apartheid in 1948, the Haddons left South Africa for Southern Rhodesia, where their second son was born the same year and Michael established a mining consultancy business.
In the early 1950s, the Haddons helped to found the Interracial Association, which Eileen chaired. They were also involved with the United Rhodesia party and were influenced greatly by Guy Clutton-Brock and his wife Molly (who’d established the country's first farm cooperative) and by the nascent African nationalist movement.
Eileen began her writing career, addressing key issues of inequality and discrimination in her work. In the face of the detention without trial of hundreds of nationalists, the Haddons helped to establish the Legal Aid and Welfare Fund to assist political detainees and their families under the Smith regime. They made their own smallholding, Cold Comfort Farm, the base for a multiracial cooperative launched by Clutton-Brock and others.
In 1960, Eileen joined the progressive newspaper, the Central African Examiner, based in Salisbury (now Harare), 'one of the few real forums for African opinion in Rhodesia'. In 1962 she took over editorship of the Examiner. The paper and Haddons both faced increasing governmental scrutiny and hostility. The newspaper was forced to suspend publication in December 1965 and Michael himself was, very shortly afterwards, jailed for three years by the Smith regime. He was forced to sell his mine and on release from prison in 1969, the couple moved, briefly, to Britain and then to Zambia. In Zambia Eileen worked as publicity officer at the University of Zambia, 1971-77. Following Zimbabwe’s independence, the Haddons returned to Harare in 1981. Eileen continued her work as a liberal journalist in Zimbabwe, both writing and editing. Michael died in 1996 and Eileen died in July 2003.

The papers have been numbered and are filed chronologically within alphabetical order.

Records are open to the public, subject to the overriding provisions of relevant legislation, including data protection laws.

Presented by Mr and Mrs Michael Haddon in 1977.

In 1959 legislation was introduced in Southern Rhodesia which permitted the detention of people in person without trial. In response the Southern Rhodesian Legal Aid and Welfare Fund was started by a few black and white Rhodesians. The aim of the Southern Rhodesian (Detainees) Legal Aid and Welfare Fund was to raise funds in order to pay for legal advice for the detainees and to provide them with legal representation when they appeared before the secret Tribunal which considered their cases. In the period 1959-1965 the Fund spent £30,000 on legal expenses. Meanwhile the number of political detainees increased with the banning of ZAPU, its successor the People's Caretaker Council and ZANU. Legislation was made fiercer and the death sentence was introduced for certain cases. Magistrates' powers were increased. But as well as meeting legal expenses, the Fund existed to help prisoners' families: it paid rent and school fees and took up detainees' enquiries about their welfare. Finally it provided books and education courses for some of the detainees.

Eileen Haddon was born in Boksberg, South Africa, on 9 March 1921. She started to study medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand but could not complete the course for lack of funding. In October 1942, she married Michael Haddon. The Haddons had moved to Britain while Michael saw service during WW2 with the Royal Marines. Their first son, Bryan, was born in 1945. At the end of the war they returned to South Africa and Michael resumed his work in mining. Increasingly aware of injustices and the need for social change it was while in South Africa that Eileen’s involvement in the South African Institute of Race Relations began. With the success of the Nationalist party and beginning of apartheid in 1948, the Haddons left South Africa for Southern Rhodesia, where their second son was born the same year and Michael established a mining consultancy business.
In the early 1950s, the Haddons helped to found the Interracial Association, which Eileen chaired. They were also involved with the United Rhodesia party and were influenced greatly by Guy Clutton-Brock and his wife Molly (who’d established the country's first farm cooperative) and by the nascent African nationalist movement.
Eileen began her writing career, addressing key issues of inequality and discrimination in her work. In the face of the detention without trial of hundreds of nationalists, the Haddons helped to establish the Legal Aid and Welfare Fund to assist political detainees and their families under the Smith regime. They made their own smallholding, Cold Comfort Farm, the base for a multiracial cooperative launched by Clutton-Brock and others.
In 1960, Eileen joined the progressive newspaper, the Central African Examiner, based in Salisbury (now Harare), 'one of the few real forums for African opinion in Rhodesia'. In 1962 she took over editorship of the Examiner. The paper and Haddons both faced increasing governmental scrutiny and hostility. The newspaper was forced to suspend publication in December 1965 and Michael himself was, very shortly afterwards, jailed for three years by the Smith regime. He was forced to sell his mine and on release from prison in 1969, the couple moved, briefly, to Britain and then to Zambia. In Zambia Eileen worked as publicity officer at the University of Zambia, 1971-77. Following Zimbabwe’s independence, the Haddons returned to Harare in 1981. Eileen continued her work as a liberal journalist in Zimbabwe, both writing and editing. Michael died in 1996 and Eileen died in July 2003.

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* Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, University of London: Southern Rhodesia Legal Aid and Welfare Fund, 1959-1967 (reference GB 101 ICS 107).
* Bodleian Library, University of Oxford: Ranger papers (reference GB 161 MSS. Afr. s. 1825 (94) (Box LVIII))

* Pritchard, J. (2019). Race, Identity, and Belonging in Early Zimbabwean Nationalism(s), 1957-1965 (Doctoral thesis). https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.38513
* Munochiveyi, M. B. (2013). The political lives of Rhodesian detainees during Zimbabwe's liberation struggle. International Journal of African Historical Studies. 46, 283-304.

Published

GB 193