Winston Field

Who was Winston Field?

Winston Joseph Field MBE was a Rhodesian politician. Field was a former Dominion Party MP who founded the Rhodesian Front political party with Ian Douglas Smith. Field was born and brought up in Bromsgrove in England, and moved to Southern Rhodesia in 1921. A tobacco farmer near Marandellas, in Mashonaland East, Field was President of the powerful Rhodesian Tobacco Association from 1938 to 1940, when he left for military service during the Second World War.

Field was elected Federal MP for Mtoko in 1957 under the Dominion Party banner. The Federation Minister of Justice, Julian Greenfield, found him 'somewhat impulsive and opinionated but entirely straightforward'.

When the Rhodesian Front was formed in early 1962 by Ian Smith and 'Boss' Lilford, a very wealthy and right-wing tobacco farmer, they needed an Establishment figurehead. Field was chosen. He was a solid, trustworthy figure and no racist, even though "nearly everyone else in the new party was to the right of him". His wife said "he didn't really want to take it on, he wasn't really a political animal".

The "imperious and intolerant" Field was elected, to his and many others surprise, as Rhodesia's first Rhodesian Front Prime Minister in the 1962 general election and served until he was replaced by Ian Smith in 1964. 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". At the time of Field's election it was assumed that Britain would delay the process of independence for Rhodesia until "an African majority assumed power in Salisbury". Many in the Rhodesian Front felt that 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. His relatively short time in office saw the dissolution of the Central African Federation on 31 December 1963 though he did win the majority of the Federation's military and other assets for Southern Rhodesia.