Stephen Hastings

Stephen Hastings

Sir Stephen Lewis Edmonstone Hastings, Kt, MC, MFH, (4 May 1921, Knightsbridge, London–10 January 2005, Wansford, Cambridgeshire) was a war hero, former MI6 operative, Master of Foxhounds, author, painter, sculptor, and British Conservative Party politician who was elected as Member of Parliament for Mid Bedfordshire in a 1960 by-election caused by the elevation to the peerage of Alan Lennox-Boyd. He retained his seat in the subsequent general elections in 1964, 1966, 1970, February 1974, October 1974, and 1979, but stood down at the 1983 general election, when he was succeeded by fellow-Conservative Sir Nicholas Lyell.

The son of a 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 for Mid-Bedfordshire in 1960, 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 white politicians.

Over the next 20 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 1964, Hastings was a prominent member of the Rhodesia lobby opposing sanctions - against the official party line. At the 1964 Conservative Party Conference, he was cheered to the rafters by conference delegates for a speech deeply critical of the party leadership. In consequence he was never invited to speak again.

Fourteen years later, he strongly supported the internal settlement between Ian 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 Zimbabwe and led to Robert Mugabe's election, 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 administration, 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 House, the only person whose photographs were displayed in more than one room (apart from those of his beloved late wife, Elizabeth Anne) were those of Ian Smith.