Word: lilford
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...into another form of combat: Rhodesian politics. In 1961, when he was chief whip of the ruling United Federal Party, Smith resigned his seat in protest over a proposed constitution that accepted the British demand for greater black representation in government. Backed by an ultrarightist tobacco tycoon, Douglas ("Boss") Lilford, Smith helped found the Rhodesian Front Party, which won the national elections in 1962 on a "white rights" platform. Smith became Prime Minister in 1964 and soon set Rhodesia on the dramatic road to breakaway from Britain...
...Rhodesia Smith inherited was not conciliatory either. When the United Party decided to accept the 1961 constitution, Smith resigned in a rage-and immediately received a telegram of congratulations from archconservative Tobacco Tycoon Douglas Collard Lilford. "Ian Smith, and Ian Smith alone, was the one to get up and say no," recalls "Boss" Lilford. "He was the only blessed one to resign. This man has steel in him." Smith drove out to Lilford's estate near Salisbury, talked the tobacco man into helping him found the Rhodesian Front to preserve "Rhodesia for the Rhodesians...
...With Lilford paying most of the bills and Smith in charge of organization, the Rhodesian Front sprouted like mealies on the veld at Gatooma. All the rightist fringe groups, including the Dominion Party of Contractor William John Harper (now Internal Affairs Minister), got into the act, as did such present powers as South Africa-born Lawyer Desmond Lardner-Burke
...potent figures, the Front was hardly a respectable organization-until it won the 1962 election. "They used to look at us at the Salisbury Club as if we'd come out of bad cheese," says Lilford. "They called us everything-cowboys, Nazis, the lot. They don't any longer...
...blacks in Bulawayo and Salisbury. Blacks and whites get along just fine, he says; Rhodesia is a sort of "racial partnership." And what does that mean? "When my cook and I put on a dinner and it's a failure, both of us are at fault," explains Boss Lilford's wife Doris. "When my cook and I put on a dinner and it's a success, both of us deserve the credit. That is partnership...
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