Smith, Field and others met in Salisbury on 13 March 1962 and agreed to unite against Whitehead as the Rhodesian Front (RF). The Front ranged from former UFP men, including Smith, who advocated gradual transition and a government based on merit and electoral qualifications, to the Dominion Party's more right-wing members, some of whom held segregationist views not dissimilar to those of South Africa's National Party. Amid these differences, the nascent RF coalition was shaky at best. Its members were brought together by their common opposition to Whitehead's promises of fast-track reform, which they agreed would lead to a Congo-style national crisis, the flight of the white community and ultimately the country's destruction. In the wider Cold War context, the ardently anti-communist RF aspired to represent a pro-Western bulwark in Africa, alongside South Africa and Portugal, in the face of what they saw as Soviet and Chinese expansionism. Smith asserted that the RF worked to thwart "this mad idea of a hand-over, of a sell-out of the European and his civilisation, indeed of everything he had put into his country". "The white man is the master of Rhodesia," he declared; "[he] has built it and intends to keep it".