page_title: Hugh Beadle
section_title: MP and Cabinet minister
hierarchical_section_title: Hugh Beadle / Political and judicial career / MP and Cabinet minister
caption_attribution_description: English: Official photograph of the seventh Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly in 1948. Photographer not recorded. Insets (l-r): G&#160;A Davenport; W&#160;H Eastwood (elected to replace A&#160;M&#160;F Stuart, who died soon after the photograph was taken) Back row: Ian Smith; Garfield Todd; B&#160;A Barker; Julian Greenfield; Desmond Lardner-Burke Third row: N&#160;G Barrett; Humphrey Gibbs; L&#160;J Smith; H&#160;A Holmes; G Munro; D Macintyre; W&#160;A&#160;E Winterton; L&#160;M&#160;N Hodson; A&#160;M&#160;F Stuart; P&#160;A Wise Second row: H&#160;Hampton (chief messenger); L&#160;M Cullinan; G&#160;H Hackwill; J&#160;R Dendy-Young; T Titley-Haworth (librarian); C&#160;C&#160;D Ferris (clerk of the House); E Grant-Dalton (sergeant-at-arms); Lt-Col G&#160;E Wells (clerk assistant); L&#160;J Howe-Ely (committee clerk); N St.&#160;Quintin; R&#160;A Ballantyne; J&#160;M Caldicott; L Ruile (assistant messenger) Front row: Raymond Stockil; Edgar Whitehead; P&#160;B Fletcher; Sir Godfrey Huggins; Sir Allan Welsh (speaker); T&#160;I&#160;F Wilson; Hugh Beadle; R&#160;F Halsted; L&#160;J&#160;V Keller
context_page_description: Sir Thomas Hugh William Beadle CMG OBE PC was a Rhodesian lawyer, politician and judge who served as Chief Justice of Rhodesia from 1961 to 1977. He came to international prominence against the backdrop of Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain in 1965, upon which he initially stood by the British Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs as an adviser; he then provoked acrimony in British government circles by declaring Ian Smith's post-UDI administration legal in 1968.
  Born and raised in the Rhodesian capital Salisbury, Beadle read law in South Africa and England before commencing practice in Bulawayo in 1931. He became a member of the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly for Godfrey Huggins's ruling United Party in 1939. Appointed Huggins's Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1940, he retained that role until 1946, when he became Minister of Internal Affairs and Justice; the Education and Health portfolios were added two years later. He retired from politics in 1950 to become a judge of the Southern Rhodesian High Court.
context_section_description: After returning to Rhodesia, Beadle took an interest in politics; he joined the United Party, created from the former Rhodesia Party and the conservative faction of the Reform Party to contest the 1934 general election. He was attracted to the United Party not so much by its policies but by his admiration for its leading figures—he considered the Prime Minister Godfrey Huggins "a man of the calibre I think of Rhodes". The Southern Rhodesian electoral system allowed only those who met certain financial and educational qualifications to vote. The criteria were applied equally to all regardless of race, but since most black citizens did not meet the set standards, the electoral roll and the colonial Legislative Assembly were overwhelmingly from the white minority (about 5% of the population). The United Party broadly represented commercial interests, civil servants and the professional classes.
  Beadle stood in Bulawayo South in the 1934 election, challenging Harry Davies, the Labour leader. Davies defeated Beadle by 458 votes to 430, but the United Party won decisively elsewhere and formed a new government with 24 out of the 30 parliament seats. Huggins, who remained prime minister, held Beadle in high regard and made him a close associate. In the 1939 election, Beadle won a three-way contest in Bulawayo North with 461 votes out of 869, and became a United Party MP. Beadle was seconded to the Gold Coast Regiment with the rank of temporary captain following the outbreak of the Second World War, but was released from military service at the request of the Southern Rhodesian government to serve as Huggins's Parliamentary Private Secretary, "with access to all ministers and top-ranking officials on the PM's business to speed up affairs". He held this post from 1940 to 1946, during which time he was also Deputy Advocate General for the Southern Rhodesian armed forces.
  In the first post-war election in 1946, Beadle defeated Labour's Cecil Maurice Baker in Bulawayo North by 666 votes to 196. He was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs and Justice. The same year he was made a King's Counsel and appointed OBE. Two years later, after retaining his seat in the 1948 election with a large majority, he was assigned two more portfolios, those of Education and Health. Around this time he turned down an approach from a group of Liberal and rebel United Party MPs to challenge Huggins's premiership. Beadle had entered the Cabinet at a time when relations between the United Party and the British Labour Party were warming. He formed a good relationship with Aneurin Bevan, the UK Minister of Health, and put considerable work into attempting to create a Southern Rhodesian system similar to National Insurance in Britain. These efforts were largely unsuccessful, but did lead to a maternity grant for white mothers, nicknamed the "Beadle baby scheme". Beadle retired from politics in 1950 to accept a seat on the Southern Rhodesian High Court. This decision surprised many of his contemporaries; Beadle would explain later that he left politics as he did not feel he would work well under his United Party colleague Edgar Whitehead, whose subsequent rise to the premiership he correctly predicted.
caption: The seventh Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly, 1948. Beadle is third from the right in the front row, Huggins fourth from the left.
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