Good to meet you… Callum Christie

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2017/jan/20/good-to-meet-you-callum-christie

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I was an occasional reader of the then Manchester Guardian when I was at Aberdeen University in the mid-1950s. Being strapped for cash, I relied on the copy which was available in the university library reading room.

On graduating, I joined the Colonial Service and in 1959 was posted to a remote feudal kingdom called Barotseland within the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia. A considerable part of my job as a young district officer was to go on village inspection tours with the local indunas (chiefs). The tours usually lasted between two and five weeks and mail was brought on foot from the office (the boma) each week. On one of these early tours in 1959, in the mail that arrived by runner (a three-day journey) was the airmail edition of the Manchester Guardian Weekly. I was astonished and delighted to receive it – it transpired that a friend from university had given me a year’s subscription as a gift. It was a link with the world of liberal politics I had left behind.

I can’t remember any of the articles, except that they bolstered my belief that political change was on the way and that the white settler community of NR would not succeed in forming a permanent political union with the much more powerful settler-run colony of Southern Rhodesia.

The only feature I remember from these MGWs was a photo of cattle grazing in a field in England with a village church in the background. I showed my African companions this photo because they were all cattle owners. They were entranced with these beautiful beasts. If only they could have sprung off the page into our midst, how prized they would have been!

I was then 23 and I am now 80 – and still a Guardian reader.

I’ve recently published a book, Goodbye Colonialism, Farewell Feudalism, based on letters which I wrote to my parents and friends from Barotseland over 50 years ago. My affection for the MGW is mentioned in them, perhaps a hint to my parents to continue the subscription.

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