Sir Ernest Lucas Guest (20 August 1882 – 20 September 1972) was a Rhodesian politician, lawyer and soldier. He held senior ministerial positions in the government, most notably as Minister for Air during the Second World War.
Guest was born in Grahamstown, Cape Colony. His grandfather had moved the family there, leaving Kidderminster, England, where it had been in the printing business for three generations. He saw active service in the Second Boer War, enlisting despite being underage, and again in the First World War, when he was injured in France. His legal career began while back in Southern Rhodesia between those two wars. He won a case against Sir Charles Coghlan, at the time Premier of Southern Rhodesia, and Coghlan invited him to become a partner in his firm, which became known as Coghlan, Welsh & Guest. On his return from the First World War, Guest took responsibility for the Salisbury practice.
He was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1928 as a member of Coghlan's Rhodesia Party, representing the constituency of Charter, which he held until 1946. He first became a cabinet minister in Godfrey Huggins' government, appointed Minister of Mines and Public Works in June 1938. During the Second World War, Guest was Minister for Air and administered the Rhodesia Air Training Group. After the war he was also Minister of Defence, Minister of Finance and Leader of the House. At the 1946 elections he stood for Salisbury Gardens and held the seat until his retirement from office in 1948.
He married Edith May Jones and had two daughters and twin sons, both of whom were killed in action during the Second World War. At his death, both the High Court and Parliament paid public tributes to him. His continuing legacy is most evident in the Kariba Dam, a project that went ahead with his active support.
Early life
Ernest Lucas Guest was born in Grahamstown, Cape Colony (in modern South Africa's Eastern Cape province) on 20 August 1882. Guest's grandfather had moved the family to South Africa in 1861 from Kidderminster, England, where they had been involved in the printing business for three generations. His grandfather was appointed manager of the Frontier Times, printed and published in Grahamstown. The family resided there until 1889 when Ernest's father, Herbert Melville Guest, moved them to Klerksdorp, Transvaal, after buying the local newspaper and printing business.
Military career
Second Boer War
At the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, Guest was below the minimum age of 18 for enlisting. He nevertheless managed to join the First City Volunteers, a Grahamstown regiment in which his father had served. Its task of guarding a bridge over a railway line was unappealing, so he took the opportunity of joining the Eastern Province Light Horse, attached to the Highland Brigade, which was recruiting volunteers who could both ride and shoot. Early in the Brigade's advance into the Orange Free State on its way to the relief of Kimberley, Guest got food poisoning and he returned to Grahamstown.
After recovering, he joined the Kimberley Mounted Corps and guided two officers from Lichtenburg to Klerksdorp, where they persuaded the Boers to surrender by bluffing that a strong British force was following close behind. The Boers soon retook the town and Guest was captured. He was sent with other prisoners to Pietersburg to be executed but he managed to escape and travelled to Warmbaths. After satisfying the authorities that he had actually been taken prisoner and had not surrendered voluntarily, he returned to his depot at Kimberley. His unit had been disbanded and he was discharged.
Guest joined up again, enlisting in Kitchener's Fighting Scouts on 2 January 1901.The National Archives (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO) WO 126/78 War Office service records for the Boer War He was given the rank of sergeant, chasing Boer commandoes without success. He was recommended for a commission and posted to the Johannesburg Mounted Rifles, whose colonel decided that Guest was too young to lead a force composed of miners who were considerably older than him. Returning to Klerksdorp, Guest learned that the Bechuanaland Rifles were recruiting experienced officers; he went to Mafeking and was accepted into the unit, with whom he served until the end of the war. The Rifles were part of a mobile force, the Divisional Scouting Corps, whose function was to round up Boer detachments and to execute Kitchener's scorched earth policy, destroying Boer farm buildings and crops, and detaining women and children in concentration camps.
First World War
Great Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, and as part of the British Empire, Southern Rhodesia was also now at war. The British South Africa Company (which then administered the territory) took no steps to aid recruiting for the forces, so many men paid their own fares to England to join up. A number of eligible recruits could not afford to go, so Guest, together with Captain Alwyn Knowles of the Bedfordshire Regiment, who as a reserve officer was awaiting his call-up, organised a private fund to pay their passages. When the recruits arrived in England they were enlisted by Captain (later Colonel) John Banks Brady (who was in 1934 to be elected to the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly as member for Bulawayo North) to form a Rhodesian platoon in the King's Royal Rifle Corps.
Guest and Knowles were summoned to the Defence Department and told to stop recruiting. The Administration had decided to raise a regiment in Rhodesia, and Guest joined the Salisbury battalion of the 1st Rhodesian Regiment with the rank of Lieutenant.The National Archives (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO) WO 372/8/176444 Medal Card of Guest, Ernest Lucas, 1914–1920 The battalion was sent to South Africa to assist in suppressing the 1914 Maritz Rebellion by Boers opposed to fighting for Britain. It was not, however, deployed against the Rebellion and when it ended the battalion was sent, with the Imperial Light Horse, to reinforce the South African troops in the South-West Africa Campaign in German South-West Africa, present-day Namibia. They landed at Lambert's Bay on Christmas morning 1914, but made no contact with the enemy until they were sent to Swakopmund.
When the campaign came to an end, the battalion returned to Salisbury. Guest then travelled to England and sought a commission, joining the South Lancashire Regiment with the rank of Lieutenant in September 1916. He was later promoted to captain. He went with his battalion to France where they were posted to the 59th Division, then in the line. The sector they occupied was not very active, but shelling and sniping from both sides were carried out fairly regularly. It was not long before Guest was wounded, and then he fell victim to an irritating and persistent skin complaint which was common in the trenches and did not respond to treatment. He was evacuated to England and after a brief period in hospital was sent to the Imperial Hydro at St Annes, where he was told that he would not be fit to return to his unit for six months.
Through a contact at the War Office, Guest had his name added to a list of officers available for special employment, and was selected to undertake a propaganda tour of the United States, delivering 160 lectures to approximately 282,000 people in total. He was then sent to France to promote the benefits of Southern Rhodesia to the large number of soldiers who had become unsettled and wished to emigrate. Guest then returned to Rhodesia with his family, who had spent most of the war in England.
Other members of the Guest family also served in the First World War. Ivor Guest, Ernest's eldest brother, was a lieutenant in the Witwatersrand Rifles in the South-West Africa Campaign. After the regiment was disbanded at the end of the campaign, he was commissioned as a machine gun officer in the Second Cape Corps for service in East Africa; he was killed in action on 6 November 1917 at the Battle of Mahiwa while checking the advance of a vastly superior enemy force. His gun crew had become casualties and he was handling the gun himself when he was killed.
Guest's two younger brothers also served in the Transvaal Scottish. The elder of them, Duke, was later commissioned in the South African Scottish and served in France. He was gassed and after a long stay in hospital was declared unfit for further service and remained in England until the end of the war.
Legal career
Admission to the Rhodesian High Court
At the start of the Second Boer War, Guest had left school without any educational qualifications. Nevertheless, he managed to start his legal career when a Klerksdorp solicitor, Maurice Rood, offered him a job drawing up claims for compensation by farmers whose properties had been destroyed or damaged by the British forces. The claims were to be submitted to the "Compensation Committee", on which Guest's father served. When the committee ceased to function Rood suggested that Guest become articled to him.
The need to matriculate was an obstacle. He used a family connection with St. Andrew's College, Grahamstown, to attend as a day boy and passed his matriculation. He duly applied to the Supreme Court for admission as an attorney in the Transvaal, was accepted and took the oath. He was offered a post with the leading firm of attorneys in Klerksdorp, but a clause in his articles prohibited Guest from practising in competition with Rood's firm for some years without the latter's permission.
Guest became acquainted with Fred Hopley, who had recently been practising in Bulawayo. He informed Guest that a solicitor in Bulawayo, Louis Champion, wanted someone to take over his practice for six months while he was away on a shooting trip. Guest's application was accepted by return of post and he was asked to report early in July 1910. Champion's practice, as Deputy Sheriff, consisted mainly of debt-collecting and lending money to doubtful borrowers at a high rate of interest.
Guest prepared his petition for admission to the Southern Rhodesian High Court and briefed counsel to represent him before the Chief Justice, Sir Joseph Vintcent. The Judge dispensed with the requirement to apply first for admission in the Cape Colony and admitted him as an attorney of the High Court of Southern Rhodesia.
A few days after Guest's arrival a young man arrived to practise in Bulawayo as an advocate, Robert Hudson. So began a friendship that was to endure for the rest of Hudson's life and through many vicissitudes – in the legal profession, on active service in the First World War, and during the years when they were both members of the Cabinet. Hudson, who for some years was Minister of Justice, became Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia.
Coghlan, Welsh & Guest Bryce Hendrie, whose office was next door to Louis Champion's, had been appointed commanding officer of the Rhodesian contingent to attend the coronation of King George V on 22 June 1911. Before his departure to England, he offered Guest the management of his practice during his absence. Hendrie's brother was an estate agent and put all his property transfers through the firm, so Guest gained much valuable experience, especially in conveyancing, through a number of cases in the High Court, in the Magistrate's Court and in the Court of the Mining Commissioner.