William John Harper (22 July 1916 – 8 September 2006) was a politician, general contractor and Royal Air Force fighter pilot who served as a Cabinet minister in Rhodesia (or Southern Rhodesia) from 1962 to 1968, and signed that country's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain in 1965. Born into a prominent Anglo-Indian merchant family in Calcutta, Harper was educated in India and England and joined the RAF in 1937. He served as an officer throughout the Second World War and saw action as one of "The Few" in the Battle of Britain, during which he was wounded in action. Appalled by Britain's granting of independence to India in 1947, he emigrated to Rhodesia on retiring from the Air Force two years later.

Harper contended that British rule in the subcontinent should never have ended and took a similar stance regarding his adopted homeland, reportedly declaring that it, South Africa, and the neighbouring Portuguese territories would "be under white rule forever". He entered politics with the Dominion Party in 1958 and became Minister of Irrigation, Roads and Road Traffic in the Rhodesian Front (RF) government in 1962. The head of a far-right group within the RF, he called for Rhodesia to abolish black representation in parliament and adopt "a form of political apartheid". When the Prime Minister Winston Field resigned in 1964, Harper was a front-runner to succeed him, but lost out to Ian Smith, who moved him to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Each breakdown or setback during the early years of Smith's premiership prompted press speculation that Harper might replace him. In 1966, when Smith brought a working document back from the HMS Tiger talks with the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Harper led opposition to the terms in Cabinet, contributing to their rejection. Harper resigned from the Rhodesian Front in 1968, soon after Smith dismissed him from the Cabinet, reportedly because Harper had had an extramarital affair with a British agent. He subsequently became a vocal critic of the Prime Minister, greeting each step Smith made towards settlement with black nationalists during the Bush War with public indignation. By the time black majority rule began in Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979, following the Internal Settlement of the previous year, Harper had left for South Africa, being unwilling to accept majority rule in Rhodesia. He died in 2006 at the age of 90.

Early life William John Harper was born on 22 July 1916 in Calcutta, British India, scion of an old and prominent Anglo-Indian merchant family that had been based in the subcontinent for generations, working with the East India Company during the 18th and 19th centuries. He was educated at North Point in Darjeeling, India, and in the English town of Windsor. He grew into a short but tough man who spoke with clipped diction. Nathan Shamuyarira wrote of him in 1966 that "his tight mouth rarely relaxes into a smile, so ... he seems always on the point of losing his temper".

Military service during the Second World War

Harper joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1937, and was commissioned as an acting pilot officer on 5 September. He was promoted to flying officer on 12 February 1940, and attached to No. 17 Squadron. On 18 May 1940 he shared in the destruction of a Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter, and a week later he destroyed a Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber. He was appointed B Flight commander, with the rank of acting flight lieutenant, on 26 May. He destroyed another Bf 110 over Dunkirk three days later, during the evacuation of Allied forces, and continued as flight commander until 8 June 1940, reverting to the rank of flying officer. He was again promoted to acting flight lieutenant on 4 July, when he was given command of A Flight.

From July 1940, still flying with No. 17 Squadron, Harper was one of "The Few", the Allied pilots of the Battle of Britain. On 11 August he shared in the probable destruction of a Bf 110 and damaged a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter. Four days later, after taking off as part of a group of six Hawker Hurricanes assigned to intercept more than 20 Luftwaffe aircraft, Harper contacted the German planes alone and probably destroyed a Bf 109 before being shot down. He crash-landed in a field near the Suffolk seaside town of Felixstowe, and convalesced in hospital there with wounds to his face and leg. He soon rejoined No. 17 Squadron and continued his command of A Flight from the ground—he returned to the skies on 1 November 1940. A week later he destroyed a Ju 87 and probably another. Harper received the war substantive rank of flight lieutenant on 12 February 1941. A month later he was posted to No. 57 Operational Training Unit RAF, based at RAF Hawarden in Wales, as an instructor.

In September 1941, Harper was seconded to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) to command No. 453 Squadron RAAF, which was based at Singapore and operated Brewster Buffalo fighters. After suffering heavy losses during the Malayan campaign in December, No. 453 Squadron was temporarily amalgamated with another Buffalo unit, No. 21 Squadron RAAF, to form No. 21/453 Squadron under Harper's command. By February 1942, No. 453 Squadron was denuded of aircraft and its remaining personnel were evacuated to Australia. Harper assumed command of No. 135 Squadron RAF in India in April 1942. In January 1943 he took command of No. 92 (East India) Squadron RAF in North Africa, and was promoted to temporary squadron leader with seniority backdated to March 1942. He was transferred to England in September 1943 and commanded the University Air Squadron at Leeds until 1944. He remained with the RAF following the end of hostilities.

Political career

Emigration to Rhodesia

Harper was appalled when Britain made India independent in 1947—he held that the British government had unnecessarily caved in to Indian nationalist demands and should have continued in the subcontinent indefinitely. He retained this view for years afterwards. He retired from the RAF in April 1949 with the rank of wing commander, and the same year emigrated to Southern Rhodesia, a territory of the British Commonwealth in southern Africa that had been self-governing since 1923. He settled in the central town of Gatooma, where he farmed, mined and set up an earth-moving contractor's business. In 1953, Southern Rhodesia became a territory of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland alongside Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Each territory retained its own political status and government, and Southern Rhodesia's constitutional status was unaltered.

Dominion Party Harper entered politics when he contested the Gatooma seat in the 1958 general election, running for the opposition Dominion Party (which called for full "dominion" or Commonwealth realm status). The Southern Rhodesian electoral system allowed only those who met certain financial and educational qualifications to vote—the criteria were applied equally regardless of race, but since most black citizens did not meet the set standards, the electoral roll and colonial Legislative Assembly were overwhelmingly drawn from the white minority (about 5% of the population). Harper won in Gatooma with 717 out of 1,300 votes. Holding strongly conservative views, he soon became seen as the voice of the party's right wing. He was elected president of the Dominion Party's Southern Rhodesian arm in October 1959, and by 1960 he was the official Leader of the Opposition in the Southern Rhodesian parliament.

Amid decolonisation and the Wind of Change, the Federation was looking ever more tenuous and the idea of "no independence before majority rule" was gaining considerable ground in British political circles. Harper believed that indigenous Africans were uncivilized and that whites should rule Rhodesia forever. He called for Southern Rhodesia to abandon the Federation and "go it alone". In June 1960 he and the Southern Rhodesian branch of the Dominion Party adopted the policy of "Southern Rhodesia first", prompting strong protests from the party's Northern Rhodesian division; the Dominion Party splintered into separate Federal and territorial entities a month later. When black nationalist riots broke out in the townships in October 1960, Harper condemned the Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister Sir Edgar Whitehead and the governing United Federal Party (UFP) as too lenient on the protesters, and argued that giving concessions following political violence would make black Rhodesians believe that "trouble pays dividends". Arguing against black representation in the Legislative Assembly, he said that if there were black MPs "they will share the restaurant with us and they will share the bars with us. We will be living cheek by jowl with them, and what sort of legislation can the people of this country expect when we ourselves are being conditioned to living cheek by jowl with Africans?"

Rhodesian Front

In 1962 Harper was a founding member of the Rhodesian Front (RF), an alliance of conservative voices centred around the former Dominion Party and defectors from the UFP. The party's declared goal was independence for Southern Rhodesia without radical constitutional change and without any set timetable for the introduction of majority rule. After the RF won a surprise victory in the November 1962 general election—Harper comfortably retained his seat in Gatooma, and elsewhere the country's first black MPs were elected—the new Prime Minister Winston Field made him Minister of Irrigation, Roads and Road Traffic in the new government. Over the next few years, Harper became one of the main agitators in the Cabinet for a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI); equating Southern Rhodesia to India, he saw this as a way to prevent a repeat of "the same mistake".

The RF grew dissatisfied with Field during late 1963 and early 1964 because of his failure to win independence on Federal dissolution at the end of 1963. Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, by contrast, were both independent under black majority governments within a year, respectively renamed Zambia and Malawi. Harper, who had been assigned the additional portfolios of Transport and Power in November 1963, was one of two frontrunners to replace Field. The other was the Deputy Prime Minister Ian Smith, formerly of the UFP, who was also Minister of the Treasury. Harper, described in The Spectator as "an ambitious politician and single-minded upholder of white supremacy", was generally considered the more hardline choice, and the man more likely to go through with UDI. When the Cabinet forced Field to resign in April 1964, it was Smith who was nominated by the ministers to become the new Prime Minister. Accepting the premiership, Smith reshuffled the Cabinet a few days later and moved Harper to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Harper was deeply disappointed not to have succeeded Field.