Thomas Hugh Beadle

Lawyer, Politician and Chief Justice of Rhodesia 1961-77

Thomas Beadle was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia on the 6th of February 1905. He did his early education in the country and later went to Oxford University where he graduated in 1928 after receiving a Rhodes Scholarship.

Career:

Beadle came to international prominence when as Chief Justice of Rhodesia he declared Ian Smiths Unilateral Declaration of Independence legal.

After he graduated from university he returned to Bulawayo to practice as an advocate. He then stood to be a Member of Parliament for the Southern Rhodesia Parliament and won. He was appointed Minister of Justice and Internal Affairs from 1946-48. And later Minister of Education and Health 1948-50.

In 1950 he was appointed Judge of the High Court and in 1961 he succeded Sir John Murray as Chief Justice of Rhodesia until his retirement in 1977. During his tenure as Chief Justice he was usually criticised for some decisions he made especially in the 1968 cases of Daniel Madzimbamuto, Ndhlovu and other nationalists, in which he described the Rhodesian Front government as a de facto government and justified treating it as a de jure government as well.

Beadle died in 1980.