Welensky Gives Up Party Leadership

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30629, 21 December 1964, Page 13

Welensky Gives Up Party Leadership

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) SALISBURY, Dec. 19. Sir Roy Welensky, the former Prime Minister of the now defunct Central African Federation, today resigned as leader of the opposition Rhodesia Party.

Sir Roy Welensky wrote to the party chairman, Mr J. A. Clark, that his surgeon had told him it would take “from six to nine months to recuperate” from the abdominal operation he underwent in London last month. He said this would be a time of importance in Rhodesian life and “it would be wrong for me to continue to hold office as I would not be able to play an active part.” Sir Roy Welensky is 57. He has been confined to bed here since he was flown back from London.

Referring to his defeat In a by-election last September, Sir Roy Welensky said his experience of the last few months had clearly demonstrated “that it is pot possible to lead a political party outside of Parliament.” The official leader of the Opposition in Parliament is Sir Edgar Whitehead. In his letter Sir Roy Welensky said it was vital that there was an organised op-

position to the Rhodesian Front Parliament and added: “The Government is riding the crest of an emotional wave, but this will pass, as it always does. “Yet I have not lost faith in

my belief that a negotiated independence on a reasonable basis is possible.” Sir Roy Welensky, burly, a former heavy-weight boxing champion of Rhodesia and a one-time railway engine driver and trade unionist, was Prime Minister of the federation from 1956 until its dissolution in December, 1963. He retired from politicalelif after the dissolution, but reemerged last September to fight what he called the Rhodesian Front Government’s threat to seize independence illegally.