Gaston Thomas Thornicroft was a leader of the

Coloured Coloureds ( af, Kleurlinge or , ) refers to members of multiracial ethnic communities in Southern Africa who may have ancestry from more than one of the various populations inhabiting the region, including African, European, and Asian. South ...

(mixed-race) community in

Southern Rhodesia Southern Rhodesia was a landlocked self-governing British Crown colony in southern Africa, established in 1923 and consisting of British South Africa Company (BSAC) territories lying south of the Zambezi River. The region was informally kn ...

from the 1930s to the 1960s. His father was Harry Scott Thornicroft, a British colonial administrator, who married a native African woman. Gaston was president of two groups advocating rights for Coloureds: the Coloured Community Service League from 1933, and the Rhodesia National Association from 1952 until it was eclipsed in the early 1960s by more radical black unity groups. He led talks to unite competing Coloured representative associations. Initially, he emphasised the Coloured community's separateness from and superiority to black Africans, but later he was sympathetic to the non-white unity movement, without ever formally joining it. He was a businessman, running 18 stores by 1945. In the 1953 general election in the

Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, also known as the Central African Federation or CAF, was a colonial federation that consisted of three southern African territories: the Self-governing colony, self-governing British colony of Southe ...

, one seat was reserved for a European representing African interests; Thornicroft applied to stand but was refused as not being European. He represented "Coloured & Eurafrican Communities" at the 1961 Southern Rhodesia constitutional talks. He ran unsuccessfully in the

1962 Events January * January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand. * January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism. * January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wors ...

and

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of X (''Extrem ...

general elections in (Southern)

Rhodesia Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thornicroft, Gaston Coloured Southern Rhodesian people Rhodesian politicians Businesspeople in retailing Rhodesian businesspeople