Native prejudice
Sir: George Chowdharay-Best suggests (lord Salisbury's black man', 16 Febru- ary) that the great Conservative Prime Minister was encouraging racial prejudice with his comments on the defeat of Dadabhai Naoroji as Liberal candidate for Finsbury Central in 1888.
Perhaps it is more likely that Salisbury was simply expressing his exasperation that prejudice was such a force in British politics, just as it now appears to be in Cheltenham. Two years later he was to exchange letters with Queen Victoria on the subject of race.
The Queen wrote to the Prime Minister to complain about the sacking of General Sir Robert Warburton as Warden of the Khyber Pass. Warburton had managed to keep the peace in this sensitive area for about 18 years, partly because he was half-Afghan (his mother was an Afghan princess) and, unlike other army officers, was able to speak to tribal chiefs in their own language. But one of his superior officers General Lockhart said after War- burton's dismissal: 'How can you trust a man who is half-native?'
It was when Warburton visited the Queen at Osborne House that she wrote her complaint to Lord Salisbury. The
LETTERS
Prime Minister's answer, which may have had its origins in the Naoroji affair, was: 'I'm afraid that racial prejudice is far too deeply rooted in the British ruling classes ever to be rooted out.'
James Hughes-Onslow
12 Knatchbull Road, London SE5
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