Richard Hope Hall

Hope Hall was born on 5 June 1924 in Bideford, Devon, England, United Kingdom. He was educated at Charterhouse School in Godalming, and went on to earn a law degree. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II. During the war, he lost became partially deaf as a result of exposure to gunfire. In 1947, he was demobilized from the Royal Naval Reserve. In June 1950, he moved to Southern Rhodesia, traveling from Britain via Cape Town, South Africa.

Upon moving to Southern Rhodesia, Hope Hall became involved in business and politics. He joined the Dominion Party, and ran unsucessfully for parliament in 1959. From 1960 to 1962, he chaired Dominion Party, which after 1960 was solely based in Southern Rhodesia, when the party's Northern Rhodesian and Nyasaland branches split off to form the Federal Dominion Party. In March 1962, when the Dominion Party was reconstituted as the Rhodesian Front, Hope Hall was a founding member.

In 1965, the year Rhodesia declared independence from the United Kingdom, Hope Hall won election to the House of Assembly as the Rhodesian Front candidate for the Highlands South constituency. He was reelected in 1970 with 76% of the vote, and again in 1974 with 75% of the vote. On 27 March 1973, he was elected Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly and Chairman of Committees.

In 1977, the Rhodesian parliament was presented with a highly controversial bill that, if passed, would open up some areas of European-designated land to African ownership. The House of Assembly voted on Land Tenure Amendment Bill on 4 March 1977. On a three line whip, Hope Hall and 11 other conservative Rhodesian Front MPs voted against the bill. Nicknamed the Dirty Dozen by the Rhodesian press, Hope Hall and the other MPs left Rhodesian Front and formed the right-wing Rhodesian Action Party. Prime Minister Ian Smith, whose party had now lost its two-thirds majority needed to amend the Constitution responded by dissolving the House of Assembly and scheduling elections earlier than previously planned. In the 1977 general elections, Hope Hall, along with the other Rhodesian Action Party members, lost his seat in parliament. After 1977, Hope Hall never ran for elected office again.

Hope Hall remained in Rhodesia through the Zimbabwe Rhodesia period. Just before Robert Mugabe would become president of the new Zimbabwe government, Hope Hall and his wife left and moved to the United Kingdom, losing most of their possessions. They settled in Tadley, where his wife worked as a nurse at a local hospital.

Hope Hall died on 17 November 2007 at his home in Tadley. He died around mid-day, having gone for his daily hour-long walk earlier that morning. He was survived by his wife, his three sons, and eight grandchildren. He is buried in Tadley, next to his wife, who died in 2015. Their shared tombstone simply says "Rhodesians."

Hope Hall was married to Renée Evelyn Tyndale-Biscoe. He met her in the early 1950s in Salisbury (now Harare), where she taught at Girls High School. They were married at the Salisbury Anglican Cathedral on 16 February 1952. After marrying, they bought a home in Salisbury on Wingate Road. They later relocated to Dulwich Road in the Highlands area, the constituency Hope Hall would later represent in Parliament. Together, they had three sons: Robert, Mark, and Andrew. Their sons were educated at St. John's Preparatory School and Falcon College, and all fought in the Rhodesian Bush War. Renée Hope Hall worked at the Rhodesian Front headquarters managed her husband's political campaigns.

Hope Hall was an amateur ornithologist and could identify a bird by its song from twenty yards away, despite his partial deafness from the war.

• Independence Commemorative Decoration

Parliamentary elections

Highlands South constituency, 1959

• Opponent missing
• Richard Hope Hall (DP)

Highlands South constituency, 1965

• Richard Hope Hall (RF)
• Opponent missing

Highlands South constituency, 1970

• Richard Hope Hall (RF) - 1,133 (76.3%)
• Jeremy Ralph Bushton Broome (CP) - 351 (23.7%)

Highlands South constituency, 1974

• Richard Hope Hall (RF) - 1,299 (75.3%)
• Marcus Patrick Doyle (RP) - 425 (24.7%)

Highlands South constituency, 1977

• John Christie (RF) - 1,266 (76.5%)
• Richard Hope Hall (RAP) - 230 (13.9%)
• David Frank Sutherland (CP) - 158 (9.6%)