Episode 55 - The Concentration Camps installed and Winston Churchill wins in Oldham

It’s October 1900, and Spring is a month old in Southern Africa. Some of the mountains in Basutholand (Lesotho) still have their snowy caps, but the temperatures are already climbing to 30 degrees in other parts of the region. In Cape Town, the Governor of the Cape Sir Alfred Milner was completely unconvinced by Lord Robert’s assertion that the war was technically over. Spring had come - but what was actually happening was it had breathed new life into the Boers. For some they reckoned this war was only just beginning. Valley after Valley of the South western Transvaal for example had slipped back under the control of Boer General Koos de la Rey. He was back in his happy hunting ground, snapping up convoys, swallowing prisoners, a swirling cloud on the horizon the size of a dynamited train as Thomas Packenham described it. At the epicentre of this miniature cyclone was de la Rey, and Louis Botha had requested all commanders to meet in the SwartRuggens ridge at the end of October. That was west of the capital Pretoria, a long line of steep hills that afforded a view across the flats of the Transvaal. Meanwhile Louis Botha remained active to the East of the capital. The curling smoke in the distance was not limited to British trains being blown up - Robert’s command for increasingly tough action against Boers including the destruction of their farms had begun in earnest. We heard last week how this decision to target civilians had led immediately to an escalation of the number of Boers who’d returned to the commandos despite taking an oath of neutrality. The debate about this moment in the war has literally continued to this day with biased views on both sides.