Empire's Children

Diana Rigg's story will be broadcast on Channel 4 at 9pm, 2nd July, 2007. After the broadcast, you will be able to read her full story here. You will also be able to watch the entire show online using 4od: http://vodapp.grid.channel4.com/c4links-web/VODLi
nk.do?t=season&i=706328&o=4oD

The show will be repeated on More 4 at 9pm, 8th August, 2007.

Diana's father, Louis Rigg, was born in Doncaster in 1903 when the British Empire was at its height, but he was an unlikely candidate to work in India. His father worked for the railways and their house was originally a railway cottage. Diana's grandfather on her mother's side was the manager of the gentlemen's department of the Co-op. Diana believes this led her mother's family to look down on her father's.

Louis went to a technical grammar school in Doncaster which specialised in training people for vocational skills and careers. At 15 he began an engineering apprenticeship with the local railway before gaining an apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway in 1921.

Before the early 1920s there had been 122 individual railway companies in Britain, but around this time that the government decided to reorganise them into just four umbrella companies. The rationalisation led to the loss of many jobs just at the time Louis was finishing his apprenticeship.

Looking for work, Diana's father Louis responded to a Times advertisement for 'public school men about 25 years of age and unmarried' to come out to Rajasthan to work for the railways. Although Louis was not a public schoolboy, his technical grammar school education qualified him for the post. He left England to work in this distant outpost of the Empire, an unusual move for working class men at the time.

Many British men who travelled to India worked for the government in the civil service. However, highly-skilled working class men like Diana's father were also needed to help maintain the infrastructure of the country. Louis Rigg left for India in 1925 when he was just 22 years old, posted to Bikaner as a junior railway engineer.

When he arrived in Bikaner, Louis initially shared a modest bungalow with another English bachelor.

Many of the newly arrived 'sahibs' quickly developed a reputation for condescending, high-handed treatment of their Indian staff. In contrast, one of the first things Louis did was to hire a tutor to teach him to speak Hindi. Unlike most of his fellow Englishman in India, he wouldn't be working for a white employer.

In 1920s India, 1,500 English civil servants effectively ruled over 300 million Indians. Britain in fact only ruled directly over two thirds of India, while the rest, the 'Princely States', were governed by India royalty: the Maharajas. Bikaner was one of the most powerful states in Rajasthan. Louis's boss was to be the remarkable Maharaja Ganga Singh, whose feared Camel Corps was part of the Imperial army and fought in both World Wars.

Maharaja Ganga Singh was the only non-white member of the British Imperial War Cabinet during the First World War and had been present at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In later years he was responsible for the modernisation of Rajasthan, building railways and canals to bring water to his desert state and also making education free for all his subjects.

Although Louis was working for such a powerful man, the fact that his boss was Indian, not white, set him apart from most of the other English people who were working in Bikaner. It also meant he was pretty low in the pecking order.

In 1929, fours years after arriving in Bikaner, Diana's father Louis qualified for six months' leave. At the top of his agenda was to find a wife. British and Indian people led largely segregated lives by this time and intermarriage was discouraged, so finding a wife meant returning to England.

It took Louis six weeks to get to England and would take him another six week to get back. This left him only three months at home in Doncaster to find himself a bride.

It was at the local tennis club that Louis would meet his future wife, Beryl Halliwell, who at 21 had never before set foot outside England. The couple got engaged in 1929, but it was more than two years before Louis was able to persuade Beryl to make the six-week voyage to India. When she finally arrived, they were married and honeymooned at a remote hill station before settling into their new quarters in Bikaner.

The house where Diana's parents lived in Bikaner is now derelict, but when she visited she could see where the veranda was, looking out on to the beautiful garden. Diana could remember spending a lot of her early life on that veranda, as she and her brother were forbidden to go out beyond the wall.

With the bungalow came a small army of servants to wait on the family, relieving Diana's mother of the daily chores she would have had to do back in Doncaster. The servants lived in poor-quality accommodation at the back of the house. This was typical of life across the Empire.

Diana remembers that later, with the civil rights movement in America raising awareness of racial equality, she asked her mother how they could have allowed Indian servants to live in such conditions. But for Beryl, at the time there was no guilt in having servants. To her, and to thousands of other British women, that was simply the way things were.

Although she was experiencing far more luxury than she could hope for at home, for Diana's mother Beryl her new life in India was also a little daunting. As a new bride in a small community she found herself at the centre of attention, moving in exotic social circles. She was invited with Louis to the palaces of the Maharajas alongside Indian princes and some of the most senior officials of the British Empire.

As a new bride, Beryl would have had the honour of sitting at the right hand of her hosts. This meant that when they dined at the palace she would be taken in to dinner by his highness the Maharaja Ganga Singh.

In a letter home she describes her anxiety about this, saying she expects to "expire on the spot"! She and Louis were entertained by the Maharaja in the banqueting hall of his personal residence, the magnificent Laxmi Niwas Palace, on several occasions, but alas Beryl never wrote to describe this first meeting.

When visiting the palace, Louis and Beryl would have witnessed the segregation of Indian women known as 'purdah'. While Indian men were allowed to mix freely with European women at such social gatherings, Indian women were kept away from the men in a corridor. Here they would stand and watch the ceremonial functions and the guests eating and drinking.

In 1934, just over a year after Beryl arrived in Bikaner, Diana's brother Hugh was born. Diana would be born four years later in 1938. The children grew up in India, Hugh staying until he was 11 years old and Diana until she was 7. Although Diana describes these early memories as a little hazy, she does remember the scents, sights and sounds of India, as well as the wandering sacred cows.

Hugh, being four years older, remembers far more and described to Diana how they were brought up drinking milk from the goats in the garden. He is now the keeper of the family history and has an archive of photograph albums and letters. They never asked their father about his life in India and realise now with regret that many stories have been lost.

By 1938 Diana's father had been promoted to locomotive and carriage superintendent. He and his wife now found themselves rubbing shoulders with not just Indian royalty, but also the most senior officials of the British Empire.

The couple were regular guests at the Maharaja's lakeside lodge at Gagner, 30 miles west of Bikaner in the Thar Desert. Special gatherings were held there at Christmas and New Year and the residents of Bikaner vied for invitations. As in many British colonies, hunting was an especially popular pastime.

Beryl described one of the hunts at Gagner in a letter home:

'We didn't go into the butts with the men, I wanted to but HH (His Highness the Maharaja) said it was too hot for us, so we watched from the lakeside. It was a very new experience for me to see what happened... An aide de camp or someone fired the first shot. This was to make the birds rise from the lake. It was extraordinary the way they all rose in a cloud when that shot was fired. Then HH fired the first one after the birds had risen, then all the men started. There were about 10 men shooting and they got 570 birds... HH himself got 170 birds but then he had 3 guns and 3 loaders so all he had to do was shoot...'

On the hunt the men would be placed in order of precedence, with the Maharaja in the middle and his guest of honour to his right. Diana's father would be placed right at the end of the line. Diana can recall him only getting three birds during this particular hunt, but she remembers him not minding as he adored shooting.

Louis had already set himself apart to some extent from his fellow 'sahibs' by learning Hindi. Diana discovered that he had also distinguished himself by his respectful attitude towards his Indian colleagues. In researching her family history, Diana came across a local railwayman who had worked for her father in India. Shri Lal Nathamal Jos was an apprentice on the Bikaner railway in the early '40s and remembers Louis well.

He told Diana how the workers usually respected their officers out of fear. Yet in her father's case it was different: they respected him wholeheartedly. Louis was greatly liked and when he left in 1943 a farewell party was given for him by both the office and workshop staff. They even wrote a poem in his honour.

In October 1943 Louis Rigg was offered a job on the Jodhpur Railway, where he was eventually to become Chief Mechanical Engineer at the age of 40. At that time the equivalent position in Britain would have attracted a knighthood. His new boss was to be the Maharaja of Jodhpur, one of the richest men in India.

In the railway system there were three departments: transportation, engineering and mechanical. The transportation department looked after the operations of the system, the engineering department looked after the track and the mechanical department maintained and owned all the locomotives, coaches and wagons.

As Chief Mechanical Engineer, Louis Rigg was responsible for 3,000 staff and ensuring that over 100 locomotives ran smoothly. It was a huge job, and his work played a large part in the success story that was the Jodhpur Railway. The role brought with it a grand new house, a far cry from his humble roots in Doncaster.

In India the demand for self-government and independence had been growing since before the First World War. Now it was reaching a peak. Mahatma Gandhi had been imprisoned in 1942 for his part in launching the 'Quit India' campaign that same year. In 1945 he was released and pressure for independence mounted. Although it was largely non-violent, the 'Quit India' movement was suppressed by British forces and in response there were isolated attacks on strategic British interests.

Diana remembers a sense of unease spreading through the country. Nobody knew what was going to happen. A lot of railways were being blown up and whilst the danger was not very great, even as a small child she was aware of it. Many colonial men chose to send their wives and children home. Diana and her brother were themselves sent home to a boarding school in England, though their mother Beryl returned to be with Louis in India after the children were settled.

Life was to change for the Maharajas, too. Their alliance with the British would cost them their political future and Indian independence saw not only the end of the Raj but also of the centuries-old way of life of India's kings.

In 1947, after decades of campaigning, India finally gained its independence. Within 20 years the British Empire and the colonial way of life would be virtually over. Many British settlers, including the Riggs, believed they had no future in an independent India. In 1947 Beryl bade farewell to India for the last time, though Louis would stay on to serve out a further year on his contract. The couple held a farewell party at their house for their closest friends.

Amongst the guests was Baiji, a member of the Jodhpur royal family. Still alive today, Baiji remembers Diana's father with fondness. "He was always clowning, you know? Always had his arm around somebody and always a big grin on his face."

Like most women before independence, Baiji was kept in 'purdah' and was forbidden from socialising with Indian men. However, these restrictions did not apply to interactions with Europeans and she was able to take part in the farewell party, signing a photograph to Diana's parents that Diana still has today. On meeting Diana she recalled how conditions for women in India changed after 1947. She considers that she got her independence "at the same time as India."

Left alone in Jodhpur, Diana's father spent more and more time at the Sardar Club where he went to play tennis and golf. The club was famous for having only 13 holes on its golf course. This was because the British people who were working in the state only had enough time to play 13 holes after work before it became too dark too see. After that, it was back to the bar for sundowners.

Diana's father's name is still up in the bar as the winner, with a Mr Wotherspoon, of the 1947 cup. This was the year of Indian independence. Shortly afterwards all the British would leave and the future names of golfing champions on display would be Indian.

In 1948 Louis Rigg finally set sail for England to join his family. He had been away for 20 years and, at the age of 45, would find it difficult to start life again in post-war Britain. His home country had changed beyond recognition and was dogged by rationing and unemployment. This was a challenge experienced by many returning from lives of comparative luxury in former colonies. For a new Labour government committed to dismantling the Empire and establishing a more equitable society, these former privileged rulers were a source of embarrassment.

Diana met with Daphne Crabtree and Denbigh Hamilton Harding, childhood friends of her brother Hugh. Denbigh's father had been the Minister of the Interior in Bikaner but had left India with virtually nothing. His family returned to England to find they had no home. They couldn't get money out of India and had to live in a loft over a garage at the back of their aunt's house. Their mother put a curtain across the loft so they could live on one side and sleep on the other.

However, Daphne's experience of coming home was very different from Denbigh's. Her family lived in a flat in London and found it vibrant and happy. Daphne remembered that everyone was relaxing after the war but she felt very guilty for not having suffered the bombs and rationing. She recalls experiencing some resentment, particularly from trades people, who felt that her family had been 'living on the fat of the land'.

At the age of 45, Diana's father found it hard to find work. Eventually, he managed to get a job at a tanning machine company in Leeds. Despite the lack of money, both Diana and Hugh were sent to private boarding schools.

Diana's parents wanted to keep her brother at his boarding school but had planned to send Diana to the local grammar school. However, her education in India had been patchy and she was unable to pass the entrance exams. Instead, Diana's parents ended up paying for her to go to Fulneck Girls' School.

Diana did not fit in easily after her childhood in India and remembers the experience as joyless, with all the pupils lumped together by the school. However, it was through the encouragement of her English teacher at Fulneck that she was to discover her aptitude for drama.

Although Diana's childhood in India made it difficult for her to fit into the English school system, it was at her English school that she discovered her talent for drama and launched her extremely successful acting career.

For her services to the British stage and screen Diana was made a Dame in 1989. The full title is 'Dame of the British Empire'. Receiving this award led her to question what the Empire was and now is, making her wonder how her family's history fitted in. Aware that the Empire has a reputation for suppression and exploitation, she felt some trepidation at exploring her father's past.

But she considers her return to India a fruitful and rewarding journey. She was pleasantly surprised to meet Indians who look back on the Raj as a time of development. She was also pleased to have found that her father's attitude to his Indian colleagues and their culture had been so respectful.