Parting Shots

by Matthew Parris

  Harlech proved no better a doctor than political forecaster. His optimism about the state of Johnson’s heart in the eight years ahead was confounded seven years later. LBJ had a stroke in 1972. A repeat heart attack which killed him in January the following year came just two days after the end of what would have been Johnson’s second term in office.

  Our ambassador to Washington received, in turn, despatches of his own from British consular posts around the United States. In the archives Harlech’s despatch sits alongside two interesting accounts from western states, which also feature below. The first, which is essentially about the phenomenon of Texas, is today lent poignancy by the subsequent phenomenon of George W. Bush.

  I now confront the difficult task of attempting to prophesy United States policy in the future under the leadership of a very different type of man, President Johnson. Barring some unforeseeable disaster or a collapse in his health Mr. Johnson is likely to preside over the fortunes of this most powerful nation on earth for eight more years. There are those who think it most improbable that a man, who has had serious heart trouble and who possesses an inability to relax, can physically survive so long, but I am bound to say that up to now he seems to be thriving on the presidency. Perhaps the frustrations for him of supreme power are less than the frustrations of not having supreme power. For he is one of the most egotistical men I have met. His political talents are undoubtedly of a high order and his ‘populist’ approach to the problems of his country is in tune with the broad traditional instinct of Americans – certainly more so than the slightly sceptical, highly sophisticated and almost aristocratic approach of President Kennedy. He believes in low interest rates, thinks there is no real conflict of interest between business and labour, feels uncomfortable with intellectuals, hardly ever reads a book, has little interest in the history or affairs of other countries, but he does have a tremendous loyalty to his conception of the American dream and a driving determination to make it come true under his guidance. Hence his programme to create ‘The Great Society’. How successful will he be? I would judge pretty successful …

  When I turn to the prospects in the international field under President Johnson I feel I must record a large question mark. He is of course in favour of peace, disarmament, expanded trade and every other sort of desirable objective. He is naturally cautious … and he has around him, at least for the time being, intelligent and hard-working advisers. But basically he has no feeling for world affairs and no great interest in them except in so far as they come to disturb the domestic scene. He has little sensitivity to the attitude of foreigners, as witness a statement of his that on the basis of his globe-trotting as Vice-President he was convinced that in every country he visited the people would prefer to be Americans. The thought of the impression he would make in a tête-à-tête with General de Gaulle is too horrendous to contemplate. He seems most reluctant to concentrate his mind on long-term policy and prefers to arrive at a course of action after an intricate search for a consensus involving much behind-the-scenes manoeuvring and general obfuscation. I doubt therefore whether we can expect much inspired leadership from the United States under Mr. Johnson but I would be surprised if he made many mistakes in reacting to situations not of his making. I see no sign, for instance, that he will give a lead to the American people over the recognition of Communist China or its membership of the United Nations. On the other hand I think he is determined to avoid a dangerous escalation over Viet-Nam despite the temporarily more belligerent American behaviour in that part of the world.

  ‘This brash, new and selfish society’

  PETER HOPE, CONSUL-GENERAL IN HOUSTON, JANUARY 1965

  CONFIDENTIAL AND GUARD

  British Consulate-General

  1005 World Trade Center

  1520 Texas Avenue

  Houston, Texas 77002

  January 5, 1965

  My Lord,

  It is some while since a general report on the Southwest of the U.S. was submitted and since I am shortly to be posted to the United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations in New York, this may be a convenient moment to offer Your Lordship some random observations on one of the more remote areas of the U.S. which until comparatively recently was labelled the Great Southwestern Desert. Moreover, Texas in particular has come into the news, not only because of the appalling story of the assassination of President Kennedy last year in Dallas, immediately followed by the murder of the assassin, but also because there has been recent publicity about commercial prospects for Britain in this area …

  The Southwest is not much smaller than Western Europe, and this Consular District stretches from some of the highest and wildest mountains of the Rockies where peaks reach nearly 15,000 feet across a vast upland of sage, cactus and a few waterholes, to the steaming swamps and bayous of the Gulf of Mexico where the temperatures and humidity compare evilly on occasions with Freetown and other tropical ports.

  Over the past thirty years the territory has seen a series of explosions of wealth and population. In spite of the myths of cowboys and Indians, bad men and cattle stampedes, the initial wealth came from lumber, cotton, rice, sheep and goats, since in most of the district, acres were counted to the cow rather than cows to the acre. (The clever intermarriage of Hereford and Brahma cattle has now produced the Santa Gertrudis breed which copes well with heat and flies, and produces bulls over one and one half tons in weight). World War I gave the economy a considerable fillip since once-poor farmers who had discarded waterholes fouled with oil became rich overnight …

  Stories of the present wealth of Texas abound and though many at first sight appear apocryphal, there is a sound basis for most. In this vast area, it is understandable that men of wealth and their companies use airplanes like cars. There must be two or three times as many private aircraft on Houston’s six airfields as there are in the whole of Western Europe. Several oilmen have their private jet aircraft. Sheep farmers in the vast ranges of west Texas and New Mexico save money by herding animals with helicopters – so the Neiman-Marcus store offers them as Christmas gifts. In each of the cities of Houston and Dallas there is more money on deposit in the banks than the total gold and foreign currency reserves which back the sterling area; the Humble Oil Company has the largest tanker fleet in the world; the King Ranch is larger than the English County of Kent – examples are endless.

  Money in the Southwest still breeds money, and this rich area, which owed its initial success perhaps more to natural resources than the intellectual brilliance of its present millionaire leaders (to say nothing of their education since most were once roughnecks who left school before their teens), is now for the first time face to face with the outside world. The ramifications of petroleum, the petro-chemical industry, space age projects, the aircraft industry and even banking are leading a proud but basically chauvinistic and inward-looking people along international highways into the complexities of foreign affairs – and they find this experience basically disagreeable …

  It has been an interesting though not always satisfying experience to watch the almost daily expansion of this great area and the way in which its people are reacting. The hard core still remember with nostalgia both the frontier freedom of the West and the Deep South way of living. Most High School children drive themselves to class – many with pistols in the glove compartment. Nearly all of the many millionaires (and they are legion with more than sixty living in permanent apartments in one hotel in Houston, the Warwick) have made their wealth in one generation, learning to ride before they could walk and starting work as roughnecks …

  These men of newly-obtained wealth have cleverly banded themselves together effectively to operate a very closed society – under the guise of civic associations. Their word is law, so that the press, news media, civic authorities and even Courts of Justice inevitably follow their wishes. Their generosity is almost unbelievable and their pride in the State is such that the rank and file tolerate this situation for the benefits which accrue to them
both through such things as the huge medical centres, the air-conditioned Domed Stadium, and the like. These men have also attracted vast projects of Federal origin to the State, like the Manned Spacecraft Centre … bringing employment and wealth to many.

  In-born conservatism largely explains why Dallas accommodates so many rich extremists of the Right and why it was labelled in the world press as the city of hate. It also explains a fierce antagonism to Central Government in Washington which limits freedom of action to take oil from the ground for more than so many days a month; which imposes legislation regarded here as an infringement on the sacred rights of the State and which in general terms asks the oligarchy to modify its way of life. But the evils of what amounts to an 18th Century Whig oligarchy in modern guise are, however, only too observable. Absolute power has tended to corrupt absolutely and to misquote Burke, injustice is often done and even more frequently seen to be done.

  To me, however, the most disagreeable feature of this brash, new and selfish society is not the way in which one man likes the White House enough to copy it for himself or another reproduces a French Chateau most incongruously in the centre of a petro-chemical city, but the manner in which open corruption seems to be tolerated … Crimes of passion regularly occur, but when the oligarchy is involved they never even reach a Grand Jury. Disregard of law is most flagrant in politics. Ballot boxes are switched or disappear. Names from graveyards are included when necessary in the list of voters. It is indeed a common joke that Texans have a vote whether alive or dead.

  I expect, however, that this displeasing aspect of the Southwest will slowly fade as the area is diluted by immigration and internationalises itself. Already Houston is more civilised in this respect, and Dallas more so than West Texas. It is a bitter pill to the oligarchs because essentially these selfish men here had their own way and in their own words ‘hate being corralled’. They are only now beginning to understand why, unlike themselves in their own parish, the Federal Government is unable to have its own way with the Red Chinese or in South Vietnam. They still only dimly realise that their country is inevitably involved in the world, but they resent it strongly. They hope for relief from their Texan President and even more to be able to direct him. In this, events are, I am glad to say, so far proving them wrong.

  ‘There are some nice people here’

  PETER DALTON, CONSUL-GENERAL IN LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER 1965

  BRITISH CONSULATE-GENERAL

  3324 Wilshire Boulevard

  Los Angeles

  California, 90005

  29 November, 1965

  Sir,

  In my despatch No. 14 of the 19th of December, 1964, to your predecessor, I had the honour to submit some ‘first impressions’ of Los Angeles. It may seem otiose, only a year later, to submit a valedictory despatch. Nevertheless, it may be of some interest, for the record, to report that, in the intervening year, my impressions have not greatly changed. I still find Los Angeles, on the whole, a disagreeable city and life here, at any rate for a foreign consular officer, not one to which I, personally, find myself attracted …

  … [A]s Mr. Bob Hope put it, in welcoming Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret during her recent visit, ‘After your visit to San Francisco, welcome to America.’

  But if Los Angeles is politically, and in many ways actually, a great city … it is still largely an unplanned mess. Amenities have, hitherto, been sacrificed to material progress, and, while one may travel for miles on the world’s finest freeways, there is little to please the eye, or, indeed, any other sense, in doing so. The city has, therefore, at present, little physical attraction.

  For the foreign representative, Los Angeles is, I find, unrewarding also in its formlessness and lack of warmth. Southern Californians seem to want to be loved, or, at any rate, reassured, but they do not know, or, in many cases, are too busy to worry about, how to make themselves agreeable. It is not, I find, the distances that divide one from the people as much as the casualness and preoccupation with their own affairs. Many have no time to be cultivated, while others appear to have no wish.

  In such circumstances, it is difficult at times to determine in what direction, as a foreign representative, one should address one’s efforts, or, indeed, whether what one tries to do makes any impact at all. For the present, I am inclined to think that the most profitable line might be to concentrate on the commercial work … and, by and large, let ‘society’ (including the ‘Hollywood fringe’) go hang. (The large, demanding and generally, rather low-level British community will, however, always be a millstone round the Consul-General’s neck, not easy to shake off.)

  One cannot, however, altogether withhold admiration for such a brashly growing place, and, although, at this post, I must say that I leave it with no regrets, I shall certainly be interested to see how it has developed in ten or fifteen years’ time and, in the meantime, shall probably not be able entirely to stifle some friendly curiosity about its progress, for, when all is said and done, there are some nice people here.

  I am sending copies of this despatch to H.M. Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and to the Acting British Consul-General at San Francisco.

  I have the honour to be,

  With the highest respect,

  Sir,

  Your Excellency’s obedient Servant,

  P. G. F. Dalton

  Canada

  ‘He is almost incomprehensible to a great number of “far away Canadians” ’

  SIR PETER HAYMAN, HM HIGH COMMISSIONER TO CANADA, OCTOBER 1974

  … [A] commentary on Canada must begin with an analysis of that curious man, Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The swinging image has virtually disappeared, although the fifty-five-year-old Prime Minister, sometimes with beads round his neck and other sartorial fads, still tends to look too much like ‘mutton dressed as lamb’. But ‘trendy Trudeau’ was a foolish public relations gimmick that did not reflect the real man.

  He is much more interesting … [but] [h]e is almost incomprehensible to a great number of ‘far away Canadians’, the prairie farmers, Albertan oil men, British Columbian lumber-jacks.

  ‘One does not encounter here the ferocious competition of talent that takes place in the United Kingdom’

  LORD MORAN, HM HIGH COMMISSIONER TO CANADA, JUNE 1984

  Further extracts from Lord Moran’s valedictory can be found on p. 366.

  OTTAWA

  12 June 1984

  Sir,

  In a few days’ time my wife and I leave Ottawa and I become a private man. For the past three years we have travelled all over this vast and disunited land, covering altogether some 130,000 miles – equivalent to five times round the world – by everything from a jumbo jet to a canoe. We have been several times to all the main cities and to places like Prince Rupert, Annapolis Royal and Medicine Hat, but, sadly, not to Moose Jaw, Joliette or Flin-Flon. On countless occasions we have munched those inevitable salads, stood for the singing of ‘O Canada’ and drunk The Queen’s health in iced water. We shall miss, in their different ways, the cry of the loon, as characteristic of Canada as the fish eagle’s is of Africa, and the cheerful shop girls and waitresses of North America, who send us on our way with ‘Take care’ or ‘Have a nice day’.

  I have sent you and your predecessors my thoughts on Anglo-Canadian relations, Canadian foreign policy, Mr Trudeau, the monarchy in Canada, Canada north of sixty, and French and English Canadians. Now that my sojourn in Canada is nearly over, I would like to record a few last personal impressions on a rather wide variety of subjects.

  Mr Trudeau

  Although I like him personally and he has been kind to us, it has, I am sure, been a disadvantage that Mr Trudeau has been Prime Minister throughout my time in Canada because, with some reason, he has not been greatly respected or trusted in London. He has never entirely shaken off his past as a well-to-do hippie and draft dodger. His views on East/West relations have been particularly suspect. Many of my colleagues here admire him. I cannot say I do
. He is an odd fish and his own worst enemy, and on the whole I think his influence on Canada in the past 16 years has been detrimental. But what he minded most about was keeping Quebec in Canada and his finest hours were the ruthless and effective stamping-out of terrorism in Quebec in 1970 and the winning there of the referendum of sovereignty/association ten years later. For the present, separatism in Quebec is at a low ebb. Mr Trudeau has maintained that only by an increase in Ottawa’s powers could Canada develop as a strong state. He treated provincial premiers with contempt and provincial governments as if they were town councils …

  Lack of Ideology in Politics; Patronage

  I have been struck by the marked absence of ideology in Canadian politics. People in the United Kingdom join the Conservative or Labour parties with very different ideas about the kind of society they want to see. In Canada the philosophic differences between Liberals and Progressive Conservatives are scarcely perceptible. The main motive for joining one of these parties is to acquire power or a lucrative job. So political patronage flourishes. Highly paid and long-lasting jobs in the Senate and chairmanships of public enterprises are used almost entirely to reward party hacks. Canadians are surprised to learn that an active member of the House of Lords is unpaid and receives less in expenses than a Canadian on welfare. No one would pretend for a moment that Mr Don Jamieson is the most suitable man to represent Canada in London. He is there because he is an old Liberal war-horse who wanted one more job before he retired (and was disappointed of Washington). Party appointees fill scores of federally appointed posts. Politics run on ‘jobs for the boys’. And Canadian ministers arrange for large amounts of federal money to go to their constituencies. In Nova Scotia 40% of all federal grants go to the riding of the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr MacEachen. And provincial governments behave in exactly the same way.