have largely been instructed by university teachers who could not hold down a reputable job elsewhere. A small country which badly needs carpenters, plumbers, engineers and so forth is turning out third-rate lawyers and sociologists by the dozen. It is good inflammable material for a political bonfire.
Puerto Rico
‘Quite inaccurate idea of Puerto Ricans as a rather degenerate race of small brown people’’
RICHARD THOMAS, CONSUL IN PUERTO RICO, OCTOBER 1965
I have found during my two and a half years at this post that if anybody in the United Kingdom thinks about Puerto Rico at all (and few do) it is as a rather slummy place owned by the Americans where all those characters in West Side Story come from …
… In the glorious years of the conquistadors Puerto Rico was for Spain a possession without gold or other wealth … [I]n Spanish eyes Puerto Rico was merely the place where only the unfortunate or unambitious settlers remained. It was a poor island which was hardly touched by the stories of revolutionary glory that came out of the Spanish mainland territories.
When the Americans came in 1896 the campaign here was a sideshow to those in Cuba and the Philippines. There was no fighting beyond skirmishes and there the Americans were; stuck with a colony they did not know what to do with. And it was just about nothing they did do with it for the next five decades. So poor was the island in the early forties that Rexford Tugwell, one of the few remembered and a much respected American Governor, entitled his book about Puerto Rico The Stricken Land. I have read an account of a visit by an American yachtsman written as late as 1948 in which he described his eagerness to get away from Puerto Rico as fast as possible. The picture he drew was of a sink of poverty where good American dollars had gone down the drain to no avail …
And yet, only a few weeks ago I attended a Chamber of Commerce dinner … What has inspired this confidence, this quite unprecedented feeling of optimism and self respect? It is not merely the benefits of the American rule. Essentially it was the belated exploitation by the Puerto Ricans themselves of the connexion with the United States. And also there can be little doubt that one man, Luis Muñoz Marin,1 was the mainspring … Today Luis Muñoz speaks standard American English and it would be difficult to fit him in with the common and quite inaccurate idea of Puerto Ricans as a rather degenerate race of small brown people of mixed origins. He is a great personality by most standards …
1. Luis Muñoz Marin: The first governor of independent Puerto Rico (1949–65); nowadays he is remembered as the father of the nation tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans turned out for his funeral in 1980.
2. Settling Scores
Discussed briefly in the Introduction is the 2006 decision by the FCO so to curtail the impact within the Office of a valedictory despatch that (diplomats have told us) the whole tradition has effectively been ended.
Most potent among the reasons for this move (the editors have surmised) was not the occasional embarrassment caused to HMG when disobliging remarks about foreign countries, or indiscreet remarks about British foreign policy, leaked from a valedictory. No, it was the way the despatch has sometimes been used to turn a retiring ambassador’s guns on the FCO itself, and the way the Office is run, that had really enraged Whitehall mandarins, and even ministers. This, as you will see from some of the material that follows, was the one time a civil servant could round on his or her masters. Worse (from Whitehall’s viewpoint), some despatches were written to be read by a wider audience – and their authors were less than horrified when they appeared in the press.
But most only wanted their criticisms to be seen by internal eyes. Still, they meant it; it would sometimes be recognized as carrying an element of truth; and it stung. This is perhaps most sharply true of some of the more modern despatches here, all of which we obtained through Freedom of Information. Some of the authors were a little displeased to hear that we had got our hands on them.
We put it to Sir Peter Ricketts, who was then the Permanent Under Secretary – the head – of the Foreign Office, that the valedictory had been effectively banned. There was, he countered, a ‘growing tendency [for] valedictories to leak, and they were doing real damage to the confidence and trust that has to exist between ministers and officials … I felt that that trust was breaking down.’ He went on to say that the Office still wanted ‘full, frank, hard-hitting advice – and we don’t just want it on the day [diplomats] leave … So we were suggesting that people send in their advice in different ways and at different times …’
‘In fact,’ he said, ‘the world has moved on, and by and large people don’t send despatches anyway … The valedictory despatch risked becoming a caricature of itself … I don’t think [it] did great things for the reputation of the Foreign Office.’
We found this reaction sad. Sir Ivor Roberts (the author of the valedictory that preceded Sir Peter’s baleful edict) suggested to us that his despatch was only really an excuse, triggering a change the Office had been waiting to make. He pointed to ‘the leaking of some of a valedictory from Iraq from our ambassador a few months earlier which had been quite negative about the direction things were going, and naturally was not regarded as being helpful to government policy. And the fact that the Foreign Office were mulling over whether to suppress valedictories may well have been in the air, as it were, and my valedictory may have been the last straw.’
Sir Christopher Meyer (see Chapter 1) was emphatic. The valedictory, he said, is ‘an ancient and noble tradition, which requires an ambassador … to put down in a personal, succinct and clear way the conclusions that he’s drawn …’ The ban on valedictories, he said, was ‘a cringing, defensive, unworthy posture …’ and ‘to limit their circulation in response to a leak is pitiful’.
Lord (Robin) Renwick (our man in Washington – see Notes on the Material) called the ban ‘a wholly bad thing. It’s a pusillanimous response designed to protect ministers against criticism they fear might leak. The system was not abused; a lot of worthwhile things were said. These despatches were read with great interest and often real amusement; and it was the one time … when career civil servants could say what they really thought, and some of them did, and to stop them doing it is absurd.’
Roberts’s valedictory comes later in this chapter. We start with a despatch that probably caused less harm to its intended target in London than to the reputation of its author.
‘A disconcerting feeling of being watched by critical and potentially unfriendly eyes in London’
SIR PATRICK REILLY, HM AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE, SEPTEMBER 1968
Sir Patrick Reilly represented Britain in Moscow, and twice as ambassador in Paris. In 1967 General Charles de Gaulle humiliated the British foreign policy establishment by blocking, for the second time, the UK’s application to join the European Economic Community; and in May 1968, student riots brought France to a standstill. As one would expect, most of Reilly’s valedictory was given over to a serious analysis of the situation on the ground.
Some of the passages included below, however, are more personal in tone. The modern reader may feel that Sir Patrick is here driven by sadnesses or anger that disturb the flow of his argument, leaving the uninitiated a little bewildered. The despatch has some of the qualities of an ill-considered speech at a company leaving-do. The ‘special trials’ to which Reilly refers were the result of a falling out with George Brown, the mercurial and alcoholic British Foreign Secretary. Brown was once rude to Reilly’s wife, in public, at the French Embassy in London, and the personality clash between the shy, cultured ambassador and the pugnacious Foreign Secretary – for whom the euphemism ‘tired and emotional’ was coined by Private Eye – cast a pall over the rest of Reilly’s time in Paris. His valedictory was addressed to Michael Stewart, Brown’s more emolient successor. A covering note from the Department warned of its contents: ‘parts of it are controversial and outspoken … Sir P. Reilly has made fullest use of the licence which the occasion gives him for speaking frankly.’
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sp; The result is rather sad because in these passages the despatch, striking out wildly in various directions, fails to achieve the coherence for which Sir Patrick must, in an important composition like this, have hoped.
De Gaulle did (as Reilly suggests) eclipse all other French politicians of the time. Nevertheless, Reilly’s estimation of the prospects of two (then) also-rans has proved overly pessimistic with the passage of time: Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and François Mitterrand both eventually became President (1974–81 and 1981–95 respectively).
CONFIDENTIAL
BRITISH EMBASSY
PARIS
11 September 1968
Sir,
This last despatch of my official career has been written at a moment when it is exceptionally difficult to see ahead in Paris. France has just emerged from a startling and extraordinary crisis … [E]veryone is conscious of the clouds ahead. The dozen or more Ministers on whom I have called in the last fortnight have given me the impression of being very chastened men … On the morning of the 30th of May the French seemed hypnotised and paralysed in the face of what was in fact a tiny minority … [T]he foremost of the many factors which contributed to this extraordinary affair was the change in the character of political authority in France and the devaluation of all institutions under the Fifth Republic except for the Presidency itself. General de Gaulle thus bears a heavy responsibility for the crisis. Yet for all his failings, being still the one man in the Western world with greatness in him, he was able, having once recovered his will, to reverse the whole situation in a few minutes …
The lamentable weakness of the non-Communist Opposition starts with its leaders: Mitterrand, Mendes France, Mollet, Defferre, Bijleres, Lecanuet, Duhamel. Only the last seems to me to have any real future now, but his electoral base is too small. M. Mitterrand arouses astonishingly widespread mistrust. I cannot now see him as a plausible candidate for the Presidency or indeed see the Federation lasting under his leadership. (It is in fact already breaking up.) … Outside the Gaullists proper I can at present only see two possible candidates from the majority. M. Giscard d’Estaing, who is only forty-two, will certainly be a strong contender. He is able and experienced, and intensely ambitious. In the May crisis, however, his judgement went wildly astray; and for a man of his age to make a charming wife as miserable as she has appeared lately suggests to me a flaw somewhere. I am not inclined to put much money on him in the years immediately ahead …
Nearly all the speeches which have been made to me before my departure have contained friendly references to the difficulties of mine in Paris. I have often caught myself listening to these phrases with surprise … In actual fact, in many ways life is made easy for a British Ambassador in Paris … In my experience it is in London that the difficulties arise. I am not of course referring to the special trials to which, like others of our colleagues, my wife and I have been subject during our time in Paris, and which have left deep scars. There is nothing very new about the situation I have in mind. In the ’thirties a senior member of the Service with exceptional experience of Paris astonished his wife by saying that he would never want the Embassy there because he knew too well how the Ambassador was always being shot at, often by people who wanted his job. I know that feeling well. Perhaps it was often illusory and of course for half the three years of my effective mission there was a special situation in London which has probably coloured my impression of my whole time here. Nevertheless I suspect that a disconcerting feeling of being watched by critical and potentially unfriendly eyes in London, most of whose owners are in fact completely ignorant of what is being done here, is the lot of most British Ambassadors in Paris …
I have concluded this despatch with … perhaps unusual reflections because my experience here has been unusual. A French newspaper described my last French speech, in which I had thought it right to do some plain speaking, as ‘oscillating between emotion, some rancour and much bitterness’. I hardly think that the writer could have heard me make it: but the comment is interesting as showing how difficult it is, however carefully you choose your words, to
talk frankly to the French without making hackles rise. It is certainly not in this spirit that I am leaving Paris. My mission here has covered the unhappiest time in the history of the Service. It was inevitable that we in Paris should suffer with it …
I am sending copies of this despatch to Her Majesty’s Ambassadors at Brussels, The Hague, Luxembourg, Bonn, Rome and Washington, and to Sir Bernard Burrows, Sir James Marjoribanks, Sir Eugene Melville and Sir Edgar Cohen.
I have the honour to be
with the highest respect,
Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
D. P. Reilly
‘A harsh and boastful note has crept into British diplomacy’
SIR JULIAN BULLARD, HM AMBASSADOR TO THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, MARCH 1988
In the early 1980s, Bullard served as the Foreign Office’s first Political Director, a job created to help Britain work more closely with its new European partners. His criticism below of a ‘harsh and boastful note’ in the tune Britain was playing in Europe in the later Thatcher years would, therefore, have struck (in some quarters) a chord; in others, a nerve.
Extracts from this despatch also appear on p. 38.
Saying goodbyes up and down this country, I have encountered certain recurrent attitudes. Deep admiration for Britain – for things we take for granted, like our democracy and our Monarchy, but also for things not universally admired, nor even much in evidence, in Britain today. Great respect for the Prime Minister and for the turn-round in the British economy, achieved under her leadership, but stopping short of a desire to apply the same methods here. And a deep wish that Britain would be more present, more engaged, more active in Europe, in everything from space research to youth exchanges, both for our own merits and because many Germans are uncomfortable in the slightly synthetic special relationship with France. It is to this theme that I should like to devote what remains of my allocation of words.
I think we should try to avoid living down to the hard things that have been said about the British in the past. I need not quote Napoleon, but here is Nietzsche: ‘Die Engländer haben schon einmal mit ihrer tiefen Durchschnittlichkeit eine Gesamtdepression des europäischen Geistes verursacht’ (‘With their profound averageness, the British have already once caused a general depression of the European spirit’). I wrote last November to the Permanent Under-Secretary, calling for more vision and a different style in British policy in Europe. I received a reply nearly twice as long, asking what we actually lose by our present methods. In a way that illustrates my point. Not everything unquantifiable is unimportant. There will continue to be important decisions to be taken on Europe, perhaps one day on Central Europe, and the CDU will not necessarily always be in power in Bonn, nor the Conservative Party in London. I should not like the British voice to be weak because we had appeared to lose interest, or ignored because listeners had come to resent its tone. Once or twice recently a harsh and boastful note has crept into British diplomacy, a note which I do not recognise. Or rather, I do recognise it, because it reminds me of a telegram from London which reached us in Amman during the Suez crisis of 1956, which began: ‘When we are in control of the canal, which will be very soon now …’ We all know what happened after that.
My message is a banal one: Take trouble with Germany. Be punctilious over Anglo-German meetings, from Summits down to the humblest expert bilateral, and allow time for those involved not just to read out their briefs, but to unpack some of their mental (as well as their physical) luggage. Europeanise Westminster and Whitehall, not with PR and coalitions but with ever more awareness of the continent, our continent. Where we see a chance for Britain to lead, do so in European colours. And treat the instruments of Anglo-German relations as allies, not as tiresome interruptions in the working day.
Among the best of these instruments are the Embassy in Bonn, British Military Government in B
erlin and the Consulates-General, to all of whom I here express my grateful thanks. There is little wrong with any of them except over-administration, most of it dictated from above. To choose a current example: the taxpayer has to pay the cost of transferring a 1st Secretary and his family from Bonn to Riyadh; why should he also pay a Treasury official, who of course has no intention of ever going to Riyadh himself, nor anywhere like it, to tell that 1st Secretary how many cubic metres his baggage should amount to? Among the main sufferers from such attitudes are the Diplomatic Service wives, to whom I also pay my tribute, and especially to my own, whose career moreover need not have been sacrificed to mine if it had been the Treasury official that she married.
I am sending copies of this despatch to HM Representatives at NATO and EC posts, Moscow and East Berlin; the GOC Berlin, the career Consuls-General in the Federal Republic; and the Commanders-in-Chiefs’ Committee (Germany).
I am, Sir,
Yours faithfully,
J. L. Bullard
‘How does the “blustering buffoon” sign off for the last time?’
SIR DAVID GORE-BOOTH, HM HIGH COMMISSIONER TO INDIA, DECEMBER 1998
A charismatic high-flyer, Gore-Booth often courted controversy. He pulls no punches in his valedictory over the treatment he received at the hands of the Scott Inquiry into arms-to-Iraq. Defending the information supplied by the Foreign Office in answer to MPs’ parliamentary questions, his rather elusive comment that ‘of course, half the picture can be accurate’ has entered Whitehall folklore.
Parting Shots Page 11