Parting Shots

by Matthew Parris

  ‘The Tunisian temperament, like Tunisian toilet-paper, tears in such unexpected directions’

  HUGH GLENCAIRN BALFOUR-PAUL, HM AMBASSADOR TO TUNISIA, SEPTEMBER 1977

  A true Arabist, Balfour-Paul served as Head of Mission to three Islamic countries, Iraq, Jordan (see p. 248) and Tunisia. In Iraq he met Saddam Hussein, then head of Ba’athist security (whose powers of argument, the ambassador recalls, were ‘skilful enough to wrap me around his little finger’), before being expelled when the regime of Colonel Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr broke off relations with Britain. Balfour-Paul considered his last post as ambassador in Tunis ‘the least inspiring job in the service but the most inspiring Residence to do it from’.

  (CONFIDENTIAL) Tunis,

  19 September, 1977

  Sir,

  My Last Impressions of Tunisia represent so small an advance on my First that it would seem emptily repetitious to commit them to paper. After almost two years I still find myself suspended between the same two opposing views of this country as I did in my first despatch (and which I there entitled the Dyspeptic and the Lotophagous1). It would, I suppose, be cheating simply to refer the imaginary reader back and sign off. So rather than re-submit the same old wares in a different wrapper I shall, with your permission, only pinpoint a few salient features of Tunisia and then, provoked by thirty-odd years in the Arab worlds venture one or two observations of a wider reference. This is after all the last despatch I shall ever burden you with.

  During the visit here in 1976 of Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret we stood for some minutes in the room at Monastir where President Bourguiba2 was born (a national shrine filled with the sacra of the Republic’s founder). The conversation, led by Habib Bourguiba Junior, turned for some reason to the Watergate scandal and the bugging of the Democrat headquarters. ‘And did you know, Ma’am,’ he concluded in his (almost) faultless English, with the air of a conjuror producing (as indeed he did) a rabbit of an unexpected kind, ‘Did you know that the plumbers were the buggers?’ Princess Margaret’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly; but the phrase has stayed with me as a kind of encapsulation of what is amiss in Tunisia itself.

  I am not referring in the literal sense to the defects of Tunisia’s sanitary engineering – striking though they are, and true though it is that one of the capital’s main hotels has to keep all its windows hermetically sealed. Nor am I thinking of the shoddy nature of so much workmanship and the casual nature of so much behaviour which in Tunisia, as in other Third World societies, drive visitors from our own to drink or apoplexy. It is in the political sense that I would apply Bourguiba Junior’s memorable phrase to his own country. For the root fault of this republican regime is that it too interferes – needlessly as well as improperly – in the legitimate activities of its democratic rivals. Bourguiba’s Constitutional Socialist Party is led by men of intelligence and skill, it has much to its credit – trades union rights, imaginative planning, an advanced educational system, an air of general tolerance, all of them without parallel in the Arab world – and it is well established. But it does not have the courage of its convictions. Its political critics linger unnecessarily behind bars, its Press is drearily controlled, its Human Rights champions are muzzled. The singular conceit which so disfigures the Tunisian persona is matched by a singular sense of insecurity. Maybe this is why the Tunisian temperament, like Tunisian toilet-paper, tears in such unexpected directions …

  … [B]ecause this country has enjoyed (and suffered) a particularly close relationship with part of Europe, I believe it is better placed than bigger and remoter bits of Afro-Asia to teach us something … During my farewell call on one of the Tunisian Ministers he said something that I think worth passing on – with no less diffidence than he passed it to me.

  The Minister concerned is a pronounced lover of England and the English, and he has seen the world both as a diplomat and as a politician. What he said was this: ‘Your country is no longer a power of the first order. But she has unrivalled experience of world affairs and an influential role to play. Why cannot she adjust her dealings with the Third World to suit her new situation – not, as your Think Tank3 has apparently recommended, by a feeble contraction of her overseas posture, nor by the vulgar reduction of her diplomatic criteria to cost-effectiveness and of her diplomats’ qualifications to degrees in economics, but by giving your profile a new and less ungracious expression? The Third World has a great respect for your cleverness, but a sad disbelief in your sincerity. Even when your thought processes lead you to make concessions to Third World opinion, you make them with a cold and grudging air. Perhaps because of some imperial hangover your public attitudes to the Third World still sound de haut en bas, liverish if not arrogant. The Third World will not say so to your rulers because it would be impolite; and your diplomats resident abroad are unlikely to reflect it if London’s ears are open only to the crudities of economics. But that is what the Third World thinks – I know this (he went on) because I belong to it and live with it. The Third World has come to stay and is growing. We are emotional people: coldness and calculations of cost-effectiveness give us the shivers. Why do you British not realise this and (in your own interests as well as ours) condescend to it – without an air of condescension. It is not so much a matter of what you do (or don’t do) as of what you say (or don’t say) and of the way you say it (or don’t say it). Look at the way de Gaulle changed the whole course of Franco-Arab relations with a single phrase!4 Whereas in your country …’ Could he, I wonder, have a point?

  I must bring this scrappy and sententious submission to an end. I leave Tunisia with much less regret and much less affection than I leave the Service. In Tunisia little has changed in the 22 months I have known it. In the Service on the other hand much has changed during the 22 years it has found employment for me – some of it but not all of it for the better. Many of us, I suspect, are haunted (quite apart from Berrill and all that) by a ghostly sense that the Service is losing its vigour of bone and other ancestral virtues. An empty ghost perhaps. But may I conclude by quoting the engaging malapropism of a lady of my acquaintance, and suggest that it is ‘high time this ghost was circumcised’.

  I am sending copies of this despatch to Her Majesty’s Ambassadors at Algiers, Tripoli, Rabat and Cairo and (because of its references … to the CPRS Review) to Sir Andrew Stark.

  I have, etc.,

  H. G. Balfour-Paul

  1. Lotophagous: Lotus-eating; indolent daydreamers. Used here in contrast to the unsettled demeanour that comes with indigestion, or dyspepsia.

  2. President Bourguiba: Habib Bourguiba, the first President of independent Tunisia, 1957–87. His son, born from a French wife, shared the same name (Habib Junior).

  3. Think Tank: In 1977 Sir Kenneth Berrill, head of the Central Policy Review Staff (the ‘Think Tank’) proposed cuts to the Foreign Office budget and made a recommendation – never carried out – that the diplomatic corps be merged with representatives of other foreign-facing departments such as the Ministry of Defence. Reporting and despatch-writing in the FCO, the report concluded, was ‘done to an unjustifiably high standard’. The Diplomatic Service, it said, ‘tends to err on the side of perfectionism in work whose importance is not always commensurate with the human and material resources devoted to it’.

  4. de Gaulle … single phrase!: Probably de Gaulle’s famous condemnation of Israel in 1967, after the Six Day War: ‘Le peuple juif, sûr de lui même et dominateur’ (‘The Jewish people, self-confident and domineering’).

  Libya

  ‘Observers in aircraft and ships leaving Tripoli have noted almost hysterical manifestations of relief’

  PETER TRIPP, HM AMBASSADOR TO LIBYA, MARCH 1974

  Three years in post-revolutionary Libya have on the whole been a depressing experience. Qadhafi’s one-man rule, the chaos he has created, his unbalanced character and his ingrained prejudices have frequently produced situations inimical to British interests and obstructive to our work … />
  Had his policies at home made Libya a happier place for the Libyans themselves, he might be excused some of his excesses. But the plain fact is that Qadhafi is indifferent to and contemptuous of Libyans as a whole. He uses them for his own ends and to further his own ambitions. Extraordinarily apathetic and backward, they signally fail to match up to Qadhafi’s requirement of a dynamic, Muslim elite …

  The power which vastly increased oil revenues confers has – quite apart from Libyan xenophobic arrogance and egocentricity – made the regime indifferent to the admonitions and criticisms of the rest of the world. There are constant supplicants for Libyan hand-outs and, in a more sophisticated context, contenders for fat Libyan contracts … Yet Libyan meanness drives away many competent foreign technicians and she is paying dearly for botched work …

  Major difficulties for anyone working in Libya include the abysmally low standard of administration, the incompetence of civil servants, the absence of qualified Libyans of all sorts, the pathological meanness of Libyans and the lack of co-ordination between different departments and strata of government. Add to this officials’ fears of making a mistake, of being over-ruled or cast into gaol, and it is easy to understand why the Libyan Government machine labours so badly. National pride will not permit Libyans to admit that they do not know, or cannot do something. All major decisions are taken by Qadhafi or by the RCC.1 Ministers are rarely consulted on policy, only on execution. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the only Ministry with which foreign missions are allowed to deal direct, has been without a Minister for all but seven months of my three years here. The job is now passed round from hand to hand – Qadhafi continuing to make his own foreign policy without advice and often without informing his colleagues …

  I hope there will be a better future for Libya than a perpetuation of Qadhafi’s rule. He is too egocentric and erratic ever to make a benevolent dictator. Granted Qadhafi broke with the colonial past and made Libya truly independent – (he now seems unreasonably keen to lose that independence by merger with other more developed Arab States), but he has virtually isolated his country by his abrasive and destructive policies and made only enemies among the Arabs. Even given the Arabs’ propensity for trying to kill each other one day and, the next, kissing and making it up, even given that their staple diet is all too often their own words, Qadhafi’s hostility and contempt for other Arab leaders will be hard to swallow …

  It is a very great shame that Libya with all its attractions, its magnificent coast-line, exciting hinterland, superb archaeological remains and relatively good climate, should have been turned into such an uninviting and depressing place. I contemplated entitling this despatch: ‘Where Every Prospect Pleases …’2 but was persuaded that this would be an offence against the accepted convention that an Ambassador should not ‘knock’ the people who have, however ungraciously, received and tolerated him! But what impression should one retain of a country, so very different from any other Arab State, where personal contacts are excluded because people are too frightened by the secret police to respond to one’s friendly overtures and where officials carry vindictiveness to unbelievable lengths, both in their dealings with foreigners and with each other? Contacts with officials are in any case minimal because the regime forbids officials from mixing socially with foreign diplomats. My Embassy is not alone in this, even some Arab Missions are shunned. There are of course rare and unscheduled friendly contacts, particularly in the countryside, which are the more memorable because they are so rare. At the popular level there is some goodwill for Britain. Sometimes, when Qadhafi has attacked us, Libyans have privately apologised to myself and members of my staff. But they are afraid – afraid to speak up and afraid to act. They therefore count for very little in our current relationship, although they are worth cultivating for their possible long-term value …

  There is a well-known syndrome affecting expatriates leaving Libya either on holiday or finally. This shows itself in an exaggerated and irrational feeling of euphoria and an urgent need for strong drink. Observers in aircraft and ships leaving Tripoli have noted almost hysterical manifestations of relief. Curiously enough, many Libyans are similarly affected. This is a legitimate (and revealing) comment on the state of affairs in Libya today. Perhaps Qadhafi started out with good intentions but ‘Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied’.

  I am sending copies of this despatch to Her Majesty’s Representatives at Algiers, Beirut, Cairo, Paris, Rome, Tunis, Valletta and Washington; and to Her Majesty’s Permanent Representatives to the European Communities and to the North Atlantic Council at Brussels, and to the UN at New York.

  I have, etc.,

  PETER TRIPP.

  1. RCC: The Revolutionary Command Council.

  2. ‘Where Every Prospect Pleases …’: The line concludes ‘and only man is vile’. Reginald Heber’s missionary hymn, written in 1819, roused the ire of no less a figure than Gandhi, who said it ‘always left a sting’ with him. Heber was Bishop of Calcutta, and he was writing about Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

  6. Now, If I Were Foreign Secretary …

  Matthew Parris found during his short stint as a trainee diplomat that colleagues divided into two quite distinct types. They are well represented among ambassadors. One type of diplomat is really a government minister manqué. His duty may be to carry out the Foreign Secretary’s orders, but in his imagination he would like to be giving them; and he frets about policy, always asking how it might be better framed and conducted. The other type – often no less intelligent or probing in his intellect – is relatively untroubled by the question of whether he agrees or disagrees with the policy line it is his job to serve. His job is to serve it. From time to time, and if asked, he may offer advice on how it might be improved, but he is professionally careless whether his advice is taken or ignored.

  The second type of diplomat is likely to sleep easier and live longer. Examples of the former abound below.

  ‘Our world is dying’

  PETER JAY, HM AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, JUNE 1979

  Peter Jay came to diplomacy after a career at the Treasury and ten years as Economics Editor of The Times. Described by his tutors at Oxford as the cleverest young man in England, Jay was an unabashed elitist. A startled sub-editor who once complained to Jay that one of his articles was hard to understand was told: ‘I only wrote this piece for three people – the editor of the Times, the Governor of the Bank of England, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’

  However, as a ‘non-careerist’ in the diplomatic jargon, Jay’s appointment to Washington at just forty may have owed something to the fact that James Callaghan, the Prime Minister, was his father-in-law, and the Foreign Secretary, David Owen, a friend. Owen had discovered that senior Foreign Officials were, as he saw it, freezing him out by exchanging information in telegrams marked ‘personal and confidential’ and he was determined to break up this circle. Jay says Owen appointed him as ‘my man, whom I can trust not to be part of a network which excludes me’. A fierce nepotism row ensued over the appointment. Even Jay was surprised by the scale of his promotion; when Owen summoned him to the Terrace of the House of Commons, Jay thought he was being offered the post of Economic Minister at the embassy, a post two full rungs below ambassador. When it became clear that Owen was actually offering him the top job, ‘I actually fell off my chair,’ Jay recalls.

  In 1979, with a change of government in Whitehall, Jay was replaced. Packing his bags after just two years in the Diplomatic Service, Jay was not steeped in its traditions. But he embraced the customary farewell despatch with vigour, not to say volume. Jay’s overall message, much of it cast, as he put it, in ‘highly abstract, even philosophical, terms’, is an enduring one – that Europe and America must not allow their petty disagreements to undermine the stability and security of the West. In 1979, the biggest danger to the established order on the European side was, as the ambassador saw it, nationalism. This last argument is not helped by the obvious reflectio
n that Europe was more often seen as an anti-nationalist than a nationalist force. In an interview with us Jay said he regards nationalism as dangerous because ‘it excites and inflames emotions which are not about important objective things like prosperity and people’s welfare, but about a kind of Olympic games version of political life where each nation is trying to come out top dog over the rest’. One can sense why he was not Margaret Thatcher’s choice for Washington.

  But this valedictory essay, though it has its longueurs, can make heavy verbal weather of straightforward thoughts, and is prone to lose the thread of its argument, remains important. European disappointment with President Carter was, in Jay’s view, both a cause and an effect of the cracks which had opened up in the transatlantic relationship. In this despatch the ambassador paints a sympathetic picture of the beleaguered President. In June 1979 Carter had plenty on his plate – an energy crisis, spiralling inflation – but things were to get worse in November, with the seizure of fifty-three Americans at the US Embassy in Tehran. American prestige was diminished and American voters enraged by the inability of the White House to free the captives. The Iran hostage crisis lasted for the remainder of Carter’s first term of office, putting paid to any hopes of a second.