Parting Shots

by Matthew Parris

  In terms of the direction of British foreign policy, the passage of time has shown Jay to have pointed the way on the issue, at least, on which he and Thatcher would have agreed. The ambassador’s desire for the Atlantic alliance to be nurtured and not taken for granted became the Thatcher government’s policy: her outlook was altogether more Atlanticist than European. On the more prosaic matter of electoral forecasting Jay had less success. He got it wrong on three out of three counts: Edward Kennedy did challenge Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980 – and lost. Carter went on to lose the election to Reagan, by 8 million votes.

  His two years as HM Ambassador in Washington were professionally rewarding but personally trying; Jay’s wife embarked on an affair with the Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, and Jay fathered a child with the family’s nanny. After Washington, Jay plunged back into the media, as the founding Chairman and Chief Executive of TV-am, Chief of Staff to the later disgraced Robert Maxwell, and on screen as the BBC’s Economics Editor.

  Foreign and Commonwealth Office Diplomatic Report No: 149/79

  General Distribution

  THE WEST: THE PERIL WITHIN

  Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Washington to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

  Washington,

  20 June, 1979.

  My Lord,

  Our world is dying; and its death is being hastened by errors and myopia in our own ranks. Forty years ago Winston Churchill saw the need to bring in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. Now we risk driving out the New to indulge the amour propre of the Old; and thereby we are putting at hazard the foundations of the peace and prosperity which have been the fruits of the Churchill doctrine.

  When the Prime Minister goes to Tokyo at the end of this month to meet President Carter and the other leaders of the Western world she will face an historic choice between swimming with the new tide of economic nationalism and refighting the unending battle for the broader principles that have underpinned transatlantic cohesion since the war …

  The spirit of ‘the West’

  By ‘our world’ I mean the political, military and economic order which has sustained the stability, freedom and prosperity of the ‘Western’ nations through thirty almost unprecedented years of peace and progress. That order was first conceived, extraordinarily enough in the darkest days of the war, by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt and foreshadowed in the Atlantic Charter of 1941 …

  The philosophic worm in the bud

  … Understanding is side-tracked by superficial and unilluminating arguments between ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ and between ‘the Atlantic’ and ‘Europe’. We can have democratic capitalism or democratic socialism to taste. We can lean in day-to-day affairs to the US or lean to the Common Market to taste. What we cannot safely do, but are doing, is to trifle with or to neglect the basic foundations of the security, stability and prosperity of the free world or its necessary relations with Russia, China and the Third World. Those foundations … are undermined by nationalism in politics, isolationism (or ‘decoupling’) in defence and mercantilism in economics in whatever part of the free world they occur.

  That they are occurring, that the framework of the West – and the security, freedoms and prosperity which depend on it – is being dangerously eroded and that the growing ‘prevailance’ of the Franco-German concept of ‘Europe’, both nationalist and autarkic, is powerfully contributing to this peril are the themes of this despatch. To put it more baldly, the way things are going we are set fair to lose during the 1980s the substance of NATO, the utility of the UN, the essentials of the GATT, the spirit of the OECD and the purpose of the IMF. The challenge we face is not to find the imagination, courage and statesmanship which enabled Churchill, Roosevelt and the rest to conceive and to create the post-war order, but more modestly to produce the leadership, common sense and restraint, to preserve it from internal destruction …

  ‘Europe’: Liberal or Nationalist?

  … It is no part at all of the argument that the search for greater political and economic unity in Western Europe is, as such, wrong … or that any tendencies or attitudes in Europe are exclusively to blame … There is, however, a ‘good’ Europe and there is a ‘bad’ Europe, just as there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Americas … The ‘good’ Europe is easily recognised. It is the Europe of Monnet, a monument to the internationalist ideal and, so it was intended, an antidote to the specific evil of the old nationalisms of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, etc. It is the Europe of free internal industrial trade, open frontiers and mobility of people and capital. It is the Europe which promptly embraces all democratic European nations who wish to join …

  But there is a ‘bad’ Europe, too. It is the Europe that sees its own unity as a vehicle for a new nationalism on a sub-continental scale, as an escape from the post-war impotence of the old petty, Balkanised nationalisms of France, Germany etc. into the headier league of superpower or regional nationalism. It is the Europe of the common agricultural policy … It is the Europe that is tempted to proclaim its identity by grandiose gestures and ridiculous standardisation rather than by steady practical achievements: the Europe of monetary union and the EMS,1 of heavy lorries and of uniform beer mugs … It is the Europe of vulgar anti-Americanism and elite anti-Carterism, that has neither the inclination nor the aptitude to understand contemporary America and that smugly delights in every American mistake or misfortune, real or imagined. Above all and embracing all, it is the Europe that cares more about Europe than the West, about the dash it cuts than the crash it causes and about displaying its own identity and prestige than about sustaining the broader Western framework of security and prosperity on which it depends.

  A similar examination of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ faces of America could be made; and some of its unacceptable features would be comparably gross. Protectionism and autarky are growing. Isolationism still stirs. Anti-Carterism here is streets ahead of its European counterpart. Dark forces – anti-semitism, cold-war hysteria and panicky self-doubt – are visible not all that far below some surfaces to the regular traveller away from Washington …

  Carter and contemporary America

  One of our European Ambassadors, in a letter of 7th May, 1979, to the department on US Foreign Policy, refers to ‘the general European disenchantment with President Carter’; and, as a description of the private attitudes of many influential people in and out of government on the Continent, this is clearly accurate and has its full counterpart in the US … [let us] beware of the fallacy that we make Europe strong by depreciating the US or its President; for, as I have said before, Mr. Carter is the only President of the US we have got …

  I have described elsewhere … Mr. Carter’s correct insight into the bankruptcy of pressure group politics, once more than half the nation is so organised, and his commendable determination to take the high road of national leadership, mobilising the general will of the public as ordinary citizens behind decisions which will benefit the whole society against the sectionalised will of organised interests. He has trodden that road unflinchingly. Indeed, if anyone is still tempted to find Mr. Carter unpredictable, they should recognise that the defect lies in their own comprehension. Line up any set options with the most immediately unpopular but, on merits, correct on the left and the most immediately popular but, on merits, wrong on the right; and you can rely upon it that Mr. Carter will choose from the left. It is not the kind of facile predictability that comes from being easily labelled ‘hawk’ or ‘dove’, ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, ‘idealist’ or ‘realist’. It is the predictability of a subtle, penetrating and ice-cold mind studying the detailed merits of issues and deciding them accordingly. To describe him as a man whose heart rules his head is about as apt as calling Aristotle a hysteric or Euclid a pornographer.

  Politically Mr. Carter is failing. He has chosen, bravely, a highly unconventional style of Government; and he has failed so far to win sufficiently
widespread understanding of the virtue and necessity of this radical departure. The explanation is not the substance of the policies, still less public doubt of his integrity, decency or mental ability. It is rather that, if a leader takes on the entire apparatus of organised political opinion – and so the press and broadcasters who are geared to amplify those special pleadings – then that leader will be widely and vigorously bad-mouthed. His only weapon is his own direct access to public attention; and to use that he must articulate effectively, not just the detailed justification of his individual decisions, but the unifying conception of what he is doing and why. Mr. Carter has never yet managed to do that, his great skills at the quite different art of electioneering notwithstanding. He is, perhaps, too fastidious to trust the generalisations and memorable phrases that a Churchill or a Roosevelt used so skilfully, too proud to fight, as was said of Woodrow Wilson, with rhetoric and ideologies that he intellectually distrusts.

  So he stands low in the polls and could indeed be denied re-election or re-nomination in 1980. If, as I still think unlikely, Senator Kennedy sought the Democratic nomination against Mr. Carter, the Senator would almost certainly get it. Against any other Democratic contender the advantage of the incumbency, even one so fastidious (or, according to your view of the baser political arts, inept) as Mr. Carter, still seems at this stage likely to prevail, though a year is an aeon in Presidential politics. If nominated, it now seems likely that Mr. Carter would face Governor Reagan, whose entrenchment with the Republican faithful is being prematurely discounted, or Governor Connally, though Senator Howard Baker and others are still in the race. Against Mr. Reagan the odds still favour Mr. Carter as incumbent and as a man whose merits may be expected to gain wider recognition when it comes to a choice between two real candidates rather than between one President and the Archangel Gabriel. Moreover, Mr. Reagan’s reputation is not such as will enable him easily to capture the floating vote in the centre from as moderate a Democrat as Mr. Carter …

  In short the odds now on Mr. Carter being re-elected are probably little better than evens, though shorter than on any one other potential candidate (given Mr. Kennedy’s reluctance to run). This means that the dangers of unchecked anti-Carterism in European counsels can by no means be assumed to expire by January 1981. It may well be more useful to understand him and to cultivate him, indeed on the merits of the issues to support him, than to revile him, dismiss him or misrepresent him …

  Tokyo summit

  When the Prime Minister meets President Carter bilaterally at Tokyo, she will have many specific issues to discuss and she will be looking to confirm, as will he, a good personal relationship. He may by then be tired from his travels; and he has plenty of domestic political worries on his mind, although he is not a man to show either or to appear bothered. He has a keen intelligence and enjoys solid discussion of complex problems with other good minds. He is more a man for the particular than the general (hence his political problems). He likes to make friends and usually makes a good impression in private. He is an exceptionally good listener.

  The Prime Minister has already met him and will know best how to approach the meeting. Without being drawn too far into philosophy, I think the President would most value Mrs. Thatcher’s appreciation of the state of and prospects for US–West European relations and of the role her Government hopes to play in them. I hope this despatch will be helpful as background.

  I am sending copies of this despatch to Her Majesty’s Ambassadors at European Community Posts, Moscow, Tokyo, Peking, Tel Aviv, Cairo and Jedda; British High Commissioners at Ottawa and New Delhi and the UK. Permanent Representatives to the UN on the North Atlantic Council, to the OECD and to the European Communities; and to Her Majesty’s Consuls-General in the US.

  I am, Sir,

  Yours faithfully,

  PETER JAY.

  1. EMS: Exchange-rate pegging. The European Monetary System was a forerunner of Economic and Monetary Union, which in turn led to the Euro.

  ‘A betrayal of that history which others in the world … will neither understand nor forgive’

  SIR BRIAN BARDER, HM HIGH COMMISSIONER TO NIGERIA, JANUARY 1991

  Not all valedictory despatches were given a wide circulation. some were hushed up.

  In 1991, Brian Barder was preparing to leave Africa to take up his final post in the Diplomatic Service, as High Commissioner in Australia. Barder had come to know the continent well, spending the last three years as British high commissioner to its most populous country, Nigeria. That followed four years as ambassador to Ethiopia, a period which included the 1984 famine in which one million people died. The catastrophe (and reports and campaigning by the likes of Michael Buerk and Bob Geldof) triggered an unprecedented flood of private donations from Britain to Africa; but as the decade drew to an end Africa and its problems were losing the public’s attention. Newer priorities, such as rapidly unfolding events in Eastern Europe, were keeping ministers awake. It was against this backdrop that Barder was asked to put down some final reflections on leaving the continent.

  The result was a despatch that pointed out the ‘sorry story’ of British aid. In 1991 HM Government was giving less per capita in aid to the Third World than any other member of the EEC bar Austria. In seeking to downgrade Africa in its priorities and further disengage from the continent, we were (Barder wrote) shirking obligations and betraying our history. One can see why his well-argued case cut little ice with much of its likely audience: he addresses every argument for diminished aid to Africa except the one which will have weighed most with an incoming government: would an increase in aid along the lines the ambassador urges, in fact have achieved the human and policy goals he lists?

  Sir Brian, a prolific blogger in retirement, recalls on his website (www.barder.com/ephems) that his African valedictory was given

  a far more strictly limited domestic and global distribution than was then customary for this kind of document. The sentiments it expressed seemed controversial, even provocative, in the climate of the time; there was some suggestion (as I learned later on the grapevine) that when I wrote it I must have forgotten that there was no longer a Labour government in office at home.

  Baroness Lynda Chalker, the Conservative Minister for Overseas Development at the time, was said by some to have ordered that the despatch be suppressed. She became, however, a considerable champion of aid to Africa.

  BRITISH HIGH COMMISSION

  LAGOS

  7 January 1991

  The Rt Hon Douglas Hurd CBE MP

  London

  Sir,

  DOES AFRICA MATTER?

  Next month I leave Lagos and complete 17 years’ involvement in African affairs, 10 of them dealing with west Africa or southern Africa in London, and 7 as head of mission in the two most populous countries of black Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria. Tidily, I end where I began, with Nigeria, whose constitutional and political problems I first tried to grapple with as a new entrant in the Colonial Office in Great Smith Street a third of a century ago. I leave Nigeria with many of the same problems unresolved – not, I think, for any lack of effort by ourselves as the colonial power or by the Nigerians themselves, but chiefly because of the inherent difficulties we bequeathed when we gummed together such a big, unwieldy entity in such a casual manner 90 years ago.

  As I leave the continent, Africa ranks at its lowest in any British Government’s scale of global priorities for 100 years or more. There are intense pressures, from Ministers downwards, for sharp cuts in the resources we devote to Africa in money and manpower; and for some reduction in our commitments in Africa … As I shake the African dust from willing feet, it is natural to wonder why this down-grading of Africa is taking place; whether it is politically and economically justified; and what might be the implications for British interests.

  Why are we demoting Africa in our priorities?

  There seem to be 5 main factors:

  (a) Decolonisation fatigue. Shedding our colonial responsibilit
ies in Africa has been a long, wearing process, bringing us more obloquy than ovation and often yielding more disappointments than evident successes. For 3 decades, completing this process – especially in Kenya and then Rhodesia – and ridding ourselves of the international incubus of our involvement in apartheid South Africa have been our overriding aims in the continent. Now that they are achieved (or, in the case of South Africa, within sight of being achieved), it is natural to feel that we are entitled to turn our attention elsewhere. To recognise, define and substitute new needs and objectives requires an effort of imagination and will that does not come easily to the exhausted.

  (b) Humanitarian fatigue. For decades we have given aid to Africa – sometimes generously, sometimes not. We have responded to famines with humanitarian relief aid, although often without the development aid needed to avert renewed famine in the future; and to poverty (in countries where we have recognised special responsibilities) with development aid. Yet we see a situation in Africa where poverty and need are as great as ever: in some places, greater than ever. It is understandable enough that some should begin to see Africa as a bottomless pit, and resources directed to Africa as wasted – understandable, but profoundly misguided. It is a short step from this to the conviction that Africa’s failure to make better use of the aid it has received is Africa’s fault: a notion with a big enough germ of truth to be all too plausible, especially in the eyes of those who are charged with cutting public expenditure in all directions …

  (c) The end of the cold war. As long as the Soviet Union and its erstwhile allies were competing for third world hearts and minds, the west perceived the penalties of turning its back on the more western-oriented of the developing countries as unacceptably high. That constraint has gone.