Parting Shots
Page 32
Many despatches title their final section ‘envoi’ – a literary term; in poetry an envoi is a short stanza at the end used either to address the reader or to comment on the preceding verses. Some ambassadors would confine their outspokenness to this final section, having devoted the remainder of their valedictory to serious foreign policy reporting; some of these envois are therefore parting shots in miniature.
Valedictories followed a certain format – part of the tradition was the format. Sir Peter Ricketts, the former Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, insisted to us that ‘over time I think it’s true to say the valedictory despatch risked becoming a caricature of itself. Some were excellent, and very sharp, and of course stay in the mind like Nicko Henderson’s famous despatch, but many tended to conform to the stereotype of a few paragraphs of analysis of the country, something about how successful the ambassador had been, then quite a long passage on the various grievances and gripes that had been stored up over a career, and finishing with an encomium to the spouse.’
Thanks were effusive, and not just to the spouse – rare was the ambassador who did not thank the other members of the Diplomatic Service on their staff (who in a tough post would share the downs with the ambassador but not always the ups). And ambassadors would typically thank their locally engaged staff – foreigners working within the embassy – often with a note of regret that the pay and conditions verged on the exploitative; which they did.
But the spouse – almost always the wife – was typically the centrepiece of this section. Thanks were more than mere routine. Wives gave up their careers to follow their globe-trotting spouse; their sacrifices and years of unpaid labour spent playing hostess and entertaining guests (and often doing secretarial work too) are an abiding theme. The fact they were not paid was an abiding gripe. The FCO’s own historians, in a study written in 1999, explained that ‘besides balls, receptions and dinners for foreign diplomats and statesmen, the Ambassadress had to be prepared for a constant stream of house guests ranging from personal family and friends to visiting dignitaries and even members of the Royal Family’.
Lord Tyrrell, British Ambassador to Paris in 1933, observed that ‘there is no career in the world in which a man’s work is so much shared by a woman as is a married diplomat’s by his wife’. In 1964, the Plowden Report acknowledged the great contribution by diplomatic wives, ‘to the work, welfare and way of life of an overseas Mission’. Its consequent recommendations were to improve the conditions of service (more generous representation allowances, boarding-school allowances, etc.) so that a wife could cope better with the special family problems inherent in a life of movement.
But times were changing, and so was the nature of professional people’s marriages. How could both partners have a career? It’s a question the Diplomatic Service has struggled to answer satisfactorily. In the 1990s efforts were intensified to find paid work for spouses at missions abroad. When husbands and wives were both career officers, joint postings were where possible arranged. The Office was also prepared to help with training and retraining. The post of Residence Manager has been created in some embassies – well suited to a spouse. And the existence of a male spouse to a female ambassador has ceased to be the oddity it once was.
In more than a few of these despatches the reader senses that the author knows this ‘envoi’ is supposed to be the final drum-roll, but cannot quite find the words to do justice to the moment. In the small hours of a hot, tropical night, more than a few moistened eyes will have stared at more than a few chewed pens, as the ambassador struggled for the words with which to end a career of public service. As often as not, the note is wistful rather than fulsome. In the air hangs the question ‘Is that it, then?’
It was. And four years ago, that was it, too, for the Valedictory Despatch as an institution. With this chapter, it’s vale to the Valedictory. The casual use of Latin in a book, like the casual use of Latin in a diplomat’s despatch, like the very institution of the despatch itself, is on its way to oblivion.
‘Those doughty but elderly denizens of Whitehall, Sir Awkward Precedent and Sir Sacrosanct Principle’
SIR PAUL WRIGHT, UK AMBASSADOR TO LEBANON, APRIL 1975
On looking back over my career in the Diplomatic Service, I realise that for me it has been something of a love affair. Indeed, it was love at first sight, exemplified in the improbable person of Sir Gladwyn Jebb (now Lord Gladwyn), my first Ambassador. Since then I have served under many distinguished men; from all of them I have learned much and to all of them I owe a great deal. But my debt is at least as great to those who have served with or under me and particularly to my present staff, whose loyalty and friendship in a difficult and sometimes dangerous post will always be one of my principal and proudest memories. But, as in all properly conducted love affairs, there has been and is criticism – doubtless mutual in my case. The Service has changed drastically since the day nearly 25 years ago when I, as a third room dogsbody, felt that I was on Christian name terms with everyone from the PUS down. This may sound nostalgic but I deplore the fact, inevitable though it is, that we are less eclectic, less personal a service. I find it hard to believe that we need these large and often cumbersome missions abroad in which the art of diplomacy is now often the least of our activities. I cannot understand why Heads of Mission, held responsible as they often and rightly are for matters affecting our vital national interests, cannot be trusted to authorise small expenditures on simple administrative needs without reference to London. I regret the continued influence of those doughty but elderly denizens of Whitehall, Sir Awkward Precedent and Sir Sacrosanct Principle. I realise with a start that I have suddenly become old-fashioned enough to believe that the word ‘service’ means what it says, that one’s duty comes before anything; and that not all our younger colleagues share these ideals, however far short of them I have fallen myself. But these are as lovers’ tiffs compared with the pride and exhilaration which I have derived over the years from belonging to what remains, in spite of its defects, demonstrably the best instrument of its kind in the world and, in spite of pressures from within and without in this age of bureaucracy, the best and most efficiently administered. And if my old master Gladwyn, were to pop the same question now that he did 25 years ago, my answer would again be, ‘Yes, sir, yes – a thousand times yes.’
I am sending copies of this despatch to Her Majesty’s Representatives at Cairo, Tel Aviv, Amman, Damascus, Jedda, Paris, Washington, UKMIS New York and UKDEL Brussels.
I have, etc.,
P. H. G. WRIGHT.
‘To her courage … I owe my life’
RONALD BAILEY, HM AMBASSADOR TO MOROCCO, MARCH 1975
In conclusion I would like to express my warm thanks to all those with whom it has been my privilege to work over the years. I have met nothing but friendship, understanding and consideration.
My last words must be a tribute to my wife who has shared all the pleasures and hardships of diplomatic life in many distant capitals. To her courage in attacking and expelling my would-be assassin when he had seriously injured me in Taiz in 1962 and her calm resourcefulness in the hours which followed, I owe my life.
I have, etc.,
R. W. BAILEY.
‘My valedictory is: “Thank you” ’
SIR EWEN FERGUSSON, HM AMBASSADOR TO PARIS, DECEMBER 1992
It would be silly, whatever the occasional frictions in our relationship, not to enjoy oneself in this Embassy and, over five and a half years, my wife and I have done so – enormously. My valedictory is:
‘Thank you’
and my envoi:
‘Adieu, kind friends, adieu,
I can no longer stay with you.’
I am Sir,
Yours sincerely,
Ewen Fergusson
‘I don’t want my last words … to be words of complaint’
HUGH ARBUTHNOTT, HM AMBASSADOR TO DENMARK, 1996
Denmark has not been only the pretty, quiet but dull country it
seemed to be at first (even if it is unremittingly flat). There have been unexpected things to discover, the people are friendly and the work has been fun. I have enjoyed it here and it has been a good place in which to end my career in the FCO. I am very grateful to my staff for their help, friendship and hard work. I am also grateful to my wife who has helped me enormously and worked long hours but has had to make do with only a share of my pay as she will have to make do with only a share of my pension, both of which she would have got anyway by doing nothing for the Diplomatic Service. A change here would be one change that everyone would surely welcome.
To have been in the British Diplomatic Service during the last 36 years, as the country’s wealth and power has steadily declined in relative terms, has been nothing if not a challenge. It has seemed particularly daunting in the years since 1974 during which I have spent much of the time involved in EEC/EU affairs, as the Diplomatic Service has tried to explain to our European partners why almost everything they want to do is wrong and everything we want to do is right. During the same period, numbers in the Service have declined in line with the country’s economic strength. But even as the economy has improved, our numbers continue to decline … I think the number of staff here has gone below the level needed to pursue our interests in Denmark as effectively as they need to be pursued. Do the cuts in numbers mean we are no longer trying to pursue a global foreign policy? It is difficult to see how they can be compatible …
But I don’t want my last words, as I leave the Service, to be words of complaint about it. It has been a good way to make a living and a good deal better than most. I was lucky and proud to be in it and I am sure I shall miss it even if what I shall miss will inevitably be something rather different from what it is becoming.
I am copying this despatch to HM Ambassadors in EU countries, the Baltic States, Norway and Switzerland; and to HM Permanent Representative to the EU in Brussels.
I am, Sir
Yours faithfully
H. J. Arbuthnott
‘Without her nothing would have been possible’
SIR PERCY CRADOCK, HM AMBASSADOR TO CHINA, DECEMBER 1983
And now ‘Lusisti satis’.1 It is time to put away the telegrams and the despatches and the great generalisations and return to the serious business of life in London. This is not only my last despatch from Peking but my last in the Service. I would not have wished to bow out from any other post. This battered caravanserai, so unlike the Embassy of popular imagination, which I have seen burned down, rebuilt, and now extended, has been my home at various times for altogether some nine years and one cannot leave a place where one has laboured so long, however unprofitably, without a certain emotion …
I am sorry to leave the Service at a time when it is still beset by criticism. Though I have met, very occasionally, sharper minds at the Bar and greater accumulations of learning at universities, for a general assemblage of intelligence and professional skills, flexibility and loyalty, the Diplomatic Service is surely unsurpassed. Its trouble lies in its function: accurately reporting a world less responsive to our wishes than a generation ago, it has often met the fate of the messenger with bad tidings. But it may, to some degree, have been itself to blame. I recall it at certain periods in the past as perhaps too supple, too anxious to please, too much like the sharp pencil ready to inscribe any message on the blank paper, perhaps even a little lacking in courage. The duty to execute faithfully policy once Ministers have decided it is, of course, clear. But the duty before that decision, to present the choices and consequences plainly and unequivocally, is equally imperative. And to aim off in that presentation out of some misplaced sense of diplomacy or in order to meet political or personal considerations in Ministers’ minds which can only be a matter of surmise is to commit the one unforgivable sin. That for us is the ‘trahison des clercs’.2
But this is to be ungrateful. The Service has been very kind to me, has borne with my foibles and given me the postings I sought, as Head of the Planning Staff, which I still regard as the best job in the Office, the bonus of the Assessment Staff, an Embassy in Europe and finally Peking. I record my thanks. I must also thank all those who have worked with me. Above all, my wife who, apart from the last few weeks, has been with me throughout, in times of considerable strain and sometimes physical danger, always braver and always wiser than I was. Without her nothing would have been possible. Next the staff at Peking, who have maintained high standards under great pressure, particularly over the last year. And finally the wider group of young men and women who have assisted me at various posts, whose intelligence I have greedily drawn on and whose resilience and sense of humour have sustained me in the necessary business of arguing against the other side and the sometimes necessary and even more difficult business of arguing against my own. With these abilities to hand the Service should have little to fear in the future.
I am sending copies of this despatch to Her Majesty’s Representatives at Washington, Moscow, Tokyo, Singapore and to the Governor of Hong Kong.
I am, Sir
Yours faithfully
PERCY CRADOCK
1. ‘Lusisti satis’: From Horace: ‘Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti, tempus abire tibi est’ – ‘You have played enough, eaten enough and drunk enough; it’s time for you to leave.’
2. ‘trahison des clercs’: ‘Betrayal by the bureaucrats.’
‘Marriage turned out to be a package deal that included a job’
SIR WILLIE MORRIS, HM AMBASSADOR TO EGYPT, MARCH 1979
The three missions I have headed in the past eleven years – Jedda, Addis Ababa and Cairo – have all in some degree been hardship posts, but posts where the Head of Mission tended to get more than his proportionate share of the interesting action to compensate for the hardships that fell more heavily on his staff. I would like to pay tribute here to the support I have had from my staff in Cairo, as in those other posts. I was once snubbed by a Head of Personnel Services Department for suggesting that the FCO Administration should commit itself to the factual statement that Diplomatic Service wives performed duties in support of their husbands: I failed, he said, to appreciate that a growing minority of members of the Service wanted their wives to live at arm’s length from their husbands’ work and would resent such an assertion. I will nevertheless take my courage in both hands and express my thanks to the wives of the allegedly shrinking majority, who have greatly helped my wife and me. And among them, my own wife, who finding that marriage turned out to be a package deal that included a job, did not repent or repine but put into it all she had.
I am sending copies of this despatch to HM Representatives at Amman, Baghdad, Beirut, Jedda, Khartoum, Tel Aviv, Tripoli, Washington and Jerusalem.
I am, Sir,
Yours faithfully,
Willie Morris
‘A witness of the mischief of the times’
SIR ROBIN HOOPER, HM AMBASSADOR TO GREECE, NOVEMBER 1974
‘To live retired,’ wrote an ambassador who left the service of Charles II just over three centuries ago, ‘was ever safe and to studious minds never unpleasant, but now by so much the better as the world is worse. It is a happiness not to be a witness of the mischief of the times nor liable to the allurements of common evils which of necessity must either vex or infect us.’ Whether the world is really worse than when I joined the Service in mid-Munich is a question no prudent man would care to answer. I doubt whether Lord Fauconberg, when he left Italy in 1669 for his broad acres in Yorkshire, took a very cheerful view of the prospects of Restoration England. A cynical, amoral and disillusioned society reflected in a theatre seeking only to mock traditional values; dependence, financially, politically, and militarily on more powerful neighbours; a navy that can’t even keep the Dutch out of the Medway; the chance to build a monumental new London frustrated by private greed: one can almost hear his lordship banging on. But he lived on past 1688 to see the foundations of Britain’s 18th century greatness laid; and it is in the hope of seeing a
similar revival that I now, for the last time,
have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
R. W. J. HOOPER.
‘A miserable reward for 32 years of hard work’
RICHARD THOMAS, HM HIGH COMMISSIONER TO BARBADOS AND THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN, FEBRUARY 1998
My wife, and spouses in general
Finally, my wife, the traditional theme of the last paragraph or two of all Valedictory Despatches since time immemorial. There is not much which I can add to the many pages which have accumulated on this subject in the last few years. Not only am I profoundly grateful to my wife, I am also ashamed on the Service’s part that she will ‘retire’ no better off, and no more acknowledged, than her analogues of earlier years. While I was trying to work out what we would be living on in retirement, I learned from an office in Newcastle that my wife would be entitled to the princely sum of £16.24 per week from age 60 (the price of a hair-do), reducing to £1.49 a week when I become 65, provided she (repeat, she) paid £3,126 in arrears of unpaid national insurance contributions by this coming April. This derisory future ‘income’ financed by her from zero current income, would be all that she would have in her own right, which strikes me as a miserable reward for 32 years of hard work in support of HMG’s interests abroad – work that became steadily harder the more senior her husband became. Many was the time that the show had to go on even if the caterer had let us down or whatever other crisis had intervened. She has been cook, cleaner, and hotel manager since I first became Ambassador in (servantless) Reykjavik in 1983, and before that. She has also been a shoulder for innumerable members of staff and spouses to cry on, and a very concerned and hard working ‘charity’ worker, mainly in support of the mentally handicapped, in several posts. She has gladly done her bit week in week out, for the BDSA1 and for various British expatriate women’s groups. And yet she is not even British, as on occasions of particular frustration she reminds me. The Service has collectively and individually taken her for granted ever since I had the good fortune to be accepted by her as her husband. I am immensely grateful to her, and the Service should be too.