by Hugh Purcell
The High Commissioner’s own views on the controversial Immigration Act he kept to himself. Had he still been editor of the New Statesman he may well have written a strong article opposing it but now he was a correctly behaved diplomat. One of his team was the economist Robert Cassen, an advisor to the British Aid Programme in India. He had a regular Wednesday morning meeting with Freeman:
I remember one at which John talked about the new Immigration Bill in these words: ‘It has come to my attention that some of my colleagues have been critical of the new Immigration Act. I don’t know what you think about this, but I must remind you of your duty as members of the High Commission to defend Her Majesty’s policies and if you are unable to defend this one, keep your mouth shut.’57
In July, Freeman’s time was up and the family returned to London by air after a formal farewell with the residence staff lined up outside, they and Catherine with tears in their eyes. The Freemans rented a home at Hamilton Terrace, in London’s St John’s Wood, and Freeman took stock of his diplomatic career, so far. He said he was impressed by the diplomatic service: ‘extremely hard-working, highly efficient and not overpaid’. He admitted that he had found diplomacy difficult, particularly dealing with economic and financial matters, but he felt he had come into his own in the writing of despatches. A case in point was the customary valedictory despatch he had written just before leaving New Delhi.
Much of it concerned the end of the Raj and the change in Indo–British relations. He wrote that ‘a little over twenty years ago we were involved in controlling almost the entire perimeter of the Indian Ocean. Now [because of the east of Suez withdrawal] we control none of it.’ He noted that in the 1960s India’s imports from Britain had declined by a half and Indian exports to Britain had declined by a third. Since 1965, the 18,000 UK citizens resident in India had fallen to fewer than 14,000. His conclusion was clear:
Our position in the world and our relations with India are now such that we must attach primary weight to the promotion of our own interests. We must eschew nostalgic recollections of a special relationship that over most of the field no longer exists and we must brace ourselves to stand up to criticism when it arises.
He ended his valedictory despatch with an oratorical flourish in a style reminiscent of an eighteenth-century tombstone:
Perhaps a regenerate sinner, plucked by a somewhat whimsical government from the stews of Fleet Street and the limelight of Shepherd’s Bush, may be allowed to pay a disinterested and most affectionate tribute to the kindness, the devotion to duty, the professional skill and sheer quality of mind and imagination, which he has encountered during his three and a half years as the guest of HMG.58
Isn’t that the voice of an actor, tongue in cheek, who has written himself some good lines? Applause was not long in coming. In the margin an FO mandarin has written: ‘Very nicely put indeed. The tone of it goes a long way to explain how popular he has become in the service.’
On 31 July Freeman called in to 10 Downing Street for an end of term report. Wilson had been given notes in preparation, conveniently written in the first person:
I have followed with interest the evolution of our relations with India and much admired the patience and skill with which you have rebuilt our position. I think the results have entirely justified your adoption, after the hostilities of 1965, of the ‘heads down’ policy.
What interests me in particular is that what we are now working towards is a relationship, which, in various, important, but perhaps not very marked ways, is different from that of the past. I’m sure this is healthy.
Your valedictory despatch sums all this up very well.59
On the way out, Freeman bumped into his old adversary Richard Crossman. Crossman wrote in his diary:
John used to be a rather willowy, elegant young man with wonderful wavy hair but he’s thickened out and his complexion has roughened so that he looks like an extremely tough colonel of a polo-playing regiment just back from India – big and bluff. Beside him was little Harold, relaxed and gay, having undoubtedly been drinking with John.60
No doubt the two had been celebrating Freeman’s appointment as ambassador to the United States, a posting first announced the previous February.
Notes
1 Hardcastle interview, 1968
2 John Freeman interview with Cyril Aynsley, Daily Express, 12 January 1965
3 ‘Man with passion for truth to represent UK in India’, Sunday Standard, India, 31 January 1965
4 Freeman interview with Aynsley, 1965
5 John Freeman interview with Erskine Childers, Ten O’Clock; BBC Home Service, 11 January 1965
6 ‘Gandhiji, Symbol of Revolution’; The Times of India, 1 February 1965, p. 9
7 Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5 by Stella Rimington, Arrow Books, London, 2001, p. 54
8 Ibid., p. 58.
9 Ibid., p. 57
10 Calcutta by Geoffrey Moorhouse, Penguin Books, London, 1983, p. 252
11 Catherine Freeman interview with the author, 2014
12 John Freeman to Sir John Johnston, 13 April 1966 (PREM 13/967 The National Archives)
13 Ibid.
14 Prem Shankar Jha interview with the author, 2007
15 Kushwant Singh letter to the author, 2007
16 Driberg, 1968, op. cit.
17 Catherine Freeman interview with the author, 2014
18 Ibid.
19 Robin Renwick, Baron Renwick of Clifton, interview with the author, 2014
20 Rimington, op. cit., p. 57.
21 John Freeman to Arthur Bottomley, ‘Three Weeks War’, 19 October 1965 (DO 196/387 TNA)
22 The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent 1945–1965, Paul M. McGarr, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 301
23 Ibid., p. 310
24 Ibid., p. 311
25 John Freeman record of conversation with General Chaudhuri, 25 August 1965 (as reported to CRO in despatch dated 27 August)
26 McGarr, op. cit., p. 316
27 Ibid., p. 317
28 Ibid., p. 318
29 Ibid., pp. 319–20
30 Ibid., p. 320
31 Ibid., p. 320
32 John Freeman to Arthur Bottomley, 6 September 1965 (DO 133/178 TNA)
33 Freeman to Bottomley, October 1965, op. cit.
34 McGarr, op. cit., p. 339
35 Prime Minister Wilson’s reply to F. Noel-Baker in New Delhi telegram, No. 60, 5 January 1966 (PREM B/1051 TNA)
36 McGarr, op. cit., p. 339
37 The Labour Government 1964–1970: A Personal Record by Harold Wilson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971
38 Joe Garner to Harold Wilson, 17 June 1971 (CAB 164/887 TNA)
39 Sir Burke Trend to Joe Garner, 2 July 1971 (CAB 164/887 TNA)
40 McGarr, op. cit., p. 342
41 John Freeman valedictory despatch, 21 June 1968 (PREM 13/2158 TNA)
42 John Freeman despatch to Herbert Bowden, 25 May 1967 (PREM 13/1574 TNA)
43 Freeman to Bottomley, October 1965, op. cit.
44 Sir Peter Hall interview with Jimmy Jamieson for the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill College Cambridge, 8 November 2002 (www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Hall.pdf )
45 Renwick interview with the author, 2014
46 Akhtar interview with the author, 2014
47 C. Freeman interview with the author, 2014
48 John Freeman to Herbert Bowden on Mrs Gandhi, 25 May 1967 (PREM 13/1574 TNA)
49 C. Freeman interview with the author, 2014
50 Freeman to Bowden, May 1967, op. cit.
51 John Freeman valedictory despatch, op. cit.
52 Hall interview with Jamieson, 2002, op. cit.
53 Wilson: The Authorised Life by Philip Ziegler, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993, p. 219
54 Renwick interview with the author, 2014
55 Rimington, op. cit., p. 74
56 John Freeman valedictory despatch, op
. cit.
57 Robert Cassen interview with the author, 2014.
58 John Freeman valedictory despatch, op. cit.
59 ‘Call by Mr Freeman on the Prime Minister on 31 July 1968’ briefing paper (PREM 13/2158 TNA)
60 The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister Vol. III by Richard Crossman, Jonathan Cape, 1977, p. 166
Chapter 10
Diplomat – ambassador to the United States
‘A MAN OF no principle whatsoever except a willingness to sacrifice everything in the cause of Dick Nixon. His defeat is a victory for decency in public life.’ This is how John Freeman described Richard Nixon in the New Statesman on 9 November 1962, just after Nixon had failed in his bid to become Governor of California. In 1969 these dismissive two sentences almost cost Freeman his plum post as ambassador to the United States – before he even moved to Washington. The veteran American correspondent Stewart Alsop, writing in Newsweek in December 1968, remembered the article and launched a broadside. Freeman, he wrote, ‘on the record and in print has savagely attacked the future President of the United States to whom he will shortly present his credentials’. This meant the death of the Anglo-American special relationship! Former President Eisenhower, no less, read the article and went further: the appointment of Freeman was an insult to the presidency itself.
The British government was to blame. When Freeman was appointed, Harold Wilson and his Foreign Secretary George Brown expected the Democrat Hubert Humphrey to win the presidential election in November 1968 and therefore their ambassador-designate would be working with an administration of similar political outlook. Instead the Republican candidate won and Richard Nixon was in the White House. According to his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, Nixon ‘swore that he would have nothing to do with Freeman’.1 George Brown admitted that appointing Freeman ‘was a mistake, but there was no reason to consider it a mistake at the time it was made’.2 Twenty-two Tory MPs called for Freeman’s dismissal and the appointment of a new ambassador ‘on the same wavelength as the United States President’. ‘US Call To Drop Freeman’ was the headline in the Sunday Telegraph.
In the circumstances, Freeman was obviously miscast. He contacted his old friend Henry Brandon, the Washington correspondent for the British Sunday Times, and asked his advice about resigning. Brandon advised him to hang on but ‘expect a difficult time’ when he arrived.3 So Freeman apologised instead: ‘The qualities I admire most in public life are courage and guts, and I cannot recall any case in public life where a man has shown more by his fighting spirit that he is worthy to hold high office. I hope Mr Nixon will be prepared to wipe the slate clean and start on a new basis.’4 Wilson doggedly stuck with his choice. He felt that Anglo-American relations could ‘stand the strain’.5
Freeman did have a few influential supporters and one was the former United States ambassador in London, David Bruce. He said that the demands for Freeman to give up his post were ‘foolish’ and wrote in his diary: ‘He [Freeman] is undoubtedly attractive, and reputed to be intellectually brilliant. Those who dislike him charge him with being arrogant and supercilious, but as a table companion today there was no trace of such defects.’6 Henry Brandon was a supporter too. He reported that Richard Crossman had told him: ‘He will do well because he is like an officer who stands erect under enemy fire’7 – a double-edged compliment.
Despite the support of 10 Downing Street, Freeman’s appointment, or at least its timing, was not universally welcomed in the Foreign Office. The outgoing ambassador, Sir Patrick Dean, was a career diplomat who felt he was relegated to ‘lame-duck’ status when Freeman was appointed fully nine months before he was due to retire; more hurtful than that was the rumour that Freeman had been appointed to restore British influence with the presidency. This rumour turned out to be true. The Foreign Office asked Sir Patrick’s advice about a trip by Freeman to Washington around the end of the year to meet Nixon and mend bridges. He advised against it; he thought the trip would be counter-productive. Instead, Freeman asked Catherine to visit the ambassador’s residence informally to see how suitable it was for family life. The Deans were polite but decidedly cool. When the White House announced that Nixon would visit Britain in February 1969 as part of the new President’s European tour, both sides realised that this would force the issue. Freeman’s controversial appointment would be resolved one way or the other.
Kissinger had warned the Foreign Office that the President ‘might make Freeman’s ambassadorial tenure as difficult and awkward as possible’.8 That was borne out when Nixon and his entourage arrived in London. One of his White House aides, probably on his own initiative, sent a message that the President would boycott the Prime Minister’s dinner to be held in his honour unless Freeman was removed from the guest list. The attempts of David Bruce to intervene, either by changing Nixon’s mind or by requesting Wilson to remove Freeman from the guest list, were unsuccessful. At the last minute Nixon was persuaded to attend by his Secretary of State, William Rogers, but the stage of No. 10 Downing Street seemed set for a chilly encounter.
Nixon loved to surprise and here was an ideal opportunity. In his toast after the dinner on 25 February he charmed Freeman, saying that American journalists had written far worse things about him than had the New Statesman. Then his speech reached a memorable climax, carefully honed as it was by his brilliant speech-writer William Safire. Henry Kissinger was there:
Looking squarely at Freeman, who sat on the opposite side of the table, Nixon said: ‘Some say there’s a new Nixon. And they wonder if there’s a new Freeman. I would like to think that that’s all behind us. After all, he’s the new diplomat and I’m the new statesman, trying to do our best for peace in the world.’9
The impact was electric. Wilson wrote to Nixon on his menu: ‘That was one of the kindest and most generous acts I have known in a quarter of a century of politics. Just proves my point. You can’t guarantee being born a Lord. It is possible – you’ve shown it – to be born a gentleman.’ The usually imperturbable Freeman was close to tears.10
David Bruce adds his eyewitness account: ‘A profound satisfaction was apparent throughout the room. I’ve never known anything more courteously or magnanimously done. The PM fairly glowed with pleasure.’11 What a pity I could not persuade Freeman to recall the incident in old age. It ranks with his Humble Address to Parliament on 16 August 1945 as the summit of set piece speechmaking by him or about him.
During the dinner Michael Stewart, George Brown’s successor as Foreign Secretary, commended the ambassador-designate to Secretary of State Rogers; Freeman was ‘highly professional and intellectually gifted, with broad experience’.12 Rogers needed no convincing. He replied that after their antagonism Nixon and Freeman would ‘lean over backwards to be friendly’ to one another. And so it proved. When Freeman arrived in mid-March at the White House to present his credentials, Nixon used the occasion to move the ceremony from the Oval Office into his residential quarters, a clear signal that the United Kingdom was still a special partner. He welcomed Freeman generously, implying again that the past was forgiven: ‘Let me assure you that you are most welcome in Washington. Your impressively versatile career is well known to us. I was delighted to meet and talk with you in London and anticipate seeing you often in the future.’13
Meanwhile the New Statesman journalist Francis Hope was assuring Americans that the term ‘radical socialist’ did not have the revolutionary connotation in England that they gave it. In a long article for the New York Times – ‘Meet the New Man from London’ – he began, tongue in cheek:
One must understand the English upper-middle-class radical. A little leftishness is not at all a dangerous thing in England: some of our best friends are socialists. The New Statesman is found in the nicest of households. The old Fabian tradition that the elite should be infiltrated rather than destroyed, dies hard. Ambassador Freeman is one of its finest blooms.14
He continued with a perception about the ‘Class of’45’, the parliamentary i
ntake of soldier-socialist MPs that applied to Freeman as much as it did to more radical socialists, like George Orwell: ‘The Class of ’45 has a complex attitude towards social change. They have lived through the war, which both caused and called for a greater equality, but also reinforced an affection for the British way of life.’
‘How will he find Washington?’ Francis Hope asked. Here I wonder whether he was briefed by his old New Statesman boss, so apposite were his answers:
The suggestion that he would have been happier with Humphrey than with Nixon is as complete a misunderstanding of the man as one could hope to find. He has always disliked political parties. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he once said, is his idea of the nastiest institution ever devised by man. He is here to do a job.
The idea that Freeman ran an anti-American paper is another that won’t stand up. The insularity of the ‘Class of’45’ never touched him. During the war when he encountered American troops he was struck by two facts, the extraordinary speed of their learning from mistakes and their widespread sense of having something to fight for. He is a great clearer away of cobwebs. Sentimentality about the special relationship or nostalgia for the Kennedy era will not influence him at all.15