Dislocated to Success

by Iain Bowen

  Eventually, it was brought to a head; the Spanish domestic situation became so poor that we were invited by the civil authorities to bring peace and protection to the city of Sevilla after the retreat of Spanish forces back toward Castile proper. Similarly, the French informed the Spanish that they had received similar invites from the local commune about Barcelona. After one last attempt to try and give us absolutely anything but concede on Gibraltar, they came up with a serious and mature proposal on both Panama and Gibraltar - which we found acceptable with some modifications. In fact we were very surprised about the maturity of the Panama proposal; it suited both nations very well - to this day I still wonder who suggested it and pushed it through, because it clearly wasn’t from the Spanish court.

  This left the UK with a somewhat increased number of theoretical colonies. We had gained the Spanish claims to the former West of the USA, as well as Baja California and a slightly modified Mexican border; part of East Texas would be traded with France for further concessions in the Mid-West of British North America. We had also gained the middle of cis-Argentina and the claim to the south, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, a small border revision in Guyana and some scattered islands and outposts. In addition, we added a lease to make Gibraltar more practical and certain rights over Panama - rights which not only gave us access to the Pacific, but - for the time being - a potential stranglehold over Spanish commerce from the Pacific on which they depended. Portugal gained much of what we knew as Uruguay, and settled some longstanding border disputes on the Iberian peninsula with Spain.

  As a conclusion to this, we remained in part of Andalusia until all terms were fulfilled, although we immediately withdrew from Sevilla and a few other areas. When we finally left the province some two years later, despite the damage to Cadiz, we left the province in better order than when we came. Some of the inhabitants appreciated this, others did not; there was a low-level petty campaign of graffiti and trouble-making throughout our brief occupation. This did lead to one small incident when the Prime Minister visited the city of Jerez, which was probably the area where we had the least problem and the most friends. A local priest spent some time shouting abuse at the PM, which she insisted on be translated; it seems he wanted her burned at the stake. She, as quick as a flash, replied - “He can burn if he wants to, but this lady is not for burning”.

  There was also a small side treaty; the French and Portuguese agreed to exchange some possessions in India and the Far East, the result of which was mainly to concentrate Portugal in Bengal and France in the area of Madras. They also settled their border in Guyana/Brazil - which is more than they ever did back in our original time.

  It was at this time that we also made contact with the new Pope; there was some worry that the conclave would choose differently, but mercifully all that had reached them was some rumours and the historical succession happened. Bruno Heim, the previous Apostolic Delegate, had offered to go to Rome and see if he could have an audience. Bruno was a top quality fellow and I had every confidence in his abilities. Whilst he didn’t quite manage a Commander Ashdown[47] level of introduction, I understand he was smuggled in by the Genoese and managed to start off what has been a difficult but good-natured relationship.

  There are, of course, a number of doctrinal differences between ourselves as British Catholics and the Church of 1730 - never mind the social and philosophical differences. Even as I write this, these have not all been ironed out; the British church I sometimes believe survives mainly because of its large contributions of Peter’s Pence and is therefore allowed rather more leeway than most would within Holy Mother Church. Whilst this leeway has been gratefully received, there has certainly been a return generally to some of the traditional practices and some of our more liberal priests have wandered off into a Cantabrigian abyss whilst others have joined the congregations of Utrecht - and, indeed, dominated that group to some extent.

  However, Bruno’s little mission meant that we had at least made contact, and received a period of grace during which the British Question - or, rather, the British Catholic Question - would be discussed. What I dreaded as a Catholic was the idea - which was very popular in some continental circles - that the United Kingdom would be put under the Interdict; it would probably lead to a large-scale schism of British Catholics. What I dreaded as a Diplomat was also the Interdict, but more for its effects on our foreign relations and our trade with Catholic States. Mercifully, Bruno bought us plenty of time, and by the time the question had been studied we had managed to create a favourable impression as a nation in enough Catholic circles to stop that sort of action. With that issue sorted out, I was able to look at other areas - such as India, where we had traded various rights with other European powers but had not looked at the situation with the Indian states and Bombay.

  Whilst I had no direct responsibility for Bombay, which was a job for the Colonial Office, I did have responsibility for the rest of India; this was either confusing or not confusing, depending on how you looked at it. If you considered that the Mughals and the Marathas were the powers and that all their various vassals were mere minions, then it was relatively simple. If you took the pragmatic approach, and realised that many of them were effectively independent, then it was rather more complex. Officially, we hadn’t really set anything up outside of Europe except for Persia and Morocco - and they had both come to us. Unofficially, we had sent out feelers to several Indian powers and also were taking the temperature East of India; much of this was being done through the East India Company, who had the contacts, and with some introductions from the French as well. The next year’s task was to start to set this up on a more formal footing - I don’t think we realised at the time how difficult this would be, logistically or diplomatically.

  Of course, with India, there was a substantial number of people originally from the sub-Continent here, many of whom had quite different opinions on what should and what should not happen - although a very substantial minority took a more “That’s not our India” approach. Many of them tried to co-ordinate their response through their community leaders, which did not help matters; I couldn’t possibly hear them all, and generally delegated this to civil servants or to one of my special advisors. Other groups were more organised and had a plan of sorts: the council of Sikh Gurdwaras had some good ideas and some willing bodies; similarly the Ismaili community pitched in with uplifting Bombay. The final group were more politically inspired and put their trust in the Labour Party and its self-appointed spokesman for India, Keith Vaz. Mr Vaz and I never really saw eye to eye, and any attempt at meeting with him usually descended into chaos as his list of contradictory demands was uttered. He had some hopes of being selected as an MP, preferably for a seat with a large Indian community, but his star fell somewhat and as of writing he has never managed to be elected.

  Further East was even more laden with difficulties; whilst there were a number of people from the Far East in the UK, the majority of them were not particularly interested in their natal countries. Many of our Malays were of Chinese origin and supremely uninterested in Malaysia, the Singaporeans accepted that their country was effectively gone, and only amongst our Hong Kongers was there any great interest in China; even there, it was more towards how to make money in China rather than any real interest in Qing China. Not to say that there weren’t people who were interested in the fate of their country, but they were few and far between.

  By this time, things had settled and I was able to contemplate Christmas - the first Christmas after the Dislocation, and my first Christmas without Adrian for many years. I did consider taking myself to Dorneywood with a selection of friends and doing the best we could; however, I didn’t feel much like it - and there had been a very stern memo about how ministers should not indulge in ostentatious displays over Christmas. The PM has always had that strong Methodist streak which disapproves of over-indulgence and ostentation at the best of times, but she can be more forgiving of personal foibles. So I settled for a very
quiet holiday in Town, just going to the Christmas drinks at Clarence House and the Garrick Club do for New Year. It was all very contemplative, and several others mentioned this as well - there was even some austere editorial in the Telegraph praising the return to an uncommercial Christmas.

  I had been warned by the Private Office that there would be a delightful series of Embassy ‘Do’’s - sadly there wasn’t a single one. The British Christmas was fairly unique, and I think some of embassies were rather shocked by it - some of them came round to our practices in time, and current Foreign Secretaries again finish Christmas in the sure and certain knowledge that their liver resembles that of a goose after gavage.

  Chapter 12

  I think that it was about a year after the Dislocation when we could finally say that the UK was out of full-time crisis mode; we certainly weren’t out of the woods, but unemployment had levelled off, albeit at both a high and subsidised level, steps to protect our economic prosperity and stop our population from starving had been put in place, and slavery had been abolished throughout what was being called the new Commonwealth - calling it the new Empire was regarded as being rather de trop. There were still some niggles, like Massachusetts, but they were more in Michael’s bailiwick than mine. We were no longer constantly fire-fighting; to some extent the dice had been rolled and we were waiting to see what they would bring up.

  Despite being Foreign Secretary, I was not actually part of what some people have called “The Kitchen Cabinet”. Myself and Michael were somewhat on the outside, brought in when needed and our contributions appreciated - but at least we were not as far on the outside as someone like Nicholas Ridley, who appeared to have moved from being one of the elect of the True Believers in the Monetarist Flame to being the latest whipping boy for the problems around the persistence of unemployment. Of course, Nick still believed in the Invisible Hand, whilst the PM was rather keen on people not being idle during our great crisis.

  Of course, Michael took it worse than I did; I was excluded because I was felt to be a gossip, Peter Morrison[48] - who was not exactly the soul of discretion - told me one evening. In a way, they were right; gossip is an important currency and a useful way of getting information around. However, I did know when to keep it zipped about very important matters and I was rapidly learning what to feed and not to feed around more minor matters. However, I will say this: if people think you are an incorrigible chatterbox, they tend to open up a little themselves and you get to find things out that otherwise you wouldn’t.

  A lot of people did wonder why we had given France such a good deal for a few commercial concessions and a low tariff regime. The reasons for this were threefold: firstly, France was the biggest unified economy in Europe - we felt if anyone could start off exports properly it would be France; secondly, we felt that by throwing in a few sweeteners we would tempt France into greater capital purchases; and thirdly, there was the question of North America and the division of it. The rather good deal was predicated on a once-and-for-all settlement greatly in favour of the UK in North America.

  The problem was that legally, or at least by the legal concepts of trans-Europe, France had some form of rights via possession over a critical part of North America: the Mississippi valley. Their possession was very weak, but it was there; the courier du bois had established French trade - if not French power - in the area. British power, on the other hand, barely reached to the Appalachians and in many cases was short of the historic 1763 line. Now the advantage of the French is that with Fleury, Orry and Chauvelin they had people who could read the runes of what had happened and learn from it. I was slightly disturbed by their Algerian fetish; it had clearly been a terrible mistake last time, and I wasn’t convinced what they had learnt was what the British people had wanted to them to learn. Outside of that, they understood that their chances of keeping control of the area they claimed were none; what they sought to do was retain the best areas for France.

  So started a very lengthy series of negotiations about North America; they were to take several years, not least because of the need for accurate maps in the valley of the Mississippi, but partly because both sides were looking to see what advantage could be gained around the margins. To be absolutely honest, there was only one really major change between the start and the end of the process and that concerned the status of Prince Edward Island. There was, of course, plenty of time to make side decisions as well - the French had gone back to Dakar, ostensibly to stop slavery in the area; a few years later they would try do the same near Cabinda, with nearly disastrous results. There was a lot of fiddling around the borders in Ontario where people debated over minor river valleys that had seen no white man yet.

  However, the vast majority of this could be left to civil servants on both sides. We had accepted that France would be given access to a fairly large amount of oil in Texas; this was a trade-off for the areas where they had given up a fairly firm claim. Of course, they would need UK help to exploit it, but given the French propensity to do things their way we expected them to leave most of it in the ground until they actually had their own ability to exploit it. The sticky points were essentially around Michigan and the Maritimes; everything else was fairly well agreed. We knew the Canadians would be unhappy about losing quite a large amount of Ontario, but to be absolutely frank we couldn’t be everywhere at once. I kept a ministerial eye on it, but we knew that the final resolution was probably years off, not least with the French cabinet changes a couple of years later. This was not helpful for cis-Canadians, but in the long run it was helpful overall; we got a better treaty, and everything had been discussed with both sides so there was very little enmity out of it. It also meant that French citizens in the areas being transferred, mainly on the Île Royale, had sufficient exposure to the new UK that they decided to stay.

  Various developments mean that our original deal with Hannover had partially become redundant; Hannover and Hamburg had developed close ties, and the idea of expanding Geestmünde as a port and driving a rail line to it had become obsolete. Frederick was more amenable to changing this to take a railway line westwards towards Prussian Minden to gain access to coal reserves, with a short branch to the small Hannover oil deposits. This was fine by us as it actually cost a little less, and Frederick was of a generous spirit. He also wanted to start looking at education more closely, and came out with a grandiose scheme which would have provided an excellent education to the whole of Hannover. Had he been able to afford it for the dozen years or so before it would start to yield dividends then that might have lead to great things for Hannover, but it was both unaffordable and unrealistic; there weren’t enough teachers in the Electorate, nor was it possible to train them in the timescales available. Within four years he had moved to a more realistic scheme which has started to yield results.

  However, this was becoming one of our ways of drawing cash in - more and more countries were willing to send a few people to the UK for schooling or training. Much of the demand was for English, which helped our hard-pressed language schools no end, but from 1981 onwards we started selling more and more places on other courses - Mark Carlisle[49] was instrumental at working with both Higher and Further Education institutions to design specialist courses, help integrate students, sell school places and working with ourselves and the Home Office produce a decent visa scheme for students. Of course, the numbers came nowhere near those before the Dislocation, but where exports outside the Commonwealth were running at about about 4% of the pre-Dislocation number by 1985, education was running at just over 20%. Mark had struggled in Cabinet before the Dislocation, but after his demotion and having to deal with a more concentrated portfolio he became a shining star.

  Eventually, Mark hammered out a decent deal for Hannover; like Hamburg, they had seen considerable growth in their economy and were at the start of what was a period of great economic success. Frederick’s interest in everything modern meant that, whilst things weren’t as widespread as he had hoped, particularly
in rural areas, he at least laid the foundations for a number of decent schools - which helped Hannover no end. Whilst a couple of imperial cities managed a more comprehensive education, and Brandenburg-Prussia and Austria did some interesting things, Hannover probably had the most overall effect in the Empire as it aimed higher than the others.

  A fly in the Diplomatic ointment for some time had been the Barbary States; whilst Morocco had generally given up piracy, and we had established a surprisingly firm friendship fairly quickly, the areas of Algeria and Tunisia were riddled with corsairs. They had quickly learned early on not to mess with British ships; the RN had a selection of various experimental gunboats out of Gibraltar and the RAF had a flight of Harriers. An early attempt to seize a provisions boat from Tetouan had given the Corsairs an early introduction to auto-cannon which they had not forgotten and they were fairly quick studies. By the end of the summer of 1980, they would steer away from British ships.