by Iain Bowen
However, as I was musing over that, I was asked if I could attend the Spanish Embassy at 4pm. My first thought was that something had gone wrong in Panama, my second was that they wished to protest about some slight or other - but it all seemed rather cordial. Spain was very slowly on the mend; the King had replaced a couple more ministers after the famine and had managed to finally stabilise the mainland fully. There had been some low-level talks about some agricultural products being sold, although they could afford very little. However, on arrival, the Spanish bowled a complete googly - the King had announced that Slavery was to be abolished in Spain as from All Saints Day, not even a gradual element to it. I was very pleased, but I knew that I would have to rewrite my speech; this had to be included. I would also have to spend some time considering the other effects of this, not least in the Caribbean.
After conference, I had no great plans - just the usual work to be done - but there’s always something unexpected popping up. We were starting to prepare a report on how the Dislocation had changed Europe for the five-year anniversary. When you look back with some distance at progress since the Dislocation, people look at how various nations have taken their paths forward, albeit sometimes with a step back or two, since finding themselves with the United Kingdom. It is quite often said that Poland-Lithuania has benefited the most, or that the Electorate of Hannover has modernised the most, or even that the Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves has more carefully prepared and planned than others. All of this would be true, and in each case they have done it with the help and assistance of their descendants, although this has been varied - the Poles have had a cast of thousands, the Portuguese a selection of experts and the Hanoverians the slowly growing assistance of more and more cis-Germans.
However, they overlooked a smaller nation, the Sovereign Order of of Saint John of Jerusalem - or rather the islands on which its territory was held. After a somewhat dramatic start, an arrangement had been made between the United Kingdom and the Knights that the Knights would look after Valletta, Floriana and the Three Cities within the Cottonera Lines and the United Kingdom would protect the rest of the Three Islands. Nominally, the Knights retained sovereignty, but apart from keeping an office in Mdina and in Rabat on Gozo all they received was a tax stipend.
The Maltese people - who, if they lived outside of the Walled Cities, came under British protection - also had the additional assistance of the Maltese population of the United Kingdom, which contributed its time and money generously to the the people of the Island. Many of the cis-Maltese were small business owners, often of some of Central London's more famous "Italian" cafes, and with rationing many had spare time to go back to the island. As both they and their British-born children spoke excellent Maltese, there was little problem with communication. They encouraged vaccinations, some basic medical care, English classes, improving sanitation and all the other benefits. Most of them were from integrationist families that had been in the UK since the 1950's and so had strong links on both sides.
Unfortunately, there was another side to all this; some of our Maltese small businessmen were not entirely kosher. Whilst their love for Malta was genuine, many of them were there to make money - some did so by selling food to the naval base at Marsaxlokk; others had different plans. There were a number of small disputes about land ownership as they sought to buy property in certain areas, but the main problem was smuggling.
Malta was at the crossroads of the Med; ships came from various Italian states, France and the Sublime Porte. The latter were very much looked down upon by the locals, but were allowed to trade at Marsaxlokk as long as the RN were watching. Malta went from being sleepy to being busy in a couple of years. Unfortunately, the number of times people were caught with items that should not be exported from the UK was rather high. This led to a number of arguments about the actual status of Malta, and some of the small businessmen had some fairly sharp lawyers.
As a result of this, the Foreign Office got involved, and it was agreed that we should have further discussions with the Knights about how we could deal with legal issues around property ownership and whose law applied in which areas. I had expected some resistance but obviously their Maltese tax revenues doubling in three years, never mind the Marsaxlokk lease, made them much more amenable to talking over the issues. After a surprisingly short and cordial set of meetings, it was decided that it would probably be best if British laws applied everywhere except Valletta and the Three Cities - as long as the overall rights of the Knights were accepted. In addition, they were happy to co-operate with the UK on water and sewage distribution from within their sole territories - they had long since acceded to vaccinations. They even allowed a cut in tax rates to allow for British administration, although I couldn't help feeling there was a sharp-eyed Knight somewhere with a calculator who had worked out how his revenues could boom even further.
There was some criticism in the left-wing press - but, as the PM said, all that we were doing was regularising what was already happening, paying for less of it as we were receiving local revenues, and assisting an island which had close historic links with the UK. The local people certainly weren't against the idea, especially on Gozo, and we did hold some consultative straw polls which showed over 70% in favour of British Administration. The next step for Malta would be more controversial, of course, but will fall into the next volume.
By the time we had concluded the Maltese changes, the festive season was approaching. The joys of Christmas include the annual Foreign Office Christmas Party, which is not as it used to be; the Leaderene disapproves of ostentation, even if most of our new-found friends rather like it. In addition, the Press are always on the look-out for breaches of the rationing rules, and whilst Diplomatic Gatherings officially don’t count one doesn’t want to feature too frequently in the Daily Mail or Daily Mirror - both of which delight in placing rule-breakers in the metaphorical stocks. The amount of letters in green ink - it is always green ink - that come from such an exposé is phenomenal.
However, it still takes rather a lot of planning - in fact it seems to take more planning than many other endeavours within the FO. Committees and Activities start sometime around September and take up more and more time, although I suspect just as much time is spent on the Staff party as the Diplomats’ party. Although it must be said that the protocol for the Diplomats’ party does take up a considerable amount of time, far more than it used to.
One of the joys of the FO is the Durbar Court, which has proved to be an excellent venue and very impressive - although there have been a few sniffy comments over the years that it might be a little too ostentatious. Obviously, whilst the FO has shrunk a little in size we had to initially accommodate the Colonial Office as well, and I had to start refurbishing areas - the Court was first, but 1985 allowed the use of the refurbished India Office Council Chamber for the first time for the more exclusive guests. The target, if the budget allowed after that was to sort out the Locarno Suite, which had been left in a terrible state.
Having said this, obviously there was still a fairly large amount of background activity at the FO. Whilst we were in the happy position of having stable relations with nearly every nation, the only really large project was to sort out the situation with China; and that, I was being told by experts, would probably take years - not helped by the unfortunate demise of the Emperor earlier that year. However, there was always something to take up time - some minor squabble, some succession, some perceived breach of a treaty - especially as people discovered more and more about what might lie under their lands or what their land could be used for. In addition, as THE superpower, more and more people came to us for advice and even to act as arbiters; by the end of 1984, I was seriously considering creating an official Mediation Service which third parties could hire out - a form of a diplomatic version of ACAS.
However, all this changed at the end of November when I was summoned discreetly to Clarence House. I had been aware for some time that Prince Andrew had
been seen “about” with Princess Philippine of Prussia; there had even been a couple of comments by the likes of Hickey and Dempster about it. However, despite comments from some close friends, I had disregarded it as mere froth; it seemed an unlikely alliance when all things are considered. Whilst Prince Andrew was known to be considering matrimony more seriously, he had also made approaches about taking a more serious look at his military career. Princess Philippine was supposedly being “finished”, but like several others of similar rank was hunting for a suitable husband - with, of course, the strong and baleful encouragement of her Head of House.
However, over a couple of large Gin and Dubonnets, the reasons were more clearly outlined to me: a trans Princess would have less problems with her husband being away on duty for considerable periods, might cope better with any indiscretions, and could probably be relied on to be fairly unobtrusive. I got the impression that not everyone was entirely happy with the idea at the time, and that some people in the Firm had to be talked around. The matter had been discussed with both the PM and the Leader of the Opposition already - both were, I detected, guardedly in favour. However, there were other questions, which is why I had been called in; the main one was what the reaction would be in Europe.
That wasn’t an easy question to answer. Obviously, those states who knew us well would know that a Brandenburg-Prussia marriage did not mean an alliance; however, there were certainly some states out there who were less enlightened. I could imagine St Petersburg pitching a fit about it, and I suspect that the Poles might be a little on edge - although given the amount of co-operation between the Baltic Tier of states, they might have been consulted. Other than that, I could only see jealousy - the English marriage was much desired for prestige reasons, and at least two Catholic monarchs had suggested that daughters could become Anglo-Catholic. During the first year after the Dislocation there had been a wide range of suggestions from various Powers, ranging from a Danish princess who had very firmly remained unmarried in our history, and who most trans-powers would have regarded as a grass widow, to a couple of princesses who were barely past their tenth year. It had taken a while for this to sink in, as it had taken a while for one or two Eastern potentates to work out that Prince Charles didn’t need a junior wife or concubine.
I said I would take soundings, and speed was of the essence; the Palaces are notoriously leaky and most of the newspapers have people on the payroll. Whilst some papers would just drop hints, if Wendy Henry[68] at the Sun got hold of it it would be on the front page the next day - probably with some grotesque headline. However, the European sounding had to be done in a reasonable hurry; I was surprised that the reaction wasn’t actually more negative than it was, as the British Marriage was so coveted. There was a general resignation; no one was going to throw a diplomatic tantrum about it, although there was an overall comment of “why Prussia?” I conveyed the information back to the Palace, carefully editing who the more specific comments were from in most cases, although to no avail; the Queen Mother got most of them right.
Despite the threat of another happy event to play for, there was other more serious work to do - the Chinese had returned to the table in distant Phuket. I sometimes think that the Chinese play diplomatic games for their own amusement; they seem to time new proposals very carefully and in a way to determine maximum disruption. With this proposal, they had also added another string to their bow by appointing an official Qing Empire press attache in London; a somewhat shadowy figure called Mr Gong, who it seems was a former American citizen stranded here in the UK after the Dislocation with roots in the former Taiwan. Mr Gong was accredited in a somewhat odd way by the delegation in Phuket as the press representative of the Qianglong Emperor. How Mr Gong managed to get this accolade, I remain uncertain, even unto this day. The more foolish members of the UK press called him the Chinese Ambassador, of course, but the Qing weren’t that stupid; it had been made clear that he had no real power, except - it seemed - to cause trouble for us.
However, the Qianglong Emperor is a somewhat different kettle of fish to his father; there had been requests for architectural books and a copy of a modern English-Mandarin dictionary, and a promise of a copy of some four-language civil service dictionary that the Qings have. There was a hint that they wanted a western-style palace built for them as, of course, a tribute. The temptation to send them John Madin and have done with it was quite high. However, amongst what looked like an increase in some cultural interests, which we suspected were caused by cross-border leakage from Korea and Vietnam - where we were making slow but steady progress - there were still the signs of what we considered to be barbarity. A merchant we dealt with in Canton was flayed alive for being found wearing modern fabrics. It was a very capricious system in mainland China, and one where personal favour or dislike counted for rather a lot.
However, having rejected Hainan - and with the Qing authorities not even recognising our proposal for a proper enclave at Canton - I was surprised that the first snow of December also saw the offer of “a ball of mud beyond the pale of civilisation”, although mercifully not all of it. The offer was for the area around the port of Anping, but to include 8 villages of civilised Taiwanese and 8 areas of uncivilised Taiwanese. To be absolutely honest, I don’t think we knew what that meant for a couple of days. Taiwan wasn’t somewhere we had much doings with except through Hong Kong, and it took a little while to realise that we were being offered around one-tenth of the habitable plains of Taiwan - not all of which was under firm Qing control. There was also the question of the highlands, which were unshaded on the map but we were given to understand we would be expected to “control”; I had a nasty feeling what ‘control’ meant. Of course, the new emperor wanted an answer to his very generous offer as soon as possible, preferably by the New Year - that created a minor frisson until it was pointed out that they almost certainly meant the Chinese New Year. The idea of the FO being able to do an initial study on an important document in two weeks is laughable, even more so when you consider that those are the two weeks before Christmas.
Clearly, we had to also draw up a counter-proposal in case this one was deemed not acceptable; it was quite clear that our suggestions around Canton were not going to be shown anything but the door. We were obviously to be kept at a suitable distance, to avoid the contagion of modernism. Of course, as demand for tea has been fulfilled more and more by other nations, we have seen how that has affected the revenues of China. Most thought that the best thing would be to resurrect the Hong Kong Island scheme again; whilst it had been condemned by Qing officials as an insult, it hadn’t been that strongly condemned. Others considered that perhaps we consider one of the old treaty ports such as Amoy or Foochow, and there were those that suggested perhaps we should let the Chinese come to us - quite a few voices found that unlikely to wash if they didn’t want us in Canton.
Of course, what we didn’t expect was Mr Gong. Within a couple of days of the documents arriving in London from Phuket, Mr Gong had also had his brief from whoever was backing him within the Forbidden City. His complicated mix of imperial terms, denunciations Red Guard-style and American marketing phrases made him extremely quotable and very popular with the tabloids - who extracted the Michael from him immensely once they had worked out he was just a hireling. However, it did get the message out that we were trying to do a deal with China on a trading base, and that in itself was something that inflamed a wide range of views; what had previously been something we had been able to keep, unintentionally of course, in the background now had a spotlight on it. It raised the profile, but I don’t believe to this day that it helped the process one iota.
There are certain departments within the Foreign Office from which the arrival of a messenger is always the cause of some palpitations; in the case of Department “I” it is more a furrowed brow of annoyance and wondering what scheme someone has come up with now. Italy looks more complex on a map than it actually is; around half the Peninsula is officially Austria -
Milan, Naples etc. I say officially because the amount of control Austria has over Naples in particular is de minimis; certainly only the larger towns and their immediate hinterlands, and in Sicily not even that. To be fair to them, they have been working on this - but, with rather more stick than carrot and with fairly minimal resources, the results at that point had not been too good.
The other biggish boys in the playground are Savoy, Tuscany and the Papal States - we have decent relations with all of those, although it may not seem so on the surface in some cases. The Papal States can seem quite frosty at the official level, but they are decent at the personal level. The Tuscans are more pleasant at the official level and trade is developing nicely, but at the personal level the Grand Duchess’ court is rather ultramontane and therefore there is a certain frost from many courtiers. Savoy, of course, dislikes our friendship with Genoa, on which it has some long-held designs which it now sees as being halted, and unfortunately blames us for the enviable Parmesan succession of Charles of Spain, although we had nothing to do with it.
The rest are but minnows, either economically or territorially, although some trade on the legacy of a great name. We have warm relations with Genoa, and certainly that city-state is doing very well, having levered its financial skills and knowledge very carefully. Doge Spinola was easily re-elected until he stood down with ill-health in 1988, his pioneering use of radio and establishing a small payments and transfer system has done a lot for Genoa. Over 90% of our trade with Italy goes through that city, and that trade is increasing at a decent rate.