Behind Diplomatic Lines

by Patrick R. H. Wright

  4 JUNE 1991

  My last meeting of the British Council board, preceded by a discussion about David Orr’s successor as chairman, on which David Orr has happily plumped for Douglas Hurd’s preference, namely Martin Jacomb, though he reported Douglas’s view that politicians should not be excluded from the field. Most board members agreed with David that this was inappropriate – a slightly awkward discussion, since Tim Renton was present.

  A bilateral with Douglas Hurd, at which he told me of a recent talk he had had with Margaret Thatcher, at which ‘shafts’ had been sent in all directions, including me – the last, because she claimed that we were wasting money on refurbishing the office which would be better put towards a consulate in Leningrad. I told Douglas that I was determined not to slow down, or interfere with, the refurbishment (a point in which Douglas has some personal interest, having served, as a third secretary, in the cardboard offices, put up in one of the Locarno rooms). When he said that Margaret Thatcher had referred to Leningrad as ‘one of the great cities of Europe’, I pointed out that the FCO was one of the great buildings in another great European city!

  5 JUNE 1991

  An early meeting with Robin Butler to follow up yesterday’s ministerial discussion on community frontiers. Recent legal opinion (allegedly written personally by the Solicitor General, Nicholas Lyell, and described, at our meeting, by Brian Unwin as ‘seriously flawed’) claims that community law will actually make it illegal to retain any customs or immigration checks at our internal frontiers – i.e. at any of our main ports. This has thrown ministers into confusion, and Kenneth Baker has been calling wildly for Britain’s departure from the Community. Clive Whitmore asked if Douglas Hurd could not exercise more control over Kenneth Baker; I pointed out that Douglas was reluctant to intervene too much with either of his old departments, i.e. the Home Office and the Northern Ireland Office.

  7– 9 JUNE 1991: BILDERBERG CONFERENCE AT BADEN-BADEN

  A three-day conference, at which I had been invited to be one of the panellists on the Middle East. My fellow panellists, under the chairmanship of Peter Carrington, were Richard Haass and Bill Quandt of the National Security Agency, Laurie Freedman of King’s College London. Among the familiar faces at the conference were Roz Ridgway, who told me that she had only been able to cure her insomnia by reading the social column of Friday’s Times, in which my attendance at credentials had provided the final morphine; Bob Blackwill, now at Harvard, with whom I had an interesting exchange on our respective Foreign Services, during which I discovered that senior State Department officials earn just about half the salary of equivalent FCO officials; Henry Kissinger, who made broad and elder-statesman interventions in his deep, gravelly growl; and George Ball, looking old in his early eighties, and reading a lengthy diatribe on the Arab–Israel problem – extremely critical of Israel, and countered by a strong, pro-Zionist intervention from Conrad Black and Bob Bartley of the Wall Street Journal.

  Bearing in mind the Gore-Booth affair, I opened my intervention by quoting Norman Hogg’s contribution in the House of Commons, who said that no public servant had the right to make private comments on a question as serious as Palestine – noting with relief that the Bilderberg rules seemed not to accept this.

  On Friday evening, I had a late drink in the bar with John Smith, the Labour spokesman for Trade and Industry, and Gordon Brown; also with Christopher Hogg, an Old Marlburian from Courtaulds, and John Polanyi, a Canadian writer on nuclear questions.

  [One conference colleague I do not record having met was an obscure, and rather shy, Governor of Arkansas, called Bill Clinton. Someone (I’ve forgotten who) told me years later that he had felt so sorry for this shy man that he had sought him out for a conversation, and had a one-hour, fascinating talk about American politics in the south.]

  12 JUNE 1991

  Today’s press is full of stories of attempts to muzzle Margaret Thatcher (some hope!); today’s Evening Standard carries an unhelpful interview with Nicholas Ridley, supporting her right to speak out. His memoirs (bits of which I have now seen) will be quite controversial, and could come out at an awkward time for John Major. Ridley has some fairly damning comments on Mrs Thatcher’s attitude to the FCO, claiming that she deliberately kept on Charles Powell in order to exclude FCO officials.

  13 JUNE 1991

  An embarrassing mistake was revealed today when a retired colleague returned the farewell letter I had sent him which referred to a post in which he had never served. I wrote back to say I was appalled, and that it was obviously high time I retired myself.

  Douglas Hurd had his annual session with Angus Fraser, from the Prime Minister’s Efficiency Unit, this afternoon. I tried to get Douglas to show genuine interest in our management plan (in which he is clearly totally uninterested); but he did it quite well, and I think we have passed with flying colours this year. But it does involve a horrific amount of work and paper.

  A bilateral with Douglas Hurd, at which it emerged that the Prime Minister has definitely decided to appoint a politician to Hong Kong after the election. I asked Douglas if he had considered talking to the opposition, and he agreed that this might be sensible. It is always a bit delicate for officials to suggest to ministers that there is any need to prepare for a change of government; Labour is today leading the polls by ten points.

  I told Douglas that the Cabinet Office study on the change to the homosexuality/positive vetting rules is under way, and that the Prime Minister has expressed support for the idea of a statement during the recess.

  14 JUNE 1991

  Malcolm Caithness told me, in very conspiratorial terms, that he had something very private to divulge. It emerged that an elderly peer called Lord Fortescue had contacted him, in total bemusement, to say that he had been telephoned by Mark Englefield of the Evening Standard, to ask if he knew David Gore-Booth. When he replied that he didn’t, he was asked whether he knew that David was trying to mount a smear campaign against Mossad. We concluded that this was a classic case of journalistic incompetence and nastiness.

  17 JUNE 1991

  Marcus and Rebecca came up to my office over the weekend, for Rebecca to take some photographs for the wall of my private office. We have decided (no doubt to the embarrassment of my successors) to break with precedent, and have a joint photograph of Virginia and me – the first accompanied photograph since one of my Victorian predecessors decided to include his dog in his!

  19 JUNE 1991

  I attended my last meeting of perm secs this morning, at which Robin Butler made a brief valedictory speech about Alan Bailey and myself (Alan, who reaches sixty the day before me, is one of four Mertonian PUSs in Whitehall – the other two being Michael Quinlan and Robert Andrew). I responded with a short account of some of the extraordinary things that are happening in foreign affairs this month alone: a report today from Cape Town on the last pillar of apartheid coming down (adding that the South African ambassador in London had invited Oliver Tambo to use his embassy whenever he wanted – ‘After all, it is your embassy’); a report from Budapest that the last Soviet troops have left Hungary; and a report that James Baker is about to visit Albania ‘to celebrate the return of democracy’.

  Tim Simmons rang Denis Greenhill, at my request, to find out if he had attended perm secs when he was PUS. Interestingly, Denis revealed that perm secs had been suspended under Wilson’s first administration, since ministers (or was it Joe Haines?) disliked the idea of ‘Tory mandarins’ getting together. When Denis had paid his last call on Ted Heath, Heath had asked him what could be done to improve the standard of government in Whitehall; Denis had suggested the resumption of perm sec meetings. He was delighted to hear from me that this had happened.

  Denis Greenhill also told Tim Simmons that he hoped my farewell speech would be better than Tom Brimelow’s, which had been so rude about the civil service that several of his guests had walked out. At tonight’s farewell dinner, Robin Butler gave a good speech about the three leavers (Peter Middl
eton, Alan Bailey and myself), referring back to our time together in No. 10, when Robert Armstrong had warned Ken Stowe about the loudness of my telephone conversations – in contrast to Tom Bridges, who had always spoken on the telephone as if his civil service colleagues were not old enough to hear these things.

  In reply, I referred to the British Public Service as the best in the world, though I quoted Lord Kennet’s remark in the House of Lords in January 1989, when he said that we might have the best diplomatic service in the world, but that ‘one or two absolute fools had risen to the top in recent years’ – adding that they had not done much harm in the end, and that by and large the standard had been extremely high.

  Papoulias, the Cyprus High Commissioner, held a farewell lunch for us today, at which he was much impressed by my quotation of William Lithgow’s seventeenth-century description of Cypriots, which I repeated in my thank-you letter – asking my PA to be careful not to include the subsequent passage from the quotation in the reference book, which is extremely rude about the Cypriots and their dishonesty!

  Calls today from two colleagues departing for their first ambassadorial postings, to whom I gave three pieces of advice: the first (given to me by John Wilton before my posting to Saudi Arabia), ‘If it moves, call on it’; the second, remember that when abroad your profile should be as high as it should be low at home; and thirdly, that by far the most effective tool for a diplomat (and, in my experience, extraordinarily rare) is to show that you love the country you are serving in. As I told my callers, several of my foreign colleagues in Luxembourg and Saudi Arabia made it all too obvious (for different reasons) that they thought their posting was either beneath them or thoroughly unpleasant. The last was particularly true of some of my Dutch and German colleagues, one of whom was described as having ‘the sensitivity of a tank’.

  21 JUNE 1991

  Tony Reeve called before leaving for South Africa, understandably daunted by the prospect of succeeding Robin Renwick, whose performance has been quite spectacular. Someone recently commented, in reply to a remark that the United States suffered from having no policy on South Africa, that they soon would, when Robin Renwick arrived in Washington as British ambassador.

  24 JUNE 1991

  John Boyd told me today that one (unnamed) head of mission had replied to Mike Shingler’s invitation to my farewell party with a frosty response: ‘I see that you addressed your letter to my Head of Chancery. My Head of Chancery was abolished by Patrick Wright.’ I told DUSs at my lunch for them today that this decision to abolish Heads of Chancery was one of my main regrets as PUS, having enormously valued my own experience as Head of Chancery in Cairo. But everyone else seems to be convinced it was right. At least I have stopped them abolishing the Chief Clerk and Deputy Chief Clerk (though some have tried hard to do this, on the grounds that the terms are ‘not understood’ elsewhere in Whitehall).

  25 JUNE 1991

  I attended my last of Douglas Hurd’s ministerial meetings, at which he gave an account of the Prime Minister’s meeting with Mitterrand in Dunkirk yesterday. It had not been a bad session, though the French are clearly put out by the formation of NATO’s Rapid Reaction Corps, and have been quite grumpy with both the Germans and ourselves on the subject.

  My last credentials this morning, for Ray and Caroline Seitz, of which a photograph later appeared in Ray’s excellent book Over Here, with a description of myself apparently holding a ‘pet ostrich’ (see p. 5, above). The proceedings were filmed throughout for next year’s BBC Jubilee film (as were the French credentials earlier this year).

  26 JUNE 1991

  I paid a farewell call on the Prime Minister this morning. I talked about FCO resources (particularly for information technology and the estate), pointing out that our permanent membership of the Security Council and global diplomacy needed adequate funds to sustain our foreign policy and our aid. I thanked him for making good use of the FCO machine; he replied that his own relationship with Douglas Hurd was excellent: ‘Few people probably know that we talked to each other every day during the leadership campaign.’ I said that I hadn’t known that, but that the look on Douglas’s face when John Major won suggested to me that they had hardly been in fierce competition.

  On relations with the FCO, John Major pointed out that the main problem ‘under previous dispensations’ had been the appalling relationship between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. He asked me about my future, commenting quite crossly that it was ridiculous that I should have to wait three months before taking up any directorships. He commented that, in contrast to Peter Middleton (for whom he had fought personally to reduce his period of purdah from one year to six months), Nigel Lawson could go straight to Barclays from the Treasury – ‘where he presumably knew something of what the Treasury were doing’.

  This evening, a mammoth party, organised by John Boyd and Mike Shingler, to say goodbye to us in the Durbar Court. The irrepressible Shingler appeared dressed in a sort of Moroccan magician’s outfit. A fantastic collection of old friends and colleagues, including two of my ambassadors, Harold Beeley and George Middleton. There were songs and recitations (not helped by the appalling acoustics of the Durbar Court), and some amazing belly-dancing by Doreen Fishwick (my PA in Jedda) and Sarah Rowland-Jones. We were presented, at the end, by a vast volume of farewell messages from nearly every post in the world.

  27 JUNE 1991

  I had a meeting with Malcolm Caithness and others to discuss post closures. I reported briefly on my remarks to the Prime Minister about FCO resources, and also told Malcolm (as I later told Douglas Hurd) that ministers should not always strive to put ‘the best people’ into every job; they need to remember that the service relies on a large core of middle-ranking stalwarts who can hold down (and not be frustrated by) rather unexacting and routine jobs around the world. It would be disastrous to staff the service only with Fellows of All Souls!

  I had my last bilateral with Douglas Hurd this afternoon, when I reported to him in more detail on my farewell call on the Prime Minister. On the question of a Minister for Europe, Douglas told me (but has not yet told the Prime Minister) that he is rather in favour of the idea, though he accepted some of my arguments against it. Richard Gozney told me last night that even Douglas Hurd, with his amazing stamina, is beginning to be worried about the sheer burden of all the meetings he has to attend. But I still think that a Minister for Europe will detract from the Secretary of State’s status and credibility, and that even if such a minister had full Cabinet status, his attendance at meetings with other foreign ministers would inevitably look as though we were fielding a B team.

  I also talked to Douglas about Tim Sainsbury’s resistance to charging increases for commercial work abroad; but I advised him against intervening in the argument, since it could be quite a powerful weapon for him in the next PESC round, when the Treasury could be quite surprised that the FCO were arguing for more revenue against other departments.

  Our official farewell in the Durbar Court this evening, with some disappointing absences, but a good turn-out, including masses of MPs. Two Cabinet ministers came (John Wakeham and Chris Patten), as did a good handful of senior businessmen and retired diplomats – including three past PUSs and Pat Gore-Booth, who told me that she gathered that David had been a ‘naughty boy’. I reassured her, and made some nice remarks about Paul, which nearly reduced her to tears.

  Happily, there were no speeches; Douglas Hurd had to leave for the European Council in Luxembourg, and had, in any case, very nicely looked in briefly last night. The poor man has already had to make two farewell speeches about me. Then our last car-pool drive home with Martin Madden.

  I ended my last letter to the service, dated 22 June, as follows:

  I would like to close this last letter with a genuine word of thanks and appreciation for what all of you have done, in various ways, over the past five years to smooth my path as Head of the Service. I have loved every moment (well, almost every moment) of it, a
nd have been proud to head what I (and others) seriously believe to be the best Diplomatic Service in the world. Journalists and commentators were fond of describing the alleged contempt and dislike with which Mrs Thatcher was said to regard the Foreign Office. It is worth remembering that the past five years has seen no single political appointment to any post in the Service; and that throughout her Prime Ministerial involvement in Foreign Affairs, even Mrs Thatcher relied most heavily on past and present members of the Service for advice. I am personally encouraged by the extent to which Ministers on both sides of Downing Street increasingly appreciate the Rolls Royce machine available to them for the conduct of the Government’s Foreign Policy; and that there is now, I believe, a much better appreciation within the Service that our job is, and must be seen to be, the vigorous and skilful promotion and protection of British interests, rather than some woolly objective called ‘good relations’. In thanking you all for your support, may I wish you all and every one of you all the best in what will continue to be a fast-moving and challenging period ahead for the Service.