Behind Diplomatic Lines_Relations with Ministers Read online

  5 AUGUST 1986

  The Commonwealth review meeting having ended at midnight, I had left a free morning in my diary. Geoffrey Howe held a meeting at 11 a.m. to discuss what work was needed, including messages to all and sundry explaining the outcome. There was a general consensus that the meeting could have gone worse, but that we are not out of the woods, particularly on air links, where British Airways may well find their over-flying rights in Africa removed from them. But the immediate prospect of breaks in diplomatic relations seems to have receded.

  Ramsay Melhuish later gave us a vivid description of the non-aligned rally in Harare, where Mugabe was giving a spirited call for sanctions against South African flights, when his voice was completely drowned out by the roar of a South African Airways flight taking off from Harare airport for Pretoria! If British Airways divert round the bulge of the African continent (which they will soon be able to do with their new aircraft) there is a strong risk of retaliation against their flights elsewhere, including India and Malaysia.

  6 AUGUST 1986

  Percy Cradock called, and opened the subject of the PM’s attitude to the office, which, as he put it, loses nothing in the way in which her comments are passed on by Charles Powell. I doubt whether Charles expends much effort on the sort of literary contortions that I went to at No. 10 in translating brusque, and sometimes obscene, comments on papers into phrases like: ‘The Prime Minister has expressed some reservations…’ [Bill Harding, who had been one of the deputy under-secretaries, later told me that, on his farewell call on the Prime Minister, she kept him for a quarter of an hour without any comment on the service, other than remarks about the need to find good posts for young people ‘like Charles Powell’ (who was present throughout).]

  7 AUGUST 1986

  I called on Lady Young before going on leave. She is clearly nervous about being left in charge of the office, particularly with the South African problems, on which she once made an unwise speech, for which she was rebuked by Geoffrey Howe.

  David Goodall reported to me that Robert Armstrong had told him that Geoffrey Howe had passed him a note during the Commonwealth review meeting, while the PM was speaking, saying: ‘I suppose there may be more unhelpful ways of presenting our case, but I can’t think of them.’

  1 SEPTEMBER 1986

  I returned from holiday in Salcombe today, during which I read the memoirs of two predecessors, Lord Hardinge and Sir Alexander Cadogan. (The latter was the subject of one of the more remarkable coincidences I can remember. When visiting Hatchards, I had asked the shop assistant whether Cadogan had written his memoirs. A lady standing next to me said: ‘Yes, indeed he did. I am his widow.’) I was struck by the extent to which Hardinge (who was appointed Viceroy of India during the First World War, and then returned to a second stint as PUS) was treated as a courtier, accompanying King Edward VII on numerous trips abroad, in place of ministers; and by the amount of drafting that Cadogan did for both the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister on the basis of telephoned instructions, and with apparently very little back-up from the office.

  Geoffrey Howe held an office meeting today to prepare for a ministerial meeting on visa regimes for Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Ghana and Nigeria, under pressure from the Home Office, following bad congestion at the airports here. Christopher Mallaby later reported to me that Geoffrey Howe had been totally isolated at the ministerial meeting (widely trailed by press leaks), and had to give way to a decision to impose regimes ‘at an early date’. When I saw Geoffrey later, he was gloomy about it, and rather predictably casting around with criticisms of the office. But he commented that the PM seemed to be taking a harder and harder line on racial questions. The opposition have already attacked the measures as ‘racist’.

  Charles Powell looked in at 11, with a very disapproving message from the PM about a Daily Telegraph story alleging direct quotations from FCO officials on the visa regimes. I said that I thought it most unlikely that any diplomatic service officer had spoken as alleged, but pointed out that the story was only the culmination of three days of extremely unhelpful, and anti-FCO, press briefing. Charles said that the PM was aware of this, and suspected the Home Office (Bernard Ingham is away at present).

  Geoffrey Howe spoke to me again today about the alleged anti-feminine bias in the administration (having spent part of his summer holidays with Pauline Neville-Jones). He also raised several instances in which Robert Armstrong had minuted to the PM on foreign affairs questions without adequately consulting him.

  3 SEPTEMBER 1986

  There was a ridiculous editorial in today’s Sun about visa regimes, referring to pin-striped FO officials worrying about their tiffin and cocktails. Christopher Meyer put up a robust draft letter, in Sun-style, for Geoffrey Howe to send to the editor.

  The German ambassador called at 4 p.m., presumably to discuss my visit to Bonn and the forthcoming summit. It turned out that he did not know about the first, and his instructions were five days out of date on the second. Not very impressive; he was visibly embarrassed.

  7 SEPTEMBER 1986

  Lunch with the Callaghans at Ringmer. Jim has delivered his memoirs to his publisher for launching next April, commenting that I might have to vet them officially. He thought there might be a difficulty over his account of Guadeloupe; but added that Helmut Schmidt and others had already produced their accounts, and that Schmidt had, in his view, given a very inaccurate account of the meeting.

  8 SEPTEMBER 1986

  I lunched with Ray Seitz (then the no. 2 in the American embassy), who gave an interesting account of the problems facing the US Foreign Service, in which over 50 per cent of ambassadorial appointments are now political. [An interview in the Financial Times on 7 November 2015 with Bill Burns claims that he had retired from the United States government after a 33-year career ‘as only the second career diplomat in US history to have made it that high in the Department’. Since much of these diary extracts must appear very critical of Margaret Thatcher, I should mention, in her favour, that there were no political appointments to embassies or high commissions during her time as Prime Minister; and the plethora of political advisers was only to blossom when Tony Blair arrived in No. 10.]

  9 SEPTEMBER 1986

  Robert Armstrong told me today that the PM has given way (with extreme ill grace) on the move of the ODA to Richmond Terrace, in the face of a warning minute from Robert that the Public Accounts Committee might wish to delve into the reasons for extra expenditure of £3–4 million. He thinks she will only give up after a ‘bloodbath meeting’ at which Geoffrey Howe will be exposed to maximum flak (and attacks on alleged FCO misuse of the old Home Office building). Robert again commented that the tone of the PM’s anti-Foreign Office feeling was very strident, and not exactly countered by Charles Powell.

  Virginia and I dined at ICI, for their annual dinner for permanent secretaries, with Denys Henderson as host. I am not sure if it was at this dinner, or a subsequent occasion, when Denys, or his successor, walked me down the corridor, along which were portraits of all previous chairmen, and told me that when Margaret Thatcher had similarly come to dinner, she had ticked off each portrait with the words: ‘He wasn’t bad,’ ‘He was dreadful,’ and so on.

  12 SEPTEMBER 1986

  An awkward situation has arisen today over sanctions. Hans-Dietrich Genscher telephoned Geoffrey Howe to say that Helmut Kohl was adamantly against sanctions on coal. This puts the whole package of Hague measures into confusion, just at the moment when the US Congress has reached agreement on a stronger package. It will tempt Margaret Thatcher to unravel the whole thing, particularly when the Frontline States themselves are backsliding fast on sanctions. Geoffrey himself thinks the situation is manageable, since dropping coal will certainly lead some community colleagues to press for sanctions on vegetables and fruit, which the PM is adamantly determined to block.

  17 SEPTEMBER 1986

  I had an hour’s meeting with Geoffrey Howe to prepare him for his public expenditur
e bilateral with the Chief Secretary on 19 September. We may have some difficulty stiffening him, since he let the office down badly two years ago. There may be some psychological problem of the Chancellor poacher having turned Foreign Secretary-gamekeeper – just as I later faced problems with Douglas Hurd, as a diplomatic-service-officer poacher having turned ministerial-gamekeeper.

  When John Major was (to his surprise) moved by Margaret Thatcher from being Chief Secretary to Foreign Secretary, I asked him whether he knew what the Treasury brief was for the diplomatic service and he claimed that the only brief he had looked at was the Transport brief, since he had been convinced that if he was moving anywhere it would be to Transport.

  Television last night showed the PM in Bonn, gratuitously drawing attention to her opposition to sanctions, and ridiculing the idea of ‘signals’ to South Africa at precisely the moment when Geoffrey Howe had put together a reduced package in Brussels and was telling the press that it would be a clear ‘signal’ – having successfully left the onus on the Germans and the Portuguese. [A foretaste of Margaret Thatcher’s later undermining of John Major at the Commonwealth heads of government conference in Kuala Lumpur three years later.]

  18 SEPTEMBER 1986

  Geoffrey Howe rang me at 1.30 a.m., with a complicated request for advice on a Soviet swap. I first of all did not realise who Geoffrey was; and then found it very difficult to understand what the question was. No doubt it will be clear tomorrow. [It did, indeed, transpire that it was an American proposal to include Oleg Gordievsky’s family in a deal with the Russians.] Geoffrey asked me whether it was a capital offence to telephone PUSs in the middle of the night, and said that when he had done the same to the Chief Secretary, and apologised the next day, the Chief Secretary had totally forgotten that he had telephoned, or why!

  [Geoffrey’s habit of telephoning people at unsocial hours led to an amusing incident which Nick Browne recounted at his farewell party from Middle East Department for Tehran in early 1997. His young son had come into his bedroom at 6.30 a.m. one morning on April Fool’s Day to say that Sir Geoffrey Howe was on the telephone and wanted to speak to him. Nick – assuming this to be an April Fool – said: ‘Tell him to bugger off.’ The son returned a few minutes later, saying: ‘I told him to bugger off; but he says that he still wishes to speak to you.’]

  20 SEPTEMBER 1986

  Virginia and I drive to Chequers for the Prime Minister’s lunch for King Hussein and Queen Noor. One rather tiresome guest (an American wife) told me loudly that she ‘didn’t think people should marry wogs’ – obviously taking pride in shocking people. This reminded me of a call I received, as head of Middle East Department in the early 1970s, from the Saudi ambassador, Abdulrahman Al-Helaissi, to ask if I would be offended if someone called me a wog. I told him that I would be even more offended if he had been (as he clearly had), but that the origin of the expression was said to be an abbreviation for Westernised Oriental Gentleman, and therefore not intrinsically offensive.

  There was a brief discussion after lunch about the strategic importance of the Gulf and the Cape route, on which Peter Carrington was splendidly direct in telling the PM that the latter depended on which war you were fighting. As NATO had only fourteen days of ammunition to fight a war, he thought that the sea route via the Cape for any strategic materials was going to be a bit slow.

  Elspeth Howe asked me if I could arrange for Geoffrey to visit Jordan, to which I replied: ‘How much is it worth?’ In reply, she promised not to raise the position of women in the service for a whole week.

  23 SEPTEMBER 1986

  I gave lunch to Nigel Wicks, who thought that the PM was even more anti-FCO since her holiday than before. He commented on Geoffrey Howe’s poor showing in Cabinet, but thought that the PM’s antipathy was primarily a difference of philosophy from his, and resentment of the FCO’s attachment to compromise and consensus (although he made the familiar comment that she has little quarrel with such individual members of the service that she meets).

  26 SEPTEMBER 1986

  I called on Janet Young for a round-up, mainly on staffing questions, including morale and recruitment, on which she is very keen to help and has the right ideas. The sad fact is that she has little clout with Geoffrey Howe, and even less with other ministers.

  A flood of weekend papers tonight. My ration could just be squeezed into one box. Geoffrey Howe had four – and loves it! (I later reported that he had returned from New York, having demolished six boxes.)

  29 SEPTEMBER 1986

  Geoffrey Howe held a meeting on Hong Kong, on which he is likely to find the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England in opposition to him. He is also fighting a lone battle (with Tom King) on the question of three-man courts in Ireland. But he seems to thrive on it all.

  A launch party this evening at George Weidenfeld’s for Paul Wright’s book A Brittle Glory, at which Lord Chalfont told the story of the beaver at the foot of Beaver Dam telling a friend that someone else had built it, but it was based on his idea.

  7 OCTOBER 1986

  In a discussion with Geoffrey Howe about James Craig’s leaked valedictory despatches (it having emerged that several newspapers, including the Financial Times and The Independent, had copies), Geoffrey, rather characteristically, tended to be critical of James’s rudeness about the Arabs, and the unwisdom of being that frank in government documents. He even tried to get me to warn heads of mission to be more careful in their drafting. I refused, on the grounds that it would be quite wrong to curb any member of the public service from giving frank advice, however unwelcome.

  8 OCTOBER 1986

  An injunction on the Craig despatches was granted this morning. I received a telephone call at 1.30 a.m. from the resident clerk [who identified himself many years later as Charles Crawford, after Matthew Parris’s parting shots had included one of the despatches in 2011] to say that the Glasgow Herald was printing both despatches and was about to release them. After I had contacted John Bailey, the Treasury solicitor, a judge was found in Edinburgh prepared to issue the Scottish equivalent of an injunction, which had to be driven – in a coach and four? – to Glasgow at 4.30 a.m. By that time, of course, hundreds of copies of the Glasgow Herald were already on the streets.

  I agreed with Robert Armstrong this evening that the police should be called in to investigate the leak. Anthony Loehnis telephoned me from the Bank of England to say that one of the journalists who interviewed James Craig (called Forbes) was an ex-Bank of England man; and that the bank had discovered (very efficiently) that Forbes’s signature was on the official receipt of the despatches.

  Two days later, I was asked to call on the Attorney General, Sir Michael Havers, at the law courts. As I had a credentials appointment at Buckingham Palace later that morning, I had to go in diplomatic uniform, telling Sir Michael that I was merely trying to uphold the dignity of the FCO – which the Daily Mirror claimed this morning was the reason for all this fuss about a leaked despatch. I also had a further conversation with John Bailey, who told me that The Observer was now claiming that the full text of the offending despatch was not only available to the Saudi embassy; it was also being carried extensively both on agency tapes and on Israeli radio.

  I commented: ‘The press have behaved unspeakably this week. It is not as if there is any particular principle they are trying to defend.’

  13 OCTOBER 1986

  My morning meeting of under-secretaries was largely taken up with the Reykjavík summit, and the implications of Reagan’s stated hopes for the abolition of all nuclear weapons within ten years. This will cause considerable alarm, both in the Quai d’Orsay and in No. 10.

  21 OCTOBER 1986

  The PM chaired a meeting today to discuss the Hindawi trial, and decided, with only Tim Renton putting up a contrary argument, that we should break relations with Syria. I met a rather disconsolate Tim afterwards, who said that he had received no support from other ministers. I imagine that the expulsio
n of Haider might well have led to a break anyway; but this is bad news, and we are already thinning out our embassy in Beirut (a fact that unfortunately leaked in the press today).

  22 OCTOBER 1986

  Geoffrey Howe returned from Hong Kong this morning and held two office meetings – one on arms control and one on Syria, on which he is dismayed by the ministerial decision, but has concluded that there is no hope of changing minds – an appalling case of decision by intimidation. A verdict on Hindawi is now expected tomorrow, and it is not excluded that he may be acquitted. Geoffrey (as an ex-lawyer) commented this morning that it was a case that he would have enjoyed defending.

  A meeting at 6 p.m. with Robert Armstrong and others to consider his draft brief for the PM’s meeting tomorrow on Richmond Yard; but the meeting was interrupted by a dramatic intervention from Nigel Wicks, who arrived to tell us that the PM had agreed after all that the ODA move should go ahead, and that her meeting had therefore been called off. The PM has however demanded an assessment of the FCO’s use of the main office buildings, on which she clearly has a vision (or has heard reports) of extravagant and wasteful use of them. But at least one piece of bloodshed has been saved.