'Little Friends of All the World?' the Experiences Of
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‘LITTLE FRIENDS OF ALL THE WORLD?’ THE EXPERIENCES OF BRITISH DIPLOMATIC SERVICE CHILDREN 1945 – 1990. Sara Anya Hiorns Queen Mary University of London Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 1 DECLARATION I, Sara Anya Hiorns, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Sara Anya Hiorns. Date: 31 January 2017 This thesis is the outcome of a studentship within the project ‘Representing and belonging: social and cultural change in the British diplomatic service since 1945’, a collaboration between the School of History, Queen Mary University of London and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Historians, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of its Extended Collaborative Doctoral Award Programme (grant reference number AH/L003201/1, this studentship advertised in 2013 as ‘The diplomatic family at home and abroad.’) 2 ABSTRACT This thesis is a historical reconstruction of the experiences of children born in to the British Diplomatic Service between 1945 and 1990. The first academic investigation of its kind, in a greatly under-documented area, it uses oral history testimony as its primary method of investigation. Source material was gathered by the author through interviews and correspondence with a sample of 23 former Diplomatic Service children born between 1942 and 1992. This evidence was compared with existing material which referred to Diplomatic Service children. This included the contents of Newsletters produced by the Foreign Service Wives Association, later the Diplomatic Service Wives’ Association, and twentieth-century memoirs by diplomats. The dominant themes suggested by interviewees and respondents formed the basis of the thesis’ four thematic chapters. These take as their subjects Separation, Transience, Identity and Home. A preceding Chapter which outlines internal Foreign Office policy towards children and families during the period under consideration provides background. The main questions considered were whether the findings shed light on existing stereotyped understandings of Foreign Office children, whether the participants’ experiences challenged historical narratives of childhood during the period and examined whether experiences differed according to gender. The richness and diversity of experiences recorded have made a multi-disciplinary approach necessary in order to provide a sufficiently structured framework for their interpretation. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My greatest debt is to the children of HM Diplomatic Service who agreed so generously to share with me their recollections of childhood. Without them this thesis would not have been possible. My thanks also to Anne Mavroleon Dixon and Piers Dixon and who offered me a quiet place to study the Dixon family manuscript magazine, The Double J. I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my research. Undertaking a Collaborative Doctoral Award has meant that I have benefitted from supervision from Queen Mary University of London with input from the Foreign and Commonwealth Historians. I am enormously grateful for the unstinting guidance and support of Dr Helen McCarthy, which has surely gone beyond the call of duty. Also at Queen Mary my thanks go to Dr Alastair Owens who painstakingly read my drafts and offered suggestions. Dr James Ellison and Prof Amanda Vickery were also generous with their help and advice. Among the Foreign Office Historians Professor Patrick Salmon, Dr Richard Smith, Dr Luke Gibbon and Isobelle Tombs have offered advice and support and new sources of friendship. The team at the Diplomatic Service Families Association, including Pam Gordon and Geraldine McKendrick, very kindly gave me access to their store of Newsletters. My PhD colleague and friend James Southern, along with Jess Douthwaite, has been a great source of encouragement, as well as curry and shepherd’s pie. Among other friends, my dear Mary Guyatt had faith in me from the start and set this process in motion and Katie Pettit was ‘at home’ for discussions at the British Library. My own children, Jessie and Carla, kept me entertained. Luke Jacobson paid for the wine and provided proof that, despite the passage of time, there is no one with swagger like us. 4 I dedicate this thesis to the memory of Susan Caroline Parker. CONTENTS PAGE TITLE 1 DECLARATION 2 ABSTRACT 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 CONTENTS 5 ABBREVIATIONS 6 LIST OF FIGURES 7 INTRODUCTION 8 CHAPTER 1. THE FOREIGN OFFICE AND THE FAMILY 39 CHAPTER 2: SEPARATION 72 CHAPTER 3: TRANSIENCE 107 CHAPTER 4: IDENTITY 144 CHAPTER 5: HOME 183 CONCLUSION 222 APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEWEES AND RESPONDENTS BASIC BIOGRAPHICAL 232 DETAILS APPENDIX 2: PRO-FORMA INFORMATION SHEET WITH SUGGESTED 240 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS APPENDIX 3: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR PARENTS AND SPOUSES 242 BIBLIOGRAPHY 244 5 ABBREVIATIONS CEA Continuing Education Allowance CORB Children’s Overseas DSA Diplomatic Service Association DSFA Diplomatic Service Families Association DSWA Diplomatic Service Wives’ Association FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office FSA Foreign Service Association FSWA Foreign Service Wives’ Association PUS Permanent Under Secretary (eg. of the Foreign Office) PNEU Parents National Educational Union QBP Queen’s Birthday Party RAF Royal Air Force TCK Third Culture Kid TNA The National Archives, Kew 6 UAF Unaccompanied Air Freight LIST OF FIGURES All images prepared by the author unless otherwise stated. 1. ‘Parenthood’: Poem, Autumn 1990. Source: DSWA Newsletter, British Library. 2. FSWA Reaction to the Plowden Report, July 1964. Source: FSWA Newsletter, with thanks to the DSFA. 3. Advert for Country Cousins and Emergency Mothers Agency, Spring 1977 Source: DSWA Newsletter, British Library. 4. Original advert for Universal Aunts Agency, 1920s. Source: Universal Aunts, www.universalaunts.co.uk 5. Cover Diplomatic Service Wives Association Newsletter, Spring 1976. Source: DSWA Newsletter, British Library. 6. Housing on the British Consulate compound in Jeddah, classified by grade, circa 1980s. Source: FCO Historians, FCO Estates Inventory Albums. 7. Lady Fretwell organising a formal lunch at HM Ambassador’s residence in Paris, 1987. Source: Beryl Smedley, Partners in Diplomacy, (Ferring: West Sussex, 1990) 8. Glencairn, residence of HM Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland, circa. 1980s. Source: FCO Historians, FCO Estates Inventory Albums. 9. FSWA Newsletter piece on Family Allowances, 4 January 1962. 7 Source: FSWA Newsletter, with thanks to the DSFA. INTRODUCTION In October 2013, a magazine article about British punk band, The Clash, had this to say about the band’s lead singer, Joe Strummer: Punk fundamentalists were… outraged when they discovered that Joe had gone to some minor private school… suddenly, he was inauthentic, a poseur playing at being a punk, not the real thing. 1 These elements in Strummer’s family background, at odds with the iconoclastic, aggressive nature of the punk movement, have been widely reported. During his lifetime Strummer was at great pains to neutralise the assumption that he had been raised as member of the establishment. In interviews he gave poignant accounts of a boarding school career, and spoke about his father’s job – which paid the boarding school fees – with derision. 2 Joe Strummer – or John Grahame Mellor as he was born in 1952 – attended a private boarding school because his father Ronald worked for the British Diplomatic Service, the branch of the civil service that represents British interests overseas. The two-dimensional and dismissive criticism that he faced was not an unusual reaction to the assumed circumstances of diplomatic children from their contemporaries. As this thesis will argue, this prevailing view of their lives as elite and privileged was a misleading veneer for a set of experiences which was altogether more thought-provoking and complex. 1 Alan Jones, ‘The Clash Live On!’, UNCUT Magazine, October 2013. 2 Chris Salewicz, Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer, (London: Harper Collins, 2007), pp. 47 – 48. 8 More apposite is a comment about Strummer ‘trying on aliases for size’ because he struggled to find a personal identity.3 Another article stated that ‘beyond… a worldly background … he didn’t have a lot to give.’4 The influence of world music that became a familiar part of The Clash’s sound has been ascribed to a receptiveness to other cultures that was the result of Strummer’s peripatetic early years.5 A former partner commented on the contradictions in his personality in terms that will become familiar over the course of this thesis: ‘Joe was charming. He was brought up as an embassy child – he knew how to fix you a drink. But he was not all charm: he was a chameleon - he was exactly what you wanted him to be.’6 Strummer’s relationship with his parents was ambivalent. They got on, despite talk of neglect and heartlessness when he spoke about boarding school. Yet one subject he remained reticent about was the suicide of his brother David – another Diplomatic Service child - in 1970. Joe Strummer achieved worldwide fame as a musician, and the ways in which his formative experiences shaped his personality and his subsequent engagement with British society at a time of rapid change have been foregrounded in interviews and biographies.