Horizons, Memoirs of a British Diplomat
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Horizons Memoirs of a British Diplomat by Anthony Goodenough First published 2021 by Goodenough Editions 8 St Paul’s Mews, Dorking, RH4 2HP [email protected] This second, shorter, edition covers my working life in the Diplomatic Service and in the charitable world, first as a young teacher with Voluntary Service Overseas in Sarawak and, after retirement, as Secretary General of the Order of St John, Vice President of Wellington College and a Governor of Goodenough College. It does not include material on my early life, my family and ancestors, all of which are covered in the first edition only, under the title “Many Horizons”. This edition is available only on-line. All rights reserved Copyright 2021 Anthony Michael Goodenough ISBN 978-1-9993116-1-2 Dedication and thanks This book is dedicated with love and gratitude to my wife Veronica and to our children Eleanor, Nicholas and Robert and their families, for whom it was primarily written. I am also enormously grateful to my brother Simon for his endless patience and help in editing the book and also for allowing me to quote from his recent research into our family history. He has published the full fruits of his work in his book ‘Family’ and in a companion volume, ‘A Grand Packet of Letters’. I should also like to express my warm appreciation and gratitude to all my colleagues in the British Diplomatic Service with whom I was lucky enough to work in the course of my career. Inevitably, in memoirs of this kind, the word “I” features far too often and there is not room to do justice to the work of every individual, only a few of whom are mentioned here by name. But we were all members of a team which was collectively responsible for whatever we did. I was most aware of this in my last three jobs, as High Commissioner to Ghana, Assistant Under Secretary of State in London and High Commissioner to Canada. My heartfelt thanks to you all. My particular thanks are due to David Logan, my friend of more than 70 years from Malta, school, university and the Diplomatic Service, for his advice on the text and for encouraging me to publish the book. Finally I want to thank all the Ministers for whom I worked for their political leadership and personal kindness which made my time in the Diplomatic Service all the more enjoyable. CONTENTS Introduction Page 5 Chapter 1 The Foreign Office 6 2 Dictatorship in Greece: Colonels 13 3 Britain joins Europe 20 4 Unfinished business in Africa 25 5 A new relationship with France 44 6 Terrorism and European integration 52 7 Dictatorship in Pakistan: Generals 60 8 Management innovations in London 82 9 Dictatorship in Ghana: a Flight Lieutenant 99 10 And a dictatorship in Togo 128 11 Good Government in Africa 134 12 Miracle in South Africa, catastrophe in Rwanda and an African Funeral 160 13 The Commonwealth: Britain’s hand of history 173 14 What can Britain and Canada learn from each other? 181 Appendix 1 Voluntary Service Overseas in Sarawak 225 Appendix 2 The uttermost corners of Greece 232 Appendix 3 Retirement work 259 Index 268 4 INTRODUCTION Three general themes emerge from this book. The first is the wide variety of my career. Although it was relatively conventional and, unlike some of my diplomatic colleagues, I was rarely involved in major headline events, it was never dull and always busy. I served a quarter of my time dealing with African affairs, mostly from London but also as High Commissioner to Ghana. Two of my postings were in Europe - Greece and France. One was in Asia - Pakistan. One to North America - as High Commissioner to Canada. Three of these five overseas posting were to dictatorships - Greece, Pakistan and Ghana. The other two were to strong Western democracies - France and Canada. A half of my entire career was spent in London, an unusually high proportion of the total. In London I served in a variety of roles: desk officer, assistant head of department, head of department, under secretary, and ministerial private secretary, all in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and as an assistant secretary in the Cabinet Office. Three of these London jobs dealt in one way or another with the European Economic Community. The second and more important underlying theme is of Britain gradually adjusting from its former position as a major power to a more limited role in which it still exercised global responsibilities but was increasingly obliged to prioritise its international aims, making the most of the hand that history dealt us as well as of its new membership of the European Community - until in a fit of national madness we decided to leave it. The third theme is more personal. A constant challenge throughout my career was how best to balance the demands of the job and the love I felt for my family. Some times they conflicted; and on rare occasions I felt obliged to allow the first to take precedence, although the Diplomatic Service was good at helping its members to reconcile the two as far as possible. In the first edition of this book, under the title ‘Many Horizons’ I included the main parts of my family’s story. Veronica and our children, Eleanor, Nicholas and Robert added an account of their own activities and some of their impressions and memories. This second edition concentrates uniquely on my own working life. The original draft of the chapters on Africa and its affairs was far longer than appears in this memoir. I have lodged it in the archives of Churchill College to add to the oral account I gave of my career for the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme in case it proves useful for research purposes. This memoir contains a shorter version. 5 CHAPTER 1 THE FOREIGN OFFICE, 1964 - 1967 I first thought of the Foreign Office as a career at school. A friend was aiming to go to Cambridge before, he hoped, sitting the FO exam. I found that one advantage of being able to tell people that I too wanted to enter the FO was that I had something to say to my uncles and godfathers when they asked me what I was planning to do in life. And, gradually, the idea became increasingly firm. I confess that I had very little understanding of what a FO career would entail; but I liked the thought of life overseas and of working for the Government for which my father and maternal grandfather had also worked, the first as a naval officer and the second as a colonial governor. I had also considered schoolmastering as well as overseas educational publishing, management consultancy, Shell, the British Council and the Commonwealth Development Corporation. My uncle, a senior banker, warned me to steer clear of the latter and feared that I would find government service apt to be cramped and confining and therefore frustrating. But the Warden of New College, my Oxford college, Sir William Hayter, had been Ambassador to the Soviet Union and encouraged me in my ambition to try for the Foreign Office. On the other hand, my mediaeval history tutor, Harry Bell, recommended the Commonwealth Relations Office. “Anthony,” he said, “you are a Commonwealth man.” As things turned out I was to enter the Foreign Office one year before it and the Commonwealth Relations Office were amalgamated. And I was to serve in two foreign countries, two Commonwealth countries and in Pakistan when it was foreign but just before, happily, it returned to the Commonwealth. So I contrived to follow the advice of both Warden Hayter and Harry Bell. My entry to the Foreign Office did not go smoothly. I took the preliminary exam of four rather general papers in January of my third year, 1963; but failed to get a high enough mark to qualify for what was known then as Method 2. This was a three day series of interviews and oral tests held by the Civil Service Commission and introduced after World War II for the benefit of candidates who had been fighting in the war and could not therefore have been expected to take an academic exam. But I did qualify for Method I, the original pre-war academic exam in which one sat seven three hour papers in the subject of one’s choice shortly after the university final degree exams had finished in June. I spent the intervening three weeks swatting up all my notes again, including some from 6 The Foreign Office school days since the Civil Service syllabus was not identical to Oxford’s. Successful candidates from both Methods then went for final interview at the Civil Service Commission. I heard the result in Sarawak as I recount in Appendix 1. Thus it was, on 3 September 1964, on my return from Sarawak, I joined the old Foreign Office. Four years later, on 17 October 1968, the Foreign Office was to merge with the Commonwealth Office into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (since 2020 Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office - FCDO). On that date, Michael Stewart, the last Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, would become the first Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The process of amalgamating the two offices was under way when I arrived; but I am still proud to have joined the pre-1968 Foreign Office. Rightly or wrongly, we regarded ourselves as an elite. New entrants were given no formal training, only a seven day introductory course with 20 or so fellow fast streamers, destined for both the Foreign Office (FO) and Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), a sign of the impending merger.