Dislocated to Success (12 page)

Chapter 12

I think that it was about a year after the Dislocation when we could finally say that the UK was out of full-time crisis mode; we certainly weren’t out of the woods, but unemployment had levelled off, albeit at both a high and subsidised level, steps to protect our economic prosperity and stop our population from starving had been put in place, and slavery had been abolished throughout what was being called the new Commonwealth - calling it the new Empire was regarded as being rather de trop. There were still some niggles, like Massachusetts, but they were more in Michael’s bailiwick than mine. We were no longer constantly fire-fighting; to some extent the dice had been rolled and we were waiting to see what they would bring up.

Despite being Foreign Secretary, I was not actually part of what some people have called “The Kitchen Cabinet”. Myself and Michael were somewhat on the outside, brought in when needed and our contributions appreciated - but at least we were not as far on the outside as someone like Nicholas Ridley, who appeared to have moved from being one of the elect of the True Believers in the Monetarist Flame to being the latest whipping boy for the problems around the persistence of unemployment. Of course, Nick still believed in the Invisible Hand, whilst the PM was rather keen on people not being idle during our great crisis.

Of course, Michael took it worse than I did; I was excluded because I was felt to be a gossip, Peter Morrison
[48]
- who was not exactly the soul of discretion - told me one evening. In a way, they were right; gossip is an important currency and a useful way of getting information around. However, I did know when to keep it zipped about very important matters and I was rapidly learning what to feed and not to feed around more minor matters. However, I will say this: if people think you are an incorrigible chatterbox, they tend to open up a little themselves and you get to find things out that otherwise you wouldn’t.

A lot of people did wonder why we had given France such a good deal for a few commercial concessions and a low tariff regime. The reasons for this were threefold: firstly, France was the biggest unified economy in Europe - we felt if anyone could start off exports properly it would be France; secondly, we felt that by throwing in a few sweeteners we would tempt France into greater capital purchases; and thirdly, there was the question of North America and the division of it. The rather good deal was predicated on a once-and-for-all settlement greatly in favour of the UK in North America.

The problem was that legally, or at least by the legal concepts of trans-Europe, France had some form of rights via possession over a critical part of North America: the Mississippi valley. Their possession was very weak, but it was there; the
courier du bois
had established French trade - if not French power - in the area. British power, on the other hand, barely reached to the Appalachians and in many cases was short of the historic 1763 line. Now the advantage of the French is that with Fleury, Orry and Chauvelin they had people who could read the runes of what had happened and learn from it. I was slightly disturbed by their Algerian fetish; it had clearly been a terrible mistake last time, and I wasn’t convinced what they had learnt was what the British people had wanted to them to learn. Outside of that, they understood that their chances of keeping control of the area they claimed were none; what they sought to do was retain the best areas for France.

So started a very lengthy series of negotiations about North America; they were to take several years, not least because of the need for accurate maps in the valley of the Mississippi, but partly because both sides were looking to see what advantage could be gained around the margins. To be absolutely honest, there was only one really major change between the start and the end of the process and that concerned the status of Prince Edward Island. There was, of course, plenty of time to make side decisions as well - the French had gone back to Dakar, ostensibly to stop slavery in the area; a few years later they would try do the same near Cabinda, with nearly disastrous results. There was a lot of fiddling around the borders in Ontario where people debated over minor river valleys that had seen no white man yet.

However, the vast majority of this could be left to civil servants on both sides. We had accepted that France would be given access to a fairly large amount of oil in Texas; this was a trade-off for the areas where they had given up a fairly firm claim. Of course, they would need UK help to exploit it, but given the French propensity to do things their way we expected them to leave most of it in the ground until they actually had their own ability to exploit it. The sticky points were essentially around Michigan and the Maritimes; everything else was fairly well agreed. We knew the Canadians would be unhappy about losing quite a large amount of Ontario, but to be absolutely frank we couldn’t be everywhere at once. I kept a ministerial eye on it, but we knew that the final resolution was probably years off, not least with the French cabinet changes a couple of years later. This was not helpful for cis-Canadians, but in the long run it was helpful overall; we got a better treaty, and everything had been discussed with both sides so there was very little enmity out of it. It also meant that French citizens in the areas being transferred, mainly on the Île Royale, had sufficient exposure to the new UK that they decided to stay.

Various developments mean that our original deal with Hannover had partially become redundant; Hannover and Hamburg had developed close ties, and the idea of expanding Geestmünde as a port and driving a rail line to it had become obsolete. Frederick was more amenable to changing this to take a railway line westwards towards Prussian Minden to gain access to coal reserves, with a short branch to the small Hannover oil deposits. This was fine by us as it actually cost a little less, and Frederick was of a generous spirit. He also wanted to start looking at education more closely, and came out with a grandiose scheme which would have provided an excellent education to the whole of Hannover. Had he been able to afford it for the dozen years or so before it would start to yield dividends then that might have lead to great things for Hannover, but it was both unaffordable and unrealistic; there weren’t enough teachers in the Electorate, nor was it possible to train them in the timescales available. Within four years he had moved to a more realistic scheme which has started to yield results.

However, this was becoming one of our ways of drawing cash in - more and more countries were willing to send a few people to the UK for schooling or training. Much of the demand was for English, which helped our hard-pressed language schools no end, but from 1981 onwards we started selling more and more places on other courses - Mark Carlisle
[49]
was instrumental at working with both Higher and Further Education institutions to design specialist courses, help integrate students, sell school places and working with ourselves and the Home Office produce a decent visa scheme for students. Of course, the numbers came nowhere near those before the Dislocation, but where exports outside the Commonwealth were running at about about 4% of the pre-Dislocation number by 1985, education was running at just over 20%. Mark had struggled in Cabinet before the Dislocation, but after his demotion and having to deal with a more concentrated portfolio he became a shining star.

Eventually, Mark hammered out a decent deal for Hannover; like Hamburg, they had seen considerable growth in their economy and were at the start of what was a period of great economic success.  Frederick’s interest in everything modern meant that, whilst things weren’t as widespread as he had hoped, particularly in rural areas, he at least laid the foundations for a number of decent schools - which helped Hannover no end. Whilst a couple of imperial cities managed a more comprehensive education, and Brandenburg-Prussia and Austria did some interesting things, Hannover probably had the most overall effect in the Empire as it aimed higher than the others.

A fly in the Diplomatic ointment for some time had been the Barbary States; whilst Morocco had generally given up piracy, and we had established a surprisingly firm friendship fairly quickly, the areas of Algeria and Tunisia were riddled with corsairs. They had quickly learned early on not to mess with British ships; the RN had a selection of various experimental gunboats out of Gibraltar and the RAF had a flight of Harriers. An early attempt to seize a provisions boat from Tetouan had given the Corsairs an early introduction to auto-cannon which they had not forgotten and they were fairly quick studies. By the end of the summer of 1980, they would steer away from British ships.

However, as we had sunk the majority of the Spanish Navy, Spain was left heavily open to their raids - and the main point of their raiding was to take slaves. This was becoming more and more frequent as Spring arrived in 1981, and was clearly unacceptable. British forces started to intervene, firstly by making manoeuvres and then with weapons unlocked; many of the people involved on the small boats were members of the trans-RN, and proved themselves very much to be in the traditional spirit of the Royal Navy. However, after a particularly large raid near Malaga had been foiled, it was decided enough was enough and and a force was sent to Algiers - where it was believed that there were some trans-British slaves.

Quite simply, we issued an ultimatum, the Bey of Algiers chose to ignore it and the consequences were dire for them. Essentially, we conducted a precision bombing of the citadel of Algiers - what we didn’t know was that the Algerines stored all their powder in the one tower. Which, unfortunately, meant that there was not a lot left of that tower, or the buildings around it, or the Bey of Algiers. What remained of the Algerine civil authorities became curiously compliant, and a number of trans British and Irish slaves were liberated - although, astoundingly, a handful chose to remain in Algiers, which the psychologists put down to Stockholm syndrome. We had no further trouble from Algiers and the other Algerian cities also became very quiet, mainly leaving their piratical ways to preying on themselves, which also mercifully removed the French excuse for any intervention.

This Algiers action pretty much put paid to any piracy West of Gozo. I expected some form of complaint from the Sublime Porte - who was, after all, the feudal overlord of the Algerians - however, there was not a whimper. There was a little note that Tunis was a loyal and valued vassal, but nothing about the Bey of Algiers and his assorted fractious and rebellious underlings. The reason was that the Bey of Tunis at least paid lip service to the Ottomans and some tribute when reminded, whilst the Bey of Algiers and his supposed vassals in Oran, Bone and Constantine did not. The news that slavers had been put down generally received the approval of the British people, with only a handful of very strange people on the extreme right and extreme left objecting to the action for very different reasons.

Of course, much of this passed most people by, as the Prince of Wales announced his engagement. The announcement meant that the Foreign Office had to swing into action again, and I particularly involved the civil servants I had brought over from Culture and Arts in this. There have been a lot of stories told that Charles finally made up his mind because otherwise he felt there might be pressure to marry a suitable foreign princess. This was far from the truth; there was absolutely no intention of forcing the Prince of Wales to take a foreign bride. Both the Queen and the Foreign Office were against such an idea as sending the wrong signal to Europe, where marriages were used to seal alliances. The actuality of it all is far more simple: Charles, like his uncle, was smitten by a woman he could not marry; unlike his uncle, he understood his duty and did not press the issue. The lady in question was Dislocated as she was visiting her sister in Australia; so after a suitable period of that not-mourning that those of us affected so went through, he decided that it was time to marry.

There had always been a list of eligible girls; in fact there were actually two lists, one which was mainly the fantasy of the press and the second which was more realistic. He started courting the more realistic one, thank goodness; they were at least intellectual equals, which helped considerably, and I think they reached a very sensible accommodation very quickly. It did surprise some members of the press and there were royal watchers who questioned if returning to an old girlfriend was wise, but having lost the love of his life I think Charles decided that he needed to get back to stability rather than risk an adventure. It was a wise move for them both, I feel; I don’t think the other girl would have suited him and she ended up with an excellent, happy - if somewhat unconventional - marriage.

Chapter 13

Whilst preparations for the Royal Wedding took up a lot of time, it had been decided that a short tour of the more major players in Italy was also required. With the exception of Genoa, the Italian states ranged from intrigued (in the case of Venice), through indifferent (in the case of Tuscany) to downright hostile (in the case of Parma, where there was a succession problem). Several of the states were, of course, Hapsburg apanages. The diplomatic side of the Royal Wedding plans could be left fairly capably in the hands of Lord Belstead and the Queen Mother, who was being invaluable in this; also assisting was Landgraf Ernst II. Leopold von Hessen-Rotenburg, who had come for minor medical treatment but whose knowledge of who was who in the HRE was very useful.

The RN were a little sticky about my request for a cruiser; after all, we only had two in service (and Belfast, which was sort-of in service). But, eventually, I managed to get the use of HMS Tiger after stressing that we needed to impress, particularly with the case of the Most Serene Republic. It was almost compulsory at each stop to give a demonstration of the 6" guns - the RN enjoyed that immensely, and most of the local admirals were very impressed or very scared.