Dislocated to Success (20 page)

There were a couple of neutral things as well. Firstly, we had been asked to take Ekaterina Alekseyevna Dolgorukova into exile; she was not wanted in Russia. Michael had agreed to this and brought the young lady back with their party; I wasn't so happy at being used as a dumping ground for Romanov disputes. Secondly, we were told that if we wanted immigrants, we could have as many Old Believers as we wanted - I was sure Michael H would be delighted, but I ordered a brief made to present to him about it.

Finally, there was the just plain bad. We were informed that Elizaveta Petrovna would be an entirely suitable wife for Prince Andrew and that they would even find a large dowry for the marriage - I was quite impressed by the sum. There were, of course, some conditions - such as no inheritance, never setting foot in Russia again and, of course, being deprived of her estates and properties. Kent suggested that Yekaterina Alexeevna might more suitable for Andrew, but alas, she was only three.

We were also told that the Ulyanov family had been dealt with - root and branch. I struggled for a second until Kent informed me that ‘Ulyanov’ was Lenin's surname. Several other Bolshevik leaders ancestors had suffered the same fate - most had been buried alive.

We were also informed that any attempt to disturb God and the Tsarina's order by fomenting rebellion amongst serfs would lead to severe action, and that all British newspapers, magazines and books were totally forbidden in Russia - forever. I anticipated a roaring samizdat trade in the future, probably run by Cheltenham - after all, we had to give them something to do. All in all, it had been an interesting mission, but not one Kent was willing to endure again unless there was a vast need.

Of course, whilst this went on, the election continued apace. The concerns about the PM were justified; she did not perform well in the first part of the campaign, but who can be surprised at that - contrary to the tales put about by both her most committed supporters and her most committed enemies, she is not made completely of iron. This led to a nasty attack of the pollywobbles; there were a couple of bad polls that showed us only 2 or 3 percent ahead, which - given the boundaries - would mean only a bare majority, and a number of colleagues in marginals were getting panicky. Mercifully, Mark Thatcher was found and the PM roared back into action, which may well have saved us the election.

As the election got nearer, I was rolled out to make a few speeches; I was told I was quite popular in the party these days, and I certainly had a decent reception in most places. I emphasised how bad Labour would be for foreign affairs and how they would damage our slowly growing export trade. The problem is, most of the Labour vote is intensely tribal and will vote for its party come what may no matter what the policies; whilst we have a similarly large wing, ours tend to be a bit more capable of drifting off - especially if the Liberals look sane. Unfortunately, at this election the Liberals looked particularly sane, with attractive policies about America and some decent slogans, whilst we looked very “Safety First” - offering seemingly nothing more than a firm hand on the tiller. Now, that was considered by Saatchi and Saatchi to be the right thing in these circumstances, combined with a selection of the wilder quotes from the Labour left on posters. Tony Benn, who is actually fairly thoughtful and considered, although usually also wrong, is always very good for an out-of-context quote accompanied by an unfortunate google-eyed photograph.

There were trouble spots: West London was dire, the inner south east commuter belt was horrible, but we had huge majorities there so there was no effect; the car towns were very bad as well, although sadly not so poor as to lose us Tony Marlow. Where we were improving our vote also had little effect; the increase in the vote in the North East and industrial Yorkshire was still buried under the usual mountain of Labour votes. The one change that was more significant was amongst the black vote. The Conservatives have traditionally had an appalling record with ethnic minorities, but we did harbour Enoch for over 30 years. However, we did much, much better amongst black voters in this election and their turnout increased significantly; whilst Labour still won a majority of the black vote overall, we won around 40% instead of 4%. This lead to some significant gains in parts of London; it also led to Derek Laud
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in Parliament at the last election, but buggers can’t be choosers.

Of course, I didn't bother with too much of the actual election night; it was clear that I was unwanted in Chelmsford, and despite some annoying juvenile from ITN doorstepping me, I managed to pass the first hour or two with one of the world’s last bottles of pre-Dislocation Montrachet and then retired. I was awakened to the sight of Shirley Williams in a horrific yellow pantsuit burbling on to Angela Rippon about her historic victory in Cambridge. Oh dear. It had clearly been a good night for the Liberals, and not just in their usual misty Celtic fastnesses.

I was quite surprised to be summoned to The Presence rather early; I did run through my mind if there had been any little gaffes recently, such as re-telling Critchley's joke about her new title of The Great White She-Elephant. However, I did think I was secure in my position, at least for a while.

I had the radio on in the car picking up the news; they were interviewing Wedgie - who had scraped through in Bristol - and he was cheerfully calling for heads to roll, a leadership contest and a full-throated but British socialism to be the basis of the next manifesto. We had hoped to hear so much more in this vein from him during the campaign, but the wily old fox had worked out he was in the proverbial and had ensconced himself in Bristol since late June.

Anyway, I was in before ten and I was handed a list of the Fallen for reference; it included a couple of provisional names, but there was no one really important on it except for young Needham - who would end up entertainingly scuttling off to the Irish House of Lords and doing rather well there. The latest gossip it seems was the awful "Red Ken
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" was now the member for somewhere hideous in Hackney - not at all bad news from some viewpoints.

Anyway, I was ushered in to see the Leaderene and was offered real coffee; real coffee wasn't a problem at the FO, but Number Ten was usually very keen on ersatz. My trepidation increased slightly; was this the hanged man's hearty breakfast? However, it seemed my palpitations were premature: there was to be a reshuffle, and it would be quite a large reshuffle - especially of the middle and lower ranks. There was also a small reorganisation of departmental responsibilities etc. However, why I had been invited in early was two-fold. Firstly, the FO was to formally lose responsibility for the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa to the CO; not that we had much to do with them anyway. Of course, this was to be made more complex later, but at the time it was fairly simple. There were also to be cuts to the number of ministers; 2 Ministers of State and 2 Parliamentary Under-Secretaries was the giddy limit - one of whom would be from the Lords - and I'd only got that because I was away so much. The question was, was this acceptable - with an edge that if it wasn't, then I knew what to do.

I understand from conversations afterwards that, had I demurred, then Geoffrey would have got the position - which might have been for the best for the party in the long run given the amount of pique Geoffrey had about his sideways move. However, I did not flounce; I wasn't ready for retirement yet, and to be fair, the cuts were reasonable. I wasn't too keen on the expansion of Michael's little empire when that became apparent, but that is the nature of politics.

It was then suggested that I could come up with names for approval for the Ministries; Number 10 suggest a complete clear-out except for little Rifkind
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. I tended to agree, and I had been considering a list for some time. I suggested Rifkind was good for a proper Minister of State and Margaret smiled; I also suggested that William Waldegrave
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might be ready for the other position, or maybe Alick Buchanan-Smith
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. As for the Pussies, I suggested the Earl of Gowrie
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for the Lords; I was expecting some resistance to that - I knew that Dennis Thatcher had been very, very rude about him - but there was none. For the Commons, I suggested Tristan Garel-Jones
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or again the capable and urbane Matthew Parris; the eyebrows shot up at my suggesting Parris, and a comment was made that perhaps people might look a little askance at that one. The PM said she would talk about those, but saw no real problems; I would be consulted further tonight. The reshuffle proper would start tomorrow - at the moment there were consultations going on.

On leaving I was assailed by young Gow; he mentioned that that old rogue Pardoe
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was back in Cornwall North and that that unspeakable yokel populist Penhaligon
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had managed to increase his already large majority to over 17,000 in Truro, but generally there weren't expected to be any more problems in the Friday declarations. He also told me that he and Morrison had to talk the PM out of appointing Clark
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as Secretary of State for Defence; she was peeved with Francis again. I said I would find it very difficult sharing a Cabinet table with Clark, and he grinned; whilst he was a friend of Alan he couldn't imagine putting him in charge of nuclear weapons. A flunky came up at that point to tell us that Richmond was on a fourth recount - I enquired what the margin was and was told it was fluctuating at about 10. Ye Gods.

I felt I had earned another period at the FO, but I was aware that I had better start grooming some successors - the last thing the UK needed was one of Margaret's steely-eyed Essex accountants with a clipboard in charge of our foreign relations.

Just before Christmas, the Ottomans came back again with another proposal - it was actually their fourth, but the other two had been variations on the original theme with little to recommend them, so I had them turned down without consultation to Cabinet. This scheme was somewhat different; it was less ambitious in scale, it merely sought to provide a backbone railway through the Empire rather than the all-encompassing thing that it had been. It had some cash up front, which had shown that they were capable of learning something, and whilst it still wasn’t acceptable I did feel I had to take it at least to Norman and Nigel
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. Nigel was being a much more hands-on Chancellor than Geoffrey had been about such schemes.

The end result was the same: the Ottomans wanted a railway that could take their troops from Basra to Nis - well, the maps said Belgrade, but Belgrade was still Austrian (although uncomfortably so). The extensive branch lines and the Greek and Egyptian spurs had gone, although there were hints in the text that they were not forgotten. There was a schedule of cash payments to be made each year, which my people said were just about possible but Norman claimed would be severely impacted by economic changes. The Ottomans had about 80% of the coffee business in the UK at the moment; he believed that would have shrunk to around 25% by the end of the millennium. There were also a series of suggested tariff reforms, which looked fair but felt foul, involving more extensive access for us - essentially everywhere but Palestine and Greece proper - but a bump to to category B for them. They also suggested we took a lease on Crete until the loan was paid off; we kept that condition very much under wraps - we didn’t want Crete and we were worried that the RN, who never saw a base they didn’t like, might combine that with the hint of talks about a Suez Canal concession to get this through.

We decided to say no; we did hint that the cash up front was enough to pay for a railway from The City to Adrianople (and some way further) and that we felt that they were good enough in credit terms to maybe stretch to Sofia. Also, if they were willing to accept a more limited railway - the scale of the proposal was still rather grand - then they might be able to get from The City to Konya with a suitable credit agreement. We conveyed this to them just before Christmas, and sat back and awaited the next in the series of Ottoman overstretch proposals. Unfortunately, we didn’t get another proposal for a long while, because Topal Pasha - who had clearly promised much - went under in a palace coup in early 1983. However Topal got off lightly and was sent to the Princes Isles, which is quite generous considering he had his predecessor strangled and his two main rivals killed by a mob. The most worrying development was that Asil Nadir - a former ladies tights salesman - ended up as chief advisor to the Governor of Cyprus after the coup.

Chapter 17

The BBC started 1983 off very well.  They came up with “Yes, Governor”, which transplanted the hapless Jim Hacker to British Equatoria and had Sir Humphrey as head of the Colonial Civil Service. Like moving the “The Good Life” to British South East Africa it was somewhat contrived, but it worked remarkably well. The acting was, of course, superb and the look on Hacker’s face when he realises that he isn’t free of Humphrey is delightful. Of course, it quickly became compulsive viewing amongst the political classes - who all watched it and who all discussed it; the PM was quite a big fan, for instance. However, we all pretended that we are not Hacker and that our department was not like that, but any small problem or obstruction was often blamed on the Sir Humphreys.

In a way, I have been mercifully free of them. The Dislocation was such a shock to the FO and we lost so many good people, that most of the manipulative types were either shunted elsewhere, were Lost or took retirement. A younger breed of diplomat was generally in charge, with a few old retirees brought back in places - although by 1985 they were starting to make noises about re-retiring again. Not that there weren’t attempts to move things in some directions; the old jokes about the Camel Corps have some basis in fact, and on occasion I have heard my decisions referred to as being “courageous”. Certainly around the Treaty of Bordeaux there was a prominent group of “Let’s be nice to the Spanish” who had to be reminded that we are the world’s foremost power by a country mile and that other nations’ foolish actions have to have consequences.