Dislocated to Success (21 page)

All in all, “Yes, Governor” was quite a triumph for the Corporation, which had some difficulties in adapting to their new role. Like parts of the FO, the BBC is full of liberal-conservatives and the odd socialist; they were generally appalled by the new Imperialism, loathed the new Commonwealth and seemed to regard trans-Europe as somewhere between Nazis in Brocade and unredeemable primitives. There were times that they had to be reminded that they are the British Broadcasting Corporation; luckily many of their prima-donnas still to the day tend to regard anywhere dislocated as being too unbearable for words, so much of their European reporting has been done by younger, more flexible and hungry reporters.

The FO was and still is, however, responsible for much of the payment for the World Service, and as such it has fairly regular meetings with the BBC about broadcasting matters. We did not seek to direct actual content, although Gray Gowrie usually had a laundry list of complaints that had to be seen to. What we did was to say what we were happy to pay for and what we were not happy to pay for. For instance, the BBC wanted to completely mothball a number of language services rather than shut them down leaving the staff on some substantial retainers, as we saw no real audience for them for probably a decade if not longer; we simply said we weren’t paying for the mothballing. They were also been loath to take up the BBC Commonwealth mantle, but that was generally been Michael’s problem - and when he awarded a couple of colonial radio franchises to commercial broadcasters, the BBC oddly moved on the issue post haste.

Essentially, the World Service then as now mainly broadcasts to Europe. Both transistor and clockwork radios were not uncommon by 1983  in the better of bits of Europe, although they tended to be more communal in a tavern or other meeting place rather than privately owned. Audience figures were and are quite hard to discern, but I don’t think the BBC was wrong at the time in saying that around 100,000 people were fairly regular listeners of the French and German service and the English for Learners Service probably got around 400,000 listeners throughout Europe. The numbers have since grown somewhat despite more and more broadcasting in Europe by Europeans. Back then,  we paid for services in French, German, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Maghreb Arabic and Danish. The BBC also did a service in Lithuanian and Finnish; we didn’t believe that penetration of radios was sufficient to make those worthwhile so we didn’t subsidise it, and we had some severe doubts about the intelligibility of the Italian service but that was hardly the fault of the BBC. Back then we were still just discussing India and the Far East, the BBC were pushing for it, but we resisted temptation. To be honest, such things are unlikely to happen even in the next few years. There are,  of course, local services for Bombay and Phuket, but back then they were just the odd hour on a Forces network.

It wouldn’t be a new year without some form of trip to wave the flag and in 1983 I headed towards the Far East. Of course, there were some logistical problems in going to meet the various potentates of the East and their representatives. There were some places we just didn't want to sail to, there were others that were somewhat out of the way, and there was the general feeling that it would all take rather a lot of time. However, as it was often pointed out, the East was where there were quite a lot of goods coming our way and not a lot being sent back in return. However, unlike Europe, there was some considerable actual money around and a great deal of potential. Unfortunately, some of the regimes were even more politically poisonous than those of Europe, if they were looked at carefully - but as many had only small numbers of nationals or were little known, there was a certain amount of leeway as long was we didn't sell them arms. Needless to say, they all wanted to buy arms, which they had in common with Europe.

My first stop was Zanzibar. I had joined HMS Belfast at Lawrence Marks having flown there; had it not been for Zanzibar, I would have probably gone on by seaplane to Bombay. However, the Imam of Oman wanted a word - or, rather, one of the Imams, as there were currently two. We had carefully arranged to collect him from Oman and fly him to Zanzibar for talks, in order that he didn't have to spend much time out of his country before the other Imam discovered that he had gone.

Zanzibar was much like Lawrence Marks was becoming; a thriving port city, where cargos from the East Coast of Africa were exchanged with those of the Middle East. Zanzibar had a good deal of charm, whilst Lawrence Marks increasingly looked like a tropical Milton Keynes by the sea. However, LM didn't smell like a rugby changing room, was vastly cleaner and was safe for all travellers - nor was its main trade slavery; the picturesque charm of Zanzibar was rather overcome by the sordid squalor.

The young Sultan was actually rather charming, as opposed to the dissolute playboy image that the historical researchers had given him; he had clearly been doing his homework as well. Unlike some potentates, who gave gifts that were, well, awkward, his gift to Britain was to buy every slave in the Zanzibar market that day and free them - I almost thought that the Saatchis had been to call. He talked widely about how it was clear that Britain had been a friend of Oman and how Oman could help Britain with the patchwork quilt of statelets, holdings, treaty ports and petty chiefdoms that made up much of the East African coast. He was wary of the growing power of the Ottomans in Arabia and of Persians in the Gulf.

He also clearly had some cis-advisors; he played heavily on the Ibadi tradition of tolerance to others whilst retaining their own customs amongst themselves, and about how Oman could organise access to all those East African ports and act as the UK's agents. After all, whilst weak on land, they did have a navy to rival anyone but ours in the region. There was just a hint that they didn't respect our alliance with the Portuguese much, or rather they didn't respect the Portuguese much. They were quite plain-speaking for Arabs, and pretty clear on what we would and wouldn't sell. Their main interest seemed to be in water storage and treatment, dredging, improved ships and dock-handling equipment. There had been some toing and froing over this, but it was eventually decided that we could sell them new designs of sailing ship as long as they promised to use them not for slaving; nor would we arm the new ships. I found out later they had already arranged to buy new cannon from the French.

After a couple of days of talks, we had a draft trade treaty to be considered; we gave them the best possible tariff rates for a slavery state and they gave us very generous access rights to their markets. We promised to inform them about any actions with the various petty emirates between them and the Ottomans and they promised to keep us informed about the situation in East Africa.

This meeting lead to a steady relationship between ourselves and the Omanis; the additional riches brought by the British trade helped the Imam beat his inland rival, and we found that the coffee and spice trade was greatly assisted by them acting as middlemen - removing the dependence on the Ottomans. Of course, it helped considerably that whilst they were great bargainers, they always understood in the end that agreements were to be made with goods, commercial concessions or solid cash.

I met Nader Shah at the small port of Bandar Abbas, which at that point in time was actually officially controlled by some minor Arab sheik from Muscat. However, he had seen the wisdom of deciding that he was merely the servant of Nader Shah and that this would be a suitable place for a meeting.

Shah, historically, was an impressive figure, and the fact that he had pulled his coup off four years early showed that he had obviously received some information early and decided to take action. He had even sent notes ahead suggesting some points he would like to talk about. Quite simply, he wanted to talk about India and Afghanistan.

What was really impressive is that he had also spent a little time learning English; whilst we used translation, he did occasionally comment in slightly idiosyncratic English. This actually disturbed a couple of the professional diplomats on our side, who spent much of their time trying to work out how much English he knew.

On the trade side, he was happy to allow us access to his ports and markets, but he said that he didn't think that there would be that much trade between us for some time. Persia could not produce much that we would be interested in without some considerable infrastructure in place - infrastructure that, he pointed out, Persia could not afford. He was interested in irrigation equipment and the knowledge of how to make good roads, and he was interested in sending people to the UK as students.

His canny side was shown with his comments on Persia's vast reserves of oil and gas. He felt it would be his son who would start to tap those and make his empire wealthy, not him. Someone had been doing some fairly long term thinking. I did point out that there was actually a considerable market for carpets, and he might be surprised by the amount of trade he could generate from that.

We didn't discuss Afghanistan and Central Asia too much; the UK had very little interest in either, and some of the smaller Khanates didn't even have an honourary counsel. We did, however, discuss the Ottomans, the Persian Gulf, the Russians and the sub-continent in some detail. We actually had very little in the way of problems here; we were relatively unconcerned about relationships between the Persian Empire and the Russians and the Ottomans.

Nor, really, did we have have much a problem with the Persian Gulf; obviously there were some long term Persian interests, especially around the Shia emirates, but the rest of the remainder between the Ottomans and Bahrain were regarded as inconsequential.

What he really wanted to know was our subcontinental intentions; like many others, he didn't seem to quite comprehend that we were only committed to Bombay. I did, however, emphasise that we would like to trade with stable states, and that the current situation in the North of India was not good; nor did we really want anyone else intervening in that. I also carefully pointed out the large number of modern British citizens with an interest in the Punjab, Kashmir and Gujarat, and that many of those citizens were of the Sikh faith. He countered with the comment that neither the Mughals or the Marathas looked kindly on the Sikhs, and that a stable Punjab might be good for everyone.

However, he indicated that he felt that his northern borders were of more interest to him, especially given that parts of them had given help to the remaining partisans of the previous Shah. Which lead to his final point: he did not particularly want to kill children, but if rebellion was raised in their name it would be difficult to keep them in prison. As they were both very small, perhaps the UK could take them off his hands? I said I would get advice on that point for him.

Karachi was actually rather pleasant in its trans-incarnation as a fishing and trading village and small fort. We'd picked it because the anchorages were reasonably well known and explored and most people had agreed to come there. The political map of North West India hadn't changed that much, although some of the figures had; there had been a few little purges and coups here and there.

Of course, we did not rate an actual visit from the Mughal Emperor and we understood that we were unlikely to get proper attention from the presence if we ventured to Delhi, although we would get the full attention of the Grand Vizier. However, we did have a number of competing Nawabs, Subadhars and the like who "wanted a word", and we did have a couple of men from the top.

Essentially, it all boiled down to the same: the Great Nawab wishes nothing but eternal peace, trade and friendship with the Angrezi Raj, would like assurances that they will not be forced into the role of a princely state, would like to point out that neighbouring nawab/subadhar/rajah may not have such good intentions and please can we have some flying things that kill lakhs of enemy soldiers.

Actually, I wasn't entirely convinced that some of the minnows wouldn't have jumped at the status of getting a 17-gun salute, a British Resident, a nice little garrison, the RAF on call and a few lakhs of silver rupees.

My main talks were held with Noor Muhammad Kalhoro, who was pretty much in charge of Sindh; he was keen to exchange cotton and rice for silver, but he was also very keen on learning more about irrigation and advanced agricultural techniques. He was also quite interesting in improving his cloth-making facilities, which was also something that was developing in Bombay. There was also an odd discussion about mangoes; it seems that the Pakistani community back in the UK was willing to hire a refrigerated ship just to collect these mangoes once a year. It was a very easy deal, but I made a note that ship should be very carefully searched both ways.

Similar talks were held with various people from the Punjab. This was quite tricky ground: whilst the Punjab was clearly Mughal territory, there were several obviously competing overlords in the area, all of which wanted to push themselves forward. Each of them - as well as being wary of each other - were wary of Delhi, of the Rajputs lurking across the lower Sutlej, and of Persia and Afghanistan. Each also wished to complain to different degrees about the Sikhs and their almost-terrorist status in the Punjab, and how we were encouraging them by allowing cis-Sikhs to visit. I pointed out that cis-Sikhs were British citizens; if they wanted to deny them entry that was up them, but there would be consequences to trade relations. I was also happy to improve and enforce exit searches within the standards of the UK.

There were short discussions with the various Balochi leaders as well. Again, we suggested trade; although they suggested Gwadar rather than Karachi, we said we were happy to trade in both. All in all, it was a pleasant few days. We avoided entangling alliances or annoying people too much, there was no real hostility and we made it very clear that rice and cotton, either raw or as cloth, were our priorities.