Dislocated to Success (29 page)

After that we spent sometime talking about libraries and books; the library at Wolfenbüttel was quite large - the largest in trans-Europe - but a newer one was only two-thirds finished. I suggested that if he finished it and stocked it with modern books, that could be interesting. He smiled at that and considered that it would offend a lot of people, so he would have to give it serious consideration. I did also suggest that he took up one of the offers from UK Universities to help with the collection; he raised a number of questions about this, which I took back to UK. He was an astute man with a fine sense of humour, but slightly given to thinking the future is unchangeable when it has already all changed.

One little encounter I did have whilst there was with the young lady Elisabeth Christine, who would have been the Crown Prince of Prussia's intended and now was looking rather on the shelf. The Duke had pulled the marriage - ‘for diplomatic reasons’, he claimed, but I suspected that as a voracious reader he had seen an unhappy and loveless marriage ahead. She seemed a little more spirited than history had portrayed her, and said that, as England had taken her future husband from her, perhaps she could have an English visa to take a husband from England. I said I would ask the Duke if she could, but I could see no real objection on the United Kingdom's part.

After a day or so of talks, and a delightful day looking at the rare books and the art collection, it was time for my little working holiday to end. I had an official appointment in Hannover for the opening of the new railway line to Minden and then I would fly home by air taxi; Marcio brought back the Land rover via Hamburg. The journey to Hannover would be much easier than most of the rest of the journey - once you got to Braunschweig, the main roads became of a pretty decent quality for the time; in fact it only took around three hours.

The great joy of the Foreign Office is that there is always something unexpected that pops up and either causes great joy or great problems. I had spent the morning with John Major - who had just moved to the Foreign Office as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State whose responsibilities include liaison with the Commonwealth and Colonial Office - where I was explaining to him what the rules were on who did what, especially around Africa. He was quite interested in this, although a little concerned about our general lack of engagement outside of our small enclaves. My comment was that this would come with time; we needed to essentially make ourselves much more aware of what polities there were, and how they wanted to interact with us. At the moment, we had neither the knowledge or the skills and my main concern was to let Africa be Africa and not have a second scramble for it. I felt we needed a lot more information to act, and that, at least in the immediate areas of the colonies, the Commonwealth and Colonial Office were in the best position to do that. I didn't let on that the idea of being a Diplomat in, say, West Africa was about as appealing as a country pancake to the average member of the FO, and that some of the briefings we had from SOAS were just disturbing. I did, however, point out that CCO should be careful where it engaged in case it gave the wrong impression.

Having said that, I was looking forward to preparing for Party Conference; previous Foreign Secretaries had often had a very rough ride, but I usually got a decent reception now that the tables of the world had turned. A few hints of the iron fist inside the velvet glove always went down well, and whilst I didn't have the legendary skills of, say, Michael with the twinset and pearls brigade he had the much stickier wicket to deal with. However, you always had to be careful about which bon mots to use, which carefully chosen nation to praise and which one to be a little cutting about. The Ottomans were a good bet for a few digs, but I was aware of both the coffee supply and the rather tricky Tutankhamen situation - Roy Strong had thrown an enormous public tantrum at even the thought of the death mask going back to Egypt. What the press wanted was some demonstration of how the UK was good and noble, what the MPs wanted was news of more exports and jobs being created, and what the grand dames and the dowagers wanted was news of how Britain was Top Dog again. It was really a question of balance.

I had decided that I was going to actually praise the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; the Grand Duchess had now settled in her role and was proving to be not just a game old bird but a rather wily one as well. She had cleared out the Augean Stables of the court, generally just sending many of them back to their villages and telling them not to darken Firenze's doors again, banishing a few of the worst culprits and only making an example of a couple of the more egregious gold-diggers. We had ended up giving a handful of them asylum; some had taken ship to find their fortunes and a new identity, although friends told me one or two were hanging around the City of Quebec. In addition to this, she had kept Gian Gastone's sensible liberal economic reforms and not clamped down too much on the other matters; tolerance of non-Catholics remained - just.

However, the reason for my praise would be on other matters: she had engaged with cis-Italians, spent some of her own considerable monetary reserves and was trying to encourage various small industries, agricultural concerns and the like. Livorno was being improved and a decent road being constructed to Firenze; art experts had been called in and a programme was being arranged where some would be sold over a period of time - some would be leased to UK museum, and the proceeds would be invested in modern facilities in Firenze and a major renovation of the galleries there. However, the biggest investment which was still to be agreed was for us to provide a geothermal power station, which would probably supply the energy needs for Pisa and Livorno for the foreseeable future. The only question was how much the UK would be contributing, as there was an interest in geothermal for Costa Rica and eventually for California.

However, as I was musing over that, I was asked if I could attend the Spanish Embassy at 4pm. My first thought was that something had gone wrong in Panama, my second was that they wished to protest about some slight or other - but it all seemed rather cordial. Spain was very slowly on the mend; the King had replaced a couple more ministers after the famine and had managed to finally stabilise the mainland fully. There had been some low-level talks about some agricultural products being sold, although they could afford very little. However, on arrival, the Spanish bowled a complete googly - the King had announced that Slavery was to be abolished in Spain as from All Saints Day, not even a gradual element to it. I was very pleased, but I knew that I would have to rewrite my speech; this had to be included. I would also have to spend some time considering the other effects of this, not least in the Caribbean.

After conference, I had no great plans - just the usual work to be done - but there’s always something unexpected popping up. We were starting to prepare a report on how the Dislocation had changed Europe for the five-year anniversary. When you look back with some distance at progress since the Dislocation, people look at how various nations have taken their paths forward, albeit sometimes with a step back or two, since finding themselves with the United Kingdom. It is quite often said that Poland-Lithuania has benefited the most, or that the Electorate of Hannover has modernised the most, or even that the Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves has more carefully prepared and planned than others. All of this would be true, and in each case they have done it with the help and assistance of their descendants, although this has been varied - the Poles have had a cast of thousands, the Portuguese a selection of experts and the Hanoverians the slowly growing assistance of more and more cis-Germans.

However, they overlooked a smaller nation, the Sovereign Order of of Saint John of Jerusalem - or rather the islands on which its territory was held.  After a somewhat dramatic start, an arrangement had been made between the United Kingdom and the Knights that the Knights would look after Valletta, Floriana and the Three Cities within the Cottonera Lines and the United Kingdom would protect the rest of the Three Islands. Nominally, the Knights retained sovereignty, but apart from keeping an office in Mdina and in Rabat on Gozo all they received was a tax stipend.

The Maltese people - who, if they lived outside of the Walled Cities, came under British protection - also had the additional assistance of the Maltese population of the United Kingdom, which contributed its time and money generously to the the people of the Island. Many of the cis-Maltese were small business owners, often of some of Central London's more famous "Italian" cafes, and with rationing many had spare time to go back to the island. As both they and their British-born children spoke excellent Maltese, there was little problem with communication. They encouraged vaccinations, some basic medical care, English classes, improving sanitation and all the other benefits. Most of them were from integrationist families that had been in the UK since the 1950's and so had strong links on both sides.

Unfortunately, there was another side to all this; some of our Maltese small businessmen were not entirely kosher. Whilst their love for Malta was genuine, many of them were there to make money - some did so by selling food to the naval base at Marsaxlokk; others had different plans. There were a number of small disputes about land ownership as they sought to buy property in certain areas, but the main problem was smuggling.

Malta was at the crossroads of the Med; ships came from various Italian states, France and the Sublime Porte. The latter were very much looked down upon by the locals, but were allowed to trade at Marsaxlokk as long as the RN were watching. Malta went from being sleepy to being busy in a couple of years. Unfortunately, the number of times people were caught with items that should not be exported from the UK was rather high. This led to a number of arguments about the actual status of Malta, and some of the small businessmen had some fairly sharp lawyers.

As a result of this, the Foreign Office got involved, and it was agreed that we should have further discussions with the Knights about how we could deal with legal issues around property ownership and whose law applied in which areas. I had expected some resistance but obviously their Maltese tax revenues doubling in three years, never mind the Marsaxlokk lease, made them much more amenable to talking over the issues. After a surprisingly short and cordial set of meetings, it was decided that it would probably be best if British laws applied everywhere except Valletta and the Three Cities - as long as the overall rights of the Knights were accepted. In addition, they were happy to co-operate with the UK on water and sewage distribution from within their sole territories - they had long since acceded to vaccinations. They even allowed a cut in tax rates to allow for British administration, although I couldn't help feeling there was a sharp-eyed Knight somewhere with a calculator who had worked out how his revenues could boom even further.

There was some criticism in the left-wing press - but, as the PM said, all that we were doing was regularising what was already happening, paying for less of it as we were receiving local revenues, and assisting an island which had close historic links with the UK. The local people certainly weren't against the idea, especially on Gozo, and we did hold some consultative straw polls which showed over 70% in favour of British Administration. The next step for Malta would be more controversial, of course, but will fall into the next volume.

By the time we had concluded the Maltese changes, the festive season was approaching. The joys of Christmas include the annual Foreign Office Christmas Party, which is not as it used to be; the Leaderene disapproves of ostentation, even if most of our new-found friends rather like it. In addition, the Press are always on the look-out for breaches of the rationing rules, and whilst Diplomatic Gatherings officially don’t count one doesn’t want to feature too frequently in the Daily Mail or Daily Mirror - both of which delight in placing rule-breakers in the metaphorical stocks. The amount of letters in green ink - it is always green ink - that come from such an exposé is phenomenal.

However, it still takes rather a lot of planning - in fact it seems to take more planning than many other endeavours within the FO. Committees and Activities start sometime around September and take up more and more time, although I suspect just as much time is spent on the Staff party as the Diplomats’ party. Although it must be said that the protocol for the Diplomats’ party does take up a considerable amount of time, far more than it used to.

One of the joys of the FO is the Durbar Court, which has proved to be an excellent venue and very impressive - although there have been a few sniffy comments over the years that it might be a little too ostentatious. Obviously, whilst the FO has shrunk a little in size we  had to initially accommodate the Colonial Office as well, and I had to start refurbishing areas - the Court was first, but 1985 allowed the use of the refurbished India Office Council Chamber for the first time for the more exclusive guests. The target, if the budget allowed after that was  to sort out the Locarno Suite, which had been left in a terrible state.

Having said this, obviously there was still a fairly large amount of background activity at the FO. Whilst we were in the happy position of having stable relations with nearly every nation, the only really large project was to sort out the situation with China; and that, I was being told by experts, would probably take years - not helped by the unfortunate demise of the Emperor earlier that year. However, there was always something to take up time - some minor squabble, some succession, some perceived breach of a treaty - especially as people discovered more and more about what might lie under their lands or what their land could be used for. In addition, as THE superpower, more and more people came to us for advice and even to act as arbiters; by the end of 1984, I was seriously considering creating an official Mediation Service which third parties could hire out - a form of a diplomatic version of ACAS.