As you can see, I have been reviving my flagging career as a Daily Telegraph blogger.
This one prompted by the death of Sir Kenneth James (one of my distinguished predecessors as Ambassador in Warsaw) popp'd up this morning, remembering lost times at the Foreign Office :
One key difference between the Foreign Office of Sir Kenneth James and what we have now is that back in his day there were far fewer words. He worked in a system that had many robust military-style disciplines and traditions (a foreign service) where documents produced by senior people had real authority. There were no word processors or even photocopiers, let alone today’s babble of twittering ambassadorial blogs. A submission or telegram had to be dictated or written out in longhand, then typed for issuing.
This slowed everything down, but it also meant that diplomats had time to read and think a lot more. Plus they typically wrote things only when they had something useful to say. Work had to be good first time if at all possible – woe betide even the most senior diplomat who had to shuffle to the tough-egg women in the typing-pool to ask for something to be done again.
Ambassadors’ own work carried particular weight. As well as telegrams that shaped the views of the whole of Whitehall, an Ambassador might send a despatch, a long beefy essay on a particular theme. The best of these despatches were printed up on green paper and sent round Whitehall and by Bag to all posts round the world – a superb way to make the system as a whole more intelligent and "joined-up".
Some of the greatest despatches changed the whole way the government – if not the world – looked at issues. In the mid-1980s, when most of us saw AIDS as an exotic problem for gay men in America, William White sent in a despatch from Zambia with jaw-dropping predictions about the devastation AIDS would cause across Africa. Despatches duly died out as email swept the system and officials could no longer be trusted not to leak things. We all became a bit less smart.
It concludes gloomily:
It is striking that once again the FCO has not produced anyone with the weight within Whitehall to lead the UK’s EU delegation in Brussels (UKRep). After the years of calamitous Labour governments slyly cutting our diplomacy and our diplomats down to size, William Hague is striving to put right the damage and restore "diplomatic excellence". Sir Kenneth’s fine career reminds us of that now distant age where diplomatic excellence was taken for granted.
As always the comments are much better than the article itself:
meaculpa
'woe betide even the most senior diplomat who had to shuffle to the tough-egg women in the typing-pool to ask for something to be done again'. Crikey; I remember that sort of thing. The terror of having to ask for something to be changed and the inevitable, 'why can'y you get it right in the first place' or similar!
davidofkent
I was under the impression that since the end of WW2, the task of the Foreign Office was to manage Britain's decline. In those terms, they haven't done too badly. Modern communications have made it impossible to do anything discreetly
flanker
A slightly rose tinted view of the past FCO. After all weren't they the Government department that nurtured the Soviet spies and traitors?
In addition they were also the department that had the agenda for our country of 'managed decline' , which gave them the excuse to sell us out to the EU, for the FCO were the Government department to negotiate our loss of sovereignty to the EU, and when a Prime Minister decided enough was enough, it was the plots hatched from the FCO that stabbed Mrs T in the back ...
No the FCO has been a pretty rotten organisation for a long long time. Of all the Departments of state it has been the one that resents the loss of Empire, it has always felt it demeaning to be the diplomatic corp of our country, as such it nurtured traitors who were attracted to another Empire, the Soviet one, and as an organisation has it is the mouth piece of the EU empire, and has been the department that has negotiated the sell out of our sovereignty to that EU empire
alan_campbell
Christ, what a pompous oaf. Sounds like the latter days of Fred Trueman on Test Match Special - "Everything were better in my day.."
But there is some hope:
nolimitnagger
Very interesting article, and you are an excellent writer, evoking the reader's emotion and engagement.
I endeavour to give satisfaction. Someone has to.