A Very Private Celebrity (28 page)

Back in New Delhi he became embroiled in an incident that, like many involving MI5, had its farcical element. The British complained to the Indian government about the Soviet influence on Indira Gandhi, exercised through the Indian Foreign Ministry, so the High Commission must have been just a little smug when in December a Russian defector, Aziz Oulougzade, sought asylum in the American embassy and applied for admission to the United Kingdom. Freeman allowed it, despite the objections of the Indian Foreign Ministry. The Soviet ambassador demanded a protest interview. Freeman asked Robin Renwick to sit in: ‘The Russian ambassador was full of bluster: “This man is misguided. He is ruining his life. All is forgiven”. That sort of thing. Freeman was impassive. He did not give one inch. He just sat there in silence. He was a very tough guy.'
54

With the defector still camped in the American embassy after four days and all the potential publicity of a Cold War incident in the offing, proceedings needed to be communicated to the UK in secret, that is by cypher telegram. Stella Rimington was now working ‘behind the baize door' in the High Commission where MI5 had its office, but she had not been taught how to use the cypher machine. The girl whose job it was could not be contacted because she was in bed with her Sikh boyfriend. ‘I was aware of earnest and angry consultations in huddled groups outside on the lawn during a High Commission cocktail party,'
55
Rimington wrote.

In May 1968, Wilson's government passed the Commonwealth Immigration Act. It limited the right of entry to the UK to citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies currently holding a British passport who were born in the UK or had at least one parent or grandparent born in the UK. This was damage limitation to the ‘Africanisation' policy of
Kenya, which could have led to the flight of 200,000 African Asians, many of them Indians with British passports, who did not wish to become Kenyan citizens. Indian politicians were outraged. This was ‘a breach of faith'. Britain had ‘a legal, moral and political responsibility' to absorb the Kenyan Asians. Mr Om Mechta, deputy Chief Whip of the Congress Parliamentary Party, called for the nationalisation of British assets in India and for India to leave the Commonwealth. Mrs Gandhi ‘made her strong views known' to the High Commissioner but said that India should ‘not act in a huff'. Freeman probably regarded this as another example of Indian ‘neurosis'. Once again, his advice to HMG was to ‘talk little. It is a waste of time, and probably counter-productive, to attempt a hard sell on the Commonwealth in India. Eventually, it will be a combination of inertia and marginal self-interest that will hold India inside the Commonwealth.'
56
And so it came to pass.

The High Commissioner's own views on the controversial Immigration Act he kept to himself. Had he still been editor of the
New Statesman
he may well have written a strong article opposing it but now he was a correctly behaved diplomat. One of his team was the economist Robert Cassen, an advisor to the British Aid Programme in India. He had a regular Wednesday morning meeting with Freeman:

In July, Freeman's time was up and the family returned to London by air after a formal farewell with the residence staff lined up outside,
they and Catherine with tears in their eyes. The Freemans rented a home at Hamilton Terrace, in London's St John's Wood, and Freeman took stock of his diplomatic career, so far. He said he was impressed by the diplomatic service: ‘extremely hard-working, highly efficient and not overpaid'. He admitted that he had found diplomacy difficult, particularly dealing with economic and financial matters, but he felt he had come into his own in the writing of despatches. A case in point was the customary valedictory despatch he had written just before leaving New Delhi.

Much of it concerned the end of the Raj and the change in Indo–British relations. He wrote that ‘a little over twenty years ago we were involved in controlling almost the entire perimeter of the Indian Ocean. Now [because of the east of Suez withdrawal] we control none of it.' He noted that in the 1960s India's imports from Britain had declined by a half and Indian exports to Britain had declined by a third. Since 1965, the 18,000 UK citizens resident in India had fallen to fewer than 14,000. His conclusion was clear:

He ended his valedictory despatch with an oratorical flourish in a style reminiscent of an eighteenth-century tombstone:

Isn't that the voice of an actor, tongue in cheek, who has written himself some good lines? Applause was not long in coming. In the margin an FO mandarin has written: ‘Very nicely put indeed. The tone of it goes a long way to explain how popular he has become in the service.'

On 31 July Freeman called in to 10 Downing Street for an end of term report. Wilson had been given notes in preparation, conveniently written in the first person:

On the way out, Freeman bumped into his old adversary Richard Crossman. Crossman wrote in his diary:

No doubt the two had been celebrating Freeman's appointment as ambassador to the United States, a posting first announced the previous February.

Chapter 10

Diplomat – ambassador to the United States

‘A
MAN OF
no principle whatsoever except a willingness to sacrifice everything in the cause of Dick Nixon. His defeat is a victory for decency in public life.' This is how John Freeman described Richard Nixon in the
New Statesman
on 9 November 1962, just after Nixon had failed in his bid to become Governor of California. In 1969 these dismissive two sentences almost cost Freeman his plum post as ambassador to the United States – before he even moved to Washington. The veteran American correspondent Stewart Alsop, writing in
Newsweek
in December 1968, remembered the article and launched a broadside. Freeman, he wrote, ‘on the record and in print has savagely attacked the future President of the United States
to whom he will shortly present his credentials'. This meant the death of the Anglo-American special relationship! Former President Eisenhower, no less, read the article and went further: the appointment of Freeman was an insult to the presidency itself.

The British government was to blame. When Freeman was appointed, Harold Wilson and his Foreign Secretary George Brown expected the Democrat Hubert Humphrey to win the presidential election in November 1968 and therefore their ambassador-designate would be working with an administration of similar political outlook. Instead the Republican candidate won and Richard Nixon was in the White House. According to his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, Nixon ‘swore that he would have nothing to do with Freeman'.
1
George Brown admitted that appointing Freeman ‘was a mistake, but there was no reason to consider it a mistake at the time it was made'.
2
Twenty-two Tory MPs called for Freeman's dismissal and the appointment of a new ambassador ‘on the same wavelength as the United States President'. ‘US Call To Drop Freeman' was the headline in the
Sunday Telegraph
.

In the circumstances, Freeman was obviously miscast. He contacted his old friend Henry Brandon, the Washington correspondent for the British
Sunday Times
, and asked his advice about resigning. Brandon advised him to hang on but ‘expect a difficult time' when he arrived.
3
So Freeman apologised instead: ‘The qualities I admire most in public life are courage and guts, and I cannot recall any case in public life where a man has shown more by his fighting spirit that he is worthy to hold high office. I hope Mr Nixon will be prepared to wipe the slate clean and start on a new basis.'
4
Wilson doggedly stuck with his choice. He felt that Anglo-American relations could ‘stand the strain'.
5

Freeman did have a few influential supporters and one was the former United States ambassador in London, David Bruce. He said that
the demands for Freeman to give up his post were ‘foolish' and wrote in his diary: ‘He [Freeman] is undoubtedly attractive, and reputed to be intellectually brilliant. Those who dislike him charge him with being arrogant and supercilious, but as a table companion today there was no trace of such defects.'
6
Henry Brandon was a supporter too. He reported that Richard Crossman had told him: ‘He will do well because he is like an officer who stands erect under enemy fire'
7
– a double-edged compliment.

Despite the support of 10 Downing Street, Freeman's appointment, or at least its timing, was not universally welcomed in the Foreign Office. The outgoing ambassador, Sir Patrick Dean, was a career diplomat who felt he was relegated to ‘lame-duck' status when Freeman was appointed fully nine months before he was due to retire; more hurtful than that was the rumour that Freeman had been appointed to restore British influence with the presidency. This rumour turned out to be true. The Foreign Office asked Sir Patrick's advice about a trip by Freeman to Washington around the end of the year to meet Nixon and mend bridges. He advised against it; he thought the trip would be counter-productive. Instead, Freeman asked Catherine to visit the ambassador's residence informally to see how suitable it was for family life. The Deans were polite but decidedly cool. When the White House announced that Nixon would visit Britain in February 1969 as part of the new President's European tour, both sides realised that this would force the issue. Freeman's controversial appointment would be resolved one way or the other.

Kissinger had warned the Foreign Office that the President ‘might make Freeman's ambassadorial tenure as difficult and awkward as possible'.
8
That was borne out when Nixon and his entourage arrived in London. One of his White House aides, probably on his own initiative, sent a message that the President would boycott the Prime Minister's
dinner to be held in his honour unless Freeman was removed from the guest list. The attempts of David Bruce to intervene, either by changing Nixon's mind or by requesting Wilson to remove Freeman from the guest list, were unsuccessful. At the last minute Nixon was persuaded to attend by his Secretary of State, William Rogers, but the stage of No. 10 Downing Street seemed set for a chilly encounter.

Nixon loved to surprise and here was an ideal opportunity. In his toast after the dinner on 25 February he charmed Freeman, saying that American journalists had written far worse things about him than had the
New Statesman
. Then his speech reached a memorable climax, carefully honed as it was by his brilliant speech-writer William Safire. Henry Kissinger was there:

The impact was electric. Wilson wrote to Nixon on his menu: ‘That was one of the kindest and most generous acts I have known in a quarter of a century of politics. Just proves my point. You can't guarantee being born a Lord. It is possible – you've shown it – to be born a gentleman.' The usually imperturbable Freeman was close to tears.
10

David Bruce adds his eyewitness account: ‘A profound satisfaction was apparent throughout the room. I've never known anything more courteously or magnanimously done. The PM fairly glowed with pleasure.'
11
What a pity I could not persuade Freeman to recall the incident in old age. It ranks with his Humble Address to Parliament on 16 August 1945 as the summit of set piece speechmaking by him or about him.

During the dinner Michael Stewart, George Brown's successor as Foreign Secretary, commended the ambassador-designate to Secretary of State Rogers; Freeman was ‘highly professional and intellectually gifted, with broad experience'.
12
Rogers needed no convincing. He replied that after their antagonism Nixon and Freeman would ‘lean over backwards to be friendly' to one another. And so it proved. When Freeman arrived in mid-March at the White House to present his credentials, Nixon used the occasion to move the ceremony from the Oval Office into his residential quarters, a clear signal that the United Kingdom was still a special partner. He welcomed Freeman generously, implying again that the past was forgiven: ‘Let me assure you that you are most welcome in Washington. Your impressively versatile career is well known to us. I was delighted to meet and talk with you in London and anticipate seeing you often in the future.'
13

Meanwhile the
New Statesman
journalist Francis Hope was assuring Americans that the term ‘radical socialist' did not have the revolutionary connotation in England that they gave it. In a long article for the
New York Times
– ‘Meet the New Man from London' – he began, tongue in cheek:

He continued with a perception about the ‘Class of'45', the parliamentary intake of soldier-socialist MPs that applied to Freeman as much as it did to more radical socialists, like George Orwell: ‘The
Class of '45 has a complex attitude towards social change. They have lived through the war, which both caused and called for a greater equality, but also reinforced an affection for the British way of life.'

‘How will he find Washington?' Francis Hope asked. Here I wonder whether he was briefed by his old
New Statesman
boss, so apposite were his answers:

The Deans insisted on staying put until Sir Patrick's seventieth birthday, leaving the Freemans kicking their heels in Hamilton Terrace. Freeman was frustrated but for the rest of the family it was a happy time, as Cynthia Gomes remembers:

One of the vacancies in the embassy household was for a social secretary, whose duties were to help the ambassador's wife with all that she had to do. A major part of this was the secretarial work involved in the endless entertaining, which is such a feature of the diplomatic life. The social secretary lived in the residence, almost as a member of the family, so the salary was modest and the relationship close. Catherine made enquiries for a possible candidate and these reached as far as The Owl and Pussycat toy shop in Hampstead, much frequented by the Freeman children. Its owner, Betty Mitchell, happened to be the ex-wife of the famous documentary filmmaker Denis Mitchell, whom the Freemans had known at the BBC, and she recommended her 28-year-old stepdaughter Judith. Judith had been brought up in South Africa, had worked as a playgroup leader in London and an au pair in New York. She had also spent time at Big Sur in California at the Esalen Institute, famous for its hippy
philosophy and lifestyle. She came for interview and both Freemans found her a breath of fresh air. They decided to employ her.

Catherine and the three children were due to fly out with the ambassador in mid-March but were delayed because they caught flu. ‘It's all very annoying,' Freeman said, but went ahead anyway with Judith Mitchell in attendance. When Catherine, Cynthia and the children arrived in Washington three weeks later, he was waiting on the tarmac. She was taken aback to find him looking drawn and stressed. ‘This is a loathsome place,' he said to her. ‘We'll just have to make the best of it. I'm not sleeping at all well so I think we should have separate rooms.' She supposed that he was going through some kind of midlife depression and would need a lot of support.

And so to the ambassador's residence at No. 3100, Massachusetts Avenue, the most impressive address on Embassy Row. It was so large, said Catherine, that she was not sure how many rooms there were. It is a vast red brick and stone palace, designed by Lutyens in the English country manner, with a dramatic columned portico and terrace overlooking the immaculate rose garden. The drawing room had seats for eighteen, the dining room for thirty-six and the ballroom held ‘unnumbered multitudes'. It was perfect for entertaining, fortunately, for Catherine soon discovered that she was expected to give two lunches, two dinners and a reception each week, and attend on average four receptions or dinners every week as guest – much of it presented in a lavish style and in the glare of publicity. For this entertaining, the Foreign Office provided a budget of $100,000 per year to which the ambassador added his own contribution. There were constant demands for interviews from the press, demands that Ambassador Freeman shunned whenever possible and directed to his wife.