Dislocated to Success (15 page)

The day itself was virtually flawless; the bride and groom looked their best, although there was a continuous refrain of “they are so old” from some of the foreign guests, which wasn’t surprising considering the numbers of offers The Firm had had to set up Prince Edward with a suitable princess - after all he was 17, prime marriageable age it seems. Despite best precautions it was a warm day and we did pack the Abbey rather heavily, but we only had a couple of fainters and there were plenty of St John’s Ambulance personnel around. There was a bit of fuss about who got to go to which reception; the Buck House one was very much family, plus a few selected people mainly from the UK. The Guildhall one was the civic event - despite the rumours of 57 different ways with turnips, it was the Buck House one that stuck firmly to the ration but the Guildhall had a little creative licence. The Buck House one, however, had the better drinks.

There were some minor demonstrations, mainly from Anarchist types, which caused more amusement than problems - although a lot of princes didn’t seem to understand why said Anarchist types weren’t dragged away by the police and given a good solid beating. One gentleman even suggested sending in the hussars to sabre the demonstrators; not even Patrick Wall would have gone for that one. There was also the odd sight of a demonstration which was complaining about captive nations going from booing the Ottoman ambassador to cheering on ex-King Constantine of Greece to the rafters. Some of the obviously more left-wing in that crowd looked very embarrassed at this cheering. I must admit, the idea of Greece going from the Sublime Porte to Tino Glücksberg did have a hint of frying pans and fires.

After the triumph of the Royal Wedding, the joys of August came upon us; last year had been very busy and few people had any time for a break. This year was rather less busy, although a fair number of European rulers had decided to have an extended break in London; a trend which increased as rationing started to ease up over the years - not that it applied to diplomatic guests, but the rating period did dampen part of the
joie de vivre
of London.

This meant that I couldn't go too far for a holiday in case someone wanted a word, so I joined many Britons in having a holiday at home, doing the odd trip to London and sorting out my departure from Chelmsford; whilst very nice, I was struggling at keeping two places open and also using Chevening, so I was preparing to sell the country place - albeit not at the sort of profit I would have had before the Dislocation. Inevitably, I was summoned back to London for a meeting with the Ottoman ambassador.

Now the Ottomans had played a good hand well so far, considering the weakness of their position and the amount of faction fighting going on there. We were trading quite heavily with them for coffee, spices etc and there were ongoing discussions about opium, cotton and chromium. They had a sharp eye for a profit, and the mercantile classes were keen to deal; they didn't buy much back off us however. They had a fair number of cis-advisors, although many of them were Cypriots - which led to additional problems later - and many were less skilled; the former embassy staff, Kemalists to a man, were having very little to do with the Sultan. Like the Austrians, they were somewhat crippled by the nationalities question, but unlike the Austrians they were unfortunately much more willing to consider somewhat drastic responses as opposed to radical responses.

Being asked if I could make a short meeting with the Ottoman ambassador in early August, I was intrigued to what it could be about; we had been pressing for more open access to the Empire for some time, but the Porte had very much kept us at arm’s length. After the usual blissful coffee, a presentation was given by two men whose accents smacked more of Wood Green than The City. I was used to trans-powers whose eyes were greedier than their belly, but this was stunning in its audacity. They even added that they would expect that it would cost them around five billion guineas sterling. Then they explained how they would pay for it and both myself and my civil servants sat bolt upright at this. It seemed very plausible, a lot of work had gone into this; there was an enormous amount of documentation to go with it.

It had to be said that it was on a grand scale: a railway system in Europe, Asia and North Africa; a power grid in major cities; the development of certain mines and resources; and some substantial public works in The City. We would manage and run the railway and power systems for 20 years whilst training up Ottoman personnel; I noted with interest that we would be handing said systems over to the Ottoman Army, and that there were pages of complex-looking clauses about military use.

In return, we would have a 99 year lease on the oil fields from what looked like Basrah to Qatar, with a small percentage back to the Empire and an even smaller percentage to be used on improvements to the area. The area would still be run by Ottoman law and governance, but there would be extra-territoriality for the British working there and we would be allowed to place garrisons and bases in the area.

Of course, this was really Sally's area, and I was surprised she hadn't been the original person to present to. Whilst some countries had difficulties dealing with a woman, and some had particular difficulties dealing with a Jewish woman, it always amused me that the Moroccans and the Ottomans appeared to have no problem with this at all.

Then I looked at the maps presented and saw the problem: the whole of the Arabian peninsula was coloured Ottoman green. Of course, this wasn't the actual situation at that time, but it clearly represented the realpolitik of the situation - in order to close what looked on paper looked like a very tempting deal we would have to make some interesting compromises. I resolved to talk to the PM, Sally and Norman as soon as possible. The answer that came back was a fairly clear “No”; we were being asked to risk rather a lot on an unstable regime for a concession that we really did not need. The decision did take a while because it was August, which always used to be a bit of a dead month in London, but with no abroad to escape to people were still around and it was fairly busy. Parliament may have had a month off, but I only managed a week at home in Essex packing and a long weekend in Balmoral.

The Ottoman ambassador took our "No" pretty well; in a flowery way he suggested that this was only an opening position, and that he would communicate with the Porte and come back with a renewed offer. There was, after all, plenty of time; there always was with the Turks.

The Prime Minister and myself had an extended and somewhat animated discussion about Arabia and the Ottoman claim. In general, we did not regard it as a good thing, but we did not really see what we could do about it except to warn them off. There were those in the Foreign Office that were utterly outraged by the idea of an Ottoman Arabia and I considered that a leak to the BBC or the Guardian was imminent from some member of the FO Camel Corps.

The question was: did we want to warn them off; was it worth it; and if we did, and they carried on, could we actually follow through? Very few people cared that we had bombed Algiers; bombing Constantinople would be an entirely different kettle of fish. We had very few assets in the area, and potentially quite a lot to lose in terms of the few minor luxuries that came to the UK.  As I put it, did we really want to lose 80% of the UK's limited coffee supply over parts of Arabia? However, the Prime Minister countered with the amount of oil that would come under the domination of the Ottomans - whilst not significant at the moment to the UK, it might be later.  As ever, she had a point. We would have to consider this further.

There were other considerations to be raised as well. There were a substantial number of residents with grievances against the Ottoman Empire - the majority to do with "captive nations", but others to do with some of the more unsavoury practices of the Empire. Of course, just about every country in the world at the time had a collection of unsavoury practices, but the Ottomans had some particularly lurid ones which occasionally made the tabloids. A mere taradiddle compared to some of the stuff east of Bombay, but mercifully I was no longer in office by the time that we started to make serious diplomatic moves in most of Asia away from the coasts.

However, Cyprus was a massive issue; the UK has large populations of both Turkish and Greek Cypriots. The Turkish Cypriots were not as delighted as you would think at the return of Cyprus to what amounted to Turkish control, but when the Greek Cypriots started regular protests, they moved some way onto the Ottoman side - although there were hardcore groups of near-Communists,  Alevi Turks, Kurds and Kemalists who wanted nothing to do with the Porte. Of course, the Greek Cypriots were supportive of an independent Greece - an idea which had some sympathies in quite exclusive circles, especially those in Maida Vale.

Whilst there were representatives of about a dozen cis-nations who could and did protest about the Ottomans from their lands, only two others could raise more than a dozen placards in their support. Israel, of course, was one of those, and there was always a suspicion in the FO that they were up to something; but, after a number of initial refusals of schemes to return to the Holy Land, they stayed as a brooding menace rather than an active anti-Porte presence.

The other was Egypt. There weren't that many Egyptians in the UK, but they had all pretty much united around an interesting little group fronted by Prince Abbas Hilmi and funded by the Al-Fayeds; they made noise above their stature. The only other one that might have been effective were the Yugoslavs, but they had fallen into comic opera bickering and factionalism; it seems that the idea of a Yugoslavia as opposed to its separate parts really does need a Tito.

I made the ruling that any trade deal over a million guineas sterling involving the Empire had to come through myself, Sally and - if needed - the PM. Luckily, this saved us from some problems early on in 1982.

Of course, the busiest desk in the Foreign Office was Desk H, the Holy Roman Empire. Just keeping track of everyone was a job for a small but dedicated team; with a couple of hundred principalities, duchies, lordships, free cities, bishoprics and abbeys, it was hard work. There was also some fairly constant plotting going on - the poor Duke of Marlborough had been stitched up by people to have a small patch of land given immediacy which was part of some obscure title his family had gained. Stuck out in the Innviertel - which at that point was part of the Bavarian Circle, not the Austrian one - he was landed with a seat in the Reichstag, about fifteen hundred peasants and a tiny hamlet with a very rude name - Fucking.

Needless to say, the papers got hold of it after some of his subjects arrived at Blenheim and petitioned him for aid; I deeply suspect that certain younger princes of the Reich had a hand in this. This lead to much ribaldry - and some very clever headlines, so that the word itself would not be published - but when they found that the nearest town to Fucking was Tittmoning, there was a second paroxysm of press pleasure. The Sun even took a couple of its Page 3 girls for photos in Tittmoning and Fucking; luckily they were not caught, it would not have done down well with the locals and I suspect the Duke was not feeling merciful.

However, these were not the only shenanigans being played at the time. The Lord of a selection of Franconian Protestant enclaves called Oettingen-Oettingen knew his time was coming; wanting the best for his lands, and deeply loathing the other cadet branches of his family, he pulled a fast one and adopted Prince Charles as his son. I hasten to add the Prince of Wales knew nothing about this, and was as utterly shocked as we were when the news arrived in the UK.

Our first reaction was to check it all out for legality, but absolute monarchs - even of fly-specks - are absolute monarchs, and it was perfectly legal under Oettingen-Oettingen law. The clever old sod had even entailed it so that if there was a second son of Charles they would inherit the principality. Of course, this caused a minor row amongst the various Oettingen heirs, a somewhat smaller row in the Reichstag and some trouble amongst the more left-wing MPs in the House of Commons. This was partly because the Prince had a number of ideas about how to handle matters post-Dislocation, although - with the exception of one speech - he had confined them to his many lengthy letters to ministers. The Government had some concerns about the issue as well and it was heavily suggested to the Prince of Wales that he should just appoint a steward and have done with it. As for any questions of heirs, well - that was probably a good 20 years away.

Luckily, this silly season row was eclipsed by an incident in London. We had recently received an ambassador from Persia; they had settled in fairly well, but were not receiving any assistance from the cis-staff of the Embassy. However, many had this problem, but what we were not expecting was a dead body being thrown out of the embassy with a bullet hole in it. Needless to say, the police were swarming within minutes and both myself and  Willie had to be in attendance fairly quickly.

The Persian incident could have been a bigger problem than it turned out to be had the ambassador not played the game. The idea of someone being shot and then thrown out onto the street was the stuff of spy novels, and attracted some press attention straight away. However, there were the problems of the Vienna Convention - and, of course, there are two sides to every story.

We kept the PM informed by phone and Willie and I held a meeting with the ambassador. It was an interesting meeting; he claimed that the person killed had been an intruder, that they had shot him whilst he was rifling the kitchen for silver, and that they had thrown him out as a warning. They would not admit who had done the shooting.