Dislocated to Success (5 page)

One of the most difficult things to deal with were the 400,000 or so short-term visitors to the UK at the time of the Dislocation. Some were visiting families or friends, which at least meant that their housing needs were looked after; some were visiting for work, which meant - at least, where the company wasn’t collapsing - their firms looked after them in the short term. It had already been agreed, subject to the whims of Parliament, that everyone who was here could stay, but questions of status had yet to be determined. There was a frightful interdepartmental row about this: some people tried to claim that they were the FO’s responsibility, whilst the FO said they were clearly refugees and therefore the Home Office’s problem, whilst the Home Office decided, as they had effectively been given Indefinite Leave to Remain, they were the DHSS’s problem. Essentially, no one wanted to pay for them out of their budgets - which were already being heavily reworked by Geoffrey. At the same time, they were increasingly destitute and increasingly being thrown onto the streets by hoteliers, boarding houses and the like. I’m afraid that whilst you can square the Forte’s and the Stakis', the average London small hotelier makes Mr van Hoogstraten look pleasant and kindly. Of course, many of the British people responded with great kindness - my friend Derek took in two young American college students for a few months - but there were really just too many to cope with.

Luckily, it had been decided to treat them all as refugees, be they legal visitors or illegal visitors - of which there were probably a hundred thousand or so. As such, they would be eligible to find work, claim some limited benefits and be considered for housing. The problem was, the refugee scheme was really designed for about 1,000 people fleeing horrid regimes a year rather than around half a million people in one go. So eventually, we ended up doing some deals to house them; there was a consideration of using holiday camps, but we were rebuffed - bookings had gone through the roof as the smarter members of the public had realised there would be no trips to the Spanish Costas for them. So we ended up using the grotty small hotels that many people had been evicted from and slowly filtering people into the system as space became available - which some did, as councils started to work out who had been lost.

One of the most interesting conundrums of the Dislocation was the position of the Elector of Hannover, Frederick Lewis
[31]
.  Some people say that things would have been considerably easier if he had been dislocated with the rest of the Hannoverians. They forget that it would have changed the balance of power in Northern Germany, eventually uniting Hannover and Braunschweig whilst increasing the power of Prussia due to the complex House rules over the various possessions in the area. It would have also left Ireland - technically - in the hands of the Queen of Prussia, who may not have been so amenable - and her husband certainly wouldn’t have been amenable at all; it was not in his nature, even after we had placed him on medication for porphyria.

However, there was also the issue of Frederick Lewis’ British rights. No matter what some mad people said, he wasn’t King - the Queen reigned and therefore there was no vacancy. However what was also blindingly apparent was that he was, under the Act of Succession, the heir to the throne. In fact Prince Charles had technically been shoved down to about tenth, after the the various Hohenzollerns and Braunschweig's. Quintin and I discussed the situation of the colonial possessions and, after much reading of texts, we came to the conclusion that the because the Queen reigned in the UK, she reigned in the colonies. However, this was subject to some dispute; there were other interpretations, some of which were very petty in the making and some of which would make the basis for a good Master’s dissertation.

However, that did leave the question of Ireland, which was much more difficult. The Irish situation was much, much more in Frederick’s favour: the Kingdom of Ireland was separate, it held its own accession councils, the personal union was not really on any legal footing. To be absolutely honest, he was the rightful King of Ireland - which, looking at his history, left us with some very interesting challenges in front of us, especially considering how critical Ireland was becoming to our thinking with regards to food. This was distinctly a problem that we would have to deal with, and fairly quickly; it didn’t seem like a priority compared to all the other problems of the Dislocation, but it proved to be an expensive problem in the end - although good for both Ireland and Hannover.

What has been interesting is how the British people have taken to the man - his concentration on trying to be modern, his enthusiasm for sport, his ability to not take himself too seriously and to provide plenty of newspaper copy means that he has going from being a Cuckoo in the Royal Nest to probably the fourth most popular member of the family. The UK needs a proper Playboy Prince every now and again to delight them, but I think people have started to realise since the Pragmatic War just how effective he actually is as a ruler. Mrs Thatcher, however, still loathes him, and feelings towards him within The Firm are somewhat mixed.

One of the more interesting items that had come to light by this time was that the weather patterns were those of the 1730’s; at least, they were a good enough match for observed weather from the Met Office’s copious archives for us to be confident in what was happening. This made a lot of boffins very happy, and proved both to be a boon and a curse for the government. Actually knowing the rough pattern of the weather for the next few years was terribly useful, but on the other hand the weather of the 1730’s was dreadful, with some real stinkers of years coming up. However, it did allow for some medium term planning to use crops more suited to cooler weather, and to increase money spent on bad weather precautions. Small but useful items like this were becoming apparent every day and led to a great increase in the amount of paperwork. Unfortunately, because of the number of them,quite a few got lost in the mounds of red boxes - which meant that when Ministers asked “Why wasn’t I told this?”,  their Sir Humphrey was allowed to respond - with considerable glee - that the Minister
had
been informed.

However, things were returning to a more even keel - we had agreed the legislation for the next few months, and I was looking for some time to settle down. I was then shocked by the offer made to me by the PM on the Wednesday - someone needed to go to France, and it needed to be someone high-level. She didn’t want to send David, who was having a lot of problems with what we then still called the old ambassadors and needed to be here, but someone who spoke good French. She knew I spoke good French, and she knew that I had some connections with Royalty and how to behave at court - and, to boot, I was a Catholic. Would I go to Versailles? Well, despite the fearsome number of “shots” I would need, and a 24-hour quarantine on my return, I could hardly say no - the idea of actually seeing the Court of Louis XV was far, far too enticing. So - after being jabbed for everything under the sun, given enough pills to take until I rattled and 24 hours for everything to take effect - off we went. I had a pile of briefing notes, a personal letter from the Queen, a new ambassador and three staff, three drivers and a couple of handy looking chaps from the Diplomatic Protection Squad. I learnt later that the drivers were all from the Army and had guns as well.

We travelled in two newish land rovers with the Royal crest on the side and with a four-wheel-drive truck which carried “the bare essentials for an embassy”, all flying large Union Flags - which, of course, the French didn’t recognise. Of course, they were nowhere near even the bare essentials, but we really didn’t know that at the time; there was a lot of learning for the FO to do in that time, it had been a while since we had really had to fully supply embassies with everything. Hardship posting had used to mean the likes of Ulan Bator or Dakar - not Paris, Copenhagen or Berlin. It was all quite exciting really; we rolled off the ship onto a beach with a number of very scared looking Frenchmen in attendance and Sir Gordon
[32]
shouting 
“Je suis l’ancien ambassadeur du Royaume-Uni” 
at anyone who came in range. It sort of worked, and we proceeded remarkably slowly towards Paris; even with four-wheel drive - and with cushions - it was still not a wonderfully comfortable journey and took several hours, partly because of the roads and partly because of the crowds of locals that gathered to look at our little convoy. It was also rather slow because we were several times stopped by officials - with no telephones, no radio and not even a carrier pigeon, we were the fastest method of communication. By the end of the journey, I was convinced that the helicopter would be the way forward for diplomatic travel for a few years; sadly that was not generally to be, except in extremis - the Treasury deeming it to be too expensive, the land rover convoy was the future for the FO for many years. However, despite this slow progress and some worries about a couple of bridges, we arrived at the British Embassy in Paris by the early afternoon.

The embassy itself was in a rather grand house in Paris; it had some grounds, it had relatively light airy rooms and it had, for the time, a considerable staff of five plus a similar number of servants. When you compared that to a modern embassy, you will understand why the FO was able to make so many savings rather easily and why the Diplomatic Corps has shrunk somewhat. The then-Ambassador Horatio Walpole was understandably rather dubious about us at first, but eventually we met up, presented bona fides and answered a host of questions. They did know something had gone on; there was news from Ireland and news from the ships that had turned back, there were a whole host of wild reports about grey ships, horseless carriages and things that flew through the air, so our outlandish ways were at least partially understood. There was a great deal of disbelief and the Second Secretary took some convincing, especially as with regard to his lost estates - that required a certain amount of flannel, as I don’t think anyone had thought of how what we now call trans-persons who had lost out in the Dislocation who might have claims on property in the United Kingdom could be dealt with. Luckily all five members of the embassy had their immediate families with them; others were not so lucky. Some of the other early diplomatic arrivals had different problems - we were denied access to Spain, our man in the Austrian Netherlands refused to speak to us and things were very sticky in Cologne. However, as news got about, we were more and more accepted.

Just about every writer since the Dislocation has usually made a song and dance about how filthy and disgusting they found their first encounter outside the United Kingdom. I do not intend to do that; I think it is fair to say that some of the accounts, especially later ones from the mid-1980’s, were just regurgitating popular prejudices. It was fairly grim, to be honest - although our experiences helped the next tranche of expeditions abroad, who went equipped with bug powder, their own bedding, Elsans and Andrex. Our medical precautions were also useful; I don’t believe from later experiences that trans food is inherently dirty and certainly plenty of it is tasty, it is just that we needed to gain compatibility in certain ways. Certainly our some of our early trans guests had to deal with dicky tummies a few times, despite our much higher food hygiene standards.

Having got to Paris, there was the question of actually getting to Versailles. We had prepared a note which was sent through official channels requesting an audience; it was felt to be rash to try and just drop in, especially as there was now a noticeable military presence hanging around the embassy. I was reminded of the emergency procedure by one of our drivers, which was quite scary in itself. Essentially, some of our drivers were not as it seems, and in absolute extremis they would call in a helicopter; I have never asked if there were guns secreted on the land rovers, but I suspect I know the answer. However, by noon an answer had been received from Versailles; the Cardinal could see us around 3pm. Time, of course, was a lot more flexible in trans-land due to difficult travel times and the lack of accurate clocks.

Our big advantage was that we knew a lot about the Cardinal Fleury: that in general he had done a good job of restoring France’s finances; that he was flexible on some matters but not on internal religious affairs - and especially not on Jansenists; that he had usually sought peace above war; and that he had great influence with the King but somewhat less with the nobles, many of whom resented him. We managed to make the 12 or so miles to Versailles in about forty minutes, and eventually - with the help of our terrified guide, who crossed himself about every two minutes - pulled up at one of the smaller wings, where a sparse, elderly man was looking - no, staring at the LandRover in amazement.

I will say this about Fleury, he has no side to him. He took us in and he listened to us; occasionally he asked a question; occasionally he would signal to a secretary to take a note. He asked the usual questions about the Dislocation: How, What, Why? I carefully phrased things so as not to indicate our total ignorance of the matter in question. I also carefully trailed a Catholic cloak in front of him, which he picked up swiftly and which led to a number of other questions. He seemed rather pleased about at least a partial Conversion of England, but he did say that our lack of
eius regio eius religio
would cause problems to other states. I countered with Electoral Saxony, and he said that they did not have tolerance, but an unusual situation - the effects of which might not be determined for many years.

Fleury was, as far as we were concerned, an entirely rational actor and a long-term thinker.  With the two exceptions of Jansenism and Lorraine, on which he is clouded by emotions, he has otherwise taken everything on its merits and assessed in in a very cool and collected manner. Unfortunately, sometimes he has been overruled by the King or by collections of powerful magnates and there was a considerable period when he was out of favour and did not act as the
primus inter pares
of France. The Lorraine compromise of the Treaty of Birmingham
[33]
has satisfied neither side, and may well lead to further problems in a decade or two. Philibert Orry, his finance minister, was another such exemplar of rationalism; and whilst I doubt if Orry will ever rise to be
primus inter pares
, he is virtually irreplaceable as finance minister - possibly because no one else fully understands his investment and taxation policies. Fleury’s sheer pragmatism, and his ability to discard his self and place the long term duty to France to the fore, is impressive and he has served France well. This was why Margaret Thatcher decided he was “
A man we could do business with”
- and she was right about, that particularly with regards to affairs in North America.