Dislocated to Success (8 page)

One of the things I was asked to do was to be a member of yet another committee, which looked at our current colonies and considered their status and how we should go forward with them. This also included various holdings by trade companies - such as the East India Company - of which there were several. Most of the companies had been dissolved in the UK many years before, which involved some creative use of legislation - especially as they had been founded by Royal Warrant. The really awkward case was the Hudson Bay Company, which not only still existed but had substantial UK assets and what looked like rights to vast tracts of Canada - that was nearly four years before it reached some sort of conclusion, and nearly ten years before it was finally resolved. It had been decided to allow members from the Labour and Liberal parties onto the committee; after all, we were making long term decisions for the future of these places and what we did not need was a quick volte-face by other parties taking office at some point. Luckily, I was not to be on this committee for too long - it was tedious in the extreme.

The main problem with the committee was that the members and the civil servants were children of the era of Imperial Retreat; the legacy of decolonisation lingered over all of us like a shroud. It was assumed by many that each of these colonies would swiftly want to separate itself from the UK and become masters of their own destiny. We did not appreciate the lack of non-British identity in these places, nor did we understand the extremely limited context in which many of them existed. I think it still amazes people that, fifteen years on, we have not yet given independence to a single colony that we chose to retain, nor that there has been anything but the most piffling objection to British rule in a single colony from the former colonials.

Instead we lingered in a sort of miasmic world where we assumed that places would want their own independence as quickly as possible, with perhaps just some simple trade and security guarantees from the UK. Obviously, we appreciated that some places would probably be effectively Crown Dependencies as they were before the Dislocation,  but that was about the limit of it. We certainly did not appreciate that places would look to be fully integrated in the UK. Our first report was very much in the wishful thinking mode, and in the end only a handful of places were evacuated and abandoned. I don’t think we made any incorrect decisions over Bencoolen and the African slave factories - and similarly, although people have disputed it, the state of our claims on the Mosquito Coast and St Lucia were barely tenable. The latter did upset a lot of people in the UK of St Lucian decent, but the facts on the ground were that the island was effectively French; there were just a largish number of people of British descent there. It had a disputed history and our records were not perfect.

Some criticism has been made that part of this “get out quick” idea came from the Labour party; it is certainly true that, even to this day, Labour struggles with the idea of our colonies both old and new. Whilst many people have come to accept that, firstly, we need the resources desperately and, secondly, that many of these people regard themselves as British or feel in need of close association with us, there are those - mainly on the left - who cannot accept that. However, both Labour’s members on the committee were generally in line with the thrust of the debate, and Terry Davis
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in particular grasped the issues firmly in that we had certain responsibilities. On the other hand, the Liberals had not at this point made British North America their cause - probably because they had not yet met Mr Franklin - and they were initially quite awkward about Native Rights, which later became more Sir Edward Heath’s cause.

During this time, the UK continued to make more and more contact with the nearer European states; our reception was varied, to say the least. There were very few cases where we were welcomed with open arms, especially as wild and fanciful stories started to spread. Not that there was much need for them; the very foundations of our liberal democracy are still looked on with apprehension in most of Europe. However some reacted worse than others. Spain was a particular problem; the UK could afford to ignore the likes of Parma, but Spain was one of the five big European powers and the possessor of a world wide colonial empire.

To this day, we still don’t know what mitigated their series of poor decisions that lead to their utter humiliation and the Treaty of Bordeaux. It has been suggested that the leadership of the country was exceptionally poor, and that several members of it may well have not have been in the clearest frame of mind. Certainly the King of Spain, who had been placed back on the throne because of the death of his son, may not have been in the best frame of mind to resist the initial entreaties of his fanatical wife and the ultras who supported her. Opinions of medical professionals were taken on this matter, as there was a feeling that we were not dealing with a rational actor. The rejection of our new ambassador and the expulsion of our old ambassador certainly raised a few eyebrows at the time, although it was generally thought not to presage any of the later events. We had forgotten about the Jacobites - which was easy to do; in the UK they were a tiny and dormant crackpot fringe.

Chapter 9

Obviously, we started seeing some important people wanting to visit the UK at this time. One of the most important in the early days was Cardinal Fleury; unlike some of the others, there were no real problems with our procedures with him. We had grabbed hold of a holiday camp near Clacton for guests - temporarily, whilst proper quarantine facilities were being organised - but I suggested that we would be better having a small VIP facility. There was a bit of discussion about this, but we couldn’t have very prominent people rubbing noses with merchants, returned trans UK travellers etc. It was only used sparingly and had the same level of quarantine as the other facilities, the PM was insistent on that.

Once the 48 hours was up, I was instructed to give the Cardinal a nice day tour before taking him to the Savoy; given his age, I constructed it to be able to be cut short, but he was very interested and full of questions. We showed him a fair bit of rural Essex, a glimpse at Chelmsford, a brief look at various agricultural facilities and then a reasonably fast journey into London. He was fascinated by cars and by roads, and completely stunned by the size of London; he did remark that when we said there were seven million people in the Capital he didn’t believe us, but now he did. He also remarked on the number of black and Asian people as we got deeper into the East End, and was very curious about high rise buildings.

We put up the most prominent people in the River Suites at the Savoy, where we made arrangements that they should get the best available British food and without any rationing problems. We had become aware that, whilst for us, rationing meant tight belts and a hope that we could sort things out quickly, it seemed to indicate a much more desperate situation to most of Europe. Both sides were guilty of mis-signalling, but this one was one of our more troublesome errors. My personal amusement was to make sure the Cardinal had a bottle of modern French wine; he was deeply impressed by it, as were many others.

I wasn’t privy to the meetings he had with the various people, but I do remember having to administer a couple of restorative drinks to him after his meeting with some of the French embassy staff. Apart from his horror at a secular republic, they had given him a brief summary of British military and industrial power; such briefings tended to be rather blunt, especially when the cis-staff were out of sympathy with the trans-power. As some American once put it, once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds shall surely follow. What surprised me was how well he got on with the PM; of course, in some ways, they were quite similar despite the march of the ages. Both declared themselves capable of doing business with each other in public; in private, both respected but had reservations about each other.

The Cardinal returned to France with a good deal more information than he had previously, and from then on proved to be a good friend to Britain, but always kept the interest of France to the fore. It was to prove a lengthy relationship, although there were times when his power was somewhat diminished by the actions of some of the magnates. I don’t believe he ever liked us, nor got fully used to modern thinking - despite his founding of the
Auto Club de France
- but there was a strong feeling of mutual trust between himself and Mrs Thatcher.

No sooner had one VIP departed than another arrived; the Elector of Hannover. I was not involved in this originally, but was dragged in as the Irish situation made David’s position untenable. The position of Frederick Lewis of Hannover was a rather difficult one; whilst we all know him as a modernising Prince who happens to be a bit of a playboy, and whilst he has become quite popular with the British public, he was deeply affected by the Dislocation. Effectively, he lost his entire family - except for a few cousins in Prussia and cadet lines in some of the smaller Braunschweig statelets. He was in an electorate which he was not that familiar with and with a ruling coterie who had been used to exercising power on their own. He was in an unfamiliar situation, off balance and - as one Nottinghamshire MP put it - “A bit mardy”.

We were helped in that he accepted that he could not - nor did he want to - be King of the United Kingdom, and he was really not very keen on being King of Ireland; it seemed he had visited once and had not been impressed. I was told his language was rather salty about the place; this was actually in one way quite helpful to us as it was becoming apparent that we needed Ireland - or at least its agricultural potential - quite badly, but there was certainly a group around Willie who felt that a trans-sovereign in close association was what it needed.  The interesting thing is that now, fifteen years later, he is the fourth most popular member of the Royal family; and if - by some mischance - he did inherit, it would probably be initially accepted by the people - though the politicians would hate it, due to his tendency to be rather more hands-on than other members of The Firm.

So there had to be a settlement - and a fairly generous one at that - and this needed to be sorted out before the new Act of Succession came into place. Luckily, Frederick was broke, as was his electorate, and therefore he was very willing to listen to the idea of a settlement. This took some time to negotiate, but once the principle was there everyone breathed a lot easier. The majority of the settlement in terms of the annual payment came from the Royal Family, but there was a substantial one-off payment made mainly by the Government in return for the nationalisation of most Crown-held Irish land, which was eventually redistributed to its tenants under a form of Right to Buy. As Quintin said, if some of the sharper lawyers had got hold of him it could have cost both the UK and the Royal Family billions.  As it was, he had a sound financial future with a solid annual income - which proved to be much needed, because he did like spending.

It was during the elector’s visit that all hell broke loose. I have mercifully never had the pleasure of the political Siberia that is Northern Ireland, so I was not as well versed as many colleagues in the matter, but towards the end of April Spanish ships landed mercenary forces in Cork Harbour to try and raise rebellion against the Crown of Ireland. At this point, our relations with the Kingdom of Ireland were at rock bottom; the Ascendancy had finally worked out what was happening with the lands of the absentee and long-dead landlords where we had been issuing judgements and had realised that our arrival meant the effective end of their power. All they had heard from their putative Sovereign was effectively telling them to Naff Off, and they had become frightened men.

The attempt to raise a revolt was reasonably successful - not as successful as other revolts in the long history of Irish peasant revolts had been, but successful enough - and the Kingdom of Ireland was in a terrible military position, with most of its forces having been sent north to deal with the border with Northern Ireland. Needless to say, the politics of that benighted province also came into play - with Catholic paramilitaries trying to intervene against Irish regiments crossing the Boyne, and with that awful man Paisley
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attempting an invasion in support of the Ascendancy. Happily it all ended in tears for both groups; the INLA were slaughtered, and the Ulstermen collapsed before they got to Drogheda. Pleasingly, it got most of the leadership of the DUP locked up and out of the way for a while; rather more unexpectedly, it led the way for the start of a slow realignment of Catholic politics in the North.

However, in terms of the insurrection, it was reasonably successful - it looked like the forces of rebellion would reach Dublin before the regiments returned from the North. The Government of the Kingdom of Ireland was forced to swallow its considerable pride and ask the UK government for help. I do not want to go into details, as that is much more for those with a more avid interest in military matters; there have been several excellent books produced over the years which cover events in detail. The culmination was a massively one-sided battle near Naas, where the rebel army managed to stand for around five minutes against an air strike followed by a counter-attack by the experimental light-armoured forces of the Pembrokeshire Yeomanry
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. From that point on the rebellion was essentially over, although it took a week or so to deal with the scattered remaining forces.

Of course, Spain was highly duplicitous in this matter - they had funded the Old Pretender in full, they had supplied the ships to take his forces there, their few cannon were Spanish and a good number of the mercenary troops were of Spanish origin. Whilst our diplomatic contacts were via France or Portugal, their denials were fairly swift to reach us and not at all plausible. It was too late for them; Spain had now been drawn to the attention of the Prime Minister, and any hopes of them regaining Minorca could be forgotten. What was interesting was the reaction of Europe; Europe expected us to take a very harsh line against Spain, whilst we stuck firmly to more modern standards. This also had, I feel, some interesting consequences - I wonder if a swift bombing immediately afterwards would have brought the Spanish to heel quickly. As it was, it added to our growing reputation as a bit of a soft touch.