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HHiissttoorryy NNootteess IIssssuuee 1155 [[JJaannuuaarryy 22000022]]
The Permanent
Under-secretary of State: A Brief History of the Office and its
Holders
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
History Notes
HE PERMAN UNDERSEC YO S ~
A Brief History of the Office and its Holder.
· torians, o.15
THE PERMANENT UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE
A brief history of the qffice and its holders
FCO Historians Records and Historical Departinent
April2002
I BN 0 903359 85 5
Cover: Photographs of the Permanent Under-Secretary )s Office today.
Foreword
This history, now revis d and reissued as a History Note, was initially prepared to mark the r tirement of Sir John K rr as P rmanent Und rSecr tary of State for Foreign and Commonw alth Affairs. A 1 ath rbound copy was present d to Sir John by th S cretary of Stat on 7 January 2002. Although this was n ver intend d to be more than a v ry brief survey of the office of PUS, a number of am ndments hav b n made to the original text, and th last two chapt rs hav b n expanded in order to take account of th work of some of ir John Kerr's more recent pred c ssors. W are grat ful to all thos who hav offered advice on mat rial for inclusion
Christopher Baxter Keith Hamilton
11
CONTENTS
• Foreword 1
Prelude to Permanence 1
Clerks, Constructs and Diplomacy, 1827-93 3
The Last Super Clerk, 1894-1906 13
The New Bureaucracy, 1906-20 18
The New Diplomacy, 1920-46 23
Fusion and Cold War, 1946-62 32
Reports, Reform and Retrenchment, 1962-82 37
The Modern PUS 44
~uotations 51
Chronology of Pennanent Under-Secretaries 55
Bibliography 56
111
IV
LIST OF PLATES
Extract from Treasury minute, 1831
Edmund Hammond
Foreign Office staff ( c.1861-66)
Lord T enterden
British delegates to the Congress of Berlin
Philip Currie
Lamps without Lamps: Thomas Sanderson
Thomas Sanderson
Charles Hardinge
Arthur Nicolson
The Diplomatic Apprentice: Eyre Crowe
Eyre Crowe
William Tyrrell
v
1
5
6
8
9
11
14
16
19
20
23
24
26
Vl
The For ign Office in th 1930
Robert Vansittart
Al xander Cadogan
William trang with Fi ld Mar hal Montgomery
Ivon Kirkpatri k
Paul Gore-B th with Paul S holefield: 'The fir t Fight at th
D ni Gr nhill
Micha 1 P lli r
Ant ny A land
Patri k Wright
David illm r
John C 1
Th P rm n nt nd r- r tary' offic today
JhnKrr
vii
Falls.'
27
28
30
33
35
38
4
42
44
45
46
47
48
49
Vlll
Prelude to Permanence he post of Permanent Under-Secretary of State (PUS) in the Foreign
Office was not, in the first instance, the creation of any
administrative ordinance. Like much else in British public life it
evolved. When, on his appointment as Secretary of State in March
1782, Charles James Fox assumed sole ministerial responsibility for foreign
affairs, he had a staff composed of two Under-Secretaries, a Chief Clerk, seven
Extract from Treasury minute of 15 April 1831, distinguishing between political appointees and permanent Under Secretaries '.
Junior and Senior Clerks, two chamber keepers and their deputy and the
'necessary woman'. The Under-Secretaries drafted despatches, superintended
foreign correspondence and divided up the other work of 'Mr Fox's Office'
amongst the clerks. Initially, both were political appointees, but from 1795
onwards it became cu tomary for only one Under-Secretary to be replaced with a
change of ministry. As a result, the office of Permanent Under-Secretary emerged,
although for many years it was usual for holders of it to regard themselve simply
1
a senior Under-Secretaries. John Backhouse who prior to hi appointment a
Under-Secretary in April 1827, had been associated politically with George
Canning and had served as his private secretary both before and during hi term a
Foreign Secretary (1822-27) remained in po t after the withdrawal of the
Canningites from the Duke of Wellington's Government in 1828. Able and
industrious he came to see his position as 'permanent' and he en ured that his
successors would have virtually exclusive responsibility for the manag ment of
Office business.
Formal recognition was given to Backhouse' po ition a well a to that of hi
counterparts in the Home Office and the War and Colonial Offic in a Trea ury
minute of 15 April 1831. Although this was primarily concerned with propo al
for reducing the salaries of the three principal Secretaries of tate it dr w a cl ar
distinction between these political appointment and the 'perman nt Und r
Secretaries' who remained in office 'during different chang of Admini tration
and who thus [made] a profes ion of Official life'. And wh n in March 1 42
Backhouse retired, George Lenox-Conyngham the then hi f l rk d cribed hi
successor Henry Unwin Addington, as 'Permanent Und r- cr tary f tat . A
salary differential was meanwhile establi hed between the two U nd r- cr t ri
and the second or junior Under-Secretary became ver mor cl ly id ntifi d
with the Secretary of State and wa expected to part office when he did. at r in
the nineteenth century, when a succe ion of Foreign cr tari wer p r
Governments found it necessary to have an Under- cr tary in th u of
Commons, and the title of Parliamentary Under- ecretary already appli d in th
Treasury minute of 1831, pa sed into popular u age.
2
Clerks, Constructs and Diplo~acy, 1827-93 uring the early- and mid-Victorian eras the PUS's role was in part
fashioned by the personalities and ambitions of holders of the
office. But it also grew in response to new demands on the time
and energy of Secretaries of State, political developments abroad,
advances in communications technology, the emergence of a career civil service
and parliamentary pressure for more efficient and more rational administrative
structures. Backhouse, though dogged by ill-health and frequently forced to take
long periods of leave, established the principle that, as the senior official, it was
the PUS's duty to preserve Foreign Office traditions, whether these related to
uniformity of rule and practice or the maintenance of regulations. He also claimed
ascendancy in matters affecting the establishment, including the handling of
clerks' petitions for extra payment for extraordinary duties. Hi functions were,
however, chiefly administrative. Thus, while he appears to have been the first
Under-Secretary to issue letters written on his own initiative, but o tensibly under
the direction of the Foreign Secretary, where questions of policy were concerned
neither he nor Addington were much more than intermediaries. Backhouse
occasionally offered an opinion to Lord Palmers ton, who was Foreign Secretary
during 1830-34, 1835-41 and 1846-51. He conferred with Palmerston on the
American boundary problem in 1835 and again on events in Constantinople in
1836. Nevertheless, Palmerston generally preferred to keep his own counsel and
he was cautious in devolving work to Under-Secretaries. 'Lord Palmerston', noted
Sir George Shee his political Under-Secretary during 1830-34, 'never consults an
Under Secretary. He merely sends out questions to be answered or papers to be
copied when he is here in the evenings.'
Palmerston was even less inclined to seek advice from Addington. The latter,
whose diplomatic career Palmerston had terminated in 1833 on the grounds that
he was too stupid and too ill-willed, owed his appointment to the patronage of
Lord Aberdeen, the Foreign Secretary in Sir Robert Peel's second administration
(1841-46). Nicknamed 'Pumpy', he seems to have been generally disliked within
3
the Office. He, nevertheless, had Palmerston's support in hi quarrel with the
possibly still more detested Chief Clerk. The two official had clashed openly in
1846 over Lenox-Conyngham's efforts to enforce Aberdeen' ban on rooking in
the Office. After returning to the Office one evening to find it in a di gu ting
condition from the smell of Tobacco', Lenox-Conyngham proposed to summon
each of the clerks in order to identify the delinquent for reprimand. But Addington
considered this too severe a course, and that while it wa 'a very good thing
sometimes to take the bull by the horns', it was 'generally wiser to get out of his
way'.
When [he continued] an abuse has become an use by prescription, it i not quite fair, nor is it wise, to up with the club and knock it down. Smoking at [the] F.O. is in this category; and we must deal gently with those who have had their long allowed enjoyment suddenly cut off and who shew some temper at the prohibition.
Two years later, when Lenox-Conyngham declined to implement m a ure
Addington had ordered for the defence of the Office again t po ibl harti t
violence, Addington took this as a challenge to hi seniority. Th hi
insisted that such specific actions required prior instruction from the ecr tary of
State. But Palmerston backed Addington, and the net r ult of the di put wa a
reaffirmation of the PUS's absolute authority over njor per onn l.
Addington and his colleagues were also pre ented with mor pportuniti for
influencing policy after Palmerston's resignation in D c mb r 1 51. The thr
relatively inexperienced Secretarie of State who followed in rapid ucc
Lord Granville, Lord Malmesbury and Lord John Ru ell w r f: r m, r inclin d
than their illustrious predecessor to look to their official for advic . M anwhil
increased business, particularly in the admini tration of con ular w rk plac d n w
demands on staff. Addington's re i tance to Trea ury pr ur for chang 1n
personnel policy and recruitment wa however to en ure that th cl rk in th
Office were to continue to spend much of their tim carrying ut uch ntially
menial duties a the copying docketing and filing of d patch . In hi nd av ur
to promote comprehensive reform of the Civil Servic rev lyan the
Secretary to the Trea ury, sought to root out dead wood wh r v r it c uld b
found. But Addington and his succes or ucc fully pp d p n c mpetitiv
entry to the Office and any mea ure which might di tingui h b tw n taff
4
engaged in intellectual and mechanical tasks. They insisted that the work of the
Foreign Office was different from that of other Government Departments, that it
was of a more confidential nature, and that it was therefore only possible to
employ clerks who were absolutely trustworthy. They would have to be gentlemen
either known to the Secretary of State, or recommended to him, and as such they
must be paid a salary commensurate with their social status. It was an attitude of
mind which profoundly irritated those pressing for greater economy in
Government. It also denied the Office the chance to recruit copying clerks, and
condemned many of the bright, and not-so-bright, young men who joined it during
the next half century to years of employment in work which was very often
neither satisfying nor intellectually challenging.
Edmund Hammond, who succeeded Addington as PUS in April 1854, was equally
opposed to Treasury proposals to bring the Foreign Office into line with the rest of
the Civil Service. The son of a career diplomat, a Fellow of University College,
Oxford, and the choice of the Foreign Secretary
Lord Clarendon, for PUS, he was, unlike either
Backhouse or Addington, drawn from the ranks of
the Foreign Office clerks. However, he too had
firm ideas on how the Office should be staffed.
'There is', he contended 'no department that at
all resembles it [the Foreign Office] in the
character of the work or in the manner in which it
must be done.' The absence of routine work in the
Office, the irregular hours that clerks frequently
had to work, and the need for speed and accuracy
in the despatch of business, meant that much
depended on the maintenance of a certain esprit
de corp to which Hammond felt the 'pariah' Edmund Hammond
l )
y
class could not contribute. A vigorous administrator he believed that the primary
requirement of a Foreign Office clerk was that he should write 'a good bold hand
forming each letter distinctly'; and he resisted the introduction of electric
telegraphy into the Office, complaining that 'nothing is sufficiently explained by
it. It tempts hasty decision. It is an unsatisfactory record for it gives no reason.'
5
Dreame~ of the Sixtie
Foreign Office staff (c. 1861-66). This photograph was taken in Whitehall Garden during the period when the present Main Building wa under con truction. It includes three future Permanent Under-Secretarie : sixth from left (seated) i Charle Abbott (Lord Tenterden); twelfth from left (leaning on rail) i Philip Currie; and eated on the ground immediately below him is Thomas Sanderson.
But while Hammond with the aid of Clarendon and the Prim Mini ter ultimately
triumphed over Treasury reformers, the bu ine gen r ted by th rimean War
(1854-56), subsequent war in urope and pe dier communication ~ rc d
change upon the Office. he political (geographic) divi ion of th fie g in d
in importance; an ssistant Under- cretary wa appoint d and m re clerk w r
recruited, so that by 1 58 the Office had an t bli hm nt f rty-thrce,
approximately the arne as it till had in 1 02 · and th Parliam nt ry n r
Secretary became so preoccupied with the growing int r t of MP in for ign
affairs that Hammond accumulated even gr ater re p n ibiliti within th
By the end of the decade he wa supervi ing four out o fiv of th
political divi ions.
Hammond s period as PUS also coincided with the t mporary rcl cation o th
Office in Whitehall Gardens whil t th pre nt building in Downing
6
being constructed during 1861-68. Little escaped his attention, though it was the
Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell, who was responsible for reprimanding the Office
Keeper and Assistant Doorkeeper, who during supper on the night of 6 April 1862
transformed one of the public rooms of the Office 'into a scene of riot and
debauchery'. Of more immediate concern to Hammond was the appearance of
rooms, corridors and staircases of the new building, whose care was entrusted to
Mary Langcake, the Office Housekeeper. A formidable lady, Mrs Langcake had
already quarrelled with the Chief Clerk over the extent of her responsibilities,
warning him on one occasion 'that she would rather go and keep a lodging house'
than take on extra work in the Office. But Hammond was far from satisfied with
her conduct. In a minute of 10 March 1871 he protested that he had just heard that
the 'generally filthy state of the Office attracted attention from guests at Lord
Granville's party on the 4th instant, and that great complaints were made of the
damage sustained by ladies' dresses in consequence'. There was, Hammond felt,
no excuse for this state of affairs. 'The duty of the housemaids and charwomen in
the Office', he insisted, ' ... is little more than can be done by broom and duster,
and soap and water; and it is the housekeeper's duty to see that this work is
properly done; and more particularly when there is a party in the Office, the
Housekeeper, as such a servant in a private family would do, should be throughout
the day looking to the state of the rooms.' And much to the evident irritation of
the delinquent Housekeeper, he insisted that she henceforth go everyday before
noon through all the passages and rooms, and satisfy herself that the maids had
done their work properly.
The nineteen years during which Hammond was PUS witnessed both a clear
acceptance of his authority in the Office, and the beginnings of the PUS's modem
advisory function. Indeed, to the consternation of some social observers, he was
on retirement at the age of seventy-two, one of the first Victorian bureaucrats to
be rewarded with a peerage. But Hammond had also tended to concentrate all
important work in the Foreign Office in his own hands, and this left other officials
with little opportunity to demonstrate and develop their talents. 'I think',
complained one disgruntled colleague, 'that when Mr Hammond retires we shall
find that with many very competent men in the Office there will not be one ready
to take his place.' This may help in part to explain the appointment, in October
7
1873 of the thirty-eight year old Lord Tenterden as his successor. A nephew of
the second Baron Tenterden he had, as Charles Stuart Aubrey Abbott joined the
Foreign Office as a clerk in 1854. His career might have been unremarkable had it
not been for the untimely death of one Assistant Under-Secretary in 1869 and the
rapid translation of another to the Embassy in Berlin. In consequence Tenterden
became Assistant in the Far East and American division and was able to win
recognition for himself as secretary to Lord de Grey s mission to Wa hington
during the Alabama arbitration proceedings. Two years later he was appointed
A si tant Under-Secretary over the heads of all the other Senior Clerks.
Tenterden appears to have adopted much the arne approach to the running of the
Office as did Hammond. He wa however, soon to discover a probl m that wa to
Lord Tenterden
beset many of his succes ors notably that
there wa 'routine work in th Offic and
that it ob tructed trategic thinking. It
ha he noted on 17 January 7 6
'occurred to m that it would much
facilitate bu in and ave orne tim and
troubl to th Head of D partm nt if
w re to t a ide a tim during th ay
which I could d ot to int rvi w and th
di cu ion with the pt. of
important matt r with ut b ing
int rrupted by routin work. H th r for
decid d to t ap rt two hour in th
aft moon leaving th r mainin tim r
1gntng and g ing through m r d tail
work'. In other r p ct r th r
con rvative figur , h
managed to displea e the onservative Prim njamin Di raeli. h
latter s di astrous ceptici m about Ottoman trociti tn ulgaria in 1 7 wa
attributed to the failure of th Foreign ffice to nd him the r 1 vant d patch
and telegram . And Tenterden s ub qu nt critici m of th p r on 1 dipl macy of
the Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury was denounced by Disraeli as
'Tenterdenism-a dusty affair not suited to the time and things we have to grapple
with.'
The ear Eastern crisis underscored the Office s need for immediate and reliable
legal advice. Until the mid-1870s it had relied for legal advice upon the Queen s
Advocate and the Law Officers of the Crown. But in 1876 a Parliamentary
Committee recommended the appointment of a Legal Assistant Under-Secretary,
and Sir Julian Pauncefote was selected for the po t. A former Attorney-General
for Hong Kong and Chief Ju tice of the Leeward I lands Pauncefote had only
recently been appointed to a similar po ition within the Colonial Office. Hardly
however, had he taken up his new job in the Foreign Office before he found that
in addition to hi legal work, he wa e pected to assume re pon ibility for
superintending a good deal ofth Department political work. Tenterden declined
to support hi plea for th upgrading of hi post to a full Under-S cretary hip.
v rthele wh n after a long illne T nterden died in Sept mber 1 2
olvin the a tern Que tion
Briti h delegate to the ongre of Berlin of 1 7 . From left to right: Arthur Jam Balfour; Franci Bertie; Philip Currie, future PU but at the time Private ecretary to Lord ali bury; Eric Barrington; Le Marchant Had ley Go elin; and Charle Hopwood.
9
Pauncefote was, despite the objections of those who believed a career official
should have been appointed chosen as his successor.
The business of the Office meanwhile continued to expand and the complex
geographical, legal and political issues raised by the Berlin West Africa
Conference of 1884-85 placed severe strains on its limited resource . True the
official six-hour working day of 12 noon to 6 p.m. might seem short by modern
standards. Indeed, Pauncefote complained vigorously to the Chief Clerk on 8
January 1886 when, after having arrived 'early' at 11.45 a.m. , he found himself
unable to summon an Office Keeper. But Clerks were not usually released from
their attendance until all the day's work was complete which often meant their
working until 7 or 8 p.m., those in charge of divisions were required to do a good
deal of work at home and, unlike other Whitehall Department there was no half
day holiday on Saturdays. Granville, in any event, heaped ful orne prai e upon the
Office when he resigned as Foreign Secretary in June 1 5. 'I doubt' he wrote to
Pauncefote, 'whether the Department was ever o well-manned as at pre ent & it
is to that fact that I ascribe that with no increase of number , they hav been o
able to deal so efficiently with an increa e of work. It i certainly th b t type of
the be t civil service in the World.'
Prior to Tenterden's death the old political divi ions of th Offic were
reorganised into larger departments. The French and German divi ion thu
became the Franco-German, or Western, Department, and th Ottoman Empire
and its neighbours became the responsibility of the Ea tern Department.
Pauncefote 's decision to continue providing the Office with legal advice required
a greater devolution of work to the two As istant Under- cretarie . On of th
Sir Philip Currie, eventually replaced him when in 1889 ali bury who wanted to
honour the Americans without demoting an Amba sador, appointed Paunc fot
British Minister in Washington. Four year later, when th Briti h Legation in
Washington was raised to an Embassy Pauncefote became Britain' fir t
Ambassador to the United State . He is also remember d by diplomatic hi torian
a the head of the British delegation to the fir t Hague Peace onference of 1 9
at which he played a leading role in ecuring agreement to the e tabli hm nt of a
10
permanent court of international arbitration, and as the co-signatory of the Hay
Pauncefote Treaty of 1901 which sought to regulate rights of passage through the
Panama Canal. A lawyer who stumbled into the rough and tumble of diplomacy,
Pauncefote, made no great changes in the administration of the Office, but he was
a conciliatory force during a troubled and stressful period in Anglo-American
relations.
Currie was an official much more in the mould of Tenterden. He had entered the
Foreign Office in 1854 and served as Precis Writer to Lord Clarendon during
1857-58. But he was also endowed with a private fortune and was socially well
Philip urrie
connected. His cousin was the Earl of
Kimberley (Lord Wodehouse ), to whose
special mission to St Petersburg in 1856
he was attached, and he was on close
terms with Salisbury whom on
Tenterden' s recommendation he
accompanied to the Constantinople
Conference in 1876, and whose Private
ecretary he subsequently became. Mary,
hi wife was the novelist Violet Fane.
His contribution to the running of the
Office was nonetheless hardly
impre sive, and Currie was better
remembered for the tricks performed by
hi pet dog 'Pam' than for any administrative initiative. He adopted a distinctly
negative attitude toward the Royal Commission on the Civil Service which began
it enquiry into th oreign Office in 1 90 and cho e to ignore it
r comm ndation that econd di i ion (copying) clerk hould be employed for
handling non-p litical corr pond nee. e likewi e allowed the implementation
of the oyal ommi ion' other main recommendation for the amalgamation of
the oreign Office with th Diplomatic ervice to become bogged down in
t cbnicalities. Yet, the la t year of Currie' career would seem to suggest that
tho e rai ed in the Victorian or ign Office were not th best uited for service
abroad. urrie' rigid manneri ms did not endear him to foreign courts. either in
11
Constantinople, where he was appointed Ambassador in December 1893, nor in
Rome to which he was translated in 1898, did he succeed in advancing British
influence or interests.
12
The Last Super-Clerk, 1894-1906 ~ .................... urrie owed his elevation to his intimacy with Lord Salisbury. Sir
Thomas Sanderson, his successor as PUS, owed his to his good
sense, sharp intellect, and devotion to duty. The second son of the
Conservative MP for Colchester, at sixteen years of age Sanderson
had been forced by his father's bankruptcy to quit Eton in order to find some form
of remuneration. Two years later, in 1859, he sat the recently instituted Foreign
Office competitive examination and secured himself a junior clerkship. He
remained in the Office for the next forty-seven years, his only service abroad
being with Lord Wodehouse's mission to King Christian IX of Denmark in 1863-
64, and at Geneva during the Alabama arbitration in 1871. His qualities were
amply recognised in a despatch from Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, the British
arbitrator, to Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary. 'His perfect mastery of the
subject of the Alabama claims', Cockburn observed, 'extending even to the
minute details· his general information, his great intelligence, his indefatigable
industry, his readiness, only excelled by his ability, to afford assistance, have
excited my warmest admiration and deserve my sincerest acknowledgements.'
Granville, to whom he was Private Secretary, during 1880-85, was also impressed
by his talents. Indeed, in 1882 he considered Sanderson a suitable successor to
Tenterden as PUS, but dared not press his case for fear of the disruption that was
likely to be caused by passing Sanderson over the heads of so many of his more
senior colleagues.
'Lamps' or 'Giglamps', as Sanderson was known to friends and colleagues
because of the heavy spectacles he usually wore, was a frequent guest at
Granville's home in Carlton House Terrace. There he joined younger members of
the household in games of drawing room cricket. He also wrote short stories for
children and played the flute. His playful gestures were not, however, invariably
appreciated. Once, whilst staying at Walmer Castle, he was party to some
charades in which he was required to impersonate an acrobat and much alarmed
Lady Granville by appearing in his under-shirt and drawers. The poor woman
could not be consoled with assurances that Sanderson's underclothes were the
nearest approach to a professional acrobat's attire that could be attained. Others
13
Lamp without Lamp
Thomas ander on, seated on the left, explaining the u e and abu e of red tape to younger colleague .
by contrast were irritated by
Sanderson s bureaucratic
strictures. His eye for detail and
refusal to abide the lea t
inaccuracy in terminology or
drafting meant that many clerks
lived in terror of him, and in later
year he was regarded by juniors
as a martinet of the old order . It
is however quite impos ible to
read the memorandum which he
wrote as s istant Und r-S cretary
in October 1 91, 'Ob ervation on
the U and Abu e of Red ape for
th Junior in the
and American D partm nt
without recogni ing ander n
capacity to bring wit an
intellig nc t he dri t of
subj cts. And his pap r' penultimate admonition would m t b lie th v rdict
of orne of hi contemporarie that he wa out to tifl indi i u 1 initi tiv
I hould [he wrote] be glad t think that I could at any m mcnt r fi r t any member of the hinese partment for the respective wh reab ut of Honan and Hunan or a certain from a Juni r lh We tern Department what are the i of the ari u island in th am an Archipelago and wheth r the inhabit nt d , r d n t wear tr u r . But I am afraid that to many of u amoa only r pr nt c pyin and sections of blue print. hi I think i a mi ~ rtun · i turn ur daily bread into dry bon and after a tim th t 1 p n nt r int th ul, and the individual become a m re fficial (who i a very di mal creature), or lo e all vigour, and inks i to h p 1 m di crity.
ander on had however a rather mor cautiou vt w o th n h
orne of hi succe or . i appointrn nt a P rm n nt
January 1 94 wa followed ighteen month lat r by
flnal term a ore1gn cretary. ali bury like and r p ct
cr t ry in
r tum r hi
nd r n but pt
14
the overall making of policy very much to himself and treated even his closest
officials as though they were instruments rather than advisers. Indeed, Salisbury
could sometimes be more open in expressing his views to foreign Ambassadors
than to either colleagues or staff. Pressure of business during the late 1890s, a
time of crisis and conflict in Africa and Asia, nevertheless, left senior officials
with more opportunities for debating policy, and Salisbury was content to leave
them to deal with matters of detail. When in April 1898 Salisbury fell ill and his
nephew, Arthur James Balfour acted as Foreign Secretary, it was Sanderson who
was summoned every morning to assist him with the matters of the day. 'I am
now a sort of standing dish at Arthur Balfour's breakfast', noted Sanderson.
'When his attention is divided, as it was this morning, between me and a fresh
herring there are alternatively moments of distraction while he is concentrating on
the herring and moments of danger when he is concentrating on foreign affairs.'
Later that year, at the height of the Fashoda Crisis, Sanderson also served as a
convenient negotiating buffer between Salisbury and the French Ambassador in
London. Sanderson had nonetheless to reckon with constant criticism from
colleagues who were anxious to have more say in the direction of policy. Much of
this was the result of personal and bureaucratic rivalries. Francis Bertie, who had
joined the Office only four years after Sanderson and who doubtless envied him
his position, was in the words of one new entrant to the Diplomatic Service
'always turning Sander on into ridicule in front of us'. He also condemned
Sanderson for his 'red tapeism', and reluctance to countenance change.
'Sander on', noted Cecil Spring-Rice, one of Bertie's young friends, 'never
listens to anyone: has no personal knowledge of Europe and no general ideas: is
an ideal official for drafting despatches and emptying boxes . . . As long as he is
there the officials at home & abroad are simply useful as machines and the
Foreign Office i like Johnson's definition of fishing: a line with a fool at one end
and a worm at the other.'
This was neither accurate nor fair. Sanderson, who was by his own admission an
'official and narrow-minded', was extremely circumspect in devolving work from
Under-Secretarie and heads of department downwards. His first concern was
with the proper transaction of business in an office in which a blunder could have
15
.!
more senous con equences than in any other Department of State, and he
believed not without good reason, that 'constant practice . . . [was] ... necessary
to ensure methodical attention to matters of detail'. But he was prepared to
consider and inculcate such changes as he considered necessary, especially when
Lord Salisbury's replacement by Lord Lansdowne in November 1900 provided an
impetus to reform. From the start the new and inexperienced Foreign Secretary
sought advice in summary form from within
the Office and encouraged more specialisation
on the part of officials. But it was Sanderson
who assumed responsibility for initiating
reforms which would relieve able and talented
young recruits to the Office of many of the
more mundane and menial tasks with which
they had previously been assigned, and which
would leave it to heads of department to
devolve policy work to subordinate members.
He was instrumental in securing the
appointment of the Cartwright Committee in
1903 to look into the reform of the
administration of the Office, and with the aid
of both Francis Villiers, Assistant Under- ly
Secretary since 1896, and the indefatigable
Eyre Crowe, who was then an Assistant Clerk,
he eventually overcame Treasury quibbling Thoma ander on
CJ . over the Committee's proposals. As a result, the Office acquired a General
Registry, a Registrar, an Assistant Registrar, two staff officer , nine second
division clerks and four boy clerks. The additional appointments were sanctioned
from 1 December 1905 and the new scheme was put into operation on 1 January
1906, a month before Sanderson's retirement.
Sanderson's last eighteen months in the Office were unfortunately marred by ill
health. Problems with his eyesight forced him to take extended leave in the
summer and autumn of 1904, and Bertie, who in the previous year had replaced
Currie in Rome, returned to London to assume temporary charge of the Office.
16
Sanderson had hoped that 'in the Italian climate and with much less work some of
[Bertie's] asperities from which we have suffered [would] disappear'. They did
not. Nor did Bertie's penchant for intrigue. He had already succeeded in
furthering the diplomatic careers of several younger men who shared his
increasing Germanophobia- a reaction in part to the Germans' adoption of
French and Russian methods in their dealings with the British- and in London
Bertie began to work for the nomination of his second cousin Sir Charles
Hardinge, who was then Ambassador in St Petersburg, as Sanderson's successor.
Sanderson would have preferred Villiers to be his heir. But Bertie and Hardinge
were both on excellent terms with Edward VII and with the King's support they
were able to win the appointments they desired. There was indeed a certain sad
irony in the fact that it was those who looked to Bertie as their mentor who were
ultimately to benefit most from Sanderson's reforms. And in retirement
Sanderson was left to ponder on the increased influence on policy of former
colleagues whose views on relations with Germany he evidently perceived as
dangerous and misplaced. His observations on Eyre Crowe's celebrated
memorandum of January 1907 offered a balanced, but too often ignored,
corrective to Crowe's historical analysis and the growing tendency within the
Office and outside to portray every German action as a threat British interests. ' It
has sometimes seemed to me', he observed, 'that to a foreigner reading our pre s
the British Empire must appear in the light of some huge giant sprawling over the
globe, with gouty fmgers and toes stretching in every direction, which cannot be
approached without eliciting a scream.'
17
The New Bureaucracy, 1906-20 ardinge was surprised at Sanderson having 'taken up the cudgels
for Germany'. He should not have been. Sanderson had worked
closely with Foreign Secretaries who had looked to Germany
almost as a natural ally in their dealing with older and more
dangerous imperial rivals. But Hardinge was very different in background career
and character from Sanderson. His paternal grandfather had been Governor
General of India, and his maternal grandfather, Lord Lucan, had led the Light
Brigade in its ill-fated charge in the Crimea. Educated at Harrow and Trinity
College Cambridge, where he gained a third class honours degree in mathematics
he entered the Diplomatic Service in the spring of 1880 and erved ucces ively in
Constantinople, Berlin, Washington Sofia, Bucharest Paris Tehran and St
Petersburg, and he was briefly Assistant Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office
during 1903-04. And although in 1905 he quibbled over the pecuniary acrifice
involved in exchanging an Embassy for the Permanent Under-Secretary hip, he
had by then come to realise, as he later acknowledged in hi memoir , 'that the
only way to get on in the ervice wa to disregard material advantages and to eek
only for power'. Hardinge was the first PUS to be drawn from the Diplomatic
Service, and he was the only PUS to hold the office twic .
Hardinge's appointment as Permanent Under-Secretary coincid d with thr e
significant developments in Foreign Office hi tory: the collap e of th U nioni t
Government in December 1905 and the formation of a Lib ral admini tration with
Sir Edward Grey a Foreign Secretary· the opening of the Alg cira Conti renee
which was intended to settle the int rnational cri i r ulting from G rmany'
championing of Morocco's independence again t the expan iv d ign of Franc
and the challenge this apparently po ed to the recently-conclud d nt nt
cordiale· and the implementation of the Sander on/ rowe r form for which
Hardinge was later to claim credit. Grey wa much more inclined than Lan downe
had been to regard the maintenance of th Anglo-French ent nt a a fundam ntal
element in British foreign policy, and over the next few year th r lation hip wa
transformed from an understanding on colonial issue into what wa in ffl ct a
quasi-alliance. Thi wa very much in line with Hardinge' own thinking and a
18
relatively inexperienced Grey, who, unlike his immediate predecessors, had to
Charle Hardinge
defend policy in the Commons, came to rely
increasingly on his advice and that proffered by
other senior officials. Despatches from missions
abroad were henceforth regularly accompanied by
minutes and Office memoranda analysing and
summarising international developments and
recommending appropriate courses of action. In
addition, Hardinge corresponded by private letter
with all of Britain's major Embassies in Europe
conveying both Office gossip and detailed
information on current preoccupations in Whitehall.
Hardinge's burden of work steadily increased in a period which witne sed
renewed crises in the Near East, the seemingly relentless expansion of German
naval power, and the achievement of a rather less than successful accommodation
with Russia in Persia and central Asia. The King's enthusiasm for foreign travel
also expanded the role of the PUS. On no less than eight occasions between April
1906 and February 1909 Hardinge accompanied Edward VII on official or semi
official visits to foreign Heads of State. That to Carthagena in April 1907 opened
the way to the conclusion of the Mediterranean Accords with France and Spain an
event which was perceived in Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg as evidence that
the King was pursuing a policy aimed deliberately at encircling Germany; and that
to Reval in June 1908 appeared to confmn the new understanding with Russia and
the emergence of what was sometimes referred to as the 'Triple Entente'. The
meeting between Edward VII and Nicholas II at Reval might also be classed as a
minor triumph for Sir Arthur Nicolson, who, after succeeding Hardinge as
Ambassador in St Petersburg, was also to succeed him as PUS, when in
November 1910 Hardinge was appointed Viceroy of India.
Nicolson was not well-suited either in stamina or temperament for the post of
Permanent Under-Secretary. A career diplomat, before taking up his post in St
Petersburg he had been Britain's Minister in Tangier, Ambassador in Madrid and
Head of Delegation to the · Algeciras Conference. But while he was a skilled
19
negotiator and adept reporter of events, he never developed the makings of a good
administrator. Anglo-Russian differences over Persia, a fresh crisis over Morocco,
and war in the Balkans, placed new burdens on the Office, and Nicolson was
evidently overwhelmed by a system which required him to act as filter between
energetic departmental heads and the Secretary of State. Moreover, he never
achieved the close working relationship which Hardinge had established with
Grey. The latter, with whom he quarrelled over
Ulster, relied increasingly upon his Private
Secretary, William Tyrrell, for advice, and Nicolson
was accused of excessive Russophilia. In ill-health
and anxious to leave London, Nicolson began in
August 1912 to hanker after a posting abroad. After
having been refused the Embassies at
Constantinople and Vienna, both of which became
vacant in 1913, he set his sights on Paris. Bertie,
who had been Ambassador there since January
1905, was due to retire when he reached seventy in
August 1914. But Bertie was reluctant to go, and
Arthur Nicol on
certainly had no wish make way for Nicolson whom he feared 'would be an out
and out advocate at Paris and in London of Rus ian view '. At a time when
Austria-Hungary and Russia seemed set on a collision cour e in the Balkans
Bertie thought there was a need to have in Paris omeone who would moderate
French zeal for supporting their Russian allie . H wa therefore particularly
irritated when Nicolson, 'the little blue eyed rogue', began making enquiri about
re-furnishing the Embassy.
In the end Nicolson was denied the opportunity to move by the outbreak of the
First World War and a request from Grey to Bertie to ' tay on and ee th war
through'. He spent another two unhappy years as PUS confining him elf to
helping Grey with the routine work of the Office and neither attempted nor
desired to take a leading part in the conduct of war-time diplomacy. 'Hi whole
attitude towards the war was', in the words of hi biographer, hi son Harold
Nicolson, 'indeed, old fashionable. He objected to the blockade: he hated the
secret service work and spy-fever which it produced: he wa particularly
20
distressed by the excesses of war-time propaganda. ' Yet, the exigencies of total
war required the mobilisation of all the resources of the state and increasingly
involved other Whitehall Departments in the conduct of foreign relations. Senior
officials in the Foreign Office continued to exercise considerable influence on the
Foreign Secretary, but foreign policy was no longer his exclusive preserve. Grey
willingly accepted a subordinate role in the Cabinet, deferring to the wishes of the
Admiralty and the War Office, and Balfour, his successor in Lloyd George's
Government, was not even a member of the War Cabinet. On the eve of
Hardinge' s return to London as PUS in June 1916, Bertie wrote from Paris to
warn him: 'I think that you will find that the Foreign Office is in great part a "pass
on" Department viz. it issues instructions at the issue of other offices often
without considering whether such instructions are advisable or feasible and
sometime in ignorance seemingly of what has already been said by some other
Departments of the Foreign Office.'
Hardinge was also not the man he had once been. Prior to his departure for India
he had been raised to a peerage and had taken the title of Lord Hardinge of
Penshurst. But personal bereavements, public criticism of his part in the disastrous
Mesopotamian campaign, and the shock of being blown up on an elephant, had all
seemed to weaken his resolve. He soon had to cope with an Office in which there
was an uncertain division of responsibility between Balfour and Lord Robert
Cecil, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary and Minister of Blockade, and with a
Prime Minister who had little respect for traditional institutions, distrusted
intermediaries and preferred to engage in his own brand of personal diplomacy.
His colleagues hoped that when peace came the Office would be able to reassert
its central role in directing policy. Elaborate preparations were made for a peace
conference, and the newly-established Historical Section produced over 180
Handbooks containing background information on issues likely to be considered.
Hardinge was not however permitted truly to play the part of organising
Ambassador during the negotiations at Paris, and Lloyd George looked to his
Cabinet Secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, to provide what central coordination the
British delegation possessed. Moreover, the effective division of the Office into
two parts in 1919, one with Balfour in Paris, and the other under his successor
Lord Curzon in London, helped further reduce its influence on policy.
21
Hardinge was also faced with implementing the report of the pre-war MacDonnell
Commission on the Civil Service, whose recommendations included the fusion of
the Foreign Office with the Diplomatic Service and the introduction of an entry
system which would attract candidates from a broader social base. This was to
involve Hardinge in long battles with the Treasury, which favoured reform but
was reluctant to pay for it. In consequence, only a partial merger of the two
services was achieved up to First Secretary level and, while entrance procedures
were liberalised, conservatives in the Office were to insist on a method of
selecting candidates separate to that applied elsewhere in the Civil Service. There
would, as one official remarked, otherwise be no way of excluding 'Jews,
coloured men and infidels who [were] British subjects'. Hardinge nonetheless
gave oblique recognition to the shortcomings of such selection procedure . When
in June 1920 Sir Auckland Geddes, then British Amba sador in Washington,
suggested that the ideal senior staff in his Embassy should consi t of at least one
Roman Catholic, a Jew, a Scotch Presbyterian, and an Anglican, Hardinge
confessed: 'We could not find enough Jews and Scotch Presbyterians to go
round!' Meanwhile, the PUS failed to establish a modu vivendi with George
Curzon. It was difficult for one former Viceroy to reconcile himself to taking
instructions from another, and their relationship was characterised by per onal
bickering and deep-seated animosity. 'They were', Lord Van ittart later recalled,
'connected by a broad old speaking tube, and when George blew down Charlie
blew up.' Relations between them only improved after Hardinge managed to fulfil
one of his long held ambitions by securing appointment as Amba ador to Pari in
November 1920. There, much to Curzon's evident disgust, he set about furni bing
the beautiful Hotel de Charost with tiger skins, elephant tu k and ilver ca kets.
He was replaced as PUS by Crowe, a survivor of the old diplomacy and an
unacknowledged progenitor of the new.
22
The New Diplomacy, 1920-46 -- ew Permanent Under-Secretaries have received a more favourable
press from the historians of their day than Sir Eyre Crowe. Even
fewer have earned more praise and affection from those who served
under them. Crowe, whose long career in the Office spanned forty
years and culminated in his appointment as PUS in ovember 1920, was rarely
without his critics or rivals. But in 1932 George Peabody Gooch and Harold
Temperley, the Editors of the British Documents on the Origins of the War
observed that it was impossible to read Crowe's memoranda 'without receiving
the impression that they [were] the utterances of a man of uncommon powers of
mind and capacity to take wide views when immersed in disputes of the moment'.
The son of Joseph Crowe, the British Consul at Leipzig, and his German wife
Crowe received his schooling in Germany and was eighteen when he first visited
The Diplomatic Apprentice
The young Eyre Crowe, econd from the left, ca ts an eye over office memoranda.
23
England in 1 82 to start tudying for the Foreign Office examination. Ther ,
impecunious in Wimbledon, he struggled to overcome his imperfect knowledge of
English. When in 1 85 Lord Granville was abl to offer him a junior clerk hip in
the Office, Crowe informed his father in a letter which betrayed his still uncertain
gra p of the idiom of his adopted land, 'I am to have an appointment is that not
so?' Family ties, which were reinforced when in 1903 he married his widowed
cousm lema von Bonin kept rowe in clo e touch with German politic and
ociety. He could count among t hi relatives two German admiral , one of whom
became wartime Chi f of the German a val Staff and a Prus ian gen ral.
In lat r years he was to uffer for the e German connexions and when in March
191 a hostile and xenophobic mob of uffragettes d cended on hi hom 1n
Eyre rowe
hel ea demanding hi di mi al h
loaded a pi tol for hi wife prot ction.
All thi wa particularly ironic tnc
rowe con i tent d t rmination t
what he perceiv d a the thr at po d t
Britain' imperial curity by th ill -
defin d but mbiti n f
Wi lh lmin ermany and th pr ur h
a A i tant nd r- cr t ry put n r y
in the umm r of 1 14 t r nge Brit in
al ng id ranc and Ru ia in pp iti n
to rm ny am d [! r him th r pu ti n
f an anti- rm n. In t ct h w v r
rowe r main d enti lly rm n in hi
int 11 ct and methodology. He wa thoroughly imbu d with th id a f rman
hi torian . He devoured the weighty volume of Rank nd in ad ition t th
work of von ybel Treit chke and ichte h r ad th a
Kapital. Wa it any wond r that in Augu t 1 14 h fllt him lf t b f: c
of big force of n tur and [th t] th mu t work th ir w y'. Di ti fie with
what he regarded a the hand-to-mouth diplom cy f
ab ence of planning in Briti h policy-m king rowe had
li bury and the
intr duce
m re hi torical pirit' into the Office. In a p p r f Janu ry 1 5 h tr th
24
inadequacy of a system which allowed hardly anyone 'the time or opportunity to
engage on that wider survey of affairs and duties which [seemed] the only
satisfactory basis on which to establish the management' of foreign policy, and he
advocated the preparation of annual reports by heads of mission a a means both
of assembling information and of appraising their author for promotion or
transfer. Much to the dismay of the Treasury, he also suggested that the Foreign
Office Library employ young university men with 'historical training' to compile
'histories of certain events or incidents of importance' for the guidance of the
Foreign Secretary. Crowe himself made full, if not always accurate, use of
historical analogies to substantiate his analyses of Macht- and Weltpolitik.
Characteristically, when Grey seemed to hesitate in the war crisis of 1914 Crowe
cited the example of Prussia which, having opted for neutrality in 1805 had
succumbed in the following year to Napoleon's might. And he warned colleague
who contemplated resignation that 'their supreme duty [was] not to Sir Edward
Grey and to his Cabinet but to the state', a doctrine which, though constitutionally
sound was surely expressed in terms more appropriate to the Wilhemstrasse than
Whitehall.
Bertie subsequently noted that he had learnt that Crowe's 'Prussian blood' had
come out and that he had been 'insubordinate and insolent' to Grey. Nevertheless
Crowe's wartime supervision of the Office's economic departments allowed him
to carve out a key role in the formulation of commercial policy, and provided him
with a good grounding in dealing with the kind of commercial and financial is ues
which were so important in the diplomacy of the early 1920s.
During his first three years as PUS he also, like Hardinge, had to contend with the
demands and daily tantrums of Curzon, who repeatedly complained about the
functioning of the Office. Curzon would deliberately ask for him on the telephone
at times when Crowe could not reasonably have been expected at his desk and
would ask for his return. 'Can't the man realise', Crowe complained, 'that long
after he has gone home in his Rolls-Royce, I have to catch a No. 11 bus for Elm
Park Road and sup off sardines or cold sausages before dealing with the evening'
telegrams.' The formation of the fust Labour Government in January 1924 and
Ramsay MacDonald's arrival at the Foreign Office may therefore have come a
25
something of a relief to Crowe. And although they differed over relations with
Soviet Russia, MacDonald was personally committed to more open diplomacy
and gave his support to a project long favoured by Crowe_the publication in
documentary form of the Office's historical record. Crowe believed that Britain
had nothing to lose and much to gain by giving the widest possible publicity to its
transactions with foreign countries and, from 1908 onwards, he had supported the
notion of giving historians freer access to Foreign Office records. He thereby
inadvertently ensured that his own dialectic would help shape the history, as well
as the course, of British foreign policy.
Crowe had to oversee the Office's transition from war to peace. Its wartime
structure was dismantled and by 1922 there were, in addition to the PUS three
Assistant Under-Secretaries, one of whom was from 1925 termed Deputy Under
Secretary. In addition, Crowe's efforts to promote the accords which were
eventually concluded at Locamo in October 1925 helped defuse a Franco-German
cold war on the Rhine and restored a sense of 'normality' to relations amongst the
European powers. Unfortunately, by the time of their signing, Crowe wa no
more: in declining health, he died on 28 April hartly before hi sixty-first
birthday.
His successor, Sir William Tyrrell, was also very
much a product of the pre-1914 Foreign Office.
Born in India, the grandson of an Indian princess,
he was brought-up in the household of his uncle
the distinguished Prussian diplomat Prince Hugo
von Radolin, and educated at the University of
Bonn and Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the
Foreign Office in 1889 and was Private Secretary
to Sanderson and later to Grey, and briefly
Second Secretary to Bertie's Embassy in Rome.
His career was interrupted in 1915 when he
suffered a breakdown following the death of his William Tyrrell
youngest son in battle. But he returned to work in 1916, was appointed head of the
newly-formed Political Intelligence Department, and wa promoted to A si tant
26
Under-Secretary in October 1918. Urbane, charming and an inexhaustible source
of information, Tyrrell worked well with Sir Austen Chamberlain, who was
Foreign Secretary for all of the time that he was PUS. He had, however, neither
Crowe's eye for administrative detail, nor his proficiency in extensive and profuse
minuting. He shunned the drudgery of departmental drafts and was highly
selective in his reading of files, and preferred to rely on personal contacts rather
than commit his views to paper. Once, in response to a reminder from his Private
Secretary that a decision was required on a particular issue, he simply noted: 'Yes,
it is.'
Tyrrell was nonetheless quick to stake a claim to the Paris Embassy when it
became vacant in July 1928, and he won Chamberlain's backing for his
appointment as Ambassador. He was replaced by Sir Ronald Lindsay, an
aristocrat and professional diplomat who, apart from a short spell as Assistant
Private Secretary to Grey and three years as Assistant Under-Secretary during
1921-24, had spent most of his career in posts abroad. During his eighteen-month
tenure as PUS, he seems not to have made a great impression on the Office, and
his relations with Arthur Henderson, the new Labour Foreign Secretary, were
The Foreign Office in the 1930s
27
strained. In June 1929 he persuaded Henderson, against the latter's better
judgement, to remove the British High Commissioner in Egypt; and later that
summer he was particularly critical of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord
Snowden, whose robust defence of Britain's financial interests had threatened to
bring about the collapse of the reparations conference at The Hague. Evidently
relieved by Henderson's offer to him of the Embassy in Washington in January
1930, Lindsay assured his successor Sir Robert Vansittart: 'The staff will carry
you.' His language doubtless betrayed his own state of mind. But it was not advice
which Vansittart was in any mind to follow.
Vansittart' s appointment was not in itself controversial: his opinions and conduct
were. Known as 'Van' to his friends, the forty-eight year old Vansittart had served
at home and abroad and had had a career which was as varied as that of most
modem Permanent Under-Secretaries. As an assistant clerk in 1914, he had been
first British delegate at the Conference for the Protection of the Elephant and
Rhinoceros in Africa and since 1928, with the rank of Assistant Under- ecretary
he had served as Private Secretary to Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and
Robert Vansittart
Ram ay MacDonald. He was a man of trong
opinion , which he firmly expre ed in
correspondence heavily lard d with wit and
metaphors. According to Anthony den, who
became Foreign Secretary in ecember 193 5,
he wa more 'a in cere, almo t fanatical
cru ader than 'an official giving cool and
disinterested advice'. i minut could b
allusiv , amu ing and contort d and hi
immediat succ or had g od rea on to
complain of hi 'dancing lit rary hornpip '
Only three month after hi appointment a
PUS, he circulat d hi Old dam'
memorandum, a paper in which he bemoan d
the reversion of Europe to 'pre-war thought' or what he pecified a the old
diplomacy with its alliances insurance and reinsurance tr atie , balance of pow r,
military values, and the economic theories represented by tariff wall and tariff
28
combinations'. Yet, within three years, he was warning colleagues against Nazi
Germany's loosing off another war, and urging the need for large-scale
rearmament and the closest of relationships with France.
As, however, Vansittart was soon to be reminded, much would depend on the
Treasury's willingness to sanction expenditure on armaments. The Treasury,
which had already expanded its influence over foreign policy during the 1920s,
strengthened its position in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1929-31 and
jealously guarded its role in international financial and economic relationships. Its
pressure together with the strongly held views of the Service Departments
considerably curtailed the independence of the Foreign Office, which during the
1930s was increasingly divided on the policies to be pursued towards the
continental dictatorships. Vansittart was eventually to emerge as an opponent of
further attempts to achieve a modus vivendi with Germany in Europe, but he did
not rule out colonial concessions and meanwhile he made a determined effort to
keep Mussolini on the side of Britain and France. It was his discussions with the
Italian Foreign Minister in the autumn of 1935, during which he held out the
prospect of an under tanding with Italy on Ethiopia, which led ultimately to the
Hoare-Laval accord and, following a public outcry, the forced resignation of the
Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare. After this debacle, Vansittart's dismissal was
seriously considered by Ministers. Eden, Hoare's replacement, decided this would
be improper since Ministers were responsible for policy. But both Baldwin and
Anthony Eden tried subsequently to persuade Vansittart to give up his post as
PUS for the Emba sy at Paris. And when Neville Chamberlain succeeded Baldwin
as Prime Minister in 1937 he too pressed for Vansittart's removal, a course which
Eden did not oppose. In December 1937 Vansittart was 'promoted' to the newly
created post of Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Government. Thereafter, he was
to pose as an 'anti-appeaser', though he remained convinced that Britain could not
risk war with Germany until1939.
Eden made Vansittart's future role in the Foreign Office clear when he stated that
the incoming PUS, Sir Alexander Cadogan, would receive all papers and then
forward them directly to the Secretary of State. On 22 January 1938 a document,
signed by Eden, stated: 'In the event of a paper requiring urgent action, it will be
29
sent by Sir A. Cadogan direct to the Under Secretary concerned with a slip
bearing the words "Sir R. Vansittart after action'.' Cadogan, who had joined the
Diplomatic Service in 1908, and who had been in the Briti h Emba y in Vienna
when war was declared on Austria-Hungary in
Augu t 1914 had spent all but two of the
following years in the Foreign Office. Between
1934 and 1936 he was first Minister and then
Ambassador to China, and since October 1936
Assistant Under-Secretary in London. Crowe
had thought him 'the best man in the Office ,
and during the 1920s he had headed the Foreign
Office's League of Nations Section. But he took
comparatively little interest in the formal
machinery of the Office or its proc dure
valuing promptitude efficiency and good
drafting. Like many of his predece or h wa
concerned about the quality of handwriting and AI and r ad an
was adamant that minute hould be kept hort.
A PUS during the Second World War h faced the Blitz with c mp ur ft n
refu ing to take shelter. On a different front h had to r ck n with th thr at
posed by the Prime Minister Win ton hurchill. Th latt r wa n avid criti f
the Office which he con idered cumber orne and alway equiv c I f
policy. Fortunately, with Cadogan, Lord Halifax ( or ign cr tary 7-4 nd
Eden at the helm, the Office maintained a farm r promin nt p iti nth nit h d
done during the Great War. During a conflict which the
Minister Jan Smut once aptly d crib d a war by c
accompanied Eden at the major gath ring f th
d g n
e tabli bing for the PU the po ition of r ving dip lorn ti dvi r. H w
trmly
r bu t
and knowledgeable a loyal coll agu wh would n t i ly u urn t
Churchill's bullying tactic .
Cadogan al o presided over an Office facin fundam nt 1 dmini tr tiv h n
In conversation with Cadogan in th lat autumn f 1 4 rn t vtn th n w
Mini ter of Labour, urged on him th n d [! r th ffi t tak
30
interest in industrial and labour matters. And Bevin subsequently addressed a
memorandum to Lord Halifax in which he repeated a criticism made often of the
Office and the Diplomatic Service both before and since 1914: that diplomacy had
'moved in far too narrow a circle and the reactions of [British] policy on the well
being of the people of other countries [had] not been comprehended'. This appear
to have initiated the process which led to the White Paper of January 1943 and the
introduction of the Eden Reforms. As a result, a single Foreign Service was
established, and the former distinctions between the Foreign Office, the
Diplomatic Service, the Commercial Diplomatic Service and the Consular Service
were abolished. New methods of selection were also introduced so as to
encourage recruitment from a much broader social base. Bevin's suspicions of the
Office seem, however, to have disappeared following his appointment as Foreign
Secretary in July 1945, and he soon recognised Cadogan as an adviser of
exceptional value. Both men were concerned about the Soviet Union's ultimate
intentions and, after taking up his new post as Britain's first Permanent
Representative to the United Nations in February 1946, Cadogan was drawn into
the politics of ideological confrontation. Deeply pessimistic about the new
diplomatic institutions at New York, he dubbed the Security Council a 'tiltyard'
and could see little chance of it being used for any other purpose.
31
Fusion and Cold War, 1946-62 ir Orme Sargent, Cadogan's heir as PUS, inherited an administratively
unified Foreign Service, but faced an ideologically divided world. He
had joined the Office in 1906 and, after spending almost two years as
Second Secretary in the British Legation in Berne, had been attached
first to the Peace Delegation to the Peace Conference in 1919 and subsequently to
Britain's Embassy at Paris for the work of the Ambassadors' Conference. The
remainder of his career, from November 1925 onwards, was spent in Whitehall,
and as superintending Under-Secretary of the Central Department during the
1930s, Sargent was instrumental in helping to frame British policy towards
National Socialist Germany. Nicknamed 'Moley' and with a tendency to suffer
from claustrophobia, Sargent resisted any suggestions that he might be posted
abroad. After promotion to Deputy Under-Secretary in September 1939, he
superintended both the Office's Northern and Southern Departments. During the
war he became increasingly concerned about the way in which Britain' mounting
indebtedness was likely to impact upon its foreign policy. It might well, he
forecast, 'involve a change in our diplomatic method ' since Britain 'could no
longer rely on the weapons of the rich man'. And, as author of the influential po t
war memorandum, 'Stocktaking after V-E Day', he wrestled with the problem of
how to maintain Britain's position in the world through Big Thr e cooperation,
without abdicating Britain's status as a great power through the abandonment of
its interests in eastern Europe. Later, as PUS, he ominou ly pr dieted: 'The Far
East seems destined to be the principal scene of a conflict of intere t b tween the
Soviet Union and the United States.' Sargent al o ob erv d that Soviet and
American policies in Korea had now become contiguous and that a dir ct cla h
between the two powers was to be expected. He was not howev r, inclined to
press his views on ministers. As Vansittart later ob erved he wa 'a philosopher
who strayed into Whitehall. He knew all the an wer · when politician did not
want to hear them he went out to lunch.'
Sir William Strang replaced Sargent as PUS in February 1949. ducat d at
University College, London, Strang had entered the Diplomatic ervic in 1919
after four years military service in France and Flanders. Hi ub equent career had
32
included postings in Belgrade and Moscow, and, following his transfer to the
Foreign Office, he accompanied Neville Chamberlain to Berchtesgarten Bad
Godesberg and Munich, and travelled to Moscow in 1939 in a vain effort to
achieve an agreement with the Soviet Union. From 1945 to 1947 he was political
adviser to the Commander-in-Chief Germany, Field Marshal Montgomery.
Around the time of his appointment as PUS Strang was described by a journalist
as being 'over six feet tall, slim, with a brown moustache, shy and correct . Strang
was widely regarded as a first class administrator, and on his retirement The Times
commented that he 'coupled a capacity for hard work and very long hours with the
analytical mind of a mathematician'. One of his principal achievements as PUS
was the establishment in 1949 of a policy planning body called the Permanent
Under-Secretary's Committee (PUSC). One of the most important
recommendations made by the PUSC was that neither the Commonwealth nor
Western Europe or the two combined, could stand on their own against the Soviet
Union without the full support of the United States. In 1949, the Attlee
Government effectively adopted this line of argument.
Berlin 1945: William Strang with Major-General Lyne and Field Marshal Montgomery
33
Unlike Sargent, Strang was willing to travel the globe in an effort to ascertain
where Britain commanded influence and where it might be challenged. He
undertook a tour of the Middle East and Asia in 1949 to this effect and his
analyses of these regions were frequently reflected in the papers of the PUSC. As
Foreign Secretary, Bevin was impressed by his judgement and the care and
earnestness with which he submitted his recommendations. The PUSC was
eventually discontinued by the incoming Conservative administration in 1951.
Strang remained PUS until November 1953. After leaving the Office he published
a number of works on diplomacy, including The Foreign Office (London, 1955)
and Home and Abroad (London, 1956). In Home and Abroad, Strang concluded:
'My years as Permanent Under-Secretary were the happiest years of a happy
career: and yet I will confess that of all those days perhaps the happiest was that
on which I laid down my charge.'
Strang's immediate successor, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, fully appreciated this
paradox. In his memoirs Kirkpatrick later recalled his thoughts on taking up his
new position:
From my long years of previous service in the Foreign Office I knew what was in store for me and, like any athlete, went into training. I gave up smoking and drinking, went to parties as little as I could and took a brisk walk through the park to the office every morning. Only so was I able to last the course.
Kirkpatrick was related to a former PUS, his mother being first cousin to Charles
Hardinge. He joined the Office in February 1919 after spending the previous three
years in wartime intelligence and propaganda work, an activity to which he
returned when in 1941 he became foreign adviser to the BBC. Serving as head of
Chancery in Berlin during 1933-38, he made clear his detestation of the Nazis. His
views seem not, however, to have made any great impre sion on the British
Ambassador, Sir Neville Henderson. After 1945 he was again very much involved
with German affairs, serving for a year in the Office's Germany Section and then,
during 1950-53, as High Commissioner in Bonn. Kirkpatrick had a reputation as a
combative, even aggressive, Irishman, who had little time for discussion. He was
not, according to some of his former colleagues, the easiest of men to work with,
and in Lord Gladwyn's opinion he would have made 'an excellent general'.
34
Kirkpatrick's difficult period as PUS culminated in the Suez Crisis of 1956, an
event that was little referred to in his memoirs, The Inner Circle (London, 1959).
l vone Kirkpatrick
Convinced that the nation's survival was dependent
upon the exercise of great power responsibilities, he
encouraged the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, in his
dangerous fixation with Nasser as a Middle Eastern
Hitler. The experience of the 1930s had led both men
to oppose any 'appeasement' of Nasser. Kirkpatrick's
closeness to Eden was reinforced by the Prime
Minister's dissatisfaction with what he perceived as a
pro-Arab stance held by his Foreign Office
subordinates during the last Churchill administration.
As a result, Eden increasingly used Kirkpatrick as an intermediary between
himself and other senior officials in the Office. This close relationship took an
ominous turn when the PUS found himself obliged to exclude the Foreign Office
from the decision-making process during the final crisis. For Kirkpatrick, the Suez
debacle was a test of Britain's great power status, leading him later to reflect that:
No country [in the Western world] can any longer pursue an independent foreign policy. The liberty of action of each is in varying degrees restricted by the need to obtain the concurrence of one or more members of the alliance
Suez sullied Kirkpatrick's reputation as PUS, though he may have been guilty of
no more than fulfilling a civil servant's duty of loyalty to his political chiefs.
It is perhaps hardly surprising that in the wake of Suez, Sir Frederick Hoyer
Millar, who succeeded Kirkpatrick in February 1957, should have sought to
encourage greater inter-departmental coordination in policy planning. The
administrative basis for such coordination already existed in the form of the
Permanent Under-Secretary's Department, a body first established in October
1949 and later developed into the Policy Planning Department. This provided a
centralised policy planning structure and avoided tackling problems department
by department. Hoyer Millar nonetheless also came close to being at the centre of
a Middle Eastern disaster when, in the summer of 1958, airborne support was
despatched to the King of Jordan without the British having gained prior consent
35
from the Israelis for the overflight of their territory. Hoyer Millar had seemed
quite sure that Israeli consent would be forthcoming, but the matter was still not
resolved when British troops began landing in Amman.
A bluff, relaxed and much loved figure, Hoyer Millar was, in the words of Alistair
Home, 'as contented on a grouse-moor as his predecessor Kirkpatrick had been
burrowing about in the corridors of power'. When Douglas Hurd became Foreign
Secretary in 1989 he told Sir Patrick Wright that his ideal PUS was Hoyer Millar,
who left the Office on Friday afternoon, and only returned from Scotland on
Monday afternoon. Whether Hoyer Millar's relaxed style could have spared him
the boxes that his predecessors and successors had to take home nightly and over
the weekend is open to question. Hoyer Millar's first experience of diplomacy had
been in 1922 when for a year he acted as Honorary Attache at the Briti h Embassy
in Brussels. He later went on to serve in Berlin, Paris and Cairo and a Minister in
the British Embassy in Washington in 1948 he famou ly baulked at the Foreign
Office's proposal to appoint Guy Burge s to the Chancery, exclaiming: 'We can't
have that man. He has filthy fingernail . ' Whether Hoy r-Millar knew of an
alleged remark made by Maurice Bowra, the Warden of Wadham ollege,
Oxford that Burgess 'had shit in hi fingernails' wa not clear. The refu al
produced a sharp rebuke from London to the effect that Burge wa now an
established member of the Foreign Service and it wa not for the mba y to
refuse to accept him. In 1952, Hoyer-Millar became Britain' first Permanent
Repre entative to NATO and as Kirkpatrick's ucce or at Bonn, he wa al o
Britain's Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. Hoyer-Millar wa a
good committee-man and, after retirement in January 1962 becam a member of
the Plowden Committee which reviewed Briti h repr sentation overs a .
36
Reports, Reform and Retrenchment, 1962-82
he Plowden Committee, together with the Duncan Inquiry set out to
modernise the Foreign Office in view of Britain's rapidly changing
position in the world. Indeed, by the 1960s the Office had come
under repeated attacks for its social exclusiveness and lack of
sympathy with the commercial needs of the country. In 1964 the Government
accepted the main recommendations of the Plowden Report in particular that the
separate Foreign and Commonwealth services should be merged. The single
service came into existence in 1965, but the institutional adjustments took several
years, with the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office merging in 1968 to
form the present Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The Duncan Inquiry
was aimed specifically at the need to find possible economies in overseas
representation. Overseeing these important changes as PUS was Sir Harold
Caccia who arrived at his post in January 1962. Of Italian descent, he spent the
most exciting part of his career in the Mediterranean, becoming involved in the
forced escape of the British Legation from Athens in 1941 and the rescue of the
Greek King from Crete. After the war, he chaired the Joint Intelligence
Committee, and was subsequently High Commissioner at Vienna and Ambassador
at Washington. As PUS, he was to be the first head of the newly unified
Diplomatic Service, and applied his robust common sense to tackling the
problems associated with implementing the recommendations of the Plowden
Committee. Caccia was one of the few Diplomatic Service officers who excelled
in many ports including shooting and rugby football. It was not unusual ,
therefore for the PUS often to use a sporting phrase in response to anyone seeking
advice on an intractable problem, his favourite being 'kick it into touch'. Caccia
was also responsible for the creation of a daily meeting headed by the PUS to
discuss affair of state which survives until this day. The situation had arisen
during Patrick Gordon Walker's short spell as Foreign Secretary. In the three
month prior to the latter's second electoral defeat in 1965, Caccia deemed it
essential to keep Gordon Walker up to date with a daily account of international
development while he was campaigning. Caccia and senior officials met every
37
morning and this proved to be so valuable that successive PUS's continued with
the practice in order to set out the agenda of the day.
In 1965 Sir Paul Gore-Booth replaced Caccia as PUS. Educated at Eton and
Balliol College, Oxford, Gore-Booth had served in Vienna, Tokyo and
Washington, leading to his appointment flrst as Deputy Under-Secretary from
1956 to 1960 and then as High Commissioner at Delhi in 1961. After returning to
the Office in 1965 as PUS, he oversaw its merger with the Commonwealth Office.
The Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, described Gore-Booth as 'wise and
urbane', while his manners and intellect were considered to be in the best Balliol
and Foreign Office tradition. Unlike some of his predecessors, Gore-Booth had a
Foreign Affair and Public lntere t
(Left) {The first Fight at the Fall '. Paul Gore-Booth with Paul cholefield (Right) Pocket Cartoon from The Daily Express. Courtesy of The herlock Holme ociety.
wide knowledge of the world outside the United tate and urop . H 1 ter
recollected in hi memoirs, With Great Truth & Re pect (London, 1974) that
during his time a PUS, apart from the Foreign ecretary, he was the only p r on
38
in the Office whose obligation it was to have some knowledge of everything.
However, his relationship with George Brown as Foreign Secretary during 1966-
68 was extremely strained. Brown was abrasive, abusive and ebullient, and this
contrasted sharply with Gore-Booth's old Etonian Christian Scientist outlook.
Listening to reports of the resignation of George Brown, after the latter had
accused the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, of running his Cabinet in a dictatorial
fashion, Gore-Booth also heard with considerable surprise, the last sentence of the
Downing Street statement: 'The Prime Minister proposes to bring about the
amalgamation of the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office into a single
Office'. The announcement of the amalgamation came as a complete surprise to
Gore-Booth. But he was well aware that the unified service could not remain
subject to differing routines and disciplines. Very different filing systems, 'a more
intimate and sensitive feature of most people's daily lives than the making of high
policy', required attention and considerable patience. Along with Sir Saville
Garner the PUS at the Commonwealth Office, Gore-Booth had done sterling
work in bringing both the Services together into what was known as the
Diplomatic Service Admini tration Office (DSAO), and with Gamer's retirement
on 1 March 1968, Gore-Booth became 'Head of the Diplomatic Service'. The full
amalgamation of the two Services would have to await Sir Denis Greenhill's
arrival a PUS in 1973. Meanwhile, Gore-Booth also set out to establish his own
form. of 'joined-up government' by inviting Permanent Secretaries from various
Department aero Whitehall to regular meetings in his office. This pioneering
work in bringing Whitehall together aimed to involve other Departments in the
bu ine of foreign economic and trade policy, and was the forerunner to the
regular meeting of Permanent Secretaries now held by the Cabinet Secretary. It
wa , however hi v nture into amateur dramatics for which he is probably best
remember d by the public. Hi performance in the spring of 1968 as Sherlock
Holme in a re-enactment of the great detective's combat with Professor Moriarty
on the narrow path overlooking the Reichenbach Falls attracted widespread media
attention. Upon learning of Gore-Booth's intentions, Michael Stewart wrote, 'All
right. But don't return in two years' time via Tibet'. Gore-Booth did return rather
more quickly unfortunately to witness gloomier events including the Soviet
intervention in Czecho lovakia and the continuing Nigerian civil war. On 15
39
January 1969 Gore-Booth retired to be replaced by Sir Denis Greenhill in the
following month.
Although Greenhill had not served as a head of mission in any Embassy and had
no great flair for languages, his term as PUS was a successful one. Liked and
respected by his colleagues, Greenhill fought hard to preserve the integrity of the
Diplomatic Service in a time of economic
belt-tightening. During the war, Greenhill
had served with the Royal Engineers in
Egypt, North Africa, Italy, India and
Southeast Asia. He entered the Foreign
Office in 1946, serving in Sofia,
Washington, Paris and Singapore, and then
as Minister in Washington. After two years
as Assistant Under-Secretary, he was
appointed Deputy Under-Secretary in 1966.
Greenhill had a good relationship with the
incoming Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec
Douglas-Home, recounting in his memoirs,
More By Accident (York, 1992), that 'my Deni Greenhill
role as his Permanent Under Secretary was to be full of excit ment and
enjoyment'. An established and respected expert on the Soviet Union and Ea tern
Europe, in 1971 Greenhill was famously instructed by Douglas-Home to inform
the Soviet Embassy in London that 105 Rus ian diplomats and official were to b
expelled for spying.
During the Governments of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, it was the accepted
practice for the PUS to travel with Ministers. According to Gr enhill, it wa
. .. unwise for either the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary to build up a monopoly of knowledge by failure to hare hi experiences with some ofhis senior staff. From his point of view, he has a second opinion of experienced people. From the officials' point of view, it is of great help. It enables the official to understand better the minds of his own ministers and of hi foreign opposite numbers.
40
By 1972 the Office also had a Planning Staff that reported to the Planning
Committee, which comprised the PUS, Deputy Under-Secretaries and the Head of
Planning Staff. The Committee was an important link between the Planning Staff
and senior officials at a time when the complexity of foreign policy had
intensified as a result of Britain's entry into the European Community (EC).
Sir Thomas Brimelow, who succeeded Greenhill in November 1973, was, unlike
his immediate predecessor, an outstanding linguist. Raised in a Lancashire
working class family, he spoke French, German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Swedish
and superb Russian. He was once asked in Moscow, 'Mr Brimeloff, where did you
learn to speak such good English?' Self-effacing and well-mannered, the PUS
possessed a formidable intellect that put those who worked with him on their
mettle. He was also probably the first PUS - at least until the introduction of word
processors to type his own drafts at office meetings. During 1942-45, as head of
the Consular Section in the British Embassy in Moscow, Brimelow had on more
than one occasion a face-to-face meeting with the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin.
After the war in Europe had ended, he returned to the Office in the summer of
1945 to play a role in the implementation of repatriations to the Soviet Union
already agreed by Britain. After spending a period in Ankara, where he learnt
Turkish, he returned to London in 1956 to act as interpreter during the visit of
Khrushchev and Bulganin, and became head of the Office's Northern Department.
Brimelow also served as Counsellor in Washington, Minister in Moscow,
Ambassador to Poland and Deputy Under-Secretary during 1969-73. Once
described as 'the toughest-minded and most intransigent of all the Cold Warriors',
Harold Wilson valued Brimelow' s counsel when it came to pursing a tough line
with the Soviet Union. His tenure as PUS, however, was a brief affair, lasting
barely two years.
Brimelow's successor, Sir Michael Palliser, was in post until 1982, the longest
serving PUS since the Second World War. Formerly Britain's Permanent
Representative to the EC at Brussels, he soon had to grapple with the Whitehall
wide impact of Britain's membership and strove to maintain the Office's influence
over policy co-ordination. At the same time he was fully alive to the need to
41
maintain personal contacts with posts abroad and travelled widely. He later
remarked:
You've got to know people, you've got to know their family life, you've got to know a lot about them and the other thing, which is certainly true in the army, I found that you could almost tell when you walked through the door of an Embassy whether this place was being well run or not.
The appointment of David Owen as Foreign Secretary in 1977, led to what
Palliser termed an 'extraordinary' relationship. Palliser considered Owen to have a
real feel for foreign policy, but in order to get a decision from him, 'you had to
have a row'. However, hard-talking did not damage Palliser's relationship with
Owen and in reply to a letter from the latter on the role of the PUS with his
Foreign Secretary, Palliser remarked:
I greatly appreciate what you say about my advice. I am convinced that the public servant has the duty to advise as his conscience and experience dictate. It is good of you to make clear that that is what you want. It is also our duty, once you have taken your considered decision to support it to the hilt.
The arrival of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979 was also a difficult
and challenging time for Palliser but he remembered that 'you simply had to argue
the toss with her'. Palliser felt that one of the paradoxes in Thatcher's attitude to
Michael Palliser
the FCO was that she presumed the establishment
would be prepared to sell the country out to
foreigners on almost any issue. On the other hand,
she respected and indeed paid a lot of attention to
the views of a number of very senior people in the
diplomatic service. Sir Percy Cradock and Sir
Anthony Duff both became foreign affairs
advisers to her. Palliser presumed she thought he
was 'a dangerously committed Federalist', but this
did not prevent her asking him to come to the
Cabinet Office at the outbreak of the Falklands
War and be her principal adviser. Palliser, by a
most unfortunate coincidence, reached his 60th birthday retirement on the very day
42
that the Argentinians invaded the Falkland Islands - indeed, his farewell party was
cancelled in favour of Lord Carrington's resignation drinks. Although Palliser was
appointed a member of the Privy Council, he never received a peerage and as
Thatcher's antipathy towards the Service grew such diplomatic elevations
appeared to be a thing of the past. Only after John Major's appointment as Prime
Minister was the practice revived in the 1990s.
43
The Modern PUS he demands on the PUS from the 1980s to the 1990s remained
enormous. Modem Permanent Under-Secretaries have, however,
frequently found that the provision of policy advice has taken second
place to resource management. The balance between the two has
very often depended on the relationship established between the PUS and the
Secretary of State, and upon the latter's
experience and inclinations. John Major was
new to foreign affairs and during his brief
spell as Foreign Secretary in 1989 he clearly
had in the first instance to rely upon the
expertise of his permanent staff. As so often in
the past, it fell to the PUS and his senior
colleagues to provide continuity of advice on
foreign policy. The responsibility of officials
has in this respect been eased by the political
consensus which has tended to prevail on what
constitutes the 'national interest' and on the Antony A eland
obligations imposed by Britain's overseas alliances and alignments. There were,
however, occasions during the 1980s when the bipartisan approach to foreign
policy appeared to be under the severest of strains. As leaders of the Labour
opposition, both Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock advocated alternative non
nuclear defence policies and a withdrawal from membership of the European
Community. Quite how officials might have responded to this agenda was never
tested but, speaking in the 1980s, the meticulously professional Sir Antony
Acland, PUS during 1982-86, made the following point:
I think that if a government were to decide to take Britain out of Europe, that would be very unsettling and worrying for a large number of members of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and I think for home civil servants as well. But there are other issues too which would cause them great anxiety: I think the withdrawal from NATO, or going wholly unilateralist, would also cause great anxieties in the minds of quite a number of us. But I suppose in foreign affairs there has been a greater tradition
44
of bipartisan policy over the years than on other issues, and it may have been comforting and consoling for us.
Nonetheless, there was never a suggestion that Acland would have worked in
opposition to his political masters. The PUS can put forward alternative policies
yet in the final analysis, he has to implement the policy propounded by the
government of the day.
Parliament also started to play a greater role in the life of the PUS from the 1980s.
Appearances before the Public Accounts Committee and the Foreign Affairs
Patrick Wright
Committee, for example, occurred at least once
a year. Sir Patrick Wright, PUS during 1986-
91, was astonished to be told by Denis
Greenhill that he had never once appeared
before the Public Accounts Committee.
Wright's successor, Sir David Gillmore, found
such Committees extremely daunting and
recollected from his time as PUS that: 'there
were moments when I was overcome with
complete terror at the whole idea of doing it'.
Gillmore's only solace was that he became 'so
damn busy' that he didn't have time to be
frightened. Many modem PUSs would regard their primary role as being to run
the Service, and to promote its interests. Wright estimated that running the Service
took up about 65% of his time, adding:
I remember reading Sir Alexander Cadogan's diaries and realising, rather to my shame, that my personal, written contributions of policy advice (as opposed to the submissions emerging from the Department or the PUS's Planning Committee) had been few and far between - as compared with the magisterial minutes on Foreign Policy which Cadogan addressed regularly to his Ministers.
Wright's greatest concern as PUS was the lack of resources to maintain Britain's
position in the Security Council, and to conduct a global foreign policy. He argued
in particular that the FCO should be allocated sufficient resources for information
45
techno] gy in which he con idered the Office to be woefully behind. Like his
pred ce or Wright had al o to respond to social changes which affected the
a pi rations and requirements of staff and career patterns within the Service. He
had to tackle the problem posed by diplomatic spouses (of both sexes), with
car er of their own. Many of them were increasingly in well paid professions at
home, and less than enthusiastic about joining their Service partners on postings
abroad. By the time his tenure as PUS came to an end, Wright believed there was
'a much better appreciation within the Service that our job is, and must be seen to
b , the vigorous and skilful promotion and protection of British interests, rather
than some woolly objective called "good relations"'.
Gillmore was also a resolute guardian of the Service's welfare and reputation. In
giving evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee in
1993, he explained 'when we lose a mission on the ground, we lose information,
we lose an ability to assess the policies of that government and we lose the ability
to foresee problems which could be caused for Great Britain'. By 1991, the FCO
employed 6,400 people in 220 posts around the
world but faced competing attractions from
what Gillmore called 'giddy times in the City
with black Porsches and black filofaxes'.
During a time of rising political tensions in
Europe, Gillmore proved to be a calm and
clear communicator, while forging a good
working relationship with Douglas Hurd. He
had himself followed an unconventional path
to the post of PUS. One of his first jobs was
with a plastics company in Paris and after
several years in France he went on to teach in
the East End of London. It was only at the age
David Gillmore. Courtesy of the Press
Association
of 36 that he joined the Service by the late entrants' examination. He made his
name during 1978 when he went to Vienna as Counsellor and Deputy Head of the
British Delegation to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks. However '
apart from postings to Moscow in 1972 and Kuala Lumpur in 1983, Gillmore,
unlike many of his more recent predecessors, did not have a series of important
46
positions abroad. On his return from Malaysia in 1986 Gillmore b cam D puty
Under-Secretary of State with responsibilities for the Americas and A ia.
Appointed PUS only after the Prime Minister of the day, Margaret Thatch r had
overruled the nomination of another candidate for the post, Gillmore pre id d ov r
the Office at a time when political differences over Britain's future role in th
were becoming ever more apparent. He also set in hand the fundamental r form of
the structure and management of the FCO, and encouraged the greater u e of th
latest information technology within the Service. A clear and calm communicator
he was the first PUS to have a word processor on his desk. He later observed:
It's fine to make brilliant policy, but if you have no means to carry it out, or can't produce the means, or don't know how the means can be extracted from the system, then you're whistling a bit in the dark.
Gillmore did not forget policy but recoiled from asserting any right to be the
funnel through which all advice should reach the Foreign Secretary. And at a time
of radical change abroad, he remained confident of Britain's global role.
'Wherever I go', he remarked in 1994, 'I'm instantly struck by the continued
attention paid to our views, the continued interest in what is going on in thi
country and the passionate devotion to our institutions in countries where you'd
least expect it.'
By the time of Sir John Coles's appointment as PUS in 1994, the time and effort
John Coles
devoted to Parliament, the media and public opinion in
general had spiralled to unprecedented levels. The
demands of public diplomacy coupled with the impact of
the latest communications and information revolution
meant that Coles felt himself unable to devote the
attention he would have wished to policy matters. He
later recalled in his book, Making Foreign Poli y: A
Certain Idea of Britain (John Murray 2000) that mor
than one Cabinet Minister had lamented thi
development. It might indeed be argued that a century of
47
reform, restructuring and retrenchment has still left unresolved the fundamental
problem that Tenterden confronted in 1876 and Eyre Crowe addressed in 1905.
The routine administration of business has left senior officials with insufficient
time in which to focus upon broader considerations of policy.
Crowe's prime concern was not, however, so much with the role of the PUS as
with the advisory functions of the Office as a whole. And while officials in
Whitehall may nowadays still feel themselves overburdened by the pressures of
current business, administrative reform and modem technology have relieved
them of many of the tho e essentially clerical dutie which Crowe's generation
considered both onerous and demeaning. One of the ach· evements of the
Crewe/Sanderson reforms was the establi hment of a General Registry-a
repository of information which in contemporary office-speak might be classed as
an innovation in knowledge management. Yet by it nature thi till left a fund of
knowledge inadequately utili ed by a mall team in Whit hall. Since eland'
tenure a PUS, Permanent Under- ecretari have grappl d with the ne d to
introduce an effective and up-to-date communication
The PU ' office today
4
Office and with po t abroad. oon after his appointment as PUS in 1997, Sir John
Kerr recognised the need for the FCO to acquire an information technology
system which would allow a policy paper destined for the Foreign Secretary to be
constructed on-line between the Department and the experts in the post'. He went
on to champion a policy which ha helped to transform 'the FCO from an HQ
with outstations into a ingle on-line global organisation .
In triking the balance between management head and policy adviser Kerr also
attached great weight to policy content and the elling of it through presentation.
He rea ert d the PU role as the Foreign Secretary's principal adviser on
foreign affair maintaining that in one of his various gui es he could when on
John err
missions abroad be said to be acting in
some sen e a 'deputy foreign minister .
The latt r i not a position which either
ammond or ander on would have
pr umed to hold· but Hardinge,
Van ittart and many of their uccessor
could have described them elve a
uch. The office has evolved and
r main without a job de cription.
r anality and the relation hip
tabli h d b tween the PU , the
cretary of tat and their ubordinate
h a much a political
circum tanc h lp d d t rmin th
fi 1n u nc n p li y. t i n tabl that rr claim d that what ha
him m t nur ha b n £ mal , Firecr t and
im d
th m th-running
c ntributi n t p li y h
ti n o om n to n1or p ition in the ervice the
n w com ut ri d communication y tern and th gras
rna ping ut th tur of the 0 fice. All three relat d to
f th dipl matic m chin upon which the PU s
ry oft n d p nd d. an while th F 0 ha it lf had
u h r intru ion of oth r ov rnm nt D partment into the
m n g m nt t rn 1 aft ir n In rlier p riod , o. 10 has sometime
4
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' • 1\ i.l h l J. . · n I u ' lv
hl\ . It h
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111' 111 l lu 1 111
QUOTATIONS
'From my l ng y ar of pr viou ervice in th Foreign Offic I kn w what wa in tor f r m and like any athlet , went into training. I gav up moking and drinking, went to parti s a little as I could and t ok a bri k walk through the park to the office every morning. Only o wa I abl to 1a t the cour e. '
Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick's thoughts on taking up his position as PUS, 1959
'Y u can't ju t it in th t big offic on th ground floor of th F r i n ffi and run th diplomatic ervice without actually going
ut int th fi 1 and ing what c nditions ar like. '
'Th th
Sir Michael Palliser, 1999
m n wh n I a v ream with complet t rror at f d ing it. '
Lord Gillmore's recollections on becoming PUS, 1996
'Th j v ri th p r n
f P rm n nt in my vi with
m, and it vari d p nding on f t t ' offic up tair . Th job f p Hey and admini tration, but
1 p li y cont nt. '
Sir John Kerr, 2000
rly t -d y [11.45 a.m.] having an appointm nt m - nd I h v b n ringing in vain for an Office
Sir Julian Pauncefote to the Chief Clerk, 1887
n t th t m n r li th t l n aft r h ha gon hom in hi Roll -R y , I h v t t h .11 bu f r Elm-Park R ad and up off
r ld b f r d aling with th ev ning'
Sir Eyre Crowe on Lord Curzon, c.1919-1924
'T m ny p pl tayin t o lat in th Offic . To do o i not virtu . h
1 v th ffi tiv ffic r ar n t n c arily th who
Lord Gillmore, 1992
51
'Vacancies are of rar occurrence and a Foreign Office Clerk is lucky if he obtains a Senior Clerkship of £700 a year in twenty years.'
Lord Tenterden, 1877
'If you do not have sufficient people to do the job, tho e who e responsibility it is will either do the work inadequately or will work exces ively long hours in trying to do it adequately, with the risk of mistake being made.'
Sir John Coles, 2000
'The recruitment numbers are sp ctacular, with 100 applicant f r ev ry plac ; and the head-hunter report that w ar curr ntly th No.1 career of choice for final year tudents in Briti h univ r iti '.
Sir John Kerr, 2002
'Red Tape in the Public Office , like drill in an army, i only th mean to an nd. It i the m thod by which a hug machin i mad to move - rather pond rou ly - but t adily and without c nfu i n . It is our duty to mak our lves rna t r f it, in ord r th t th direction of our chi fs may b carri d out pr p rly in th ir d tail . '
Sir Thomas Sanderson, 1891
'Although, ideally speaking, verything h uld b "d wn n pap r" and ea ily traceable - fil d and ind xed, that i , with ampl references - the actual manipulation of much p p r i n y task.'
Lord Strang, 1955
'It's fine to make brilliant policy, but if y u hav n m n t rry it out, or can't produce the m an , or don't kn w h w th m n be xtracted from th y t m, th n you'r hi tling a bit in th
Lord Gillmore, 1996
52
'I conf I di lik th t 1 graph v ry much. In the fir t place nothing i uffici ntly xplain d by it. It t mpt ha ty decision. It is an un ati f ctory r cord f r it giv no rea on. '
Edmund Hammond, 1858
'You cann t inv nt a machin into which documents can b put at on nd nd on lu i n ground at th oth r by turning a handle. If uch a rna hin w r po ibl , it would be wept away by popular
indign ti n. v ry y t m f gov rnm nt, how v r perfect in theory - nd ur lay n laim to th or tical p rf ction - mu t depend m inly f r i u n th po ion and x rcise by its employ' s n t m r ly f indu try nd int grity but al o of intellig nee, ym hy nd d r d common s n .'
'A hil h n
Sir Thomas Sanderson, 1891
d int Whit hall. H kn w all th an w r ; nt t h r th m h nt out to lunch. '
ir Robert Vansittart on Sir Orme Sargent, 1958
h rw m n , n ith r will I allow any of ~...,., ... ~ ..... t th f th r id nt cl rk' rvants
unt. Th y mu t b c nfin d to , nd front do r , i. . und r
P rk, l in th ar a and t p .'
Edmund Hammond, 1868
h w rld in whi h a man' w rk i o much m rri d dipl m t' by hi wif ... Th r
h r in th diplomatic v r n b f r tho who might
Lord Tyrrell, 1933
53
'If asked what pleases me most in the record of the last few years, I think I'd say f males, Firecrest and foresight. I've been lucky enough to b at this desk as a brilliant generation of women break through to the senior ranks: in 1996 there were 3 women Heads of Mission, there are 16 now, with 9 more already appointed. And it really does a make difference: not just to how we're perceived, but also to how well we work.'
Sir John Kerr, 2001
'When an abuse has become an use by prescription, it is not quite fair, nor is it wise, to up with the club and knock it down. Smoking at [the ] F. 0. is in this category; and we must deal gently with those who have had their long allowed enjoyment suddenly cut off, and who shew some temper at the prohibition.'
Henry Addington's clash with the Chief Clerk in efforts to enforce a ban on smoking in the Office, 1846
'I became "chain-smoking John Kerr". It didn't do me any harm, politically or diplomatically.'
Sir John Kerr, 2000
'My years as Permanent Under-Secretary were the happiest year of a happy career: and yet I will confess that of all those days perhaps the happiest was that on which I laid down my charge.'
Lord Strang, 1956
'When I retired from the service people used to ask me, did I miss the Foreign Office, I said, it depends on what you mean, if you mean, do I miss one box every night and two boxes at week nds the answer is absolutely not for one second, but if you mean, do I miss my friends and the people I knew and o on, the answer is yes.'
Sir Michael Palliser, 1999
54
CHRONOLOGY OF PERMANENT UNDER-SECRETARIES, 1827-2002
Apr 1827-Apr 1 2
Mar 1842-Apr 1854
Apr 1854- ct 1873
ct 1873- p 1882
p 1 2-Apr 18 9
Apr 1 89-D c 1893
Jan 1894-Feb 1906
F b 1906- v 1910
ov 1910-Jun 1916
jun 1916- ov 1920
1920-Apr 1925
M y 1925-Jul 1928
1929
jan 1930-jan 19
J n 1938-J n 19
19 - b 49
F v 1 5
v 195 -F b 19 7
1957-F 19 2
Jan 962-May 9 5
M y 19 5- 19 9
1 9-
v 1973-
73
1 75
v 1 75-Apr 1 2
Apr 1 2-Jun 19
jun 19 -Jun 1 1
jun 1991-Jul 1 9
Au 199 - ov 1 97
1997-Jan 20 2
jan 2 2-
Backhou e, john
Addington, Heruy U.
Hammond, Edmund (later Lord)
Tenterden 3rd Baron Charles Stuart Aubrey Abbott
Pauncefote, ir Julian (later Lord)
Currie ir Philip (later Lord)
ander on, ir Thoma Oat r Lord)
Hardinge, ir Charles (later Lord Hardinge of P n hur t)
icol on, ir Arthur (lat r Lord Carnock)
Hardinge of P nshur t, 1 sr Baron
row , ir Eyr
Tyrr 11, ir William (lat r Lord)
Lind y, ir Ron ld
V n ittart, ir R ert Oat r Lord)
ad gan, ir Al xand r
ar nt, ir Orm
tran , ir William (lat r Lord)
Klrkpatri k, ir Iv n
Hoy r Mill r, ir red ri k lat r Lord Inchyra)
ir Har ld 1 t r L rd
r -B th, ir Paul (lat r L rd)
r nhill , ir D ni lat r Lord)
Brim low, ir Thorn Oat r Lord)
P lli r, ir Mi ha l
A land, ir Antony
W ri ht, ir Patri k Oat r L rd)
illmor , ir D vid later L rd)
ol , ir john
K rr, irJ hn
J y, ir Mi ha 1
55
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Th author wish to thank the Master and Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge for the p rmis ion to reproduce extracts from an interview with L rd Gillmor conducted under the auspice of the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme (DOHP 8). We would also like to thank Sir Michael Palli r GCMG for allowing us to u e extracts from his interview within the am programme (DOHP 37).
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]. Coles, Making Foreign Policy: A Certain Idea of Britain (John Murray, 2000).
S. Crowe and E. Corp, Our Ablest Public Servant: Sir Eyre Crowe GCB) GCMG) KGB) KCMG) 1864-1924 (Braunton Devon, 1993).
]. Dickie, Inside the Foreign Office (London, 1992).
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56
R. Jon , The Briti h Diplomatic Service 1815-1914 (Ontario, 1983).
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ir I. Kirkpatrick, The Inner Circle London, 1959).
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H. Nic 1 on Sir A. Nicol on London, 1930).
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Zara t in r, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898-1914 (London, 1969.
]. Till y and 1 , The Foreign Office (London, 1933).
ir R. Van itt rt The Mit Proce ion London 1958).
J. Zametica, British Officials and British Foreign Policy, 1945-1950 (Leicester, 1990).
57
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