FOREIGN RELATIONS

See Also: CANCER Cancer Research U.K.; EMBASSIES & HIGH COMMISSIONS; FRUIT Bananas, International Relations and Bananas; THE KING OF CORSICA; M.I.6; NUCLEAR WEAPONS Joseph Rotblat; THE OLYMPICS; TRADING COMPANIES; ZOOS The Royal Menagerie

The Anti-Apartheid Movement

See Also: HIGH COMMISSIONS South Africa House

The African National Congress

In 2008 it emerged that the process by which Apartheid was ended had started in 1987 when Thabo Mbeki of the African National Congress and Willie Esterhuyse, acting for P.W. Botha's (1916-2006) government held discussions. These were conducted at Mells Park in Somerset, which was owned by the South African mining company Consolidated Goldfields.

Location: 28 Penton Street, N1 9PW

Website: www.anc1912.org.za

The British Anti-Apartheid Movement

The British Anti-Apartheid Movement was founded in London in 1959

In 1975 the anti-apartheid campaigner Mike Terry (1947-2008) succeeded Ethel de Keyser as the executive secretary of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement's central organisation. Under him, the organisation became revitalised.

In 1983 the A.A.M. moved from its premises above a Spanish food importer in Fitzrovia to larger premises in Camden Town.

The Camden building was firebombed.

In 1984 Margaret Thatcher invited P.W. Botha to visit Britain. The A.A.M. was able to persuade tens of thousands of people to protest at his presence in the country.

Democratic elections led to the A.N.C. forming a government in South Africa. The A.A.M. disbanded. Mr Terry became a science teacher

Location: 89 Charlotte Street, W1T 4PU (blue, red)

20-23 Mandela Road (formerly Selous Street), NW1 0DL (blue, yellow)

The Canon Collins Educational & Legal Assistance Trust

The Canon Collins Trust furnished money to help educate active anti-Apartheid campaigners. The money had to be channelled through informal means. The actuary John Prevett (1933-2010) was active in the Trust.

Location: The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, SE11 5RR

Website: https://canoncollins.org

The British Council

The British Institute of Florence was granted a royal charter in 1923.

The British Committee for Relations with Other Countries first met in 1934. The Committee was established to promote a wider international knowledge of British life, thought, and culture. It became the British Council. The body is not a state agency. It is an independent entity that receives funding from the government. In large part, it was modelled on the Institute.

Location: 10 Spring Gardens, SW1A 2BN (orange, brown)

See Also: ECONOMICS Trinity House

Website: www.britishcouncil.org

Chatham House

Chatham House is the home of The Royal Institute of International Affairs, an independent foreign affairs forum that maintains a policy of being free from both political and governmental influence.

Among some of the British experts on international affairs who attended the Peace Conference held at Versailles after the First World War, there emerged the view that there was a need for an effective forum for exchanging ideas and information about international affairs. Thus, in 1920 the British Institute of International Affairs was founded by a group that was led by the lawyer and academic Lionel Curtis. The body moved into Chatham House in 1923.

Location: 10 St James's Square, SW1Y 4LB. The first building on the western side of Duke of York Street on the square s northern side. (orange, blue)

Website: www.chathamhouse.org

The Chatham House Rule

The Chatham House Rule is a practice by which it is agreed that what is being said can be reported but that it cannot be attributed to who said it. Its purpose is to enable opinions to be displayed more freely. The Rule, which was introduced in 1927, can - if the parties present agree - be in operation in places other than Chatham House itself.

See Also: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS The Members Lobby

Chile

Initially, the law lords concluded that Pinochet could be extradited to Spain. Subsequently, it emerged that Lord Hoffmann had failed to declare his association with Amnesty International, which meant that there had been a conflict of interest. Three weeks later Nicholas Brown-Wilkinson (1930-2018) presided over a second hearing. In an unprecedented action, it set aside the initial hearing's decision. A third one concluded that the United Nations Convention Against Torture could not be applied to instances that had had occurred outside Britain prior to its adoption. As a result, most of the charges were invalidated, leaving only a few minor ones. Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, allowed the former dictator to return to Chile on health grounds.

The Duke of York

The Duke of York felt able to pronounce to Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times that the paper's man in Dubai was causing a lot of trouble. The prince got the journalist's name wrong and then admitted that he had not read any of his copy.

Website: www.royal.uk/the-duke-york

The European Union

See Also: HIGH COMMISSIONS New Zealand House

Website: https://european-union.europa.eu

Brexit

The European Court of Justice and the House of Lords's Factortame ruling in 1999.

London was the only English region to vote for Remain during the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office

In the 19^thC the Foreign Office was the principal ministry, the Treasury was there to provide the financial wherewithal for its policies. Playing the Great Game of international relations was considered of far greater importance than whether or not to raise income tax by a ha penny. With Britain s dropping down the world order by a few pegs the department was called to order.

In the mid-19^thC Palmerston served as Foreign Secretary three times. He engaged in an active foreign policy. He once felt moved to comment, We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. In the final quarter of the century the 3^rd Marquis of Salisbury pursued isolation.

Within Whitehall's rarefied world-view, the Foreign Office is seen as being something of a different breed. Historically, there was a common attitude within the department that, as an institution, it was best able to judge what policy it should execute; ministers, if they thought otherwise, were to be given about as much respect as the fairy on the top of the Christmas tree. It long laboured under the stigma of being regarded as being happy to subordinate Britain's strategic interests in order to allow it to better woo foreign powers for its own separate agenda.

The British Foreign Office is nicknamed the camel corps .

Location: King Charles Street, SW1A 2AH (blue, brown)

See Also: WHITEHALL Ministers, George Brown; WHITEHALL DEPARTMENTS The Foreign Office Building

Website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/foreign-commonwealth-office

France

Location: The Antigallican 428 Woolwich Road, SE7 8SU. A pub-turned-hotel.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies

The Institute for Strategic Studies was founded in 1958 by the Labour politician Denis Healey, the academic historian Michael Howard, and the B.B.C. employee Malcolm Mackintosh (1921-2011).

Location: Arundel House, 6 Temple Place, WC2R 2PG (purple, turquoise)

Website: www.iiss.org

Israel

In the 1870s Turkish troops massacred Bulgarian civilians. British public opinion supported the Bulgarians. However, the Foreign Office believed it to be in Britain's best interests to back the declining Turkish Empire.

Most leading British Jews rejected the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Edwin Montagu the Secretary of State for India was of the opinion that the creation of one would undermine the effort for Jews to achieve civil liberties elsewhere in the world.

A scheme was floated for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Uganda.

Balfour had a reputation for being thoughtful rather than practical. In 1906 he met Chaim Weizman. Ultimately, this encounter was to be a factor in the creation of the Balfour Declaration.

Britain and France had planned to carve up the mass of the Ottoman Empire between themselves. The former would receive control of Baghdad and the latter Damascus.

There was a deterioration in the Allies situation. The Americans were slow to mobilise, Russia had fallen into revolution, portions of the French Army were mutinous, Passchendale and Caporetto had been particularly bloody. There was a perception that Britain's alliance with Russia had cast the former in a poor light with the international Jewish community.

On 2 November 1917 Arthur Balfour the Foreign Secretary sent Lord Rothschild a letter in which he stated His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

Many Jews disliked the Declaration because it allowed anti-Semites to terms them foreigners in their own lands. Some Jewish Britons did not wish to be viewed as British Jews.

Italy

The Hon. Violet Gibson

The Hon. Violet Gibson (1876-1956) was born a daughter of Lord Ashbourne the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Lady Ashbourne was a keen Christian Scientist.

She spent a period dabbling in Theosophy. In 1902 Violet converted to Roman Catholicism. Her brother Willie, an ardent Irish Nationalist, also converted. They were active in the church's liberal wing. They objected to the Papacy s inclination to support dictatorships.

She tried to force her way into the Carmelite Monastery in Kensington. This led to her spending time in a nursing home.

In 1923 she attacked a servant with a knife. She was committed an asylum in Virginia Water. She was certified as being insane. In 1924 she travelled to Italy with a gun in her luggage, planning to shoot the Pope. In early 1925 she shot herself.

It is possible that the gun had been supplied by associates of her brother Willie, who was involved with Gaelic League.

On 7 April 1926 she shot Benito Mussolini in the Piazza del Campidoglio as he left the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill. She hit his nose.

It was one of four attacks that were made on him in the space of a year.

Mussolini pardoned her. She was interred in a psychiatric hospital in Northamptonshire. She engaged in self-violence and was given to attacking other patients.

Location: Our Lady of Mount Carmel & St Simon Stock, 41 Kensington Church Street, W8 4BB (purple, red)

Website: https://carmelitechurch.org

Sir John Hawkwood

Sir John Hawkwood probably learned his skills as a military commander on the English side in the Hundred Years War in France. In 1360 a break in conflict was affected by the Treaty of Br tigny. Some of the English troops remained in France and became freebooters. They continued raiding and pillaging on an independent basis, rather than as agents of the Crown. They worked with German mercenaries who had been fighting in the conflict. In 1356 King Jean II of France had been taken prisoner at the Battle of Poitiers. The French court sought to raise funds to ransom him. A number of the freebooter companies coalesced to seize a collection of money that was being transferred north up the Rh ne Valley. They appreciated that the Papal Court at Avignon offered rich pickings and so laid siege to the city. In 1361 Pope Innocent VI bought them off and directed them towards the service of the Marquis of Montferrato, who was at war with the brothers Bernab and Galeazzo II Visconti of Milan. The wealth and diverse series of political powers that were present in the Italian peninsula provided a wealth of opportunities for the north Europeans.

In 1363 Hawkwood emerged as the leading commander of the freebooter company that he had been serving in. His first few years were not particularly successful. However, he proved to be able to hold the loyalty of a core group of supporters, around whom other soldiers could swiftly coalesce. Within this unit, many of the leading figures were natives of northern Essex, Hawkwood's home region. He was adept at long marches and winter fighting. He had particular skill in choosing advantageous terrain on which to battle and at pulling victory from the jaws of defeat. The commander developed his own intelligence service and listened to his colleagues counsel. He was careful not to disclose information about his true intentions until he had to and often released disinformation. Through his ability and wiles he made himself the leading condottiere in Italy.

In 1368 Hawkwood entered the service of the Viscontis. In 1372 he switched from their service to that of Pope Gregory XI. By the late 1370s a new generation of condottieri were emerging. This was composed of ambitious young Italians, such as Alberigo da Barbiano, who had appreciated the opportunities for self-advancement that the trade furnished and who had learned it under the tutelage of the generation of battle-hardened northerners. In 1380 Hawkwood entered the service of Florence. He proved to be a key factor in the republic's retention of its independence from Milanese expansionism. Hawkwood was never to leave Italy, however, his Italian-born son was to settle on the family estate in Essex.¹

Location: Leadenhall Market, EC3V 1LT (red, blue)

See Also: THE CEREMONY OF THE ROSE; GEOFFREY CHAUCER; FASCISM Private Armies; FOOD MARKETS Leadenhall Market

¹. Percy Bysshe Shelley is reputed to have been one of Hawkwood s descendants. The poet drowned off the Italian coast.

The Men Who Would Be Kings

C.B. Fry

In 1914 the German princeling Wilhlem of Wied-Neuwied was crowned the King of Albania. However, following the outbreak of the First World War he went into. Following the return of peace, the cricketer C.B. Fry (1872-1956) was considered as someone who might replace him. However, the leading figures with the Albanian state wanted someone who was independently wealthy, which the sportsman was not. As a result, he was never formally offered the throne.

Lord Rothermere

Nandor Fodor (1895-1964) was a Hungarian Jew. In the late 1920s Lord Rothermere had invited him to Britain from New York to advise him upon Hungarian affairs.

Mercenaries

David Stirling set up the's.A.S.. In the wake of Suez Crisis, the British government was no longer inclined to be seen to engage in overseas adventures. In the 1960s he set up the British Mercenary Organisation to participate in Yemen s civil war by proxy. The company effectively placed mercenaries in a corporate structure. It went on to train forces in Africa. It changed its name to Watchguard International.

Simon Mann's 2004 failed coup in Equatorial Guinea came to be seen as the last of the old style mercenaries.

The Zambezi Club

The Zambezi Club was a drinking club that was used by mercenaries. This had lost its drinks licence in 1976 after a petrol bomb had been thrown through one of its windows.

Location: 32 Barkston Gardens, SW5 0ER (orange, purple)

Sarawak

James Brooke (1803-1868).

Charles Brooke (n Johnson) (1829-1917) had an austere character. When he lost an eye he replaced it with one that he took from a stuffed albatross. He regarded jam as being effeminate .

In 1911 Vyner Brooke (1874-1963) married Sylvia Brooke (n e Brett) (1899-1971). In 1919 Vyner became the Rajah.

In 1937 Valerie Brooke, one of the daughters of the Rajah, married Bob Gregory the European middleweight catch-as-catch-can wrestling champion.

In 1946 the Privy Council ordered the annexation of Sarawak. The Rajah abdicated. He and his family settled in London.

Location: 13 Albion Street, W2 2AS. The post-1946 home of the last Rajah. (purple, red)

22 Archery Close, W2 2YF. The post-1946 home of the last Ranee. (purple, pink)

Spain

Stuart Christie

The Anarchist Stuart Christie conducted an active foreign policy. He participated in an effort that was intended to assassinate the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (d.1975). It did not succeed,¹ Master Christie was apprehended by the Spanish authorities, and spent a number of years in Iberian prisons.

Upon his release, the youth returned to Britain where he moved in radical circles. This was a factor that led to his spending some time incarcerated in H.M.P. Brixton. The comparative experience led him to conclude that the Francoist Spanish prison system had had, in relative terms, some positive facets.

Location: H.M.P. Brixton, Jebb Avenue, SW2 5XF

¹. Franco died in his own bed.

Franco

It was two Briton, Cecil Bebb (1905-2002) Hugh Pollard (1888-1966), who chartered a plane from Croydon Airport that flew Franco from the Canaries to North Africa. His subsequent victory in the Spanish Civil War vanquished democracy from Spain for almost four decades.

During the Second World War the British Embassy orchestrated a large slush fund that bribed leading members of the Franco regime, and perhaps even the general himself, to keep Spain out of the conflict.

Franco hit upon the idea of charging foreigners 8 a head to visit the sites of republican atrocities and nationalist triumphs. Arnold Lunn went on a number of such trips. In the 1950s his family firm, Lunn Poly, was to play a role in developing Spain's package holiday industry.

Location: Airport House, 265 Purley Way, CR0 0XZ

The International Brigade

35,000 volunteers from 80 countries served in the Brigades, which were Communist-dominated. About 2500 were British or Irish. Over 500 of them died.¹

The return ticket that people used to cross to France, in order to fight on the Republican side in Spain, was known as a dirty weekender.

The International Brigades were disbanded in 1938. The following year the Republic lost the war.

In 2009 the Spanish government honoured a pledge that its democratic predecessor had made in 1938 and conferred Spanish citizenship upon the surviving Brigaders.

Stan Hilton (1917-2016) died in 2016. He was the last of the Britons had fought in the Spanish Republican War.

See Also: GEORGE ORWELL

Website: www.international-brigades.org.uk (The website of The International Brigade Memorial Trust)

¹. Fewer Britons died during the Battle of Trafalgar (1805).

The International Brigade Memorial Gardens

The International Brigade Memorial Trust was established in 2001 to look after the interests of the surviving brigadistas and their memorials. Each July the Trust organises a memorial event in Jubilee Gardens.

Location: Jubilee Gardens, Belvedere Road, SE1 7PG

Website: www.international-brigades.org.uk/memorials?tid=4

Post-Spain

Those who fought in the Brigade included the trade unionists Jack Jones, who was one of the most influential political figures in Britain during the 1970s, and Alfred Sherman who, after eschewing Communism, became an advocate of the free market and was one of Margaret Thatcher's most influential advisers during the 1980s. Sherman, despite his change in political outlook, never disavowed the Brigade and participated in its commemorations.

P.O.U.M.

The writer George Orwell planned to serve the International Brigades. However, he had an argument with Harry Pollitt, the leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Therefore, he opted to join the Trotskyite P.O.U.M. (the United Marxist Workers Party), which was supported by the Independent Labour Party. The P.O.U.M. believed that there should be a revolution within the Republic as it fought. Its members murdered thousands of priests. This proved a liability to the Republic cause. Orwell was unaware of this

In Barcelona the I.L.P. office adopted the local practice of having long lunches and siesta. David Crook was a P.O.U.M. member who was ultimately working for the Soviet Union's interior ministry. He took advantage of this to steel and copy files, returning them before work resumed in the late afternoon.

After Orwell was discharged, he met his wife at the Hotel Continental. She told him to flee. He spent several nights sleeping rough to avoid capture. The couple crossed over to France in a first-class railway dining carriage, posing as affluent tourists. His account Homage To Catalonia was published in April 1938. 800 copies were published. The book only became popular following the writer's death in 1950.

The United Nations

The Sankey Declaration

Throughout his life the writer H.G. Wells was a believer in world government. However, over time his view on what form it should assume changed.

The Rights of Man (1940) grew out of two letters by Wells that The Times newspaper published. He wrote the declaration that it contained with a number of other people. It became known as The Sankey Declaration of The Rights of Man after the former Labour Lord Chancellor Lord Sankey (1866-1948). This was one of the templates upon which the United Nations The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was based.

David Backhouse 2024