Dislocated to Success (7 page)

It was clear that the schemes would need to be in place sooner rather than later, and when I reported this to Cabinet there was a general wave of nods around the table; everyone else was under the same pressure. Geoffrey did his pat act about only 10% of the UK economy being for export and that there were vast opportunities for UK business to produce what had been imported goods, but he conceded that, given the state of the banks, there needed to be schemes. Keith and, surprisingly, John Nott
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threw a predictable tantrum, to find themselves having their heads bitten off by a combination of Francis and Norman T - whom it was unusual to find having common ground. Geoffrey was ordered to make haste, and the banks were told that if they wanted help with their little problems then they should make temporary help for another month. Like many things, the scheme was far too rushed and had to be revisited fairly quickly - and unfortunately it also led to a not-inconsiderable amount of fraud. However, if we had delayed to make it more foolproof, then I suspect that unemployment would have headed up to about 4 million - at which point things would have become very difficult.

There had been some talk of another overseas trip for me, but instead the PM asked if I could spend some time with some Danish visitors who were in quarantine at the moment. They were quite senior nobles and friends of the King; the idea was that I would whip them around Essex showing them a few things, give them a nice meeting with some people from the FO, do a bit of  tourist London with them and then introduce them to our Danish embassy. They had no English, but they did speak fairly decent French - which was not uncommon as it was the language of diplomacy then; something that has been changing fairly rapidly since the Dislocation. They didn’t say a lot until we headed out into the countryside - and then there were quite a lot of questions, ones that I mainly couldn’t answer, about why the fields were so big and what was being grown. However, I did know there was a branch of the NFU in Maldon and I took them there, where a nice, helpful young man explained various things to them with myself translating. There was a lot of chatter in Danish in the car all the way to London, which was obviously rather awe-inspiring - just the sheer size of it and how long it took to drive through. They had previously thought that Clacton, which they had seen yesterday, was one of our major towns. They had barely a concept of a city of more than a hundred thousand or so, and the idea of one of eight million was beyond them. Having delivered them to the FO, I had very little to comment; they had mainly asked a few questions and made a lot of “oooh” noises, they had also quite enjoyed the car ride. Others had different reactions to their introduction to the UK, I was told.

Of course, in the world we now found ourselves in, whilst trade and industry was not smart, agriculture was smart. I didn’t realise then, but gathered fairly quickly that we were in some ways at the very start of the Agricultural Revolution, and that nobles and bigwigs of many nations were somewhat taken with improving their economy through agriculture. In fact, agricultural improvement or mercantilism was the big argument of the day for the nascent practitioners of the Dismal Science. A couple of farm visits became a staple part of the introduction to Britain for any diplomats for the next year or so, in what became known in-house as the Intourist tour. They didn’t want to see factories; they didn’t want to see housing estates; they usually wanted to see highly productive farms, pleasant country villages and displays of fine horseflesh. A fair few took a fancy to cars, to be fair, but not to their manufacture or anything mundane like that.

Whilst this was going on, we made the first of our undoubtedly many Foreign Policy errors, with the United Provinces. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but it is clear that decisions were made based on a reading of what would happen in the near future rather than what was happening now. We were in the Second Stadthouderless Period, and someone - trying to read the runes, but failing to notice the dates - put some quite considerable eggs in the Orange basket. Of course, whilst the Prince of Orange was important in a couple of provinces where he was Stadthouder, that was by far the minority of the United Provinces - and some of the poorest and less influential parts. Unfortunately, as all this got out, our names were mud in Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague for a considerably longer period of time than was really healthy. Other misunderstandings over the roles of the great merchant companies and their relations to government didn’t help this situation either, and I suspect that to this day we are regarded with more suspicion than usual in the United Provinces.

Chapter 8

Oddly enough, the most difficult emergency bill to pass the Commons was the citizenship bill. The government had come up with what they considered a simple three-tier scheme, where there were only minor differences between the three tiers and each tier had a path through naturalisation to full citizenship. It was a very comprehensive and generous offer covering nearly everyone in the UK - there were a handful of people felt to be so inimical to the UK that they were not being offered citizenship. Even if you didn’t take citizenship, the UK offered what was effectively Indefinite Leave to Remain to everyone who was there at the time of the Dislocation. It covered everyone; residents, visitors and even illegal immigrants. The House of Commons debated it at length - or at least as much length as they were allowed. There were those who just wanted everyone to be a British citizen - a grouping led by Enoch and the Liberals, but with some Conservative and Labour support; they might have gained a lot more Labour support if Enoch hadn’t have been leading the charge.

There were those who just wanted two classes of citizenship; they could have carried the day, and the Government was not against that idea, but they could not come to an agreement what the two classes would consist of. There were also a few hedgers who did not want any extension of British citizenship, although they generally agreed that there had to be Leave to Remain. There was, of course, every shade of lunatic under the sun, there was even one chap - who was one of ours - who wanted to bring back an equivalent of the Test Act. There were others, mainly led by members of the Monday Club, who did not want illegal immigrants to benefit from this; the main thrust appeared to be that they should just have Leave to Remain, although Marlow
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and a couple of his cronies from the Blood and Soil wing of the party wanted them deported. One of the happy side effects was that all British Overseas Citizens, British Protected Persons and the other odds and sods left over from various law changes since 1948 all had the opportunity to become full British Citizens.

Of course, at that time there were massive concerns about how loyal so many people would be - this had been increased by the actions of a small but vocal group of Americans. Now, looking at it from a safe distance of a decade and a half, we can see that modernity provided a greater sense of loyalty than nationality, and - with a handful of exceptions - much of the nationalist trouble actually came from Commonwealth citizens. In retrospect, what was interesting was the small group of people who refused to take out British citizenship; most were Americans, although there were also significant groups of Australians and - oddly enough - Japanese. These numbers slowly faded over the years; the lure of jobs only available to British citizens, the slow acknowledgement that the USA was not coming back, etc.

This left the thorny question of the colonies and their citizenship. The ones we owned were simple; we were at this point a
ius sanguinis
nation, and it was quite easy to decide that all those in our current colonies were UK citizens. This meant giving UK citizenship to the slaves held in many colonies, and to people who had not been born in those colonies or in the UK. The numbers of this latter group turned out to be very low, surprisingly enough - and as for the former, it seemed to be the least that we could do. This did leave questions over future colonies which would be decided on a case by case basis as said colonies were developed. This led to quite a debate - there were large elements of the Labour party who felt we should abjure any new colonies and tried to cause trouble at this stage. There were also a lot questions about Ireland, mainly from Gerry Fitt. We assured him that Ireland would remain a separate citizenship and that, within the bounds of quarantine etc, we would eventually assure free access to the UK. That caused another fairly lengthy row, especially as Gerry
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wanted assurances that people in Northern Ireland could still take out Irish citizenship - which we couldn’t give at this stage. Nor could we consent to convert a Republic of Ireland passport to a Kingdom of Ireland one, and that idea has remained firmly blocked by the Irish House of Lords to this day. Ted Heath started asking about North American Indians and Australian Aborigines but got fairly short shrift, so that question remained for another day. However, after four very long sessions, we managed to send it off to the Lords, where they produced a veritable horde of amendments - it was in the end the second slowest piece of emergency legislation to be ratified, and it was also one of the first major pieces to be fully revisited in 1985. To be honest, it needed more debate and better drafting; but, like most of the emergency legislation, time was of the essence. The main purpose was to leave no one intentionally stateless - although even to this day there are a few thousand diehards who have not taken out UK citizenship.

One of the small privileges of my job was a small entertainment allowance. I decided to use it invite one of Oxford’s foremost historians to dinner; I had enjoyed his book, although it more covered the half-century before the Dislocation proper. Luckily, some of the better places in London still had some un-rationed treats at that time, and if you stuck to fish, which seemed to have massively improved in quality since the Dislocation, you could still dine reasonably well. Professor Stoye was waspish, in command of his details, argumentative and very thought-provoking. He gave short pen - some would say poison pen - portraits of a number of European leaders, many of which turned out to be pretty accurate and some of which were a little off beam. He said that we wouldn’t be respected until we had fought a war, and that we were likely to get a frosty reception in a number of places. His main feeling was that ignorance and absolutism were marching hand in hand, and that, providing we could get through our food crisis - and he made some rather harsh suggestions on that matter - then within a decade we could either ignore Europe completely or just make it dance to our tune. His comments were that we should concentrate our diplomacy on the smaller and middle ranked powers; they were more likely to be receptive and in need of friends - and, as they were smaller, could be reformed more easily. He specifically warned against three figures as being false friends, and left with a Parthian Shot of “
and god help you if Frederick the Great gets a British education
”. We kept in contact throughout my period in office; he was quite useful at times, and always very interesting. In return, we arranged a few discrete meetings for him over the years with Prominent Persons; including, amusingly, the future Frederick the Great - who we did give a British education to.

Whilst all this was going on, we were making the traditional UK mess of Anglo-Irish relations. I suppose it was inevitable, and to be honest I’m not sure quite how I would have handled it if I had been in charge. I think the approach was probably wrong, but I suspect the bilious response of the powers-that-be in the Kingdom of Ireland would have been just as awkward and obnoxious under any feasible approach. There were some sensible chaps around, but they needed a certain amount of time to accept the new reality and take in the consequences of the Dislocation. Speaking as a Catholic, it would have probably been best if we hadn’t tried to be so even-handed and modern about things, cut the talks to the very much bewildered trans-Irish RC hierarchy out and removed the cis-Irish who resided in Britain from the equation. With that, we could have moved onwards in a very similar way to what we did, but possibly gaining the trust of those in power first. As it was, we were on another sticky wicket; if it hadn’t have been for the cupidity of James Edward Stuart, heaven knows how long the Hibernian mess would have taken to sort out.

As it was, we had had an Irish Accession council meet and proclaim the succession of Frederick Lewis as the rightful King of Ireland, which was somewhat awkward to say the least. However, the stories that the Queen gave the Prime Minister what we call “an interview without chair” are somewhat fanciful. Like the rest of us, the Queen fully understood that Frederick of Hannover was legally the heir to Ireland and that our ventures had been based on not getting an Accession council until after he had decided to stand down and the new Act of Succession also passed in Ireland.

Of course, with the Dislocated Persons Act being passed, something could now be done with Adrian’s flat. I had expected not to be involved, but Rachel contacted me over the last weekend of March to ask if I could help. She came up to town, and we discussed what to do and how to arrange the trust. Luckily I did know a few competent lawyers and suggested one to her; we went to see him on the Tuesday, and he dealt with everything very well. Of course, it was all quite complex and determined by various matters such as the will. I wasn’t even sure if Adrian had a will; I knew I hadn’t made one - something I rectified a couple of years later. It turned out he had - and, quite surprisingly, he had made certain provisions for me. However, as none of the beneficiaries were considered to be either destitute or dependant, and as the estate was valued at over £40,000
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, the will did not directly come into force; nor could it for seven years. Essentially, a trust was set up where the assets would be preserved, but property could be let and investments could be made; reasonable expenses could be charged against the trust. There was a lot of rules about how much could be charged and what investments could be made, which created a few badly needed jobs for financial people and more work for lawyers. Considering the rush of drafting, it was sound law and pretty much stood up to various judicial tests - of which there were plenty. As my share was the flat and contents, it allowed me to let the flat, which I did through an agency, pay the lease and ground rent and the expenses of letting, and sell some of the contents, whilst the rest of the income from it went into an account. I let the place fairly quickly, partly from a fear of squatters and partly because otherwise I was paying for everything involved with it; but I took a much longer time dealing with the contents, some of which remained in store for a very long time.