Confidential embassy despatches
How you can find them
Diplomats’ despatches are private. They aren’t meant to be read outside government.
But increasingly, they can be.
In this week’s Gazette: how to find, and read, the telegrams, cables and reports you were never meant to see.
Parting Shots
It is frankly amazing that the [British Diplomatic Service] does still exist and that morale has remained so high… The impression that I and many of my contemporaries derived from a visit to Personnel Department was that the greatest service we could render to our colleagues and to the state was to drop dead. - Ralph Selby, Ambassador to Norway, 1975.
At the end of their postings, ambassadors write a final goodbye.
It’s a moment to tell their bosses what they really think of the country in which they’ve served, and perhaps its people.
If they’re “retiring” from the service they don’t tend to hold back either about their Ministry, or sometimes their own country. Those communications are internal and confidential, right?
They used to be.
In 2010, former diplomat Matthew Paris and Andrew Bryson used the UK Freedom of Information Act to obtain a selection of these telegrams, written in British embassies decades earlier and never intended for public view.
“Candour is (I found) a quality encountered in refreshing quantity everywhere in the Diplomatic Service - but only in private between consenting adult colleagues”, wrote Mr Paris.
He found more than he expected.
It is still possible to talk of German national characteristics, and one of these is the seriousness, thoroughness, humourlessness, perfectionism and pedantry - Sir Julian Bullard, Ambassador to Germany, 1988
The average Nicaraguan is one of the most dishonest, unreliable, violent and alcoholic of the Latin Americans - Roger Pinsent, Ambassador to Nicaragua, 1967
Over a good many years [the British] assumed responsibility for the well-being of millions of Africans. Then we about-turned, broke faith with our predecessors and… abandoned our subjects to a motley crew of mountebanks, criminals and even monsters.
Whatever one may say about the French (and who does not), at least they have done better for their ex-colonies than we have.
- Sir Martin Ewans, British High Commissioner to Nigeria, 1988
They only date up to 2006, when “valedictory telegrams” were banned (for a while). Since then, the service has changed, so has the world, and so has the way diplomats communicate.
Today, much of the candour has migrated to emails and messaging apps (or disappeared). Much of it is never formally recorded; some leaks; some appears on social media.
But these frank thoughts, even the caricature, are a window onto the joys, frustrations and trials of a diplomacy career.
After four years in Hanoi, I shall be overjoyed to leave… Most foreigners in Vietnam, diplomats or not, are on the verge of insanity - Robert Tesh, British Ambassador to Vietnam, 1978
Departing nearly 40 years later, I wrote a very different final report, feeling more than sad to leave a very different Hanoi.
Perhaps I, too, was on the verge of insanity.
The most unsatisfactory thing about the job [of Ambassador] is that it is often not clear what an Ambassador ought to be doing or what he is trying to achieve…
I take comfort from the scene in a long-forgotten play… in which the staff of an Embassy complain to the Ambassador that they do not have enough to do. The Ambassador dismisses them with the remark: ‘You aren’t paid for doing things: you are paid for being here’”
- Sir Patrick Hancock, British Ambassador to Italy, 1974
It was another era.
For me, the aims were clear, and there was always more opportunity than time in which to pursue it. The challenge was not inactivity, but prioritisation.
It would be silly… not to enjoy oneself in this Embassy and, over five and half years, my wife and I have done so - enormously.
My valedictory is: “Thank you”.
- Sir Ewan Fergusson, British Ambassador to France, 1992
But here are glimpses of diplomacy as it was, and is, practised: candid, colourful, often far removed from public statements.
Those extracts aren’t unique.
With the right approach, you can unearth the same kinds of documents yourself, and much more.
How to find the cables and reports you weren’t meant to read
