Report on June 2010 Quarterly Meeting

 

A diplomat’s Lot

 

   It’s not very often that a Speaker starts off by slightly re-arranging the chairs and tables!  To illustrate his first point David Hawkes said “The Diplomatic Service changes everything – offices, furniture and personnel frequently get shuffled around, and not for any apparent reason”.  This could possibly be a throw back to the time when the Diplomatic Service was an elitist organisation and it needed to make its presence felt.  Salaries were a pittance and it was only open to people from a well-off background with a good private income.  All that changed in 1935 when Sir Anthony Eden redefined the pay structure.

 

David Hawkes spent most of his working life as a Diplomat in the Middle/Far East and he came up with very interesting insights into a profession which many of us know little about.  So what is a Diplomat?  It is a label “stuck on” a Foreign Office official who is posted overseas to work with local officials in their country.  He reminded us that the word “Diplomat” means being truthful, honest and polite!  Postings are usually on a 3-year rota, of which two are spent overseas with the third year being spent back in the UK.  The cost of running the Diplomatic Service for 1 day is the equivalent of the Foreign Office’s budget for 18 months during the first Gulf War.

 

Staff are recruited after ‘A’ levels and University (not Oxbridge!) and no specific degree is required, and happily now there are equal opportunities for women.  Married female officers can now take their husbands overseas with them.

 

According to David, the TV comedy “Yes, Minister” was true to life.  Ministerial visits obviously involve much preparation and “quid pro quo” goes on all the time.  The generous drinks which abound at these gatherings help to make the visitors mellow, and seeing two people talking with bowed heads means extending one’s ear and trying to make sense of lots of little things.  Business cards are an absolute necessity with the right hand jacket pocket being kept for receiving cards, while the left pocket will contain the Diplomat’s cards for handing out, taking care not to muddle the two!  No wonder that the policy is to listen rather than talk at Receptions, but as ever, it’s the Cleaners who know what is going on!  Any interesting information gleaned is then passed back to the Government, but it is up to them to decide whether they want to use it or not.  Added to this, surprisingly, is the fact that on the whole Diplomats are not great linguists and consequently the biggest faux pas occur in translation.  

 

Just some of the highlights in another most interesting talk and one can be forgiven for thinking about John le Carre’s novels.  Smiley’s people…?                    Anne Robinson