AN ORIGINAL AND ADVENTUROUS LIFE

Lord Amery of Lustleigh died on Wednesday. Bruce Anderson pays tribute to his unique grasp of foreign policy

JULIAN AMERY always had the knack of arriving in interesting places at the right time. At the beginning of the war, he was in Belgrade. While nominally attached to the Embassy press office, he helped to set up the Balkans branch of SOE. Through- out his life, Julian believed in conducting his own foreign policy, which might, or might not, coincide with HMG's views; the early war years were no exception. Con- cluding that the Regent Paul of Yugoslavia and King Boris of Bulgaria were moving in a pro-Axis direction, he planned to have them both assassinated. When news of this reached his superiors in London, he was recalled in disgrace, and summoned by Hugh Dalton, then minister in charge of SOE. Dalton rolled his eyes at Amery: `Young man, your seniors think that you are an appalling fellow. If they had their way, you would now be on your way to the Tower, in chains. But I'm not so sure. I've read the papers, and I'm not convinced that you are wrong. I have to send you away from here; I can do no less — but if events unfold as you have predicted, I will bring you back: if you receive a message from the Ministry of Economic Planning, you will know what it means.'

Julian had read All Quiet on the Western Front. While he did not mind dying for his country, he preferred a form of warfare that would allow him a hot bath and a whisky and soda at the end of a day's fight- ing, so he joined the RAF. Balkan affairs, meanwhile, deteriorated as he had fore- told. Towards the end of his pilot training, he was sent for by his CO. 'You're doing well here, young Amery; you'll shortly be commissioned, and I'm sure you'll be an asset to the air force. Had some piece of bumf about you from London. Nearly put it straight in the wastepaper basket, but it says you've got to see it, so here it is.'

It was indeed an invitation from the Ministry of Economic Planning. In those days, I was a self-important young man,' Julian later recalled, `so I did not enlighten my CO as to my true destination. I simply said: "Yes, sir, I'd like to go." He looked at me with such contempt: as far as he knew, I was just a politician's son who'd used his connections to fix himself a safe job. If he had had a white feather, he'd have handed it to me. As it was, he said, "In that case, you'd better get out." A week later, I parachuted back into the Balkans.'

Thus was the pattern set for a life of originality and adventure. I first met Julian in the late Seventies. In those days, I thought I knew all about diplomacy: it meant managing the Cold War, patrolling the Iron Curtain with an oilcan to ensure that the hinges stayed rust-free. That was not how Julian Amery saw foreign policy. He talked of a fluid world of interests and nationalisms, powers and personalities, in which Western statesmen should constant- ly be weighing their choices on the scales of opportunity and danger.

To begin with, this seemed so old-fash- ioned, an impression reinforced by Julian's manner, and voice: a magnificent, reso- nant organ, one of the finest speaking voices of the age — it did, however, sound as if it had been marinating in port since the Belle Epoque. But within a few min- utes I was captivated, my ignorant precon- ceptions wholly overthrown.

Julian brought to foreign affairs a unique depth of experience and knowl- edge. When he was born, his father Leo was already an important man in middle life, so from an early age Julian met the world's great figures at dinner. He went on doing so until the end. When he was not meeting distinguished foreigners, he was reading or travelling. The combina- tion of long knowledge, inexhaustible curiosity and original thinking gave him a grasp of international affairs unrivalled by any of his contemporaries except Henry Kissinger, who speaks and writes about post-Napoleonic Europe in a similar way to Julian — as if he had transmuted every detail into personal experience. Julian also sought to influence events. In the 19705, he cultivated Ceaucescu, believ- ing that Romania could be used to turn the Warsaw Pact's flank. He was partly respon- sible for Ceaucescu's state visit, accompa- nied by the usual honours, all of which later became a source of embarrassment. But Julian never had any illusions about the Ceaucescu regime; he merely used the same arguments as Churchill would have done in 1941 — my enemy's enemy is my friend.

Partly because of his Balkan experiences, Julian quickly saw the potentialities of the Afghan resistance. 'Why should the Soviets have a monopoly of liberation move- ments?' he would growl in Churchillian tones. To him, diplomacy was always a war of movement.

In pursuit of his interests, he turned the library and dining-room of 112 Eaton Square into an alternative Foreign Office. This regularly caused alarm in official cir- cles, but from the era of Harold Macmillan and Alec Home through until Charles Pow- ell and Malcolm Rifkind, the wiser foreign secretaries and diplomats realised that Julian was an invaluable asset. After the Six Day War, he arranged the first contacts between the Israelis and the Jordanians: King Hussein and Moshe Dayan both slipped secretly into London to meet at Julian's house.

When the history of the post-war years is written, Julian will emerge as a bigger fig- ure than many men who rose higher in gov- ernment, but his failure to achieve great office was a disappointment. If Alec Dou- glas-Home had won the 1964 election, Julian would have been in the Cabinet, but with Wilson's narrow victory, the terms of political trade altered, to Julian's lasting disadvantage. He lost touch with the new Tory Party, and it with him. Ted Heath and he never got on. One summer in the late Fifties, Lord Blaken- ham took a palazzo in Venice and invited three of the Tory Party's bright young men to be his guests. Two of them, Julian Amery and Hugh Fraser, arrived equipped for fun, with guidebooks and light clothes. The third youngster brought blue books and winter clothes. Reverting to under-

graduate or even schoolboy behaviour, Julian and Hugh proceeded to mob up the third fellow. Returning in the small hours, they would burst into his bedroom and spray him with a fire-extinguisher, pre- tending to have smelt smoke. In the morn- ing, at 11 o'clock or so, they would arrive on the balcony to nurse their hangovers; their victim had already been at work for several hours. At least once, while he was having a pee, his blue book somehow found its way into the Grand Canal. 'X, old man, I'm so sorry. Was refillin' my champagne glass when my elbow acciden- tally caught your blue book. I'm sure we can find another one in the Piazza.' By the end of the week, the third young man's shoulder-chips were in full view; his name was Edward Heath. He never gave Hugh a job, and only employed Julian because he would have been too troublesome on the back benches.

Mr Heath not only disliked Julian, he distrusted him, seeing him as part of the old imperial wing of the Party which ought to be modernised out of existence. While Julian obviously had to be part of the 1970 Government, there was no question of a Cabinet post. For the first two years, he was exiled to the Ministry of Works, the equivalent of managing a power station in Omsk. Only in 1972 was he allowed to join Lord Home at the FO.

It was unfortunate for both Amery and Heath that their personalities were incom- patible, for Europe ought to have made them staunch allies. Julian's pro-European credentials were unrivalled; they dated back to conversations with Churchill in the early post-war years. Churchill can be cited by both sides of the European argument, partly because he never focused on the narrower, detailed arguments for and against British membership. Nor did Julian; he always expressed his Euro- enthusiasm in broad, grandiloquent terms, seeing it as a new national mission, a sub- stitute for Empire, a great cause requiring British leadership. Julian was one Europhile who could never be accused of lack of patriotism, nor did he allow the argument to drain away into a morass of bureaucratic tedium. For once, however, he was unable to carry his disciples with him. I remember a trip to Brussels which Julian organised for some younger Ameryites. We responded by vying with one another as to who could be the most Eurosceptic. Julian reacted with an equal measure of dismay and amusement. Margaret Thatcher did regard Julian with affection and respect, but he was never in her circle, nor were his business methods those of the Grantham grocery. Julian believed in long lunches and good dinners: he had a Churchillian reverence for brandy and cigars. By the early Eight- ies, he was only in his early sixties, but he already seemed like a relic of a vanished generation.

He was also impatient with the younger Tory Party's lack of interest in the real issues. By the late Seventies, Julian had come to view the world with gloom and alarm. The Americans had not only betrayed his friend the Shah, but under President Carter's nerveless stewardship they seemed to be losing the Cold War. Yet the average Tory MP seemed interest- ed only in the arcana of monetary policy.

There was an irony here. Just at the moment when Julian and modern politics lost touch with one another, the forces were emerging which would justify the Amery world view. Julian had always believed that the Cold War could be won, but 1)e never for a moment subscribed to the naive optimism of those who seemed to think that history and conflict would end with that victory; he knew that the ter- mination of the Cold War would mean, not a new world order, but a new set of world problems.

From the outset, he was pessimistic about the former Yugoslavia. His grasp of history combined with his wartime experi- ences to fill him with foreboding about Bosnian Muslims, Albanians in southern Serbia, the Voivodina and the Sanjak of Novy Bazar, before anyone else had worked out whether he was referring to a place or a dignitary.

Suddenly, the sterile certainties of the Cold War were revealed for what they were, the illusions of a passing phase. Far from being out of date, Julian's learning had an *up-to-the-minute relevance — but he, alas, was past his prime and into old age. It was too late for vindication to turn into political success.

But he died full of honour and influence. It is no coincidence that the two most per- ceptive thinkers on foreign policy in today's Tory Party, Jonathan Aitken and Robert Cranbome, are both Amery pupils. The sons of old friends of his awn generation, they became his political offspring. That he lived to see them both in Cabinet brought him joy. As generous with his time as with his wine cellar, he loved the company of the young; if he could not be Foreign Sec- retary, he could at least ensure that he passed on his ideas. To travel with Julian was a guarantee of unalloyed pleasure and amusement (unless you were Ted Heath). When I told the daughter of one of his friends that he had died, she commented sorrowfully that it was the end of an era. So often said, so seldom as truly, for with Julian's passing, the world that produced him has finally slipped into history. But his deeds will live on, as will his words. Julian wrote as well as he talked. Approach March, the first and, sadly, final volume of his memoirs, is an especially delicious book.

As long as Julian's friends and disciples have memories, he will also live on, in their amused reminiscences and in their love.