The Permanent Under-Secretary of State: A Brief History of the Office and its Holders

The Plowden Committee, together with the Duncan Inquiry, set out to modernise the Foreign Office in view of Britain's rapidly changing position in the world. Indeed, by the 1960s, the Office had come under repeated attacks for its social exclusiveness and lack of sympathy with the commercial needs of the country. In 1964 the Government accepted the main recommendations of the Plowden Report, in particular that the separate Foreign and Commonwealth services should be merged. The single service came into existence in 1965, but the institutional adjustments took several years, with the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office merging in 1968 to form the present Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The Duncan Inquiry was aimed specifically at the need to find possible economies in overseas representation. Overseeing these important changes as PUS was Sir Harold Caccia who arrived at his post in January 1962. Of Italian descent, he spent the most exciting part of his career in the Mediterranean, becoming involved in the forced escape of the British Legation from Athens in 1941 and the rescue of the Greek King from Crete. After the war, he chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee, and was subsequently High Commissioner at Vienna and Ambassador at Washington. As PUS, he was to be the first head of the newly unified Diplomatic Service, and applied his robust common sense to tackling the problems associated with implementing the recommendations of the Plowden Committee. Caccia was one of the few Diplomatic Service officers who excelled in many sports, including shooting and rugby football. It was not unusual, therefore, for the PUS often to use a sporting phrase in response to anyone seeking advice on an intractable problem, his favourite being 'kick it into touch'. Caccia was also responsible for the creation of a daily meeting headed by the PUS to discuss affairs of state, which survives until this day. The situation had arisen during Patrick Gordon Walker's short spell as Foreign Secretary. In the three months prior to the latter's second electoral defeat in 1965, Caccia deemed it essential to keep Gordon Walker up to date with a daily account of international developments while he was campaigning. Caccia and senior officials met every morning and this proved to be so valuable that successive PUS's continued with the practice in order to set out the agenda of the day.

In 1965 Sir Paul Gore-Booth replaced Caccia as PUS. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, Gore-Booth had served in Vienna, Tokyo and Washington, leading to his appointment first as Deputy Under-Secretary from 1956 to 1960 and then as High Commissioner at Delhi in 1961. After returning to the Office in 1965 as PUS, he oversaw its merger with the Commonwealth Office.

The Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, described Gore-Booth as 'wise and urbane', while his manners and intellect were considered to be in the best Balliol and Foreign Office tradition. Unlike some of his predecessors, Gore-Booth had a wide knowledge of the world outside the United States and Europe. He later recollected in his memoirs, With Great Truth & Respect (London, 1974), that during his time as PUS, apart from the Foreign Secretary, he was the only person in the Office whose obligation it was to have some knowledge of everything. However, his relationship with George Brown as Foreign Secretary during 1966-68 was extremely strained. Brown was abrasive, abusive and ebullient, and this contrasted sharply with Gore-Booth's old Etonian Christian Scientist outlook.

Listening to reports of the resignation of George Brown, after the latter had accused the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, of running his Cabinet in a dictatorial fashion, Gore-Booth also heard with considerable surprise, the last sentence of the Downing Street statement: 'The Prime Minister proposes to bring about the amalgamation of the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office into a single Office'. The announcement of the amalgamation came as a complete surprise to Gore-Booth. But he was well aware that the unified service could not remain subject to differing routines and disciplines. Very different filing systems, 'a more intimate and sensitive feature of most people's daily lives than the making of high policy', required attention and considerable patience. Along with Sir Saville Garner, the PUS at the Commonwealth Office, Gore-Booth had done sterling work in bringing both the Services together into what was known as the Diplomatic Service Administration Office (DSAO), and with Garner's retirement on 1 March 1968, Gore-Booth became 'Head of the Diplomatic Service'. The full amalgamation of the two Services would have to await Sir Denis Greenhill's arrival as PUS in 1973. Meanwhile, Gore-Booth also set out to establish his own form of 'joined-up government' by inviting Permanent Secretaries from various Departments across Whitehall to regular meetings in his office. This pioneering work in bringing Whitehall together aimed to involve other Departments in the business of foreign economic and trade policy, and was the forerunner to the regular meetings of Permanent Secretaries now held by the Cabinet Secretary. It was, however, his venture into amateur dramatics for which he is probably best remembered by the public. His performance in the spring of 1968 as Sherlock Holmes in a re-enactment of the great detective's combat with Professor Moriarty on the narrow path overlooking the Reichenbach Falls attracted widespread media attention. Upon learning of Gore-Booth's intentions, Michael Stewart wrote, 'All right. But don't return in two years' time via Tibet'. Gore-Booth did return rather more quickly, unfortunately to witness gloomier events including the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia and the continuing Nigerian civil war. On 15 January 1969 Gore-Booth retired to be replaced by Sir Denis Greenhill in the following month.

Although Greenhill had not served as a head of mission in any Embassy and had no great flair for languages, his term as PUS was a successful one.

Liked and respected by his colleagues, Greenhill fought hard to preserve the integrity of the Diplomatic Service in a time of economic belt-tightening. During the war, Greenhill had served with the Royal Engineers in Egypt, North Africa, Italy, India and Southeast Asia. He entered the Foreign Office in 1946, serving in Sofia, Washington, Paris and Singapore, and then as Minister in Washington. After two years as Assistant Under-Secretary, he was appointed Deputy Under-Secretary in 1966. Greenhill had a good relationship with the incoming Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, recounting in his memoirs, More By Accident (York, 1992), that 'my role as his Permanent Under Secretary was to be full of excitement and enjoyment'. An established and respected expert on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, in 1971 Greenhill was famously instructed by Douglas-Home to inform the Soviet Embassy in London that 105 Russian diplomats and officials were to be expelled for spying.

During the Governments of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, it was the accepted practice for the PUS to travel with Ministers. According to Greenhill, it was '… unwise for either the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary to build up a monopoly of knowledge by failure to share his experiences with some of his senior staff. From his point of view, he has a second opinion of experienced people. From the officials' point of view, it is of great help. It enables the official to understand better the minds of his own ministers and of his foreign opposite numbers.'

By 1972 the Office also had a Planning Staff that reported to the Planning Committee, which comprised the PUS, Deputy Under-Secretaries and the Head of Planning Staff. The Committee was an important link between the Planning Staff and senior officials at a time when the complexity of foreign policy had intensified as a result of Britain's entry into the European Community (EC).

Sir Thomas Brimelow, who succeeded Greenhill in November 1973, was, unlike his immediate predecessor, an outstanding linguist. Raised in a Lancashire working class family, he spoke French, German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Swedish and superb Russian. He was once asked in Moscow, 'Mr Brimeloff, where did you learn to speak such good English?' Self-effacing and well-mannered, the PUS possessed a formidable intellect that put those who worked with him on their mettle. During 1942-45, as head of the Consular Section in the British Embassy in Moscow, Brimelow had on more than one occasion a face-to-face meeting with the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. After the war in Europe had ended, he returned to the Office in the summer of 1945 to play a role in the implementation of repatriations to the Soviet Union already agreed by Britain. After spending a period in Ankara, where he learnt Turkish, he returned to London in 1956 to act as interpreter during the visit of Khrushchev and Bulganin, and became head of the Office's Northern Department. Brimelow also served as Counsellor in Washington, Minister in Moscow, Ambassador to Poland and Deputy Under-Secretary during 1969-73. Once described as 'the toughest-minded and most intransigent of all the Cold Warriors', Harold Wilson valued Brimelow's counsel when it came to pursing a tough line with the Soviet Union. His tenure as PUS, however, was a brief affair, lasting barely two years.

Brimelow's successor, Sir Michael Palliser, was in post until 1982, the longest serving PUS since the Second World War. Formerly Britain's Permanent Representative to the EC at Brussels, he soon had to grapple with the Whitehall-wide impact of Britain's membership and strove to maintain the Office's influence over policy co-ordination. At the same time he was fully alive to the need to maintain personal contacts with posts abroad and travelled widely. He later remarked:

'You've got to know people, you've got to know their family life, you've got to know a lot about them and the other thing, which is certainly true in the army, I found that you could almost tell when you walked through the door of an Embassy whether this place was being well run or not.'

The appointment of David Owen as Foreign Secretary in 1977, led to what Palliser termed an 'extraordinary' relationship. Palliser considered Owen to have a real feel for foreign policy, but in order to get a decision from him, 'you had to have a row'. However, hard-talking did not damage Palliser's relationship with Owen and in reply to a letter from the latter on the role of the PUS with his Foreign Secretary, Palliser remarked:

'I greatly appreciate what you say about my advice. I am convinced that the public servant has the duty to advise as his conscience and experience dictate. It is good of you to make clear that that is what you want. It is also our duty, once you have taken your considered decision to support it to the hilt.'

The arrival of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979 was also a difficult and challenging time for Palliser but he remembered that 'you simply had to argue the toss with her'. Palliser felt that one of the paradoxes in Thatcher's attitude to the FCO was that she presumed the establishment would be prepared to sell the country out to foreigners on almost any issue. On the other hand, she respected and indeed paid a lot of attention to the views of a number of very senior people in the diplomatic service. Sir Percy Cradock and Sir Rodric Braithwaite both became foreign affairs advisers to her. Palliser presumed she thought he was 'a dangerously committed Federalist', but this did not prevent her asking him to come to the Cabinet Office at the outbreak of the Falklands War and be her principal adviser. Palliser, by a most unfortunate coincidence, reached his 60th birthday retirement and on the very day that the Argentinians invaded the Falkland Islands - indeed, his farewell party was cancelled in favour of Lord Carrington's resignation drinks. Although Palliser was appointed a member of the Privy Council, he never received a peerage and as Thatcher's antipathy towards the Service grew such diplomatic elevations appeared to be a thing of the past. Only after John Major's appointment as Prime Minister was the practice revived in the 1990s.