The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

  It went on for about half an hour, then, somehow, we were on final approach, wheels down, flaps at the right setting, green grass flashing past, gentle bumps as the wheels met tarmac.

  I had long lost the airfield, except twice, when it was above my head, but the leader had ensured that the whole team hardly left the circuit. That is the point of display flying. The audience has to be able to see it. So it never really leaves their vision. And all the time we had been airborne, the assessors had been watching with powerful field glasses to note any imperfection.

  We were assisted out of the cockpits to the wings, then down to the ground. I went over to Peter. He had probably lost several pounds in sweat, but was otherwise impassive. He was probably more concerned for the health of his beloved camera than for himself. How he had taken the strain in the 6-G turns, I shall never know.

  We had a “brew” with the Arrows, also soaked in sweat, said our good-byes, and motored back to Ally Pally. I was dying to see the rushes (films had to be developed in those days, then cut and edited).

  The rushes were superb and the editors were pretty openmouthed. The camera never wavered, rock-steady, filming out through the Perspex hood as the world twisted and turned around us. And always the next red Gnat in perfect formation, so close one would think to lean out and touch it.

  The feature was screened as a “special” to considerable public and professional acclaim.

  That autumn I went back to Broadcasting House and lodged my application for the post of assistant diplomatic correspondent, still yearning to go back abroad. There were boards and interviews. I was twenty-eight and the job normally required someone two decades older.

  I met Chris Serpell, the middle-aged diplomatic correspondent, whose deputy the job was all about. He seemed formal and distant, staid, and in all things more like one of the Foreign Office mandarins with whom he consorted daily than a journalist.

  But amazingly they gave me the job, effective from the next February. Foolishly, I was elated, for I had no idea what I had stepped into.

  There are times in life when you discover what is really going on, but too late. When you can say, “If I had known then what I know now, I would have acted completely differently.” Had I known the full level of incompetence of the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) and its sister the Foreign Office, and the level of slavishness the BBC foreign news mini-empire at Broadcasting House would dedicate to both ministries, I would have resigned at once, or never applied for the job in the first place. But awareness came later, too late.

  A TASTE OF AFRICA

  That spring of 1967, I joined the foreign news team, full of hopes that I would soon be sent abroad again to cover foreign news stories. What I did not know was that my presence on that team was absolutely undesired.

  My new boss, foreign news editor Arthur Hutchinson, had been extremely upset that he had not been seated on the interview board that had given me the post. Had he been, I would never have got it, because he had a protégé of his own that he wished to bring on. As Tom Maltby explained to me months later, from the first my card was marked.

  There is a permanent question in office politics: Does your face fit? This one emphatically did not. All that was needed was an excuse, and this I liberally provided.

  To start with, my tasks included attending the regular morning briefings at the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office. These two ministries in the heart of Whitehall covered all British foreign affairs, the second one obviously concerning itself with the residue of the fast-dissolving empire and its successor, the Commonwealth.

  It seemed to me the other diplomatic and Commonwealth correspondents had really “gone native” inasmuch as they were as close to mandarins in attitude and posture as the senior civil servants, languid and disdainful, who briefed them. I never recall a penetrating question or a hint of disagreement with what we were being told. The “received wisdom” was duly and obediently noted and thence reported to the public. But by midspring, a single issue was dominating all others: the Middle East. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt was steadily preparing for war with Israel.

  If the briefings at the two ministries, seated by the grave Chris Serpell, were boring, the growing crisis in the Middle East was absorbing much of the world’s attention. Nasser was no friend of Britain, nor vice versa. In 1956, we had invaded Egypt via Suez in collusion with the French and the Israelis. It had been a disaster and still rankled in Britain on the Center-Right.

  Yet in the Foreign Office, the anti-Semitism was unmissable. I found this odd. On most issues, the senior mandarins reflected a lofty disdain of foreigners, yet made one exception, a preference for Arabs and Islam. This was mirrored in the left-wing media.

  In his young manhood, as an impecunious provincial furrier, my father had been treated with great kindness by the fur houses of the East End of London, all run by Jews, many who had fled Hitler. My own views therefore were the other way.

  By the time Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli and Israel-bound sea traffic, it had become hard to see how war was avoidable. I wanted to go out there on assignment, but was pinned to London. In frustration, I took my summer leave.

  It was on leave that I watched the Six-Day War via the media. It was a war that shattered an awful lot of misconceptions and frustrated many prejudices. In early June, Israel took on four surrounding Arab armies and three air forces and crushed them all. The air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria were destroyed on the ground before they even flew. With unchallenged control of the air above them, the Israeli ground forces raced across Sinai to the Suez Canal, roared east to take the holy city of Jerusalem and almost all land up to the Jordan River, and in the north stormed Syria’s Golan Heights.

  In Britain, the Left had been practically salivating at the imminent destruction of the Jewish state and could only watch in slack-jawed amazement. Most of the British people just cheered. The hero of the hour across two continents, Europe and the United States, became the Israeli defense minister, a one-eyed veteran called Moshe Dayan.

  There were three pools of influence in the UK that were not so enthused: the left-wing newspapers, the BBC, and the Foreign Office. In those environs, I was much in a minority when I returned from leave in mid-June. What nobody was paying any attention to at all was a brewing crisis in Nigeria that pitted the federal dictatorship and its own region of eastern Nigeria.

  It was on July 6, forty days after the Eastern Region had declared unilateral secession from the federal state, that Nigeria invaded to end the insurrection. That day I was called into the office of Mr. Hutchinson’s deputy (he was on leave) and asked to go to Nigeria to cover the extremely short-lived campaign.

  I protested that I knew nothing of Africa, could not care less, and did not want the assignment. It was pointed out that everyone else was either still “wrapping up” in the Middle East or on leave. I capitulated. There was a day of “jabs” from the resident medical officer and a minutely detailed briefing on what had led to the revolt, what I would find, and what would happen next. This came from a man from the BBC World Service West Africa of Bush House, the official voice of Britain. I recall it even now.

  The issues, I was told, were quite simple. The east was the homeland overwhelmingly of the Ibo people who, on the spurious basis of some riots a year earlier and led by a self-serving rogue called Ojukwu, had declared secession from the very fine republic of Nigeria, the jewel in the crown of the British Commonwealth in Africa. Their collective character was long-term troublesome and their claims had no merit.

  Even so, they had been unwillingly goaded into secession by the military governor of the region, a certain Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, and had unwisely agreed to follow him. The Nigerian head of state, the marvelous Colonel Yakubu Gowon, had no choice but to use the federal army to reconquer the east, which was styling itself as the Republic of Biafra.

  The rebel army was a rabble
of cooks and bottle washers who would be no match for the British-trained Nigerian army. This force would soon march into the rebel enclave, sweeping all before it, topple the upstart colonel, and “restore order.”

  I was not wanted in Lagos, the capital four hundred miles west of Biafra, constantly referred to only as the “rebel enclave.” Events out of Lagos would be covered by our veteran West Africa expert Angus McDermid. My job was to fly to Paris and thence to Douala in Cameroon, the republic east of Nigeria. Then over the border into eastern Nigeria and, as best as I could, cross-country to the regional capital Enugu.

  It was not wanted that I actually file any report, as communications were cut off from all sides. I would report to the British deputy high commissioner there and stick close to him. As the Nigerian army swept south, he and his retinue would retreat south to the coast, where we would all be taken off the shore by an arranged vessel and returned to Cameroon. Once I had reestablished phone contact from the best hotel, I was to file an “upsummer”—a complete report on the short-lived revolt.

  The operation would take between ten and fourteen days. Then I should fly home. Job done. So I flew to Paris and thence Douala.

  I found traveling companions in the form of Sandy Gall of Independent TV News, his cameraman, and sound recordists, and we agreed to travel together all the way. The two assignments were rather different.

  Sandy had a TV team, I did not. He had to spend one week covering a range of stories as they presented themselves, file nothing, ship no film, just return after one week with whatever he had got. I had to stay until the end.

  We arrived in Douala, checked into the Cocotiers Hotel, chartered a small plane, and flew to Mamfe, the Cameroon-Nigeria border town. From there, a local taxi and a lot of persuasion took us across the border into the “rebel enclave.” After an exhausting drive, we arrived at Enugu and checked into the Progress Hotel, the principal hostelry of this pretty small provincial capital.

  It must have been the next day, about July 12, that I made contact with the British deputy high commissioner, Jim Parker. He was a real veteran “old Africa hand,” steeped in knowledge of the country and the Eastern Region. I recall that I saw him alone. Sandy and his team were out filming what they could get of interest in a town still completely at peace. Jim asked me what I had been told.

  I related my briefing to him, almost word for word. He listened, grim-faced, then put his face in his hands. He knew where the briefing had come from; I did not. The author and source for it all was the British high commissioner (ambassador) in Lagos, one Sir David Hunt. I had never even heard of him.

  I would meet him eventually, years later and after the war, in the guest suite of a British TV program. He turned out to be about the nastiest piece of work I have ever come across. An intellectual who had missed out on every plum in the diplomatic service, he ended up in West Africa, the trash can of diplomacy, and seethed with resentment; a crashing snob and a racist who hid his unpleasantness behind a veneer of affability, about as convincing as a four-pound note.

  The reason Jim Parker had put his head in his hands became plain as he talked. Every word I had been given was complete and utter garbage. But David Hunt had sold it hook, line, and sinker to the Commonwealth Office. Who in turn had passed it to the West Africa Service at Bush House and the Foreign News Department of the BBC at Broadcasting House. No one dreamed of disputing a word of it.

  Jim Parker spent the rest of the morning explaining to me what had really happened and what was happening right then. Which was nothing. Starting on July 6, the Nigerian army, composed entirely of Muslim Hausa tribesmen from the north and numbering about 6,000, had captured the northern border town of Nsukka, which was not defended. Just south of the town, they met the first defenders, oil barrels filled with concrete. And stopped.

  They could have gone round them, but they were frightened to enter the rain forest, which they believed was full of evil spirits. They remained there for weeks.

  In the deep south, a landing party from the Nigerian navy had captured the offshore island of Bonny, which had an oil refinery. But the navy could go no farther into the shallow and treacherous Niger Delta and they had no amphibious units.

  “So what is happening?” I asked. My briefing said the Nigerian armed forces should be sweeping across the rebel enclave.

  “Nothing,” he said cheerfully. “Welcome to Africa. Let’s go for lunch.”

  His houseboy had prepared pickles and salad. After that we went to a press briefing at State House, the residence of the regional governor, now of the newly announced head of state, to meet the demon Ojukwu.

  The drive enabled us to see a microcosm of the crowds in the streets, consumed with exhilaration at what they saw as their present and continuing freedom at last. They were waving their new half-a-yellow-sun flags and the youths were queuing at the establishment booths to go and fight.

  The populace had not yet learned to loathe the BBC and never learned to hate the British, so they ran grinning up to the car with the Union Jack pennant on the bonnet, waving and laughing.

  Colonel Emeka Ojukwu was not quite as painted to me in London. The son of Nigerian multimillionaire and Knight of the Empire Sir Louis Ojukwu, he had been sent to a British-run preparatory school in Lagos, then to Epsom College in Surrey. Then to Oxford, where he gained a master of arts degree in history at Lincoln College.

  As an ardent federalist, he had joined the army, because he considered it the only institution that was truly pan-national and devoid of regional jealousies. He had risen by merit to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the first of the two coups of the previous year, the one in January, had been appointed military governor of the east. His native Iboland. He had been in office for fifteen months until the declaration of independence. He was thirty-four.

  In measured terms and an Oxford drawl he explained that he had resisted the clamor from the people for a separation from Nigeria for as long as he could before having to face a decision he could no longer avoid. He could either resign and leave or he could agree to lead his people along the path they had chosen. He opted for the latter.

  He told all the foreign journalists present—about six, apart from Sandy and me—that we were free to rent cars and wander where we wished. His staff would issue a laissez-passer to all, in case there were problems at the overenthusiastic roadblocks.

  Back at the Progress Hotel to change, I discovered there were more than a score of other expatriates, mostly British, in residence. These were businessmen representing large firms and franchises, who had been there for years, engineers from a number of foreign aid projects, and so forth. If I wanted confirmation of anything Jim Parker would tell me, I would find it in this community, also steeped in local knowledge.

  I took tea with Jim Parker back at the deputy high commission and he explained to me where and why the London briefing was wrong on every single point.

  It was the chastening seminar that confirmed the old adage for foreign correspondents: Never mind what the embassy says—go and ask the old sweats who have been there for years.

  END OF CAREER

  The trouble with Nigeria was that historically it had never been one country, but two. Some say it still is.

  A hundred years before the British arrived, a Muslim warlord called Usman dan Fodio had led his Fulani army out of the Sahara, through the Sahel of semidesert and scrub, and into northern Nigeria to wage war on the Hausa Kingdom. His horsemen stopped at the line of the rain forests because their mounts contracted tick-borne diseases and died in the tropical rain. So the Hausa/Fulani settled the whole of the north, almost 60 percent of what would become Nigeria.

  About 120 years ago, the British arrived by sea from the south. Sir Frederick Lugard conquered the tribes of the forest and annexed the north. Lady Lugard grandly called the place Nigeria and mapmakers drew a single line around it.

  The Muslim north
was ruled by sultans and emirs who resisted the British until the white men used their Maxim machine guns to urge a rethink. Missionaries arrived by sea to convert the animists of the rain forests—not to Islam but to Christianity. So, two countries, and for fifty years the British ruled them as two countries.

  Northern Nigeria continued on its sleepy way, with nominal rule by the British but real rule by the emirs and sultans, with British agreement. There was no middle class, education and technology were shunned, and the common people were slavishly obedient to their liege lords. This extreme deference was extended to the British civil servants, who loved it.

  But in the Christianized south, the two main ethnic groups, the Yoruba of the west and Ibos of the east, became avid for education and technical mastery, which they learned from the British. One of the two, the Ibos, passionate for knowledge, consumed education with both hands, and became the effective motor of the country. And they spread throughout Nigeria, north and south.

  In the north, southerners had to live in closed ghettos, but they enabled the British to run the place with a minimum of white faces. The Ibos especially were the drivers, mechanics, switchboard operators, masters of machinery, office staff, and junior civil servants. They were also entrepreneurial; they became the traders, shopkeepers, bankers, and money changers.

  And they made themselves unpopular. I once heard a British civil servant, in London but originally from northern Nigeria, refer to the Ibos as “the Jews of Africa,” and it was not meant as a compliment. By the fifties, there were over a million Ibos resident in the north. That was when the trouble began.

  London decided that Nigeria had to be independent within a decade, and that it had to be a united Nigeria. Having run the place for so long on the basis of a schooled but controlled mutual antagonism between north and south, that was a tall order. Even taller was the decree that it had to become a democracy, a concept wholly alien to the feudal north.