Denis Greenhill, Baron Greenhill of Harrow

Denis Arthur Greenhill, Baron Greenhill of Harrow GCMG OBE (born November 7, 1913 in Woodford , Essex , † November 8, 2000 in London ) was a British diplomat . During his time in the Foreign Service, of which he was head from 1969 to 1973, matters relating to security policy and intelligence took up a large part of his work.

Life

Early years

Denis Arthur Greenhill was the son of James Greenhill, a bank clerk who later rose to become a bank director, and his wife Susie Beatrice Greenhill, b. Matthews. He spent his youth in Woodford near London, where he grew up in a suburban atmosphere. Greenhill began his academic education with a scholarship at Bishop's Stortford College in Bishop's Stortford and put them later in the College Christ Church in Oxford on. There he attended lectures by the historian John Cecil Masterman . Patrick Gordon Walker , who later became Secretary of State, was one of his tutors . During his semester break, Greenhill toured mainland Europe, where he was confronted with the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy . He graduated from university in 1935.

He then went to the London and North Eastern Railway as a trainee . During the Sudeten crisis , one of his tasks was to organize the distribution of refugees. While traveling, he observed the serious consequences of the Great Depression in the industrial north-east of England , which left a lasting impression on him. After the start of World War II , he volunteered for the British Army and was assigned to the Royal Engineers because of his experience with the railroad . Until the end of the war he was deployed in Egypt , Italy, India and Southeast Asia and was promoted to colonel during this time . In 1941 he was awarded the OBE .

Career as a diplomat

Beginnings and first diplomatic missions

On the recommendation of Edwin Chapman-Andrews , Head of Human Resources at the Foreign Office , whom he had met during the war, Greenhill took the diplomatic service entrance exam after his discharge from the army. He began his work in the Foreign Office in November 1945 and was officially admitted to the Foreign Service in early 1946. He gained his first experience in his new job as a companion to Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin in talks with the Egyptian government about the future of the British military bases on the Suez Canal .

He received his first post abroad in December 1947 as First Secretary of the British Embassy in Bulgaria , where he had very negative experiences. After receiving inadequate medical treatment, he narrowly escaped death and was declared a persona non grata by the country's communist government following a show trial of 15 Protestant clergymen who had named his name in connection with the acquisition of military secrets .

His next post abroad was more successful as First Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington, DC , which he took up in August 1949 and where he remained until 1952. Under Ambassador Oliver Franks , he was responsible for the Middle East and witnessed the diplomatic upheavals that resulted from the nationalization of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company by the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1951. Greenhill developed a close relationship with the United States during these years that would last until the end of his tenure.

From September 1952 to January 1954 he worked again in the Foreign Office in London, where he was again responsible for matters relating to the Middle East. During a subsequent visit to the Imperial Defense College , he continued his training in security policy and intelligence matters until December 1954. During the Suez Crisis in 1956, he served as Head of Unit for the British delegation at NATO headquarters in Paris .

From December 1956 to January 1959 he was stationed at the British Embassy in Singapore . During this time, on extensive trips, he gained an overview of the state of the British diplomatic missions in Southeast Asia. He then briefly organized the cooperation between the Foreign Office and the British secret services in London, before he was again stationed at the embassy in Washington from October 1959, now as head of unit and advisor to Ambassadors Harold Caccia (until 1961) and David Ormsby-Gore . In the following five years he took part in the 1961 meeting of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan with US President John F. Kennedy in Key West and in 1962 experienced the consequences of the Cuban Missile Crisis . The growing recognition of his achievements found expression in his appointment to Companion des Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1960 and an extraordinary promotion from adviser to envoy sur place .

Head of the Foreign Service

In 1964 he returned to London, where he became Assistant Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office and his duties again included security and intelligence matters, now especially with regard to the Warsaw Pact states . In 1966 he was promoted to Deputy Under-Secretary of State sur place and in 1967 he was appointed KCMG . Greenhill, who was attested to be particularly skilled in dealing with foreign ministers (including his former college tutor Patrick Gordon Walker from 1964 to 1965), succeeded in building a relationship of trust with Gordon Brown , who was in office from 1966 , even though he was a Labor politician was very critical of the diplomatic establishment. Brown nominated Greenhill as Permanent Under Secretary of State in 1968, an unusual step, since Greenhill had never held an ambassadorial post, had little knowledge of the language and region, and many of his long-serving colleagues were therefore more likely to hope for this position. Despite this, Prime Minister Harold Wilson confirmed the appointment.

After the merger of the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Office to form the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in October 1968, Greenhill was appointed head of the diplomatic service in February 1969, a position in which he was shown great respect for his discreet and objective, but determined demeanor has been. His tact also served him when he oversaw a reorganization of the Foreign Service in the course of which thirty high-ranking employees lost their posts because the restructuring had made them redundant. Among the crises Greenhill had to grapple with during this period were diplomatic resentments with France after the memorandum of a meeting between British Ambassador Christopher Soames and President Charles de Gaulle was leaked to the press, as well as the consequences of Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in 1970. After taking office the Tory -Regierung of Edward Heath in the same year worked Greenhill with the new Foreign Minister Alec Douglas-Home closely and worked among others extensively in the negotiations for accession of the United Kingdom to the European Community with which eventually to 1 January 1973 took place.

The coordination of intelligence affairs also took up a large part of his work. On the basis of information obtained from a Soviet defector, the British government suspected numerous persons who were accredited as diplomats at the Soviet embassy in London to be spies. Greenhill traveled personally to Moscow and negotiated with the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko about reducing the number of Soviet embassy staff or replacing them. After the failure of these talks Greenhill led the process of arranged by Foreign Minister Douglas-Home expulsion of 90 Soviet diplomats in 1971 and handed over to the Soviet chargé a list with the names of another 15 people who were staying abroad and no longer allowed entry to the UK. The unprecedented measure, known as Operation Foot, put a heavy strain on British-Soviet relations.

In 1972 Greenhill was appointed GCMG . When he reached the age of 60 in November 1973, he retired from the diplomatic service.

Later years, private matters and death

In 1974 he was given the title of Baron Greenhill of Harrow as a lifetime peer . The "Harrow" in the title referred to the parish of St Mary in Harrow on the Hill ( London Borough of Harrow ), whose books record the baptism of John Greenhill in 1562. In the House of Lords , he joined the Crossbenchers . He was a member of several special committees of the chamber, which were primarily concerned with EC matters.

Baron Greenhill has also held a number of board positions at large corporations and institutions. From 1973 to 1978 he was one of two members appointed by the British government on the board of directors of BP and was a member of the BBC Board of Governors during the same period . He also served on the boards of British American Tobacco , the SG Warburg & Co. banking house and the Wellcome Foundation . From 1973 to 1982 he was a member of the Security Commission , whose task it was to investigate violations of the security of the state. In the first few years after leaving the diplomatic service, he continued to work as special envoy for Rhodesia and in this context accompanied the negotiations on the country's independence.

In 1992, Baron Greenhill published his memoir under the title More by Accident . The book was more a commentary on the diplomatic questions that had played a role during his service than a closed retelling of his experiences, enriched with amusing anecdotes, such as the drinking habits of the Soviet double agent Guy Burgess , who during Greenhill's first mission in Washington this had worked. In letters to the editor to the media, Lord Greenhill regularly commented on questions of interest to him, and he frankly addressed issues that he had not been able to raise publicly during his service.

Greenhill was married to the born Angela McCulloch from 1941 until his death, whom he had met during the war in Cairo , where she had worked for the British secret service. The two had two sons, born in 1942 and 1945, respectively. The death of the younger son in 1986 put a severe emotional strain on the family of Baron Greenhill.

Denis Arthur Greenhill, Baron Greenhill of Harrow died on November 8, 2000, the day after his 87th birthday, in London.

Publications

• More by accident . Wilton 65, York 1992, ISBN 094782815X .

literature

• John Ure: Greenhill, Denis Arthur, Baron Greenhill of Harrow (1913-2000). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.
• Lord Greenhill of Harrow . Obituary de s Telegraph dated 11 November 2000th