Howard Smith (diplomat)

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Sir Howard Frank Trayton Smith GCMG (born October 15, 1919 in London , † May 7, 1996 ) was a British diplomat .

Life

Howard Frank Trayton Smith was the eldest son of a teacher at Wembley. With a state scholarship, he studied at Regent Street Polytechnic in London, which he successfully completed a year before his grade. From 1938 he studied mathematics at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, a college of the University of Cambridge . From 1940 to 1945 he was employed in the Bletchley Park Military Department. In 1946 he entered the foreign service and was sent to the UN General Assembly in New York City in 1948 . Until 1956 he worked in Norway , Washington, DC and Caracas . From 1956 was deputy head of the Africa department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office .

From 1961 to 1963, Howard Smith was Counselor in Moscow . In 1966 he was accepted as a Companion in the Order of St. Michael and St. George , in which he was promoted to Knight Commander in 1976 and Knight Grand Cross in 1981 . From 1968 to 1971 he was ambassador to Prague .

In the early 1970s, Brian Faulkner ruled Northern Ireland with internment politics and Blood Sunday occurred (Northern Ireland 1972) . Smith was the United Kingdom Government Representative in Northern Ireland at the time. In that capacity, Smith attended a meeting of the Joint Security Committee on January 13, 1972 . At this meeting, the Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland claims to have submitted a memorandum to General Robert Ford in which he proposed the use of soldiers for arrests during eventful gatherings. In the memorandum, Ford pointed out that the shooting of ringleaders should be considered. According to Smith, the subsequent direct government by the British government was at this point an option to be avoided.

From 1972 to 1975 Smith was Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and then until 1978 Ambassador to Moscow. He then headed the Security Service (MI5) until 1981 .

Private

In 1943 he married Mary Cropper († 1982) with whom he had a daughter. In 1983 he married Mary Penney († 1992).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 44210, HMSO, London, January 1, 1967, p. 4 ( PDF , accessed October 22, 2013, English).
  2. Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.official-documents.gov.uk
  3. ^ The Independent , May 10, 1996, Obituary: Sir Howard Smith
predecessor Office successor
William Barker British Ambassador to Czechoslovakia
1968–1971
Ronald Stratford Scrivener
Oliver Wright
Ronald Burroughs
United Kingdom Government Representative in Northern Ireland
1971–1972
Terence Garvey British Ambassador to the Soviet Union
1976–1978
Curtis Keeble
Michael Hanley Head of MI5
1979–1981
John Jones