Ronald William Bailey

Ronald William Bailey CMG (* 1918 Southampton ; † 14 May 2010 in Sussex ) was the United Kingdom's ambassador .

Life

Bailey attended King Edward VI School in Southampton when Southampton was the UK's busiest port. After graduating from high school, he learned French and Spanish and was awarded a scholarship to Trinity Hall in 1936 . There he made friends with Fuad, the son of an Egyptian minister of agriculture and later defense minister, who invited him to a long stay in Egypt in 1938.

With 16 other candidates, Bailey obtained admission to the foreign service after a final exam . He opted for the consular service, since the diplomatic service from 1936 required an independent income and a command of the German language . David Scott, Secretary of State in the State Department, sent him to Beirut . From 1939 to 1941 Bailey was employed in the consular service at the British Consulate in Beirut, learned Arabic and issued visas for British citizens to Palestine , for which the British Mandate Authority had introduced a visa requirement after the Arab uprising .

When France recognized the military defeat against the German Reich in 1940 , the Vichy regime declared that no British consulate could continue to exist in a French port. In consultation with the British Consul General Sir Godfrey Havard and the French High Commissioner Gabriel Puaux, the British Consulate General was relocated to Aley, about 15 miles from Beirut.

In 1941, Bailey was accredited as Vice Consul of Alexandria in the Kingdom of Egypt . The consulate looked after around 40,000 British citizens, as well as the interests of the English merchant navy. The tasks of the consulate in Alexandria included the accommodation and consular care of 2,000 British citizens who had rushed to Alexandria during the evacuation of Greece before the German attack. Among the refugees was Lawrence Durrell , who then headed the news department in Egypt. Another Greek exile in Alexandria was George II , to whom Bailey left his office for a few days.

Bailey volunteered to track mines in and around Alexandria docks. From two raised points (Boghaz lighthouse in the port of Alexandria and Kom el-Dik (Kom el-Dekka)) the position of the fall of bombs or mines was determined by triangulation, which could then be defused. His consular duties during World War II included determining and documenting the cause of death of deceased British citizens, as well as developing an evacuation plan in the event of a German invasion, especially for the large Jewish community in Alexandria, as the German military already existed in Alamein about 110 km away .

In Alexandria he also met his future wife, who worked there for the Women's Royal Naval Service .

From 1944 he headed the translation department at the Embassy in Cairo , where Arabic documents were translated into English and vice versa. Freya Madeline Stark had founded the Brethren of Freedom (Brotherhood of Peace) for the Ministry of Information , which stood on the side of the Allies. As the brother of the Brethren of Freedom , Bailey traveled to the Egyptian kingdom and made contacts with Muslims and the Coptic Christian community . In 1945 Bailey represented the British ambassador at the funeral of Makarius III.

In 1945 he was employed in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for 18 months . He headed the division of the former Italian colonies ( Libya , Italian Somaliland , Eritrea ), which were under British administration, and Ethiopia .

From 1947 to 1952 he was the British Deputy Consul in Beirut . At the time, the embassy had accredited 140 employees.

From 1952 to 1957 he was the first secretary and advisor on Middle East issues at the British Embassy in Washington, DC in 1956, during the Suez crisis , was John Coulson UK- charge d'affaires in Washington.

From 1957 to 1960, Bailey was accredited to the British Embassy in Khartoum after Sudan gained independence on January 1, 1956.

From 1960 to 1962 he was Chargé d'affaires at the British Embassy in Taizz , Yemen . The Imam of Yemen, Yahya Muhammad Hamid ad-Din , was murdered in Sana'a , which is why his son, Ahmad ibn Yahya , moved the Yemeni capital to Taizz and claimed the territory of Aden . In Taizz, Bailey was the chargé d'affaires of the non-Arab governments: USA, FRG, Ethiopia and Great Britain. The currency in Yemen was the Maria Theresa thaler . In Taizz, Bailey and his personal protection were injured by a knife. The Imam of Yemen sent the US chargé d'affaires Robert Stookey with a GDR pilot to see Governor Sir Charles Johnston in Aden to fetch a medic from the Royal Air Force . Bailey was taken to a hospital in Aden.

Later he was consul general in Gothenburg and was mainly responsible for developing trade relations.

From 1967 to 1971 he was ambassador to Bolivia , but also looked after all other people whose countries belonged to the Commonwealth, such as B. Canada. After a stable two-year phase in which trade was further expanded, the death of President Barrientos in 1969 was followed by a troubled time in which ambassadors were given personal protection for fear of kidnapping.

Then he was ambassador to Morocco . In 1975 he retired, founded a British-Moroccan society in England to promote friendship between the two countries, was elected President of the Society for the Protection of Animals in North Africa (SPANA) and became an advisor to Qaboos ibn Said , Sultan of the Oman .

He was married to Joan Gray. The two had two children named Rowena and Nigel Bailey.

Web links

• Short biography and interview of the British Diplomatic Oral History Program of Churchill College of the University of Cambridge
• Obituary: Ronald Bailey . In: The Daily Telegraph, July 26, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Coulson gripped his chair and the whites of his knuckles showed, Scott Lucas, Britain and Suez: the lion's last roar
2. ^ John Hutson, April 25, 1996, British diplomatic oral history program (PDF; 66 kB)

predecessor	Office	successor
	British Chargé d'affaires in Taizz 1960 to 1962	Arthur Kellas
Sir Roger Allen	British Ambassador to Baghdad from 1965 to 1967	Richard Ashton Beaumont
Sir Herbert Gamble	British ambassador to Bolivia from 1967 to 1971	John Tahourdin
Thomas Shaw	British Ambassador in Rabat 1971 to 1975	John Duncan