Getting nowhere in a hurry

Patrick Cosgrave

It is just over a year sinde Dr David Owen became Foreign Secretary, following the unexpected death of Anthony Crosland. Few men in the last generation have entered upon high office so young, and to such high approbation: the 'press, and even the Opposition, were both taken aback and rather impressed by what seemed like a . strikingly imaginative gesture on the part of the Prime Minister. Few politicians, on the other hand, have suffered so rapid a decline in public esteem. It is not just that the Tories have constantly set about Dr Owen because of his attitudes to and diplomatic failures in Southern Africa. Within his own party he seems to have succeeded principally in being an irritant. His efforts at the dispatch box do not convince for, in striking contrast to his appearance and reputation, he is a plodding speaker. His general pronouncements, at venues from St Andrew's Church ('The morality of compromise') to the Fabian Society, are found to be vague beyond the acceptable limits even of modern politics. And his ceaseless journeying to various points around the globe (at a cost to the taxpayer, so far, of more than £250,000) does not, it seems to people in all parts of the political spectrum, appear to have gained any marked advantage for Britain.

To what extent — this is the central question about his public reputation — is all this due to the limitations which the decline of national power has imposed on all recent British Foreign Secretaries and to the fact that, because of his novelty value, Dr Owen was overblown in the first place? Or can it be said that the exposure he has inevitably enjoyed in the last year has brought out weaknessess and inadequacies in his own character which would have remained con

cealed had he continued in the decent obscurity of his role as number two to the domineering Crosland? One thing is certain: from the beginning Dr Owen shared to the full the extravagantly high estimate of his abilities and his potential made by the press on his appointment. If there were no other evidence for this statement, that of the steady issue of signed photographs of the Foreign Secretary would, to my mind, clinch the matter. For it was revealed last spring, as he came up to his first anniversary as Secretary of State, that somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 signed photographs of him had been sent out to correspondents by the Foreign Office, at a total cost of £2,500. Had all these been requested by citizens writing in it would have indicated the development of a new phenomenon in British politics, for the English have not, in the past, normally treated their politicians in the same way that teenagers do pop or a ■

film stars. Even Mrs Thatcher, the novelty value of whose sex excites on the part of voters a greater attention than is common to her personality, is asked for no more than a few hundred photographs a year. Inves' tigation revealed, however, that at Dr Owen's personal instruction, the Foreiga Office had taken to sending out photo. graphs even to correspondents who had not asked for them. Thus was revealed a streak of narcissism in the man the existence of which other evidence amply confirms. Dr Owen and his hair is a recurring topic Of comment and amusement at home as well as abroad. He is never without a comb, and rarely passes a mirror without stopping to adjust the lie of his wayward hairstyle. I myself saw him stopping, in full view of the guests, before joining a party, to take advantage of his hostess's provision of a mirror just inside the door of her living room. Likewise, in conversation with his entourage while travelling, as well as oe more mundane social occasions, his self' preoccupation is much in evidence. In Feb' ruary of this year, for example, in the hear' ing of journalists as well as British diplomats, in a hotel in Tel Aviv, he exploded against the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Begin, with whom he had just concluded

talks, 'I can't stand that man. He lectures me. He treats me like a boy.'

Now, many things can be said against Mr Begin, but even his worst enemies have never suggested that he lacked personal courtesy. On this occasion, however, the important thing was that, given the position of his government on Middle Eastero affairs, Dr Owen had grounds for being disI satisfied with Mr Begin. He reacted, I though, not to the matters of serious dispute I between himself and the Israeli Prime I Minister, but to an imagined personal slight. I Nor had he come to Israel prepared with ( any conviction to play the even-handed role of mediator between that country and ha I Arab enemies which he had publielY claimed for the British government. For he had, just before in Amman, made alt intemperate speech justifying the Arab pas' ition. Even that, though, won him no frieifl in Jordan. For it was after his talks with King Hussein that the Jordanian ruler made the memorable remark, `Do you suppose . he's any good as a doctor?'

What emerged in the course of the Fore' ign Secretary's conversations with the King, I is Dr Owen's embarrassingly loose grasp 0' the details of the political situations with I which he is concerned. That, more than anY particular position on policy he hes adopted, has caused concern among solve Labour backbenchers. On the face of it, this is surprising. For, when he was Minister of State at the Foreign Office, he was regarded by his civil servants as a minister who went, through his papers with thoroughness art', efficiency, albeit at speed. It may be, 0' course, that the frenetic pace he has set himself in high office, and the ceaseless travelling in which he has engaged, have exhausted him. It was somewhat Per' curbing, for example, to find him causing to be issued, apparently with pride and a conviction that they represented some kind of achievement, statistics for his first months as Secretary of State showing that he had made thirty-five trips abroad, covered sixty-three thousand miles, and lost two stone in weight. Apart from any question that might be raised about the diplomatic usefulness of such peregrinations, it is doubtful whether even the toughest of Politicians could submit to such a schedule Without suffering the kind of exhaustion Which impedes judgment. Dr Owen might be well advised to attend to the counsel offered both himself and the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr Andrew Young, after one of their more hectic pas de deux, by the phlegmatic Mr Cyrus Vance. Quoting Lincoln's exhortation, Mr Vance suggested that the youngsters should 'sit Still and saw wood a while.'

Of course, as a Labour politician Dr Owen has no choice but to be in something of a hurry, His Plymouth constituency is int arginal in the extreme. He has no solid or large bloc of support within his party. And that party is notoriously unkind to those of as members who have held the office either °f Secretary of State for Defence or Foreign Secretary and sought to defend as best they Can the interests of Britain abroad. The trouble is that Dr Owen has almost no resource of style with Which to impress himself on his wilfully plebeian colleagues, nor does he have that massive and arrogant self-confidence which his predecessor used to impose himself — though not with any Spectacular success —on the Labour Party in the country. He is fond, for example, of SaYing in Labour company that he lives in

he East End (in an elegantly developed °once in Limehouse) but of following this Specious assertion with a little giggle, as though he was expecting his companions to

!hare some obscure joke. The strange thing _Is that both he and his handsome wife .ueborah (a literary agent) seem at times Obsessively anxious to stress that they live in

°Ile of the humbler parts of the capital. Of course, there is something of the PFacock in many politicians. Many politi cians, too, have done a job well in spite of having more than a touch of vanity. The d,Isturbing, and even alarming, thing about

ur Owen is that his personal wilfulness and self-regard spills over into his diplomacy. lie has immoderate likes and dislikes and, Specially when he is irritated or obsessed !9Y what seems to him to be the intrans igence of others, his statements are loose, extravagant and petulant. The stated policy of his government in Rhodesia, for exam

Ple, is to bring together the proponents of an internal settlement and the members of e Patriotic Front. But he has been rude to ur Sithole, curt with Bishop Muzorewa, and childishly dismissive of Mr Smith — to

Vhom he referred, throughout one session 10 the House of Commons, dismissively as Smith', saying the while that he would like nothing better than to see him overthrown. He has, indeed, long been almost morbidly preoccupied with Rhodesia, asserting in a book written some years ago that he wanted Britain to impose a blockade on nations breaking the United Nations sanctions on that country. In the context it is clear that he meant that he wished to blockade South Africa (in itself a somewhat childish proposal) but a strict interpretation of his loose phrasing would imply the inclusion of the United States (then buying Rhodesian chrome) as well. Likewise, on the question of human rights in other countries, a subject which he has, in imitation of President Carter, taken up, he is prone to windy gestures (and even in these he is inconsistent) which he has neither the power nor the conviction to sustain, as when, following reports of atrocities in The Times he recalled Mr Derek Day, HM Ambassador in Addis Ababa. Once, however, the Ethiopian Ambassador here called on him to protest, his indignation petered out.

It is not hard, in the end, to see why Dr Owen craves the company of Mr Andrew Young rather than that of Mr Cyrus Vance. The two men are personally and emotionally flamboyant. They are prone to utter before they think, and inclined to interpret public opinions and public issues not according to the evidence but according to how they want things to be. Thus, for example, at Hilversum last February the Foreign Secretary told a Dutch televisicin interviewer that Britain's EEC partners could be well pleased at the burgeoning public sup port in this country for the Common Market. As his questioner well knew, whatever the state of British support for the Market it is not burgeoning, and the fact that it is in some respects more than a little sour is something that worries intelligent Europeans who would prefer the Foreign Secretary to address himself to improving the situation rather than engaging in fantasy about it. Similarly, Dr Owen has more than once shown an inability to understand the ramified nature of the present establishment in Washington. He told his friends proudly, when he appointed Mr Peter Jay as Ambassador there, that the former economics editor of The Times, being a sartorially informal sort of fellow himself, would get on splendidly with the countrified Georgian types now in charge at the White House. Mr Jay, as it happens, has not done at all badly — but, then, he is considerably more able than his patron — but neither he nor Dr Owen has managed to impress himself very effectively on the Secretary of State: that Dr Owen has succeeded with Mr Young is no compensation. In sum, for all that the British Foreign Secretary is a much reduced figure in the world these days, for all that our power and wealth have been eroded, for all that our frequently exalted notions of ourselves are not shared very fully by a sceptical and hard world, we do not deserve to have, sitting where Palmerston and Curzon and Salisbury and Bevin sat, a young man who is, compared to them, little more than a wilful child.