UK saw risk in posting non-white diplomats abroad

Posting non-white diplomats to represent Britain abroad would amount to putting the country’s security and institutional reputation at risk, according to an official historical assessment of race that held sway in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until the 1980s.

The first analysis of the history of race in the FCO released on Friday documents the ways in which non-white people – earlier called the ‘coloureds’ – were systematically discriminated against in recruitment and roles they were given.

The document, titled ‘Black Skin, Whitehall: Race and the Foreign Office, 1945-2018’, by FCO historian James Southern, mentions that Indian-origin Robin Chatterjie was the first successful minority applicant in the entry level Diplomatic Service Fast Stream in 1975.

Recalling the history of migration from India and the Commonwealth after World War 2, and its influence on recruitment and other aspects of the FCO, Southern said: “Like many similar British institutions, the FCO has a difficult history when it comes to race”.

“At the Foreign Office, until the 1980s at least, those who did not match diplomats’ definitions of ‘whiteness’ were presumed potentially disloyal to Britain and were consequently excluded from the representative grades of the Diplomatic Service”, he writes.

Over the years, changed perceptions have led to Indian-origin diplomats being among the UK’s largest number of non-white envoys. They include Ajay Sharma, who played a key role in re-establishing UK’s diplomatic ties with Iran in 2014, and Bharat Joshi, deputy high commissioner in Chennai.

Historically influenced by perspectives of the British empire, Southern writes that the FCO relationship with the empire is a “difficult one”, particularly when there is no public consensus (in the UK) around whether it was ‘a good thing’ or a ‘bad thing’.

“Empire quite literally depended on crude skin racism in order to function, and until that basic fact is processed and accepted, British politics in general and the FCO in particular will find it an uncomfortable legacy with which to deal”, he writes.

The document notes that Chatterjie, who died in 1986, fitted with the cultural template of an upper-middle-class Englishman, and quotes colleague Matthew Parris that neither he nor any of his colleagues discussed or particularly noticed Robin’s Indian background.

Parris wrote: “I think actually if Robin had been a white boy, and had been the kind of person he was, we would have assumed he was gay, and we would have thought it pretty odd and thought him an anachronism. But because he was obviously, very high-born Indian, one somehow put him in a special category”.

The FCO said that now its staff from a non-white background represents the UK all around the world and at all grades, including the first black career diplomat in Mozambique (Nnenne Iwuji-Eme). Over 23% of its graduate entry intake is from this background, it added.

First Published: Oct 07, 2018 13:18 IST