Getting Our Way

For 500 years our little island Britain

has punched above its weight around the world...

Getting Our Way.

The means to our success?

Not just gunboats and commerce, but ruthless power broking,

Machiavellian manoeuvring and plenty of charm - diplomacy.

Diplomats are the people you don't often get to hear about.

It is the kings and queens, the politicians and the generals

who dominate the history books, but this series is about my predecessors,

who championed Britain's interests abroad - ambassadors and envoys,

power-brokers and negotiators.

You must never forget

that it is British interests you are there to promote and protect.

You are constantly having to talk to, make deals with,

make concessions to, people who, in other ways, are doing things

you thoroughly dislike and disapprove of.

You have to be a bit of a schemer,

otherwise you can't do the job properly.

As Our Man in Washington, I saw history in the making.

Now, I'm going back over the last five centuries to put myself

in the shoes of different diplomats

who helped Britain's rise to greatness...and managed our decline.

Our diplomacy must always be driven by the national interest.

That's easier to say than to define, but of one thing we can be sure,

our top priority is, as it has always been, our security.

Well, it's the irreducible national interest

and this is the minimum

a diplomat or statesman

must try to accomplish.

When I was at school, I was taught that the roaring seas

had protected England from invasion for a thousand years.

But back in the 16th century, we were far from safe.

For Queen Elizabeth I, a key line of defence, was not the roaring seas,

but her spymasters and diplomats -

ruthless, pragmatic men, like Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham,

who had made it their life's mission

to confound the Queen's foreign Catholic enemies.

What I would give to have been in that game!

The nearest I got to it was playing cat and mouse

with the KGB in Soviet Russia.

In 1572, shocking news arrived from across the Channel,

where Elizabeth's chief spy, Walsingham, ran our Paris embassy.

Thousands of Protestants had been slaughtered on St Bartholomew's day.

Throats were slashed and bodies dismembered.

The River Seine ran red with blood.

Burghley called it, "the greatest crime since the Crucifixion".

The grisly news from France tapped into a deep fear

that a great international Catholic conspiracy would come together

to depose Elizabeth and restore Catholicism in England.

The Pope had just issued a Bull, calling for the violent overthrow

of "this monstrous heretic". Poor Elizabeth.

As they said about Richard Nixon, just because you're paranoid,

it doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you.

The survival of the nation, no less, was at stake

and the Queen immediately summoned a diplomat for help.

He was a Cornishman and his name was Henry Killigrew.

Killigrew was one of a new breed of professional diplomats,

key players in the 16th century world of rapidly shifting alliances,

cold-blooded assassinations and devious espionage.

Elizabeth I might not yet have had a Foreign Office,

but she had moved from the medieval world

into a recognisably modern era of professional statecraft,

where resident ambassadors abroad kept a wary eye on neighbour states

in the defence of Britain's national interest.

So much of real history happens behind the scenes,

where diplomacy likes to ply its trade.

These days, ambassadors summoned home to see the Foreign Secretary

come here - the Ambassadors' Waiting Room

at the very heart of the Foreign Office.

It can be nerve-wracking awaiting orders.

Eventually, Henry Killigrew's moment came from his queen.

Killigrew had earned a reputation as a troubleshooter,

whose discretion was such that there is not a single portrait of him.

Less than a fortnight after the Paris Massacre,

Elizabeth gave him instructions for a new and vital foreign mission.

Without even pausing to say goodbye to his wife and children,

Killigrew made haste.

From Paris, Walsingham had reported rumours of plans

of a French military enterprise against England

and he strongly advised that steps should be taken

to shut up what he called the "postern gate".

BAGPIPES PLAY

And that postern gate was Scotland.

Edinburgh in 1572 was up for grabs.

A two-year civil war had reached stalemate

and Killigrew's task was to negotiate a settlement

between the rival Scottish factions.

Holed up inside Edinburgh Castle

were the Catholic supporters of the dethroned Mary Queen of Scots,

Elizabeth's most dangerous rival for the English crown.

We are the Billy Boys!

Keeping them under siege was the Protestant faction

that governed as Regent in the name of Mary's infant son, King James.

Why on earth should Elizabeth, as the Texans say, have a dog in this fight?

Well, it was already bad enough that Mary had a respectable claim

to the English throne, but what really rang the alarm bells in London

was the danger of the French joining in on Mary's side.

There was an "auld alliance"

between Scotland and France against the "auld enemy", England,

and what Elizabeth dreaded most of all was Scotland becoming

part of a Catholic 'Axis of Evil' on England's doorstep.

Well, the 'auld alliance' stretches back to the late 13th century.

I mean, it had already been running the best part of 400 years

by the time we got to Killigrew.

But, of course, Scotland had just actually come out of

a union with France.

Mary's mother, Mary Guise, a very, very formidable woman,

and she'd have had Henry Killigrew for breakfast, incidentally.

She'd negotiated a union with France, so that Scotland

was in a union with France before it was in one with England.

Killigrew made it his business to sow mistrust of the French in Scotland,

by building a network of influential contacts and making sure

they all heard the news about the Paris Massacre.

I mean, this is reasonably typical of the sort of tradition

of the English statecraft and diplomacy being of divided rule,

so separate your opponents, try to divide and make the enemy uncertain.

In fairness to that sort of statecraft, I mean, you could argue

that kept an empire together for the best part of 200 years.

Before I went as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia,

a very wise predecessor of mine gave me a word of advice

which I have subsequently passed on to a lot of younger members

of the Foreign Service and that was, "if it moves, call on it".

And I spent a lot of my time, and I may say the recipients of my calls

were very tolerant of it, I spent a lot of my time just simply in going

calling on people, not necessarily to do any particular piece of work,

but to keep in contact,

because you never know when you're going to need that contact.

Scotland was a bracing experience for a Sassenach diplomat.

Even Killigrew, a Machiavellian's Machiavelli,

felt obliged to report to Elizabeth and her advisers that

"these men be so devilled and uncertain in their doings

"as I cannot tell what to write of them,

"but of this, your honour may be assured, I trust no-one further

"than I see with my eyes or feel with my fingers".

What, so trusting, Killigrew?

First Minister, what does that tell you about the way

in which the English tried to deal with the Scots?

Well, it just tells me that Henry was a diplomat, wasn't he?

Sent abroad to lie for his country, so his attitude to the Scots

was no different probably his attitude to the French

or anyone else would have been.

I think it's a bit much if you're sent in effectively as a spy

to try and interfere in the Scottish succession then to start complaining

about your hosts, as opposed to your own nefarious motives.

The Scottish Catholics inside the Castle might have been wise

not to trust Killigrew himself too far.

There was also a hidden agenda to Killigrew's mission,

a set of instructions that dared not speak its name.

An enterprise so hush-hush

that it was written down in a separate document.

These secret instructions were drafted by Elizabeth's

main adviser, and Killigrew's brother-in-law, Lord Burghley.

You can see from the crossings out that this was, shall we say,

a tricky document to write.

"It is found daily more and more that the continuance of the Queen of Scots

"here is so dangerous, both for the person of the Queen's Majesty,

"and for her state and realm, as nothing presently is more necessary

"than that the realm might be delivered of her".

Killigrew was being instructed by Elizabeth to devise a plan that would

deliver Mary Queen of Scots into the hands of her Scottish enemies.

"Use all good speed, with the most secrecy that you can, to understand

"their minds and yet to deal to your uttermost, that this matter might

"be rather opened to you, than yourself to seem first to move it".

In other words, cunningly persuade the Regent's party

to assassinate Mary and make them think it's their own idea.

Mary was a threat to the throne and to England's security.

She had to go - without the English queen getting her own hands dirty.

For Killigrew, with his strong Protestant faith

and intense loyalty to the Queen,

if the nation were under threat, the end justified any means.

Softly, softly, he sounded out the Regent's party,

headed by the Earls of Mar and Morton,

about carrying out judicial murder on behalf of the English Queen.

"Give us money and soldiers

"and only then will we do your dirty work", they said.

But Killigrew knew that Elizabeth would be extremely reluctant

to get involved in a costly war in Scotland.

So how could he keep the Protestant party onside?

Killigrew could not promise what his Queen was unwilling to deliver,

but he knew better than to give an outright refusal.

He disappeared into a fog of vague assurances to keep his

allies onside, even feigning illness at one particularly tricky moment.

It's a tried and tested weapon in the diplomat's armoury. Playing for time.

I'm not sure that being a Machiavellian, scheming type

is not a rather good description of what a diplomat ought to be.

You have to be very thoughtful,

you have to find ways to get your way, to get your country's way,

and often that means you can't be entirely straightforward.

What you must never do is lie. Once you lie,

your credibility is destroyed, not just on that occasion, but forever.

So you have to be very careful, but equally, there are ways

of presenting things and, perhaps, occasionally

withholding certain aspects, which could be considered relevant,

but maybe you don't want to emphasise. So you have to be

a bit of a schemer or you can't do the job properly.

As New Year's Day 1573 dawned,

the ceasefire between the Scottish factions was broken by cannon fire.

Mary's party in the castle fired a warning shot onto the town below.

They expected military help from France imminently

and were spoiling for a fight.