Sir James Plimsoll – Man for All Seasons

Sir James Plimsoll was a remarkable and most influential Australian diplomat in the post war years from the 1950s to the 1980s. He was renowned for his handling of various complex situations around the world, and his relations with Australian prime ministers Menzies, Gorton, Whitlam and Fraser, and foreign ministers Evatt, Casey, Barwick and Hasluck. During more than three decades after World War II, as Australia forged its place in the world, few were so influential as Sir James Plimsoll. Jeremy Hearder is a former diplomat and now author of the first biography of James Plimsoll – Jim Plim – Ambassador Extraordinary. To discuss the work and times of James Plimsoll, Jeremy Hearder addressed The Sydney institute on Monday 28 Nov 16

PLIMSOLL – A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

JEREMY HEARDER

It is a special honour to address The Sydney Institute. Plimsoll was a great Australian, but he was Sydneysider through and through. Sydney was an important part of his formation. He was born here, lived with his family in Bondi, went to North Sydney Boys High, Sydney University, and worked at the Bank of NSW. He left Sydney at age 25, constantly returned on visits, and would have lived there in retirement were it not for becoming Governor of Tasmania.

Jim Plimsoll was, I think, a man for all seasons, that is, someone who is, or could be, very successful in many different types of activity. He could have been a great banker, head of a think tank, chancellor of a university or a professor, a company director, head of an international organisation or, as Sir Robert Menzies once said to him, he would make a fine Governor General. Meanwhile, let me focus on Plimsoll the diplomat, and the seasons that he encountered there. To get the full flavour of course, you will have to read the book

The Cold War provided the background and context of Plimsoll’s diplomatic career. In 1959, Plimsoll at the tender age of 42 had recently taken up post as our Permanent Representative (PR) or Ambassador in the United Nations New York. Plimsoll tried to look for ways of trying to build better communication with the USSR and its East European satellite countries. In New York, he set about calling on all the East European representatives. A forbidding task and many would not have bothered. When he called on the PR of Albania there was the usual stilted conversation through an interpreter. At the end, the Albanian said that they were on opposite sides of the fence. But if there was any way in which he could do something for Plimsoll, personally, Plimsoll should let him know. When Plimsoll was slightly taken aback, the Albanian broke down and cried: “You are the first ambassador to call on me.”

Sometime later, in the General Assembly, a vote was brought on suddenly. Plimsoll could see that the Albanian was nervous, probably because he had yet to receive instructions from the Russians. As often happened in moments of pressure, the Russians had not yet told him how to vote. Sensing the man’s distress, Plimsoll went over and told him which way he should be voting, which was of course the opposite of the way Australia was itself about to vote.

This evening, I would like to try to look at Plimsoll and his career, how he reached the top so quickly, why his career provides an outstanding example of what an ambassador can achieve, and touch on why this still matters today.

Australia has had many great diplomats, but there are two things that are special about Plimsoll. Firstly he had a CV that is unlikely to be equalled. As well as becoming Secretary of the Department in Canberra, the top job, overseas he served at ambassadorial level no less than eight times when for most people the figure is between two and four. And all of those eight ambassadorial postings were in places of the highest importance to Australia: in Korea during the War in that country, at the UN New York, New Delhi, Washington, Moscow, Brussels, London and Tokyo.

That CV does give some indication of the variety of cultures, climates, both geographical and political, to which he had to adapt. More than most professions that of diplomat requires being someone for all seasons.

The second thing is that, what made Plimsoll really stand out was that key foreigners, representatives of other countries, would not only agree to see him but they would come to him seeking advice about their own problems. That happened in cases in relation to USA, UK, Korea and India. Even once in the case of the USSR. In March 1977, in India, Indira Gandhi lost power in the Indian elections. The Russians worried about a resulting decline in Soviet influence in India. What should the USSR do? Senior Soviet officials in the Foreign Ministry (MFA) in Moscow invited Ambassador Plimsoll for a discussion.

His advice was cautious but sound. In effect to stay calm and wait – sound, since two years later Mrs Gandhi was returned to power.

Plimsoll at first had no intention of becoming a diplomat, it just happened.

He settled into the career so well partly because of earlier experiences that were to prove relevant, notably public speaking and research and analysis. As an evening student at Sydney University, graduating in economics and then in arts over the course of eight years, he spent much time as a participant and then chair of Union Night debates, where he developed a style that was calm, measured and persuasive, and where he became accustomed to speaking off the cuff.

Meanwhile in his day job at the Economics Department of the Bank of New South Wales, he worked in research and analysis, alongside a number of talented people of whom many made their mark later. They were supervised by a professor of economics on loan to the bank, and they worked to the redoubtable banker Sir Alfred Davidson.

Then during the War he worked in Melbourne in another remarkable organisation, the Army Directorate of Research. This was at the invitation of Alf Conlon, a fellow student politician at Sydney University who, amazingly, arranged for him overnight to become a Captain in the Army. Again he worked alongside a number of people who later rose to prominence, including John Kerr, later Governor General. At that time these two organisations, at the bank and the Army, provided rare and invaluable experience.

Then came a sequence of fateful moves. In late 1945, Major Plimsoll, then based in Washington DC, was expecting to be returned home, demobilised and resume at the Bank. But Dr Evatt, Australia’s Minister, for External Affairs, was arriving in Washington soon after for the opening of a new international organisation, the Far Eastern Commission, at which the allies intended to discuss post war policy towards Japan. But the small Australian embassy was unable to help prepare things for him.

Plimsoll was approached and asked to help, and worked day and night on the task for three days. Evatt was so impressed that by the end of the conference he appointed Major Plimsoll as Australia’s representative to this new international organisation. Later, Evatt persuaded him not to resign after Plimsoll’s frustration about responses from the Department in Canberra to his proposals. In fact, Evatt persuaded him to join the Department in Canberra, and he told the Secretary of the Department to arrange it. Evatt also put more international conference experience in Plimsoll’s way, especially at the UN. Plimsoll worked closely with Evatt, but with loyalty to the office not the person and, on occasion, he courageously stood up to Evatt.

Plimsoll adapted well to conference diplomacy, which became so important after the war. In the course of this work, he made an impression on Alan Watt, a frequent and more senior fellow Australian conference delegate.

At the UN in the late 1940s, Plimsoll became closely involved on the issue of Korea. When Watt became Secretary of the Department in 1950, Australia needed to nominate a representative of ambassadorial standing to the United Nations Committee for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea (UNCURK), a new UN body to be located in Korea. Watt persuaded the Minister, Percy Spender, that Plimsoll, although only in the Department three years, and only 33, was the man for the job. In Korea from the end of 1950, Plimsoll was closely involved in one of the major flashpoints of the Cold War, in which forces of all the major powers, USA, Soviet Union as well as China, were engaged. Plimsoll was the only foreign diplomat there who had some influence with the despotic President Syngman Rhee of South Korea.

After Plimsoll had completed his posting and returned to Canberra, the Americans, who had been impressed with Plimsoll, most unusually asked Australia to send Plimsoll back. From that point on, Plimsoll became one of the most well known and respected Australian diplomats among Americans.

Seven years later, in 1959, came Plimsoll’s appointment to the UN in New York. His selection and his actual performance on the job reflected the close working relationship he had achieved with Prime Minister Menzies during Plimsoll’s previous six years of work in Canberra. When Casey, the Minister, retired in 1960, Menzies decided to retain the External Affairs portfolio. Plimsoll, in New York, realised that this was going to make getting decisions from the minister more difficult than usual. He decided to avoid as much as possible seeking ministerial guidance, confident that he knew Menzies’s thinking. And Menzies was most impressed by his work there.

On one occasion when the question of Rhodesia was going to be debated for the first time in the UN General Assembly, Plimsoll did seek guidance from Canberra about the speech he would have to make, but got nothing except a suggestion that he consult Menzies when the latter visited New York shortly. In vain, Plimsoll tried to consult, but Menzies seemed uninterested. As Menzies was about to board his plane home, Plimsoll tried once again, and asked for guidance for his speech on Rhodesia. Menzies slapped him on the shoulder and said, “My boy I am glad you are making it, not me.” Later Menzies appointed Plimsoll as Secretary of the Department at the age of 48.

So, in a diplomatic career perhaps more than in most occupations, being in the right place at the right time, and who you have worked with, can count for something. But it only gets you so far.

In Plimsoll’s case, there were other factors as well. His degree of dedication to the job was total. He worked harder than most, in a profession where hard work and being constantly on the job is the norm. He worked weekends, and one can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that he took a real holiday. He ghost wrote two books, one for Evatt and one later for Casey, fitting these tasks around his normal work. He never took a day off to catch up from jet leg after long and arduous overseas journeys accompanying the PM or the minister.

Why did he work so hard? I think that like his contemporaries, he was absorbed by the fascination and importance of the work, but Plimsoll was more absorbed than others and had no immediate family to consider. It proved to be an important period in the evolution of Australian foreign policy, notably development of relations with our region, making the ANZUS Treaty work well, and developing our foreign service.

He kept himself extremely well informed on all current international issues. He had a photographic memory, and a very clear mind, and could express himself concisely and persuasively to a minister, or to a large gathering, without notes and regardless of the complexity of the subject.

Further, Plimsoll was in the tradition of frank and fearless advice. The courage that often lay behind this also manifested itself in other ways. In 1970, while Plimsoll was Ambassador in Washington he put on a dinner in honour of visiting Australian Foreign Minister William McMahon. Guests included the US Secretary of State, William Rogers, and the Director of the CIA, Richard Helms. After dessert, while guests were still at table, McMahon quietly left. Plimsoll followed him out. McMahon said he was tired and was going to bed. Plimsoll replied that the guests included a number of important, busy people, who had come to meet him. McMahon replied: “Some other time”. He had turned to go up the stairs, when Plimsoll seized him by the back of the coat. “All right I’ll stay”.

When Plimsoll was in Moscow in early 1975, Whitlam visited. He queried an item on his program for Leningrad, a visit to the Antarctic Institute. Plimsoll, who knew Whitlam and his wife quite well, had inserted this visit off his own bat. He explained to Whitlam that it would add balance to a program that had been criticised at home for extensive tourist activity. Whitlam made the visit.

Personally Plimsoll, although private, was very approachable, and despite the hours he worked, he had an easy manner and was a good listener.

Plimsoll revelled in the more difficult overseas posts he had, like Moscow (Cold War), Korea (war), and India (health and climate). In Pusan, temporary wartime capital in South Korea, he and his two other Australian colleagues had their office and accommodation in the cramped conditions of a Nissan hut at a former US base. When Mr Casey visited, he tried engaging Plimsoll about his living conditions, which Casey later described as “like a cowshed in the Mallee”. But Plimsoll insisted it was all wonderful. In the two periods of his career spent in Canberra, he lived in a hotel room. There was something of the Spartan about Plimsoll. And that might partly explain his lack of interest in his appearance, and the clothing he wore. He often owned only one suit. By no means sartorial, this was in contrast to his father, who for 20 years was Company Secretary at David Jones and always looked the part.

Did he relax at all? I think he did to a degree, firstly by traveling away from the capitals of the countries in which he was assigned. All part of the job, but with his genuine interest and endless curiosity he really enjoyed getting out and about, and observing things and meeting people.

Apart from the job, he had a number of interests, including cricket, and he had a deep interest in art, music and literature. He could lose himself in an art gallery or museum. His significant personal collection of art was donated to galleries in Canberra, Melbourne and Hobart. As for literature, sometimes he would manage to read 80 major literary works a year.

Once he brought to bear his interest in literature to good effect in his work. In 1974 Plimsoll was confronted with the difficulties of operating as Ambassador in Moscow, capital of the Soviet communist empire, a very closed society. Access to key figures was very difficult, if not impossible, while contact with ordinary citizenry also was difficult. Somehow Plimsoll wheedled his way into Moscow State University, the premier institution of its kind. The head of the English language department, of course a Communist Party member, asked him to give a series of weekly lectures, over a period of some six months, to the faculty and graduate students on the literature of Britain, America, Australia and the Commonwealth – along with lectures on grammar and punctuation. Plimsoll fitted these in around his normal work, and he achieved contact with some interesting people.

Plimsoll had times when things did not go so well. In 1970, he was assigned to Washington. This has long been the most important posting in the service. Plimsoll was possibly the best prepared for the post of anyone. And he approached it in his usual deft and dedicated way. It was a difficult time because of the problems of access to the White House under President Nixon, and later the looming Watergate scandal. But Plimsoll, by the end of two years there, was personally thanked not once but twice by Nixon for Plimsoll’s advocacy that the US should take a moderate, restrained course in late 1971, as the Bangladesh issue hotted up, and the USSR was lurking in the shadows.

Then, with the advent of the Whitlam Labour government, Nixon became incensed by the way that he felt Whitlam was going about his new direction in foreign policy. Nixon let it be known that if Whitlam came to Washington, Nixon would not receive him. It was a crisis in the bilateral relationship. Turning that problem around was a major Australian effort, with Plimsoll to the fore. Eventually, Nixon relented to the extent of granting Whitlam 45 minutes of his time, but no joint press conference or White House Dinner. Instead, however, Plimsoll managed to put together a number of lunches and dinners at his Residence for Whitlam, enabling him to meet members of the Nixon administration as well as other Washington notables.

But Plimsoll’s reward for all that effort was to be prematurely moved out of Washington. In a game of musical chairs, he had to make way for Patrick Shaw, actually a friend and colleague, who in turn had been moved out of New Delhi to make way for the journalist, Bruce Grant, whom Whitlam wanted to install there. As Dr Kissinger commented to the visiting Australian Deputy Prime Minister: “You’re mad to move Plimsoll. He’s got contacts here and great influence.”

Later a posting to Brussels in 1977 turned very sour, when he found himself totally at odds with Malcolm Fraser’s aggressive approach to fixing Australia’s problems with the EU, especially access for agricultural products. Plimsoll felt sidelined. Yet, as Alexander Downer noted in the foreword to my book, Plimsoll still performed valuable service through his ability to get alongside Roy Jenkins, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, and no particular friend of Australia, who was now President of the European Commission of the EU.

Having always gone where he was told, towards the end of his career Plimsoll asked for a posting to Port Moresby. It was just before Papua New Guinea became independent, and Plimsoll who had long been deeply interested in PNG, thought that the job would be important in developing what would be a critical relationship. But in Canberra over the years there were different ideas: one government thought he would be too senior, and another thought he would be too tall.

His next preference was London, to be the first career appointment there. And he achieved that in 1980. He was looking forward to it greatly. He knew well many people in key positions, not least the then Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington. But after only six months he was moved aside to make way for a political appointment. With Washington, that made it a second time that this had happened to him.

Plimsoll of course was human, and had areas of performance that were not so good. As I have said earlier, he was not a role model for what is now called work/life balance.

As Secretary of the Department, he had been selected by Menzies very much because of his policy advising skills. And he held that arduous job for five years, more than most incumbents, and for most of that period he had to deal with a Minister, Paul Hasluck, who was by no means easy. Hasluck, however, had great respect for Plimsoll, which helped. But by 1965, when Plimsoll took the job, it was increasingly clear that what was wanted was also someone with managerial skills and a vision of where to take the Department. That was not his cup of tea. As a lifelong bachelor, he was cautious in principle about the advent of women officers, following the Public Service reforms of 1967. He was less motivated to involve himself in the constant battle with the bureaucracy in Canberra for better conditions of service overseas. But he was by no means the worst secretary.

To conclude, we now live in an age of much faster travel and communications. It has been encouraging that the continuing importance of the role of ambassadors and diplomats has been supported by decisions in recent years to open more diplomatic missions. The diplomatic service still plays a critical contribution in putting across Australian views and policies, keeping a finger on the pulse, and looking for ways to advance connections and in other ways pursue our interests. However, I have long thought that there is insufficient understanding of this, which is one of the reasons I wrote this book.

Plimsoll’s career is of wider enduring significance because of his remarkable display of the classical talents of a diplomat, talents which are important regardless of time or circumstances.