A Very Private Celebrity (25 page)

In May 1963, after Parliament had debated the Radcliffe Report, Freeman wrote ‘This We Risk to Guard Freedom’. It was a provocative piece that has resonance today. He hoped that ‘we’ve now heard the last of this squalid little traitor [Vassall]’ and he admitted that the press ‘didn’t emerge from the trial with much credit’. Nevertheless, he argued, ‘There are times when the press must cause both scandal and offence – and damn the consequences.’ The alternative was a ‘press condemned to have its face washed by a government nanny’ – in other words, some form of state control. He implied that this had happened to the BBC already, despite
Panorama
being ‘good and responsible’: ‘The TV channels are run by men who are virtually civil servants. Their first concern is not to cause offence, not to create scandal.’ He recommended an independent chairman – perhaps Lord Radcliffe himself – for the press council. History has shown that this innovation has not worked either.
18

At the general election in October 1964, the first Labour government for thirteen years was voted into power. Freeman, who had been sounded out for office in it (see Chapter 4), placed the
New Statesman
firmly behind new Prime Minister Harold Wilson in his efforts to modernise the party and turn it into ‘the natural governing party of Britain’. In December, Wilson visited the White House for talks with President Johnson and Freeman was in the press corps. He wrote a long
New Statesman
article ‘Wilson at the White House’ on
11 December. It was very complimentary: ‘Wilson certainly won the respect of his host – and probably his liking. The acceptance of Wilson as a responsible statesman is the first achievement of this week’s talks.’ Anthony Howard thought that Freeman was ‘trailing his coat’ for a diplomatic appointment and therefore directing his well-known charm at Wilson, although it was common knowledge in the
New Statesman
offices that the editor had little time for the Prime Minister. He once said, to approval from his fellow writers, ‘If there were a word “aprincipled” as there is a word “amoral” it would describe Wilson perfectly.’ It was nothing new for him to praise in public and criticise in private, but probably Howard was wrong on this occasion.

A few months later Wilson did invite Freeman to be the High Commissioner in India (the title equivalent in Commonwealth countries to ambassador elsewhere). Freeman said he had gone along to 10 Downing Street with his notebook expecting that he had been summoned for interview. Then the Prime Minister ‘took the wind out of my sails completely by asking me whether I would go and lead our diplomatic mission in India. I was absolutely flabbergasted and said that with his permission I would like a little time to take it over.’
19
This has the ring of truth about it.

Why did Freeman leave the
New Statesman
after only four years as editor for a completely different assignment? – advertiser, soldier, politician, broadcaster and now diplomat? Richard Crossman said that, having ‘seen through’ politics and journalism, Freeman said to himself: ‘Let me find a career so chilly and austere that I can never see through it or be bored by success.’
20
How wrong he was! MacKenzie agreed that Freeman was bored by the
New Statesman
and no longer enjoyed it. Driberg saw Freeman more as a good citizen answering the Prime Minister’s call to undertake a task for his country. Freeman himself might well have said that although the invitation to become a
diplomat came out of the blue, he had made it perfectly clear in 1961 that he saw his editorship as a consolidation of Kingsley Martin’s rule and had always intended to put a younger editor in place after a few years. Paul Johnson was the man he had in mind.

In fact Johnson’s appointment stalled at the last moment. Kingsley Martin, exhibiting his customary indecision, was worried at the prospect of a Roman Catholic editing a traditionally agnostic paper. It was left to Freeman to find a choice of words that augured well for his next role as diplomat: ‘The board has unanimously decided to appoint Mr Paul Johnson acting editor, with full editorial responsibility.’ Johnson accepted this and said he had no doubt that the position would soon be ‘regularised’. It was and he remained editor until 1970.
21

Freeman’s move from Great Turnstile to Whitehall caught the attention of the press. Particularly perceptive was this profile in the
Daily Mail
by Marshall Pugh:

Chapter 9

Diplomat – High Commissioner to India

T
HE FREEMANS SPENT
the eight days over Christmas and the New Year deciding whether to accept the India posting. Civil servants in the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), probably regarding him as a typical journalist in their eyes – that is, superficial and untrustworthy – sent Freeman a few files. Then he asked for more. Then he asked for a full background briefing to extend over Christmas. Perhaps it was the army that had drummed into him the necessity of ‘prior preparation' and he followed that order ever after. Freeman was not a career diplomat, of course, but his previous careers had all trained him for the job in hand. He was well organised, could assimilate a brief quickly and speak to it,
was a good listener and judge of character and, above all, he was a precise and fluent communicator. Over the next seven years it was to be the writing of despatches that would give him most pleasure. ‘I don't think I would have been too ashamed', he said later in his self-deprecating way, ‘to send a newspaper some of my despatches from India.'
1

The round of press interviews he gave in January 1965 showed that Freeman the role player was perfectly capable of turning from journalist to diplomat overnight. He drew the curtain on one interview with the courteous put down: ‘Any such opinions that I do form are then the property of Her Majesty's government [HMG].'
2
Wilson wanted an independent High Commissioner who would work to him more directly than a career diplomat who had progressed through the Foreign Office. He knew since his school days that Freeman had been a believer in Indian independence and his previous job as editor of the
New Statesman
would serve him well in India because of the reputation of Kingsley Martin as an ardent anti-imperialist. All in all, Freeman was one of Wilson's astute appointments.

The press approved of Freeman: ‘Tall, red-haired, powerfully built, he radiates from behind a manner of winning charm an aura of drive and effortless executive ability'
3
was one press description. Another was more physically descriptive: ‘Freeman's face has the ruddiness of a yeoman farmer. His close-cut hair is pale ginger. He stands 6 ft 2 – taller than you imagine.'
4
It was his connection with India's nationalist politicians that Freeman was most keen to talk about. On 11 January he was interviewed on the BBC Home Service
Ten O'Clock News
:

This would become the theme of the High Commissioner's parties at the residence.

On 31 January Freeman gave a speech at India House on the seventeenth anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. He recalled their meeting in 1932 at Westminster School: ‘How many converts to the cause of Indian independence the Mahatma made that evening I'll never know. But I remember the sense of surprise, awe and – perhaps “melting” is the word – which his visit evoked.' He concluded: ‘I talked to him [Gandhi] for a few minutes in private as he left and from that day on the cause of Indian independence concerned me.'
6
What a pompous assertion! Freeman may have been a precocious schoolboy but he was no more than seventeen at the time!

Soon after, the High Commissioner designate took the sea route for India on the P & O liner
Chusan
, arriving in Bombay on 26 March. It so happened that another new member of the High Commission arrived the same way and nearly at the same time. He was John Rimington, newly appointed First Secretary of Economic Affairs, travelling with his young wife Stella, who would eventually become the first female director-general of MI5. In fact she was recruited into the spy world while in Delhi. In
Open Secret
she describes arriving at the very end of the Raj. The British Empire in India had formally ended in 1947 but the Raj, as it became known after Indian independence, had enjoyed an ‘Indian summer' through the 1950s, extending though diminishing until the death of Prime Minister Nehru in 1964. An ‘Indian summer' stands for the unexpected warmth after the season
has ended. Applied to the British Raj, it means the continuing privileged, un-‘Indianised' lifestyle of the remaining 18,000 or so UK citizens resident in India in 1965. This became one of Freeman's main concerns as High Commissioner. Stella Rimington observed them on her ship the RMS
Caledonia
:

This was on Freeman's watch: it would be a traumatic four years.

After the
Chusan
docked at the Gateway of India on the Bombay waterfront, Freeman flew to Delhi. The Rimingtons, fresh off the
Caledonia
, travelled by train:

The new High Commissioner arrived in his Rolls-Royce at his official residence, known as ‘2 KG' standing for 2 King George Avenue. It is impressive: a two-storey whitewashed mansion, designed by an Indian architect after the style of Lutyens, with a pillared veranda giving onto three and a half acres of lawns and shrubs – prime diplomatic real estate. The Union flag announces the High Commissioner's presence. Obsessively tidy since his army days, Freeman found the High Commission itself, a '50s Indian design in Chanakyapuri, to be run down and shabby. He sent for a ‘competent shit' to sort things out so the Commonwealth Office gave him Counsellor John Waterfield. At the residence, Freeman waited for Catherine and the two boys, Matthew aged three and Tom aged eighteen months, to arrive by air. They did so in the company of former BBC boss Leonard Miall, who was on his way to advise the Indian government on setting up a television service.

Soon after Freeman arrived, the Minister for Overseas Development asked the High Commissioner for the transfer to her department of a member of his staff. Legend has it that, as she was Barbara Castle and he was John Freeman, the exchange went something like: ‘John, dear, could you possibly spare young Snooks, love Babs'; to which
the reply was along the lines of, ‘The High Commissioner is considering your request and you will be notified as soon as a decision has been reached.' No doubt this story was not strictly true but the fact that the rumour circulated round the High Commission shows that the staff were getting to know their boss. Another door had closed.

Stella Rimington found herself surrounded by the last vestiges of the Raj:

Once again, however, she notes that the echoes of empire really were dying to a whisper:

Two specific events hastened the exodus. On 6 June 1966, a date referred to by the British in India in apocalyptic terms, the rupee was devalued against the pound by one third, thus slashing the income British businessmen could send back to the UK. The devaluation, coupled with heavy taxation and the need to obtain Indian government approval for high salaries, meant that it became virtually impossible for an ‘expat' to earn more than £2,750 per year in India. The second event was the looming 1969 India Companies Act that would abolish the system of management agencies. These mostly British conglomerates ran portfolios of Indian companies in Calcutta, the business centre of British India, and enabled young men out from public schools to earn a good income. By the time Freeman left, only a rump of 1,400 expats remained. Thus, wrote Geoffrey Moorhouse in
Calcutta
, ‘The British are reduced to roughly the same number of people as were in Calcutta a few years before the Black Hole happened.'
10

This lugubrious comparison would not have been wasted on the High Commissioner, nor that it happened during the regime of Indira Gandhi. Freeman's difficult relationship with the Indian Prime Minister would dominate diplomatic relations for the second half of his posting. Already, however, soon after his arrival, he was reminded that the legacy of the British Raj could be an embarrassment; that a nostalgia for the past had to be replaced by a hard-headed view towards a commercial future. Lord Mountbatten came to stay. In May 1965, Mountbatten was Britain's chief of the defence staff, but he had been the last viceroy of British India and the first governor general of the newly independent India. Mountbatten had supported Freeman's appointment as High Commissioner, but now he embarrassed him with his Raj attitude, culminating in an incident at the residency when he suggested showing guests round his ‘old house up the road'. He was
referring to the Viceregal Lodge, now the state home of the Indian President, the
Rasthrapati Bhavan
. This patronising insensitivity, Freeman noticed, played on the ‘neurosis' of the Indian government and press, ever ready to feel slighted when none was intended. Catherine Freeman noticed this too: ‘He was an embarrassment. He wanted his old troops lined up outside his old house. I thought our Indian hosts were very decent.'
11
Mountbatten himself noticed a change in atmosphere. At a meeting with Indian military commanders, ‘He sensed a feeling of restraint on the Indian side and it was clear to him that relations were very different from the last time he had visited India.'
12
Always keen to receive honours of one kind or another, he was dismayed that plans to offer him the honorary colonelcy of an Indian Army regiment were vetoed.

A year later Freeman was more explicit about the legacy of the Raj. The CRO asked him to advise on a possible visit from Jennie Lee, a left-wing government minister and widow of Aneurin Bevan; also an old friend of Mrs Gandhi. Harold Wilson's proposal was that she would ‘establish a cordial atmosphere for his own visit' later in the year. Freeman replied: