Derek Tonkin is a distinguished former Ambassador (of an older generation than me) who follows closely the situation in Burma.

He was brought up in a Foreign Office which prided itself on impeccable standards and good manners.

Hence his sensible and courteous letter to David Miliband in March about Burma, making a number of significant points. Extracts below:

29 March 2010

Rt Hon David Miliband MP

Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

 

 

Burma/Myanmar: Renewal of the EU Common Position

 

Dear Secretary of State,

 

The European Council will be meeting on 26 April 2010 to consider the renewal of the EU Common Position on Burma/Myanmar. In this context, might we express our concerns about the mistaken targeting of several restrictive measures imposed by the EU? 

 

We would make it clear that we have no problem at all with those measures which the EU has targeted against the regime and its cronies. These should certainly be maintained.  But there are areas where the interests of the Burmese people themselves are mistakenly targeted while in certain cases EU measures affect the population far more than the regime.

 

Sanctions only too often hit the wrong targets. One example is the several hundred small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) targeted in the EU’s February 2008 Regulations for no other reason than that they are in sectors of the economy generally controlled by the regime, although many enterprises affected are themselves in no sense regime cronies. Indeed, some of them we know personally to be supporters of the democratic Opposition and are in many cases no more than modest family businesses engaged in jewellery and furniture manufacturing and retailing. This should have been, and probably was known to the EU, which makes it all the more reprehensible.

 

To remedy these unintended injustices, we strongly recommend that the European Commission should be asked to conduct an urgent review of the effectiveness of EU restrictive measures with a view to eliminating those which either wholly or mainly affect ordinary Burmese citizens. No doubt the Council will wish to maintain the EU Common Position in its broad outlines as a matter of policy since there is no case for withdrawing those which are effectively targeted. But that should not prevent the EU from making the administrative adjustments needed to remove Burmese individuals and enterprises which have been sanctioned for no good reason…

 

We are also concerned that the discouragement of travel and tourism to Burma/Myanmar by the EU primarily affects the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Burmese who directly or indirectly earn a living from a sector of the economy which is mainly in private hands and which it cannot be in the EU’s interest to undermine. The regime "take" from tourism is of the order of some US$ 20 million annually from taxation and gross receipts to the industry of some US$ 200 million. This US$ 20 million and pales into insignificance in comparison with revenues from natural gas sales to Thailand which now exceed US$ 2 billion annually, or 100 times as much…

 

 

It makes no sense in our view to persist with measures which were drawn up incompetently and ill-advisedly and have only served to alienate the very people who seek and need our support.

 

I am writing in broadly similar terms to Baroness Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Ignorant as I am on the subject of Burma, I am unsighted on how far Derek’s arguments make operational sense. But in an evidently learned and responsible way he is getting at one of the classic diplomatic dilemmas – how to put pressure on a nasty regime without doing more harm than good, eg by clumsily hitting nascent forces for long-term change? Plus it is more than obvious that he knows the subject.

 

In short, his letter deserves a considered and courteous reply, of the sort Derek and I drafted for many years when answering the public from within the system.

 

What in fact does he receive?

 

A cluelessly insulting attempt at a letter from a junior diplomat. It does not say ‘Dear Mr Tonkin” or have any such opening and is actually unsigned. It continues thusly:

 

Thank you for your letter dated 29 March to David Miliband about Burma. I am responding as a member of the Burma & Mekong team responsible for correspondence on this issue.

In your letter, you outline your concerns about the EU’s restrictive measures against Burma, which we note. EU Foreign Ministers renewed EU restrictive measures on Burma at the Foreign Affairs Council on 26 April.

You will appreciate that we have not yet had an opportunity to discuss UK policy towards Burma with the new Foreign Secretary and his Ministerial team.

Yours Sincerely,

[Name withheld to spare the guilty]

Burma and Mekong Team

Asia Pacific Directorate

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

 

Let us face the harsh facts.

 

It is now possible, nay likely, that most young people entering the FCO have never written any letter in their lives, nor been taught at school how to do so. Plus they will not have been trained to lay out work neatly to the standard of a good old-fashioned secretary.

 

Nonetheless, it is deeply depressing that they are not getting any guidance from a more senior colleague on how to lay out work to a good professional standard, and a stern lecture on the need to avoid crass errors of style, grammar and presentation when dealing with the public.

 

Not to mention the almost insolent refusal to engage on the substance.

 

Really poor.

 

Come on, Conservative and Liberals. Time to get down to work and sort things out.

 

Issue an order to the FCO HQ Top Brass and all Ambassadors to run for a week spot-checks on all communications with the public within their respective empires, identify errors of style and substance and start to put things right – fast. Anyone not gripping this to be fired.