In March 2007 it was drawn to my attention that the authors of a new book The Albanian Question – Reshaping the Balkans had said some most disobliging things about … me!

 

Thus I had been described as “ … a fanatical Yugophile, who had been a member of the Tony Blair orbit of law students at university”; success for the Albanians in Macedonia had been “a real defeat for the Crawford-Landsman group in London and their allies in the Whitehall bureaucracy”. (Note: David Landsman served with distinction to support democratic forces in Serbia from our Embassy in Belgrade and then in London during the turbulent and dangerous end of the Milosevic period, and later became HM Ambassador in Tirana.)

 

Needless to say, in doing their research the resourceful authors of this tome had not approached me to ask for my views on UK policy on the Balkans had unfolded, despite kindly describing me as a “key figure”. And they seemed to have unduly lurid ideas about how policy was devised in our system. But why let facts spoil a good Balkan-style yarn? Brendan Simms by contrast did a lot of detailed research for his much praised book on Bosnia and interviewed a lot of the people involved, including myself. He roasted British policy – intelligently. And duly sold quite a few copies. 

 

It is one thing to lambast British Government policy and the Ministers who lead it. But to denigrate the humble messenger thereof? Fie!

 

I could not bear the thought that in the pubs and salons and debating societies of the United Kingdom millions of people could be poring over this ‘pioneering’ and ‘brilliant’ book, concluding that I must be a horrible person. So I asked FCO HQ a couple of questions, really to see what would happen. Had I been libelled? And if so, would the FCO fund my libel suit as evidently I was being libelled in my official capacity?

 

Rather good answers came back. Yes, the passages in the book were clearly unpleasant and possibly defamatory. They arguably called into question my impartiality as a civil servant and perhaps hinted that I had been engaged in disloyal private scheming. But it did not look as though they had so undermined my reputation and authority so as to stop me doing my job or otherwise to cause me real damage. As for the FCO funding any libel action launched by one of its officers, that raised complicated questions given the way the libel laws worked in the UK…

 

So I sighed, shed a silent tear, and moved on, my reputation among all right-thinking Albanians and everyone else dented and scratched, but not wrecked beyond repair.

 

This book alas has not yet been reviewed on Amazon.co.uk. It now languishes at a scary 343,427th place in their sales rank list. 

 

Of course the vilest claim made against me in this book (and surely the reason for its dismal sales record) was that I had been a member of Tony Blair’s ‘orbit of law students’ (whatever that is) at university.

 

The Facts:

 

  • I was at St John’s College, Oxford with Tony Blair – he a year ahead of me
  • We did both read law, so we must have spent some time together in the small law library glumly mulling over snailtainted ginger-beer bottles and other such magnificent phenomena of British jurisprudence
  • And we played in the St John’s football team together; I vividly recall a glorious Adonis-like run he made down the right wing
  • But he was of the glamorous, middle-class, public school Cool Left. I was of the prosaic, petit-bourgeois Libertarian Right. 

Above all, I was not beautiful or sophisticated (or above all wealthy) enough to be part of his distinguished toxophilitic society.

 

So, Balkan authors. Calm down.

 

If you want to know my views, do what Brendan Simms did. Just ask nicely: mail@charlescrawford.biz