Epitome of Upper-Class Refinement : New British Envoy to U.S.: Master of Perfection

LONDON — After a lengthy search for anecdotes that would add spice to the apparent perfection of Sir Antony Acland’s career as a British diplomat, a hapless local newspaper profiler in the early 1980s gave up. “Crisp, direct, well-mannered, popular with his staff, highly efficient, discreet, dependable,” was the conclusion. The headline read: “The Rise of Sir Flawless.”

It is a description that still makes Acland smile, with a boyish sort of grin that momentarily softens his upright visage. As a diplomatic colleague points out, it also is a description that Acland does not dispute.

Experienced Arabist, chief aide to two foreign ministers, twice an ambassador in Europe, he has been thrice honored by the queen for service to his country. In 1982, at age 52, he became one of the youngest men ever to hold his profession’s top domestic job--head of the diplomatic service and permanent undersecretary of state.

Prestigious Post

He arrived in Washington last month to take up Britain’s most prestigious overseas post, as the new ambassador to the United States.

Is the U.S. ambassadorship the pinnacle of Acland’s 33-year career? Another smile escapes the constraints of breeding and a lifetime of propriety. “I call it another pinnacle of my career,” he says. Then, lest this slight immodesty cause offense, he amends: “I feel privileged to be in the diplomatic service. I feel equally or even more privileged to be about to be British ambassador to Washington. . . . I am a very lucky man.”

The naming of Britain’s highest ranking diplomat in Washington comes at a pivotal time in the recent history of the two nations. General elections will be held in the United States and Britain during Acland’s likely three-to-four-year tenure, in both cases testing the staying power of what have been virtual revolutions toward the political right under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

‘A Vast Asset’

Until the 1988 election dates, Acland will have to contend with the close personal relationship between the two leaders that some observers here think makes the British ambassador in Washington and his U.S. counterpart in London somewhat superfluous figures.

Acland disagrees. “There’s no doubt that both for an ambassador and, much more importantly, for Britain, the prime minister’s relationship with President Reagan is a vast asset. It’s of cardinal importance.” But there is more than enough to keep any ambassador busy, he says, from issues shared, such as East-West relations and regional conflicts, to issues contested, including trade and technology transfer.

In addition to his official role as representative of America’s closest ally, the ambassador from Britain holds a special place in the U.S. capital. Many consider him the social and cultural doyen of the diplomatic corps. His style is closely watched, his invitations greatly coveted.

British-Bred

Each of Her Majesty’s recent envoys has stamped his own character on the Massachusetts Avenue mansion residence, from the yuppie bonhomie of journalist Peter Jay, through the easygoing erudition of Nicholas Henderson, to the slightly ruffled elegance of Acland’s immediate predecessor, Sir Oliver Wright.

During an interview in his soon-to-be-vacated government office here, Acland ponders what his own style will be. With so many eyes upon him, how would he like to be seen in Washington?

“British, essentially.”

It is a part he was bred to play. Sir Antony’s elegant bearing and clipped diction are the epitome of British upper-class refinement. A widower with three grown children, he prefers to spend his free time in traditionally British “country pursuits”--horseback riding, shooting game, tennis.

A Long History

His lineage over the last two centuries is the history of Britain itself. A great-grandfather, Henry Wentworth Acland, founded the school of medicine at Oxford University and was physician to Queen Victoria and Edward VII, as well as a close friend of English writer and critic John Ruskin. Another great-grandfather, W.H. Smith, founded a chain of 19th-Century book shops whose name now adorns hundreds of stores on the main streets of nearly every town in the land.

Smith turned to politics, losing one election to John Stuart Mill before winning a seat in Parliament, eventually serving in three separate Cabinet posts and becoming first lord of the Admiralty and leader of the House of Commons. And near the end of the century, three Aclands--a father and two sons--were simultaneously elected to Parliament as supporters of the Liberal prime minister, William Gladstone.

Sir Antony’s father, “a public servant, an administrator and a soldier,” served in pre-World War II Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and later became military governor of various colonial and postwar entities, including Libya. His brother, Maj. Gen. Sir John Hugh Bevil Acland, ended his own notable military career as commander of the multinational force in Rhodesia, successfully transforming guerrilla independence fighters into the integrated Zimbabwean army.

Immaculate Career

Still, when Antony Acland decided to join the diplomatic service during his last year at Oxford, his friends made book at 17 to 1 that he would fail the entrance exam. It is a “rather unflattering” story he tells with some relish, as if conscious that it adds a bit of dash to the immaculate career that was to follow.

In 1953 he entered the Foreign Office’s Arabian department. “I went to Beirut,” he says, “in the days when Lebanon was peaceful and idyllic and beautiful.”

During several pre-oil, pre-independence years spent in what are now the United Arab Emirates when Britain still had responsibility for their foreign affairs and defense and judicial systems, “we fought little wars, and we exiled wicked uncles, and we administered justice. It was the greatest possible fun.”

Among his other official duties, Acland recalls, “we were manumitters of slaves, giving them their freedom. I actually used to sign a document saying, ‘I, Antony Arthur Acland, Her Britannic Majesty’s assistant political agent in Dubai, hereby give you your freedom.’ And then I signed it and stamped it, a stiff little card with crossed Union Jacks on the top.”

Fast Promotions

Beginning in the early 1960s, promotion and change came quickly--from the British mission to the United Nations in New York, to head of the Arabian department in London, to three years as chief aide to two successive foreign secretaries, one from the Conservative party, the other from Labor. As ambassador to Luxembourg in 1977, Acland oversaw the visit there of Queen Elizabeth II, with whom he is said to enjoy a good personal relationship. As ambassador to Spain in the late 1970s, Acland witnessed that country’s transition to democracy from decades of dictatorship.

In 1980, as deputy undersecretary of state, he undertook a special mission to Libya--once administered by his father--to persuade Col. Moammar Kadafi to desist from assassinating his exiled political enemies in Britain.

Acland’s posting to Washington is likely to be his last job before retirement--mandatory at age 60 in the British diplomatic service. With the Labor Party currently leading Thatcher’s Conservatives in opinion polls here, there is a chance that the country he represents may undergo a radical change during his tenure. A Labor government would bring an abrupt turnabout in some key aspects of Britain’s relationship with the United States--Labor has pledged to send home all U.S. nuclear weapons stationed here, and a significant Labor faction is arguing for the closing of all U.S. military bases in Britain.

100% Active-Duty Officers

Unlike the United States, where all ambassadors formally offer their resignations after a change in government to make room for new political appointees, Britain prides itself on a career diplomatic service that is considered above the mundane concerns of politics. Political appointments occasionally are made--although Henderson and Wright both had been career diplomats, Thatcher’s recalling them from retirement for the Washington embassy technically put them on the political list. With Acland’s arrival, however, the roster of British diplomats abroad will be composed 100% of active-duty career officers.

“We’ll have to wait and see the outcome of the election, and what happens after that,” Acland says. But he clearly sees little chance of recall, and few problems in making a possible policy leap from right to left.

Acland makes no bones about the fact that the Washington job--the only post left for him to be promoted to--is one “I had always hoped, privately . . . might work out.” His one regret is that his wife Clare, who died two years ago after a lengthy bout with cancer, will not be with him.

‘Would Have Been Marvelous’

“It is a great sadness,” he says. “I’ve had to think, obviously, very seriously whether I can do it alone. . . . It will be different, and I realize how very much better it would have been if she were with me.

“I think she would have wanted me to do it--we both had wanted to do it together. It would have been marvelous if we could have, a thousand percent perfect if that had proved possible. But I think and hope it’s manageable.

“I’ll be very well supported in both the office and in the house. I know the staff . . . because I’ve stayed there many, many times. I’ll have to see whether I need any sort of reinforcements, in the way of an additional social secretary or housekeeper. But I don’t want to disrupt initially what I know to be a very good, going concern.”

Acland says he expects frequent visits from his three children. One son is a politician, serving as a Social Democratic Party councilor in a London borough, the other an engineer. His daughter, a medical student at Bristol University, will arrive in Washington in early September to help with the first weeks of the fall social season.

Active Social Life

According to reports from Washington, the pending arrival of a distinguished 56-year-old widower, with looks not unlike those of the late British actor Leslie Howard, has caused some anticipation among hostesses in the U.S. capital. On this subject, Acland allows a slightly bemused but noncommittal laugh. “Well, that’s very kind of them,” he says. “I’m sure there will be an active social life. I’ll have a very busy life, and I look forward to that.”

One hope is “to make sure that that wonderful house is used to the advantage of Britain,” Acland says. “I hope it will be a meeting place, for prominent Americans meeting prominent British visitors in a congenial atmosphere, with things well done, but I hope not pompous or stuffy or overpowering.

“But it needs to be put to work. It’s an asset, it’s a wonderful house, a wonderful garden . . . I hope that thousands of people will go through the house. I think that, though I’ll be on my own, I have been quite well trained by my wife in these matters.”

Among his professional goals, Acland wants to continue and expand a recent extension of the embassy’s contacts with U.S. power centers outside the executive branch, particularly with Congress. While such divisions are non-existent in parliamentary Britain, envoys to Washington have found increasingly that it is not enough simply to have good relations with the president and his staff.

Lobbying Is Part of the Job

“One has got to operate on the basis of trying to promote and encourage the legislation that the British government wants to see pushed through,” Acland says, “like the extradition treaty.”

Although the British and U.S. governments agreed early this year on revisions to the treaty designed to facilitate the extradition of alleged Irish terrorists, several members of the Senate--including some Republicans--balked at approving the measure.

When British diplomats joined the Administration in lobbying for passage, there were some complaints in Washington that the embassy was becoming too “pushy” in its advocacy of the treaty.

Acland says he considers the charge a compliment, rather than a criticism.

“My impression is, you have to be a bit pushy in that city, and it’s no use having your light under a bushel. You’ve got to say what you think, and you’ve got to push fairly hard.”