by John Billington
UK Independent
Sunday 23 October 2011 04:05
TIBETAN REFUGEES
Sir. – Recent devastating events in Tibet caused over 15,000 Tibetans to cross the perilous Himalayas into India. It may be a long time before these unfortunate people can safely return to their overrun country. Our own consciences should allow us neither to neglect nor forget them.
The Indian Government has manfully coped with this addition to its own problems at home. In this country we are bound in honour to help relieve needs of the Tibetan refugees, because from 1905 to 1947 there was a special relationship between Tibet and the United Kingdom – a relationship handed on to the new India.
On balance we think it wisest to concentrate chiefly on collecting money which can be used for the benefit of the refugees, not least in the purchase of necessary antibiotics and other medicaments. The Tibet Society has opened a Tibet Relief Fund for which we now appeal in the hope of a generous response. Donations should be sent to the address below or direct to the National Bank Ltd. (Belgravia Branch), 21 Grosvenor Gardens, S.W.I.
Yours faithfully,
Thubten Jigme Norbu; F.M. Bailey; Birdwood; J.D. Boyle; [Indian Foreign Secretary Sir] Olaf Caroe; Clement Davies; A.D. Dodds-Parker; Peter Fleming [Master of Deception: The Wartime Adventures of Peter Fleming, by Alan Ogden]; Thomas Moore; [Esmond Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere] Harmsworth; Marco Pallis; Hugh E. Richardson; Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer, Chairman; Major J.C.W. Napier-Munn [Tac HQ Calcutta (Advanced HQ ALFSEA)], Hon. Secretary; D.C. Nicole, Hon. Treasurer, The Tibet Society.
-- The Tibet Relief Fund, 58 Eccleston Square, S.W. I., Letter to the Times, July 31, 1959, p.7.
-- The Founding of Tibet Relief Fund, Tibet Matters, Issue 17, Autumn 2013, by Tibet Relief Fund
Tibet Society is the world’s first ever Tibet support group. The Society was founded in 1959, within weeks of the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet following the uprising against China’s occupation. Today, the organisation continues to work actively for the freedom of the Tibetan people and their right to self-determination.
All the founders of Tibet Society had personal knowledge of an independent and free Tibet, having either lived in Lhasa or had direct dealings with the Tibetan government.
Hugh Richardson, the British Representative in Tibet, was among the dignitaries who greeted the young Dalai Lama when, in 1939, aged just four, he first entered Lhasa. Heinrich Harrer, when in Lhasa in the 1940s, coached the Dalai Lama in English and maths. Robert Ford, who remained Vice President until his death in 2013, was captured and imprisoned for five years by the invading Chinese army in 1950 when serving as radio officer to the Tibetan Government. Well known High Court Judge and founder of the Buddhist Society, Christmas Humphreys, first met the Dalai Lama in 1956.
-- Tibet Society: Our Story, by tibetsociety.com
Horace Algernon Fraser Rumbold, diplomat: born 27 February 1906; Deputy High Commissioner, Union of South Africa 1949-53; CMG 1953, KCMG 1960; Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Commonwealth Relations Office 1954-58, Deputy Under-Secretary of State 1958-66; Deputy Chairman, Air Transport Licensing Board 1971-72; President, Tibet Society of the UK 1977-88; author of Watershed in India 1914-1922 1979; married 1946 Margaret Hughes (two daughters); died Guildford 23 October 1993.
ALGERNON RUMBOLD was a staunch friend of Tibet and a forceful champion of the right of Tibetans to determine their own destiny.
His interest in Tibet dated from his service, from 1929 to 1943, at the desk in the India Office concerned with Afghanistan, Tibet, and other territories bordering on Northern India.
Rumbold was born in 1906 into a family with military and diplomatic connections; his uncle, Sir Horace Rumbold, was British ambassador in Berlin from 1928 to 1933.
British diplomat Sir Horace Rumbold, 9th Baronet (1861-1941)
Sir Horace George Montagu Rumbold, 9th Baronet, GCB, GCMG, KCVO, PC (5 February 1869 – 24 May 1941) was a British diplomat. A well-travelled diplomat who learned Arabic, Japanese and German, he is best remembered for his role as British Ambassador to Berlin from 1928 to 1933 in which he warned of the ambitions of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Rumbold was born on 5 February 1869 at St. Petersburg in the Russian Empire, the son of Sir Horace Rumbold, 8th Baronet and Caroline Barney (née Harrington). Horace was educated at Aldin House Prep School and at Eton.
Rumbold was an honorary attaché at The Hague (1889–1890), where his father was ambassador. In 1891, he passed the first of the required examinations and entered the Diplomatic Service.
After a year at the Foreign Office in London, he served in Cairo, Tehran, Vienna, Madrid and Munich between 1900 and 1913. He was then moved to Tokyo (1909–1913) and to Berlin (1913–1914).
In Berlin, he took up the position of counsellor. Rumbold was in charge of the British Embassy when the ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen, went home on leave on 1 July. Rumbold conducted negotiations in the first four of the ten days that preceded the outbreak of the First World War.
Rumbold left Berlin with the ambassador on 5 August 1914 with crowds attacking the embassy and their train.
In 1916, he was appointed ambassador to Berne. After the war, he was appointed ambassador to Poland in 1919. The following year, he became the High Commissioner to Constantinople during which he signed the Lausanne Treaty on behalf of the British Empire. He then became ambassador to Madrid from 1924 to 1928.
Rumbold went on to his last position when he was appointed as ambassador to Berlin in 1928. Rumbold supported appeasing Heinrich Brüning's government in the hope of staving off German nationalist parties like Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. Once Hitler came to power in 1933, Rumbold was deeply unsettled by the Nazi regime and produced a succession of despatches critical of the Nazis. On 26 April 1933 Rumbold sent to the Foreign Office his valedictory despatch in which he gave an unvarnished view of Hitler, the Nazis and their ambitions:[Hitler] starts with the assumption that man is a fighting animal; therefore the nation is a fighting unit, being a community of fighters.... A country or race which ceases to fight is doomed.... Pacifism is the deadliest sin.... Intelligence is of secondary importance.... Will and determination are of the higher worth. Only brute force can ensure survival of the race. The new Reich must gather within its fold all the scattered German elements in Europe.... What Germany needs is an increase in territory... [to Hitler] the idea that there is something reprehensible in chauvinism is entirely mistaken... the climax of education is military service [for youths] educated to the maximum of aggressiveness.... It is the duty of the government to implant in the people feeling of manly courage and passionate hatred.... Intellectualism is undesirable...It is objectionable to preach international understanding... [he] has spoken with derision of such delusive documents as peace-pacts and such delusive ideas as the spirit of Locarno.
Rumbold concluded by giving stark warnings for the future of international relations:...it would be misleading to base any hopes on a return to sanity...[the German government is encouraging an attitude of mind]...which can only end in one way.... I have the impression that the persons directing the policy of the Hitler government are not normal.
Sir John Simon, the Foreign Secretary, found Rumbold's descriptions to be "definitely disquieting". Ralph Wigram, an official in the Foreign Office, gave Winston Churchill a copy of this despatch in the middle of March 1936. After Rumbold's death, Lord Vansittart said of him that "little escaped him, and his warnings [about Nazi Germany] were clearer than anything that we got later". Walter Laqueur concurred by claiming that Rumbold's "prophetic" insights explained the Third Reich better than the expert opinions that were later issued from the OSS.
Rumbold was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in 1907, a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1917,[12] sworn of the Privy Council in 1920 and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in 1922.
Rumbold married Etheldred Constantia Fane, younger daughter of the British diplomat Sir Edmund Douglas Veitch Fane (1837–1900)[a] by his wife Constantia Wood, a niece of the 3rd Earl of Lonsdale, on 18 July 1905.
On his father's death in November 1913, Horace succeeded him as 9th baronet.
They had one son and two daughters; the younger daughter died young in 1918. [b]Lady Rumbold's only brother Henry Nevile Fane was married in 1910 (divorced 1935) to the elder daughter of the 21st Baron Clinton, and the Rumbolds were thus indirectly related to the British Royal Family after 1923.
Rumbold retired due to his age in June 1933. He died on 24 May 1941, aged 72, at his home in Tisbury, Wiltshire. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son, Anthony, who also became a distinguished diplomat.
-- Sir Horace Rumbold, 9th Baronet, by Wikipedia
Algy was educated at Wellington College and at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1929 he entered the civil service at the India Office, where he served as Private Secretary to a succession of Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State for India and then to the Permanent Under-Secretary until 1934. By 1943 he had become Assistant Secretary at the India Office; and when India became independent in 1947, he moved to the Commonwealth Relations Office. From 1949 until 1953 he was Deputy High Commissioner in South Africa.
In 1954 he became Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Commonwealth Office, and four years later Deputy Under-Secretary with responsibility for economic affairs. He was deeply involved in the negotiation of Commonwealth preferences in the European Free Trade Area (Efta) and was instrumental in securing special treatment for New Zealand butter, but his outspoken hostility to Britain's entry into the Common Market brought him into conflict with the then Commonwealth Secretary, Duncan Sandys.
It was Rumbold who briefed Sir Anthony Eden in 1943 before his crucial meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister, TV Soong. At this meeting Britain's view on the status of Tibet was reiterated in its most authoritative form. While Britain recognised Tibet as having enjoyed de facto independence since 1911, and stated that the British government had 'always been prepared to recognise Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, but only on the understanding that Tibet is regarded as autonomous'. The British government's definition of autonomy covered Tibet's complete internal freedom and her right to conduct her own external relations with other countries without reference to China.
The Right Honourable, The Earl of Avon, KG MC PC
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977), was a British Conservative politician who served three periods as Foreign Secretary and then a relatively brief term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1957.
Achieving rapid promotion as a young Conservative Member of Parliament, he became Foreign Secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Mussolini's Italy. He again held that position for most of the Second World War, and a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, Eden succeeded him as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister in April 1955, and a month later won a general election...
Eden was born on 12 June 1897 at Windlestone Hall, County Durham, into a conservative family of landed gentry. He was the third of four sons of Sir William Eden, 7th and 5th Baronet, a former colonel and local magistrate from an old titled family. Sir William, an eccentric and often foul-tempered man, was a talented watercolourist, portraitist and collector of Impressionists.
Eden's mother, Sybil Frances Grey, was a member of the prominent Grey family of Northumberland....
As an Oxford 'aesthete' after the First World War, Eden conducted a number of homosexual affairs with fellow students, including Eddy Sackville-West, Edward Gathorne-Hardy, and Eardley Knollys. Later, his wartime colleague James Grigg regarded him as "a poor feeble little pansy", while Rab Butler described him as "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman."
On 5 November 1923, shortly before his election to Parliament, he married Beatrice Beckett, who was then eighteen. They had three sons: Simon Gascoigne (1924–1945), Robert, who died fifteen minutes after being born in October 1928, and Nicholas (1930–1985).
The marriage was not a success, with both parties apparently conducting affairs. By the mid-1930s his diaries seldom mention Beatrice. The marriage finally broke up under the strain of the loss of their son Simon, who was killed in action with the RAF in Burma in 1945. His plane was reported "missing in action" on 23 June and found on 16 July; Eden did not want the news to be public until after the election result on 26 July, to avoid claims of "making political capital" from it.
Between 1946 and 1950, whilst separated from his wife, Eden conducted an open affair with Dorothy, Countess Beatty, the wife of David, Earl Beatty.
Eden was the great-great-grandnephew of author Emily Eden and in 1947, wrote an introduction to her novel The Semi-Attached Couple (1860).
In 1950, Eden and Beatrice were finally divorced, and in 1952, he married Churchill's niece Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, a nominal Roman Catholic who was fiercely criticised by Catholic writer Evelyn Waugh for marrying a divorced man.
-- Anthony Eden, by Wikipedia
When Tibet finally lost her freedom in 1959 and the Dalai Lama was forced into exile, Rumbold, and old India hands like Sir Olaf Caroe (a former Foreign Secretary to the Indian Government and Governor of the North-West Frontier Province) and Hugh Richardson (Head of British Mission, Lhasa), joined with Francis Napier Beaufort-Palmer to found the Tibet Society of the UK, an organisation that for many years stood alone in advocating Tibet's independence. Members of the society persistently challenged Chinese propaganda, principally by letters to the broadsheet papers, until the British media came to understand that there was a more reliable source for news about Tibet than the Anglo-China Association and the Chinese Ambassador.
For 11 years, from 1977 to 1988, Rumbold served the Tibet Society as its president. In 1991, with Hugh Richardson, he produced for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Tibet a pamphlet, Tibet, the Truth about Independence, which remains the most succinct and authoritative account of Tibet's status and the British government's relations with Tibet.
He retired from the Commonwealth Relations Office in 1966 but soon found himself in further conflict, on this occasion with Harold Wilson, who claimed in his memoirs that he had been badly advised by the Commonwealth Relations Office in a statement on the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war.
Wilson claimed that in making a statement deploring the extension of the fighting into Kashmir and the Punjab, at the time when India was winning, he had appeared to be supporting Pakistan and had damaged Britain's relations with India. He laid the blame on an official at the Commonwealth Office who was clearly identifiable as Rumbold. He even suggested that the official had been forced into early retirement.
Rumbold broke silence to defend himself and forcefully denied these charges and Wilson subsequently withdrew the implied slur and publicly apologised. Rumbold maintained that Wilson knew very well that there were important international reasons for wanting to bring the Indo-Pakistan conflict to a speedy conclusion in 1965 and that the reasons would be available to historians in 1996.
Rumbold continued to work actively, throughout his retirement, with a commitment in a variety of fields but especially in the cause of Tibet, where he aimed to [url=Tibet and the British Raj, 1904-47: The Influence of the Indian Political Department Officers, by Alexander McKay]correct the bias that the Foreign Office held in favour of the Chinese interpretation of events in that country[/url].
A scholarly man, and one of great personal integrity, Rumbold was a stickler for detail and accuracy, and outspoken in denouncing misrepresentation of facts.
(Photograph omitted)
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Sir Algernon Rumbold, KCMG, CIE
Obituary
by Bill Peters
Asian Affairs, Volume 25, 1992, Issue 2
1992
Sir Algernon Rumbold was for many years an active member of the Editorial Board of the R.S.A.A. [Royal Society for Asian Affairs] as well as a frequent and pungent reviewer for Asian Affairs, mainly on Central Asian subjects.
The Royal Society for Asian Affairs (RSAA) is a learned society based in London (United Kingdom). Its objective is to advance public knowledge and understanding of Asia through its worldwide networks, its public events, its publications and its support to research. It is independent of governments and political bodies and does not take institutional positions on issues of policy at its meetings or in its publications.
The Society was founded in 1901 as the Central Asian Society to "promote greater knowledge and understanding of Central Asia and surrounding countries". The geographical extent of the society's interest has since expanded to include the whole of Asia. Taylor & Francis publishes the society's journal, Asian Affairs, which has been in print since 1914....
Meetings were traditionally held at a range of central London locations including the Royal Astronomical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Medical Society of London and the Army and Navy Club. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, all RSAA activities are online and many are open to the general public...
The Society's library and archive are split between Hailebury school and the Society's London offices....
The journal of the society, Asian Affairs, is published quarterly by Taylor and Francis. It has been continuously in publication since 1914. It contains original articles and book reviews.
The Society has for many years run Schools' days jointly with the School of Oriental and African Studies, London for sixth-form students. These offer interested A-level students an opportunity to hear talks on a wide range of Asian topics and to try out a variety of Asian languages...
The Royal Society for Asian Affairs awards two medals, the "Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal" (named for Percy Sykes, honorary secretary 1924-1932) and the "Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal", named for T. E. Lawrence, to individuals who have distinguished themselves in their contribution to cultural relations, exploration, research, or literature....
Notable members
• George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston KG GCSI GCIE PC
• Ella Sykes, founder member
• Sir Percy Sykes, KCIE CB CMG (28 February 1867 – 11 June 1945)
• Sir Francis Younghusband, KCSI KCIE (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942)
• K. P. S. Menon CIE ICS (October 18, 1898 – November 22, 1982)
• Vyvyan Holt (1887–1960), diplomat and Oriental scholar, who was captured during the Korean War[2]
• William Anthony Furness, 2nd Viscount Furness (31 March 1929 – 1 May 1995)
• Violet Conolly OBE (11 May 1899 – 11 January 1988)[3]
• Sir Wilfred Thesiger KBE, DSO, FRAS, FRSL, FRGS (3 June 1910 – 24 August 2003)
• F.M. Bailey CIE FRGS (3 February 1882 – 17 April 1967)
• Sir Aurel Stein KCIE, FRAS, FBA (26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943)
• Lt Col R.C.F. Schomberg (1880-1958)[4]
• Sir Olaf Caroe KCSI KCIE (15 November 1892 – 23 November 1981)
• Peter Hopkirk (died August 2014), writer and traveller
-- Royal Society for Asian Affairs, by Wikipedia
His interest and expertise in the area derived from distinguished service at the India Office and later the Commonwealth Relations Office, where he was an authority on the defence of the Northern frontiers of India. It was he who in 1943 drafted the essential text on the British view of Tibet for a crucial meeting of Anthony Eden with T.V. Soong, the Chinese Foreign Minister. This asserted that Britain recognised Tibet as having enjoyed de facto independence since 1911 and the British Government had "always been prepared to recognize Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, but only on the understanding that Tibet is regarded as autonomous," i.e. Tibet should have complete internal freedom and the right to conduct her own external relations.
Horace Algernon Fraser Rumbold was born on 27 February, 1906 into a family with military and diplomatic connections. He was educated at Wellington College and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1929 he joined the Foreign Office, where he won early recognition in the offices of a succession of Parliamentary Under-Secretaries and then the Permanent Under-Secretary. He remained engaged with policy towards India until that country became independent in 1947. Shortly thereafter he was posted to South Africa as Deputy High Commissioner, returning to Whitehall in 1953 as Assistant Under-Secretary, then Deputy Under-Secretary with special concerns for Commonwealth economic affairs.
After retirement Sir Algernon remained active, successively Chairman of the Committee on Inter-Territorial Questions in Central Africa, and Adviser at the Welsh Office and Deputy Chairman of the Air Transport Licensing Board. He was on the Governing Body of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London from 1965 to 1980 and became an Honorary Fellow in 1981.
SOAS University of London (/ˈsoʊæs/; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London.
SOAS is one of the world's leading institutions for the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It also houses the Brunei Gallery, which hosts a programme of changing contemporary and historical exhibitions from Asia, Africa and the Middle East with the aim to present and promote cultures from these regions.
SOAS is divided into three faculties: Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Languages and Cultures and Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. It is home to the SOAS School of Law which is one of leading law schools in the UK. The university offers around 350 undergraduate bachelor's degree combinations, more than 100 one-year master's degrees and PhD programmes in nearly every department. The university has a student-staff ratio of 11:1. The university has produced several heads of states, government ministers, diplomats, central bankers, Supreme Court judges, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and many other notable leaders around the world. SOAS is a member of Association of Commonwealth Universities.
Origins
The School of Oriental Studies was founded in 1916 at 2 Finsbury Circus, London, the then premises of the London Institution. The school received its royal charter on 5 June 1916 and admitted its first students on 18 January 1917. The school was formally inaugurated a month later on 23 February 1917 by George V. Among those in attendance were Earl Curzon of Kedleston, formerly Viceroy of India, and other cabinet officials.
The School of Oriental Studies was founded by the British state as an instrument to strengthen Britain's political, commercial and military presence in Asia and Africa. It would do so by providing instruction to colonial administrators (Colonial Service and Imperial Civil Service), commercial managers and military officers, but also to missionaries, doctors and teachers, in the language of that part of Asia or Africa to which each was being posted, together with an authoritative introduction to the customs, religion, laws and history of the people whom they were to govern or among whom they would be working.
The school's founding mission was to advance British scholarship, science and commerce in Africa and Asia and to provide London University with a rival to the Oriental schools of Berlin, Petrograd and Paris. The school immediately became integral in training British administrators, colonial officials and spies for overseas postings across the British Empire. Africa was added to the school's name in 1938....
In 1942, the War Office joined with the school's Japanese department to help alleviate the shortage in Japanese linguists. State scholarships were offered to select grammar and public school boys to train as military translators and intelligence officers. Lodged at Dulwich College in south London, the students became affectionately known as the Dulwich boys.
Bletchley Park, the headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), was concerned about the slow pace of the SOAS, so they started their own Japanese-language courses at Bedford in February 1942. The courses were directed by army cryptographer Col. John Tiltman, and retired Royal Navy officer Capt. Oswald Tuck.
1945 to present
In recognition of SOAS's role during the war, the 1946 Scarborough Commission (officially the "Commission of Enquiry into the Facilities for Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies") report recommended a major expansion in provision for the study of Asia and the school benefited greatly from the subsequent largesse. The SOAS School of Law was established in 1947 with Professor Vesey-Fitzgerald as its first head. Growth however was curtailed by following years of economic austerity, and upon Sir Cyril Philips assuming the directorship in 1956, the school was in a vulnerable state. Over his 20-year stewardship, Phillips transformed the school, raising funds and broadening the school's remit.
A college of the University of London, the School's fields include Law, Social Sciences, Humanities, and Languages with special reference to Asia and Africa. The SOAS Library, located in the Philips Building, is the UK's national resource for materials relating to Asia and Africa and is the largest of its kind in the world. ...
In 2011, the Privy Council approved changes to the school's charter allowing it to award degrees in its own name, following the trend set by fellow colleges the London School of Economics, University College London and King's College London. All new students registered from September 2013 will qualify for a SOAS, University of London, award....
Directors
Since its foundation, the school has had nine directors. The inaugural director was the celebrated linguist Sir Edward Denison Ross. Under the stewardship of Sir Cyril Philips, the school saw considerable growth and modernisation.
-- SOAS University of London, by Wikipedia
His book Watershed in India, 1914-1922 was published in 1979. But it was his concern for Tibet which remained most active until the end. Having been President of the Tibet Society of the U.K. and the Tibet Relief Fund from 1977 to 1988, he continued to attend major meetings and Tibetan functions until last year. In a letter shortly before his death he expressed satisfaction at the progress recently made in pressing the Tibetan case, which he characterised as a "transformation."
Sir Algernon's widow, Margaret Adel, and his two married daughters survive him.