Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 3, 1993 TAG: 9310050314
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: D-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAUREEN JOHNSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LONDON LENGTH: Long
British embassies once were everywhere. But it's been two years since Britain's last envoy in Gabon rolled up the flag and departed - leaving diplomats 500 miles away in Zaire to represent Her Majesty's government in the West African nation.
From its magnificent headquarters where sweeping staircases and cantilevered canopies epitomize Victorian grandeur, the Foreign Office lists facilitating a sale of Mickey Mouse clocks to Disneyland among recent achievements.
Bit by bit, the writ of a nation that once ruled a globe-circling empire is still shrinking. Yet the habits of great power die hard, and this country still presumes to wield a special international influence.
Britain, as Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd put it, "punches above its weight" in world affairs.
"Britain will not act as if we were simply a regional power, for the very good reason that that is not what we are," Hurd told the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London recently.
For example, despite budget problems, Britain appears determined to keep pace with France as the main suppliers of U.N. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Yet even in parts of the former British Empire, it's the United States that takes the lead in diplomacy. Pressure from Washington forced elections last year in Kenya, a former British colony, and the United States led the invasion of Grenada, a British Caribbean state, in 1983 despite British advice to stay out.
Some parts of the British government have no problem saving money by diminishing Britain's world role as it struggles to deal with economic problems at home. Treasury officials, facing a $75 billion budget deficit, are nibbling at the $925 million the Foreign Office spends each year.
Hurd, arguing that the Foreign Office has discarded its gold-braid, gin-and-tonic image, is battling to keep his department active.
Historic British army regiments are merging and troops are coming home from continental Europe and former colonies.
Repeated drubbings at cricket by Australians and West Indians are a special humiliation: It's the game the English invented and taught to their colonial subjects.
"Cricket is indelibly linked with a failed `Establishment,' with obsolete values and with the empire that was," said Martin Jacques, a left-wing analyst and former editor of the journal Marxism Today.
And yet the legacy of greatness continues.
Britain is one of the world's five nuclear powers. It is skillfully enlisting American help to resist rumblings about its status - a post-World War II hangover - as one of the five, veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
Its language, its monarch - and cricket - still link the Commonwealth, a 50-nation association of Britain and former colonies headed by Queen Elizabeth II.
It has two internationally known 20th century leaders in Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher - while most foreigners would be hard put to name one Japanese. It sees itself as America's No. 1 ally.
"I don't think to this day we behave as if we weren't quite an important country," said Sir Nicholas Henderson, a former British ambassador to Germany, France and the United States.
When Henderson, 74, began his diplomatic career in the 1940s, huge tracts of globes and atlases were colored red to denote British rule. As a young man in Cairo, Henderson watched Lord Killearn, the British ambassador, "throwing his weight around."
"I don't know whether the Egyptians necessarily liked it, but they certainly couldn't do anything about it. . . . We were, quite simply, the most important power in the Middle East," said Henderson.
In Paris in the 1970s, Henderson represented a country plagued by strikes, economic crises and plunging morale. In a 1979 message to London, he bluntly described Britain as "poor and unproud" compared with the rest of Western Europe.
"The French were always going on about how much more successful they were than the British," Henderson said in an interview, recalling his stint at Britain's palatial embassy in Paris. "The great historic rivalry was over, and they'd won." He paused. "Even then it never occurred to me that I had to sort of apologize for being British or say we're not strong enough to talk to you."
THE BRITISH LEGACY\ THE EMPIRE IS GONE, BUT ITS IMPRINT LINGERS\ \ The 50-nation Commonwealth of Britain and former colonies, headed by Queen Elizabeth II. Members encompass nearly one-fourth of world's people.
\ The Anglican Communion, the foreign outposts of the Church of England, serves about 70 million.
\ Greenwich Mean Time and zero meridian were adopted by treaty in 1884, reflecting Britain's maritime power.
\ British Broadcasting Corp.'s internationally respected World Service broadcasts in 39 languages to record audience of 120 million.
\ Gurkha Regiment, whose soldiers are recruited from Nepal, have served in British army since 1815.
by CNB