Tony Blair’s government was privately lobbied by Australia not to meet representatives of Indigenous communities who were described as “troublemakers”.
Papers released from Britain’s National Archives shed light on the behind-scenes-discussions about a delegation that came to the UK in late 1999.
It was led by Patrick Dodson, a Yawuru elder who was to become an Australian Labor party senator and has been referred to as the “father of reconciliation”. During the same trip, he met Queen Elizabeth II as part of a larger effort to foster reconciliation. Dodson has spoken about the significance of that meeting.
However, files including a memo written by Blair’s foreign affairs adviser, John Sawers, reveal the level of angst within government circles about the trip, and refers to an apparent intervention by the then Australian high commissioner, Philip Flood.
“The Australians are pretty wound up about the idea of you seeing the Aborigines at all,” Sawers wrote in a note to Blair. “Their high commissioner rang me to press you not to see them: they were troublemakers – it would be like [the then Australian prime minister] John Howard seeing people from Northern Ireland who were trying to stir up problems for the UK.”
The memo suggested: “Can’t we plead diary problems?” while the word “yes” is written in answer to this, in handwriting that resembles that of Blair. The same memo reminded Blair that he would be “pressed” to see the Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng a week later, adding: “It will be harder to avoid seeing Wei if you’re seeing Australian dissidents next week.”
A separate British government memo recorded that the Australian High Commission had made several points, including that Australian media reports suggested the delegation would be seeking an apology from the Queen and would be raising the “historical failure of the British government to consult Australia’s Indigenous population during colonisation”.
“We are not certain of the message it will deliver, but it is unlikely to be welcome,” it added, recommending that Blair not meet them and that there was a risk the UK could be drawn in “domestic Australian debate on indigenous issues”.
Other files reveal angst inside Blair’s government about Australian relations, including the potential scenario of Australians voting to become a republic during a referendum in 1999. “We don’t want a rejection of the Queen to equate to rejecting all things British,” Sawers told Blair in a note advising that new legislation would be needed in the UK if Australians voted yes.
Files from the following year include a briefing for Blair before a visit to him by Howard in July 2000 during Australia Week.
Howard would be “very aware of domestic Australian media criticism” of it as a “backward-looking junket” and would try to use the visit to Blair to emphasise serious political aspects, a senior UK civil servant wrote. A pen portrait of Howard described him as having a “sometimes didactic but nevertheless effective speaking manner”.
There was considerable anxiety in the British government about the eagerness of Howard’s government to hold an England v Australia cricket match featuring teams selected by him and Blair.
It was expected that the Australian team would comprise high-quality professionals and the Australian High Commission had informally approached the England and Wales Cricket Board, but British civil servants feared it would clash with another event and that English county teams would not be prepared to release players for a match between the prime ministers’ XIs.
After Howard wrote to Blair to propose the match, Blair’s private secretary, Philip Barton, noted in a memo to the UK prime minister: “I suspect the last thing you will want to do is go to a cricket match on the Saturday. But if we just say no, this would no doubt come out and you would look unsporting.”
Barton came up with options including getting John Major, a cricket fan, to raise an XI on Blair’s behalf, “but it may not be enough to stop the prime minister having to go to at least the start of the match”. A third option was to “turn it into a charity match”.