Sir John Thomson
Diplomat who helped to bring an end to the Iran-iraq war and laid the foundations for arms control
SIR JOHN THOMSON, who has died aged 91, was one of the most original and creative diplomats of his generation: intelligent, energetic and unstuffy. His most senior postings were as Britain’s High Commissioner to India and Permanent Representative at the UN, but he did some of his most influential work setting up machinery for arms control and non-proliferation at the height of the Cold War.
At the UN from 1982 to 1987, Thomson played a crucial role in securing an end to the seemingly interminable Iran-iraq war, by brokering agreement between the Permanent Five members of the Security Council – Britain, the United States, Soviet Union, France and China.
Concerned that the Security Council was not living up to its responsibilities, he called the other four ambassadors round to his New York apartment, and over a cup of tea persuaded them to act.
In July 1987 the Security Council passed Resolution 598, which called for an end to the fighting and a return to pre-war boundaries. The war dragged on for a further year, and Thomson had moved on, before Iran accepted Resolution 598; the conflict had claimed some 400,000 lives.
Thomson also took the full force of Argentina’s diplomatic campaign to gain sovereignty over the Falklands after its humiliating military defeat. Although Britain’s recapture of the islands had brought the end of General Galtieri’s junta, Argentine ministers waged an unremitting campaign through the UN for Britain to hold talks on sovereignty. At each year’s General Assembly Thomson found himself rebutting claims of British intransigence, and attempting to make the vote fractionally less one-sided toward Argentina.
He was usually helped by the stridency of the Argentine resolution. When in 1985 one was tabled in “more persuasive” tones, Thomson told his Argentine counterpart Carlos Muniz, with whom he had become quite friendly, that he would have preferred the previous year’s text.
When Thomson retired in 1987, the UN’S secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar said he wished he could have become a “permanent permanent representative”.
John Adam Thomson was born at Bieldside, outside Aberdeen, on April 27 1927, with a fine academic pedigree: his father, Sir George Thomson, was Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and his grandfather, Sir JJ Thomson, Master of Trinity; both were Nobel prizewinners. His mother, Kathleen, was the daughter of the Very Rev Sir George Adam Smith, principal of Aberdeen University.
Thomson was educated in wartime at Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, before serving in the Royal Navy as an able seaman. He completed his education at Aberdeen University and at Trinity.
Finishing first in the examination for the Foreign Office in 1950, he was sent to Mecas – the FO’S “spy school” in Lebanon – to learn Arabic, then posted in turn to Jeddah and, in 1954, to Damascus. While there, he wrote the definitive Crusader Castles of the Levant (1956) with Robin Fedden.
He served as private secretary to the permanent secretary at the FO (1958), first secretary in Washington (1960) and head of the FCO planning staff (from 1966). In 1968 he was seconded to the Cabinet Office as head of its newly formed Assessments Staff.
Thomson then became, in turn, deputy head of Britain’s mission to Nato and head of the FCO’S defence and arms control departments. In 1973 he led the UK delegation to exploratory Mutual Balanced Force Reduction talks with the Warsaw Pact countries, and he was the moving force behind the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a non-proliferation mechanism for controlling nuclear exports that has grown to 48 countries.
Around this time, Thomson – unusually for a diplomat – became involved in domestic politics. He and his American wife were supporters of the Democratic Labour Association founded by Dick Taverne, who in 1973 broke with Labour to hold his seat at Lincoln in a by-election.
James Callaghan held Thomson in high regard and, as prime minister, appointed him High Commissioner in New Delhi. When the Callaghans visited India soon after, Thomson had contracted typhoid and had to receive the prime minister from his bed in the mission hospital. Callaghan, too, had medical matters on his mind; directed to sit on a stone slab while viewing the Taj Mahal, he observed: “This won’t do my piles any good.”
Thomson was a hit with the Indians, and struck up a friendship with their prime minister Indira Gandhi. When news of her assassination on October 31 1984 reached New York, Thomson took the podium at the General Assembly to deliver a tribute.
Spoken of as a successor to Sir Nicholas Henderson as ambassador in Washington, Thomson instead replaced Sir Anthony Parsons at the UN. Parsons was preparing to leave when the Falklands conflict erupted in April 1982, but stayed on in New York for two months of frenzied diplomatic activity. Victory achieved, Parsons retired, urging a “cooling off period” on all parties.
Thomson arrived with Buenos Aires refusing to admit hostilities were at an end and America backing an Argentine resolution calling for talks to find a “peaceful solution to the sovereignty dispute”. Thomson called it “ill-timed and ill-considered”, but it was carried 90-12 with 52 abstentions.
After the Cold War and the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher’s next concern was avoiding tighter sanctions against South Africa. Thomson declared – reflecting the prime minister’s view, not his own – that they would hurt “the ordinary people of Britain” and neuter the forces within South Africa pushing the government into concessions. In 1986 several African nations boycotted Thomson’s lunch for the visiting Sir Geoffrey Howe in protest.
Thomson had a tightrope to walk after America’s invasion of Grenada in 1983, making it clear that Britain did not support the action while agreeing the situation had become “grave, risky and difficult.” He also repeatedly urged the United States (and Russia) to pay their full share of the cost of UN peacekeeping operations.
An outstanding debater who frequently clashed with his Israeli opposite number Benjamin Netanyahu, Thomson unequivocally deplored Israeli air strikes on the PLO’S headquarters in Tunis.
In retirement, Thomson became a director of ANZ Grindlays Bank, and later chaired Fleming Emerging Markets Investment Trust. He also chaired the Minority Rights Group International, and as Yugoslavia disintegrated, led a mission to inspect detention centres which Bosnian Muslims said the Serbs were using as concentration camps.
Thomson worked with MIT to develop the technology and diplomacy for a proposal to safeguard the Iranian nuclear fuel cycle, partly reflected in the 2015 Joint Plan of Action recently repudiated by President Trump. In his last year he was still campaigning for greater rigour in the analysis and attribution of chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
After his second marriage, Thomson lived much of the time in the United States, maintaining his Scottish roots through his holiday home in Galloway.
He was appointed CMG in 1972, KCMG in 1978 and GCMG in 1985.
John Thomson married first, in 1953, Elizabeth Mcclure. She died in 1988, and in 1992 he married, secondly, Judith Bullitt. She survives him, with three sons and a daughter from his first marriage.
Sir John Thomson, born April 27 1927, died June 3 2018