Sir Patrick Moberly
Old-school ambassador who had an uphill battle representing Britain in Israel and South Africa
SIR PATRICK MOBERLY, who has died aged 95, was a formal, old-school diplomat whose career culminated in two of the most sensitive postings for a British ambassador: to Israel and South Africa.
Moberly’s years in Tel Aviv, from 1981 to 1984, coincided with a particularly chilly phase in relations, and with Menachem Begin in uncompromising mood there was little scope for him to improve matters. It did not help that, shortly after his arrival, he was out of contact in the Sinai when the Israeli war hero Moshe Dayan died, and it was left to the consul-general to represent Britain at the funeral.
Things were little better in Pretoria (1984-87), as the National Party government under PW Botha dug in its heels over apartheid to mixed signals from London. Margaret Thatcher was doing her utmost to block sanctions, while her Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, was protesting at the force used by the authorities to maintain apartheid.
Moberly, described by one South African as “a piece of porcelain under tremendous control”, tried to get closer to the ruling elite by learning Afrikaans, helped by his wife, who had been born in the Transvaal. But he did little to cultivate opinion-formers across the racial spectrum, unlike his successor Robin Renwick.
Nor was he always well briefed. Hearing that the son of the veteran ANC leader Walter Sisulu would be collecting an award in his father’s absence, Moberly enquired: “Oh dear, is he indisposed?” Sisulu was in jail with Nelson Mandela.
Meanwhile Moberly was seen by liberals as needlessly cautious. One observed: “Even when he is vaguely prodding the government towards reform, the word is that he gets his advisers to repeatedly water down their drafts.”
Patrick Hamilton Moberly was born on September 2 1928, the younger son of the historian and classicist GH Moberly, and educated at Winchester and Trinity College Oxford.
Joining the Diplomatic Service in 1951, he served in Baghdad, Prague, and Dakar before spells with the MOD and the Commonwealth Office. Postings to Canada and (for a first time) Israel followed, then seven years in Whitehall.
Appointed Ambassador to Israel in June 1981, Moberly realised the scale of his task when only a handful of politicians turned out for his reception to toast the marriage of the Prince of Wales. The chill intensified when Douglas Hurd, Minister of State at the FCO, criticised Israel’s plans for a canal linking the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean.
Matters did not improve with the outbreak of the Falklands conflict in April 1982. Israel was understood to have supplied Argentina with military equipment, and Moberly found the foreign ministry reluctant to confirm this.
Then Begin decided to appoint Eliyahu Lankin, who had led an attack on the British intelligence office in Jerusalem in 1944, as ambassador to London. Margaret Thatcher, bypassing Moberly and the FCO, despatched her political chief of staff David Wolfson to urge the Israelis to drop the idea, hinting that Britain might recognise the PLO if Begin persisted. The plan was abandoned.
Hurd upset the Israelis further by meeting a senior PLO official in Tunis, and Francis Pym, the new foreign secretary, urged a halt to new Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Moberly was summoned to the foreign ministry for a carpeting. Succeeding Ewen Fergusson as Ambassador in South Africa, Moberly arrived to find an equally unpromising climate. Four Transvaal businessmen had been charged in Coventry with smuggling arms from Britain to South Africa, but had been given bail to travel to South Africa after undertakings were given that they would return, but the pledge was not kept.
Moberly faced the full force of the anger of foreign minister Roelof “Pik” Botha that October after Britain cast a rare vote against South Africa in the UN Security Council. Relations were further complicated because anti-apartheid protesters were avoiding arrest by occupying the British consulate in Durban; Moberly insisted they would not be forced to leave.
The use of force against protesters in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, removal of populations to “homelands”, detentions without trial and the imposition of death sentences brought fresh protests from Sir Geoffrey – and another summons to the South African foreign ministry.
Moberly was told bluntly that South Africa would not accept foreign interference, and that granting the homelands independence amounted to setting up the “black nations” Britain wanted. South African ministers later accused Moberly of leaking the substance of the talk.
Tensions rose further as South Africa torpedoed a Commonwealth peace initiative by launching raids on ANC targets in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana. Archbishop Desmond Tutu threatened to disinvite Moberly from his enthronement as Archbishop of Cape Town in protest at Mrs Thatcher’s attitude.
Ill health cut short his tenure; Moberly returned to London in July 1987, retiring in November 1989. He was appointed CMG in 1978, and KCMG in 1985.
Patrick Moberly married Mary Penfold in 1955; she died in 2019. He is survived by their daughter and two sons.