Sir James Hennessy
Diplomat in Uganda who tackled three years of Idi Amin’s murderous rule with skill and patience
SIR JAMES HENNESSY, who has died aged 100, was Britain’s high commissioner in Uganda for three nerve-racking and at times humiliating years, with President Idi Amin at the height of his barbaric unpredictability.
Previously he was head of chancery in Montevideo, taking charge when the ambassador, Geoffrey Jackson, was kidnapped by Tupamaro guerrillas; Hennessy helped secure his release after eight months.
To a former district commissioner in peaceful Basutoland (now Lesotho) who spent 20 uneventful years in the colonial service before becoming a diplomat, the murderous farce of Amin’s rule (backed by Libya’s Col Gaddafi) was a revelation. Yet Hennessy handled the situation with courage, skill and patience.
In 1974 Amin expelled 14 British diplomats, declaring the handful remaining in Kampala “the slaves of Africans”. The next year it took a visit from the foreign secretary James Callaghan for a death sentence against Denis Hills, a British lecturer, for describing Amin in an unpublished book as a “village tyrant”, to be dropped.
Aware that he was being depicted as a buffoon, Amin habitually used Hennessy as a sounding board for his rage against the British media. But at times the menace was personal: Amin threatened him with “serious steps” after he protested at Hills being denied legal representation.
In June 1975 Hennessy was summoned to meet Amin, who told him that two Britons had been arrested as spies and Hills had been charged with treason; Hills would be shot unless Callaghan flew to Kampala within a week.
Having studied reports from Hennessy, the prime minister, Harold Wilson, told Amin that Callaghan would come within 10 days. When he arrived, Amin, wearing a Seaforth Highlanders’ glengarry and with five rows of medals on his Air Force uniform, kept him waiting half an hour, then sat down with him under a portrait of Gaddafi. He told Callaghan the two spies had been released – Hennessy was sure they had never existed.
Callaghan flew Hills out. A week later, Amin arrived at an Organisation of African Unity conference in Kampala on a chair borne by four expats.
James Patrick Ivan Hennessy was born on September 26 1923, the son of Richard Hennessy, DSO, MC. From Bedford School he went to King’s College, Newcastle, completing his studies later at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and the LSE.
He joined the Royal Artillery in 1942, and after two years was seconded to the Indian Army as adjutant and battery commander, 6th Indian Field Regiment. He was demobilised in 1946.
Graduating in 1948, he joined the colonial service as a district officer in Basutoland, a colony surrounded by South Africa. Promoted to district commissioner, he became joint secretary to the country’s constitutional commission, supervisor of elections in 1959 and secretary to the executive council.
In 1961 Hennessy was seconded to the British High Commission in Pretoria; he returned to Basutoland as permanent secretary for local government (1964), a member of the legislative council (1965) and, after independence in 1966, Secretary for External Affairs, Defence and Internal Security. After a brief spell in the Lesotho prime minister’s office, he joined the diplomatic service in 1968.
His first posting, to Uruguay, proved a baptism of fire. Barely had he arrived in January 1971 than ambassador Jackson was ambushed while being driven to the embassy, and held by his captors in a
“people’s prison” to embarrass the government of President Pacheco.
Hennessy took charge of the embassy as the Foreign Office sent Edward Heath’s special representative Oliver Wright to help negotiate Jackson’s release. Eight months later, Hennessy was informed by an anonymous phone call that he would find Jackson in a church, where the guerrillas had left him to make his confession. Driving there in the ambassadorial Daimler, he took Jackson to the British Hospital, where he asked for a scotch before being given the medical all-clear.
Amin was already making waves when Hennessy was appointed High Commissioner to Uganda (and Rwanda).in May 1974, having realised he was becoming a laughing stock, Amin dropped in on Hennessy and his wife for a dip in their pool, and asked him to invite the Archbishop of Canterbury and the BBC to Uganda.
Days after Hennessy invited Amin to his Queen’s birthday celebrations, the dictator threatened to expel the 1,000 Britons in Uganda. Hennessy flew to London to reassess relations. On his return, he was summoned to Amin’s “command post” for a series of rambling lectures, and after SNP gains in that autumn’s British general election, Hennessy was handed copies of a letter from Amin to the Soviet Union, China and the UN urging formation of a Scottish provisional government. “The leaders of the Scots provisional government have also asked me to inform their excellencies that England is now bankrupt,” the letter added.
Relations thawed after the Hills episode, but went into the deep freeze again after the raid on Entebbe by Israeli special forces in 1976 to free 100 hostages from a hijacked airliner. Hennessy flew to London to tell Callaghan’s successor Anthony Crosland that 75-year-old Dora Bloch, a British/israeli citizen taken from the aircraft to Mulango hospital which was Britain’s independence gift to Uganda, had been abducted by Amin’s security service and murdered.
The murder of Mrs Bloch was the last straw. Amin accused James Horrocks, acting high commissioner in Hennessy’s absence, of conniving in Mrs Bloch’s abduction. A second secretary at the high commission who had seen her in the hospital with two plainclothes guards was expelled. Hennessy remained in London for “consultations”, then in 1977 was appointed consul-general in Cape Town.
Three years later, he was despatched to Belize as governor and commander-inchief. Moves to grant the colony independence were frustrated by a territorial claim from Guatemala. On the eve of a constitutional conference in London, Hennessy declared a state of emergency after two days of strikes and riots by government workers demanding independence.
That summer, Hennessy was tipped off that a Panamanian ship off Belize was carrying a large consignment of marijuana. A Royal Navy frigate closed in, supported by a Harrier from Belize, and £31.5 million worth of drugs were seized.
Hennessy retired after Belize became independent that September. Then, at the start of 1982, he took up a new challenge as Chief Inspector for Prisons. His brief covered England and Wales, but his most notable investigation concerned Northern Ireland.
In September 1983, 38 IRA men broke out of the Maze prison after guns were smuggled into a supposedly secure compound. Nineteen got away including the senior Provisionals Brendan Macfarlane and Gerard Kelly, and several – to the embarrassment of the authorities – were never recaptured.
There were calls for the Northern Ireland Secretary James Prior to resign, notably from Enoch Powell, and Prior – saying he would only go if there had been a failure of policy – asked Hennessy to investigate.
His report blamed faults in the design of the prison, poor security procedures, human weakness, negligence and inadequate management, for which he held the governor, Ernest Whittington, responsible. Whittington resigned; Prior and his prisons minister Nicholas Scott stayed on. Whittington’s deputy, William Mcconnell, was murdered by the IRA after going on television to comment.
When the 19 recaptured escapers went on trial for murder in 1987 the judge, Lord Lowry, criticised Hennessy for refusing to let the prosecution see statements taken during his inquiry. Hennessy said he had promised witnesses their evidence would not be published; moreover, it was not needed to support the Crown’s case.
Hennessy tried to persuade ministers that more prisons, longer sentences and a tougher regime would not solve the problem of rising crime. He observed of the Thatcher government’s “short, sharp shock” approach to young offenders that the boys adjusted to it, while prison staff did not like it. And he repeatedly warned that conditions in some jails were “close to breaking point”.
After a wave of riots at 46 prisons in May 1986, the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd asked Hennessy to investigate. He blamed “the worst night of violence the English prison service has ever known” on gross overcrowding, squalid conditions and industrial action by prison officers, with £5.5 million worth of damage, 800 places lost and 45 inmates having escaped.
Later that year, Hennessy blamed “regrettable lapses of security” for a Category A prisoner facing two attempted murder charges being “sprung” from St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. Officers guarding him had been out of radio range, and unaccountably allowed him visitors.
Hennessy stepped down in 1988 with a call for a prison ombudsman to be appointed. For three years more, he was a member of the Parole Board. He was appointed MBE in 1959, OBE in 1968, CMG in 1975 and knighted in 1982.
James Hennessy married Patricia Unwin in 1947; they had five daughters, and a son who died young.