The meaning of ‘internationalisation’

Reciting a sizable list of proposals for internationalisation of the Antarctic, Bulkeley (Reference Bulkeley, Lüdecke, Tipton-Everett and Lay2012) has argued that the concept of a polar treaty can be said to date back to the beginning of the 20th century. Before World War II a number of legal minds had grappled with questions of Antarctic sovereignty and made recommendations of some form of international governance, but without significant influence. During and after the war more concerted attempts at promoting internationalization of the Antarctic were made by various groups and individuals, including the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Parliamentary Group for World Government, Professor Julian Huxley, Krishna Menon of India, and Prime Minister Walter Nash of New Zealand. Nearly all were proposing some form of United Nations (UN) trusteeship. In the face of the increasing postwar competition for Antarctic territory the UK Foreign and Colonial Offices were forced to consider the possibility of UN administration along with many other options, but they repeatedly dismissed it out of hand, regarding it as impractical and undesirable. Moreover such proposals were to them a source of irritation with the potential for unwanted publicity that could easily derail their own efforts at achieving a negotiated multilateral agreement (Speaight Reference Speaight1956a; Vincent Reference Vincent1956a). On this issue Roberts was in complete agreement with his FO colleagues (Roberts Reference Roberts1959: 12). The FO wished in contrast to promote the concept of an all-powerful independent supranational authority for the Antarctic constituted exclusively from those states that had a proved interest and investment in the region; but that would, perhaps unsurprisingly, prove to be controversial.

1944. Roberts enters the Foreign Office

At the outbreak of World War II the historian Professor Arnold Toynbee, then Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, founded the UK's Foreign Research and Press Service, staffed mainly from Chatham House but located at Balliol College, Oxford. In June 1943 he returned to London to head a new department to be called the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD), conceived as an information and intelligence service for other FO departments and intended as an aid to them in formulating policy (Longmire and Walker Reference Longmire and Walker1995). The FORD staff were not established Civil Service employees but were academics recruited on a temporary basis for the duration of the war only. Roberts would turn out to be one of the very few exceptions; he stayed on.

In December 1943, following his return from a tour of North American Arctic institutions and the abrupt termination of his work at SPRI on Admiralty Naval Intelligence Division Handbooks, Roberts received a telephone call from Toynbee proposing some work for him at FORD. He had been recommended to Toynbee by the noted geologist, explorer and SPRI Chairman James Wordie (Roberts Reference Roberts1940–Reference Roberts1943, Reference Roberts1943). At the time the young Roberts was still a protégé of Wordie's, some years before their eventual rancorous split over issues of terminology (‘shelf ice’ versus ‘ice barrier’) and over UK Antarctic policy issues during the 1950s: in particular those concerning the IGY and the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (CTAE).

On 1st February 1944 Roberts was appointed to FORD to work on the political problems of the British Antarctic territory, then known as the Falkland Islands Dependencies (FID). In particular Roberts was to prepare a FO Handbook on Antarctic territorial claims, to be completed within 3 months. In the event he was retained by the FO to continue the work and also, together with Wordie and Neil Mackintosh, to co-manage the British Antarctic expedition ‘Operation Tabarin’ (Dudeney and Walton Reference Dudeney and Walton2012; Haddelsey Reference Haddelsey2014: 29–30), which was subsequently renamed the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) and eventually the British Antarctic Survey. By May 1945 Roberts had completed a document of over 200 pages detailing the entire history of the Antarctic insofar as it had implications for territorial sovereignty claims (Roberts Reference Roberts1945a, Reference Roberts1945b). It was to remain closed for 62 years in the UK Public Records Office until its release in 2007, albeit somewhat redacted.

1945. A sceptical view of Antarctic territorial claims

A detailed analysis of Roberts’ FO Handbook is beyond the scope of this article, but some of its observations are germane to an understanding of the legal and political difficulties presented by the Antarctic. In it Roberts points out that amongst the governments laying claims to Antarctic territory, the British Commonwealth had no coherent policy while Argentina, Chile, the US and Norway had all before 1939 set up organisations to study and report on polar matters, and at various times had made proposals for an Antarctic Conference.

There is much discussion in the handbook of territorial claims related to non-existent or inaccurately reported discovery. For example, Chile's claim was to a region to which no Chilean national had ever visited. But it is in the discussion of claims based on air survey that we find Roberts at his most acerbic. ‘Ellsworth did not recognize that Stefansson Strait is a glacier rising to 8,000 feet above sea-level. . . . He did not himself have any precise ideas about where he had been and what he had seen’. In view of the extreme difficulty of interpreting such country from the air and Mr Ellsworth's lack of technical ability, the results were, in Roberts’ judgment ‘not unexpected’.

Still more problematic in Roberts’ view was the opinion of the FO Legal Advisers that the act of discovery was by itself a good initial basis for a claim based on inchoate right, even by the mere sighting of unknown land from a ship or aircraft. Roberts pointed out the consequent and persistent controversies over questions of priority of discovery, for example those concerning Hubert Wilkins in 1928. Roberts categorized several types of bogus discovery: (1) Claims to discovery of land in areas which are later found to be sea (or vice versa), attributable to mirage effects, faulty navigation, or ‘sheer incompetence’; (2) Inaccurately routed flights over unrecognised land features which were not properly identified, until later photographs were obtained that proved that the explorer did not venture where he thought he went; (3) Discoveries by two different explorers, neither of whom gave a clear account of the extent or nature of their discoveries; and (4) Disputes over priority of discovery once it is found that a unique feature has been given more than one name.

On disputed claims and territories involving the UK, Roberts discusses at length issues such as the naming of the Antarctic Peninsula ‘Palmer Land’ by the US and ‘Graham Land’ by the UK. He himself proposed the name ‘Trinity Peninsula’, but it never stuck. Regarding disputes with Argentina and Chile, Roberts was confident that the UK would succeed in any arbitration regarding sovereign possession of its claimed areas of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic, with the possible exceptions of the Falkland and South Orkney Islands. But he advised against arbitration for a number of reasons, which included the possibility of inadvertently setting up potentially embarrassing legal precedents. British claims were founded on a variety of titles and most had not then received formal recognition from other countries.

Finally, Roberts considered the influence of place names in causing confusion, international acrimony and, for that matter, political disputes (Day Reference Day2012: 364); in no other part of the world, with the exception of Svalbard, had so many names been ‘given, forgotten, imperfectly remembered, mis-spelt and misapplied’. He suggested the publication of a Gazetteer of officially accepted place-names within the FID, an activity that would become a monumental task for Roberts and his research assistant Ena Thomas throughout her employment at FORD during 1947–1961.

From today's perspective, after 50 years of operation of the Antarctic Treaty, Roberts’ sceptical view of the validity of Antarctic territorial claims is perhaps not particularly noteworthy, considering their lack of evident purpose. The post-war mindset had, however, a rather different outlook. Until the beginning of 1958 there were recurrent discussions, within and outside the US, on whether the US should, or should not, make a sovereign territorial claim, which would almost inevitably clash with some other claims (Clift Reference Clift1956; Corner Reference Corner1956; Foreign Relations 1948: 980, 1955–1957; Roberts Reference Roberts1957a; Speaight Reference Speaight1956b; Templeton Reference Templeton2000: 124; Vincent Reference Vincent1956b). On this matter Gerald Fitzmaurice, the senior Legal Advisor to the FO, was dismissive (Fitzmaurice Reference Fitzmaurice1955). As he saw it, purely from the standpoint of international law, the British claim was rock-solid, while the US had no basis for a claim whatever. He also criticised the US position of not recognising the claims of other Antarctic states, describing it as a form of diplomatic myopia akin to the US ‘refusal to recognize the Peking Government as the effective government of China’. But the pragmatic ‘double negative’ policy of the US (neither making a claim oneself, nor recognising others’ claims) arguably contributed positively towards the political settlement represented by the 1959 treaty. Ironically there was nobody in the UK who would be more involved in drafting the treaty than Fitzmaurice himself.

These observations by Roberts and Fitzmaurice were clearly directed at the UK government and were framed from a staunchly British perspective, the strength of which rested largely on the priority and accuracy of historical discovery. They are not concerned with assessment of the validity of polar territorial claims from the standpoint of theoretical concepts of international law, such as the sector principle and the Hughes doctrine regarding permanency of occupation, discussion of which can be found in more recent treatises (Kikkert Reference Kikkert2016: 66–151, 292–348).

Conception of an Antarctic treaty

Soon after Roberts had joined the FO, Arnold Toynbee invited James Brierly, Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford and author of Brierly's Law of nations, to visit FORD once a week to provide advice on problems relating to international law. Brierly would continue to do so for two years thereafter. At the time Roberts had acquired experience of polar exploration, cold climate logistics, and research into Antarctic and sub-Antarctic ornithology, but no experience of grappling with the legal and political problems of the Antarctic. Brierly found the Antarctic particularly interesting, and it was during 1944 that, according to Roberts, the principles of an Antarctic treaty began to evolve at FORD (Roberts Reference Roberts1963).

At the end of the war Roberts was retained by the FO, now part-time but on a more permanent basis: a position that he would continue for another 30 years. One of his longer-term objectives was to prepare for an international Antarctic conference along the lines of the one originally planned for Bergen in 1939 but abandoned due to the outbreak of war. But Whitehall (the British government civil service) was concerned mainly with protecting the UK's sovereign interests, and due to the continuing conflicting national interests in the Antarctic there would be another 15 years of ‘weary’ controversy before the conference materialised.

1948. The State Department's internationalisation proposal

One factor underlying the increasing postwar concern over the Antarctic was the conflicting claims to sovereignty of the Antarctic Peninsula and adjacent regions between the UK, Argentina and Chile. The 1947–1948 Antarctic open season witnessed an increase in Argentine exploratory activities, resulting in a number of incidents embarrassing to the UK, including the Argentine occupation of Deception Island (Howkins Reference Howkins2008a: 154–159). In an attempt to forestall a recurrence during the following 1948–1949 season, the FO proposed to recommend to the Cabinet a direct approach to the Argentine and Chilean Governments in the hope of reaching a territorial settlement. At this point the US State Department, concerned more about the possibility of Soviet expeditions to the Antarctic, unofficially approached the UK Embassy at Washington with a plan for international administration of the whole Antarctic continent under UN trusteeship (Foreign Relations 1948: 977–983). To the FO, internationalisation did indeed represent a means of escape from the dispute over the Antarctic Peninsula sector; but it did not relish any form of UN authority. In a paper to the Cabinet on 22 July the FO proposed that the UK respond favourably to the plan, but not under UN administration (Commonwealth Relations Office 1948). On 9 August 1948 the State Department returned with an aide-memoire proposing instead a condominium in which the 7 Antarctic claimant states and the US might pool their claims in a scheme of joint sovereignty (State Department 1948). Articles 3–5 of the US Draft Agreement provided for the creation of an Antarctic Commission with full administrative powers, one member per country involved (Foreign Relations 1948: 997–999); an idea that would be taken up and considerably expanded by the FO in due course.

The State Department proposal was not particularly welcome, either to the other Antarctic claimant states or to the UK Colonial Office (CO). But at the FO Roberts felt that a condominium, despite its cumbersome nature, represented the best hope of achieving a solution to the Antarctic problem (Roberts Reference Roberts1948a). In spite of the unfavourable initial reactions, Roberts was optimistic that at least some of the Antarctic claimant states such as France could be progressively won over by UK leadership. So alarmed by this possibility were the Chileans, who were apparently unequivocally hostile to the idea, that they approached the Quai d'Orsay (the French Foreign Ministry) in an attempt to make them suspicious of British motives (Liotard Reference Liotard1948; Roberts Reference Roberts1948b). The origin of the Chileans’ distaste for the condominium principle was likely to be their own historical experience since 1866 over their border disputes with Bolivia and Peru in the Atacama Desert (St John Reference St John1994). In their view a condominium solved nothing and would create further problems worse than those that the treaty was intended to settle.

The FO, realising that there was no way of getting an international agreement before the next Antarctic season, then proposed a temporary 1-year ‘standstill agreement’, aimed at avoiding disputes pending further negotiations on territorial sovereignty. In the meantime the US received a formal response from Chile, rejecting a condominium and proposing instead its own version of a renewable standstill agreement (Bowers Reference Bowers1948; Cockram Reference Cockram1948), in this case of 5 years duration and aimed at promoting unfettered scientific collaboration without necessarily anticipating any political settlement. This formed part of an Antarctic Declaration by Chile that became known as the ‘Escudero plan’ (Berguño 2011: 47) that some historians have viewed as the real foundation of the subsequent Antarctic Treaty (Moore Reference Moore1999). However in the opinion of Jorge Berguño, Moore's assertion, while plausible, is likely to be an oversimplification (Berguño 2011: 44).

The FO standstill proposal, which was intended only as a temporary stopgap, brought a disparaging response from the CO (Bennett Reference Bennett1948; Galsworthy Reference Galsworthy1948a), which had since 1946 been made responsible for managing the FIDS. The CO accused the FO of attempting to force the proposal through with indecent haste, complaining that it would prevent FIDS from operating satisfactorily, that the Argentines could not be trusted to keep their side of the bargain, and that it implied de facto recognition of Argentine and Chilean rights. In the event the FO standstill proposal was rendered obsolete by a tripartite naval agreement between the UK, Argentina and Chile aimed at demilitarisation of the contested area. In the sense that the agreement was violated by the occasional presence of warships in the region it could not be said to have been wholly effective; but it was renewed every year until the signing of the 1959 treaty.

By November 1948 it was clear that the response from all Antarctic claimant states except the UK and New Zealand to the State Department condominium proposal was indifferent or even hostile (Foreign Office 1948a). The Argentine Foreign Minister Dr Bramuglia commented that he could not begin to consider the surrender of Argentine rights in the absence of any proposal to hold a preliminary conference (Foreign Office 1948b). Moreover the US Government appeared to have lost any enthusiasm for the State Department proposal, if indeed it ever had any. The CO, which had never liked the idea, was now somewhat embarrassed by the fact that the UK had meanwhile formally responded positively to the State Department initiative. For once the FO could do nothing but agree with them (Galsworthy Reference Galsworthy1948b).

1949–1950. Altercations between the Foreign and Colonial Offices

During 1949, the State Department, having failed with the UN and condominium proposals, decided to pursue the Chilean standstill proposal, completely redrafting it and proposing a duration of 10 years (Anstee Reference Anstee1949; Stirling Reference Stirling1949). This was received somewhat more favourably than previous State Department initiatives, but once again with the exception of the CO, whose response was lukewarm and contained numerous objections (Bennett Reference Bennett1949).

Partly for reasons of economy and partly because they believed (wrongly) that threats to UK sovereignty claims in the Antarctic were subsiding, the CO proposed in 1950 to reduce the number of FIDS bases from 7 to 4, none of which would be on the Antarctic mainland (Colonial Office 1950). This time it was the turn of the FO to provide an adverse critical retort to an initiative by the CO. Eventually a compromise was reached, but in the meantime Roberts pointed out that ever since 1946, when the CO and the Falkland Islands Governor had assumed joint responsibility for its management, FIDS had suffered from chaotic administration, poor communications, wastage, and low morale amongst its field staff, which were due to inadequate facilities, lack of trained staff, and the limited funding capability from Port Stanley, that was dependent on whaling revenues (Roberts Reference Roberts1950a). In short, the issue was not whether or not the UK could afford to economise on its presence in the Antarctic; it was that it needed more efficient management, secure funding, and a more focused sense of purpose.

The Foreign Office in 1951. One of us?

On being retained at FORD following the end of World War II, one of Roberts’ main tasks was to assist the FO American Department, which had been allocated the responsibility of dealing with Antarctic issues (Roberts Reference Roberts1963). Having been recruited as a technical expert, Roberts was not seen by the diplomatic staff at the FO as ‘one of us’ (M.J. Anstee, personal communication, 4 June 2014), but rather as an eccentric polar enthusiast (Anstee Reference Anstee2003: 75–79), known colloquially in the office as ‘Mr Antarctic’ (D.H. Anderson, personal communication, 1 January 2014). It was the attitude of the incumbent Head of American Department that would in the coming years determine whether Roberts would be able to exert any influence on FO policy on Antarctica. In November 1950 a new Head was appointed: Donald Maclean.

Being at the time occupied for several months as observer to the Norwegian-British-Swedish Expedition (NBSAE) to Dronning Maud Land, Roberts saw little of Maclean during his short tenure as head of FO American Department before his sudden disappearance on 25 May 1951. When Roberts returned to the FO from NBSAE he requested an extra assistant to cope with the large volume of work on FID maps and place naming, to which Maclean responded by asking why the FO was paying for it anyway. Two of Maclean's very last FO notes dated 21 and 24 May 1951 (Maclean Reference Maclean1951a, Reference Maclean1951b) reveal his recommendation to transfer Roberts and his assistant Ena Thomas to the CO to complete the work, a prospect that was anathema to Roberts owing to a long-running feud between himself and the prickly John Bennett, who at the time was the CO representative on the interdepartmental Antarctic Place Names Committee (Day Reference Day2012: 438; Roberts Reference Roberts1950b). Fortunately for Roberts, Maclean never followed up this threat. Instead, on the night of 25 May, with MI5 closing in on him, he and Guy Burgess slipped away and headed for Moscow, never to return. Maclean was well liked and respected by his FO colleagues (Anstee Reference Anstee2003), and his exposed espionage activities for the Soviet Union (USSR) were profoundly shocking to the FO, to say nothing of the UK and US governments and their ‘special relationship’.

1952–1954. The UK faces increased competition

The CO's 1950 assessment had been way off the mark. While the US and Chile continued to attempt to negotiate an agreement based on the Escudero plan, Argentina under President Perón and Britain under Prime Minister Churchill were raising the stakes by expansion of their respective Antarctic programmes (Howkins Reference Howkins2008a: 191–196). Despite the annual renewal of the Anglo-Argentine-Chilean tripartite naval agreement, tensions increased during 1952–1953 and surfaced with the potentially serious incidents at Hope Bay and Deception Island (Howkins Reference Howkins2008a: 197–230). The UK government was sufficiently concerned as to set up a Ministerial Committee on Antarctica towards the end of 1954.

During 1954 Argentina gained a significant edge over the UK by acquiring the icebreaker General San Martín, sending the vessel to the east coast of the Weddell Sea, and constructing Base Belgrano, which opened on 18 January 1955. Within the FO the news prompted an immediate reaction from Roberts (Reference Roberts1955a). Ostensibly Roberts’ minute was in response to a leak concerning the proposed CTAE, over which Roberts and SPRI Director Colin Bertram disagreed strongly with James Wordie. Roberts complained of the Chinese walls between the FO, CO and Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), the latter two having both ‘swallowed Mr Wordie's propaganda hook, line and sinker’; but the accompanying 4-page memorandum (Roberts Reference Roberts1955b) encompassed much wider issues regarding UK's Antarctic policy and its diminishing prospects in the face of the increasing competition. In Roberts’ view the UK had to place priority on its contributions to the IGY, the CTAE, and the proposed air survey of Graham Land that he personally favoured. He also emphasised that the IGY would result in further threats to the British Antarctic from the US and from the USSR that Whitehall was seemingly oblivious of (Roberts Reference Roberts1955c, Reference Roberts1955d).

1955. Roberts faces deadlock at the Foreign Office

The situation was in Roberts’ eyes a matter of urgency for the UK, but the response from Morgan Man, then Head of the FO American Department, was discouraging: ‘Pending the high level agonizing reappraisal of the UK Antarctic policy I do not think we can usefully do anything at present’. Although Man agreed with Roberts on the relative political unimportance of the CTAE, he was not prepared to support Roberts in deprecating it. However, when pushed by the Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, Man circulated a draft Cabinet paper (Man Reference Man1955a) that incorporated much of Roberts’ own advice. Because this was now to be a FO paper only, not a joint FO-CO paper as originally envisaged, Man was apprehensive of interdepartmental fireworks, particularly if that were to happen at Cabinet level. The more combative Roberts might well have relished the prospect. In March 1955, frustrated at the perennial need to get any proposal on UK Antarctic policy through the FO, the CO, the CRO, the Governor of the Falkland Islands, the Admiralty, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Cabinet, Roberts submitted 3 papers for consideration at the ministerial Committee on Antarctica. One of the proposals was for the wholesale reorganisation of FIDS (Roberts Reference Roberts1955e), an issue that he had already raised 5 years previously (Roberts Reference Roberts1950a). He also pointed out that Australia, France and Norway had all set up specialist Antarctic departments to deal with the administration, research and politics under a single authority and that it was time that the UK did the same. Some of Roberts’ proposals were described by Man as ‘dynamite’ (Man Reference Man1955b); others in the FO commented that they were ‘interesting’. They did not get put to the Committee on Antarctica at its next meeting at the Cabinet Office.

During the previous year the UK Cabinet had decided to offer arbitration with Argentina and Chile over the Antarctic dispute. Both countries declined, with the result that the UK was now in the process of making a unilateral application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming trespass by the two adversaries (Howkins Reference Howkins2008a: 229–240). The proceedings, prepared by Professor Humphrey Waldock of Oxford and Gerald Fitzmaurice, with substantial factual input from Roberts, were filed with the Court on 4 May 1955 (Roberts Reference Roberts1932–1978; Whitehead Reference Whitehead1956a). In August of that year Argentina and Chile declined to accept the Court's ruling (Empson Reference Empson1955; Whitehead Reference Whitehead1956a), and the case was finally removed from the ICJ's list in March 1956 (Fitzmaurice Reference Fitzmaurice1956; International Court 1956).

Meanwhile an alternative proposal was being mooted at the highest level of government: that the UK should consider complete withdrawal from the Antarctic (Salisbury 1955). This prospect would continue to rear its head over the next few years (Hood Reference Hood1957a). However in August 1955 the Cabinet officially approved a new 5-year programme for FIDS. Forcible eviction of trespassers from the FID prior to the start of IGY was being recommended by the FO Legal Advisers, demanded by the House of Commons, and even contemplated by some FO diplomats (Speaight Reference Speaight1955a). In the words of Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan ‘I hope we may be able to get tough’ (Macmillan Reference Macmillan1955). Prospects for a negotiated settlement of the dispute seemed more remote than ever.

But in September 1955 a significant political shift was created by a revolution in Argentina that resulted in the ousting of Perón, which seems to have delighted the occupants of the Argentine Antarctic bases (Anderson Reference Anderson1957: 152–153). By October the UK had decided formally that the use of force against Argentines would be counter-productive. On 24 October Man prepared a Parliamentary Question asking the Foreign Secretary to make a statement on the Antarctic dispute in the light of the new Argentine situation. The question was deferred to 7 November, but on that day the very full House of Commons had other things on its mind. Following peremptory answers to this and several other questions (‘no change’), the House settled in to a 7-hour debate on the missing FO diplomats Burgess and Maclean (Hansard Reference Hansard1955).

Roberts also had other things on his mind. His circulated memorandum of 28 October 1955 UK policy in the Antarctic, concerning the proposed activities of FIDS in the coming season (Roberts Reference Roberts1955f), contained a robust strategic appraisal of the UK position:

1. (1) Rejection of the use of force means that the UK has accepted the principle of negotiated partition; if it does not take a tough line it cannot hope to hold the whole of the FID. Any agreement should allow common access to Deception Island by the UK, Argentina and Chile.

2. (2) Since it cannot secure a legal settlement, and is not prepared to use force, the UK should plan now for a political settlement. Every year this becomes more difficult, and by 1959 its Antarctic activities will appear puny.

3. (3) Forward planning is essential for the UK to retain some Antarctic territory without loss of prestige. Whitehall, especially the CO, seems oblivious of the dangers to the British claim. The FO should circulate a considered paper reviewing the whole position.

4. (4) The UK is following two incompatible policies: the need to reduce its overseas commitments, and the arousing of public interest (for example via the CTAE) that will result in political pressure to exert forceful action to defend its sovereignty.

5. (5) UK support for the IGY has been unavoidable but is politically inconvenient, and is likely to continue to be an embarrassment to the UK until 1959.

6. (6) If the UK believes that an international Antarctic conference is unavoidable, it should initiate one, preferably by 1956.

7. (7) The UK cannot possibly keep the US and the USSR out of the Antarctic, so it should not incur the odium of appearing to do so.

This time Roberts’ paper provoked heated debate amongst his American Department colleagues, which seems in itself to represent some advance in Roberts’ ability to influence FO policy. But once again there was a damp squib response from Morgan Man (Man Reference Man1955c): ‘I agree with much of this but I do not think that the time is yet ripe for a Foreign Office paper . . . . . I do not think that it is practicable for Her Majesty's Government to take the initiative now in order to bring about a formal settlement’. In a lengthy memorandum by the American Department's Richard Speaight, which had been agreed with the FO's Legal and UN departments (Speaight Reference Speaight1955b), the conclusion was singularly anodyne: ‘(1) It is in the UK interest to promote a close understanding with the Americans in the Antarctic, modifying its own claims if necessary (2) But it should aim at postponing any reconsideration until the 5-year plan has made further progress (3) Meanwhile the UK should make unofficial soundings of the new Argentine Government (4) UK should refrain from forcible action against Argentina and Chile (5) The tripartite naval declaration should be renewed (6) UK should seek closer cooperation with the Americans.’

In other words, do nothing.

1956. The Soviets and the Indians take an interest

For British diplomacy the year 1956 was marked by a thawing in relations with the USSR and a deterioration in relations with the US. This extended to Antarctic affairs, manifested by a growing suspicion of US intentions regarding the continent (Muirhead Reference Muirhead1956a).

On 11 February, 5 years after their disappearance from the UK, Burgess and Maclean resurfaced with a press conference in Moscow (Fisher Reference Fisher1977: 197). A few days later a group of Commonwealth ambassadors approached US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles with a joint démarche proposing regular discussions between the US and the Commonwealth aimed at keeping the USSR out of the Antarctic (Man Reference Man1956a), the initiative for which may have come in late 1955 from Australian External Affairs Minister Richard Casey (Hall Reference Hall, Jabour-Green and Haward2002). Dulles was not interested. The formal aide-memoire from the State Department rejecting the request was described by the UK's Washington Ambassador David Muirhead as ‘terse to the point of rudeness’ (Muirhead Reference Muirhead1956b). The reaction of the FO American Department was one of universal bafflement.

With the goodwill visit to the UK of Khrushchev and Bulganin in April 1956, Anglo-Soviet relations continued to improve. In the same month two academicians from the Leningrad Arctic Institute visited SPRI, followed by the return visit of the SPRI's representatives Roberts and Terence Armstrong at the end of May (Roberts Reference Roberts1956). Roberts was not present as a representative of the FO, and had not been authorised to discuss political matters (Rutter Reference Rutter1956). Nevertheless an outcome of the visit was a clear impression on Roberts that, whilst the Soviets intended to retain a sizeable indefinite presence in the Antarctic, they were remarkably open to exchanges of scientific information and facilities in the polar regions. This may have contributed towards the eventual reversal in FO policy in 1957 concerning the inclusion of the USSR in the treaty.

That year a development that was particularly unwelcome to most of the Antarctic claimant states, notably the UK, Argentina and Chile, who for once found themselves on the same side, was the formal request by the government of India for an item entitled ‘The question of Antarctica’ to be placed on the agenda of the 11th Session of the UN General Assembly. It was tacitly supported by the USSR. A UN solution for Antarctica had, as mentioned earlier, attracted enthusiasm from a number of individuals and organisations in the UK, now augmented by supportive letters to The Times from unlikely bedfellows James Callaghan, Miles Clifford and Edward Shackleton. The FO American Department was unanimous in its antipathy to this proposal (Whitehead Reference Whitehead1956b), partly because UN trusteeship had already been considered and rejected in 1948, partly because of the UN's collective anti-colonialist sentiments, and partly because of the publicity that would ensue. In FO eyes secrecy was essential to any negotiations on the Antarctic. But ironically the Indian initiative may have contributed in its own way towards the evolution of a treaty by focusing the minds of the claimant states on what might happen if they failed to achieve agreement amongst themselves (Howkins Reference Howkins2008b).

A new man at the helm: Henry Hankey

At the end of August 1956 Morgan Man was moved on from the FO American Department (Man Reference Man1956b) in order to take up a diplomatic post in the Middle East, which was more his spiritual home than were the polar regions. Man was replaced by Henry Hankey, a man with long experience and interest in the Americas; he had just been Head of Chancery at the UK Embassy in Santiago, and later on would play a major diplomatic role in the Cuban missile crisis of 1961–1962.

Hankey's arrival marked an important change in FO Antarctic policy. There was no more talk of territorial sovereignty ‘rights’, judicial proceedings, protests to Argentina and Chile, or advocacy of forcible action. All discussion was to be on the negotiation of a political settlement. Within days of starting his new post Hankey persuaded his replacement in Santiago Sir Charles Empson to make an informal approach to the Chileans (Empson Reference Empson1956). But with the imminent international crisis over the Suez Canal that was to prove over-optimistic. The mood in the FO American Department was sombre; its reputation, already sullied by its harbouring of one of the country's most notorious traitors, was at an all-time low. Hankey was sufficiently concerned about the parlous state of Anglo-American relations to circulate a memorandum on the topic (Hankey Reference Hankey1956a).

Roberts, who for years had needed a champion for his cause with a sufficiently high level of authority and commitment, seized his chance. There is little documentary record of informal discussion between Roberts and Hankey, but scraps of correspondence suggest that Roberts remained on close terms with Hankey and his archaeologist wife Vronwy for many years afterwards (Roberts Reference Roberts1969; Hankey Reference Hankey1971). Two FO eye-witnesses, the diplomat and then Resident Clerk Richard Parsons, and Assistant Legal Advisor John Freeland (J.R. Freeland personal communication, 16 February 2014; R.E.C.F. Parsons, personal communication, 23 February 2014), were impressed by the teamwork of Hankey and Roberts. ‘American Department had been put down a bit, because shortly after Donald Maclean had been head, it had been necessary to say that the American Department was really peripheral or unimportant, which of course it wasn't’, commented Parsons (Reference Parsons2005). His testimony is supported by Foreign Secretary Macmillan's statement to the House of Commons during the 7 November debate on Burgess and Maclean (Hansard Reference Hansard1955). Moreover: ‘Owing to the Maclean fiasco the American Department was deeply embarrassed. Hankey wanted to do something big, to restore the Department's prestige’ (Parsons 2014). In Hankey the FO American Department now had a leader who recognised the negotiation of an Antarctic settlement to be a matter of urgency for the UK (Hankey Reference Hankey1956b).

Many years later Hugh Carless, Head of FO Latin America Department in 1973–1977 recalled that in his opinion Hankey was a leading player in the success of the Antarctic treaty (Carless Reference Carless2002). This was also recorded by Roberts himself. In his Origin and history of the Polar Regions section (Roberts Reference Roberts1976), he writes: ‘1957–59. Main activity preparing for 12-nation Antarctic Conference in Washington which signed the Antarctic Treaty. The idea of this Treaty originated in the Foreign Office; not the State Department as is often claimed, and owed a great deal to Mr Hankey, who was then head of American Department.’ And again in Roberts’ own curriculum vitae (King and Savours Reference King and Savours1995a) there appears the entry: ‘1959. October 12 – December 1. Visit to Washington for 12-power Antarctic Conference as member of UK Delegation to negotiate Antarctic Treaty signed on December 1. Preparations for this have been a major activity in co-operation with Henry Hankey (especially) and many others. We did in fact initiate the whole idea, despite later American claims to the contrary.’ On being proposed in 1965 to a fellowship of Churchill College, Cambridge, he expresses doubt that he can find the time to fulfil college duties: ‘The 12-nation Antarctic Treaty of 1959 was in many respects a special ‘baby’ of mine, and I must continue to nurture it. . . . . These problems absorb almost all my time’ (Roberts Reference Roberts1965).

The Chatham House party

The Antarctic question acquired further impetus towards the end of 1956 from the establishment of a private discussion group at Chatham House, set up to examine the UK's Antarctic position in the context of IGY activities (Hankey Reference Hankey1956b). A Chatham House paper had been published in July (Jenks Reference Jenks1956), advocating an international authority for Antarctica based on a complex of existing organisations such as the International Civil Aviation Organisation, World Meteorological Office and International Council of Scientific Unions. At a meeting of the Chatham House group in December, the outgoing Director of SPRI, Colin Bertram pointed out to the eclectic audience the UK's recent rapid loss of its lead position in the Antarctic (Bertram Reference Bertram1956). It was followed by a further discussion meeting (Chatham House Reference House1956), chaired by the distinguished physicist Professor Patrick Blackett.

In addition to Roberts, the FO representatives at the meeting included Ivor Vincent, who was unwell at the time and was disenchanted and sceptical of the value of the exercise, mainly on account of the entrenched positions taken by certain speakers, in particular the ‘World Government’ lobby (Vincent Reference Vincent1956c). In contrast Roberts commented half a year later in a letter to Bertram who was then in New Zealand, that it had played a ‘very substantial’ part in winning over the upper echelons of the Colonial and Foreign Offices to the emerging ideas for an Antarctic settlement (Roberts Reference Roberts1957b), and that ‘we have made big strides in the past 5 months’. Such big strides in fact, that in April 1957 Charles Empson at the Santiago Embassy protested to senior FO officials (Empson Reference Empson1957) that nobody had told him what was going on, asking how he could be expected to represent UK policy if he did not know what it was, and how was it that strategic matters had been discussed not with the Foreign Service but unofficially at Chatham House under a chairman who at one time had been considered a security risk owing to his Fabian political views? In response, the rapidly evolving FO policy was explained to Empson by Viscount ‘Sammy’ Hood (Hood Reference Hood1957b), a senior official who had originally favoured complete UK withdrawal from the Antarctic (Hood Reference Hood1957a) until a critical review by the Chiefs of Staff gave that option a categorical ‘no’. Hood would later on become the UK's chief representative at most of the discussions in Washington; ironically he had himself once been considered a ‘security risk’ under the FO's positive vetting procedure introduced in the wake of the Maclean debacle (Foreign Office 1953).

1957. Unprecedented dynamism at the Foreign Office

Shortly before the New Year Hankey was contacted by the UK Embassy in Buenos Aires (Hopson Reference Hopson1956), disclosing that the British Naval Attaché there had been approached in confidence by the Argentine Chief of Staff and by Rear-Admiral Rodolfo Panzarini, Head of the Argentine Antarctic Institute. Both were conveying a strong signal to the UK that they wanted to discuss the Anglo-Argentine dispute and were confident of arriving at an agreement.

This initiative is likely to have been prompted by the political situation within Argentina, in which the provisional government at the time was dominated by the Argentine navy and were thought to be, relatively speaking, favourably disposed towards the UK (Hankey Reference Hankey1957a). Panzarini was perhaps best known in IGY Antarctic circles for a somewhat intemperate political outburst during the 1956 CSAGI (Comité Special de l'Année Geophysique Internationale) meeting in Paris (Roberts Reference Roberts, Lüdecke, Tipton-Everett and Lay2012), from which he had to be diplomatically extracted; but he was popular with the British (Fuchs Reference Fuchs1982: 166), and would later develop a warm friendship with Roberts (King and Savours Reference King and Savours1995: 106).

Hankey believed that a limited Anglo-Argentine-Chilean tripartite territorial agreement would be more acceptable to the Latin Americans than an 8 power condominium such as that originally proposed by the US (Hankey Reference Hankey1956c, Reference Hankey1957b); but owing to the changed political situation created by IGY he proposed to play for higher stakes, favouring (with reservations) the condominium option. On 26 February 1957 Hankey requested a reappraisal by the Joint Planning Staff of the strategic interest of the Antarctic to the UK (Hankey Reference Hankey1957c) and whether they favoured the option of internationalisation of UK Antarctic territory or that of complete withdrawal by the UK. The Chiefs of Staff concluded, as mentioned earlier, that withdrawal from Antarctica was not a remotely acceptable option. This was crucial for Roberts; had the decision gone the other way Hankey would have been forced to abandon any constructive UK proposal for the Antarctic (Hankey Reference Hankey1957d).

Mindful of the huge US investment in IGY and the presence of Soviet Antarctic bases, State Department officials were now waking up from their Antarctic hibernation. They notified the FO that they were taking another look at the proposals for consultation on Antarctica between the Commonwealth nations and the US that they had rejected one year previously (Vincent Reference Vincent1957). A further initiative came in April 1957 from Australia, where Casey proposed a joint UK-Australia-New Zealand meeting on the Antarctic in London, which in the event had to wait until September (Jasper Reference Jasper1957; Templeton Reference Templeton2000: 128).

Within the FO, the senior Legal Adviser Gerald Fitzmaurice was by now presenting his team with the intellectual exercise of drafting a treaty for the Antarctic (J.R. Freeland, personal communication 16 February 2014; R.E.C.F. Parsons, personal communication 23 February 2014). Even the CO was responsive, Under-Secretary Philip Rogers producing a lengthy memorandum on the topic (Willis Reference Willis1957). Much of what he expressed mirrored the views of the FO, with the exception that the CO was adamantly opposed to the condominium option. Rogers, who was also chairman of the Official Committee on Antarctica, admitted that to his ‘imperialist sentiment’ the internationalisation of British territory was not entirely agreeable, but it was better than being ‘squeezed out’. Despite his aversion to it Rogers was keen enough to claim ‘equal rights of discovery or invention’, as though the treaty were somehow patentable.

Hankey continued to liaise with Maurice Willis of the CO and by 26 June they had agreed the first draft of a Joint Note by the FO and the CO analysing all the options, which Hankey submitted to Viscount Hood (Hankey Reference Hankey1957e). At a meeting chaired by Hood on 8 July it was agreed that no form of UN trusteeship would be acceptable and the paper was correspondingly redrafted to eliminate that option (Scrivener Reference Scrivener1957). There remained however a number of potentially contentious issues, in particular concerning the composition of the proposed International Authority for the Antarctic. The FO was now recommending that the USSR be included, not excluded.

In August 1957 the first joint meetings in London with representatives of the UK Commonwealth partners succeeded in achieving a general consensus. But across the Atlantic the State Department was mooting a proposal that was rather unwelcome to the UK (Hankey Reference Hankey1957f; Templeton Reference Templeton2000: 128): a tripartite limited international arrangement in which the sectors of Antarctica claimed by Australia and New Zealand, and the unclaimed sector, would be administered jointly between the US and its ANZUS partners. The UK was being sidelined from this arrangement, although it was being suggested that other claimant states such as the UK might be brought in later. This manoeuvre by the State Department was ostensibly for the US to avoid taking sides in the Anglo-Argentine-Chilean dispute (Dulles Reference Dulles1957), but it was admitted privately to be a response to the UK's latest recommendation to include the USSR (Audland Reference Audland1957a). Once again Hankey was distraught by doubts and suspicions over US intentions (Hankey Reference Hankey1957g).

By 5 September 1957 the FO American Department had prepared a final version of the joint FO-CO note Sovereignty in the Antarctic for the imminent meeting with Commonwealth representatives (Dominions Office 1957a; Hankey Reference Hankey1957h). Following a review of the options it recommended the setting up of an ‘International Authority for the Antarctic without sovereignty in name’. At the meetings of 12–13 September at the CRO in London, which included representatives from Australia House, New Zealand House, South Africa House and Canada House, FO Legal Advisor John Freeland explained the fundamental difference between the UK plan and the US condominium proposal (Dominions Office 1957b). The difference lay in the presence of the reversionary clause in the UK draft proposal. A condominium is generally understood to be an indefinite pooling of sovereign rights, with no implied reversion to the prior legal status in the event of a breakdown of the treaty. In contrast the UK proposal stated explicitly the retention of pre-existing claimed sovereign rights by participating states, with no ‘pooling’: arguably an uncomfortable compromise, but a necessary one if the southern hemisphere states Australia, Argentina and Chile were to be kept on board. It would end up, in a mutated form, as part of the celebrated Article IV of the treaty that was signed in Washington.

On 20 September 1957 Arthur de la Mare at the UK Washington Embassy provided the FO with some insight into State Department thinking on Antarctica, or rather lack of thinking (De la Mare Reference De la Mare1957). It seemed that nothing much had changed, but shortly afterwards US Secretary of State Dulles responded to the FO proposal for a US-UK-Australia-New Zealand quadripartite meeting, and appointed former Ambassador Paul Daniels as adviser to the State Department on Antarctic matters (Hankey Reference Hankey1957i).

Readers of Roberts’ personal diary of the Washington Conference will probably have been bemused by his vituperative criticisms of Daniels (Roberts Reference Roberts1959: 12, 25, 91). Roberts was not alone in this view; UK diplomats had long suspected that Daniels’ long experience of Latin American diplomacy would predispose him to favour Argentina and Chile over the UK (De la Mare Reference De la Mare1957). FO members concurred with Roberts’ opinion to the extent that Daniels was seen as arrogant and partisan (J.R. Freeland, personal communication, 16 February 2014; R.E.C.F. Parsons, personal communication, 23 February 2014), notwithstanding his undoubted patience in negotiating with the Latin Americans.

On 7 October 1957, 3 days after the IGY's spectacular success, the launch of Sputnik I, Daniels convened the first quadripartite US-UK-Australia-New Zealand meeting in Room 5104 of the Department of State in Washington. Viscount Hood expounded the UK position and circulated as a working paper the finalised FO document of 3 October (Audland Reference Audland1957b), based largely on the earlier joint FO-CO paper. During November Legal Advisers Fitzmaurice and Freeland drafted a Convention and Constitution that outlined the FO vision of a High Authority for Antarctica (Foreign Office 1957; Freeland Reference Freeland1957), including a 2-tier membership scheme that would prove to be controversial. But it was Ambassador Daniels, already arranging further meetings in Washington, who was now in the driver's seat.

1958. The international wrangling begins in earnest

On 9 December 1957 Daniels wrote to Dulles, proposing a treaty (then referred to as a ‘statute’) to be drafted at an international conference. By this time Daniels had become converted to favour the inclusion of the USSR (Daniels Reference Daniels1957).

In January 1958, during Prime Ministerial talks between New Zealand and the UK, it became apparent that the Australian Cabinet was not only resolutely against the ‘surrender’ of Australian sovereignty (Bass Reference Bass1958), but also opposing internationalisation of the Antarctic if the USSR were to be included (Hankey Reference Hankey1958a). After all the efforts at persuading the US to accept Soviet participation, such an intransigent position was a setback, but it was perhaps not entirely unexpected owing to the fractious Soviet-Australian relationship existing since the 1954 defection of Vladimir Petrov and the unagreed occupation of Australian Antarctic territory by Soviet bases during IGY, the Australians and the Soviets having broken off diplomatic relations. This setback would be by no means the last; the wrangling would continue for nearly two years at the secret Ambassadors’ meetings in Washington preparatory to the Conference (Beck Reference Beck1985; Roberts Reference Roberts1959: 5–7). For one thing, the UK proposal for rigorous international control of the Antarctic would receive a hostile response from southern hemisphere states (Caccia Reference Caccia1959). During this period voluminous diplomatic traffic ensued between Hankey and the Washington UK embassy (Hankey Reference Hankey1958b), but with relatively little indication of direct involvement by Roberts. It would be only at the 6-week long Washington Conference of October–December 1959 that Roberts would be able in person to engage in the cut and thrust of international negotiation. By the time the 12 parties had convened, the original FO proposal had become watered down somewhat; but the signing of the treaty was nonetheless a satisfying outcome for Roberts and Hankey.

It was politically expedient that during Roberts’ lifetime the US State Department was being credited with the Antarctic Treaty; had the UK's deep involvement been recognised at the time, the treaty might well not have been ratified by the governments of Argentina and Chile, and possibly not even by the US government, since for some members of Congress the only reason for approving ratification was that the treaty was thought to be an American idea, and therefore must be good for the US. Roberts, Hankey and their FO colleagues may therefore have been disinclined to highlight the UK involvement, at least until the treaty had become secure.

As a part-time employee of the FO throughout his professional life Roberts had limited authority to direct FO policy. In contrast Hankey, as a career diplomat, played a far more direct role in the international negotiating process; but he was not a polar specialist and would have depended completely on Roberts’ encyclopedic specialist knowledge and advice on the Antarctic. At the conference itself Roberts remarked in his diary that only 4 of the approximately 100 delegates had ever visited the Antarctic, of whom two were Russian and one was himself (Roberts Reference Roberts1959: 16).