Nick Archer

My blog's identity and the Prince of Wales Own Band Club in Malta

This blog has been suffering an identity crisis. It began life, as I explained back in November 2006 as a way of demystifying my role for a Maltese audience, produced in Malta and hosted on the High Commission website. Now it is hosted by FCO Blogs, and is more likely to pick up non-Maltese readers, not least colleagues elsewhere. Should this make a difference? When I was ‘negotiating’ (haa) their takeover, FCO Blogs laughed at my suggestion that it did not already have a global reach – once you are in cyberspace, they reminded me, you are out there for everyone. Oyes, but no writer writes without a more specific audience in mind – I assume – and this is where the identity crisis arose; I’ve been too conscious of a new, non-Maltese readership. So it’s time to say again; this will continue deliberately to be provincial; to assume some familiarity with these islands; and to avoid explaining them to the wider world – that is for Maltese bloggers.

So now I’ll put my blinkers back on. On Sunday morning I took the family over to the Prince of Wales Band Club to say goodbye, and to present to the Committee a signed photograph of His Royal Highness which I have had for months in a drawer. The Committee rooms of the old Stricklandjan band clubs are full of Royal memorabilia, and the Prince of Wales’ is no exception. When I first went over to Birgu two years ago, I decided that I should try to do two things; encourage The Prince of Wales to visit if I could engineer a visit to Malta, and in the meantime secure from my former boss a memento to symbolise a continuing interest in the links and affection we English still find in these clubs. The Prince of Wales was beginning a renovation of its clubhouse; the Household agreed to send a picture to mark its completion.I should have known better; completion is some distance away. In the end we had to anticipate it. As for the visit, it too will happen after my time, but I am confident that can and will; there is such an overlap between the challenges Malta faces and the issues His Royal Highness has now been working on for so long. It’s just a question of picking the moment. Meanwhile, this Sunday night, the King’s Own’s annual pre-festa reception is upon us.It’s always sweltering; always atmospheric – the ladies’ fans fluttering , the old banners and sepia photographs all over the walls, the window seats crammed with guests leaning out over the Strada Reale for fresh air – and always enjoyable; these are the places you find the goodwill which keeps the relationship warm.

Yesterday to talk to the Nationalist party Secretary General Paul Borg-Olivier about why – by contrast, you might say – links between the Nationalists and the British Conservatives are not closer. Of course you could do a PhD on that. Perhaps I should have said; ‘how we can make them closer’. Generational change at both ends opens up new possiblities. The two Labour parties are of course relatively intimate – something for which I always credit Joe Mifsud as much as history or politics, although, to circle back to ‘our’ band clubs, the MLP did pick up most of the Stricklandjani when that movement expired…

Posted at 10:28 23 July 2008 by Nick Archer  | 

A Mediterranean summer night and Maltese Doctors’ ‘brain-drain’ to the UK

Another year and it’s time again for one of our favourite events – the Kinemastik short film festival in Gnien il-Gardjola.  Sponsored by the British Council once again because it hits their target demographic perfectly, and a difficult-to-describe mix of extraordinary location – on a free-standing ravel in forming part of the outer fortifications of Valletta – the petards of the Kalkara village feast going off across Grand Harbour, cheap Budvar, and lots of short and very, very short films: some funny, some pretentious, some rather moving, all in the heat of a Southern Mediterranean summer night.  There’s always a heart-stopping musical moment, too – last year, some bright spark tested the sound equipment by playing the overture to Rheingold, this year, a Maltese film suddenly sprang the andante of the Appassionata on us.

At a lunch for the President of the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday, I had the chance to talk properly to the Minister of Social Welfare about how we manage the doctors’ ‘brain drain’ to the UK.  We’re making progress, with some of our officials planning to come here in early August and a positive reply from our Department of Health to some Maltese proposals I forwarded at the beginning of the month.  Meanwhile, St George’s Tooting are back on the 29th to finalise their agreement with the University for a partnership which should develop into cooperation on post-graduate training here.   This is one of a number of things I want to get nailed down before leaving; the list seems to get longer as the days pass.

Posted at 09:37 22 July 2008 by Nick Archer  | 

A strike, an interview and my reflections

So, we are in the grip of a national public transport strike, triggered by a government decision to open the hearse market to new operators.  This sentence may have a rather surreal ring to non-Maltese…

Meanwhile, some of our Maltese friends find the fact that I shall next week be helping interview candidates to come here next similarly surreal.  It’s not how most diplomatic services appoint their Ambassadors.  But yes – the job has been advertised around the Foreign Office; we had a good number of bids; and we’ve pretty much whittled these down to a shortlist of three people to interview.  I write hoping that you will conclude that Malta will get the best-suited person currently available and, moreover, somebody who really wants to come here and do this job.  

It’s strange being obliged to say that one’s off but forbidden to say where to.  You can see people unsure as to whether to congratulate or commiserate.  It’s tricky, too – the more so against this background – to communicate the right mix of the satisfaction which anyone working in a hierarchical organisation feels when moving onwards and upwards, and the sadness that we diplomats feel when, after investing heavily and personally in a new country and new people, we’re told to up sticks and start again.  We sat up over supper until three-ish in the morning after the Calleja concert on Saturday night with the Governor of the Central Bank, the new Secretary General of the Nationalist Party, and the Minister of Justice and Home Affairs and their wives, and thought three things: most of my colleagues in other countries would kill for this kind of ‘access’, in the jargon; after two years we are in the company of people we know and like, and; we’re about to throw it all away – why? 

Posted at 16:20 16 July 2008 by Nick Archer  | 

Why I’m moving on.. and the two "Tonio’s"

The front page of our website carried the news that I’ll be moving on from Malta in August. This blog will inevitably become something of a chronicle of departure.  I hope that that in itself may be of interest to those who have never bothered – why should you? – to think about how, when and why Ambassadors or High Commissioners come and go.

The question I’ve been asked most over the last week – after Where are you going?, which I cannot answer yet because there are strict rules about whom you tell first and second and so on – is Why so soon?  It is early; I might have stayed until March of 2010, but these days, tour lengths are maxima and when you go depends more on when the right next job for you comes up.  In my predecessor’s case, a little more than three years in; in mine, about two and a half.  If a job looks like it might have your name on it, you grab it.

This is not how most people imagine our lives are regulated; there’s still a strong sense that you ‘are posted’ – that the experience is essentially passive.  But the British Foreign Service has made it more active: you watch; you bid; you interview; and you may get what you and your employers think is a good fit.  As long as there’s a framework to guard against absurdities – a move a year, or staying put forever – this must be a better way, mustn’t it?

Meanwhile The Times of Malta yesterday quoted the Foreign Minister, Tonio Borg, as saying ‘Malta must recognise Kosovo’.  Yes.

I went to see the other Tonio yesterday – Tonio Fenech, the Finance Minister – to offer his Ministry a Chevening fellowship.  These are the successors to the scholarships we used to offer here, but which we phased out once Maltese students got easier access to British universities as EU citizens.   At the beginning of this year, Martha Delicata from Justice and Home Affairs went on a fellowship in England to look at Managing Migration.  She was a great success.  This coming January’s is on the European Political Economy.  We won Malta the right to apply because there’s still an understanding back home of the challenge of building capacity – notably civil service capacity – here to our mutual benefit.  But it’s only the right to bid; as with attempts to secure Ambassadorial appointments, you then have to succeed in the selection process.  So I wanted the Minister personally to help identify of a really strong candidate.  He will. 

Posted at 11:08 15 July 2008 by Nick Archer  | 

Town twinning ... and a hero's tale

One thing my predecessor worked hard on was twinning.  When I arrived in 2006 I found that he had, as it were, planted seeds all over the islands.  My job, it soon became clear, was to work out which were going to grow, which not, and to concentrate on nurturing the first lot.  Two and a half years on, the picture is rather clearer. 

The link between the two Pembrokes (three actually, since at the Welsh end Pembroke town and Pembroke Docks are both involved) is strongest.  I was in Pembroke (Malta) on Friday evening for Pembroke Day, and again yesterday, on both occasions with Elfed Williams of the St David’s Welsh Society, who is usually to be found somewhere close to any Welsh initiative, and Sir Brooke Boothby, whom the Maltese authorities have just appointed their Honorary Consul in Wales.  This link is healthy; self-sustaining and focussed on young people – not in an abstract way but actually taking them to and fro to play rugby, live with families and so on.

Also at the Monday meeting were John Boxall, the Mayor of Birgu, and the Secretary of Isla Council.  Another twinning relationship which my predecessor helped get going is the one existing between these two towns and Bormla on the one hand and HMS Illustrious on the other.  This, too, will last – at least until Illustrious is decommissioned – because it, too, is grounded in real people-to-people links.  I’m just back from Birgu where I presented to John a memento from Illustrious which he was unable to pick up himself when the ship was last in Grand Harbour a few months ago.  I’m not sure whether he will be able to handle a town in Anglesey as well; Maltese councils are no richer than ours.

The link with that town, Moelfre, is that in 1859 a sailor from Birgu called Guze Ruggier (aka Joe Rogers) was awarded the RNLI’s Gold Medal (the only non-member to be so honoured) for helping save the lives of 39 people caught up in the wreck, off the coast near the town, of the Royal Charter.  He was quite a tabloid hero at the time; you can read the story. Next year is the 150th anniversary and a big celebration is planned; to start a twinning would be nice if it were possible.  Meanwhile, John is going to find a street in Birgu to name after Ruggier; not easy either but, we think, do-able.

Posted at 15:23 10 July 2008 by Nick Archer  |