Readers of my blogs will be aware that Sir Andrew Gilchrist, when Ambassador to Ireland, was instrumental in making THE IRISH TIMES responsible to a secretive oath- bound “TRUST” dedicated to serve British state interests..
And that a few years earlier Sir Andrew, when Ambassador to Indonesia was the grisly Eminence/Excellency behind the slaughter of at least many hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilian trade Unionists and the installation of the puppet dictator Suharto and the handing over of the country’s vast wealth to a “Who’s Who” of Western Capitalist Corporations.
And that while in Dublin Sir Andrew like many of his predecessors and successors lived in the residence once owned by Richard Croker, a West Cork boy, perhaps not made bad, but forged that way in the infernal regions, a neanderthal thug and Tammany Hall Boss, who skipped out of New York ahead of the law, mixed with high society as his horse “Orby” won the Epsom Derby.
The evil done by Sir Andrew Gilchrist (Mac Giolla Chroist the Son of the Servant of Christ) lives after him in the Irish Times and the unfortunate exploited people of Indonesia.
I do not believe that Sir Andrew, though he exulted in his professional coups shared Boss Croker’s selfish motives, but that he was body and soul devoted to the Greater Glory of Britain and its Gracious Sovereign.
Such coups have been the bread, butter, jam and caviar of English statecraft for centuries,
Not many of its practitioners had the finesse of Sir Andrew.
Take Sir Bax Ironside, British Representative in Sofia who had to leave his post in the Bulgarian capital in 1915 having been compromised in a plot to kill King Ferdinand, who had rejected pressure to bring his country into the Great War in Britain’s interest
Ironside had a brass neck, when he had been Minister in Santiago, Chile,in about 1908/09 and lost $300 in cards to a prominent expatriate businessman named Campbell, in that city.
Ironside said he didn’t have the sum in cash, but would send a cheque. The cheque didn’t come for days, and Campbell assumed the matter had slipped his mind. Then he heard that Ironside had left the city on his way to Valparaiso to take ship to England. Campbell took the next train
to Valparaiso and found Ironside on the deck of the steamer surrounded by Brits wishing him bon voyage. Ironside apologised for his lapse of memory, invited Campbell to the library where he wrote a cheque for $300 on a bank where he never had an account
The British colony in Santiago were scandalised that their country could be represented diplomatically by such a bounder and sent a registered letter to 10 Downing Street voicing their concern, but Ironside soldiered on.
Another such murderous scoundrel, Sir Mansfeldt de Cardonnel Findlay, served in Santiago just before or after Ironside, and then in Egypt where he distinguished himself in an episode recalled in the preface to Shaw’s “JOHN BULL’S OTHER ISLAND,” As British Minister in Christiana (Oslo) in neutral Norway in 1915 he wrote a handwritten promise of US $5,000 on behalf of His Britannic Majesty’s Government, on the Legation’s notepaper, if Roger Casement could be “knocked on the head”
Findlay gave Casement’s servant the back door key to the legation. The written promise and a copy of Casement’s letter to Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey survive, unlike certain alleged writings of Casement.
Findlay was an Old Boy of Harrow School and Bax Ironide an Old Etonian.
A “TIMES” Review, last week of a book on the Phoenix Park kilings of Cavendish and Burke makes assertions about assassinations. I hope to comment on
that organ and its association with crime, in a day or two.
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