External Affairs' crucial month in wartime London: Ken Ross outlines how Alister McIntosh picked up the departmental baton at Downing Street and the Savoy in May 1944.

• Author: Ross, Ken

'[By May 1949 External Affairs] had already lived some of its greatest days.... I had missed something which had marked in a significant way those who were already there.'--Merv Norrish (1993) (1)

Merv Norrish retained a touch of that feeling right through his career, despite being one of the few of McIntosh's successors as the foreign ministry head to have a 'golden period' of his own. (2) Norrish's sentiment is seemingly confirmed by McIntosh himself who, shortly before departing External Affairs, declared

Perhaps the golden period of New Zealand's external relations was that of the drafting of the Charter of the United Nations, and the early years of that world organisation. The New Zealand stand at San Francisco on the veto, and its efforts to have the principle of collective security included in the Charter, gained for the spokesman of our country universal respect--and not least from the Great Powers themselves. (3) That golden period began in May 1944 when Mclntosh arrived in London with prime minister Peter Fraser for the first Prime Ministers' Meeting (PMM), a successor to and replacement of the cumbersome pre-war imperial conferences. (McIntosh was to attend sixteen PMMs--all but one taking place in London during his time as secretary. (4)) It was a month when the 37-year-old McIntosh first exhibited his class in his quarter-century stewardship of New Zealand diplomacy. Spotlighting McIntosh's days in London allows us to comprehend his accomplishment. The key ingredients were his personality, his outstanding network of loyal talented officers and the respect he garnered from those more experienced.

Could this talent have been anticipated? Shortly before the conference, McIntosh had written to former boss Carl Berendsen: 'I have made absolutely no preparation [of briefing papers] for the Prime Ministers' Conference and am comforting myself with the thought that he [Fraser] would not use any material anyhow.' (5) By then McIntosh had had just eight months as head of the new External Affairs department, created when Berendsen stepped aside from his role as the prime minister's principal advisor to open a New Zealand high commission in Canberra (his stomach ulcer disappeared once away from Fraser). McIntosh informed J.V. Wilson, soon to be one of his senior off-siders in External Affairs: 'It is literally a case of a position having been thrust upon me and one can only hope for the best under such circumstances.' (6)

McIntosh was short-changing himself. Despite his relative youth, he was not inexperienced: he had been Berendsen's deputy for nearly a decade in the predecessor agency, the Imperial Affairs Office of the Prime Minister's Department. And before leaving for London, the prime minister and McIntosh prepared for the conference in their frequent late night sessions at 66 Harbour View Road, Fraser's official residence in Wellington. (7) McIntosh noted that

preparations for this meeting were as thorough as meagre staff resources permitted. Then, as later, in dealing with the Prime Minister, briefing had usually to be done orally. Peter Fraser suffered from extremely bad eyesight: he was virtually blind in one eye. Reading, which he did incessantly, was a strain and he preferred to listen and discuss matters and to give his own instructions orally. (8) The big occasion in London involved five prime ministers--Fraser and his counterparts from Australia, Britain, Canada and South Africa, who began their fortnight long discussions on 1 May. Winston Churchill focused them on the future direction of the war and the shape of the post-war world. Fraser's achievements at the leaders' gathering are not canvassed here: Gerald Hensley, Fred Wood, David McIntyre and McIntosh have all covered the importance of the conference in forging Fraser's international reputation. (9)

McIntosh was not always at Fraser's side: on numerous days they went separate ways. McIntosh called on other...