In 1965 Harold Wilson, then prime minister, embarked on a secret attempt to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War. He sent a junior minister to Hanoi, but the “peace mission”, undertaken without informing the Americans, was exposed in the press. It ended in fiasco and embarrassment. The minister, Harold Davies, was snubbed by Ho Chi Minh; there was fury in Washington and mockery in Westminster.
The contentious disclosure of the mission was one of a series of notorious scoops by the doyen of Fleet Street’s diplomatic editors, John Dickie, whose home telephone was tapped on Wilson’s orders to try to track down the source of the scoop, without success.
Dickie travelled the world with every foreign secretary from Sir Alec Douglas-Home to Douglas Hurd. His coverage for the Daily Mail was recognised as both stylish and authoritative, as Lord Owen observed: “John Dickie was no ordinary journalist. He had personal panache and had many good sources within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.” Always impeccably dressed and often with a carnation in his buttonhole (“astonishingly this appeared at whatever far-flung place in the world we were at,” recalled a colleague), he was characterised in the Financial Times as “one of the last of the dying breed of Fleet Street prima donnas”.
Dickie’s reputation for scoops began on February 6, 1959, when his front-page lead disclosed that the Greek and Turkish leaders had secretly flown to Zurich to negotiate a deal for the independence of Cyprus. Each day for a week his exclusive disclosures on the progress of the talks led the News Chronicle and on the final day he flew back to London with details of the agreement before it was conveyed officially to the British government.
His Cyprus reports led to a move in 1960 to head the diplomatic team at the Daily Mail where he was to remain for 30 years.
Advertisement
Another scoop caused consternation at the Foreign Office in July 1969 when he revealed that there was a secret deal with the Russians for the imminent swap of two Soviet spies, the Krogers, for a Briton, Gerald Brooke, who was caught handing over Bibles in Moscow, despite denials for months and the assertion that a prisoner exchange was against government policy. When Dickie went to see the head of the Foreign Office, Sir Denis Greenhill, about his story the negotiations were confirmed but he was warned not to publish on the grounds that the Russians might back off if there was premature disclosure.
Before Dickie got back to Fleet Street, Greenhill phoned the editor of the Daily Mail, Arthur Brittenden, urging him not to publish the story because Brooke’s mother was seriously ill and, as she was unaware of the negotiations, might have a relapse on reading about it in the newspaper. The editor courteously rebuffed government pressure with the comment: “If I withheld stories in case they affected a reader’s health I would be left with blank columns.”
The relaunch of the Daily Mail as a tabloid on May 3, 1971, led with another Dickie exclusive under the headline “Spy Scandal at Britain’s Defence HQ” which was the first step on the trail that resulted in the expulsion of 105 Russians five months later.
Once again he caused embarrassment at the Foreign Office with the splash headline “Death of a Princess” on April 19, 1980, revealing that a row was about to erupt in relations with Saudi Arabia over the imminent ITV documentary about the execution of a princess who had an illegal love affair. The furore resulted in the withdrawal of the British ambassador from Riyadh and required Lord Carrington, the foreign secretary, to undertake a special visit to Saudi Arabia to smooth over relations in four carefully orchestrated speeches.
John Dickie was born in Glasgow in 1923 to Hugh Dickie, a Glasgow stockbroker, and Euphemia Chalmers Dickie, a cousin of his father’s. He was educated at the High School of Glasgow and read history at Glasgow University until he joined the army in November 1942. Commissioned a year later, he led gunners of the 79th Scottish Horse Regiment on to the D-Day beaches of Normandy and saw his driver shot and wounded beside him. Six weeks after the victory parade at Bremerhaven he was posted to Lord Mountbatten’s staff in South East Asia Command and served in Saigon, Jakarta and Singapore. On demobilisation as a major he resumed his studies and graduated with an MA in history.
Advertisement
He entered journalism in 1949 as one of two successful candidates out of 440 graduates who applied for a place in the Kemsley Editorial Plan introduced by The Sunday Times. After learning his trade as a reporter, leader writer and theatre critic on the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, he moved to London first to Reuters News Agency and then to the News Chronicle where he became Commonwealth correspondent in 1955.
Dickie’s contacts in foreign ministries and cordial relations with ambassadors in London enabled him to persuade visiting statesmen to address luncheons of the Diplomatic and Commonwealth Writers’ Association when he was president from 1974 to 1976. His extensive first-hand knowledge of the Commonwealth was deployed in his appointment by Lord Owen as a governor of the Commonwealth Institute in London for two terms. A keen rhabdopholist, he collected 108 walking sticks in his travels.
As an author from 1964, with his biography of Douglas-Home (titled The Uncommon Commoner) until his seventh publication in 2006, The British Consul, Dickie was an acknowledged authority on foreign policy. In 1992 he was appointed OBE for services to journalism.
He stopped writing in 2006 when his eyesight began to fail and he was registered blind because of macular degeneration. He was hugely proud to be made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur for his role in the Normandy invasion and awarded the Croix de Guerre.
Dickie married Agnes (Inez) Campbell White, the Scottish skating champion, in 1949: they met by chance when instead of going to play as usual at Hillpark tennis club after lectures at Glasgow University he joined his sister Helen at her club, Wallace & Weirs at Crossmyloof. They adjourned after play with a group including Inez and the next morning he invited her out to dinner. She died in 2014. He is survived by his daughter Lorna Tatton, a senior mathematics teacher in Kent, and his son Dr Nigel Dickie, director of corporate and government affairs Europe at the Kraft Heinz Company.
Advertisement
A regular at the Gay Hussar restaurant for many years, Dickie had his own corner seat facing a wall of photographs of journalists, including, of course, one of himself.
John Dickie OBE, diplomatic editor, was born on November 24, 1923. He died on February 13, 2022, aged 98