The Lord Ashdown ofNorton-sub-Hamdon | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) Formal portrait, 2005 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Leader of the Liberal Democrats | |||||||||||||||||||
| In office 16 July 1988 – 9 August 1999 | |||||||||||||||||||
| President |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Deputy | |||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | |||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Charles Kennedy | ||||||||||||||||||
| High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina | |||||||||||||||||||
| In office 27 May 2002 – 31 January 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Wolfgang Petritsch | ||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Christian Schwarz-Schilling | ||||||||||||||||||
| European Union Special Representativefor Bosnia and Herzegovina | |||||||||||||||||||
| In office 3 June 2002 – 31 January 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Office established | ||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Christian Schwarz-Schilling | ||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||
| Born | Jeremy John Durham Ashdown (1941-02-27)27 February 1941 New Delhi, British India | ||||||||||||||||||
| Died | 22 December 2018(2018-12-22) (aged 77) Bristol, England | ||||||||||||||||||
| Resting place | Church of St Mary the Virgin, Norton-sub-Hamdon | ||||||||||||||||||
| Political party | Liberal Democrats | ||||||||||||||||||
| Other political affiliations | |||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse | |||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 2 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | Bedford School | ||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation |
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Nickname | Paddy | ||||||||||||||||||
| Military service | |||||||||||||||||||
| Branch/service | Royal Marines | ||||||||||||||||||
| Years of service | 1959–1972 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Rank | Captain | ||||||||||||||||||
| Unit | Special Boat Service | ||||||||||||||||||
| Battles/wars | |||||||||||||||||||
Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon[a] (27 February 1941 – 22 December 2018), better known asPaddy Ashdown, was a British politician and diplomat who served asLeader of the Liberal Democrats from 1988 to 1999. Internationally, he is recognised for his role asHigh Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2006, following his vigorous lobbying for military action againstYugoslavia in the 1990s.
Ashdown had an interpretership qualification inMandarin and was fluent in several other languages, includingMalay, German, French andBosnian.[1] After serving as aRoyal Marine andSpecial Boat Service officer and as an intelligence officer in theUK security services, Ashdown was electedMember of Parliament (MP) forYeovil in 1983 before retiring in 2001.
Ashdown was appointedKnight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG) in the2006 New Year Honours andMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the2015 New Year Honours. In 2017, Ashdown was appointedOfficer of the Legion of Honour by the French government.
Ashdown was the eldest of seven children: four brothers and two sisters.[2] He was born in New Delhi,British India,[3] on 27 February 1941[4][5] to a family of soldiers and colonial administrators who spent their lives in India.[6] His father was alapsed Catholic, and his mother aProtestant. His mother (née Hudson) was a nurse in theQueen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps.[7][full citation needed] Ashdown's father, John William Richard Durham Ashdown (1909–1980), was aBritish Indian Army officer who served in the14th Punjab Regiment and theRoyal Indian Army Service Corps, and in 1944 attained the rank of temporary lieutenant colonel.[8][b]
Ashdown was primarily brought up in Northern Ireland, where his father bought a farm in 1945[3] nearComber, County Down.[10] He was educated first at a local primary school, then as a weekly boarder at Garth HousePreparatory School inBangor[10] and from age 11 atBedford School in England, where his accent earned him the nickname "Paddy".[10]
After his father's business collapsed, Ashdown passed the naval scholarship examination to pay for his school fees,[11] but left before takingA-levels and joined theRoyal Marines in 1959.[10] He served until 1972[3] and retired with the rank ofcaptain. He served in Borneo during theIndonesia–Malaysia confrontation and thePersian Gulf,[2] before training as aSwimmer Canoeist in 1965, after which he joined the eliteSpecial Boat Section (now named the Special Boat Service) and commanded a Section in the Far East.[3] He then went toHong Kong in 1967 to undertake a full-timeinterpreter's course in Chinese,[11] and returned to the UK in 1970 when he was given command of a Royal Marine company inBelfast.[3]
Ashdown left the Royal Marines to join theSecret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6).[11][12] Asdiplomatic cover, he worked for theForeign and Commonwealth Office asfirst secretary to theUnited Kingdom mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.[13] At the UN, Ashdown was responsible for relations with several UN organisations, involved in the negotiation of several international treaties, and some aspects of theHelsinki Accords in 1975.[14]
While in the Marines, Ashdown had been a supporter of theLabour Party but switched support to theLiberal Party in 1975. He had a comfortable life in Switzerland, where he lived with his wife Jane and their two children, Simon and Katherine, in a large house on the shores ofLake Geneva, enjoying plenty of time for sailing, skiing and climbing.[13] Ashdown decided to enter politics after the UK had two general elections in one year (those ofFebruary andOctober 1974) and theThree-Day Week.[11] He said that, "most of my friends thought it was utterly bonkers" to leave the diplomatic service, but that he had "a sense of purpose".[15]
In 1976 Ashdown was selected as the Liberal Party'sprospective parliamentary candidate in his wife's home constituency ofYeovil in Somerset,[13] and took a job with Normalair Garrett, then part of the Yeovil-basedWestland Group. Yeovil's Liberal candidate had been placed second in the February 1974[16] and third in the October 1974 general elections;[17] Ashdown's objective was to "squeeze" the local Labour vote to enable him to defeat the Conservatives,[13] who had held the seat since its creation in1918.[18] He subsequently worked for Tescan, and was unemployed for a time after that firm's closure in 1981, before becoming a youth worker withDorset County Council's Youth Service, working on initiatives to help the young unemployed.[6][14] That position being an unpaid "volunteer" one, Ashdown was at the time classified as "long-term unemployed", having applied unsuccessfully for 150 jobs.[19]
At the1979 general election, which returned the Conservatives to power, Ashdown regained second place, establishing a clear lead of 9% over the Labour candidate.[20] The Conservative majority of 11,382[20] was still large enough to be regarded as asafe seat when the sitting MPJohn Peyton stood down at the1983 general election to be made alife peer. Ashdown had gained momentum after his years of local campaigning.[21] The Labour vote fell to only 5.5% and Ashdown won the seat with a majority of over 3,000,[22] a swing from the Conservatives of 11.9% against a national swing of 4% to the Conservatives.[23]
Ashdown had long been on his party's social democratic wing, supporting the 1977Lib–Lab pact,[13] and theSDP–Liberal Alliance. In the early 1980s, he was a prominent campaigner against the deployment in Europe of American nuclear-armedcruise missiles, describing them at aCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally inHyde Park in 1983 as "the front end of the whole anti-nuclear struggle. It is the weapon wehave to stop."[24]
Shortly after entering theHouse of Commons, he was appointed SDP–Liberal Alliance spokesman on trade and industry and then on education.[14] He opposed the privatisation of theRoyal Ordnance Factories in 1984, criticised theThatcher government in 1986 for allowing the United States to bomb Libya from UK bases, and campaigned against the loss of trade union rights by workers atGCHQ in 1987.[13]
When the Liberal Party merged in 1988 with theSocial Democrats to form theSocial and Liberal Democrats (their name shortened in 1989 to "Liberal Democrats"), he waselected as the new party's leader and made aPrivy Councillor in January 1989.[25]
Ashdown led the Liberal Democrats into two general elections, in1992 and1997, and three European Parliament elections, in1989,1994 and1999. The Lib Dems failed to win any seats in the 1989 European Parliament election. They recorded a net loss of two seats in the 1992 general election when the party was still recovering from the after-effects of the 1988 merger. In 1994, the party gained its first two Members of the European Parliament.[26] At the 1997 election, the Liberal Democrats won 46 seats, their best performance since the Liberal Party in the 1920s. However, they took a smaller share of the vote than in the 1992 election.[27] While the Liberal Democrats vote share decreased in the 1999 European Parliament election, the move fromfirst-past-the-post to theD'Hondt method saw the party make a net gain of 8 seats.[28]
Between 1993 and 1997, he was a notable proponent of cooperation between the Liberal Democrats and "New Labour" and had regular secret meetings withTony Blair to discuss the possibility of acoalition government. This was despite Labour's opinion poll showings from late 1992 onwards, virtually all suggesting that they would gain a majority at the next election, particularly in the first year or so of Blair's leadership following his appointment in mid-1994. The discussions began in early 1993, while the party was still being led by Blair's predecessorJohn Smith, who died suddenly in May 1994. After Blair was elected as Labour leader, the talks continued.[29]
There was no need for a coalition, as the 1997 general election ended in a Labourlandslide victory. The election also saw a breakthrough for the Liberal Democrats despite receiving fewer votes than in 1992; they increased their representation from 18 to 46. A "Joint Cabinet Committee" (JCC), including senior Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians, was then created to discuss the implementation of the two parties' shared priorities for constitutional reform; its remit was later expanded to include other issues on which Blair and Ashdown saw scope for cooperation between the two parties. Ashdown's successor as Liberal Democrat leader,Charles Kennedy, deliberately allowed the JCC to slip into abeyance until it effectively stopped meeting.[30]
Ashdown announced his intention to resign as Leader of the Liberal Democrats on 20 January 1999,[31] departing on 9 August that year following 11 years in the role, and was succeeded by Charles Kennedy.[32] In mid-1999, there was speculation that he would be appointed the newSecretary General of NATO; his lack of governmental experience meant that doubts were raised about his suitability. The post was ultimately filled by defence secretaryGeorge Robertson.[33][34][35]
He was appointed aKnight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 2000[36] and after retiring from the Commons one month previously, he was created a life peer, the peerage being gazetted on 16 July 2001 as that of Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, ofNorton-sub-Hamdon in theCounty of Somerset.[37] In the2001 election, the Yeovil seat was retained for the Liberal Democrats byDavid Laws. Likewise, in 2001, theUniversity of Bath conferred on Ashdown an honoraryDoctor of Laws degree.[38]
He was the subject ofThis Is Your Life in 2001, when he was surprised byMichael Aspel atBBC Television Centre.[39]
After leaving frontline British politics, he accepted the post of theHigh Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina on 27 May 2002,[40] reflecting his long-time advocacy of international intervention in that region. He succeededWolfgang Petritsch in the position created under theDayton Agreement. During his time as High Representative between 2002 and 2006,[41] he strengthened the central state institutions, brought in statewide legal bodies such as theState Investigation and Protection Agency and brought the two ethnic armies under a central civilian command, and moved Bosnia-Herzegovina toward EU integration.[41][42] He was sometimes denigrated as "theViceroy of Bosnia" by critics of his work as High Representative.[43][44]
On 14 March 2002, Ashdown testified as a witness for the prosecution at thetrial of Slobodan Milošević at theInternational Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.[45] He said that he was on the Kosovo–Albania border nearJunik in June 1998.[45] From this location, through his binoculars, Ashdown claimed to have seenSerbian forces shelling several villages.[45] In July 2005, a defence witness, GeneralBožidar Delić, claimed by demonstrating with a topographical map of the area that Ashdown could not have been able to see the areas that he claimed to be able to see as hills, mountains and thick woods would have obstructed his view.[46] After the Delić claims, Ashdown supplied the Tribunal with grid coordinates and a cross-section of the ground indicating that he could see the locations concerned.[47] These coordinates indicated he was on the Kosovo–Albania border, which was a sealed border at the time.[47] The prosecution also used new maps and topographical cross-sections indicating Ashdown's location, but their accuracy was challenged by Delić, for the location of a village was different from that shown in other maps of the area.[47]
In retirement, Ashdown became a regular voice for the Liberal Democrats. He publicly supported military strikes in Syria in 2013 and said he was ashamed after Parliament voted against them.[48] At the2015 general election he appeared on the BBC soon after the announcement of the exit poll which predicted that the Liberal Democrats would be reduced from 57 MPs to 10. Ashdown said he would eat his hat if the exit poll was correct. The result was that the Liberal Democrats returned eight MPs, but the technical difference from the exit poll was not enough to save him from several requests to carry out his vow. Some commentators suggested humorously that this was an example of Liberal Democrats breaking their promises in response to U-turns conducted in the coalition government.[49] The following day after the election, on the BBC'sQuestion Time programme, Ashdown was presented with a chocolate hat that he later ate.[50]
In June 2007, the BBC reported that Ashdown had been offered and rejected theCabinet post ofNorthern Ireland secretary by incoming Labour Party prime ministerGordon Brown. Liberal Democrat leaderSir Menzies Campbell had already ruled out the idea that members of his party would take seats in a Brown Cabinet, but, according to the reports, Brown still approached Ashdown with the offer.[51]
Ashdown was later asked by US secretary of stateCondoleezza Rice and Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take charge of the Allied effort inAfghanistan,[52][53] though an unnamed source is quoted in a January 2008Reuters report indicating that Ashdown was also approached by UN secretary-generalBan Ki-moon and met with the Afghan presidentHamid Karzai secretly in Kuwait to discuss the post which he later accepted.[54] He later decided against taking the role after gleaning that Afghanistan preferred GeneralSir John McColl over him.[55] On 7 March, Norwegian diplomatKai Eide was appointed as the UN representative for Afghanistan, stating "I'm not Paddy Ashdown, but don't under-estimate me."[56]
Ashdown was a member of the Governing Council ofInterpeace, an international peacebuilding organisation,[57] and also served as President ofChatham House.[58] He later chaired the Liberal Democrats' 2015 general election team.[59]
In 2016, Ashdown foundedMore United alongside several other public figures in theaftermath of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.[60] More United is a liberal and progressive cross-party political movement.[60]
Ashdown married Jane Courtenay in 1962. The couple had a son, Simon; a daughter, Katharine; and three grandchildren. In 1992, following the press becoming aware of a stolen document relating to a divorce case, he disclosed a five-month affair with his secretary, Patricia Howard, five years earlier from which he acquired the press nickname "Paddy Pantsdown".[61] His career and marriage both survived the political and tabloid storm, with his wife forgiving him.[13][62]
Ashdown supportedYeovil Town.[63] He was a member of theNational Liberal Club.[64]
Ashdown was diagnosed withbladder cancer in October 2018.[65][66] He died on 22 December atSouthmead Hospital in Bristol,[67] at the age of 77.[66]
On 10 January 2019, a funeral service was held atChurch of St Mary the Virgin, Norton-sub-Hamdon,[68] and he was buried in the churchyard.[67] A service of thanksgiving was held for him atWestminster Abbey on 10 September.[69][70]
 |  | _Ribbon.svg) |
 |  |
| Date | Ribbon | Honour | Letters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unknown | | Naval General Service Medal with Borneo Clasp[71][failed verification] | — |
| General Service Medal with Northern Ireland Clasp[71][failed verification] | ||
| 19 June 2000 | | Knight Commander of theOrder of the British Empire | KBE |
| 31 December 2005 | | Knight Grand Cross of theOrder of St Michael and St George[72] | GCMG |
| 31 December 2014 | | Member of theOrder of the Companions of Honour[73] | CH |
| Country | Year | Ribbon | Honour |
|---|---|---|---|
 | 2017 |  | Officer of theLegion of Honour[74] |
 | 2004 |  | Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service[75] |
In 2011, Ashdown narrated theBBCTimewatch documentaryThe Most Courageous Raid of WWII.[77]
Donald Sumpter portrays Ashdown in the 2015Channel 4 television filmCoalition.[78]
I reply I have forgotten six … Malay … local language … among the Dayak people … two years learning Mandarin Chinese … [t]hen came German (briefly), French and Bosnian.
I actually served in the Secret Intelligence Service.
The name of Lord (Paddy) Ashdown, who ran Bosnia-Herzegovina after the civil war, has been mentioned.
European newspapers have focused on Paddy Ashdown, a British politician and envoy, but a former senior military officer said his appointment would be considered controversial and seems unlikely.
Yes, he has accepted the job.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forYeovil 1983–2001 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Leader of the Liberal Democrats 1988–1999 | Succeeded by |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by | High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina 2002–2006 | Succeeded by |
| New office | European Union Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina 2002–2006 | |
 |
|  | |
