The Commonwealth Conference (August 1979) 65

prefaced by a ‘personal commentary’: a concise overview in which Renwick outlined the key developments and issues as they appeared to him. The more detailed narrative, based on a close reading of the documents then followed.

‘The Rhodesia Settlement: 1979-1980’ was one of a number of inhouse studies, sometimes termed ‘internal histories’, produced by Foreign Office officials from the early 1960s onwards. Sometimes they recorded a notably successful set of negotiations. Renwick’s report clearly fell into this category, as did the precedent cited by Hurd, Sir Con O’Neill’s report on the negotiations for Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community in 1970-72. 5 Others recorded policy failures, including the very first such study, Rohan Butler’s ‘British Policy in the Relinquishment of Abadan in 1951’, completed in 1962.6 Another post-mortem, Nicholas Browne’s report on British policy in Iran during the period leading up to the Iranian revolution, commissioned in 1979 by David Owen, Foreign Secretary in the previous Labour Government, was completed in April 1980, shortly before Renwick started work on his own.7

To a greater or lesser extent, all such studies were ‘lessons learned’ exercises. Yet most were kept highly confidential, usually given a high security classification and circulated to only a small number of officials. Sometimes, as in the case of the Browne report, knowledge spread by word of mouth: by the mid-1980s avoiding ‘the Iranian mistake’ was being cited as a reason for making contact with grassroots black opposition groups in South Africa.8 This does not appear to have been the case with Renwick’s study, even though it provided an object lesson in how to carry a high-risk strategy through to a successful conclusion. Moreover, unlike other such studies, it carried the stern injunction on its cover sheet that it must not ‘be shown to Ministers of any administration other than the present one’. Copies therefore remained buried in the files until one was released to The National Archives (TNA) in 2012.9 We welcome the opportunity to bring Robin Renwick’s account of the Lancaster House Conference and its aftermath to a wider audience.

5 Hurd had been Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, at the time of the EEC negotiations. 6 Two copies are available at TNA: FO 416/213 and FO 370/2694 7 Again, two copies are available: TNA FCO 8/3601 and FCO 8/4029. The complete text has been archived by TNA at https://tinyurl.com/tyk7bjhc. 8 Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series III, Vol. IX, The Challenge of Apartheid: UK-South African Relations, 1985-1986 (London, 2017), p. 194. 9 TNA FCO 106/430. The version published here is identical to the TNA copy except for a few minor corrections and the addition of photographs reproduced by kind permission of TNA and the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.