Scottish diplomat who helped broker an end to the Iran-Iraq war

Born: April 27, 1927;

Died: June 3, 2018

ABERDEEN-born Sir John Thomson, who has died of pneumonia in Galloway aged 91, was a career diplomat who served as British High Commissioner in India, Britain’s permanent representative at the United Nations in New York (1982-87) and deputy head of the British delegation to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).

He was unstuffy, bold, straight- talking and a bit of a maverick by diplomatic standards. Historically, he will probably be best-remembered, while at the UN in New York, for helping end the brutal Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 in which at least one million soldiers and civilians died.

As that war dragged on, Sir John held meetings in 1987 with the other four permament members of the UN Security Council – the US, the Soviet Union, France and China – over Earl Grey tea at his Manhattan apartment or over martinis, Barolo and grappa in a discreet backroom of the Italian restaurant The Leopard on the Upper West Side. They came to call themselves the Leopard Group. By the end of 1987, Sir John had brokered an agreement among the permanent representatives, whom he considered good friends, resulting in UN Resolution 598, which would lead to the end of the Iran-Iraq conflict.

He was also influential in key diplomatic moves towards arms control and non-proliferation at the height of the Cold War. His good contacts and mutual respect with Soviet diplomats helped lead to the landmark 1980s arms-control agreements between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. A mutual trust between those two leaders, often with Sir John behind-the-scenes, also helped lead to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

As former deputy head of Britain’s mission to Nato and head of the defence and arms-control departments at the Foreign Office in Whitehall, Sir John represented Britain in arms talks with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. He was also a leading light in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), countries that seek to prevent proliferation by controlling the export of materials, equipment and technology and ensuring nuclear weapons do not “fall into the wrong hands.”

Sir John had been a young diplomat at the British embassy in Washington DC during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, during which President John F. Kennedy faced off against Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Sir John never forgot how close the world had come to nuclear war.

While at the UN in New York, he made a point of lunching as often as possible with every representative of every UN nation, including the smallest influential. He established crucial good relations with African nations, most of whom were incensed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s reluctance to impose sanctions on South Africa’s infamous apartheid regime. Colleagues recall that during his early posting to Washington DC, he was prone to wandering off on foot to explore the poor, mainly-black areas, not far from the White House, where the TV cameras rarely venture.

After his formal retirement from the Foreign Office in 1987, he remained passionate about nuclear non-proliferation. He was appointed as a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, where he was deeply involved in the diplomatic problem of Iran’s nuclear programme. His research was crucial towards the 2015 deal between US President Obama and Iran’s leaders, an agreement since rescinded by Donald Trump. He was saddened by Trump’s decision.

John Adam Thomson was born on April 27, 1927, in the Aberdeen suburb of Bieldside, later home to great Scots such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Open golf champion Paul Lawrie. His father, Sir George Paget Thomson, was a former college master at Cambridge University who won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery that electrons move in waves. That was a key factor in nuclear technology which helped Britain develop a nuclear deterrent in the post-Second World War years. John’s grandfather Sir Joseph Thomson had also won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of electrons, which effectively made it possible to split the atom.

Aged 12 when the Second World War broke out, when most children in big cities were evacuated to the countryside, John’s family sent him to the United States where he went to school in New Hampshire until his mother died of tuberculosis and he returned to Aberdeen, later studying history at Aberdeen University and Trinity College, Cambridge. Having done his national service in the Royal Navy immediately after the war, it was back at Cambridge that he met Elizabeth McClure, whom he married in 1953.

By then, he had joined the Foreign Office, learnt Arabic in Beirut and was posted as a junior diplomat to Saudi Arabia and later to Syria, both nations considered “backward” by British governments of the time, something he would later see change. Back in London, he had junior but sometimes-telling positions within the Foreign Office given his linguistic abilities.

After being appointed British High Commissioner in India by Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in 1977, Sir John liked to go somewhat “native.” He wore loose-fitting Indian clothes, befriended Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and fell in love with the country as most visitors do.

During his time at Whitehall, Sir John reconnected with Scotland. In the mid-60s, he bought a dilapidated watermill – Lochpatrick Mill – in Galloway, which he renovated over the years and made his retirement home. He was knighted in 1978, and elevated to Knight Grand Cross (GCMG) in 1985. Passionately pro-European, Sir John wrote a letter to the Financial Times in October 2012, four years before the referendum, in which he spoke of “Britain’s insouciant progress towards political isolation .... It is impractical for the UK to become a western Singapore or a large Switzerland. Besides, neither country, despite its wealth, exercises significant influence ... We have only two options. One is Europe, the other the US .... Now that the US is refocusing from Europe to Asia our contribution is less relevant ... In Europe, the case is different. There, our size, resources and inventiveness give us, if we take it, the opportunity to be in the top tier. We can show that Britain brings a lot to making Europe a world force. Europe is where the chief of our leverage exists and where our commercial interests mainly lie ... If Britain is to be influential we have to choose Europe.”

Sir John Thomson is survived by his second wife Judith (née Bullitt) and four children from his first marriage, Nancy, Sir Adam Thomson, Richard and Roger.

PHIL DAVISON