Obituary - Sir Alan Donald, British ambassador during Tienanmen massacre

Died: July 14, 2018

SIR Alan Donald, who has died aged 87, was Britain's ambassador to China in June 1989 when the communist Chinese régime, blaming counter-revolutionary rebels and a threat of civil war, launched a bloody massacre against its own people on Peking's massive Tiananmen Square. They killed several thousand and Sir Alan and his staff witnessed some of the violence from the roof of the embassy, near the old Forbidden City.

Pre-mobile-phone and social media days, it was a tragedy many of us in the UK and the rest of the world learned of through the reports of foreign correspondents including the BBC's Kate Adie, some of which Sir Alan considered were exaggerated. The abiding image for most of us was of a lone Chinese protester, carrying his shopping bag, standing in front of a column of Chinese army tanks and refusing to budge. Sir Alan said of the lead tank commander that he had clearly refused to run the youth over and managed to hustle him out of the way. The Chinese authorities insisted it was “a counter-revolutionary riot” and that only 200 people were killed by the army - "inadvertently."

Sir Alan and his wife Lady Janet Donald sheltered more than 60 British subjects, including students, in the embassy for several days while indiscriminate shooting continued in the streets outside. "The soldiers were shooting at random, trying to subdue the city in fear that there would be an uprising of workers,” said Sir David's son Angus. Sir David then helped get his house guests out of the country, mostly to Hong Kong.

In a cable to the Foreign Office at the time, Sir David wrote: "Armoured personnel carriers opened fire on the crowd before running over them ... students linked arms but were mown down ... wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted ... remains were incinerated and then hosed down drains.”

But Sir David later said the Foreign Office did not take his cable seriously enough and he felt somewhat abandoned by London. "All my European colleagues were telephoned personally by their respective foreign ministers on that awful weekend," he said, adding that he got a telegram only three weeks later. "At the time, I would have welcomed some sign of life from London at that level on that awful Sunday."

During his long career, Sir Alan also served for three years (1977-80) as British ambassador to Zaire, Congo Brazzaville, Burundi and Rwanda - a single posting - and to Indonesia (1984-88). He was also a key figure in planning the handover of the British colony of Hong Kong to China, which eventually took place in 1997. He had been a political adviser to the British Governor of Hong-Kong, Glaswegian Sir Murray MacLehose, from 1974-77 and, a decade later, was instrumental in the creation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration while acting as Assistant Under-Secretary of State (Asia and the Pacific) at the Foreign Office in December 1984. His knowledge of Mandarin and the Chinese psyche were crucial to the eventual handover of the colony by the last governor, his friend Chris Patten, in 1997.

Sir Alan watched the handover ceremony with pride from his village home in Kent but few if any of his neighbours ever knew what a significant role he had played in the historic and peaceful transition which benefited both Hong Kong and Anglo-Sino relations and helped both China and Hong Kong towards the success they enjoy today.

Alan Ewen Donald was born in Inverurie, north-west of Aberdeen, on May 5, 1931. His father Robert Donald had been an infantry officer in the First World War and became a teacher in Inverurie but died when Alan was only four. Alan and his three siblings were therefore brought up by his mother Louise (née Turner), also a teacher, who took them to Aberdeen for their education.

After Aberdeen Grammar School, he went to Fettes College, Edinburgh, before doing his national service from 1949-50 as a second lieutenant with the Royal Horse Artillery in allied-occupied West Germany. Back in the UK, he won a scholarship to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated with degrees in both classics and law. More importantly, he said, that was where he first met his future wife Janet Hilary Therese Blood, a student at Girton College, at the time a women-only college famous for its fight for women's equality but since co-educational as part of the University of Cambridge. Mr Donald was prone to wear his kilt to official events and it is said that Janet introduced herself to him by asking if she could borrow his kilt for a party.

Mr Donald joined the UK Foreign Service in 1954. Fascinated by the history of China, he also studied Mandarin at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and spent some time in Peking (now better known to us as Beijing) to learn the language fluently, no easy task for a westerner.

Logically, as a Sinologue, his first junior posting was to Peking, as Third Secretary at the British embassy from 1955-57. After spells at the Foreign Office in London and with the UK delegation to NATO in Paris, he returned to the embassy in Peking as First Secretary from 1964-66, where he began to witness the horrors of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.

During a spell back at the Foreign Office in Whitehall, he shared an office with a colleague called Hywell Duck, which led to much mirth when the nameplate outside their office read "Donald/Duck."

Sir Alan retired from the Foreign Office in 1991 and settled in Chiddingstone Causeway, Kent. Maintaining his interest in and fascination with China, he became a director of several funds and trusts investing in China and served as president of the China Association from 2003-2008.

In retirement, he maintained the British diplomatic tradition of enjoying a sundown gin and tonic, took up water colour art and took cookery classes to take the pressure off Lady Janet. A piano player since his youth, he also played the organ in his village church in Kent, played golf, enjoyed basketball with his grandchildren and loved Scottish country dancing. He was awarded an honorary law degree (LLD) from Aberdeen University in 1991.

In the Times' columnist Matthew Parris’s book Parting Shots: The Undiplomatic Final Words of our Departing Ambassadors (2010), Sir Alan showed that his balanced reports on Tiananmen Square did not mean he had “gone native” in favour of China. "One does not ‘enjoy’ China," he said. "The Chinese are xenophobic. Officialdom is stubborn and doltish. The individual has no rights, his life being State property, and the Chinese are often indifferent to each other, and sometimes downright cruel."

Sir Alan died in the Hospice in the Weald, Pembury, Kent, after suffering from prostate cancer. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Lady Janet, and their four sons, James (Jamie), John, Angus and Alexander - all of them named after historic Scottish Kings - as well as seven grandchildren he adored.

PHIL DAVISON