WIP continues....

I have a confession to make - I never managed to arrange my 10 questions in Washington BUT I did manage to arrange to interview British Consul General to the United States Mr Bob Peirce via telephone so I must have paid some attention to all this talk of networking after all. I managed to arrange this with much help from my wonderful host parents.

That is just one of the many things WIP offers - the chance to talk to people who you would otherwise never come into contact with; below is a brief snippet of my interview with Mr Peirce.

Bob Peirce has led a distinguished career in the British Foreign Office which he joined at the age of 22 after completing a history degree at Oxford. His first posting was to Hong Kong, a position that he relished having always had the desire to travel in the Far East. ‘Throughout university I didn’t have any clear plan of what I wanted to do, what I did know was that I wanted to travel and the Far East offered the adventure of the unknown so I considered it unbelievably fortunate that my first position took me to Hong Kong’.

Good luck is something that Mr Peirce modestly stresses when discussing his career. Having worked as a member of the Hong Kong government on negotiations for the handover of the region to China and as chief executive for the Patten Commission’s report into the policing of Northern Ireland his career has involved him in perhaps two of the most significant diplomatic issues the British government has been engaged with in the last century. ‘It’s nice to have had the chance to give history a nudge; there are many people who have worked in the foreign office for their entire lives without receiving these kinds of opportunities’ he says.

Mr Peirce describes his work in Northern Ireland as simultaneously the greatest challenge and achievement of his career. It was not in the remit of the Patten Commission to serve as a South African style Truth and Reconciliation panel but Mr Peirce found that as he travelled around the towns of Northern Ireland people used the forums organised by the commission as an outlet for their frustrations that had built up during the troubles. ‘Unionists and Nationalists were in the same room discussing the same issue and at times it was very emotional as some people were hearing the other community’s side of the story for the first time. The meetings seemed to provide people with an outlet to vent their feelings’.

Ten years on from the commission’s report Northern Ireland has a new police force and Mr Peirce believes the province is now in the position whereby it can offer advice internationally with regards to policing: ‘The Patten report can serve as a guideline for a modern police force and it brought interest from around the world. After the report it became accepted to listen to what the PSNI had to say on policing, for instance Chief Constable Hugh Orde recently gave a talk to the LAPD; despite the respect the RUC merited it was in a difficult position to give advice to other bodies’.

Northern Ireland has obviously left its own mark on Mr Peirce as he speaks fondly of his recent visit to Belfast and his pride in seeing the many positive changes that have come over the city in the past ten years. Indeed it is clear that he still retains many connections with the province but the life of a diplomat is not for the sedentary and Mr Peirce now finds himself working in Los Angles as British Consul General to America. ‘The consulate employs over 60 people (the size of a large Embassy in most countries) working towards the goal of improving commercial, business, scientific and educational links between California and Great Britain’.

When people think of the links between Great Britain and America it is common to consider little outside of Westminster and Washington but Mr Peirce is keen to challenge this assumption. ‘The special relationship between the countries is all about perception; the countries share the same genes, but the media can be fixated on the rapport between the Chief Executives as the barometer for this relationship, whether that be Bush or Blair or Brown. The relationship exists at many other levels, for example a joint research project between Queens University Belfast and California Tech. does not depend on how well the President and Prime Minister get along. America was founded on a British political philosophy and grew with immigrants from all over Great Britain and Ireland’.

I would like to thank Mr Peirce for taking a considerable amount of time out of his busy schedule to talk to me, it was much appreciated.