Douglas Hurd: The politicians who fought for Britain's position in the world

So when, 200 years ago, the Foreign Secretary George Canning lined up against the War Secretary Lord Castlereagh and they started shooting at each other in a duel the British public was predictably outraged.

Castlereagh and Canning hated each other. Their rivalry was personal as well as political. Both men were determined to beat Napoleon but Canning didn't think that Castlereagh was up to his job. So Canning pressed privately for Castlereagh's dismissal. The story leaked and Castlereagh challenged Canning to a duel.

The duel was a ramshackle contest. Both men survived. But, after they had stopped trying to kill one another, Castlereagh and Canning settled down to a different kind of argument – namely, what should be the purpose and direction of British foreign policy? That is the theme

which Ed Young, from York, and I have elaborated in our new book.

We have selected 11 Foreign Secretaries from the past two centuries. Not all of them are famous. Even keen historians might be hard pressed to identify the 15th Earl of Derby. He was Disraeli's Foreign Secretary and his general approach to foreign policy can be summed up by this quote: "If foreigners can settle their affairs without us, why should we intervene?"

But in one way or another all our chosen Foreign Secretaries had to wrestle with the underlying dilemmas of British policy, many of which confront the Chilcot Inquiry today. In what circumstances should Britain intervene in the internal affairs of another country? How far

can we carry a policy of appeasement? What are the criteria for sending British troops to kill and be killed?

In 1997, the incoming Labour Government announced the arrival of what they called "ethical foreign policy". In this way they showed a massive ignorance of history.

The 19th century is marked by a whole sequence of passionate debates about foreign policy, each of which has an ethical turning point. Was the Royal Navy right to intercept foreign slave ships, even when prohibited under international law? Was Canning justified in ordering an attack on neutral Denmark to prevent Napoleon seizing the Danish

fleet? Should Palmerston have allowed minor outrages against British citizens to escalate into wars? How far should we have pushed the cause of liberalism in Europe? Should we have fought the Tsar to protect

Poland? Or Bismarck to defend Denmark or France? Most poignantly of all, could we with honour have stayed out of the Great War?

Our predecessors agonised over these and other dilemmas. The whole basis of their debate was ethical: what was the right course for Britain, a country which had achieved a dominant position in the world but also felt obliged to pay proper regard to civilised and Christian behaviour?

Broadly speaking, the answers our 11 Foreign Secretaries found to these questions fell into two camps, led by Canning and Castlereagh.

Those who followed Castlereagh favoured co-operation, negotiation and compromise. They believed in what became known as the Concert of Europe. They would have disliked the noisiness which distorts modern diplomacy.

By contrast, Canning and his disciples enjoyed brinkmanship and bluster. They felt that Britain had a duty to plant its political system overseas. They pursued this principle to the point of isolation and enjoyed humiliating foreigners.

The two schools of thought clashed most obviously after both Canning and Castlereagh had left office, with Lord Palmerston and Lord Aberdeen.

Lord Palmerston carried patriotism to the point of brutality. The

climax of his career came in 1850 when he used the Royal Navy to blockade Athens in retribution for an assault on the property of a British Jew called Don Pacifico. Other countries protested furiously but Palmerston would not back down. He claimed that Britain was morally obliged to deliver justice.

He made a famous speech in the House of Commons arguing that "as the Roman in days of old held himself free from indignity when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong".

Aberdeen, on the other hand, was as close to being a pacifist as any British Foreign Secretary can be. Orphaned as a boy, widowed twice as a young man, he buried all four of his daughters before they were 20 years old. As Foreign Secretary he did everything he could to steer clear of conflict. But events frustrated him and he ended up leading Britain into the Crimean War.

In the 20th century, the argument took a new form. After the

catastrophe of the Great War the whole emphasis of British diplomacy was on appeasement. The last two Foreign Secretaries in our book – Anthony Eden and Ernest Bevin – became famous opponents of appeasement in the 1930s. But they did so for different reasons. Eden disliked the messy way Neville Chamberlain ignored the Foreign Office through his personal diplomacy. Bevin simply thought Hitler was wicked and could only be outwitted in war.

So the argument became one of tactics and strategy. What was more important: how something was done, or why we were doing it? Eden was the master of method. I remember well the pride which we felt in 1954 at the Foreign Secretary's skill in averting the dangers of war in Indo-China.

A few months later, at the start of the Suez crisis, I felt convinced that so experienced a statesman must have up his sleeve some plan for rescuing Britain from disaster. I was wrong.

By contrast, Ernest Bevin was blunt and straightforward. He was liable to fall for wild ideas such as the concept sponsored by Field Marshal Montgomery for a new European superpower based on the resources of Africa. But when it came to the point Bevin could see the whole picture. He built up Nato and the transatlantic alliance which still protects Britain today.

We are now right back at the beginning of the argument. The institutions which Eden and Bevin helped to found look bedraggled and tatty. The world is adrift among many simultaneous threats. We cannot solve our problems simply by copying our predecessors. But some understanding of the past is essential if we are going to succeed in the future. And there is no better place to start than the ferocious argument between Canning and Castlereagh.

n Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary: Two Centuries of Conflict and Personalities by Douglas Hurd is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson at 25. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. P&P is 2.75.

Lord Hurd of Westwell was Foreign Secretary during the Gulf War in 1991. His book, Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary: Two Centuries of Conflict and Personalities is published today.