In October 1956 a young British diplomat in Tel Aviv was obliged to inform Israel formally of Britain’s disapproval of its attack on Egypt following the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. He did think his opposite number was remarkably nonchalant when confronted with the wrath of Her Majesty’s government.
Only when he drove into the Sinai desert to discover the facts did the truth start to dawn, a realisation confirmed by the sight of the Royal Navy just offshore: Britain and Israel were in cahoots, and the young diplomat, along with many more important people, had been duped.
For Ronald Higgins, who has died aged 88, this was the start of a long, slow disillusionment with the role of traditional diplomacy in preserving peace. He remained in the service for another 13 years before he resigned to join the Observer. The move into journalism was far from triumphant. But it produced one remarkable article that had an impact on the readership matched by few others in the paper’s history.
This was The Seventh Enemy, about global threats, which appeared in the Observer magazine in 1975, and linked war, poverty and environmental degradation into a single overarching theme. “He was an extraordinary man who grasped very early the dangerous direction in which human affairs were going,” said Martin Woollacott, the former Guardian foreign correspondent.
Ronald was brought up in London, the son of Bob Higgins, a detective in the murder squad, and his wife, Jean. Ronald left school at 16 but, after national service, went on to achieve a first in sociology at the London School of Economics, to do postgraduate work at Oxford University and to excel in the civil service exam. “He seemed to be absolutely destined for the top and a bit of a hero figure,” said Hugh Stephenson, a Foreign Office colleague, who is the crossword editor of the Guardian.
Higgins served in Denmark (“boring”) as well as Israel (anything but). In the early 1960s he was private secretary to Edward Heath, then lord privy seal and in charge of Britain’s first, abortive, attempt to join the Common Market. The two got on, both being Euro-enthusiasts, non-silver spoon and musical, although Higgins – wry, worldly, sociable – was a very different character from the often ill-at-ease future prime minister.
His final posting was as the head of chancery in Jakarta in the mid 60s, when Indonesia was in turmoil and the British embassy was a target for angry mobs. By then Higgins had married Mary Holland, an Observer journalist, whose lively personality was wholly unsuited to the constrained life expected of a diplomatic wife. They were rescued in 1969 when David Astor, the Observer editor, took on Ronald as his “chief assistant”, hinting that he saw him as his successor.
Higgins arrived at the paper to find “at least 37 others who’d had the same promise” and also that his new colleagues were unimpressed by a non-journalist who had been parachuted in. “They chewed him up,” recalled a contemporary. Holland went on to be one of the star writers of the Ulster Troubles, while Higgins was increasingly marginalised, and found himself mainly in charge of reader offers. The two split up.
But, by 1975, Astor had become increasingly keen on the environment and, before Higgins was quietly let go, he was commissioned to write his magnum opus, The Seventh Enemy. The first six enemies he identified were exploding population, starvation, resource scarcity, the decaying environment, the nuclear threat and out-of-control technology. The seventh was the “apathy and moral blindness within ourselves”.
There were 7,000 letters and 5,000 requests for a specially produced pamphlet. The article was turned into a book (1978) and a BBC1 documentary (1979), in which a shaggy-haired Higgins, looking like a cross between Alan Rickman’s Snape and an Old Testament prophet, talked about impending doom. His timescale was over-pessimistic; the issues have only become more urgent.
For a time he mainly lived alone in a Herefordshire cottage with an unfeasibly large number of ducks. He was rescued by marriage in 1978 to Elizabeth Bryan, the paediatrician, perhaps the world’s leading expert on twins, who founded the Multiple Births Foundation.
Higgins wrote one further book, Plotting Peace (1990), but settled into being, above all, Bryan’s partner and collaborator on books about twins and on infertility – a deeply personal issue for them, as they were never able to have the child they so much wanted.
Ronald and Libby were wonderful hosts, adored by nephews, nieces and countless godchildren and friends. After her death in 2008, Ronald chaired the Elizabeth Bryan Foundation Trust and remained an in-demand lecturer and companion, his fears for humanity always tempered by sparkling anecdotes and wit. “Quality of life?” he mused during his first bout of cancer. “I can’t see what’s wrong with good old-fashioned quantity.”
He is survived by a sister and a brother.
• Ronald Trevor Higgins, diplomat, journalist and author, born 10 July 1929; died 22 December 2017
