Lord Renwick of Clifton, who has died aged 86, was Britain’s ambassador to South Africa from 1987 to 1991 and a key player in the ending of apartheid; his reward was a final posting to Washington as Bill Clinton succeeded George H W Bush.
Sent to Pretoria by Margaret Thatcher to underpin her opposition to sanctions, Robin Renwick was able to exert a unique influence on the Afrikaner establishment when the fall of President P W Botha opened the way for reform under F W De Klerk.
His embassy became the most influential in Pretoria; one National Party insider observed: “It’s as if a Cabinet minister had decided to emigrate.” Renwick cultivated Afrikaner leaders through a mutual passion for rugby and a common understanding of the realities of power; they welcomed him because of Mrs Thatcher’s stance on sanctions, but in private he told them: “You’re in a hole. Stop digging.”
Simultaneously he built unrivalled contacts with leaders of the black majority and in the townships. Renwick’s arrival coincided with a shake-up at the embassy to bring in younger diplomats; nicknamed “Robin’s Batmen”, he sent them into the townships, previously no-go areas, as Britain set up 250 aid projects.
Renwick invited opinion formers from across the racial spectrum to the embassy, pouring the drinks himself. At one dinner, the head of the black consciousness movement Azapo sat opposite the chairman of the Afrikaner Broederbond.
His style contrasted sharply with that of his predecessor Sir Patrick Moberly. Renwick worked to secure the release from jail of the African National Congress veteran Walter Sisulu; Moberly, on hearing that Sisulu’s son was collecting an award because his father could not attend, had observed: “Oh, dear. Is he indisposed?”
As Renwick helped De Klerk bring about the release of opposition leaders – and ultimately of Nelson Mandela – he persuaded Mrs Thatcher (with support from his friend Charles Powell) to accept that the end of apartheid would bring the ANC to power; for a time she had tried to work through Renwick to peel Mandela away from it.
A man of energy and restless intelligence, Renwick appealed more to Mrs Thatcher than to some FCO contemporaries; they recognised a “great operator” but questioned his commitment to the “Foreign Office view”. Yet he was never an unprotesting conduit for her opinions; indeed her nickname for him was “‘Yes, but’ Renwick.”
He came to her attention – as did Powell, who had joined the foreign service the same day – during the 1979 Lancaster House negotiations on the future of Rhodesia. Powell would become Mrs Thatcher’s foreign relations éminence grise; Renwick was sent to Washington as Head of Chancery, distinguishing himself during the Falklands war.
Sent back as ambassador by John Major, he inherited good relations between Bush and Major, went trout fishing in Wyoming with Bush’s Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and built formidable African-American contacts on the strength of his accomplishments in Pretoria.
Bilateral relations were harmed only by individual states’ attempts to tax British companies on their global earnings. But Renwick soon concluded that Bush was in trouble and assigned Powell’s brother Jonathan – later chief of staff to Tony Blair – to cultivate the Democrats.
His foresight was not shared in London; Tory staffers joined Bush’s campaign, and the Home Office ill-advisedly dug out its files on Clinton’s anti-Vietnam war activities while at Oxford. After Clinton’s election, Renwick met the president-elect at the home of Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post, to clear the air.
Yet relations under the Democrats stayed bumpy, and for this he partly blamed Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national security adviser and a friend since Lancaster House. Renwick fought to stop the State Department granting Gerry Adams a visa and inviting him for a meeting without a commitment by the IRA to disarm. He was furious when officials’ advice to deny Adams a visa was overruled and he was not informed.
There were difficulties, too, over Bosnia, Renwick attempting to maintain a semblance of unity to avoid damaging Nato. Major was convinced that peacekeeping forces and an arms embargo on all sides in the increasingly bloody conflict were the answer; Renwick persuaded Clinton that “the risks of doing nothing were just as high as those of intervening”. In the end it took the bombing of the Serbs by Nato after the massacre at Srebrenica, and marathon negotiations at Dayton, Ohio, to bring an end to the conflict.
Renwick left Washington in 1995, lauded as one of Britain’s best ambassadors there, and went into banking.
Robin William Renwick was born on December 13 1937, the son of Richard Renwick and the former Clarice Henderson. Though his parents hailed from Edinburgh he attended St Paul’s School in London. After National Service with the Army he completed his education at Jesus College, Cambridge (which made him an honorary fellow in 1992), and the Sorbonne.
Renwick joined the diplomatic service in 1962; early postings were to Dakar and New Delhi. After two years as private secretary to the Minister of State, Sir Joseph Godber, he was posted to Paris in 1972 as first secretary. Two years at the Cabinet Office followed, then in 1978 he was put in charge of the FCO’s Rhodesia desk as Ian Smith sought ways to end UDI by handing over power to moderate Africans.
In March 1979, on a mission authorised by James Callaghan and President Carter, Renwick flew to Rhodesia with the American envoy Stephen Low. They met the military, Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s transitional government and Robert Mugabe, still a guerrilla, whom they urged not to spurn negotiations.
After Mrs Thatcher came to power and Lord Carrington convened the Lancaster House talks, Renwick and Charles Powell went from one delegation’s hotel room to another stitching together a settlement.
Renwick next flew to Salisbury as political adviser to Lord Soames, the last colonial governor. He faced down a move to extend the deadline for guerrillas to hand in their weapons, and helped dissuade Smith’s army commander Lt-Gen Peter Walls from staging a pre-election coup. Renwick believed that Mugabe’s election would be a disaster, but one that had to be lived with.
He next took a sabbatical at Harvard, writing a study of the effectiveness of economic sanctions in general. He concluded that they might achieve their objective, but could have harmful political consequences.
Moving to Washington under Sir Nicholas Henderson, he struck up a rapport with President Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger. This proved invaluable when the Falklands were invaded. When Renwick submitted a shopping list of weaponry to the Pentagon, Weinberger insisted on dealing with him directly, slapping down generals who complained that giving Britain all she wanted would dangerously deplete their own stocks.
In 1984 Renwick returned to the Foreign Office as assistant under-secretary for Europe, reinforcing Mrs Thatcher’s tough line on the community budget. Colleagues rated him a Eurosceptic; in fact he reckoned that Britain’s failure to join the Common Market at the outset was a bigger mistake than Suez.
Renwick arrived in Pretoria facing an uphill struggle. Botha resented the British for having put his parents in a concentration camp during the Boer War, and black South Africans were unimpressed by Mrs Thatcher lumping the ANC with the IRA as “terrorists”.
In April 1989 he received his first letter from Mandela. That September, he persuaded the authorities to permit a multi-racial demonstration in Cape Town; 30,000 people took part in the largest such event in 30 years. The next month Sisulu was freed, Renwick meeting him soon after.
Renwick pressed for Mandela’s release, holding out to De Klerk the carrot of a visit by Mrs Thatcher (she was ousted before it could take place). Freed in April 1990, Mandela rang the Labour leader Neil Kinnock but pointedly sent Mrs Thatcher a message via Renwick.
De Klerk, struggling to envisage what a post-apartheid South Africa would look like, used Renwick as a conduit to ascertain the ANC’s intentions. Mandela was angered by Britain’s easing sanctions before steps had been taken to end apartheid.
Renwick first met Mandela at a small house in Soweto. Next time, the ambassador invited him to the best restaurant in Johannesburg. He recalled: “It was wonderful to see the faces of the diners as we walked in. They’d all probably voted to keep him in jail, but he walked from table to table shaking their hands.”
Later in 1990 he arranged for the Foreign Office minister William Waldegrave to meet all shades of opinion, Mandela included. Multi-racial elections were still three years off when Renwick left in 1991, but his work was done.
After leaving the diplomatic service, he advised Blair on how to “modernise” it, and in 1997 was given a life peerage.
Renwick joined the board of Robert Fleming, becoming its deputy chairman in 2000, then in 2001 became vice-chairman for investment banking at J P Morgan and in 2005 vice-chairman of J P Morgan Cazenove. He was appointed CMG in 1980 and KCMG in 1989.
Renwick was twice married, first to the Corsican-born Anne-Collette Guidicelli, with whom he had a daughter and a son who predeceased him; secondly to Ann Bracken, with whom he had another son.
Lord Renwick of Clifton, born December 13 1937, died November 4 2024