Alan Travis, home affairs editor.
Guardian Unlimited. Wednesday
January 3, 2001.
The Foreign Office effectively blocked a 1969 television interview that
David Frost wanted to carry out with Fidel Castro because it feared it might
prove "an inspiration to the revolting students" in Britain at the
time.
Confidential Foreign Office papers released yesterday at the public record
office show that Whitehall civil servants were even prepared to tell David Frost
that he could put an end to any career plans he had to work in the United States
if he went ahead with the interview.
The idea had been secretly initiated by Lord Stokes, the chairman of British
Leyland, after a visit to Cuba in May 1969. Castro had bought a large
consignment of British Leyland buses, one of the few big export orders ever won
by the state car company. Lord Stokes returned from Havana and claimed that
Castro had become a reformed character and the chances of a rapprochement with
the west and the United States had improved. He believed a Frost interview would
be a useful device to help Castro to "continue to improve his image".
Lord Stokes had written to the British ambassador in Havana to tell him that
he had suggested the idea to David Frost, whom he said he knew well, and the
television interviewer had "responded enthusiastically".
The Foreign Office was less enthusiastic. "An exercise involving David
Frost and Fidel Castro would put us in a highly unpopular light in the rest of
Latin America and the United States," said one confidential Foreign Office
minute.
The civil servants were also worried that if Frost conducted an aggressive
and hostile interview it could prove counter-productive: "Frost's
interviews being unpredictable, the result might be a detraction from Fidel
Castro's public image, which would have an adverse impact on Anglo-Cuban
relations."
They thought they might suggest to Frost that he could "easily
jeopardise his chances of finding further work in the United States."
But the crucial factor, according to the confidential Foreign Office file,
was that they did not want to encourage "student devotees of Che Guevara in
this country".
"There seems a danger that David Frost might, in interviewing Castro,
concentrate more on the mythology of Castro (an inspiration to the revolting
students) than on the reality," minuted one Foreign Office civil servant.
The file concludes by saying that Frost should be officially discouraged. It
seems from the file that this was enough to prevent the interview going ahead,
although there is no evidence it was directly banned.
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