George Ivan Smith

George Ivan Smith AO

George Ivan Smith AO (1915-95) career spanned radio, war correspondent, movie director, diplomat, poet and author. He was born July 11th 1915 George Charles Ivan Smith in Sydney, Australia, the first son of George Franklin Smith, a NSW prison governor and May Sullivan.

"As a people we are now called Australians because a vast & lonely land has touched us with her differences" George Ivan Smith, 1953

Personal

In 1935 he married Madeleine LaBarte Oakes (1909-1966) of Maryborough, Queensland: children George Ivan Smith 1937 deceased, Antony Ivan Smith (Ivansmith) 1939 and Sharon Morreale 1940. In 1944 he married Mary Stephanie Douglass; stepchildren Penelope Gilliatt writer (1932-1993), Angela Conner (1935), sculptor and an adopted daughter Edda Mwakeselo Ivan-Smith, author and Social Development Consultant. He passed away in 1995 in Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Life and Career

After education at Bathurst, New South Wales at Bathurst and then Goulburn High School where is father George Franklin Smith was prison governor at the Goulburn Gaol. After graduation Ivan Smith began work as a cub newspaper journalist for the Sydney TRUTH. In 1937 he joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission and managed 2WL a radio station in Wollongong. LaterMichael Pate who began his career in 1938 joined Ivan Smith writing and broadcasting a program called 'Youth Speaks' for ABC Radio. In 1939 became he talk’s editor and a founding member of the new overseas short wave broadcasting service, “Australia Calling” (1939-1941) later named Radio Australia. In 1941 Ivan Smith was seconded to the BBC Overseas Service in London where he became Director of the Pacific Service and organised overseas coverage of the Second Front. In 1945 he joined the J. Arthur Rank Organisation where he worked as Producer, Editor and Director of "This Modern Age" with Sergei Nolbano, a documentary series of films for J. Arthur Rank (1945-1947).

Ivan Smith joined the United Nations in 1947 and went to New York as Senior Director of External Affairs to establish the organisation's first international radio programmes for the United Nations Information Services, then at Lake Success, New York (1947-1949). In 1949 he came to Britain as first director of the London United Nations Information Centre, remaining there until 1958. During that time he was closely associated with Dr. Ralph Bunche and the Secretary General Trygve Halvdan Lie in developing the 1949 Armistice Agreement that ended the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

After Trygve Lie’s resignation in 1952, he acted frequently as spokesman for Dag Hammarskjöld, who had become secretary-general in 1953. He accompanied him on many missions, including his visit to the Middle East following the Suez crisis on 1956-57. After which he co-ordinated salvage operations with American salvage companies of the sunken ships that blocked the Suez Canal.

He was also in charge of press liaison at the Four Powers' summit conference and foreign ministers' meeting in Geneva in 1955 and worked closely with James Hagerty President Dwight Eisenhower’s press secretary. In 1958 Ivan Smith returned to New York, firstly as Director of the External Relations Division of the UN Office of Public Information and later as Senior Director Public Information of Press and Publications, United Nations, New York.

Africa

In 1961 he was appointed United Nations Representative Katanga by Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. Where he and his colleague Sir Brian Urquhart were kidnapped and beaten by Katangese paratroopers in the presence of US Senator Thomas Dodd. Senator Dodd was visiting the secessionist leader Moïse Tshombe and was his strongest supporter in the US Senate. A State Department employee, Lewis Hoffacker, attempted to stop the kidnapping and managed to get Ivan Smith away from his abductors by pulling him from a truck; Senator Dodd was being feted at a private home in Elizabethville at the time. Ivan Smith was able to then contact the commander of the UN Indian forces, Colonel S. S. Maitro and who effected Urquhart’s release shortly afterwards, albeit in badly beaten condition.

Ivan Smith was then appointed the personal Representative of the Secretary General U Thant in East and Central Africa 1962-1966 as well as the Regional Director of United Nations Technical Assistance Programmes in Central Africa.

In 1964 he delivered the Boyer Lecture for ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) titled “Along the Edge of Peace". 1965 he was nominated for the new post of secretary-general of the Commonwealth but the appointment went to his namesake Arnold Smith of Canada after severe pressure from Australian Prime Minster Robert Menzies over his work in Africa.

Later Years

In 1966 Ivan Smith returned from Africa to become a visiting Professor Princeton University and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1966-1968). After this last tenure he again became Director of United Nations Office London England (1968-1974). During 1967 he also worked for the World Security Trust on the problems of nuclear proliferation and acted as consultant to various international corporations.

In his retirement to Stroud, Gloucestershire he authored ’’’’Ghosts of Kampala’’’’, a biography of Idi Amin and contributed numerous articles and letters to the press to include an obituary of Lord Olivier. He was awarded the Officer the Order of Australia (AO) by Queen Elizabeth in London on Australia Day 1992 for Service to International Relations.

His collection of photographs, papers and letters were donated to the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. He was a very close friend of over the years with many individuals he met in the course of his career. Danny Kaye who would come to London with Jerry Lewis and appear in special UNICEF performances. He carried on constant communications with friends and associates such as Gareth Evans, Paul Keating and Rupert Murdoch and much earlier his mentor James Joyce these documents all reside at the Bodleian Library.

Publications

Poetry London X 1944 Editions Poetry London, page 154. Anthology of The best War Time London Verse.

Adventure and Discovery 1946 Jonathan Cape Miracle Drugs” page 155

Ghosts of Kampala: The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin first published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson (London)(1980.

The Term of his Natural Life: Marcus Clarke, with an Introduction by George Ivan Smith, Collins. 1953.

External Links that reference George Ivan Smith

Bodleian Library collection of photos, papers and letters of George Ivan Smith

George Ivan Smith, review "The Apparatus of Repression" and "Consciences of Convenience." Ghosts of Kampala (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), 113-131, 161-174.

The Official Opening of Australia Calling (later Radio Australia) on 20 December 1939.

Interview with Sir Brian Urquhart, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

This Modern Age Palestine George Ivan Smith and Sergei Nolbano

New York Times review This Modern Age Palestine 1946

Listing of This Modern Age documentaries

Michael Pate's first contact with George Ivan Smith.

Wollongong history and founding of radio station 2WL

Senator Thomas Dodd in Katanga

Radio Australia: Speech An independent voice for Australia in Asia and the Pacific

Violence Robert Jackall Class of 1956 Professor of Sociology and Social Thought, Williams College HFG grantee

Order of Australia recipients.