Paddy Ashdown

The Rt Hon. Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, GCMG, KBE
Leader of the Liberal Democrats
In office 1988–1999
Preceded by	David Steel (Liberal Party) and Robert Maclennan (SDP)
Succeeded by	Charles Kennedy
Constituency	Yeovil
High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina
In office 2002–2006
Preceded by	Wolfgang Petritsch
Succeeded by	Christian Schwarz-Schilling
Personal details
Born	27 February 1941 New Delhi, India
Political party	Liberal Democrats
Spouse	Jane Courtenay
Children	1 son, 1 daughter
Residence	United Kingdom

Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon GCMG KBE PC (born 27 February1941), commonly known as Paddy Ashdown, is a British politician native of British India.

A former leader of the Liberal Democrats, until January 2006 he was the international community's High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. A gifted polyglot, Ashdown is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and other languages. He was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (GCMG) in the New Year Honours 2006.

Biography

Ashdown is the eldest of seven children and was born in New Delhi in India to a non-practising Roman Catholic father, and a Protestant mother; subsequently, he and his siblings were not raised Roman Catholic. His father was a Captain in the Indian Army, 14th Punjab Regiment & RIASC and his mother was a QA. He was largely brought up in Northern Ireland (hence the nickname "Paddy") and educated at Bedford School, England. From 1959 to 1972 he served as an officer in the Royal Marines, including a stint in the elite Special Boat Service. After leaving the Marines, he worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in industry, and as a youth worker before being elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Yeovil in 1983. He has been accused of, but publicly denied, working for MI6 while a diplomat in Geneva in the 1970s.

UK Politics

In the House of Commons he was SDP-Liberal Alliance spokesman on Trade and Industry and then on Education. After the merger that formed the Liberal Democrats, he was elected as the new party's leader in 1988.

Once he became leader, Paddy Ashdown received advice from Max Atkinson in relation to his speeches. Ashdown said: "There was scarcely a single major speech, in my eleven years as leader of the Liberal Democrats that I made without benefiting from Max Atkinson’s personal advice and help."

Ashdown led the Liberal Democrats into two general elections, in 1992 and 1997. In the 1997 election, the Liberal Democrats won 46 seats, their best performance since the 1920s.

As leader he was a notable proponent of co-operation between the Liberal Democrats and "New Labour", and had regular secret meetings with Tony Blair to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. After Labour's 1997 victory a "Joint Cabinet Committee" (JCC) including senior Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians was created to discuss the implementation of the two parties' shared priorities for constitutional reform; its remit was later expanded to include other issues on which Blair and Ashdown saw scope for co-operation between the two parties. Ashdown's successor as Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, deliberately allowed the JCC to slip into abeyance until it effectively stopped meeting, although it is not clear if it was ever formally dissolved. Blair and Ashdown also agreed to create the Jenkins Commission to conduct a public inquiry into the case for electoral reform. Chaired by Liberal Democrat peer Roy Jenkins, the commission recommended replacing the first-past-the-post electoral system with a system of proportional representation for use in General Elections, in line with a key demand of Ashdown and his party. However, Blair remained unconvinced of the case for electoral reform, and the commission's recommendations have never been passed into law. The plan to bring Liberal Democrats into the government continued, according to Ashdown's published diaries, but foundered on opposition from senior Labour ministers.

Ashdown resigned the leadership in 1999 and was succeeded by Charles Kennedy. He was knighted (KBE) in 2000 and became a life peer as Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, of Norton-sub-Hamdon in the County of Somerset in the House of Lords after retiring from the Commons in 2001. In the 2001 election, the Yeovil seat was retained for the Liberal Democrats by David Laws.

High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina

Paddy Ashdown with Colin Powell in 2004

After leaving British politics, he took up the post of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina on May 27, 2002, reflecting his long-time advocacy of international intervention in that region. He succeeded Wolfgang Petritsch in the position created under the Dayton Agreement. He is sometimes denigrated as "the Viceroy of Bosnia" by critics of his work as High Representative.

Serbian allegations of perjury

On 14 March, 2002 Ashdown testified as a witness for the prosecution at the trial of Slobodan Milošević at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He said that he was on the Kosovo-Albania border near Junik in June, 1998. From this location, through his binoculars, Ashdown claimed to see Serbian forces shelling several villages.

On July, 2005 a defence witness, General Bozidar Delić, demonstrated with a topographical map of the area that Ashdown could not have been able to see the areas that he claimed to be able to see as hills, mountains and thick woods obstructed his view.

After his testimony had been rebutted, Ashdown supplied the Tribunal with some new grid coordinates. These coordinates indicated he was actually in Kosovo and not Albania, which meant that he would have had to cross, what at the time was a sealed border. The prosecution also used some new maps indicating Ashdown's supposed location, but their accuracy was challenged by Delić, as the location of a village was different to other maps of the area.

Personal life

Ashdown married to Jane Courtenay in 1962. The couple have two children, Simon and Katharine, along with three grandchildren. In 1992 he disclosed a five-month affair with his secretary, Patricia Howard, five years earlier. He and his marriage weathered the political and tabloidstorm, with his wife of 30 years forgiving him, but headlines in the press were merciless–The Sun famously dubbed him "Paddy Pantsdown".

Bibliography

• The Ashdown Diaries vol 1. 1988–1997, ISBN 0-14-029775-8
• The Ashdown Diaries vol 2. 1997–1999, ISBN 0-14-029776-6

External links

• Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon profile at the site of Liberal Democrats
• Office of the High Representative in BiH
• Farewell, Sarajevo, The Guardian, November 2, 2005