Anthony Ivall Aust CMG (1942-2017): Legal Advisor to the Foreign Office

Anthony Ivall Aust was descended from James Ivall (1745-1809) via Charles Ivall (1779-1832), John Ivall (1802-35), Anna Aust nee Ivall (1827-99), Henry Ivall Aust (1869-1922) and Ivall George Aust (1907-73).

Charles Ivall was a brother of my ancestor Thomas Ivall (1781-1835). There is an item about the life of Anna Aust nee Ivall on this blog. In 2009, I exchanged emails with Anthony about his Ivall family history.

Anthony was made a CMG (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George) in 1995. This is awarded to men and women who hold high office or who render important non-military service to the United Kingdom in a foreign country.

On May 20 2018, The Times published the following:

Anthony Aust obituary

Unconventional adviser to the Foreign Office whose book on international law was next to Osama bin Laden’s bed when he was shot

When Osama bin Laden was tracked to a compound in Pakistan in 2011 and shot dead by US navy Seals, not the least of the surprises revealed to a watching world was the nature of his bedside reading. At the top of a hefty stack of hardbacks that included histories of warfare was a handbook of international law written by Anthony Aust.

Commentators had fun with its content, which included sections on terrorism, and joked that after a few pages of the tome the leader of al-Qaeda perhaps felt the need to relax with some of the pornography rumoured to have been found in his desk.

Yet Aust may have had his own views on the legality of Bin Laden’s death, for, despite working for the Foreign Office as a legal adviser for almost 35 years, to more staid colleagues he could appear unconventional in dress and opinion.

Rather than being the customary Oxbridge-bred barrister, Aust was by training a solicitor and had been educated at the London School of Economics (LSE). As a young lawyer he had supported causes and organisations considered at the time somewhat radical, such as the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty). In summer he might appear in the office not in a three-piece suit, but in sandals, and in winter wear at his desk a rollneck sweater. When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands one April afternoon in 1982, he answered an urgent summons to Whitehall wearing his gardening clothes.

Such independence of mind perhaps hinted at his strengths as a lawyer. A skilled negotiator with a good poker face, from 1988 to 1991 Aust was legal adviser to the United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations in New York during the dramatic period of the end of the Cold War. In the autumn of 1988 he had an early indication of the changes to come when, unexpectedly, a senior Soviet diplomat began to relate inside stories from the Kremlin at a dinner party in Aust’s apartment in Manhattan. A steady thawing of relations at a personal level soon followed.

The destruction soon afterwards of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie triggered a series of legal issues that would dominate the last decade of Aust’s career in government service. They culminated in the unique solution of the setting-up of a special Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands to try those accused of the bombing.

He was also to play a key role in the international response to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990. As legal adviser, he sat next to the British ambassador to the UN, Sir Crispin Tickell, during the many difficult and sometimes all-night discussions in the security council. He was centrally involved in the drafting of the early council responses and typed up the first version of Resolution 678, which empowered states to use all necessary means to eject the Iraqis. Despite the apparent success of the measures in procuring the restoration of Kuwaiti sovereignty, he remained profoundly sceptical as to the effectiveness of the UN as an institution.

Anthony Ivall Aust was born in Reading, Berkshire, in 1942, to Jessie (née Salmon) and Ivall, a clerk at the Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory. Young Tony was educated at Stoneham Grammar School and initially hoped to become an architect before deciding to read law at the LSE. Later in life he became an accomplished photographer, often taking buildings as his subjects.

While an articled clerk in 1967, he applied for a post as a legal adviser at the Foreign Office and was surprised when he got the job. An early matter with which he was involved was seeking to justify in law the government’s decision to expel forcibly from their home the islanders of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. This was done to provide a base for the US military, later shared with Britain. Although successive governments have denied acting illegally, Aust found the task distasteful, and the issue remains a source of bitter dispute to this day.

From 1976 to 1979 Aust was legal adviser to the British military government in Berlin, a legacy of the Second World War. His office looked out on a golden German eagle, and behind his desk was a complete set of records of the Nuremberg trials. His remit included the supervision of the British contingent in Spandau Prison, which held Rudolf Hess, formerly Hitler’s deputy.

Spandau had been built in the late 19th century to house 600 prisoners. Hess, by then in his eighties, had become its sole inmate, but conditions were made relatively comfortable for him. He was provided with a hospital-style bed and allowed to decorate the walls with pictures of planets.

Aust had to sit in on some of Hess’s monthly family visits, when his wife usually came. Most of the time, he recalled, she talked about herself and life outside. Hess had very little chance to say anything. Unkind people said that if he were to be released he would die quickly from having to listen to her chatter.

One difficulty that Aust had to negotiate was whether Hess should be allowed to have a television, placed in a corridor, so he could watch an important football match between England and West Germany. The British wardens were keenly in favour, and for once the Soviet governor agreed, even though it meant erecting an aerial on the roof (England lost).

During his final days in Berlin, Aust also had to cope with the publication of a book by Hugh Thomas, a former British doctor at Spandau, which alleged that the man held in the prison was not Hess but a double — and that the Allies knew this. It said that the real Hess had been shot down while trying to fly to Scotland in 1941 and had been replaced by an impostor working for Heinrich Himmler. The proof was said to be that Thomas had seen no sign on Hess of a scar from when shot during the First World War. It was decided to x-ray the prisoner, which revealed the damage to his lung. Hess eventually committed suicide in the prison in 1987, aged 93.

In 1969 Aust married Jacqueline Paris. They had two daughters, Sophie and Katherine, but the marriage ended in divorce. In 1988 he married Kirsten Kaarre Jensen, a Danish diplomat; they met at a conference in Montreal about the shooting down by the Soviet military in 1983 of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.

Aust was appointed CMG in 1995 and retired as deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office in 2002. Thereafter he devoted himself to teaching and to scholarly writing, fiercely rejecting any notion that he had become an academic. His books included Modern Treaty Law and Practice (2000), derived from his extensive experience of treaty negotiation and the operation of treaty regimes such as that of Antarctica, with which he remained involved. The book became a standard work of reference.

Aust’s other interests included travel, especially to Tasmania, which he visited many times. His subtle wit was often in evidence at academic seminars. In the style of his favourite author, Oscar Wilde, he remarked that he saw his task as hoping to reveal a “glimpse of ankle beneath the capacious skirts of government”.

Anthony Aust, CMG, legal adviser to the Foreign Office, was born on March 9, 1942. He died after a long illness on December 3, 2017, aged 75.