Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

58 expulsion was based ‘on the implausible pretext that the company had set up its own hijack’. The 1970s saw him developing his views on peacekeeping, writing a number of well-received books on the subject, and in 1978 collating the Peacekeeper’s handbook , which became a standard instruction manual for UN forces acting in this role. So far, so not particularly shocking. But the DNB tells us that ‘during the 1980s [his] work took a disconcerting turn’. Well, that rather depends on your point of view. From peacekeeping in the relatively small scale of individual conflicts, Harbottle’s thinking moved to a more global scale, leading him to the conclusion that ‘international confidence-building would only work through disarmament’. 85 At this particular point in the Cold War, such a view was seen as heresy, especially coming from a former career soldier; but it was one that would shape the rest of Harbottle’s life. Between the early 1970s and his death in 1997, Harbottle was, at one time or another, a leading member of, or consultant to, over half a dozen organisations whose objective was the furtherance of peace. These included the International Peace Academy (1971-1973), the World Disarmament Campaign (1980-1982), and the organisation with which he is perhaps most associated, the International Generals for Peace and Disarmament (1981-1990) and its post-Cold War successor, the Worldwide Consultative Association of Retired Generals and Admirals. 86 In 1981 he and his strongly like-minded second wife Eirwen co-founded the youth organisation Peace Child International, and two years later they founded the Centre for International Peacebuilding, of which he remained a director until his death. In the 1980s it was inevitable that such organisations sought discussions with counterparts in Eastern Europe. In some of the corridors of power this led to Harbottle and his fellows being branded as Marxists and traitors – labels that stuck to him, in some quarters at least, for the rest of his life. 87 However, as his obituarists wrote in The Independent , ‘No-one who really knew Harbottle thought he was in any way politicised’; and ‘Like many basically good men [he] was a little naïf about the company he kept, but there is no doubt that his heart lay with the peacemakers. Real soldiers love peace, because they’ve seen the obscenity of war and heard the ranting of so-called patriots too often’. 88 In his strivings for peace, Michael Harbottle was simply an honest and disinterested idealist. Cricketing glory So, not just an obscure cricketer, then. But a cricketer nonetheless … . Harbottle showed his abilities at the game early. As a 14-year-old in 1931 85 The Independent , 14 May 1997. 86 A fuller list of the organisations in which he participated can be found in his entry in Who Was Who. 87 This may be the reason why there is no obituary of him in the newspaper that routinely prints obituaries of lesser-known senior military figures, the Daily Telegraph . 88 From a letter from Michael Hawthorne printed in The Guardian on 28 May 1997, following up the paper’s initial obituary on 9 May. Runs Aplenty