Fitzroy MacLean

Sir Fitzroy MacLean (1911-1996) was a British diplomat, soldier and politician.

In 1995 the late Sir Fitzroy Maclean was appointed as founding chair of the Hakluyt Foundation, a supervisory board for the spy company Hakluyt. He was an intrepid explorer himself who was parachuted into Yugoslavia in the Second World War to act as the Allies' main link with Tito, the partisan leader and subsequent Communist boss.

Intelligence Newsletter reports:

The man who largely invented modern-day business intelligence at Lund university in Sweden, Steven Dedijer, has just finished a study of British intelligence in which he notes that the famous writer Fitzroy MacLean, who died in June of this year, founded a firm named Hakluyt & Company in London in 1995. Dedijer, who has lived for the past few years in Dubrovnik, claims to have watched MacLean's career between 1937 and 1995 and says he "acted all his life following the best British tradition dating from the 16th century as an independent intelligence operator working informally but effectively for and within the British establishment's power network." He claims that Maclean had a foot in the intelligence world since he attended Stalin's terror trials in 1937 as a member of the Foreign Office to Mikhail Gorbachev's time -- he advised Margaret Thatcher to back him -- and to the war in former Yugoslavia, in which he was in close contact with Gen. Michael Rose. Dedijer said MacLean's decision to create a company which bears the name of a 16th century economist, whom Dedijer considers a specialist of economic intelligence, is particularly significant and mirrors the recent change in intelligence priorities, even within the British establishment.

In addition to MacLean, the founders of the highly discreet Hakluyt & Company are George Jellicoe (Earl), who was head of a committee to reform intelligence and security under the Thatcher government and is now president of the Royal Geographic Society; and Brian Cubbon, former permanent secretary at the Home Office who was a candidate in 1987 to head the Secret Service.

The Financial Times reports:

Sir Fitzroy Maclean, the former diplomat and Tory minister whose finest hour was probably leading the British military mission to Yugoslav partisans during the second world war, has taken on a new task, as president of the Hakluyt foundation.

It's a new, privately-funded body, established to give British companies the inside information they need when contemplating big ventures in foreign countries. Named after the Elizabethan promoter and chronicler of overseas exploration, the foundation will use a network of contacts to tell companies what's really going on in a foreign country, and who the key political players are. Its directors include Sir Brian Cubbon, a former permanent secretary at the home office and Northern Ireland Office.

Perhaps its nearest equivalent is the Kissinger Foundation, set up by Henry Kissinger to help US businesses and organisations. Maclean, a highly active 84-year-old who has just brought out yet another book on Scotland, is one of those people who knows everyone, on both sides of the Atlantic.