The British high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, will declare that the UK must do more to project a modern, multicultural image on the world stage.
Treadell will talk about the UK’s “journey beyond colonialism” on Wednesday, saying she is proud that in modern Britain “the daughter of immigrants can start at the lowest level of the civil service and become the British high commissioner to Australia”.
The comments come weeks after the Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, caused a stir with a speech in London reflecting on different experiences of British colonialism.
Wong said both nations should not stay “sheltered in narrower versions of our countries’ histories”, because that would make it more difficult to find common ground with Indo-Pacific partners.
Treadell will weigh into the debate when she addresses the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday. While avoiding any criticism of Wong, Treadell will set out a case that the UK has made progress to shake off its colonial history.
“I am proudly British and I say this as someone born in Malaysia without a drop of English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish blood coursing through my veins,” Treadell will say, according to speech extracts distributed to media in advance.
“In ethnic terms I am Eurasian, the daughter of Chinese and Dutch Burgher parents who migrated to Britain with me in tow, aged eight. Ten million Britons, like me, are foreign born.”
Treadell will recount her experience as a 19-year-old on the first day in an entry level role as a clerk in the Foreign Office in London. She says she “had the common experience of many migrants at that time, the inevitable ‘Yes, but where are you really from?’ conversation”.
“My first boss on greeting me was bemused [and] he said: ‘I don’t understand how you hope to be a member of Her Majesty’s diplomatic service.’
“I told him, I am a legacy of Empire, and you reap what you sow. This was 1979. A year later and perhaps I could have referenced a popular film release: The Empire Strikes Back.”
Treadell will say that over her career she has witnessed an ongoing change in her organisation’s approach to diversity, but has also seen her country transform into a “more inclusive society where whoever you are and wherever your family came from you can rise and achieve the highest office”.
“I’m not sure we have an equivalent idiom of our American friends and their ‘American dream’,” she will say.
“If we did, I’d say I’m proud of the ‘British reality’ – a reality where we have a prime minister of Indian heritage, a foreign secretary of Sierra Leone heritage, and, yes, where the daughter of immigrants can start at the lowest level of the civil service and become the British high commissioner to Australia.”
Treadell will add that the UK has made progress but “there is still more to do, not least in how we project to the world”.
“So, let me be clear: Yes, I represent the Britain of Brontë and Beckham, but I also represent the Britain of Mary Seacole and James Cleverley, of Riz Ahmed and Rishi Sunak, of Courtney Pine and Kemi Badenoch,” she will say.
Treadell will say that she also represents “a Britain that addressed its legacy of the slave trade by leading the world in the abolition of slavery” through the passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. She says it has also led the more recent global campaign against modern slavery.
