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The beach hut crisis

That this column has some reach was demonstrated once again when a friend with British Foreign Office connections sent me a clipping from The Guardian, London, of August 9, 2005, and today's picture. She had seen my piece on the Rainsfords and the Feltons (Miscellany, February 13) and thought that Rainsford had not a little to do with what The Guardianhad headlined `Cold War crisis over a beach hut.'

The beach hut in question was one the British Deputy High Commission had built on Elliot's Beach in the 1960s. That was about the tail end of the period when the last expatriates considered Elliot's Beach their exclusive preserve. Several of the British companies in Madras had built huts as changing facilities here from as early as the 1930s and bathing and sunning themselves at deserted Elliot's Beach was a favourite pastime of the expatriates in Madras on either side of World War II. When a British Deputy High Commission as well as other Western Consulates-General were set up, the beach became even more popular, and more changing huts became necessary, the previous practice of borrowing huts becoming impracticable with the growing number of expatriates using the beach. It was Rainsford, then First Secretary at the British Deputy High Commission, who built the hut and caused the `crisis.' With Britain's official records being made public every 30 years, Martin Wainwright got the opportunity to write this delightful little recollection of it: "As British holidaymakers head for the beaches, the government has revealed how the central place the seaside occupies in the national character almost caused an international incident between the major powers.

"At the height of the Cold War in 1965, diplomatic officials were exchanging anxious memos about a new staff bathing hut, which had been built by mistake on India government land.

"A flurry of confidential exchanges released by the National Archives shows that the tiny outpost of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Madras, now Chennai, had no right to exist and was, in the words of one alarmed mandarin, `without legal title - we are simply squatting'.

"The potential for embarrassment was considerable. Not only was squatting a major political issue in 1960s Britain, but India's role as a cockpit of intrigue between Soviet and Western agents also became part of the problem.

"Initially, a senior diplomat reported that after private talks with India it had been agreed that everyone would just turn a blind eye and therefore officially the hut is not there.

"But within weeks London was warned that the hut's site and facilities, including a neat `kitchenette', were so admired ... in contrast to overcrowded public beaches nearby - that `the Americans are trying to get in on our patch. So I believe are the Russians.'

"It needed intervention by tropical weather to save the former imperial power's dignity, according to the file, which has been released under the Archive Awareness Campaign to encourage research into such small historical dramas. Before Whitehall could think up a stratagem, a cyclone hit Madras, tearing away the hut's verandah and ripping off part of the roof... The hut then faded from history and eventually collapsed."

The accompanying picture shows the hut after the cyclone had helped to resolve the crisis.

S. MUTHIAH

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