Roger Barltrop

Published: 7:00PM GMT twenty-five February 2010

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Photo: PA

On nearing at the council building, he recalled, he rught away encountered Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, the Army Chief of Staff, who sensitive him:

"We"ve taken over, sir."

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"Who"s "we", Steve?"

"The army, sir," Rabuka replied, adding that he had thought about the consequences.

The origins of the manoeuvre spread out behind to the 19th century, when Indian workers had been alien to assistance with the sugarine crop. It eventually lighted in Apr 1987 after a supervision led by a Fijian but containing a infancy of racial Indians was elected, to the fury of inland Fijian hotheads.

As the tragi-farce unravelled, immature Fijians proposed aggressive racial Indian-owned shops. British officials were held. More than 100 prisoners transient from jail. Timoci Bavadra who had been inaugurated budding apportion but arrested did not assistance on being let out of prison when he purported CIA impasse in the coup. For great measure, members of the Methodist Church attempted to forestall people pushing on Sundays. When Barltrop was stopped by a immature man he asked: "How about the Gospel of St Mark, section 2, hymn 27?", explaining, "the Sabbath was done for man, not man for the Sabbath".

Efforts by a inherent examination cabinet floundered over the paradoxical inland Fijian enterprise both to keep the Queen as head of state and secure themselves an confirmed infancy in council a understanding unsuitable to both the island"s racial Indians and the outward world.

When a regulation was found at last, Rabuka staged a second manoeuvre (in September). This led to the abdication of governor-general, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, and Fiji"s depart from the Commonwealth though typical Fijians sojourn trustworthy to the sovereign to this day. Barltrop, who had played his purpose with finesse, was asked to sojourn in post. As a outcome he went to bed a high government central and rose subsequent sunrise an ambassador.

When Barltrop resumed creation central calls, Rabuka certified to the new envoy that he had been right to advise that the manoeuvre would have catastrophic results. Some years later, when Rabuka attended a Commonwealth Heads of Government discussion in Scotland, he gave the Queen a tabua, a spermatazoa whale tooth that Fijians benefaction as a present of atonement.

The son of a work confidant to the Colonial Secretary, Roger Arnold Rowlandson Barltrop was innate on Jan nineteen 1930 and went to Leeds Grammar School prior to fasten the Navy, portion in the Mediterranean for dual years in the cruiser Cleopatra. He review Greats at Exeter College, Oxford, prior to fasten the Commonwealth Relations Office, that sent him to India and afterwards Nigeria. After a spell as initial cabinet member in Salisbury he went to Turkey and St Lucia.

When he arrived subsequent in Addis Ababa, the Emperor Haile Selassie"s order was usually disintegrating; bodies in the streets were a informed sight. Barltrop was once waved down during the curfew by a radical infantryman who lurched unsteadily towards his car afterwards dismissed as he gathering off. The bullet ricocheted off the belligerent to board in Barltrop"s motor fuel tank, and became a appreciated souvenir.

His appointment as high government central in Fiji in 1982 seemed approaching to suggest some-more fad in the opportunities for sailing than in the nation"s politics. He accompanied the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on their revisit to Tuvalu and Naura in the Royal Yacht Britannia.

After returning home in 1989, Barltrop greeted dignitaries at Heathrow and served as an choosing spectator in Bangladesh, St Kitts and Nevis, and Bosnia. He renewed his seductiveness in pledge entertainment and opera, looming with internal play groups and apropos an additional at Glyndebourne, where he was not approaching to sing but hummed along in multiform productions. He additionally appeared as an additional in the 2000 radio movie of The Railway Children.

Roger Barltrop, who died on Dec 6, was allocated CVO in 1982 and CMG in 1987.

He married, in 1962, Penny Dalton, with whom he had dual sons and dual daughters; after they divorced he married, in 1988, Bojana Komadina.