Ralph Lindsay Harry (10 March 19177 October 2002) was one of Australia's pioneer diplomats and intelligence specialists. He was recognised as a skilled diplomatic professional with a mastery of the traditional conventions and methods of diplomacy and politics. Having acted early in his career for three years as Director of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, he was also known as an insightful intelligence analyst and cryptographer.
Harry was the Acting Head of the Department of External Affairs and concluded his career as Australia's Ambassador to the United Nations. He made a lifelong emotional commitment to the promotion of the interests of Australia and the betterment of his fellow men and women through the promotion of international law and institutions. There was little he did or said that was not aimed in this direction.
Family, youth and education
Ralph Harry was born in Geelong, Victoria on 10 March 1917, the youngest of four children. The son of Arthur Hartley Harry, a senior classics master at the Geelong College, and Ethel Roby Holder; the family's circumstances were modest. Harry was brought up to be frugal, reticent and hardworking and in an atmosphere of reverence for academic achievement and the value of education. The family was Presbyterian and teetotal. Harry's mother was a committed Woman's Christian Temperance Unionist and became World President of the organisation while Harry was at school. Harry's father moved to Launceston, Tasmania in 1922 to become classics master of Launceston Grammar School. As he wanted to build a house for the family in Launceston, it was decided that his wife and the children would go to Adelaide to live with Ethel's mother, Lady Holder, the widow of Sir Frederick Holder. Sir Frederick was a journalist and preacher in the mining town of the Burra. He ultimately became Premier of South Australia. As a consequence of his deep involvement in the Federal movement in Australia in the last twenty years of the 19th Century, he was appointed as the first Speaker of the first Federal House of Representatives in 1901 before dying suddenly, in Melbourne, during a loud parliamentary debate in 1909. Sir Frederick was to become the most prominent role model in Harry's life. Harry attributed his commitment to public service to Sir Frederick's example of tireless and effective commitment to church and State and he was, throughout his life, proud of all that Sir Frederick had achieved.
The family was reunited in 1923 after the completion of Arthur's house in Mowbray Heights, on the banks of the Tamar River. There followed a period of tranquillity and achievement in Harry's life. He was placed in Launceston Grammar School as a student in 1924 and was dux of his class in every year he spent at the school. Although he was a fine mathematician, his father's financial circumstances, and the bursaries that classics distinctions provided, required him to follow the non-science stream. Harry also found time for wide sporting involvement, representing his school in football, athletics and swimming. Harry left school in 1934 after receiving the award for the best all-round scholar, sportsman and leader and winning a general university scholarship. He sat for the Commonwealth Public Service exam and came first in Tasmania and second in Australia. He became a clerk in the Hobart ordnance stores, a job he held during his undergraduate studies in law at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. During the Hobart period, Harry became involved in the Presbyterian Church and the Australian Christian Students’ movement, and was a member of the University Student Representative Council.
Harry graduated with first class honours in law in 1938 and applied for and was awarded the Tasmanian Rhodes Scholarship. He arrived in Oxford to undertake his BA in early 1939 after working his way to England on a cargo boat for one shilling a month. He took up residence in Lincoln College, where John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, had his rooms in the 19th Century. As a Rhodes scholar, Harry was expected to contribute to the sporting life of the college and found his niche in rowing. He competed in the “bumps” and succeeded in moving the College up the river. He became Captain of Boats at Lincoln and was invited to trial for the Oxford “blue” boat, but declined, to concentrate on finishing his degree as rapidly as possible with the onset of war in Europe becoming more likely all the time. He also became a correspondent for Isis, the Oxford University newspaper.