Sir Richard James Stratton (16 July 1924 – 26 July 1988) was a British diplomat. He served as the ambassador to Zaire and the Congo from 1974 to 1977, to Burundi from 1975 to 1977, and to Rwanda in 1977. He later was the high commissioner to New Zealand and Samoa from 1980 to 1984 and thus also the Governor of Pitcairn.
Contents
Early life and education
Stratton was born on 16 July 1924 in London, and was educated at the King's School, Rochester, in Kent. He later attended Merton College, Oxford. He served in World War II for the British Army as a member of the Coldstream Guards. After the war, he joined the Foreign Office in 1947. Among early positions he held in the office were private secretary to the under secretary of state and private secretary to Lord Carrington.
Diplomatic career
Stratton worked in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1948. He later worked abroad in 1953 with the British Embassy in Tokyo, Japan. It was followed by work in Seoul, South Korea; the NATO Defence College in Paris, France; Bonn, Germany; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He was appointed the counsellor and head of chancery to the high commission in Pakistan in 1966. Though having no previous experience in the region, according to the Daily Telegraph he was able to quickly adapt to challenging circumstances, including the aftermath of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war and Pakistan's democratization experiments.