Rex Hunt (governor) - Military and Diplomatic Career

Military and Diplomatic Career

Hunt was born in Redcar in the North Riding of Yorkshire (Redcar is now part of the Redcar and Cleveland unitary authority). After attending Coatham School, in Redcar, and St Peter's College, Oxford where he read Law, Hunt joined the Royal Air Force as a cadet in 1941 and was enlisted as an airman in 1944 and commissioned as a pilot in 1945. He was promoted to flying officer (war substantive) in June 1946 with the permanent promotion to that rank in December the same year. In August 1946, he transferred to No 5 Squadron in India where he flew Spitfires, before transferring to Germany with No 26 Squadron in August 1947. He left active service in September 1948, received the rank of flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force reserves in September 1950, and relinquished the commission in December 1953.

In 1952, Hunt joined the Colonial and Diplomatic Service, and had his first foreign posting as District Commissioner in Uganda in 1962. He then served as First Secretary in Kuching, Sarawak, 1964–65, and Jesselton, Sabah 1965-67, both in the newly independent Malaysia, and then in Brunei 1967. In 1968 he was transferred to Ankara in Turkey, but was back in Asia with the appointment as Head of Chancery in Jakarta, Indonesia, 1970-72. After a brief spell back in the UK, he was appointed Consul-General at the British Embassy in Saigon in January 1974 and was there at the time of the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. He was transferred to Kuala Lumpur in 1976, and served as Deputy High Commissioner to Malaysia 1977-79. On January 14, 1980, Hunt was appointed Governor of the Falkland Islands and High Commissioner of the British Antarctic Territory. The status of the Falkland Islands was an irritant to the British Foreign Office who wanted to hand over the Islands to Argentina. Hunt's role was to persuade the islanders that Argentine sovereignty was in their best interests. Hunt soon discovered that the population of the Falkland Islands were wholly opposed to any ceding of sovereignty and he relayed this information back to the Foreign Office. Hunt's seniors in London did not receive the news well and concluded that Hunt had "gone native."