Tony Abbott

Who is Tony Abbott?

Anthony John "Tony" Abbott, CMG, OBE is a British diplomat, who served as Governor of Montserrat from 1997 to 2001.

Abbott was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester in 1941, and joined the British diplomatic service in 1959. He was a vice consul in Iran and Finland in the 1960s, then returned to the UK where he was press officer for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1969 to 1972. He then served as a passport officer in Zambia and a consul in Chile, then joined the secretariat of the President of the European Commission. In 1981 he was seconded to the British Overseas Trade Board, then in 1983 was First Secretary and later Deputy High Commissioner at the British High Commission in Calcutta, India. In 1991, he was part of the EC Monitoring Missions in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

After returning the UK again, he worked in the training department of the FCO, then spent four years as consul-general in Perth, Western Australia. In 1997, he was sworn in as Governor of Montserrat, as which he served until 2001.