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region in his tour d’horizon of events in March, believed that the HEC had intended

on presenting the Foreign Secretary with a petition. However the Residency

encouraged the HEC to express its opinion to Lloyd publically in a press conference

which the Minister was scheduled to give at the Residency. 480

Unexpectedly for the Foreign Secretary events in Jordan during his overseas

trip cast a shadow first on his visit to Cairo and later manifested itself upon his

arrival in Bahrain. Twenty-year-old King Hussein suddenly dismissed the British-

born Commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion, Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot

Glubb Pasha, on 1 March. Glubb was given only a few hours to leave the country as

the King feared rebellion in the army if he remained. 481 The Pasha departed from

Jordan to Cyprus following his dismissal. He had served in Arab states for thirty-six

years and commanded Jordan’s Arab Legion for seventeen years since 1939. 482 The

Arab Legion under Glubb supervised Jordan’s army, police, National Guard, and

navy. 483 King Hussein in his memoir explained his decision to sack Glubb. He based

some of his conclusions on his frustration towards having the police linked to the

Arab Legion. Furthermore, Glubb had angered the King as the latter refused to

accept the dismissal of a number of soldiers from the Legion because of their

nationalist ideals. The Jordanian King additionally viewed the fifty-nine year-old

Glubb at the time to be ‘old-fashioned’ and lacking in modern military strategic

planning. 484 Another possible explanation for King Hussein’s dismissal of Glubb was

480 TNA, FO 371/120545, V.A. Wight-Boycott: Disturbance in Bahrain, 6 March 1956.
481 Lunt, Glubb Pasha: A Biography, 212.
482 K. Morfett, ‘I Talk to Glubb Pasha: “After 36 years THIS…”’, Daily Express, 3 March 1956, 1.
483 P.J. Vatikiotis, Politics and the Military in Jordan: A Study of the Arab Legion 1921-1957 (London:
1967), 82.
484 Talal, Uneasy Lies the Head, 116 and 111.

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