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a very personal one. The King had developed strong friendship with the Head of

Jordan’s Air Force John Dalgleish who taught the young King how to fly. In late 1955

the Pasha decided to have Dalgleish replaced by February 1956. Dalgleish left

Jordan on 28 February only hours prior to Glubb’s sacking. Glubb’s decision might

have affected Hussein’s general attitude towards the Pasha. 485 The British Cabinet

alluded to a telegram from Sir Charles Duke, the British Ambassador to Jordan, who

proposed that Glubb’s dismissal might have been a personal affair and not one

aimed against Britain’s influence in the region. However the Ambassador was also

concerned that British personnel could no longer effectively regulate the Legion

and, as a result, Jordan would fall under the influence of a ‘neighbouring state’. 486

Glubb’s dismissal was celebrated by Jordanians and demonstrators thronged

the streets chanting anti-colonial slogans. 487 Keith Morfett of the London

newspaper the Daily Express reported demonstrators to have shouted ‘Down with

Glubb! Out with Glubb the imperialist!’, similar chants would be echoed later in

Bahrain. Adding insult to British injury, Morfett also reported rumours that

involved Jordan joining Egypt’s Southern Tier alliance and that the Legion would be

put under the direct command of Egypt’s Commander-in-Chief, General Abdel-

Hakim Amer. 488

To Glubb, the decision to dismiss him was partly due to efforts by Lieutenant-

Colonel Ali Abu Nuwar a close friend of Hussein. The friendship between the two

developed first in France when the former served as a military attaché at the

485 R. Lamb, The Failure of the Eden Government (London: 1987), 187-88.
486 TNA, CAB 128/30, C.M. (56) 18 conclusions, 5 March 1956.
th
487 Nutting, No End of a Lesson: The Story of Suez (London: 1967), 28, hereafter No End of a Lesson.
488 K. Morfett, ‘What Glubb told me in Amman did not add up in Cairo’, Daily Express, 3 March 1956, 1.

© Hamad E. Abdulla 155