Page 100 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 97

band of cut-throats stormed the palace and slew Khalid and several of his
retainers. They were soon afterwards overcome by units of the Trucial Oman
Scouts and the Abu Dhabi Defence Force and placed in confinement at Abu

Dhabi. A brother of the murdered Khalid, Sultan ibn Muhammad, was, by
agreement within the Qasimi family and with the concurrence of the other
federal rulers, later installed in his place.

No real debate took place in Britain in 1970-71, either within the government
or in parliament, still less in the country at large, about whether the British

position in the Gulf should be retained or abandoned. Instead there was from
the very first days of the new Conservative administration a consensus of
opinion among politicians, government officials and publicists, not only that
the Conservatives had no option except to adhere to the timetable of with­
drawal laid down by the previous administration but also that it was infinitely
desirable that they should do so. Most of the fashionable arguments that are the
staple of political discourse in our day, especially in the sphere of foreign

affairs, were deployed to buttress the consensus, as they had been three or four
years earlier in the case of Aden - historical inevitability, the decline of British
power, the irresistible advance of nationalism, the incongruity of the pax
Britannica in a post-imperial age, the growing wealth and maturity of the Gulf
oil states, the advent of a new Afro-Asian dispensation in world affairs and so
forth. As arguments they had little merit in themselves, politically or histori­

cally. All they served to demonstrate was how advanced was the palsy which
had overtaken the conduct of British foreign policy, a palsy which owed its
origin to a craven view of the world and of Britain’s place in it. With a foreign
policy that operated from a basis of fear, it is not to be wondered at that the
hallmarks of British diplomacy of late years have been vacillation, self-
abasement and a profound yearning for ‘peace for our time’.
Except on rare occasions, the formulation of British policy in the Gulf since

the Second World War had been the exclusive preserve of the permanent
officials of the Foreign Office. One does not have to seek far for the reasons.
The region, and especially the lower Gulf, was comparatively isolated, more or
less unknown to the world outside. Little had been written about it, and the
only extensive body of information concerning it resided either in the archives

of the Foreign Office and the India Office, which were closed to public view
under the fifty-year rule (reduced in 1966 to thirty years) governing access to
government records, or in the archives of the oil companies operating in the
Gulf, which again were not accessible to outsiders. Members of parliament and
ministers, therefore, were almost wholly dependent upon the permanent
officials of the Foreign Office for instruction about the Gulfs affairs; and as an
understanding of these required an acquaintance with some fairly recherche

in ormation concerning tribal structures, religious particularism, genealogical
ramifications, historical connexions and topographical peculiarities, it was