Page 25 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

12 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

as tribalism persists and they have guns in their hands, they are unlikely to be convened
to unintelligible principles of the ballot box and the majority vote.

The erection of the federation raised anew the twin issues of Aden’s constitu­
tional advance and its relationship to the federated protectorate states. Elec­
tions to the legislative council, where the number of elected seals had been
*
raised from four to twelve, were held in the colony in 1959 Again, as in 1955,
and for the same reasons, they were boycotted by the Aden TUC and its allies.
There were only 21,554 registered voters in Aden, out of a population of some
180,000, and barely 5,000 of these voted. As the Aden Association was the only
political organization to contest the election, it won eleven out of the twelve
seats (the twelfth went to an independent). To mark its displeasure at this
result the Aden TUC launched a series of strikes, which before the year was out
had reached the impressive total of eighty-four. Within the TUC there was a
running battle for influence between the Adenis, who held most of the key
posts, and the leaders of the United National Front, who were a mixture of
Adenis, Yemenis and protectorate Arabs. The contest between the two
factions for influence over the Yemenis and protectorate Arabs who made up
the largest part of the colony’s labour force generated a progressive militancy,
as each faction strove to outdo the other in protestations of devotion to Arab
brotherhood, Arab socialism, Arab nationalism, and the goal of union with
‘Mother Yemen’. (Interestingly enough, the theme of Yemeni unity was not
echoed in the propaganda put out from Cairo, which habitually and deliber­
ately referred to Aden and the protectorate as the ‘Occupied Arab South’, not
as ‘South Yemen’.) The growing militancy led inevitably to a boycott of the
1959 elections on the grounds that they were a worthless charade, a piece of
British perfidy which denied participation in Aden’s political life to brother
Arabs from the Yemen and the protectorates.
Aden’s constitutional development was being delayed as much by the
colony’s increasing strategic importance to Britain as it was by the tantrums
and antics of the Aden TUC. The long-drawn-out terrorist campaign in
Cyprus, which had recently ended with the grant of independence to the
island, had cast a shadow of doubt over the usefulness of the British bases
there. Kenya, where an alternative base had been developed, was to
become independent within three or four years, which left Aden as the
only British sovereign territory in the Middle East. On the eve of his
departure in the autumn of i960 to become political resident in the Persian
Gulf, the governor of the colony, Sir William Luce, recommended to the
Colonial Office that it grant Aden autonomy and allow it to negotiate its way
into the Federation of Arab Amirates of the South. In Whitehall’s eyes,
however, the retention of British sovereignty over the colony was essential to
the security of the base and the enhanced strategic role which was foreseen for
it in the years ahead. The principal task of Luce’s successor as governor,