Page 34 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Abandonment of Aden 25

they were not destined to learn a great deal more about it in the next two years.
Because the NLF dwelt a long way underground, its proscription by the Aden
government did little to hamper its operations. The reaction in London to the
formation of OLOS was one more of sorrow than of anger. Greenwood, the
colonial secretary, still persisted in the pathetic fallacy that the PSP, the
driving force in OLOS, could be coaxed back to the path of moderation. With
this object in mind he invited Asnaj and his lieutenants to a conference in
London in August 1965. The conference ended in disarray when Asnaj showed
what he thought of the colonial secretary’s Fabian forbearance by ostenta­
tiously flying off to Cairo to take personal charge of OLOS’s subversive
operations. In Aden the nationalists celebrated the failure of the conference by
murdering the speaker of the legislative assembly and the superintendent of
police. Greenwood responded, again in a spirit of regret, by suspending Aden’s
constitution and reimposing direct rule upon the colony. The nationalists were
delighted, for they saw the action as a further milestone on the road to ruin for
the Federation of South Arabia. The federal rulers were correspondingly
dismayed, for they interpreted Greenwood’s action, rightly, as evidence of the
Labour administration’s underlying hostility to them and to the federation
itself. Had it not been for this hostility, the British government might have
adopted the only logical, if drastic, course open to it - now that it had barred
any further constitutional advance for Aden in the form of transferring power
to the colony’s merchant classes - which was to surrender sovereignty over
Aden (other than the base areas) immediately, hand over the colony to the
federal government and leave the latter to impose an Arab solution in a night of
long knives. Instead, by choosing to restore direct rule, the British government
was saying that it and it alone would be responsible for the maintenance of law
and order in Aden for an indefinite time to come. Since this required the
suppression of nationalist-inspired terrorism, the British decision was tan­
tamount, whether the government fully realized it or not, to a declaration of
open war upon the nationalists, a war that would have to be fought through to
the end.

In February 1966 the secretary of state for defence, Denis Healey, announced a
sweeping revision of British defence policy which involved the severe reduc­
tion of British military commitments outside Europe, especially in the region
east of Suez. Britain was to withdraw from Aden colony by the end of 1968 and
to abandon all intention of retaining a base there. The treaties of protection
with the states of the South Arabian Federation would be terminated at the
same time, and since there was to be no British base at Aden no treaty of
protection would be concluded with the federation. It was a total betrayal of all
past undertakings, a betrayal of the trust placed in British steadfastness, a
renunciation of an imperial power’s recognized responsibilities to its subjects.
It betrayed, among others, the traditional rulers of the protectorates, the