Page 35 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

28 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

effect of such admonitions was to hamper the security authorities in their
efforts, and to demoralize the federal rulers even further, thereby destroy­
ing whatever slight chance of survival the federation may have had. George
Brown, the British foreign secretary, wrote cajoling letters to Nasser,
appealing to his better nature for help in keeping the peace in South Arabia,
while George Thomson, his minister of state, who had got on so well with the
nationalists in 1962, flew backwards and forwards between London and
Aden to try to salvage something from the wreck. The final ignominy
occurred when the British government appealed for help to the United Nations
Special Committee on Colonialism, a body whose malicious and mischievous
interference in previous years had contributed not a little to the turmoil in
South Arabia as well as to disturbances in other dependent British territories.
In May 1963 the Special Committee had sent a commission to investigate
conditions in Aden and to report upon the iniquities of British rule there.
Refused admission to the colony, the commission had adjourned to Cairo,
where it composed a report describing the situation in Aden as ‘likely to
threaten international peace and security’. The following autumn the UN
General Assembly passed a resolution demanding self-determination for Aden
(by means of elections based upon universal adult suffrage, regardless of
origin), the release of political detainees, the rescinding of all emergency
security measures, and the removal of the British base. (A few weeks later, it
may be recalled, came the attempted assassination of the governor of Aden,
and the killing of his deputy.)
These demands were repeated in a resolution of the General Assembly two
years later, in November 1965? which further stipulated that the elections
should be held under UN supervision. At the time of its adoption the re­
solution had been rejected by the British government as a gratuitous attempt to
usurp its legal responsibility for South Arabia. By its decisions on future
defence policy in February 1966, however, the British government had effec­
tively abrogated this responsibility itself, and it confirmed the finality 6f its act
by subsequently urging the federal rulers to accept the UN resolution. Reluc­
tantly they did so, in May 1966. If the nationalists had meant one syllable of all
their ceaseless rhetoric about free elections, democratic rule and constitutional
liberties, they would have done the same. They did not, for the reason that they
were fighting for absolute victory over the rulers and the British, absolute
control of South Arabia, and, in the case of the NLF, absolute rule by a
Marxist politburo. Against such driving passions the tactics of conciliation
were useless, and worse than useless. Constitutions, elections, civil liberties,
entrenched safeguards — the nationalist fanatics disclaimed them all. It was
futile even to discuss them, and worse than futile, for it served only to inflate
the nationalists’ contempt for those who discussed them.
Nevertheless, throughout 1966 and 1967 the British government persisted
in its belief in the inevitable predominance of reason and moderation. In the