Page 53 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

46 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

centuries, and plunging the country into a maelstrom of violence, the grim
consequences of which they were themselves shortly to experience.

South Arabia swiftly slipped below the horizon of British interest after
November 1967. There was little disposition on the part of the British govern­
ment or people to be reminded of the disastrous end to British rule over Aden
colony and protectorates, or of the fate to which they had consigned their
erstwhile subjects and proteges. Some indication of the nature of the regime to
which Britain had surrendered power in South Arabia can be gathered from the
fact that within eighteen months of the British departure the population of
Aden had shrunk from 220,000 to fewer than 80,000 souls. At least a further
100,000 people had fled the up-country areas to find refuge in Saudi Arabia and
elsewhere; and in the next few years another 100,000 at least were to follow
them. This mass flight was a crushing indictment of the new People’s Republic
of South Yemen, and one which gave the lie to all the easy assertions and glib
sophistries uttered by the anti-colonialist lobby in Britain up to the end of
1967. Whatever view one takes of Britain’s retreat from empire since 1945, it is
impossible to avoid the sombre conclusion that Britain betrayed her trust and
ran away from her responsibilities in South Arabia. Faced with a terrorist
movement which was determined, ruthless and implacable, the British
government of the day displayed none of these qualities in return. In a contest
of wills it proved spineless.
It is, of course, needless to remark that the members of that government
hardly viewed their conduct in this light. Remorse held little savour for them,
least of all for Harold Wilson, who had few words to spare for the abandonment
of Aden in his lengthy published recollections of his administration. And even
in these few words he managed, by means of a parenthetical device, to convey
the implication that the abandonment was actually something of an accom­
plishment. ‘We announced that the final withdrawal from Aden would be in
1968. (It was, in fact, achieved in 1967.)’