Page 54 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

CHAPTER II

The Retreat from the Gulf

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We tvant the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

Il’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now if s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Philip Larkin, Homage to a Government, 1969

On 30 October 1967, the day that the Cabinet confirmed the decision to.quit
Aden the following month, the minister of state at the Foreign ce,
Goronwy Roberts, left London for the Gulf to inform the local rulers o t e
decision and to reassure them that it did not entail any similar abandonment o
Britain’s responsibilities in the Gulf. The reassurance was highly necessary, or
the Gulf shaikhs had watched the development of the debacle in Aden wi
mounting dismay and apprehension, being well aware that the principa
justification offered by successive British governments for holding on to Aden
had been that it was needed to underpin the British position in the Gulf and to
enable Britain both to safeguard her considerable oil interests there and to
honour her treaty commitments to the Gulf rulers. Some attempt had been
made earlier in the year to dispel their misgivings. In April the secretary of state
for defence, Denis Healey, had stated in the House of Commons: The Gulf is
an area of such vital importance not only to the economy of Western Europe as
a whole but also to world peace that it would be totally irresponsible for us to
withdraw our forces from the area.’ The statement was echoed by George
Brown in the course of a debate in the House of Commons on 20 July.

In the present disturbed situation in the Middle East we must be particularly con­
cerned about the stability and security of the Gulf area, for which we still have treaty