Page 94 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 91

convinced, was the cm of the knife to arouse the shaikhs from their torpor and
force them to act with greater urgency to make the federation a reality. On 1
March the cut was administered. Home announced in the Commons that the
treaties with the Trucial Shaikhdoms, Qatar and Bahrain would be terminated

before the close of the year, and that all British military forces would be
withdrawn from the Gulf by the same date. He was prepared to offer the UAE
on its formation a treaty of friendship and to hand over control of the Trucial
Oman Scouts to serve as the nucleus of a federal defence force. In lieu of a

defence commitment by Britain to the federation the foreign secretary pro­
posed that British officers and other personnel should, if desired, be seconded
for service with the federal defence forces. British troops might also carry out
occasional training exercises and liaison duties in the federation’s territories,
and the Royal Navy might make regular visits to the lower Gulf.
There was about the whole statement an evasive air, as well there might be.
For what in essence Home was saying (however obliquely he might say it) was

that, for all the Conservative leaders’ bold pledges while out of office, once in
power they had chosen to take the easy way out by adhering to a decision which
they had denounced when the Labour government had taken it - although, as
George Thomson, the former secretary of state for Commonwealth relations,
caustically observed after listening to Home’s words, ‘the Foreign Secretary

appeared to be doing his best to obscure that fact from the House’. Thomson
went on to ask, with no little justification,

Why has it taken eight months to reach this point... ? The party opposite had, as one of
its election pledges, the intention to reverse Labour’s withdrawal plans. Presumably,
that was one promise which they decided to break very quickly after the General
Election. How else can one explain the acceptance in October of Labour’s ceilings on
defence expenditure, leaving no extra money for remaining in the Gulf?

Thomson’s point was highly apposite, but what neither he nor anyone else in
the House saw fit to question was the sincerity of Home’s proposals about the
secondment of British officers and men to the UAE’s defence forces, and the
dispatch of British troops to carry out training exercises and liaison duties in

the federation’s territories. The government must have been well aware that
even the infrequent presence of British troops in the federation would have
been received with suspicion or worse by the Saudis, and that the possibility of
the troops becoming involved either in internal disturbances or in border
incidents was far from remote. Considering the extreme reluctance — to an
extent bordering upon timidity - of the Cabinet up to date to offend the Saudis

any Way (leasl of a11 upholding Abu Dhabi’s territorial integrity), it is
uuhcuh to view Home’s proposal other than with considerable scepticism.
With Home’s announcement the decision to withdraw became public
nowledge, and the Gulf shaikhs were free to break the silence they had
diplomatically observed during the period of Luce’s consultations. Shaikh