RESTRICTED
The
confidence in HMG's resolve, indeed honour. Colleagues
argued that the days of rulers in Arabia had gone.
Governor decided to give the Federal Government a last
chance but it was too late.
3.
7. The sky over Aden fell in during the Middle East June war.
Fired by Nasser's big lie (that the RAF had wiped out his air
force) the population erupted, the federal forces mutinied,
over 60 people, including 20 British soldiers, died in the
cross-fire and as that longest day ended, 100 of us were held
hostage within Arab lines. The mutineers seized the federal
capital and Mad Mitch captured the headlines, nearly doing us
in with his plan of attack. After that, it was a scuttle
under the blessed protection of one of the largest
concentrations of British armed forces since the war.
8.
wrote
a
The rulers and those Arabs who stood by us to the end were
left to fend for themselves. There can have been no more
shameful episode in the Empire. The last Governor,
"we left without glory but without disaster"
disaster for those we left behind and whose trust we had
betrayed.
-
but it was
9. As with the Americans in Vietnam, Britain forgot Aden.
know of only one book that analysed the story at all
adequately: it was written by an American. He concluded
that a simple sum decided the end. When Mr Healey
H
established that the cost of the base and no-one had asked
before equalled the cost of keeping Britain afloat, there
was no alternative.
10. The Arabs did not forget, as King Fahd often reminded
visiting British Ministers. The PLO, which trained the
victorious NLF, drew the wrong conclusion about the effect of
terrorism, and it took the bravest of their fighters, Bassam
Abu Sharif, who ran the NLF campaign under our noses (and
indeed claims to have set up the attack on my wife's and my
wedding) to stand up in the Algiers conference of 1988 and say
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