1974 Cypriot coup d'état

Yesterday was the 39th anniversary of the 1974 Cypriot coup d'état.

What follow are small excerpts (taken from my recently published book on Britain and the Greek Colonels) which examines the British reaction to the coup and Whitehall's immediate actions on that day:

"[...] The first reports about outbreaks of fighting in Nicosia reached London on 15 July. According to information gained during the first hours, it was looking ‘increasingly like a coup organised by Greek contingent/Greek-officered elements of National Guard’. The most shocking news appeared to be the alleged death of Archbishop Makarios, broadcast by the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and conveyed to London by the British high commissioner, Olver.

From http://grhomeboy.wordpress.com 

[...] Callaghan admitted that the treaty gave Britain rights but appeared less urgent to suggest any concrete action as it was too early to judge the situation fully.

[As he told the House of Commons:] We are in the very early hours of this event. It happened only this morning. A declaration has been put out by those who led the coup saying that foreign policy will not change and that Cyprus will maintain friendly relations with all nations while pursuing a policy of non-alignment as happened in the past. I do not know how much reliance at this stage we should attach to any of the declarations that are forthcoming.

[...] In order to help defuse the crisis the foreign secretary prepared a telegram detailing directions to British representatives in Athens, Ankara, Washington, Brussels, and New York. His message to his Greek counterpart expressed his ‘grave concern’ over the situation: ‘[. . . ] it is undoubtedly very dangerous with serious implications for the stability of the Eastern Mediterranean and for the cohesion of the Atlantic Alliance. I am sure you share my concern that the independence, territorial integrity and security of Cyprus should be maintained.
I should be grateful to have urgently your comments on the situation as the Greek Government sees it’.

A similar message was to be delivered to the Turkish capital as well, with the hope that the Turks would avoid ‘any kind of precipitate action or intervention’ at that stage, as it was ‘clearly essential’, if the conflict was not to spread, for the Turkish government to display ‘exemplary patience’ in those circumstances. Washington was to be informed about the content of the two messages, and Dr Kissinger to be approached with an oral message from Callaghan asking his view, any information on action which he might contemplate, and any information on events on the island itself. The British delegation to NATO was asked to invite Dr Luns himself to consider sending messages to the Turks and the Greeks, and the British mission at the UN was told to suggest to Dr Waldheim the convening of an emergency meeting of the contributors to the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP)."

UK Arms Export Policy- Now and then

The Committees on Arms Export Controls has published today a report saying that the UK government should apply significantly more cautious judgements on the export of arms to authoritarian regimes which might be used for internal repression.

Taken from conservatives.com

The Chairman of the Committees, Sir John Stanley (who firstly became an MP a few months before the junta's fall in 1974) said:

"This is a ground breaking Report in the depth and detail of the Committees on Arms Export Controls' scrutiny of the Government’s policies on arms exports.

The Foreign Secretary in his Oral evidence to the Committee confirmed that the British Government's policy on arms exports and internal repression was as follows:

The long-standing British position is clear: We will not issue licences where we judge there is a clear risk that the proposed export might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts, or which might be used to facilitate internal repression."

This reminded me of the situation vis-a-vis providing arms to the Greek dictatorship of the 1960s-1970s.

Recently released FCO documents reveal that during the discussions of the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee on 30 January 1969 on arms policy towards Greece, it was decided that Britain ‘should in principle permit the supply to Greece of arms which she could reasonably be expected to require in order to fulfil her NATO role’ and that only the supply of those arms intended to repress the civilian population should be prohibited.

But how exactly did Whitehall handle this conundrum?

Here's how I analyse it in my forthcoming book (pp. 246-7):

Arms sales to Greece was [a] highly controversial issue-no less so due to prior complications over trade with South Africa. The Wilson government drew a distinction (similar to the one employed vis-à-vis the apartheid regime), whereby large items which could be used for NATO purposes, such as tanks, could be exported, whereas ‘light’ items, like grenades and small rifles, which could be used for internal repression could not be sold to Athens. The Labour government tried to handle this delicate and potentially explosive question in strict confidence, thus exemplifying its twofold policy of keeping relations with the Colonels on a satisfactory level and at the same time avoiding hostile criticism, especially within parliament. This ‘combination of high-minded principle and arms sales’, as one member of the Cabinet termed it, provided an impetus for attacks on Whitehall (for the most part from its left wing), which defended its choices by returning to the Leitmotif of the dismal financial situation of Britain that was in desperate need of exports, and the importance of the arms industry with regard to the jobs it provided.



FCO photo taken from news.bbc.co.uk

Consequently, when the Conservatives came to power, a continuation of the status quo concerning arms sales was the minimum expected. In fact, the Heath government used its predecessor’s policy as a springboard for the active promotion of sales in order to boost its trade with Greece. London made its desire to sell arms to the junta more distinct, by arranging the exchange of visits of people involved, on a variety of levels, in arms sales. Most importantly, British ministers kept reiterating their willingness to provide frigates and, after an initial numbness, even tanks to the military dictatorship in Athens, in a policy that culminated in Lord Carrington’s visit to the Greek capital. Despite Whitehall’s active policy of attracting arms deals, sales seldom materialized. FCO documents reveal that the British attributed that to the ‘Byzantine style of negotiations’ of the Greeks and their unwillingness to appear to ‘go other than American’. Greek documents show that the junta was more interested in appearing to be in negotiations with the British (in order to enhance its international respectability) than proceed with sales, for the additional reason that, in the most significant cases (such as the frigates), Athens lacked the necessary funds. Therefore, while Britain was preoccupied with supporting its arms industry and generally improving its trade in a desperate effort to reverse its financial decline, the Greeks’ main concern was to use any contracts secured for political exploitation.

Papadopoulos and the British Parliament

In this 1994 article by Richard Clogg you can read how the leader of the Colonels' regime contributed towards cleaning up British political life, by giving 'a powerful boost to the process which culminated in the establishment in 1974 of the Register of Members' Interest'.

House of Commons gaffe

Gordon Brown's slip of the tongue during PM questions, in which he said his government had 'saved the world', is reminiscent of a similar gaffe another British minister had made during the seven years of the junta's reign.

More specifically, the time was June 1973 and, while debating the British recognition of the Papadopoulos republican government, foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home responded to a relevant question by James Callaghan.
Douglas-Home later in the same session asked to correct his slip of the tongue as he had picked up a phrase of Callaghan referring to the Colonels:

'I think I said he rightly called it "the illegal regime in Greece"'.

The statement was caught by opposition circles in London, with the European-Atlantic Action Committee on Greece publishing a rather mordant bulletin to comment on Whitehall's policy towards the Colonels:

'The indecent haste with which the British government recognised the newly declared Greek Republic on 13th June was a gratuitous favour to Papadopoulos and was rightly the subject of critical questioning in the House of Commons by the Opposition's Shadow Foreign Secretary. That the government felt some embarrasment over the decision was indicated by a revealing 'slip of tongue' made by Sir Alec Douglas-Home in referring to the Greek regime as "illegal"'.