by Alan Bristow
Prior shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I’m sure you overstate the case, Mr Bristow,’ he said. ‘This is nothing more than an everyday industrial problem that needs to be addressed.’
‘Clearly there’s no point in continuing this meeting,’ I said, and they stood up to go. I was pleased that Onslow and Cooper had taken my part; James Prior was eventually to become a cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, one of the notorious ‘wets’ who didn’t have the stomach for the fight. After leaving government he became chairman of GEC, and how the hell he did that I’ll never know. He must have realised by 1980 that I had been absolutely right. At that time, ten per cent of all Margaret Thatcher’s tax revenues were coming from the North Sea.
As the strike dragged on the picket lines got thinner, with some pilots returning to work at Bristows – they were welcomed back and were never discriminated against – and others drifting off to get work elsewhere. In desperation BALPA pleaded with other unions for secondary action to support their strike, and some unions picketed oil refineries, ports and other important installations. Later, many of them said they’d been given false information by BALPA on what the strike was all about. But none of their pickets affected Bristow Helicopters or the flow of oil. The least intelligent example of secondary action came when BALPA called its members at British Airways Helicopters in Aberdeen out on strike in sympathy. Our helicopters then had to taxi around to the British Airways terminal to pick up our competitors’ passengers, and take their business away from them. The oil companies contributed by allowing resources to be pooled, so we ran ‘bus stop’ services out to several platforms rather than dedicating flights to each platform. Instead of sending two men in a helicopter that would carry twenty, they started working together to send every helicopter out full, which reduced our workload.
When it became clear that our fuel supplies were unaffected and we could continue flying indefinitely, the morale of the strikers dissolved. Captain Mike Norris, one of our Regional Flying Superintendents who was in Aberdeen during the strike, described one of the defining moments of the strike to me: ‘When you look out from the Bristow facility you are actually looking up a rise towards what is now the Airport Thistle Hotel, and I watched as one white tanker pulled up and stopped at the top, then a second tanker pulled up and stopped. Then a third tanker pulled up, then another. Jim Macaskill, the chief engineer, walked to the tankers up this rise and led them down through the picket line. I thought that was the most stirring moment of the whole thing to me, and suddenly, in my opinion, the strike was broken in that moment because it was clear they had lost.’
The pilots agreed to end the strike when a ‘Court of Inquiry’ was set up to study the dispute. What a meaningless farce that was. The McDonald Inquiry seemed designed to apportion blame evenly whatever the circumstances, and to save face for the guilty parties. Thankfully, these courts of inquiry vanished from the landscape when union power was stamped on. At the inquiry I was described as ‘a man whose language was more suited to the barrack room than the boardroom’. It made me wonder how many boardrooms Lord McDonald had been in and how much experience he had of employee relations. The inquiry did turn up a few facts, showing how BALPA had encouraged secondary action by misinforming other unions of the true situation, claiming Royston was being victimised for being a union member, saying the company had smashed unions in the past and that it was employing foreign pilots to take strikers’ jobs. As Lord McDonald pointed out, these wild claims were wholly untrue, and he censured BALPA for falsely claiming to the TUC that the dispute was about union recognition. Ultimately, his inquiry made not one whit of difference to the outcome of the strike, won no striker his job back, and did its part to turn the country against the culture of union bullying, paving the way for the Thatcher Revolution. Two years after the strike, the Conservatives won Aberdeen for the first time in history. In the 1980s, the fact that North Sea produced such a vast proportion of the government’s tax revenues allowed Margaret Thatcher to take on the miners, and it’s fair to say that winning the Bristows strike was a prerequisite for winning the seminal miners’ strike.
At the end of the strike Bristow Helicopters Ltd received messages of congratulations and support from our customers all over the world. Not a single scheduled flight had been missed, and that really did impress the oil companies. They had enormous respect for what we had been able to do, and it did us a great deal of good in contract negotiations – we had shown our determination to fulfil our responsibilities, no matter what. Alastair Gordon tried to keep the peace by offering many of the strikers their jobs back, but not all – Royston in particular was never seen again.
In the aftermath of the strike the oil companies realised they could operate successfully with ‘bus stop’ operations rather than dedicated flight to each platform, so we were able to reduce the number of helicopters at Aberdeen – a great boon at a time when we were expanding at breakneck pace not only on the North Sea but in Nigeria, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere.
CHAPTER 21
Operation Sandstorm
The name of Bristow Helicopters was well-known throughout the oil and aviation industries, but the events of March 1979 made it known across the world. The company’s exploits featured on the front pages of newspapers in every time zone on the planet. We received messages of support and congratulation from companies and individuals in all walks of life, and James Clavell even wrote a book about BHL, which he called Whirlwind. The adventure that captured the imagination of so many people was the bold and secret evacuation of our personnel and helicopters from Iran under the guns of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary hordes.
We faced and overcame many obstacles, and not just in the Persian Gulf. In thirty-two years I had only one major disagreement on matters of operating policy with my executive directors, and that was over the evacuation of Iran. George Fry, Jack Woolley, Alastair Gordon and Bryan Collins were implacably opposed to my plan to make a break for freedom. When it worked, they had the good grace to say they’d been wrong. Had things turned out differently, who knows, they might have been proved right. But our luck held. And fortune favours the brave.
Iran was in a state of anarchy, but Bristow Helicopters was well used to operating in parts of the world where revolution was just another difficulty to overcome. Outside the western world, few of the countries in which BHL had contracts could be considered wholly stable; the company had even managed to keep operating in Nigeria throughout the Biafran War inthe 1960s. The situation in Iran had been deteriorating for a year. Student riots had broken out in Qom the previous January and had spreadto other cities, reaching Tehran by September. Ageneral strike had begun in October, but the Shah’s army was still in control of the country and the best course of action seemed to be to sit tight and see how the thing played out. As the situation deteriorated I ordered that non-essential personnel be withdrawn, and by the end of 1978 our staff complement was well down on the 123 people who had been deployed in Iran at peak. On 16 January 1979 the Shah himself left Iran, ostensibly for cancer treatment, and there was every expectation that he would return. While the country was in turmoil, we could still make things happen; the Shah’s sister, Princess Fatima, had a placeman on the Board of our Iranian subsidiary. Her husband General Mohammed Khatami had been head of the Imperial Iranian Air Force and had been of great help to us until he was killed in a mysterious accident in 1975. We still had an Air Force General called Rafat on the Board, and a useful fixer in the Shah’s entourage in Tehran called Abolfath Mahvi, and after twenty-two years of successful operation in Iran we knew how to handle political problems.
It was clear, however, that the processes of government were breaking down. Our operating company, Iranian Helicopter Aviation Co., had not been paid for six months, and as a result neither had Bristow Helicopters Ltd. General Rafat clearly didn’t wield the influence he once enjoyed. I had several phone conversations with him in an attempt to pursue the unpaid mo
ney, which amounted to several million dollars by that time. Unexplained clicks and buzzes on the line testified to the fact that we were being bugged, and Rafat became increasingly circumspect in what he said, denying things he and I knew to be true.
It wasn’t until one of our senior pilots, Yves Le Roy, who was based at Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, contacted me at the end of January that I became fully aware of the seriousness of the situation. ‘You know that some of our people might have nervous breakdowns,’ he said.
‘No – why should they? I asked.
‘They’re flying with rifles at their necks,’ he said. ‘There are revolutionaries kneeling behind them in the helicopters with their fingers on the trigger, and the safety catch off. The tension is appalling.’
‘What? Has this happened to you?’
‘Yes. The guards tell us when to fly, and make sure we fly where we’re told.’
I was shocked and extremely concerned. If men were being forced to fly at gunpoint, the situation had taken on a completely new complexion. I imagined myself in the position of a Bell 212 pilot based on Kharg Island, required to fly eighty or ninety hours a month with the constant threat of a bullet in the back of the head. Even in the comfort and security of my office I felt a chill of fear. My first reaction was to ask the question I always came up with when difficulties were encountered in Iran – who can we bribe to get around this? But Rafat and Mahvi, through whom bribes were usually channelled, had largely been rendered sterile by the political turmoil. The old systems had broken down, and there was no central power left worth the name. I called an executive meeting in my office. George Fry, Jack Woolley, Bryan Collins and Alastair Gordon sat around my desk.
‘You know what’s been happening in Iran,’ I said.
George thought I was referring to the money. ‘I’m afraid there’s been no progress,’ he said.
‘No, not that – people flying with guns at their heads.’
They looked at each other. George’s son, Chris Fry, was in charge of Iran, working from Redhill, but it seemed everybody was in the dark. I told them what Yves Le Roy had said.
‘We should have known about this,’ I said. ‘We’ve got the makings of a tragedy here. If some trigger-happy religious maniac decides to shoot, we’ll lose a crew and all passengers. And we’re not even being paid for the work. The situation is completely untenable.’
George was unconvinced. ‘I’m not sure it’s as bad as you say, Alan,’ he said. ‘There are problems, but they’re no worse than we’ve faced elsewhere in the world.’
‘The question I always ask myself when I send pilots out is whether I would be prepared to do the same job,’ I said. ‘I would certainly not be prepared to fly with a gun at my head!’
Alastair spoke. ‘But how do you propose to put a stop to it?’
‘I’m going to evacuate everybody,’ I said. ‘Pull them all out.’
‘The Iranians won’t allow it,’ George said.
‘They won’t know until it’s too late,’ I said. ‘We’ll do it clandestinely, with everyone flying out at the same time. If we can preserve secrecy we’ll be long gone before they find out.’
‘That’s terribly risky,’ said George. ‘There’s no guarantee the Air Force is still with us. And the organisational requirements may be beyond us. What level of casualties are you prepared to accept?’
‘If we do this properly, there’s no reason that we should have any casualties,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen withdrawals under combat conditions in Indo-China, and I’m sure that if everyone follows my plan we can get out with minimum casualties, perhaps even none.’
I could see that my fellow directors did not share my confidence. ‘It would mean writing off any chance we had of getting our money,’ said George.
‘Look,’I said in exasperation, ‘We have pilots flying with loaded rifles at their necks, and the safety catches off! It just takes a little turbulence, an accidental shot and the helicopter’s down with the loss of all on board. Of course an evacuation is risky, but if we do nothing our pilots are going to be killed!’
Still, no support was forthcoming. My patience was wearing thin. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,’ I said. ‘I’m going to send my son Laurence to Iran to replace one of the pilots who’s flying at gunpoint.’ I turned to Bryan Collins. ‘I’ll send your son too, Bryan.’ Tim Collins was a trainee Bristow pilot. George Fry’s son Chris wasn’t a pilot, but he worked for the company at Redhill. ‘He’ll be posted to Iran, too,’ I said to George. ‘If it’s good enough for our pilots, it’s good enough for our sons.’
The idea caused consternation. ‘I see no alternative to evacuating,’ I went on. ‘If necessary I’ll use my powers as Chief Executive to push this plan through. But as this meeting is making no progress I’ll adjourn it until nine o’ clock tomorrow morning to give you some time to think about it.’
Later that day, Jack Woolley came to me. He’d said very little during the meeting. ‘You’re right, Alan – evacuation is the best option,’ he said. ‘I wish there was another way, but there isn’t. I’ll support your plan.’
In the evening, Alastair Gordon called me at home. ‘You shocked Bryan and George with your threat to send their sons,’ he said.
‘I know, Alastair, but I feel very strongly about this. I don’t think you realise just how serious the situation is in Iran.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I regret not having supported you in the meeting today. I’ve come round to your way of thinking. Evacuation is the correct course of action.’
Next morning we assembled again in my office. George Fry spoke up. ‘We’ve discussed the issue and come to the conclusion that a coordinated evacuation is required,’ he said.
‘Are you all agreed?’ I asked. ‘You, Bryan? You, Jack? Alastair?’ Each man assented in turn. And so Operation Sandstorm began.
My biggest asset in planning the great escape was the fact that I knew every inch of Iran. I had first travelled there in 1957, and I’d spent time in the country in almost every one of the next twenty years. I had flown over all the oilfields and prospecting concessions from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf and I knew the territory, the climate, the bureaucratic procedures, I knew where the Air Force kept its assets and where air traffic radar could be avoided. Most importantly, I knew the people, their habits and customs, their attitudes and their weak points. I did not have a high opinion of the Iranians. There was an educated elite, an aristocracy who were well led, but below that the quality was extremely variable. Most of the Iranians I knew were slovenly and lazy. The Shah had been trying to close the gap with education programmes, land reforms and the liberation of women, but it remained huge.
When planning began, there was still some reason to think that the Iranian Army remained loyal to the Shah and under the control of its officers. Martial law had been imposed, along with curfews in an attempt to curb lawlessness and nightly gunfire in the cities. Conflicting reports came in. In some areas the Army was maintaining order, in others it had gone over to the Islamists. Fighting broke out between Army units, and the Army began attacking Air Force bases where loyalty to the Shah was greater. It was clear we could rely on no one but ourselves.
The first priority was to finish bringing out all non-essential personnel – the remaining wives and families of pilots and engineers – who could leave the country legitimately without arousing suspicion that we might be planning a complete withdrawal. A few were able to get seats on the last scheduled British Airways flights out of Tehran, but most of the women, children and household goods were brought out overland through Tabriz into Turkey. It was a long and exhausting journey for them, and some weren’t keen to leave their menfolk, but we couldn’t risk telling them they would shortly be reunited if all went well.
At the same time George conceived the idea of getting as many of our helicopters as possible out ‘through the front door’. He reasoned that all those helicopters that were likely to need major overhaul in the near future co
uld be brought back to Redhill to undergo maintenance without tipping off the Iranians to what was really happening. A helicopter is a shell; it needs a new heart, a new liver, new lungs every so often. Its organs must be replaced before the old ones have a chance to fail; every important component has a mandated time between overhaul and must be replaced to a set timetable. Sometimes, the engineers joke, they just jack up the data plate and slide a new helicopter underneath. The Iranians had worked with us long enough to understand how it worked. Using the last of Mahvi’s waning influence we obtained permission to bring seven Bell 212s out of Iran, three of them from Galeh Morghi, a military airfield outside Tehran. That removed one major headache – all the remaining Bell 212s were based within striking distance of the Persian Gulf and could be flown out of Iran across the water.
A prerequisite for Operation Sandstorm was, however, the complete abandonment of Tehran ahead of the final evacuation. I ordered the company’s Hawker Siddeley 125-700 jet to the Persian Gulf to begin shuttling between Sharjah and Tehran, bringing out first equipment, and finally, the few remaining personnel. Iranian Helicopter Aviation Co. in Tehran held a large stock of spares at Galeh Morghi, where we’d been running a flight training school for the Iranian gendarmerie for ten years. The base manager, John Willis, knew the country as well as I did. Our flight plans to Tehran went through without difficulty. Iran Air was on strike and there was very little non-military traffic in the air. Over a period of days, Willis and the Tehran staff packed as much as they could in aluminium suitcases, each labelled as ‘personal effects’. Rotor head components were packed in the suitcase of ‘Mr Head’, gearbox parts were the property of ‘Mr Gear’ and so forth. I arranged for money to be sent to General Rafat to pay backhanders at Galeh Morghi and the suitcases were loaded into the HS125 while guards looked the other way – not a single suitcase was opened for inspection by customs. We were able to bring out everything except main rotor blades for the 212s, which were too large to fit into the jet. It wasn’t all plain sailing. On one flight into Iran, the pilots Jerry Ranscombe and Derek Jordan were crossing the coast when an Iranian F14 came alongside and ordered them to turn back. They did so, but simply filed another flight plan and set off again the following day.