by Mark Curtis
At this point some of the British files have been censored but it seems that Macmillan wrote to Kennedy informing him of a change of British policy – the beginning, in fact, of a British constitutional coup planning to effect regime change.
Covert action
The US continued covert planning. 'Here is a paper from Dean Rusk which comes out hard for a policy of getting rid of Jagan', one US note from July 1962 reads. 'Should our covert program succeed, we would wish to be in the position of being able to give the successor regime immediate aid', Schlesinger told President Kennedy in September 1962. It is very unlikely that these plans in a British colony could have been conducted without at least a nod and a wink from Whitehall.16
The CIA helped to organise and fund anti-Jagan protests in February 1962, which resulted in strikes and riots, and during which the British sent troops to restore order. But the centrepiece of the CIA's covert operation was funding a general strike, which began in April 1963 and lasted for 80 days. CIA agents gave advice to local union leaders on how to organise and sustain the strike; with a budget of $1 million, they provided funds and food to keep the strikers going.17 This strike was publicly cited by British officials as evidence that Jagan could not run the country.
In March 1963 a note from the US Consul General in Georgetown, Everett Melby, confirms the agreement between the US and Britain:
that proportional representation (PR) as an electoral system for British Guiana (BG) represents the most practical electoral device for replacing Premier Cheddi fagan and the People's Progressive Party (PPP) with a more democratic and reliable government.
The use of the term 'more democratic' is the façade maintained even in internal communications for what was in effect a coup. Later in the same memo, Melby noted that 'with the existing electoral districting, he [Jagan] would probably win a majority of seats'.
'An independent Guyana will be within the US sphere', Melby noted, adding:
It is not in the national interest to have a communist government on the mainland of South America. An independent Guyana with Jagan in office represents such a threat and as such should be removed.
Melby then urged the US government formally to decide on PR for the country. Finally, he noted that he would shortly present 'an outline of several projects which, after the PPP's removal, may be effective in discrediting Jagan with some of his supporters'.18
In June, now Prime Minister Douglas-Home met Kennedy in talks in Britain. The brief for Douglas-Home stated:
If Jagan maintains his hold over the Indians, it is inevitable that in a few years he will lead the govern- ment . . . The normal course would be for us to go ahead with independence under the present government. Were it not for Jagan's communist leanings we should have no hesitation. But we are willing to consider with the President, the possibility of independence under an alternative (Burnham) government.19
During these Anglo-American talks, British officials formally proposed to the Americans to 'establish a Burnham-D'Aguiar [the latter the other opposition party leader] government and then grant British Guiana independence'. Duncan Sandys, now Colonial Secretary, said 'we had to be careful that Jagan should not be put in a position where he would ask for dissolution [of the current government] and new elections, because he would certainly win again'.20
On 18 July Macmillan wrote to Kennedy outlining (in the words of the latter's in reply in September) 'your plan for a series of moves in September or October which would result in the removal of the Jagan government'. 'We want to cooperate with you in all ways to help you make your program a success', Kennedy said. He wanted to steer Burnham and D'Aguiar 'on the right path, creating and launching an alternative East Indian party and a real economic development programme'. Kennedy ended by saying that 'this problem is one in which you have shown a most helpful understanding of my special concern'.2'
Macmillan explained British strategy in his reply to Kennedy. The aim was to summon the three political leaders in British Guiana and 'impose a solution' by establishing 'a new electoral system designed to counteract racialism' (i.e., proportional representation). It was likely, Macmillan wrote, that Jagan would refuse to cooperate, in which case Britain would suspend the constitution. If he did cooperate, 'we shall have to postpone his removal until he shows that he is deliberately obstructing'. Also important was to keep the UN out. A recent proposal for a UN commission needed to be avoided 'since it would be bound to recommend early independence, and would be more than likely to advise the retention of the present electoral system'.22
The coup was staged at the end of October 1963 in a constitutional conference. Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys announced the new electoral system under proportional representation and the holding of fresh elections under the supervision of an official appointed by the British government.
Jagan immediately attacked the British for continuing to refuse to set a date for independence and for rigging the electoral system to bar him from office. He wrote to Douglas-Home pointing out that PR had been rejected in Britain by both the Conservative and Labour parties and that the previous Colonial Secretary, Iain McLeod, had also rejected a call for PR at the 1960 constitutional conference.
A file of 26 November 1963 shows Anglo-American planners gloating at their victory. In a meeting between Douglas-Home and Dean Rusk, 'the Prime Minister said that this had gone off slightly better than had been hoped', the file reads. 'It had even been slightly awkward that Dr Jagan had given so little trouble'.23
Jagan may have had (naive) hopes that the incoming Labour government in October 1964 would squash the PR plan. Within days of taking office, however, it had dashed these hopes. 'Bowing to United States wishes', the New York Times wrote, the new British government 'ruled out early independence for British Guiana' and was proceeding with elections under proportional representation.
In these elections, held in December 1964, the PPP increased its vote to 46 per cent and won more seats than any other party. But Forbes Burnham was asked to form a government under the new proportional representation system which gave the two opposition parties together a majority of seats. Now that the acceptable leadership had taken office, Guyana could be granted independence, which proceeded in 1966.24
The Anglo-American constitutional coup to remove the nationalist threat had successfully countered the democratic voice of the Unpeople of British Guiana. This had been carried out on the understanding that, in the words of then Colonial Secretary Iain MacLeod to Kennedy's special assistant, Arthur Schlesinger in February 1962, 'if I had to make a choice between Jagan and Burnham as head of my country I would choose Jagan any day of the week'.25
An earlier brief to the Prime Minister had said that a Burnham-D'Aguiar coalition 'would be inefficient', that 'Burnham himself is unreliable' and that 'any African leader would have great difficulty in governing a country with an overwhelmingly Indian population'.26 But these were trifling concerns in the pursuit of Anglo-American power.
16
ARABIANS: DIRTY WARS
One of the least known aspects of recent British history is the 'dirty war' conducted by Britain in North Yemen in the 1960s. The episode lasted almost a decade, spanned Conservative and Labour governments, and cost up to 200,000 lives. It also involved lying by the government to the public.
As far as I am aware, the declassified files have been researched by only one British academic, in a book due to appear in late 2004.1 These files are heavily censored – probably more so than in any other foreign-policy episode I have looked at. Dozens of documents have been retained by the Foreign Office; in the released files, numerous paragraphs or lines are blanked out. The reason given for this secrecy is, inevitably, 'national security'. In my view, the real reason is to protect reputations of the people with blood on their hands: Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, Denis Healey, Leo Amery, Duncan Sandys, and the unelected officials in Whitehall.
The threat posed by Yemen
In September 1962, the Imam of North Yeme
n was overthrown in a popular coup. Imam al-Badr had been in power for only a week. He had succeeded his father, who had presided over a feudal kingdom where 80 per cent of the population lived as peasants. The land had been controlled through bribery, an arbitrary and coercive tax system and a policy of divide and rule. The coup was led by Colonel Abdullah al-Sallal and a pro-Nasser, Arab nationalist group within the Yemeni military, which together proclaimed the Yemen Arab Republic. Royalist forces supporting the Imam took to the hills and began an insurgency, supported by Saudi Arabia and Jordan, against the Republican regime. Nasser's Egypt deployed troops in North Yemen to shore up the new government.
Britain soon resorted to covert action to undermine the new Republican regime, in alliance with the Saudis and Jordanis. The declassified files show that many British officials understood that they were supporting the 'wrong' side.
For example, Christopher Gandy, who was Britain's top official in Taiz in North Yemen, noted shortly after the revolution that the rule of the previous Imam 'has made the Imamate unpopular with large elements and those in many ways the best'. The 'monopoly of power' was 'much resented' and was overturned by the new, Republican government by appointing into office people from 'classes, regions and sects previously neglected in the distribution of power'. Gandy described the Imam's rule as 'an arbitrary autocracy'; the Republicans, on the other hand, were acting collectively through a new government, and were 'much more open to contact and reasoned argument'.2
Gandy actually recommended recognition of the new Yemeni regime, saying that it was interested in friendly relations with Britain and that this was 'the best way to prevent an increase' in Egyptian influence. But he was overruled both by his political masters in London and by officials in neighbouring Aden, Britain's then colony. One of Gandy's arguments was that if the Royalists were to restore themselves to power they would have to change their system of rule so as to make themselves popular, which would 'in its turn embarrass us in Aden and the Protectorate' – where Britain was supporting similarly feudal elements against strong popular, nationalist feeling.3
After Britain's covert campaign in Yemen was well under way, an official in the Prime Minister's office noted that Egyptian President Nasser had been:
able to capture most of the dynamic and modern forces in the area while we have been left, by our own choice, backing the forces which are not merely reactionary (that would not matter so much) but shifty, unreliable and treacherous.
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan himself admitted that it was:
repugnant to political equity and prudence alike that we should so often appear to be supporting out-of-date and despotic regimes and to be opposing the growth of modern and more democratic forms of government.
The Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, also conceded that the Republicans' 'attraction for the average Yemeni will be greater' than the Imams', and this would 'cause us a great deal of trouble'.4
The military base at Aden was the cornerstone of British military policy in the Gulf region, in which Britain was then the major power, directly controlling the sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf and with huge oil interests in Kuwait and elsewhere. The coastal city of Aden was surrounded by what Britain had forged into a 'protectorate' of the Federation of South Arabia, a set of feudal fiefdoms presided over by autocratic leaders similar to that just overthrown in Yemen, and kept sweet by British bribes.
It was feared that a progressive, republican, Arab nationalist Yemen would serve as an example to the feudal sheikhdoms throughout the Gulf and the wider Middle East as well as in Aden itself. Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home stated shortly after the Republican coup that Aden could not be secure from 'a firmly established republican regime in Yemen'. A ministerial meeting similarly concluded that if Britain were forced out of Aden it would be 'a devastating blow to our prestige and authority' in the region. Even to recognise the new Yemeni regime might lead to 'a collapse in the morale of the pro-British rulers of the protectorate', putting 'the whole British position in the area . . . in jeopardy'.''
The threat, as outlined by Sir Kennedy Trevaskis, the High Commissioner in Aden, was that the Yemeni Republicans 'could expect to win massive support in both' Aden and the federation where 'pro-Republican feeling is strong'. The Republican regime was likely to encourage 'some of our own friends among the rulers' in the protectorate to 'defect and come to terms with the Yemen government'. 'Many would be attracted by' the regime, Trevaskis noted.
These concerns were shared by the arch-medieval kingdom in the region, Saudi Arabia, which feared the spread of the overthrow of monarchies by Arab nationalist forces. It was recognised by British planners that after the Saudis had begun arming the Royalists in Yemen they 'were not greatly concerned about the form of government to be established in the Yemen, provided that it was not under the control of Egypt' – any other government would do.6
This threat heightened as Nasser and new Yemeni leader al-Sallal gave diplomatic and material support to anti- British Republican forces in Aden and the federation and conducted a public campaign urging the British to withdraw from their imperial possessions. Trevaskis also commented that if the Yemenis were to secure control of Aden 'it would for the first time provide the Yemen with a large modern town and a port of international consequence'. Most importantly, 'economically, it would offer the greatest advantages to so poor and ill developed a country'.7
Britain decided to engage in a covert campaign to promote those forces recognised as 'shifty', 'treacherous' and 'despotic' to undermine those recognised as 'popular' and 'more democratic'. Crucially, they did so in the knowledge that their clients did not stand a chance of winning. The campaign was undertaken simply to cause trouble for the Republicans, and the Egyptians, in Yemen, who held the overwhelming majority of the country and the centres of population.
The files are clear on this point. Harold Macmillan noted in February 1963 that 'in the longer term a republican victory was inevitable'. He told President Kennedy that:
I quite realise that the Loyalists [sic] will probably not win in Yemen in the end but it would not suit us too badly if the new Yemeni regime were occupied with their own internal affairs during the next few years.
What Britain wanted was 'a weak government in Yemen not able to make trouble'.
A note to the Prime Minister from his foreign-policy adviser Philip de Zulueta similarly states that:
All departments appear to be agreed that the present stalemate in the Yemen, with the Republicans and Royalists fighting each other and therefore having no time or energy left over to make trouble for us in Aden, suits our own interests very well.
De Zulueta continued: 'our interest is surely to have the maximum confusion in the tribal areas on the Aden frontier' with Yemen.8
The covert campaign
Piecing together a brief chronology of British covert action is difficult in light of the wide censorship of the files. But the task is aided by intelligence expert Stephen Dorril's comprehensive book, MI6, produced mainly from secondary sources and interviews.
Shortly after the September 1962 coup, Jordan's King Hussein visited London, where he met Air Minister Julian Amery and urged the British government not to recognise the new Yemeni regime. They agreed that MI6 asset Neil 'Billy' McLean, a serving Conservative MP, should tour the area and report back to the Prime Minister. Ml6's former vice chief, George Young, now a banker with Kleinwort Benson, was approached by Mossad to find a Briton acceptable to the Saudis to run a guerrilla war against the Republicans. Young then introduced McLean to Dan Hiram, the Israeli defence attaché who promised to supply arms, money and training, which the Saudis eagerly grasped.9
Two days after the coup Prince Hassan, uncle of Imam al-Badr, who had been in New York for the past several years, called on Douglas-Home for help in getting him to the Yemeni frontier where he would make a bid for power. The files indicate that British officials said they could not provide any overt help but by mid-October Hassan was reported to have '
plenty of money and arms'.
In October Britain also considered direct military intervention in Yemen when Prime Minister Macmillan called on the chiefs of staff 'to consider our military resources should we be driven to adopt an overt policy'. Covert operations were preferred, perhaps for the reason later given by Foreign Secretary Rab Butler, who wrote that 'if this had happened a generation ago', we should have used 'North-West frontier' tactics 'which would probably have been effective'. Unfortunately, 'there are severe limitations on the use of such methods in the world as it is today, and we trust that any repetition can be avoided'.10