by Mark Curtis
The same basic concern is in evidence when a former MI6 officer says that the purpose of MI6’s psychological warfare section is ‘massaging public opinion into accepting controversial foreign policy decisions’.19
A glimpse into the elite’s contempt for the public’s right to even know about decision-making, together with the totalitarian mindset of elites, was revealed in the Scott inquiry into arms to Iraq in 1993–94. This is an episode worth briefly reviewing since, as Guardian correspondent Richard Norton-Taylor’s excellent book on the inquiry noted, it is ‘a goldmine for students of the way we are governed’.20
The inquiry showed how government lawyers were prepared to conspire with civil servants to suppress embarrassing information about arms exports to Iraq and worked with witnesses to change their statements. The Cabinet Office delayed passing on documents to hinder the inquiry and gave it misleading figures on arms-related exports. It also fought to the end to try to persuade Lord Justice Richard Scott to suppress embarrassing information contained in thousands of documents not read out in public hearings.
One Treasury solicitor told the inquiry that it is ‘damaging to the public interest to have any decision-making process exposed’. Another said that confidentiality was ‘necessary for the proper administration of the public service’ – meaning the public is to be kept out of ‘proper’ decision-making.
Scott asked Robin Butler, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, whether he thought that ‘the convenience of secrecy’ inhibited the government from giving information about what it is doing. Butler replied: ‘You can call that a matter of convenience, if you like. I would call it a matter of good government.’
Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe told Scott that to lay ‘our thought processes before you’ would do so to ‘a worldwide range of uncomprehending or malicious commentators’. When Scott asked him: ‘You can, can you not, expose your hand to people of this country?’, Howe replied: ‘There are reasons for caution. Justice is exposed to emotional misunderstandings in this country.’
Six years before the inquiry, Scott had attacked the Thatcher government’s attempt to ban the book Spycatcher by former MI5 officer, Peter Wright. Scott said that ‘I found myself unable to escape the reflection that the absolute protection of the Security Service that Sir Robert Armstrong [then cabinet secretary] was contending for, could not be achieved this side of the Iron Curtain.’
The Scott inquiry also revealed how contemptuously elites viewed their accountability to parliament. For years, ministers had given misleading or plainly inaccurate replies to parliamentary questions on British policy on arms to Iraq. Civil servants then variously said:
‘Truth is a very difficult concept’ (Ian Macdonald, head of Defence Export Services Secretariat, when asked how parliamentary questions should be answered).
‘I think the way in which questions are answered in parliament tends to be something of an art form rather than a means of communication’ (Eric Beston, a senior DTI official).
‘Questions should be answered so as to give the maximum degree of satisfaction possible to the questioner’ (David Gore-Booth, former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia and then head of the Foreign Office’s Middle East department).
‘The secrecy culture of Whitehall is essentially a product of British parliamentary democracy; economy with the truth is the essence of a professional reply to a parliamentary question’ (Sir Patrick Nairne, former Whitehall permanent secretary).
Norton-Taylor concluded that ‘Whitehall will do its utmost to ensure that never again will a judge be given such freedom to conduct a public inquiry into the activities of government.’
This culture of elitism and the totalitarian realm of deceit, rooted in centuries of much political thought, remains safe in New Labour’s hands, as currently shown in the extraordinary state propaganda operations on Iraq, outlined in chapter 1.
PART III
EXPOSING THE SECRET HISTORY
Sitting in the Public Record Office in London is a mountain of evidence on the reality of Britain’s past role in the world. These official records, consisting mainly of correspondence between government departments and embassies, are declassified under the thirty-year ‘rule’, although there are plenty of ‘exceptions’ where files remain classified, naturally for reasons of ‘national security’. These records not only often make worrying – sometimes, frightening – reading but they also show the vast gulf that generally exists between the reality of Britain’s foreign policy, on the one hand, and conventional media and academic analyses, on the other.
The following four chapters – all documenting the formerly secret record – contain four common threads.
The first is how brutal in war, and abusive of human rights, British elites have been in the past, much more so than is usually presented. The recent onslaughts against Afghanistan and Iraq are merely the current form of terrifying traditional British practice.
Second, they show Britain’s overwhelming need to keep economic resources in the correct hands – elites who give favourable treatment to Western business. This is a crucial part of the organisation of key countries, regions, and the global economy, to ‘our’ benefit – the roots of current globalisation.
Third, they show that the primary ‘threat’ to British elite interests throughout the postwar period was not so much communism or Soviet expansion – the official threats intended for public consumption – but indigenous nationalism arising from within those countries. These nationalist forces offered in many cases the prospect of real development for poverty-stricken populations. But they were crushed by Britain.
The fourth thread is that these nationalist forces were popular and, in the case of British Guiana, democratically elected. These stories further reveal the British elite’s contempt for democratic, popular groups when they fail to promote British interests. My view is that, even though these stories come from the colonial era, their key themes are contemporary as we enter a US-led imperial order, and they throw light on understanding Britain’s current role in the world.
14
OVERTHROWING THE GOVERNMENT OF IRAN
Our policy was to get rid of Mossadeq as soon as possible.
Sir Donald Logan, British Embassy, Iran
PAST BRITISH POLICY towards Iran shows how foreign policy planners prefer repressive, elite government to popular government, if their interests are better served. It also shows how dangerous this policy has been for the people of Iran and many others. The roots of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the current ‘anti-Westernism’ of Iranian leaders owe much to British and US actions in the 1950s and since. If Iran is currently a ‘rogue state’ (that is, official enemy of the US) it was encouraged to become so partly by US and British policy. Iran’s past could have been very different and its future brighter. These links, however, are rarely mentioned in the mainstream political culture.
In August 1953, a coup covertly organised by MI6 and the CIA overthrew Iran’s popular, nationalist government under Mohamed Musaddiq and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture to institute a dictatorship that lasted until the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Shah’s regime was given full political and economic backing by Britain and the US, including its most brutal component, the Savak secret police. The new Islamic leaders turned on the US and Britain, partly for their role in installing and propping up the previous regime for a quarter of a century.
The CIA is conventionally regarded as the prime mover behind the 1953 coup. Yet the declassified British files show not only that Britain was the major instigator but also that British resources contributed significantly to it. Churchill once told the CIA agent responsible for the operation that he ‘would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture’.1
Two first-hand accounts of the coup – by the MI6 and CIA agents responsible for it – are useful in reconstructing events.2 Many of the secret Briti
sh planning documents have been removed from public access and remain classified. Despite this, a fairly clear picture still emerges.
Prelude to covert action
In the early 1950s the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) – later renamed British Petroleum – which was managed from London and owned by the British government and British private citizens, controlled Iran’s main source of income: oil. According to one British official, the AIOC ‘has become in effect an imperium in imperio in Persia’. The AIOC was recognised as ‘a great foreign organisation controlling Persia’s economic life and destiny’.
Iranian nationalists objected to the fact that the AIOC’s revenues from oil were greater than the Iranian government’s, with profits amounting to £170 million in 1950 alone. The Iranian government was being paid royalties of between 10 and 12 per cent of the company’s net proceeds, while the British government received as much as 30 per cent of these in taxes alone.3
The British Minister of Fuel and Power explained that Iranians ‘are of course morally entitled to a royalty’ for oil extraction but to say ‘that morally they are entitled to 50%, or … even more of the profits of enterprises to which they have made no contribution whatever, is bunk, and ought to be shown to be bunk’.4
Britain’s ambassador in Tehran commented:
It is so important to prevent the Persians from destroying their main source of revenue … by trying to run it themselves … The need for Persia is not to run the oil industry for herself (which she cannot do) but to profit from the technical ability of the West.5
Iranians could also point to the AIOC’s low wage rates and its effectively autonomous rule in the parts of the country where the oilfields lay. Shown the overcrowded housing of some of the AIOC workers, a British official commented, ‘well, this is just the way all Iranians live’. The AIOC regarded Iranians as ‘merely wogs’.6
Britain’s priority was to support political ‘stability’ by aiding Iranian parliamentarians ‘to preserve the existing social order from which they profit so greatly’ – as did British oil interests. One difference with the National Front (led by Musaddiq) was that its party members were ‘comparatively free from the taint of having amassed wealth and influence through the improper use of official positions’, Britain’s ambassador in Iran privately admitted. Musaddiq had the support of the nationalists against the rich and corrupt. As prime minister he managed to break the grip over Iranian affairs exercised by the large landowners, wealthy merchants, the army and the civil service. Despite British public propaganda, Musaddiq’s government was generally democratic, popular, nationalist and anti-communist. British planners noted that, unfortunately, Musaddiq is ‘regarded by many of the ignorant as a messiah’.7
But Musaddiq overstepped the mark, as far as Britain was concerned, in nationalising oil operations in May 1951. In the dispute that followed, Musaddiq offered to compensate the AIOC but Britain demanded either a new oil concession or a settlement that would include compensation for loss of future profits. ‘In other words’, according to Iran scholar Homa Katouzian, ‘the Iranians would have had either to give up the spirit of the nationalisation or to compensate the AIOC not just for its investment but for all the oil which it would have produced in the next forty years’.8
Iran’s nationalisation and offer of compensation were perfectly legitimate in international law, but this was irrelevant to British planners. Britain did ‘not consider that a deal on acceptable terms can ever be made with’ Musaddiq. Instead, the Foreign Office noted that ‘there is hope of a change which would bring moderate elements into control’.9
The first step taken to remove the threat of independent development was to stop the production and export of oil, which deprived Iran of its main source of income until the 1953 coup. This was done in the knowledge that ‘the effect might be to bankrupt Persia thus possibly leading to revolution’.10 Other, mainly US, oil companies lent their support by refusing to handle Iranian oil, to prevent other oil-exporting countries from learning a ‘bad’ lesson from Iran’s example.
The second step was to begin covert planning. The month following Iran’s nationalisation of oil operations, the Attlee Labour government began plans to overthrow Musaddiq, despatching to Iran an Oxford lecturer provided with considerable sums of money.11 ‘It has been our objective for some time to get Sayyid Zia appointed Prime Minister’, the Foreign Office noted in September 1951. Zia had ‘no popular support’ and his appointment ‘was likely to provoke a strong public reaction’, according to Iranian academic Fakhreddin Azimi. But to the Foreign Office Zia was ‘the one man who would be able and anxious to get a reasonable oil settlement with us’ and promote Iran’s ‘future stability’.12
A third option was direct military intervention, especially military occupation of the area around Abadan, the world’s largest oil refinery and centre of AIOC’s operations. According to the Foreign Secretary, this:
would demonstrate once and for all to the Persians British determination not to allow the … AIOC to be evicted from Persia and might well result in the downfall of the Musaddiq regime and its replacement by more reasonable elements prepared to negotiate a settlement … It might be expected to produce a salutary effect throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, as evidence that United Kingdom interests could not be recklessly molested with impunity.13
Plans were laid for war against Iran. But in the end the option was viewed by the Foreign Office as ‘quite impracticable’ because it was believed that Iran would be able to resist the comparatively small number of troops that Britain could deploy. The US was also opposed to the British use of force, and President Truman sent a personal message to this effect to Attlee. Both the British Foreign Secretary and the Defence Minister favoured the use of military force to seize the oil installations. The option of military intervention was kept open until September 1951, when London finally decided to evacuate British personnel, and continue covert action, instead.14
After winning the general election the following month, Churchill berated his predecessors ‘who had scuttled and run from Abadan when a splutter of musketry would have ended the matter’. ‘If we had fired the volley you were responsible for at Ismaila at Abadan’ Churchill explained to his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, ‘none of these difficulties … would have occurred’. (The reference was to the British action at Ismaila, Egypt in January 1952. After Egyptian rebels assaulted a British military base, British soldiers occupied the town, surrounded the police headquarters, and proceeded to engage in a turkey shoot, killing fifty people and wounding a hundred before the surrender.)
A few months into his term, however, Churchill noted that ‘by sitting still on the safety valve and showing no weariness we are gradually getting them into submission’.15
Preference for a dictator
Britain’s aim was to install ‘a more reliable government’, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden explained. ‘Our policy’, a British official later recalled, ‘was to get rid of Mossadeq as soon as possible’. An adviser at the British embassy, Colonel Wheeler, explained that ‘a change of government could almost certainly be effected without difficulty or disturbance’. So by November, a Foreign Office official was able to report that the ‘unofficial efforts to undermine Dr Musaddiq are making good progress’.16
After the failure of the oil negotiations, the main British negotiator advised the Shah that the ‘only solution’ was ‘a strong government under martial law and the bad boys in prison for two years or so’. Britain’s ambassador in Tehran agreed, noting that ‘if only the Shah can be induced to take a strong line there is a good chance that Musaddiq may be got rid of’. The new government should then ‘take drastic action against individual extremists’.
With 1952 came Britain’s preference for ‘a non-communist coup d’etat preferably in the name of the Shah’. It was clearly understood by the British embassy in Tehran that ‘this would mean an authoritarian regime’.17
British planners had no illusions about
the Shah. They noted that ‘the chief complaint of his political critics [is] that he wishes to monopolise power for himself’. Neither did he ‘sufficiently check the members of his family and their entourage from interference in politics and their profitable incursions into business’.18
As with the secret planning in Indonesia in 1965 (see chapter 20), Britain supported the establishment of a strong-arm dictatorship in the face of popular, nationalist alternatives. A coup could be successful, planners noted, ‘provided always a strong man can be found equal to the task’. This ‘strong man’ would ‘rule in the name of the Shah’. The files show that the ambassador in Tehran preferred ‘a dictator’, who ‘would carry out the necessary administrative and economic reforms and settle the oil question on reasonable terms’.19
The Foreign Office stated who such a reasonable new strongman might be: General Zahidi, who was to become prime minister after the coup. Zahidi had spent much of the war in prison in Palestine after being arrested for pro-Nazi activities by the British authorities. He was known as being ruthless and manipulative and had twice been chief of police in Tehran. British officials now began to talk to him about providing £10–20 million to the Iranian treasury on his taking power.20
By March 1952, the British embassy was lamenting that the Iranian army was ‘unlikely to take overt action against Musaddiq’ but that its attitude might become ‘more positive’. The Shah was also reported to be resisting British pressures to act but the British ‘made it abundantly clear that we desire the fall of Musaddiq as soon as possible’.21