Abstract
May had been a month for plans and preparations, for arguments and manoeuvres behind the scenes. June brought more visible activity. Persia was on the middle page of The Times — in those decorous days the front page was reserved for classified advertisements and the agony column hallowed by Sherlock Holmes — every weekday of the month. Nor was this for want of other news. The sensation caused by the announcement on 7 June that the traitors Burgess and Maclean had fled to Russia on 25 May would outlast not merely the month but the year. It was the main topic for parliamentary questions to Herbert Morrison on 11 June. Because of the King’s illness, Princess Elizabeth took the salute at the ceremony of Trooping the Colour on the King’s Birthday. In the Gulf, FLAMINGO ‘dressed overall’ on that same 7 June and fired a 21-gun salute. In Britain there was again a dock strike and, at the end of the month, General Ridgway, now commanding the UN forces in Korea, sent a message to the C.-in-C. of the ‘Communist forces’ proposing armistice talks. The ground lost by General MacArthur’s rashness had been recovered.
The United Kingdom has no right at all independently of any United Nations recommendation to intervene by force in Persia to prevent a wrong being committed against one of its nationals.
Frank Soskice1
His Majesty’s Government are not prepared to stand by idle if the lives of British nationals are in jeopardy…. It is the responsibility of the Persian Government… if, however, that responsibility were not met, it would equally be the right and duty of His Majesty’s Government to extend protection to their own nationals.
Herbert Morrison2
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Notes and References
FO 371 91460 and 91545. For the activities of Makki see also Norman Kemp, Abadan: A First-hand Account of the Persian Oil Crisis (London: Allan Wingate, 1953) and
L.P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1955), both passim.
Bernard Donoughue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973), p. 497.
Hansard, Vol. 489, Cols 752–830 and Alistair Horne, Macmillan 1894–1956 (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 327.
Minute of 8 August 1943 to General Ismay. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. V (London: Cassell, 1952), p. 583.
Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1952–1954, Vol. X (1951–1954) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1989), p. 71.
Norman Kemp, Abadan: A First-hand Account of the Persian Oil Crisis (London: Allan Wingate. 1953). pp. 156–7 and FO 371 91507.
Air Chief Marshal Sir David Lee, Flight from the Middle East (London: HMSO, 1980), pp. 54–6.
Henry Longhurst, Adventure in Oil (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1959), p. 158.
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. VIII (London: Heinemann, 1988), pp. 617–18 and FO 371 91555. President Truman (1884–1972) had come to admire Churchill, but he never much cared for Attlee, he had detested Bevin and any esteem he may have felt for the British did not deflect his pursuit of American interests.
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© 1991 James Cable
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Cable, J. (1991). Buccaneer is Conceived. In: Intervention at Abadan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11913-4_6
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