Abstract
Accuracy and precision are hard to achieve when writing about Plan Buccaneer. So much is still concealed from the inquisitive reader. The plan itself was set out in an explanatory memorandum (CP(51) 172) considered by the Cabinet on 2 July 1951, but closed to historians until the year 2002. So are the two PREM files containing Attlee’s papers about the Persian oil crisis. The minutes of the Defence Committee for 1951 have been diligently weeded and there are gaps even in the files of the more liberal Foreign Office. Strangest of all, some DEFE 4 files recording the meetings of the Chiefs of Staff were released by the Public Record Office in 1982 only to be withdrawn by the Ministry of Defence in 1989.
If the worst came to the worst, the Government should not exclude the possibility of a forcible occupation of Abadan.
Winston Churchill1
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Notes and References
Letter of 9 July 1951 to Attlee, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. VIII (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 618.
Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart (London: William Kimber, 1971), p. 221.
Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970), p. 507. The British Embassy in Moscow had reported on 29 June that the treatment of the Persian oil dispute in the Russian press did not suggest that the Soviet Government felt themselves concerned. FO 371 91555.
Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1952–1954, Vol. X: Iran (1951–1954) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1989), pp. 80–81.
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© 1991 James Cable
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Cable, J. (1991). Decisions, Decisions. In: Intervention at Abadan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11913-4_7
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