Britain and the Cyprus Crisis of 1974

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Britain and the Cyprus Crisis of 1974

This book examines the ideological and socio-political discourses s­haping

the remembrance and representation of Britain and the Cyprus conflict
of 1974 within Greek Cypriot society. By combining the official with the
popular and drawing on an extensive range of oral history interviews, this
monograph shows that a suspicion born out of Britain’s long (neo-)­colonial
connection to Cyprus has come to frame the image and understanding of
British actions associated with the events, and lasting consequences, of
1974. Indeed, with the island of Cyprus still divided, and the requirement to
remember a national imperative, this book has a direct contemporary rele-
vance. However, within the existent literature, while much has been written
about the political roots of the Cyprus conflict, no study has yet sought to
systematically analyse and understand the influences shaping the history and
memory of British actions on Cyprus in 1974. One defined by the existence
of ‘partitionist’ conspiracies, collusive accusations and a series of memory
distortions which continue to resonate strongly irrespective of the evidence
that is now available. As such, by analysing the influences shaping the image
of Britain in 1974, one can begin to understand in ever greater detail the
Anglo–Greek Cypriot relationship in a modern context.

John Burke is a teacher at Newcastle University, UK.

Routledge Studies in Modern European History

For a full list of titles, please visit https://www.routledge.com/history/series/

SE0246

45 Propaganda, Persuasion and the Great War

Heredity in the Modern Sale of Products and Political Ideas
Pier Paolo Pedrini
46 The Age of Anniversaries
The Cult of Commemoration, 1895–1925
Edited by T. G. Otte
47 The History of the European Migration Regime
Germany’s Strategic Hegemony
Emmanuel Comte
48 Governing the Rural in Interwar Europe
Edited by Liesbeth van de Grift and Amalia Ribi Forclaz
49 Stalin’s Constitution
Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the 1936
Draft Constitution
Samantha Lomb
50 Britain and the Cyprus Crisis of 1974
Conflict, Colonialism and the Politics of Remembrance
in Greek Cypriot Society
John Burke
51 Nationalism of the Rich
Discourses and Strategies of Separatist Parties in Catalonia,
Flanders, Northern Italy and Scotland
Emmanuel Dalle Mulle
52 Protecting Democracy from Dissent
Population Engineering in Western Europe 1918–1926
Shannon Monaghan
Britain and the Cyprus
Crisis of 1974
Conflict, Colonialism and the
Politics of Remembrance in
Greek Cypriot Society

John Burke
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 John Burke
The right of John Burke to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Burke, John (John Edward), 1987- author.
Title: Britain and the Cyprus Crisis of 1974: conflict, colonialism and the
politics of remembrance in Greek Cypriot society / John Burke.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge,
2018. | Series: Routledge studies in modern European history; 50 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017029222 | ISBN 9781138280083 (hardback: alkaline paper) |
ISBN 9781315276120 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cyprus–History–Cyprus Crisis, 1974- | Cyprus–History–
Cyprus Crisis, 1974–Historiography. | Greeks–Cyprus--Interviews. |
Memory–Political aspects–Cyprus. | Oral history–Cyprus. | Cyprus–Colonial
influence. | Great Britain–Relations–Cyprus. | Cyprus–Relations–Great
Britain. | Great Britain–Foreign public opinion, Greek. | Great Britain–
Foreign public opinion, Cypriot.
Classification: LCC DS54.9 .B87 2018 | DDC 956.9304–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029222
ISBN: 978-1-138-28008-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-27612-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For Sue, Stephen and Ann Marie
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

Figures ix
Acknowledgements xi
Abbreviations xii
Note on referencing xiii

1 Introduction 1
History and memory 5
Methodological foundations: oral history 10
Research structure 13

2 ‘One of our problems’: the British view of 1974 20

Roots of conflict 21
British rights and obligations 26
An ‘eternal balancing act’ 35
A British ‘scapegoat’? 40
Conclusion 44

3 Imagining conflict and its causes: structuring a popular

Greek Cypriot response 52
NATO ‘conspiracies’ and the Cold War 55
The SBAs and (neo)-colonial continuity 64
Britain and the ‘Big Lie’ 70
Conclusion 79

4 Creating official images of the past in Greek Cypriot

historical narratives and school texts 87
Politics of history construction 90
Consequences of conflict 93
Causality of conflict 99
A British legacy 103
Conclusion 110
viii Contents
5 Reconciling the past: sites of memory and acts
of public remembrance 116
Sites of memory for 1974: politics and mourning 118
Contested content 119
‘Imposed’ sites of memory: Peace and Freedom Rally 122
‘Constructed’ sites of memory: the occupation 125
Inclusivity 130
‘Stepmother’ Britain: a memorial heritage 131
‘Forgotten conflict’ 132
Controversies over content and location 138
Layers of memorial meaning 143
Conclusion 144

6 Framing the ‘Cyprus Problem’ 150

National roots of the problem 153
‘Who are the Cypriots?’ 161
‘Motherland’ influences 166
Cypriotism 172
Conclusion 179

7 Conclusion 185

Appendix 1 199
Appendix 2 201
Bibliography 202
Index 221
Figures

1.1 UN map of Cyprus 14

2.1 Michael Cummings, Daily Express, 2 March 1964 22
2.2 Paul Rigby, The Sun, 18 July 1974, p. 6 28
2.3 Stan McMurty, Daily Mail, 18 July 1974, p. 17 32
2.4 Stanley Franklin, Daily Mirror, 13 March 1964, p. 5 36
3.1 G. Mavrogennis, ‘Map of Cyprus USA Edition’, Satiriki, 21
May 1966, p. 1 57
3.2 Ilias Skoulas, ‘NATO puts pressure on Greece’, Haravghi,
29 December 1974, p. 5 61
3.3 Eleuthere Kupros, 6 March 1975, p. 6 63
3.4 Haravghi, 22 January 1975, p. 1 67
3.5 KYR, ‘The Crucifixion of Cyprus by Britain’, Phileleftheros,
23 January 1975, p. 1 69
4.1 PIO: ‘Cyprus: A few facts to remember’ 95
4.2 I know, I don’t forget and I struggle, p. 24 96
4.3 I know, I don’t forget and I struggle, p. 72 98
4.4 Kostas Mitropoulos, Phileleftheros, 25 April 2004, p. 2 108
5.1 G. Mavrogennis, ‘We stand well … We stand … with fear’,
Satiriki, 16 April 1966, p. 1 121
5.2 Peace and Freedom Rally, 14 July 2013 124
5.3 PIO: Famagusta: Europe’s easternmost town under Turkish
occupation, (Nicosia: PIO, 2007) 126
5.4 Kyrenia Memorial, March 2013 132
5.5 ‘Dead Heroes’, Museum of National Struggle, July 2012 135
5.6 ‘Execution of British Intelligence Service officers’, Museum of
National Struggle, July 2012 136
5.7 Museum of National Struggle, July 2012 138
6.1 G. Mavrogennis, ‘History repeats itself’, Satiriki, 21 May
1966, p. 1 169
x Figures
6.2 G. Mavrogennis, ‘With the A-7C airplanes there is no issue
of distance of Cyprus from Greece’, Satiriki, 25 October
1975, p. 1 177
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Violetta Hionidou for all of the help and guidance
provided during the course of my research, as without it I would not have
been able to pull this project together. I would also like to thank my family
for all of their help, support and patience over the years. To my parents,
Sue and Stephen, my sister, Ann Marie, and my aunt, Dr Winifred Burke,
thank you for all of your help and encouragement; it was always very much
appreciated. I would also like to offer my thanks to Angeliki Nicolaidou
Mavrommati of the Press and Information Office, as well as all the staff
at the Limassol Research Centre for their help during the course of my
research. Lastly, I would like to thank all of those people in both Britain and
Cyprus who took time out of their lives to sit down and speak to me about
their experiences and memories. Without their time, their recollections and,
most of all, their kind help, this study would not have been possible.
Abbreviations

AKEL Progressive Party of Working People (Communist Party)

ASA Advertising Standards Authority
BCA British Cartoon Archive
CBFNE Commander British Forces Near East
DIKO Cyprus Democratic Party
DISY Cyprus Conservative Party
ECHR European Court of Human Rights
EDEK Cyprus Socialist Party
EOKA National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters (1955–1959)
EOKA-B Greek Cypriot Paramilitary Organisation
ESBA Dhekelia Base, near Larnaca
IWM Imperial War Museum
MOEC Greek Cypriot Ministry of Education and Culture
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NFC National Federation of Cypriots
PIO Republic of Cyprus Press and Information Office
PTR Police Tactical Reserve
SBA British Sovereign Base Area
TFSC Turkish Federated State of Cyprus (1975–1983)
TNA The National Archives
TRNC Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (1983 onwards)
UNFICYP United Nations Forces in Cyprus
WSBA Episkopi–Akrotiri Base, near Limassol
Note on referencing

The newspapers from Cyprus referenced throughout this monograph have a

Latinised title of the original Greek variant. Full Greek titles alongside their
Latinised counterparts are in the bibliography. When referencing a publica-
tion, such as a newspaper article with a Greek title, the original reference
will provide the Greek title alongside the English translation in brackets.
Thereafter, it will be translated into English in all subsequent references.
This page intentionally left blank
1 Introduction

On 15 July 1974, after a long period of tension between the governments of

Athens and Nicosia, a coup d’état against the President of the Republic of
Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, signified the beginning of a major inter-
national crisis on this small Mediterranean island. While the instigators of
the coup attempted to depict this action as a ‘purely internal affair between
Greeks and Greeks’, this was from the outset a crisis with an international
dimension.1 The Treaty of Guarantee provided Britain, Greece and Turkey
with the purported right to take action in the internal affairs of Cyprus in
order to protect the ‘independence, territorial integrity and security’ of this
island republic.2 Through this treaty, on 20 July 1974, Turkey directly inter-
vened in the conflict by landing an army on the beaches of northern Cyprus.3
Over the course of the next month however, this Turkish invasion force
illegally partitioned and subsequently occupied one-third of the island.4 In
response, the military Junta in Athens collapsed after ordering a full mobili-
sation, Britain took the controversial decision not to intervene, and a wave
of anti-American protests resulted in the death of the US ambassador in
Nicosia. By the end of hostilities in August 1974, Cyprus was divided. In
the north, an unrecognised and ‘illegal’ Turkish Cypriot state was created,
while in the south, the ‘free’ remnants of the still internationally recognised
Republic of Cyprus became a Greek Cypriot dominated state.
Although four decades have now passed since Cyprus was partitioned,
the events of 1974 continue to resonate strongly irrespective of this passage
of time. Indeed, with one-third of the population still displaced from their
homes and a further 1,500 still officially declared missing, it is a period
which remains deeply felt across Greek Cypriot society.5 It is also one which
is clearly visible given the existence of cityscape ‘ghost-towns’ like Varosha,
in the nature of Europe’s ‘last divided capital’ of Nicosia, and in the physical
scar of the UN-controlled buffer zone that continues to cut across the heart
of the island.6 As a consequence, it is a period that must never be forgotten,
as to do so would effectively be tantamount to accepting the fait accom-
pli of the Turkish invasion and continued occupation of northern Cyprus.
For that reason, via the collective obligations of Den Xehno, or ‘I Don’t
Forget’, the commemorative structures of the state draw on and collate these
2 Introduction
emotive issues within official discourses, such as educational texts, in order
to compel all Greek Cypriots to continually remember the occupied areas.7
In turn, annual rituals on the ‘black anniversaries’ of the coup and invasion
seek to focus an internal and international attention towards the issue of
reunification and return by linking the suffering of the individual to that of
the state. Although the ‘Cyprus Problem’ has become known as one of the
most intractable issues of the modern world, with negotiations as of 2017
still ongoing, this merely feeds into the collective imperative to never forget
that which was lost.8 To put it simply therefore, the consequences of 1974
are an ever present reality within the structures of Greek Cypriot society, as
for many, its continuing ramifications are still lived with on a daily basis.9
Yet within a society so focussed on the collective requirement to ‘never
forget’ emerges the secondary issue of what should actually be remembered
about the causes of conflict on the island. Indeed, while the state places a
strong emphasis on the collective consequences of 1974, a variety of dif-
ferent national and political forces attempt to influence and control a par-
ticular form of remembrance associated with its causality. As this period
was punctuated by acts of external intervention and outbreaks of internal
violence, its representation in a modern context remains heavily contested.
This is not only evident in the deeply polarised official discourses of the
Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot authorities, who frame the events of
1974 very differently, but in the many divergent narratives that exist, and
effectively compete for representational authority within Greek Cypriot
society.10 This contestation is particularly marked between the left and right,
who in drawing on the discourses of Cypriotism and Cypriot-Hellenism,
selectively emphasise or marginalise those elements of the past which suit
their particular requirements in the present.11 Consequently, as the recent
reunification talks have shown, history can be used as a weapon to try and
undermine the dialogue, and indeed, the legitimacy of one’s political oppo-
nents.12 As such, it is safe to say that the past is very much alive on Cyprus,
as while the wounds of 1974 may have scarred, they have yet to fully heal.
However, one figure which looms large in this narrative of conflict, but is
curiously marginalised within the existing research on its remembrance and
representation is Britain.
With well over a century of direct physical and political involvement on
Cyprus marked by colonial occupation, anti-colonial confrontation and an
ambiguously orientated Guarantor status, the actions of multiple British
governments have left a significant imprint on the history of the island. This
is clearly evident in some of the negative phrases, such as ‘Pontius Pilate’ and
‘anti-Cypriot nemesis’, utilised to describe the British connection to the issue
of Cypriot division.13 Indeed, the legacy of British colonial rule (1878–1960)
is still much debated among historians for its impact on the post-colonial
state of Cyprus, particularly in relation to the lasting effects of ‘divide and
rule’.14 In turn, the British decision not to act in 1974 beyond diplomatic
measures and the defence of Nicosia airport, despite maintaining an army
 Introduction 3
within their Sovereign Base Areas (hereafter SBAs), remains one of the most
debated issues associated with the final de facto partition of the island.15 It
has formed the basis for an array of conspiracy theories questioning true
British, and by extension, Western motivations on Cyprus.16 As such, if one
were to utilise three words to encapsulate the Anglo–Greek Cypriot rela-
tionship in the twentieth century, these would undoubtedly be conflict, colo-
nialism and conspiracies. All of these can be linked directly to the seminal
events of 1974. Although the opening of the British and American archives
in 2004 has, in theory at least, eroded any form of factual basis for the
many conspiracy theories linked to this period, they continue to be widely
disseminated across Cyprus.17 Yet comparatively little research has been
undertaken to understand the broader socio-political structures shaping the
contemporary memory of British actions in the conflict of 1974.18
Indeed, while much has been written about the British connection to
Cyprus, the attention of historians has tended towards the politics of the
British response to conflict rather than the forces shaping its remembrance.19
In turn, the predominant focus of those publications focussed on the mem-
ory of conflict has been to analyse the image of the Turkish Cypriot ‘other’
within Greek Cypriot historical narratives, rather than the equally impor-
tant, but much more marginalised figure of the British ‘other’.20 This raises
a number of fundamental questions, given the significance of Britain’s role
in the events of 1974, which have yet to be properly approached or fully
answered. For example, what actually sustains the power and appeal of
the many conspiracy theories associated with 1974? Why do some Greek
Cypriots interviewed for this project remember events which all the avail-
able evidence would suggest did not actually occur? And lastly here, why do
some official publications directly refer to British actions in 1974 while oth-
ers, such as school texts, almost completely marginalise the role of Britain
within their narratives of the independence period? It is through the pro-
cess of asking and answering questions such as these that will allow this
monograph to analyse, in greater detail than has gone before, a period of
such seminal importance in the ongoing relationship between Britain and
Cyprus. As such, the central research question guiding this study and the
one which will engage with all of the issues set out above is: how is the
image of Britain shaped and utilised within the Greek Cypriot historical
discourses associated with the conflict of 1974?
By answering this question, this monograph will show that one of the
central and defining legacies of British rule on Cyprus, at least in relation
to the ‘Cyprus Problem’, is the concept of ‘divide and rule’. It is a policy
formula which transcends the colonial period, especially given the British
did not leave Cyprus in 1960 but merely changed the nature of their occu-
pation, meaning there is a lingering suspicion that the protection of their
neo-colonial SBAs simply followed the same ‘partitionist’ approach. A sus-
picion which, as Chapters 2 and 3 will show, was not helped by the inher-
ent ambiguities of British policy or by the actions of their NATO allies.
4 Introduction
What this has allowed is the view to develop that a Cyprus divided is a
Cyprus controlled. A view that is embraced across all sides of the politi-
cal spectrum, as irrespective of their ideological disputes, it is far easier
for many organisations and individuals to focus in on the divisive actions
of Britain so as to try and forget, or at the very least marginalise, their
own role in dividing Cyprus. Indeed, given the many ‘partitionist’ policies
brought forth by Britain, America, Greece and Turkey since the 1950s, it is
not difficult to see why 1974 could be framed as the effective culmination
of a long-term plan for division. As such, a discourse of remembrance has
developed which has at its foundations a post-colonial suspicion of British
political actions, given the nature of the anti-colonial struggle of the 1950s,
which is then developed and framed by the feeling of continued neo-colonial
‘interference’ associated with the protection of their SBAs. This monograph
defines this as a discourse of inherent suspicion, as while there is no direct
evidence to prove there was an Anglo–American conspiracy in 1974, there
is often enough ambiguity of action, or indeed, inaction across this period
as a whole to allow for the development and continuation of such views.
Indeed, akin to many other ‘myths’ of conflict, insofar as these discourses
can reshape the image of an event around one particularly dominant trope,
all that is needed is ambiguity, just enough ‘factual’ continuity to sustain
them, and a population willing to accept them.21 Consequently, ‘divide and
rule’ can be used to not only explain the emergence of the ‘Cyprus Problem’,
but it can also act as an effective shorthand to help explain and under-
stand why Britain has continued to act as it has over the years. In effect,
therefore, this monograph will show that the continued ‘colonial’ connec-
tion between Britain and Cyprus across the entirety of the twentieth cen-
tury, and beyond, can fundamentally impact the way in which their actions
in 1974 are interpreted and remembered today. As a final point to make
here, although this monograph is focussed on Greek Cypriot perspectives of
conflict, one should always bear in mind the potential parallels which can
be drawn to the development of Turkish Cypriot perspectives of Britain.22
Ones not given focus here primarily due to language constraints, and the
fact that the Republic of Cyprus, more so than the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus (hereafter ‘TRNC’), has a more direct relationship with
the British government. Yet the British have often faced criticism for letting
the Greek ‘usurpers’ get away with it on Cyprus, or indeed, as one Turkish
Cypriot in London stated regarding the British refusal for joint-intervention
with Turkey on the 17 July 1974:

They didn’t want to help because they wanted to partition Cyprus as well
… because this is the typical English divide and rule. And the interests of
the Americans, interests of themselves, they wanted to divide Cyprus.23

Although this respondent projected a strongly left-wing Cypriotist mental-

ity, given his use of the term ‘invasion’ rather than ‘intervention’, it certainly
 Introduction 5
suggests the findings of this monograph will resonate with some across the
Cyprus divide. Nevertheless, this focus on Greek Cypriot society is of par-
ticular importance given both the longevity of the British military presence
on Cyprus and the lasting nature of Cypriot division, as by understanding
the forces shaping the memory of British actions in 1974, one can understand
in greater detail the Anglo–Greek Cypriot connection in a modern context.

History and memory

In order to fully understand why the concept of ‘divide and rule’ resonates
so strongly, and indeed, why the many conspiracy theories surrounding
1974 are able to generate such popular support, it is important to move
beyond the politics and approach these concepts through the prism of mem-
ory. Indeed, of those studies undertaken on the prominence of conspiracy
theories, such as those by Jan Asmussen and Demetris Assos, the concept
of ‘blame transference’ is rightly highlighted as a significant factor in their
emergence, but little analysis is provided to explain their impact on acts of
memory and remembrance.24 This is particularly marked in relation to the
‘Big Lie’, a wide-ranging accusation of Anglo–Turkish collusion in 1974
centred on the concept of ‘British pilots–Turkish planes’, which Asmussen
detailed in depth as a form of political propaganda emergent from Greece.25
What is not discussed is the impact of this concept on Greek Cypriot soci-
ety, particularly the meaning that can be ascribed from the memory ‘distor-
tions’ which have developed out of this political concept. In this sense, while
blame transference is potent on a political level, to fully understand con-
spiratorial concepts such as the ‘Big Lie’, one needs to consider their preva-
lence not just through a political prism, but as an extension of a much wider
discourse shaping the image and memory of British actions on Cyprus. As
Chapter 3 will introduce, two of the most dominant discourses active within
Greek Cypriot society are framed by a political suspicion and a collectivised
trauma. Both of which can play a fundamental role in reshaping the way in
which the events of 1974 are remembered today.
This is why it is important to study the memory of British actions rather
than just their politics, as this approach is more suited to analysing the
direct, implicit, physical and symbolic structures actively shaping the inter-
linked processes of history, memory and identity construction within Greek
Cypriot society. In structuring this analysis, there are a variety of different
approaches and terminologies linked to the study of memory which could
be utilised.26 Some approach memory from the dimension of politics in
order to assess, particularly in divided societies, the processes of inclusion
and exclusion within the structures of a particular state.27 By doing this one
can understand, as Benedict Anderson put it, how the ‘narrative of identity’
of that particular nation is created and perpetuated.28 Others, such as Alon
Confino, have criticised the politicisation of memory within scholarly analy-
sis, arguing in contrast that memory is an extension of culture and should
6 Introduction
ultimately be considered as a form of ‘collective mentality’.29 Despite this
divergence however, both approaches seek to explore and understand the
shared identity of a particular social unit. As such, this analysis will adopt
a midway point between these ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches.
Through the examination of personal testimonies, remembrance ceremo-
nies, school textbooks and museum displays, this monograph will engage
with both the political and the socio-cultural influences active within Greek
Cypriot society. To structure this analysis, therefore, the concept of collec-
tive memory pioneered by Maurice Halbwachs will be subdivided, as set
out by Aleida Assmann, into the interlinked variants of social, cultural and
political memory.30
The process of social memory is shaped by lived experience and social
interaction, and can be defined as the generational experiences of the ‘eye-
witnesses’. Indeed as Halbwachs has argued, while it is individuals who
actually remember, they do so by drawing on the wider social frameworks
of the various groups in which they live.31 This form of memory therefore
is communicative and never once and for all. Its content can fluctuate and
change each time it is drawn on and effectively recreated anew from its
remaining conceptual fragments. These are ‘embodied’ memories, insofar
as they are linked to individuals, meaning they can be both public and pri-
vate, as while they are interactively constructed and connected to the views
of others, they are not always actively shared among the wider collective.
They do, however, provide the base for the construction of a social iden-
tity and a shared sense of communal togetherness.32 As this form of mem-
ory maintains a generational element that is embodied through individual
interaction, the passing of this generation can, in theory at least, mark the
end of this particular form of memory. Cultural memory in comparison
is founded on the trans-generational preservation of a particular form of
memory through symbols and material representations, such as historical
artefacts or school texts, whose cultivation is designed to stabilise and con-
vey that society’s self-image.33 This process can take the private memories
of particular individuals, say the refugees of northern Cyprus, and make
them public by institutionalising their narratives within the commemorative
frameworks of the state or wider collective. This is defined by Assmann as
a ‘canon’ memory, as it has been consciously selected and perpetuated by
society, both in literary and visual forms, in order to perpetuate what is
‘salient and vital for a common orientation and a shared remembering’.34 In
turn, a latent form of ‘archive’ memory exists alongside the ‘canon’ which
is not necessarily common knowledge, at least at a state level, but con-
tinues to be ‘stored’ within the socio-cultural frameworks of a particular
social unit. However, the delineation between the ‘archive’ and ‘canon’ is
not once and for all. Their borders are permeable, as some elements can fade
while others emerge depending on the needs and structures of the individual
and society. Political memory shares this same inter-generational focus and
reliance on material representations, but this process seeks more directly
 Introduction 7
to homogenise a particular form of memory around a clear national ideal.
In this sense, political memory is more focussed than cultural memory. It
has a clear message and purpose that is designed to solidify the identity
of a particular collective or state.35 As time progresses and the distance to
a particular event increases, the cyclical interplay between these processes
becomes increasingly evident, as each can interact with and continually seek
to reshape the other.
As such, within this reading there is a considerable overlap and intercon-
nected nature between the frameworks of the social, cultural and political.
All are socially framed and involve an interaction between the individual
and collective. None offer unmediated access to a past reality. All are open
to distortion by a variety of socio-cultural and socio-political forces. Indeed
the main difference is that social memory is ‘direct’ and embodied in human
experience, whereas cultural and political memory are ‘indirect’ and struc-
tured around those ‘prosthetic devices’ which attempt to shape and con-
tinue a form of active remembrance associated with a particular historical
period.36 In adopting this multi-layered approach to memory construction,
the issue of continuity and rupture within a social group following the pass-
ing of a generation, one not fully clarified by Halbwachs, can be explained
as a transition from social memory to the shared habits and structured
designs of cultural memory. This understanding is particularly important
in a society whose inter-generational focus, as the decades continue to pass,
is on the collective requirement to ‘never forget’ the consequences of 1974.
Likewise, as every generation learns about their past within the confines
of a particular social entity, the socio-cultural influences of that society,
be it through the political designs of the state, the media or other cultural
forms, can structure and influence the content of the social, or communica-
tive, memories of the eyewitnesses.37 Indeed, individuals always know and
remember more than that which they have directly witnessed and experi-
enced for themselves, as the constant interplay with the influences of the
wider collective can fundamentally impact one’s sense of the past. However,
this is only ever an influence not an imposition, as while certain ‘memory
authorities’ can control what is in a museum or an educational text, they
cannot control how individuals or groups react to them. Ultimately, it is the
will to remember which connects the individual to the collective, and the
social to the cultural. As such, understanding the interplay between these
forces provides an opportunity to try and understand how and why cer-
tain narratives take precedence within a particular society, and why others
become more marginalised. This is the main theoretical framework for this
study, and while other approaches will be drawn on to help develop certain
points, it is this interaction between the social, cultural and political which
runs throughout. Indeed, given this monograph is focussed on the intercon-
nection between the individual and the collective, this subdivision of collec-
tive memory into three interlinked processes allows for a deeper analysis of
the influences shaping the ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ memories associated with
8 Introduction
1974, as ultimately the interplay between the individual and collective is a
cyclical process.
In applying this framework to the remembrance and representation of
1974, the ‘canon’ can be broadly defined around two interlinked narra-
tives: consequences and causality. For the consequences of conflict, it is the
‘private’ memories of the refugees and the relatives of the missing which are
drawn on most prominently, and as Chapters 4 and 5 will show, reframed
for collective consumption in educational texts and acts of public remem-
brance. For the causality of conflict, the most significant narrative is, as
Chapter 3 will show, invariably rooted around the concept of ‘international
interference’ and the sense that a Cyprus divided is a Cyprus controlled.
In both instances, these ‘canon’ memories are perpetuated as they fit into
the aims of the state, given they provide the legitimacy to sustain the strug-
gle for return and reunification, and of the many different political entities
which wish to selectively emphasise, or marginalise, elements of this past
for their own socio-political reasons. As such, the ‘archive’ memories of
conflict could be defined as the suffering of the Turkish Cypriots prior to
1974, and in turn, many of the internal roots of division associated with the
making of the ‘Cyprus Problem’. These ‘archive’ narratives are not forgot-
ten, but they are also not emphasised as strongly as certain elements of the
‘canon’, in part, because they can dilute the narrative of suffering that has
been created in relation to 1974. Moreover, if one were to apply a simi-
lar framework to Britain, as noted previously, the ‘canon’ could effectively
be synthesised around one policy formulation: ‘divide and rule’. A policy
enacted in a direct sense in the 1950s, when Cyprus was a British colony,
and continued ‘indirectly’ after 1960 via a series of neo-colonial ‘conspira-
cies’ aimed at protecting British interests on the island. The ‘archive’ could
be the perceived ‘benefits’ of their colonial occupation, and in turn, the level
of support offered by the British to the Greek Cypriot authorities after 1960.
In this British framework, it is the inherent suspicion of British political
motivations towards Cyprus which sustains its power, as beyond simply the
events of 1974, the British cannot escape the legacy of their colonial past.
While these frameworks are not static, and indeed can all interlink given one
emphasises the suffering and the other helps explain why it occurred, they
nevertheless provide an insight into some of the influences trying to shape
a particular form of remembrance associated with the ‘Cyprus Problem’.
To provide a sense of what is to come, this monograph will argue in
Chapter 3 that one can only truly understand the power of conspiracy the-
ories through their impact on, and distortion of, the social memories of
individuals. Indeed, with the passage of time and the constant interaction
between individuals and the wider collective, distortions can enter a nar-
rative at multiple points. This can be marked by a change in one’s socio-
economic position, in the influence of political forces, or simply through
the increased distance between the individual and the events of their past.
This in turn can lead to modifications and a ‘colouring’ of the contemporary
 Introduction 9
story given, as Alessandro Portelli has noted, the narrator of today ‘is not
the same person as took part in the distant events which he or she is now
relating’.38 Therefore, these ‘direct’ memories, as socially framed reconstruc-
tions of a past reality, are open to political manipulation or cultural dis-
tortion to the extent that people can often remember events which all the
available evidence would suggest did not actually occur. In turn, as Portelli
and Richard Bessel have noted, the existence of such distortions, be they
shaped by propaganda or selective interpolated learning, operate irrespec-
tive of the archival record or the work of historians, as ultimately, it is what
people believe.39 However, they also provide a direct insight into the many
political and socio-cultural influences active within that society, given the
act of memory is fundamentally a constructive process, and will be particu-
larly important here for gaining a full understanding of the impact of the
‘Big Lie’.
In the context of the ‘indirect’ or historical memories of conflict, analysed
in Chapters 4 and 5, and influenced by commemorative rallies and educa-
tional texts, their structured content maintains both a cultural and political
dimension. With their lack of direct proximity to an historical event, these
memories are not lived but learnt via ‘external objects’ that are drawn from
the shared memorial heritage of a particular society.40 They are textually
mediated memories that are once more shaped by the interlinked processes
of active remembrance and selective forgetting.41 Therefore, in understand-
ing what is included in this shared story of the nation, in whatever form this
nation may take, one can understand in greater detail the dominant ideals of
those forces shaping its construction. However, previous academic research
on Greek Cypriot forms of history and memory has tended to significantly
marginalise the figure of Britain to passing comments concerning their
colonial legacy, and not on their actions in 1974.42 This is curious given
the prevalence of popular conspiracy theories on Cyprus and has raised a
number of fundamental questions regarding the content of these mnemonic
devices. In particular, why the figure of Britain is emphasised so strongly in
popular narratives of 1974 yet so marginalised in these official ones. It is
answering this question which forms the focus of Chapter 4. Indeed, given
these constructions maintain a political dimension, whichever political
group controls the museums or textbooks of a particular community can
attempt to instigate its own version of historiography onto the ‘mainstream
memory’ of this collective unit.43 The extent to which this official discourse
is accepted is debateable however, as while politics can help structure a form
of remembrance associated with a particular period, it does not necessarily
define the memories of the wider collective. It is an influence not an impo-
sition, as multiple voices and interpretations will always be present in the
act of shared remembrance. Yet the content of these productions provide
a direct insight into the particular values of a ruling elite, their definition
of the ‘nation’, and the way in which they attempt to structure an official
image of Britain on Cyprus.
10 Introduction
Overall, therefore, as the act of remembrance cannot truly reconstruct
a particular historical event exactly as it ‘once was’, a perfect analogy is to
consider memory as akin to a shadow of the past. These shadows follow an
event and they generally maintain the same outline, but the exact content
is shrouded and can never truly be recovered, making it open to interpreta-
tion and distortion. In certain cases, as Portelli has shown, the shadows cast
by other events can cross and thereby reshape the meaning of this original
event to the extent that it is almost completely reinvented and remodelled.44
In other cases, given the act of recollection is a form of reconstruction, these
shadows are open to both subtle and more direct influences from the media,
political propaganda and social interactions with others. While memory
markers can be maintained via particular rituals of commemoration or
through specific sites of memorial importance, they merely offer a simplified
version of this original event. The central point therefore is that memory is
an inherently fluid process, reinvented through remembrance, as while there
are frameworks that help shape it, and sites of memory that help cultivate
it, the direction of memory is dictated by the needs and processes of the
particular group that requires it, and therefore defines it. As such, by draw-
ing on individual recollections of past events, one can understand in greater
detail the broader socio-political frameworks shaping the representation of
conflict within Greek Cypriot society.

Methodological foundations: oral history

In developing from this theoretical base, as Barry Schwartz argued, while
the content of newspapers, TV programs and history textbooks can tell
us what communicative and academic elites believe about the past, they
do not necessarily say what ordinary people believe, or how they feel
about what they believe.45 Indeed, although the majority of historians
over the past decade have challenged the view that 1974 was the result of
a Western conspiracy, such beliefs remain widely disseminated on Cyprus
and are the dominant perspective of those Greek Cypriots interviewed
for this project. Therefore, to fully understand why, this monograph
draws on the popular and the official, the museums and the memorials,
and ultimately the written and the spoken word to analyse the power of
those cultural and socio-political frameworks actively seeking to shape
the modern construct of Greek Cypriot history. As Luisa Passerini noted
in relation to the insights offered via the utilisation of oral history and
personal testimonies:

We should not ignore the fact that the raw material of oral history
consists not just in factual statements, but is pre-eminently an expres­
sion and representation of culture, and therefore includes not only
literal narrations but also the dimensions of memory, ideology and
subconscious desires.46
 Introduction 11
Therefore, through these narratives, irrespective of their factual veracity,
one can understand in greater detail the influence of the collective on that
of the individual. As such the content of a personal testimony can provide a
conduit into the collective meaning ascribed from a particular event through
its remembrance and representation in the present. This approach, as pio-
neered by scholars such as Passerini and Portelli, moved the emphasis of
oral history away from the factual details of a particular account and onto
the broader understanding that can be drawn from its distortions. With this
transition, the importance of personal testimony was framed both by what
was said, and also by what was ‘silenced’ about a particular past.47 This is
why oral history forms a central part of this research, as from the 36 inter-
views incorporated into this monograph, the significance of these narratives
is less to do with events and more to do with their description by the nar-
rator. Through this process broader connections can be drawn between the
personal and the socio-cultural influence of the wider collective. As such, in
representing these oral history narratives, while some sections will be short-
ened, the language and words used will not be changed or corrected, and
will be quoted exactly how it was said by the individual respondent.
Indeed, an oral history interview is a collaborative endeavour, as the
inter-subjectivity of the interviewing process actively creates a ‘shared-
narrative’ framed by the actions of the interviewer and the articulations of
the respondent.48 Through this interactive process, the structured nature of
an interview can make the life-narrative of a respondent ‘anthropologically
strange’. This can be both direct and subconscious, as certain situations can
arise that may impel the respondent to attempt to justify certain actions
and ideas which they may never have thought would require justification.49
For instance, simply asking a question causes an individual to respond, and
depending on the context and interview, this response can easily change over
time. However, rather than an inherent weakness akin to a survey research
project, where a highly structured question and answer model provides little
room for deviation or personal elaboration beyond the frameworks set by
the interviewer, this inter-subjectivity is the inherent strength of oral his-
tory. Take for example, as a comparison, the results of Maria Hadjipavlou’s
survey project regarding Cypriot views on the division of Cyprus from
1998–2000. This project involved 1,073 Greek Cypriots and 1,073 Turkish
Cypriots and provided some intriguing results, such as the fact that 85 per
cent of this Greek Cypriot sample deemed the role of Western powers as
‘very’ responsible for the ‘creation and perpetuation’ of conflict, while only
38 per cent deemed Greece as ‘very’ responsible.50 However, the availability
of the answers to the participants involved, drawn from a ‘list of the most
frequently cited causes in the literature on Cyprus’, and the respondents’
requirement to choose the relevant response from ‘very’ to ‘don’t know’ lim-
its the methodological appeal of such approaches.51 Although this creates
cumulative and quantitative results that the total number of interviews for
this project could not hope to match, it leaves many questions unanswered.
12 Introduction
Why did those who marked the British as ‘very responsible’ for the ­conflict
believe this was the case? Was it purely based upon British actions in 1974,
or was it combined with the legacy of their colonial occupation? How closely
do they view the connection between Britain and America? Did those who
deemed the British ‘very responsible’ also believe Greece, Turkey and/or
‘Cypriot nationalisms’ were very responsible? These questions are directly
approached within this monograph through the methodology of oral his-
tory. Indeed as Portelli has shown, by accepting what the respondent wants
to say, including any ‘colouring’ that may occur, one can try and understand
not only why individuals believe or remember as they do, but in turn, offer
wider insights into the social frameworks shaping the memory and identity
narratives of the community in which this individual is placed.52 As these
memories are not merely static reflections of a past reality, but are con-
stantly reworked and reshaped through the act of remembrance, the power
of oral history for this monograph lies less in the accuracy of the descrip-
tion, and more in the meaning that can be drawn from these articulated
usages of the past in a present context.
For this project a total of 36 interviews were conducted with 43 respond-
ents in both Britain and Cyprus across 2010–2014.53 Within the Cypriot
diaspora community of London, a total of 20 interviews were undertaken
with 26 Greek Cypriots. Of these interactions, 17 interviews were one-
to-one and three were undertaken as group affairs, with four-three-two
respondents respectively. Within Cyprus a total of nine individual inter-
views were undertaken with Greek Cypriots in Limassol and Nicosia. A
further eight interviews were undertaken with British residents in Paphos
and Limassol who were either soldiers stationed on Cyprus between 1950–
1974, or who lived on the island during the events of 1974. These interviews
were all conducted in English. While the use of English was not ideal, it was
an unfortunate necessity at the beginning of this project. However, when
one compares the content and themes reflected within these interviews to
other oral history projects recently undertaken on Cyprus, it is clear that
language is not an issue that intrinsically affects the validity of the informa-
tion received.54 In turn, while it is accepted that there are many voices and
localities on Cyprus that have not been covered within these interviews,
given the focus on urban areas within Greek Cypriot society, the content of
the information received can provide an insight into the socio-cultural and
socio-political forces shaping forms of memory within this society.55
As a final point, although the majority of interviews undertaken for this
project were with diasporic Greek Cypriots, the general theme of their nar-
ratives, especially in relation to the period 1955–1974, effectively mirrored
those undertaken on Cyprus. Indeed, while the diaspora community within
Britain maintains its own forms of identity, which can either be close to or
distant from Cyprus, previous analyses of the diaspora have emphasised a
strong affiliation to the discourse of Cypriotism within this community.56 As
such this monograph will adopt the concept of ‘long-distance nationalism’
 Introduction 13
for this analysis, where the borders of the state do not necessarily delineate
the borders of the community, as a means of placing diasporic memories
alongside and occasionally in comparison to their ‘mainland’ variants.57 This
framework does not overlook the accepted differences between the commu-
nities of the diaspora and those on Cyprus, but rather places the commem-
orative structures of the diaspora alongside that of the ‘mainland’.58 The
reason for this is clear. While the diaspora may be physically separated from
Cyprus, many individuals now living in Britain are not politically or emo-
tionally separated from the consequences of conflict. Therefore, the utilisa-
tion of both diasporic and ‘mainland’ narratives can provide a direct insight
into a much wider framework of memory active within this broad stratum
of Greek Cypriot society. Equally, this framework also allows for a compar-
ison between the diaspora and Cyprus. Of particular interest are the views
of diasporic Greek Cypriots, who claim to live and work together with their
Turkish Cypriot neighbours, on the continuing division of Cyprus. These
views can offer an intriguing counterpoint to the ongoing debates on Cyprus
concerning the construct of identities, and whether the island can truly be
both ‘Greek’ and inter-communally ‘Cypriot’.

Research structure
This monograph is divided into five chapters. Chapter 2 provides an analy-
sis of the ‘British perspective’ towards the Cyprus conflict through archival
documents and the British press. It considers the British response to the
events of 1974, what motivated their actions and reactions, and the extent to
which the British government could be deemed a ‘scapegoat’ for the actions
of others. Chapter 3 analyses the ‘popular’ Greek Cypriot response to British
actions in the conflict by examining the foundations for the conspiracies and
collusive accusations expressed widely within oral history interviews, media
reports, documentaries and satirical cartoons. After setting these specula-
tions within a wider socio-political discourse of inherent suspicion, framed
by British (neo)-colonial interests and the actions of NATO, it considers the
memory distortions associated with the ‘Big Lie’ as both a collective exten-
sion of this ideological framework, and an individualised means of applying
understanding to British actions. Chapter 4 analyses the content of Greek
Cypriot school texts, the public debates concerning their content, and how
the power of the historical memory of British colonialism can frame the
image and understanding of British actions in 1974. Chapter 5 examines
the content of public rituals of remembrance through two specific case stud-
ies, the annual diasporic Peace and Freedom Rally and the British Kyrenia
memorial controversy of 2009. The first case study approaches the public
remembrance of 1974, how the image of Britain and other forms of causal-
ity for conflict are referenced, the inclusivity of this diasporic ritual, and the
wider social importance of such ceremonies within Greek Cypriot society.
The second case study scrutinises the controversial construction of a British
 32° 50' 33° 00' 33° 30' 34° 00' 34° 30'
C. Andreas
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Introduction

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Akrotiri Bay
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Akrotiri AKROTIRI Cease-fire line of
S.B.A. Turkish forces
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34° 30' 34° 30'
MEDITERRANEAN SEA 0 10 20 km

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The boundaries and names shown and the designations

used on this map do not imply official endorsement or
acceptance by the United Nations.

32° 30' 33° 00' 33° 30' 34° 00' 34° 30'

Map No. 4038 UNITED NATIONS Department of Public Information

October 1997 (Colour) Cartographic Section

Figure 1.1 UN map of Cyprus.

 Introduction 15
war memorial in Kyrenia dedicated to the 371 British service personnel who
died in the anti-colonial Emergency of 1955–1959. This section utilises the
Kyrenia memorial as a lens through which to assess Britain’s historic rela-
tionship with Cyprus, the memory of the EOKA (National Organisation of
Cypriot Fighters) period, and how one monument can reflect multiple forms
of public memory associated with the actions of Britain on Cyprus. Chapter
6 approaches the influence, both historical and contemporary, of Greece
and mainland Greek nationalism on the formation of historical narratives
and identities on Cyprus. This chapter considers the internal roots of divi-
sion on Cyprus via the question of national focus, and in turn, analyses how
the memory of Greek actions in 1974 can be framed in two very different
ways. Indeed one cannot consider the Anglo–Greek Cypriot relationship
without also considering the relationship between Greece and Cyprus, as it
was the British opposition to enosis, or political union, which placed Cyprus
and its ‘motherland’ as separate independent states. With this separation,
and the interlinked development of polarised forms of Greek Cypriot and
Turkish Cypriot nationalism, the question of identity on Cyprus has histori-
cally tightened the perceived intractability of the ‘Cyprus Problem’.
To conclude this opening chapter, in utilising oral history interviews and
analysing the content of archival records, popular publications, commemo-
rative rituals and school history texts, a more comprehensive foundation
is set than has previously been utilised to understand the frameworks of
memory shaping the image of Britain, and in turn, the wider image of con-
flict on Cyprus. As the events of 1974 continue to retain an active position
within the contemporary socio-political landscape of Greek Cypriot soci-
ety, an analysis of these memory processes can provide direct insights into
the commemorative frameworks active on an island scarred by conflict, but
shaped by the desire for reunification.

Notes
1 From radio broadcast on day of coup in Attila 74: The Rape of Cyprus, Film,
Dir. Michael Cacoyannis, (Nicosia: Fox Lorber, 1975).
2 Cyprus Treaty of Guarantee, (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 16
August 1960).
3 For the Turkish Cypriot representation associated with the ‘intervention’ of the
Turkish ‘peace force’ see Rauf Denktash, The Cyprus Triangle, (London: Allen
& Unwin, 1982); Sahali Sonyel, Cyprus: The Destruction of a Republic and its
Aftermath, (Nicosia: CYREP, 2003).
4 For illegality of Turkish occupation see UN resolutions 367 (1975) and 541
(1983) at www.un.org/en/sc/documents/resolutions/index.shtml, (last accessed
24 November 2014).
5 For current figures regarding the Missing see Committee on Missing Persons in
Cyprus, www.cmp-cyprus.org/, (last accessed 14 April 2017); for the importance
of the Missing see Paul Saint Cassia, Bodies of Evidence: Burial, Memory and
the Recovery of Missing Persons in Cyprus, (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007).
6 The ‘last divided capital’ is a plaque on the Ledra Street crossing point in Nicosia.
16 Introduction
7 See Miranda Christou, ‘A Double Imagination: Memory and Education in
Cyprus’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, (2006), pp. 285–
306; Christalla Yakinthou, ‘The Quiet Deflation of Den Xehno? Changes in the
Greek Cypriot Communal Narrative on the Missing Persons in Cyprus’, Cyprus
Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, (2008), pp. 15–33.
8 See, for example, Alexis Heraclides, ‘The Cyprus Gordian Knot: An Intractable
Ethnic Conflict’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol. 17, No. 2, (2011), pp.
117–139.
9 See, for example, Miranda Christou & Victor Roudometof, ‘1974 and Greek
Cypriot Identity: The Division of Cyprus as Cultural Trauma’, in Ron Eyerman,
Jeffrey Alexander & Elizabeth Butler Breese (eds.), Narrating Trauma: On
the Impact of Collective Suffering, (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2011), pp.
­163–187.
10 See Yiannis Papadakis & Mete Hatay, ‘A Critical Comparison of Greek Cypriot
and Turkish Cypriot Official Historiographies (1940s to the Present)’, in Rebecca
Bryant & Yiannis Papadakis (eds.), Cyprus and the Politics of Memory: History,
Community and Conflict, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), pp. 27–50.
11 See Yiannis Papadakis, ‘Nation, Narrative and Commemoration: Political Ritual
in Divided Cyprus’, History and Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 3, (2003), pp.
­253–270.
12 See, for example, Anonymous, ‘Discussion on Enosis vote to begin at House’,
Cyprus Mail, 21 March 2017.
13 See John Scherer, Blocking the Sun: The Cyprus Conflict, (Minnesota: Minnesota
Mediterranean and East European Monograph, 1997), p. 39; Stefanos Evripidou,
‘Parties accuse Britain of provocative UNFICYP stance’, Cyprus Mail, 18 July
2012.
14 For defence of British legacy see John Reddaway, Burdened with Cyprus: The
British Connection, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), p. 141; Francis
Henn, A Business of Some Heat: The UN Force in Cyprus Before and During
the 1974 Turkish Invasion, (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2004), p. 30; for criticism
see Vassilis Fouskas & Alex Tackie, Cyprus: The Post-Imperial Constitution,
(London: Pluto Press, 2009); Eugene Rossides, ‘Cyprus and the Rule of Law’,
Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce, Vol. 17, No. 1, (1991),
p. 27; Van Coufoudakis, Cyprus: A Contemporary Problem in Historical
Perspective, (Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 2006), p. 72; for a more bal-
anced assessment see Prodromos Panayiotopoulos, ‘The Emergent Post-Colonial
State in Cyprus’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Vol. 37, No. 1,
(1999), pp. 31–55; Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus 1954–
1959, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
15 For criticism of British actions see Report from the Select Committee on Cyprus,
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 8 April 1976); Christopher Hitchens,
Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger, (London: Verso,
1997); for analysis see Clement Dodd, The History and Politics of the Cyprus
Conflict, (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010); William Mallinson, Cyprus:
A Modern History, (London: I.B. Taurus, 2009); Jan Asmussen, Cyprus at
War: Diplomacy and Conflict during the 1974 Crisis, (London: I.B. Tauris,
2008); Andreas Constandinos, America, Britain and the Cyprus Crisis of 1974:
Calculated Conspiracy or Foreign Policy Failure?, (Milton Keynes: Authorhouse,
2009).
16 See Brendan O’Malley & Ian Craig, The Cyprus Conspiracy: America,
Espionage and the Turkish Invasion, (London: I.B. Taurus, 1999); Michael
Moran, Sovereignty Divided: Essays on the International Dimensions of the
Cyprus Problem, (Nicosia: CYREP, 1998).
 Introduction 17
17 See, for example, Movement for Freedom and Justice in Cyprus, Bloody Truth,
(Nicosia: Haidemenos, 2009); Nikola Nikola, ‘Ετσι προδόθηκε η Κύπρος … (So
was Cyprus Betrayed … )’, Haravghi, 15 July 2014, p. 6.
18 For approaches to conspiracy theories from a predominantly political perspec-
tive see Demetris Assos, ‘Conspiracy Theories and the Decolonisation of Cyprus
under the Weight of Historical Evidence, 1955–1959’, Cyprus Review, Vol. 23,
No. 2, (2011), pp. 109–125; Jan Asmussen, ‘Conspiracy Theories and Cypriot
History: The Comfort of Commonly Perceived Enemies’, Cyprus Review, Vol.
23, No. 2, (2011), pp. 127–145.
19 For analyses that undermine the conspiracy theories associated with 1974 see
Asmussen, Cyprus at War; Constandinos, America, Britain; George Kazamias,
‘From Pragmatism to Idealism to Failure: Britain in the Cyprus Crisis of
1974’, Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe, (2010),
pp. 1–46; Claude Nicolet, ‘Lack of Concern, Will and Power: British Policy
towards Cyprus 1960–74’, in Hubert Faustman & Nicos Peristianis (eds.),
Britain in Cyprus: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism 1876–2006, (Mannheim:
Bibliopolis, 2006), pp. 491–507; for analyses that suggest a level of ‘duplicity’
in British actions see William Mallinson, Cyprus: Diplomatic History and the
Clash of Theory in International Relations, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010); Fouskas
& Tackie, Cyprus; William Mallinson, ‘US Interests, British Acquiescence and
the Invasion of Cyprus’, BJPIR, Vol. 9, (2007), pp. 494–508.
20 See, for example, Yiannis Papadakis, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Greek
Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot Schoolbooks on the “History of Cyprus”’, in Vally
Lytra (ed.), When Greeks and Turks Meet: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the
Relationship since 1923, (London: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 125–140; Michalinos
Zembylas & Zvi Bekerman, Teaching Contested Narratives: Identity, Memory
and Reconciliation in Peace Education and Beyond, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012); Yiannis Toumazis, ‘Pride and Prejudice: Photography
and Memory in Cyprus’, in Liz Wells, Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert & Nicos
Phillippou (eds.), Photography and Cyprus: Time, Place and Identity, (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2014), pp. 79–97.
21 See, for example, Richard Bessel, ‘The Great War in German Memory: The
Soldiers of the First World War, Demobilisation and Weimar Political Culture’,
German History, Vol. 6, No. 1, (1988), pp. 20–34; Dan Todman, The Great
War: Myth and Memory, (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2005).
22 For references to the increased focus on ‘divide and rule’ in Turkish Cypriot
educational reforms see Yiannis Papadakis, ‘Narrative, Memory and History
Education in Divided Cyprus: A Comparison of Schoolbooks on the “History
of Cyprus”’, History and Memory, Vol. 20, No. 2, (2008), pp. 137–138; Yucel
Vural & Eurim Ozuyanik, ‘Redefining Identity in the Turkish-Cypriot School
History Textbooks: A Step Towards a United Federal Cyprus?’, South European
Society and Politics, Vol. 13, No. 3, (2008), p. 148.
23 Interview with Turkish Cypriot, London, 7 July 2010; for ‘usurpers’ see Sonyel,
Cyprus: The Destruction, p. 366; Denktash, The Cyprus Triangle.
24 Assos, ‘Conspiracy Theories’, pp. 109–125; Asmussen, ‘Conspiracy Theories’,
pp. 127–145.
25 Asmussen, Cyprus at War, pp. 241–248.
26 For a variety of terminologies associated with the study of memory see Jeffrey
Olick & Joyce Robbins, ‘Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to
the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’, Annual Review of Sociology,
Vol. 24, (1998), pp. 105–40.
27 See, for example, Rebecca Bryant & Yiannis Papadakis (eds.), Cyprus and the
Politics of Memory: History, Community and Conflict, (London: I.B. Tauris,
2012).
18 Introduction
28 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 187–206.
29 Alon Confino, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method’,
American Historical Review, No. 102, (1997), pp. 1386–1403.
30 Aleida Assmann, ‘Reframing Memory between Individual and Collective Forms
of Constructing the Past’, in Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree & Jay Winter (eds.),
Performing the Past: Memory, History, Identity in Modern Europe, (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2010), pp. 35–50.
31 Maurice Halbwachs (trans. Lewis Coser), On Collective Memory, (London:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 38.
32 For parallels see, for example, Alistair Thomson, ‘Anzac Memories: Putting
Popular Memory Theory into Practice in Australia’, in Robert Perks & Alistair
Thomson (eds.), The Oral History Reader, (London: Routledge, 1998), pp.
­343–353.
33 Jan Assmann & John Czaplicka, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’,
New German Critique, No. –65, (1995), pp. 125–133.
34 Assmann, ‘Reframing Memory’, pp. 43–44.
35 See James Wertsch, ‘Deep Memory and Narrative Templates: Conservative Forces
in Collective Memory’, in Aleida Assmann & Linda Shortt (eds.), Memory and
Political Change, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 174–175.
36 Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilisation: Functions, Media,
Archives, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 395–396.
37 See, for example, Alessandro Portelli, The Order Has Been Carried Out: History,
Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome, (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003).
38 Alessandro Portelli, ‘The Peculiarities of Oral History’, History Workshop, No.
12, (1981), p. 102.
39 Portelli, The Order; Bessel, ‘The Great War’, pp. 20–34.
40 See Jay Winter, ‘The Performance of the Past: Memory, History, Identity’,
in Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree & Jay Winter (eds.), Performing the Past:
Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2010), pp. 11–31.
41 James Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), pp. 4–9.
42 See, among others, Papadakis, ‘Narrative, Memory’, pp. 128–148; Stavroula
Philippou & Andrekos Varnava, ‘Constructions of Solution(s) to the Cyprus
Problem: Exploring Formal Curricula in Greek Cypriot State Schools’, in
Andrekos Varnava & Hubert Faustmann (eds.), Reunifying Cyprus: The Annan
Plan and Beyond, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 194–213.
43 See Jay Winter & Emmanuel Sivan, ‘Setting the Framework’, in Jay Winter
& Emmanuel Sivan (eds.), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 6–39; Paul Connerton,
How Societies Remember, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
p. 14.
44 See Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and other stories: Form and
Meaning in Oral History (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991).
45 Barry Schwartz, Kazuya Fukuoka & Sachiko Takita-Ishii, ‘Collective Memory:
Why Culture Matters’, in Mark Jacobs & Nancy Weiss Hanrahan (eds.),
The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture, (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2005), p. 267.
46 Luisa Passerini, ‘Work, Ideology and Consensus under Italian Fascism’, History
Workshop, No. 8, (1979), p. 84.
47 Portelli, ‘The Peculiarities’, pp. 96–107.
48 Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory, (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 54–55.
 Introduction 19
49 Ron Grele, ‘Can Anyone Over Thirty be Trusted: A Friendly Critique of Oral
History’, The Oral History Review, Vol. 6, (1978), p. 43.
50 Maria Hadjipavlou, ‘The Cyprus Conflict: Root Causes and Implications for
Peacebuilding’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 44, No. 3, (2007), pp. 354–358.
51 Ibid., p. 352.
52 Portelli, ‘The Peculiarities’, pp. 99–103.
53 List of key information is detailed in Appendix 1.
54 See, for example, The Cyprus Oral History and Living Memory Project, www.
frederick.ac.cy/research/oralhistory/index.php/nnnn-oral-history-archive-
sp-184245723, (last accessed 1 March 2015).
55 For rural and urban differences over identity construction see Spyros Spyrou,
‘Children Constructing Ethnic Identities in Cyprus’, in Yiannis Papadakis, Nicos
Peristanis, Gisela Welz (eds.), Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History, and an Island
in Conflict, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 121–139.
56 See Gilles Bertrand, ‘Cypriots in Britain: Diaspora(s) Committed to Peace?’,
Turkish Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, (2004), pp. 93–110; Evropi Chatzipanagiotidou,
‘The Conflicts of a “Peaceful” Diaspora: Identity, Power and Peace Politics
Among Cypriots in the UK and Cyprus’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of
Sussex, (2012).
57 See Nick Glick Schiller, ‘Long-Distance Nationalism’, in Melvin Ember, Carol
Ember and Ian Skoggard (eds.), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and
Refugee Cultures Around the World, (New York: Springer, 2005), pp. 570–580.
58 See, for example, Daniel Naujoks, ‘Diasporic Identities – Reflections on
Transnational Belonging’, Diaspora Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, (2010), pp. 1–21.
2 ‘One of our problems’
The British view of 1974

Following the coup against President Makarios on 15 July 1974, Harold

Wilson and his Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan, were faced with an inter-
national crisis that would severely test the limitations of British diplomacy. A
series of treaty obligations and a substantial military and civilian presence on
Cyprus made this conflict ‘one of our problems’.1 However, the British gov-
ernment’s ‘diminished international power’ and general desire for political
detachment from Cypriot affairs infused British policy with an acute ambigu-
ity towards Cyprus.2 This ambiguity, coupled with the British ‘failure’ to ade-
quately fulfil their treaty obligations, sustains the debates and conspiracies
associated with the actions of Britain in 1974. It led the Parliamentary Select
Committee Report of 1976, described as among the most ‘deadly’ works ever
published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, to state:

Britain had a legal right to intervene, she had a moral obligation to

intervene, she had the military capacity to intervene. She did not inter-
vene for reasons the government do not wish to give.3

The Chairman of the Select Committee, Hugh Rossi MP, reinforced this
sentiment by describing Cyprus as a ‘lamentable chapter in British history’.4
In turn The Times stated clearly that the government ‘cannot escape its
failure … [as] Britain neither took action itself nor requested action by the
UN’.5 The response of the Foreign Office to such criticisms was marked with
a deep level of frustration, as ‘we accept that people should feel indignation
at some of the events that occurred in Cyprus, but not that this indigna-
tion should be turned against the British government’.6 Indeed Callaghan
defined Britain’s role in the conflict as one of ‘responsibility without power’,
as official reports repeatedly stressed that the Guarantor powers of Greece
and Turkey, the USA and ultimately the Cypriots themselves were far more
responsible than Britain for the division of this small Mediterranean island.7
Therefore, while Cyprus may have been ‘one of our problems’, the British
government did not deem it to be one of their making.
With the opening of the British archives in 2004, the interpretation of
the available evidence has effectively created two broadly defined positions
 ‘One of our problems’ 21
within the secondary literature. On one side are scholars such as Andreas
Constandinos and Jan Asmussen, who have directly challenged the con-
spiracy theories associated with 1974 by stressing British weaknesses over
British culpability.8 On the other are those such as William Mallinson who
have drawn on examples of British ‘duplicity’ to argue the division of Cyprus
was a form of imperialism by proxy, as Turkey simply imposed, without
any firm opposition, the policy of partition long favoured by the Western
powers.9 This chapter will argue that there is no evidence to support the
accusation that Britain directly colluded with Turkey to partition Cyprus
in 1974, but there is often enough ambiguity in their actions to allow for
the development of such accusations. To structure this analysis, this chapter
will first consider the ‘official’ British view as to why there was a conflict
in 1974 through the archival records. Secondly, it will explore the official
British interpretation of their obligations towards the island. Thirdly, it will
survey general British policy towards Cyprus, and the perceived difficulties
associated with maintaining a physical presence on an island polarised by
ethno-political differences. The final section will consider the belief, noted in
multiple official documents, that the British government was ‘scapegoated’
for the divisive actions of others. In order to understand the Greek Cypriot
reaction to the British response in 1974, it is important to first understand
how the British government viewed and reacted to the conflict in Cyprus.

Roots of conflict
In his memoirs, James Callaghan described Cyprus in the lead up to 1974
as akin to that of an active volcano, ‘knowing it is always likely to erupt,
but not expecting every subterranean rumble to lead to disaster’.10 With the
outbreak of major political crises in 1963–1964, 1967 and 1971, multiple
assassination attempts against Makarios, regular incidents of internal vio-
lence and repeated threats of invasion by Turkey, Cyprus had faced a great
many ‘subterranean rumbles’ since acquiring its independence in 1960. And
yet, when the island did finally erupt in 1974, The Times described the
British connection to Cyprus as one ‘a responsible British citizen finds dif-
ficult to contemplate with a completely easy conscience’.11 The clear ‘failure’
of the British government to protect the independence granted to this fellow
Commonwealth nation, despite maintaining treaty obligations and an army
on Cyprus, was deemed to fundamentally undermine the credibility of British
adherence to the ‘sanctity of international laws and treaties’.12 In response
to such criticism, Callaghan wrote in his memoirs that ‘others may distrib-
ute blame but I do not feel ashamed of what we tried to do’.13 The Foreign
Office however was far more combative in their reply. Following reports in
the Greek Cypriot press alleging Anglo–Turkish cooperation in Cyprus, it
was stated that ‘it was Greek intransigence [and] Greek hubris that sum-
moned up the furies’, not Britain.14 For those British officials who attempted
to defend Britain’s role in the conflict, it was the inherent inflexibility of the
22 ‘One of our problems’

Figure 2.1 Michael Cummings, Daily Express, 2 March 1964. (N&S Syndication,

BCA).

Greek Cypriot authorities to accept compromises on constitutional matters

that brought disaster to the island, as this political ‘intransigence’ played
directly into the hands of Turkey.15
This ‘official’ British reading of the foundations for conflict is satirically
visualised in Figure 2.1, published in the Daily Express during the consti-
tutional crisis of 1963–1964. This cartoon and the others used throughout
this monograph have a variety of political and cultural meanings. However,
for the purpose of this analysis, it provides both a reflection of the official
British reports on Cyprus, and a satirical retelling of a crisis that led to the
‘first partition’ of the island. Indeed, this Greek Cypriot attempt to revise
the constitution by removing many of its ‘unworkable’ provisions, such as
the Turkish Cypriot veto, led to the complete Turkish Cypriot withdrawal
from government, the outbreak of a significant level of intercommunal vio-
lence and the first notable threat of invasion by Turkey.16 This cartoon there-
fore, with its depiction of the Greek Cypriots effectively condemning both
sides to their doom, reflects to a degree the observation of James Callaghan
in September 1974 that Makarios maintained one particularly damaging
‘blind spot’: ‘he could not see the position through Turkish eyes’.17
As such Makarios faced considerable criticism within official reports
regarding his ‘obdurate’ stance towards the intercommunal negotiations, as
a Foreign Office document from April 1975 stated:

The Archbishop had for years followed a policy of denying to the

Turkish Cypriot community fundamental rights to which they were,
 ‘One of our problems’ 23
in all humanity, entitled. That policy was no foundation for a lasting
settlement.18

Yet the settlement of this particular ‘Cyprus Problem’, or the rights and sta-
tus of the minority in relation to the rights and status of the majority, was
not necessarily deemed to be the immediate priority of Makarios’s govern-
ment.19 The formation of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force (hereafter
UNFICYP) on 4 March 1964 provided, in the words of its former com-
mander James Wilson, ‘valuable support to the Cyprus government’s posi-
tion … [as it] consolidated the dominant Greek Cypriot position’ in power.20
This international recognition allowed Makarios, at least until the Turkish
invasion of 1974, to play ‘the long game’ in the intercommunal negotiations
by not accepting any ‘compromised’ solutions.21 However, with the volatil-
ity of Cypriot politics providing the potential spark for an inter-alliance war
between Greece and Turkey, a solution to the ‘Cyprus Problem’ was much
sought after by NATO.22 As such, a Foreign Office memo from November
1971 noted that Makarios’s removal and replacement with Glafcos Clerides
‘may be satisfactory to our own interests’, as it was felt Clerides would
accept the required compromises to create a Cyprus settlement.23 Although
these archival documents state the British authorities had no intention of
actually removing Makarios themselves, given it was ‘safer to live with the
problems one knew than jumping into the unknown’, they do suggest, at
the very least, that diplomats within the Foreign Office had considered the
potential benefits of such an action.24
However, the British authorities were also well aware of the difficulties
faced by Makarios, as it was recognised that all sides attempted to twist the
constitutional system to their own advantage. On 2 August 1974, the Chief
of the Defence Staff Field Marshal Sir Michael Carver wrote to Callaghan
that the ‘Turks had never tried to make the constitution work … they merely
used their position negatively to veto everything, however trivial, to which
they objected’.25 The reason was simple: Turkey wanted the constitution to
fail to justify an intervention for means of national defence and national
pride. On 21 August 1974, A.C. Goodison of the Foreign Office agreed with
this statement, noting that Turkey’s interest in the Turkish minorities of
Cyprus and Greece, as opposed to those in Serbia and Central Asia, formed
part of an ‘Ataturkist preoccupation with her own security’.26 These strate-
gic interests meant that despite the strong relations and national affinity held
between the Turkish Cypriots and their ‘motherland’, the Turkish govern-
ment ‘do not care tuppence for the real interests of the Turkish Cypriots’.27 In
an attitude apparently shared with that of Greece, the Turkish government
viewed Cypriots ‘with contempt and irritation as pampered provincials’.28
As such, Turkey’s plans towards Cyprus did not seek to protect the Turkish
Cypriot community, but rather their own military and strategic interests.
Nevertheless, the Greek Cypriot authorities did not help to prevent
the implementation of these strategic plans. Indeed, despite the obvious
24 ‘One of our problems’
and accepted difficulties faced in the intercommunal negotiations, the
‘Archbishop’s equivocations on the subject of enosis’ greatly increased ‘the
probability of a violent Turkish reaction’.29 While the British authorities
believed that the vast majority of Greek Cypriots, including Makarios, were
by 1974 strongly opposed to the concept of enosis, the Archbishop would
still publicly express, as he did on 16 May, that ‘independence is a com-
promise … [and] if I had a free choice between enosis and independence I
would support enosis’.30 Although this sentiment may have been directed
towards his increasingly violent internal critics, as the paramilitary force
EOKA-B had on multiple occasions sought to assassinate Makarios due
to his ‘betrayal’ of enosis, such statements unsurprisingly led the Turkish
Cypriot media to argue the ‘Greek side are only paying lip service to inde-
pendence’.31 On the Turkish Cypriot side however, there was an equally
ambivalent attitude towards a united form of Cypriot independence. In
the British High Commission’s annual review of 1974, it was noted that
the year opened with Rauf Denktash publicly pushing for the creation of
two separate states. In turn the Turkish Chargé d’Affaires told the High
Commissioner that Turkey maintained plans for geographical federation.32
In the context of a retrospective review, it was noted that ‘the intention was
there but not yet the way’ to fulfil this Turkish goal.
Within this ‘official’ British version of the roots of the Cyprus conflict
therefore, it is internal forces that are held responsible for the creation and
exacerbation of the ‘Cyprus Problem’. The political obduracy of the Greek
Cypriot authorities and their continued public flirtations with enosis played
directly into the hands of Turkey and their strategic designs for the island.
The British role in this narrative was portrayed as one of detached ‘neutral-
ity’, marked by concern but little discernible action beyond the ‘preach-
ing [of] moderation and compromise’ to officials in Athens and Nicosia
who were recognised as unlikely to actually listen.33 Through this some-
what narrow reading, a direct parallel can be drawn to the observation of
John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary in relation to Ireland. Here, much
like Cyprus, British officials would often adopt a ‘functionally appropriate
amnesia’ over their own colonial contribution to the creation and exacer-
bation of this national, ethnic and communal conflict.34 In those criticisms
of the Cypriot reaction to the constitutional provisions for example, little
reference is made to the British role in authoring this document, save for the
need to protect British interests in any reforms that may be undertaken.35
Yet irrespective of this colonial legacy, British officials were clear in their
view, so detailed in a May 1975 memorandum, that ‘the unsatisfactory situ-
ation in the island cannot be in any way regarded as the responsibility of
Her Majesty’s Government’.36 In turn the Foreign Office was clear who was
responsible: Greece, Turkey and the Cypriots themselves.
Indeed the direct spark for the outbreak of conflict in 1974 was the com-
plete breakdown in relations between Athens and Nicosia. In the succinct
words of a British report from 1 July 1974, ‘the simple fact seems to be that
 ‘One of our problems’ 25
the Greeks do not trust Makarios, and Makarios is intensely suspicious of
the Greeks’.37 The Cyprus Foreign Minister described this relationship more
acutely on 3 July when he stated ‘there were members of the Junta who could
not accept that the whole of the Greek Government should be thwarted by
a priest at the head of only 500,000 people’.38 This struggle between Greece
and Cyprus was effectively played out on two interlinked fronts. On the one
hand, the Junta was directly funding and supplying the paramilitary organi-
sation EOKA-B, established in 1971 under the command of General Grivas,
in their pursuit of enosis and overthrow of the ‘arch-­traitor’, Makarios. On
the other, Athens and Nicosia were locked in a sustained political struggle
for control of the Greek Cypriot National Guard, with the former concerned
about a communist incursion and the latter its loyalty towards Makarios.39
Although Makarios had established the National Guard on 2 June 1964 in
order to protect the Greek Cypriot populace from Turkish Cypriot ‘extrem-
ists’, the power of the mainland Greek officers who commanded its forces
ultimately turned it into ‘a Frankenstein’s monster’.40 With these officers
displaying a clear ‘cloak of disloyalty’, Makarios increasingly turned to his
‘left-orientated’ Police Tactical Reserve (hereafter PTR). A British Defence
Adviser sent to report on this deteriorating situation noted in April 1974
that the PTR, with its 800 members, was an equally potent ‘force for evil’
as EOKA-B. Indeed, their tactics were described as akin to ‘those of a bull-
dozer’, with no respect shown to personal property, religious sensibilities or
the British presence on the island.41 As a result, following the overthrow of
Makarios, the British media was filled with reports of violence and brutality
undertaken by his forces.42 Yet both paramilitary organisations, one sup-
ported by the Junta and the other by the Cypriot government, were equally
guilty of ‘unsavoury acts’, as certain sections of Greek Cypriot society
effectively descended into a fratricidal civil war over the concept of enosis
or independence.
Within this climate the British security forces were fully aware of the
potential for the Junta to make a move against Makarios; it was simply a
matter of when this would occur and how it would be undertaken. As Jan
Asmussen has noted, the British anticipated any move against Makarios to
occur in October rather than July, as this would have taken place after the
rotation of Greek army officers on Cyprus. In turn this meant the British
were not fully prepared for the crisis that did erupt on 15 July, forcing them
to act largely on an ‘ad hoc’ basis.43 Indeed, there were multiple conflicting
reports as to the potential date for an action against Makarios. In early
July 1974 for example, the British High Commissioner to Cyprus, Stephen
Olver, reflected in multiple reports the options facing the Junta in relation
to the National Guard issue, from assassinating Makarios to a face-saving
climb-down.44 On each occasion a coup was effectively ‘ruled out’ given the
‘severe international repercussions’ it would bring, especially given ‘neither
of the superpowers wanted any sharp change in the internal situation in
Cyprus’. Despite these ‘logical’ assessments however, ‘with the Junta one
26 ‘One of our problems’
never knew’.45 In contrast, an overview of the ‘troubles’ produced in March
1975 by the RAF security forces provided a series of intercepted intelligence
reports from early 1974 which clearly showed the British ‘had been aware
of the likelihood of a coup for some time’.46 Ultimately, what directly pre-
cipitated this coup was Makarios’s open letter to the President of Greece,
General Gizikis, on 2 July 1974. In this letter Makarios directly accused the
Junta of criminal activity on Cyprus, including assassination attempts and
‘political murders’, which he deemed formed part of a concerted ‘policy cal-
culated to abolish the Cyprus state’.47 With this letter the High Commission
suggested Makarios had finally ‘overplayed his hand’, as two weeks later
he was fleeing Cyprus in a British helicopter.48 Yet irrespective of the when,
with the intelligence that was available, it was generally accepted that the
Junta and their ‘nationalist allies’ would eventually make a move against
Makarios. As such, while the British authorities clearly felt the outbreak of
this crisis was everyone’s fault but theirs, its eruption meant the British had
no choice but to become deeply embroiled in its settlement, which was a far
from easy task.

British rights and obligations

The response of the Foreign Office to this coup was swift, as Britain ‘took
the initiative’ and called on their fellow Guarantor powers of Greece and
Turkey to urge restraint on all sides. On Cyprus, forces within the SBAs
were mobilised, and following reports that Makarios had survived, the
British instigated their long-standing contingency plan, Operation Skylark,
for his evacuation. However, given the vulnerability of British families in the
dormitory towns to the ‘probable adverse reaction’ of the National Guard,
British involvement was kept covert as an unmarked helicopter transferred
Makarios to Akrotiri (hereafter WSBA), from where he was flown to London
via a stopover in Malta.49 In Downing Street and Whitehall, throughout this
first week, plans were drawn up and meetings held to discuss potential British
responses to the coup, including the feasibility of intervention.50 Within the
House of Commons, a series of debates were held where the ‘obligations’
and ‘rights’ of the Treaty of Guarantee were raised, but Callaghan would
not be drawn on the issue of intervention and merely confirmed diplomatic
consultations would be held with their fellow Guarantor powers. Although
the authorities in Athens repeatedly rebuffed these invitations for consul-
tation, a Turkish delegation visited Downing Street on 17 July. Here the
prospect of joint-intervention through the SBAs was raised by Bulent Ecevit
but rejected by Harold Wilson, as Callaghan stated ‘the island needed fewer
Greek troops, not more Turkish troops’.51 Yet Turkish impatience with
Britain over their reluctance to intervene was known to be growing. In turn,
British officials accepted that Turkish intervention was highly likely given
‘the Turks will on no account accept a Greek Cyprus’.52 On 20 July the
conflict escalated beyond British control. Not only was the opportunity for
 ‘One of our problems’ 27
a peaceful settlement based on the removal of Nicos Sampson and the Greek
officers of the National Guard lost, but it was abundantly clear that Britain
would not intervene under the provisions of the Treaty of Guarantee. As
such Turkey was effectively given freedom to manoeuvre on Cyprus.
Before moving further, it is important to fully assess why Britain took the
particularly controversial decision not to militarily intervene in the conflict.
Officially, three interlinking reasons were provided for not fulfilling this
‘right of intervention’:

1 Britain did not maintain the armed forces capable of viable intervention.
2 The threat of war with an Allied government was ‘unacceptable’.
3 Direct military engagement could potentially bring forth ‘savage repris-
als’ against British residents in Cyprus and Greece.53

This response, however, provoked significant debate within the British press
regarding the overall merits of British foreign policy. Both The Sun and The
Guardian argued, in the words of the latter:

If we cannot meet an obligation in the case of Cyprus … it seems point-

less to go on pretending to the world we could or would meet any of our
other commitments … [or continue] footing the huge bills for armies
and weapons which are strictly not for use.54

The Daily Mail stated Britain and the USA ‘bear a grave responsibil-
ity for failing to act promptly to prevent the war’, while the Labour MP,
Christopher Price, argued that ‘the West have a great deal to be ashamed over
Cyprus’.55 Some ten years later, during the Falklands Crisis, the Financial
Times reflected on Britain’s ‘double standards’ towards these two islands
rocked by external intervention. While the British government were willing
to travel 8,000 miles to the Falklands, they would not act on Cyprus where
they had ‘both the on-site forces … and the clearest of international rights
(and indeed obligations)’ to do so.56 Consequently, as Chapter 3 will attest,
accusations of Anglo–Turkish collusion continue to be widely disseminated
and accepted on Cyprus as one of the key reasons for Britain’s lack of inter-
vention. Yet the British authorities found such criticism grossly misrepre-
sentative of the actual situation, as officials repeatedly stressed that Britain
did everything in its power to prevent the division of Cyprus, and that ‘only
those who overestimate our power can reproach us for the outcome’.57
This description of weakness, or ‘responsibility without power’, is aptly
encapsulated in Figure 2.2, as although it was Makarios who was fleeing
from a crisis following an attempt on his life, it is the figure of Britain that
exudes an image of ruin and defeat. Indeed, The Sun stressed throughout
the conflict that Britain ‘cannot opt out’ of Cyprus given their treaty obliga-
tions, and was, therefore, fiercely critical of the government’s failure, ‘what-
ever her historical responsibility’, to protect Cyprus from an invasion that
28 ‘One of our problems’

Figure 2.2 Paul Rigby, The Sun, 18 July 1974, p. 6. (News Syndication).

was described as akin to Hitler bulldozing the Czechs in 1938.58 This far
from flattering depiction of a battered and bruised Harold Wilson, bloodied
by a series of ‘Commons defeats’, standing beside the starved and toothless
lion of Britain both satirises and reinforces this image of failure. Yet this
cartoon also reflects Callaghan’s assertion that Britain in 1974 was militar-
ily ‘impotent’ in their desire to help Cyprus.59 At the time of the coup, 2,995
soldiers were housed within the SBAs. By 31 July, this number totalled
11,700, and a sizeable naval presence was stationed around Cyprus.60 Yet
according to government sources, these forces were merely equipped to pro-
tect the SBAs and were not capable of meaningfully intervening in the affairs
of the Cyprus Republic. Roy Hattersley, the Minister of State for Foreign
and Commonwealth Affairs, made this clear in his evidentiary interview
with the Select Committee, as:

Had we wanted (I hope we would not have wanted and we did not
want) to take military action, which I believe would have been counter-
productive, it would not have been within our powers to do so.61

This reading did not sit well with wide sections of the British press. On
22 July the Daily Mail called the British response to the coup ‘gutless’, as
with firm US backing the British could easily have dealt with Sampson and
his supporters prior to the Turkish invasion. As such ‘history will record:
We had the means. We lacked the will’.62 This criticism was repeated in The
Guardian. Here the link drawn by officials regarding the safety of British
residents and the lack of military intervention was mocked with the ques-
tion of what the authorities would have done if the SBAs had been directly
 ‘One of our problems’ 29
attacked. This was followed by the quip that it was good planning to pro-
vide potential hostages so as to ensure ‘we have a good reason for fail-
ing to meet our obligations as a Guarantor’.63 Other sections of the press
were less critical, as the Daily Express argued that the British were not
bound by any treaty and should ‘never intervene’ in Cyprus, as ‘we must not
become embroiled in a struggle between Greek and Greek’.64 In an echo of
the Express, Callaghan stated that while Britain may have maintained post-
colonial ‘residual responsibilities’ through the Treaty of Guarantee, it was
the USA who ultimately maintained the power to bring ‘peace to Cyprus
by force’.65
However this was not to be forthcoming. Prior to the Turkish inva-
sion the US administration gave partial recognition to the Sampson
regime, while post-invasion American military action against Turkey was
categorically ‘ruled out’.66 As the British Ambassador to the USA Peter
Ramsbotham noted with the commencement of the second Turkish inva-
sion on 14 August 1974, ‘while the Turks could not justifiably claim to
have American approval … they could reasonably gamble that American
disapproval would not be so forceful as to compel them to stop’.67 Indeed,
the main focus of Henry Kissinger’s policy was to protect NATO and ‘avoid
giving the Soviet Union an opportunity to expand their influence and pres-
ence in the Eastern Mediterranean’.68 This form of Cold War realpolitik has,
in turn, created the conditions for the proliferation of conspiracy theories
over the actions of the USA.69 Within Britain, the Labour MP, Christopher
Price, also condemned the Anglo–American connection over Cyprus, stating
Britain’s failure to intervene was because ‘we were so slavishly following
the Kissinger policies … [as] NATO considerations became more impor-
tant than humanitarian issues’.70 Therefore, American foreign policy would
inevitably be seen to fail towards Cyprus simply because it was not focussed
on Cyprus, as in the words of Kissinger:

With all due respect to the special position of the United Kingdom,
Cyprus was a peripheral issue from the US perspective … [as] if Turkey’s
security was undermined, there would no longer be any barrier between
the Soviet Union and Syria.71

For that reason, an escalation of the Cyprus conflict must be avoided at

all costs. The territorial integrity of Cyprus was secondary to the potential
ramifications of an inter-alliance conflict, be it Greek–Turkish or Anglo–
Turkish, in the wider context of the Cold War.
Although the British acquiesced to American policy throughout the
conflict, in part due to their accepted but unwanted position of ‘responsi-
bility without power’, there was a significant level of frustration targeted
towards American officials.72 In January 1976 Tom McNally, an advisor
to Callaghan during the conflict, wrote that the USA ‘were never will-
ing to commit their strength on the basis of our judgement’, as ‘tragically
30 ‘One of our problems’
the outcome of American policy was to doom our efforts to failure’.73 An
­example of this process can be seen during the second Geneva ‘peace’ con-
ference from 8–14 August 1974. Here the British delegation attempted to
pressurise Turkey to halt its persistent ceasefire breaches by threatening to
heavily reinforce the UNFICYP, and then ordering it to stand its ground in
the face of further Turkish advances.74 In his memoirs, Callaghan described
this pronouncement as directed by the belief that ‘if we showed ourselves
sufficiently resolute the Turks would at the last moment back off’.75 There
was a direct precedent on Cyprus to support this assertion. Between 23–25
July a combined UN–British stand at Nicosia airport successfully prevented
the Turkish army occupying this strategically vital site in an event described
by Harold Wilson as ‘probably the closest Britain came to war with another
nation since 1945’.76 However, this later British proposal of deterrence,
rather than intervention, required active US support which was not forth-
coming. Although Callaghan was convinced the only deterrent to further
Turkish advancement was the threat of military opposition, Kissinger called
it ‘one of the stupidest things I have ever heard’.77 As a result, on 14 August
the second Turkish advance commenced largely unopposed, as the USA
would do nothing militarily; the UNFICYP would keep their heads down,
and the UK ‘could not act unilaterally’. The one saving grace for the British
was an acceptance, mainly based on military prudence, that ‘the Turks were
very concerned not to embarrass us and would leave the SBAs alone’.78
Indeed, the Turkish armed forces did not need to assault the SBAs to ful-
fil their targets, as the tense but brief standoff outside Dhekelia (hereafter
ESBA) proved on 15 August.79 To do so would merely complicate what
was otherwise a relatively straightforward advance. As such this British fail-
ure to mobilise international support led McNally to state Cyprus was ‘the
last in a long line of salutary lessons that in the modern world, no matter
how good our analysis and judgement, we can no longer unilaterally deliver
the goods’.80
Nevertheless, this episode suggests that aspects of those public pronounce-
ments regarding a lack of adequate force levels were somewhat exaggerated.
This is not to say the British government were willing to unilaterally inter-
vene in the conflict, but rather their forces on Cyprus, at least in the initial
stages, were more equipped for intervention than the authorities were willing
to retrospectively admit. In addition to the Nicosia airport standoff, which
proved a strong UN force could achieve certain results, the SBA command-
ers had contemplated launching a UN-backed naval blockade of northern
Cyprus on 25 July to prevent Turkey’s ‘continuous and provocative viola-
tions’ of the ceasefire agreements.81 At 13:25 hours on 25 July, with Turkish
forces occupying a relatively small enclave around Kyrenia, the Commander
of the British forces on Cyprus mobilised and dispatched a Royal Naval
taskforce of four ships to Cape Andreas, off the Karpass Peninsula, for the
purpose of undertaking this blockade. However, at 11:25 on the morning of
26 July, the task group was ordered to withdraw as reports from Turkey not
Another random document with
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worship of the brilliant Steerforth,—in short, his general way of
looking at the world is so exactly like that of the ordinary healthy boy
under similar circumstances that these parts of the book are, in the
highest and best sense of the word, very realistic.

But as a whole the work has no such convincing power over me to-
day as it had when I first read it. Some of the characters, indeed, like
little Miss Mowcher, Barkis, and Mr. Creakle, seem more like puppets
and less like real persons than they did. Many of them seem to carry
about with them a sort of trade-mark, to certify to their genuineness,
—Heep’s “humility,” for instance, Murdstone’s “firmness,” or Littimer’s
“respectability”; or perhaps the test of identity is a formula, like
“thinking of the old ’un” of Mrs. Gummidge, or “waiting for something
to turn up” of Micawber. In many cases the picture is a caricature
rather than a real portrait, and yet it has the advantage of the
caricature, that it sets forth in bold relief the leading feature and fixes
itself forever in the memory.

There is little to say about the story, for it is known to all. Practically
three or four stories are woven into one. There is the story of David
himself, a boy who, after a comfortable childhood with his young
widowed mother and her old house servant Peggotty, falls under the
tyranny of a stepfather and his sister, and is sent to be beaten and
abused at Creakle’s school, and when his mother dies is put out to a
miserable and hopeless existence at the dismal counting-house of
Murdstone and Grinby. He runs away, and in absolute destitution
betakes himself to the home of Betsey Trotwood, an aunt whom he
has never seen, but with whom he finds a refuge. Then follows the
description (one of the best chapters in the book) of his school days
at Canterbury; his devotion to Miss Shepherd; his romantic adoration
of Miss Larkins, who marries an elderly hopgrower; his disastrous
fight with a butcher. He is then articled to Mr. Spenlow, of Doctor’s
Commons, to become a proctor, and falls in love with Dora,
Spenlow’s daughter, an affectionate, foolish little creature, whom he
marries. He wins a reputation as an author, and after the death of his
“child-wife,” and a period of travel, finally weds Agnes Wickfield, who
has always loved him, and who, ever since his school days at
Canterbury, has been the guardian spirit of his life.

Intertwined with this story is that of the family of Mr. Peggotty, the
brother of David’s old nurse, who lives in the boat on the sand at
Yarmouth, with his nephew Ham, and Em’ly, his adopted child, a
beautiful creature, who is betrayed by David’s friend Steerforth, with
whom she elopes on the eve of her marriage to Ham, and who
afterwards abandons her. An affecting picture is given of the honest
Mr. Peggotty seeking his poor child through the world; of her final
return, and of the great storm and shipwreck, in which Steerforth
goes down, and Ham loses his life in a vain attempt at rescue.

Another strand in the cord of this remarkable story is that of

Micawber and his family, with whom Copperfield becomes a lodger
during his gloomy days at Murdstone and Grinby’s,—a man who,
after various misfortunes, including poverty, jail, and a wretched life
in which he is made the tool of the hypocritical Uriah Heep, is finally
sent to Australia on the same vessel with Mr. Peggotty and Emily,
and begins a career of ultimate prosperity.

But the story is interesting not so much on account of the plot as of

the people who are in it, and the human interest which runs through
the whole.

In addition to the naturalness of Copperfield’s own feelings, there are

other characters that are very true to life. That of his eccentric aunt,
Betsey Trotwood, is perhaps a little overdrawn at first, in her
interview with the doctor on the occasion of David’s birth, but
afterwards her warmth of heart, frankness, and the strong good
sense which underlie her rude behavior and eccentricities, the
combination of strength and weakness in her nature, call to my own
mind at every step one whom I have intimately known and greatly
loved. There is something immensely refreshing, for instance, in her
outbreak at the slimy Uriah Heep:
 “‘If you’re an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man,
control your limbs, sir. Good God!’ said my aunt, with great
indignation, ‘I’m not going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out
of my senses!’”

Her noble conduct in concealing what she believed to be the

defalcation of her old friend Mr. Wickfield is equally characteristic:

“‘And at last he took the blame upon himself,’ added my aunt, ‘and
wrote me a mad letter, charging himself with robbery and wrong
unheard of; upon which I paid him a visit early one morning, called
for a candle, burned the letter, and told him if he ever could right
me and himself to do it, and if he could not, to keep his own
counsel for his daughter’s sake.’”

The “umble,” pious, and vindictive scoundrel, Uriah Heep, has been
a type of whining hypocrisy. The description of him as Copperfield
first saw him is remarkable:

“A red-haired person, a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but

looking much older; whose hair was cropped as close as the
closest stubble, who had hardly any eyebrows and no eyelashes,
and eyes of a red brown, so unsheltered and unshaded that I
remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-
shouldered and bony, dressed in decent black, with a white wisp
of a neckcloth buttoned up to the throat, and had a long, lank,
skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention as he
stood at the pony’s head, rubbing his chin and looking up at us in
the chaise.”

On the whole, perhaps Heep’s character is rather a grotesque than a

reality. Everywhere he inspires us with unutterable aversion. He
worms himself into the secrets of Wickfield, his employer, takes
advantage of his weakness for drink, and finally gets possession of
much of his property. Afterwards, in the prison scene, he is equally
true to his snaky nature, and becomes an edifying and pious pattern
of the products of prison reform.
The quiet, respectful, and respectable Littimer, Steerforth’s serving-
man, who seemed to be always saying to the awestruck David, “You
are young, sir; you are very young,”—and who afterwards became
his master’s tool in the disgraceful intrigue with Em’ly, will find many
a counterpart in actual life. There are some of us who in our youth
have felt similar awe in the presence of such a domestic.

Perhaps the most charming chapters in the book are those which
describe the courting, the marriage, and the disastrous
housekeeping of David and his child-wife, Dora, in which the little
dog Jip plays such a conspicuous part. They are a pair of precious
young noodles; yet the love-making, in spite of its absurdity, is so
absolutely natural, and the foolish Dora so utterly affectionate, up to
the pathetic scene of her death, that the incidents awaken a very
strong sympathy.

Mr. Micawber, of course, is an exaggeration; but how many men

have we known who possessed some of his essential traits,—his
stilted diction, his sudden alternations of supreme joy and utter
despair, his mania for letter-writing, his visionary hopes and schemes
in the midst of his distresses? How perfect in its way is the final
newspaper account of the public dinner in Australia given in his
honor!

Mr. Peggotty’s search through the world for Little Em’ly seems to me
now greatly overstrained, though I did not think so when I first read it.
There is a very true touch in the description of the old Mrs.
Gummidge, who had always been querulous and complaining until
great sorrow fell upon the household, when she became at once
helpful, considerate, and cheerful in comforting the distress of
others. We have all seen examples of this kind of transformation.

Dickens has done mankind a service by portraying the dignity of

simple things and the delicacy and nobility of character that often lie
beneath a rough exterior, among those whom Lincoln used to call
“the plain people,” of whom Lincoln was himself perhaps the most
illustrious type. What could be nobler and in its essential character
more gentlemanly than the behavior of Mr. Peggotty and Ham after
the betrayal of Little Em’ly; what more delicate than Peggotty’s
appreciation of Em’ly’s feeling toward him?

“‘She would go to the world’s furdest end if she could once see
me again, and she would fly to the world’s furdest end to keep
from seeing me. For tho’ she ain’t no call to doubt my love—and
doen’t—and doen’t—but there’s shame steps in and keeps
betwixt us.’”

Dickens’s style is often intensely vivid—for instance, in his

description of a London fog in “Bleak House”; of the burning
Marseilles sun in “Little Dorrit”; of the storm and shipwreck in “David
Copperfield”;—all fine instances of word-painting. Yet the crudities
are many and glaring, there is very little finish, and sometimes the
diction is commonplace.

But there are occasional passages of extraordinary beauty, due

possibly not so much to the style as the sentiment and the things
described. Witness the following, where David describes his feelings
when he had taken refuge with his aunt in her cottage at Dover, after
his escape from Murdstone and Grinby’s:

“The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house,

overlooking the sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly.
After I had said my prayers, and my candle had burnt out, I
remember how I still sat looking at the moonlight on the water, as
if I could hope to read my fortunes in it, as in a bright book; or to
see my mother with her child, coming from Heaven along that
shining path, to look upon me as she had looked when I last saw
her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling with which at
length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude
and rest with which the sight of the white-curtained bed—and how
much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-
white sheets—inspired. I remember how I thought of all the
solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and how I
prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never
might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed to float,
then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away
into the world of dreams.”
“David Copperfield” may not be the supreme work of fiction which
some of us once fancied it, but it touches the heart very closely. It
dignifies humble life and common things, makes us better friends
with the world, and awakens those human traits which work for
kindness and goodwill toward all mankind.
 THE SCARLET LETTER
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Most persons of culture, if asked who was the foremost American

writer of fiction would undoubtedly answer, “Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
Among his works “The Scarlet Letter” is, I think, the most generally
read and widely known. This high estimate of Hawthorne is in most
respects well deserved. His works have a fine literary and poetic
quality. The style is faultless; the dramatic situations are admirably
conceived; and the structure of the plot, while simple, is extremely
artistic. Hawthorne generally deals with the darker phases of human
life, with scenes of wickedness and crime. His description of the
emotions awakened by criminal acts is extremely powerful. And yet it
seems to me, in reading his pages, that Hawthorne had little
knowledge of what were the actual motives and feelings of the guilty,
and that his account of the development of passions and character
came rather from reflection and abstract reasoning than from acute
observation.

The book begins dramatically rather than historically—that is to say,

in the very middle of the impressive story which it relates. Hester
Prynne, the heroine, had married old Roger Chillingworth, a union
unnatural and without affection, which was followed on her part,
during her husband’s long and unexplained absence, by a guilty
passion for Arthur Dimmesdale, the eloquent clergyman of a Puritan
New England town. All the incidents connected with the growth and
development of this passion, and with the birth of the child which
followed it, are omitted from the narrative, which opens with a scene
at the door of the prison, from which Hester comes forth to suffer the
punishment prescribed for her crime,—to stand for a certain time in
the scaffold by the pillory, and to wear for the rest of her life the
scarlet letter A upon her breast. We have nothing to tell us how the
temptation began, nor how it grew, nor the terrible anxieties which
must have preceded the discovery of her wrongdoing. Possibly these
things are the more impressive because left wholly to the
imagination.

But among the multitude that gaze upon the unfortunate woman in
the hours of her public exposure is a face that she knows only too
well. Old Roger Chillingworth, who has been so long absent, and
supposed even to be dead, appears and recognizes her. He visits
her afterwards in prison, and exacts from her an oath that his identity
shall remain unknown. The terrible punishment of the scarlet letter to
a sensitive mind is powerfully portrayed; her shame at every new
face that gazes upon it, and the consciousness of another sense,
giving her a sympathetic knowledge of hidden sin in other hearts, a
strange companionship in crime, upon which Hawthorne lays much
stress in many of his works. Even little Pearl, her child, gives her no
comfort, for the child’s character is wayward, elusive, elf-like. She is
a strange creature, whose conversation brings to her mother
constant reminders of her guilt. Hester, with great constancy, refuses
to disclose the name of the child’s father, and Dimmesdale, the
honored pastor of the community, is tortured by a remorse which
constantly grows upon him. Old Chillingworth suspects him,
becomes his physician, lives with him under the same roof,
discovers a scarlet letter concealed upon his breast, and enjoys for
years the exquisite revenge of digging into the hidden places of a
sensitive human soul and gloating over the agonies thus
unconsciously revealed to a bitter enemy. An account is given of
Dimmesdale’s self-imposed penances, and of the concealed scourge
for his own chastisement. One night he resolves to go forth and
stand on the same scaffold where Hester has undergone her
punishment. The bitterness of his emotions is finely drawn; the wild
shriek which barely fails to rouse the citizens of the town; the
passing of Hester on her way from her ministrations at a death-bed;
the standing together of the three, father, mother, and child, upon the
scaffold; the letter A which appears in the sky; Pearl’s keen
questions; and the face of old Chillingworth, who has come forth to
look on them.

Hester at last resolves to disclose to Dimmesdale the identity of his

evil companion. Her character has grown stronger through openly
bearing the burden of her guilt, while the poor clergyman’s soul has
become shattered through his constant hypocrisy. She meets him in
the forest, and in a scene of great natural tenderness and beauty
tells him that Chillingworth is her husband. He reproaches her bitterly
for her long concealment, then forgives her. She urges him to flee,
as his only hope.

“‘Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit
summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the
red men. Or,—as is more thy nature,—be a scholar and a sage
among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world.
Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up
this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a
high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why
shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that
have so gnawed into thy life!—that have made thee feeble to will
and to do!—that will leave thee powerless even to repent; Up, and
away!’

“‘O Hester!’ cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light,

kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, ‘thou tellest
of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath
him! I must die here! There is not the strength or courage left me
to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone!’

“It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit.

He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within
his reach.

“He repeated the word.

“‘Alone, Hester!’
 “‘Thou shalt not go alone!’ answered she, in a deep whisper.

“Then, all was spoken!”

In connection with their proposed departure to Europe, the minister

inquired of Hester the time at which the vessel would depart, and
learned that it would probably be on the fourth day thereafter. “That
is most fortunate!” the clergyman then said to himself. The reason
why he considered it fortunate revealed a very subtle phase of
human nature.

“It was because, on the third day from the present, he was to
preach the Election Sermon; and as such an occasion formed an
honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergyman, he could
not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of
terminating his professional career. ‘At least, they shall say of me,’
thought this exemplary man, ‘that I leave no public duty
unperformed, nor ill performed.’”

And of this strange feeling the author remarks:

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to
himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting
bewildered as to which may be the true one.”

Having resolved upon flight, however, and in the joy of his

anticipated release from a dreadful life, a curious change comes
over Mr. Dimmesdale, a revolution in his sphere of thought and
feeling.

“At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked

thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary
and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder
self than that which opposed the impulse.”

When he met one of his old deacons, it was only by the most careful
self-control that he could refrain from certain blasphemous
suggestions respecting the communion supper. When he met a
pious and exemplary old dame, the eldest of his flock, whom he had
often refreshed with warm, fragrant Gospel truths, he could now
recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and,
as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the
immortality of the human soul. He was tempted to make certain evil
suggestions to one of the young women of his flock, and to teach
some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children. He had
come back from the forest another man.

But when the hour of departure approaches, and amid the

preparations for the great Election Sermon, Hester hears that Roger
Chillingworth has learned of their intended flight and taken passage
by the same ship!

The final climax is reached when Dimmesdale, after preaching his

great sermon, which arouses the people to the highest pitch of
enthusiasm, comes forth from the church, and recognizes Hester
and Pearl. At his earnest entreaty she supports him to the scaffold,
where he stands at her side, and, against the protestations of old
Chillingworth, confesses his guilt, shows the scarlet letter upon his
own breast, and expires. Chillingworth does not long survive him.
Hester goes with Pearl across the sea, but after some years returns
alone, again resumes the scarlet letter, and takes up her old life in
her little cottage near the town.

The moral of the book, from the poor minister’s miserable

experience, is put into this sentence: “Be true, be true, be true; show
freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst
may be inferred.” Hester’s strength in bearing her sorrow is
contrasted powerfully with the growing weakness and degeneracy of
Dimmesdale, and with the transformation of Chillingworth into a
devil, through constant gratification of his revenge. The strange
conduct of Pearl, who, with her child’s instinct, resents the conduct of
the minister who will recognize her mother and herself only in secret,
adds to the effect; yet it can not be said that Pearl is in the least a
natural child. She seems almost as mature when she first asks her
mother who it was that sent her into the world, and denies that she
has a Heavenly Father, as she does in the last pages of the book.
The appearance of Mistress Hibbins, the old witch, who was
afterwards executed, throws a gleam of the supernatural across the
pages.

It is a weird story, the product of a luxuriant though somewhat morbid

imagination; but the novelist, on the other hand, lacks that acute
perception, that knowledge of trifling circumstances, such as would
have appeared in the pages of Balzac or Tolstoi—those suggestive
details which unconsciously set forth men’s motives, feelings, and
character better than any philosophical reflections.
 HENRY ESMOND
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The equestrian painting by Velasquez of Prince Balthasar Charles,

the original of which is in the Madrid Museum, is now well known
throughout the world by means of photographs and other
reproductions. It represents a very small boy on a very huge horse,
which is in the act of rearing. The anatomy of the animal is
impossible, and it is safe to say no boy as small as the Prince ever
assumed under like circumstances the attitude attributed to him; and
yet, in spite of its defects, this picture is a very remarkable and a
very beautiful painting. We know in an instant that it is the work of a
master. Indeed it is only the work of a master which could contain
such blemishes and still be great. Similar flaws sometimes deface
the greatest works of literature—for instance, the putting out of
Gloucester’s eyes in “Lear,” or the Walpurgis Night’s Dream in the
first part of “Faust.” And so it is with “Henry Esmond.” It is marred by
one or two dreadful deformities; and yet, in spite of them, it is
perhaps the most charming novel ever written.

The book opens with one of the most exquisite scenes in all
literature, where young Esmond, a lad twelve years of age, who is
supposed to be the illegitimate son of Thomas, Viscount
Castlewood, and who has led a rather hard life as a page of the old
viscountess, and been left alone in the great house after his father’s
death, is now found in the yellow gallery by Lady Castlewood, the
young and beautiful wife of the new viscount, when she comes with
her husband to take possession of the property. The scene is thus
described:

“She stretched out her hand—indeed, when was it that that hand
did not stretch out to do an act of kindness, or to protect grief and
ill-fortune? ‘And this is our kinsman,’ she said; ‘and what is your
name, kinsman?’

“‘My name is Henry Esmond,’ said the lad, looking up at her in a

sort of delight and wonder, for she had come upon him as a Dea
certe, and appeared the most charming object he had ever looked
on. Her golden hair was shining in the gold of the sun; her
complexion was of a dazzling bloom; her lips smiling, and her
eyes beaming with a kindness which made Harry Esmond’s heart
beat with surprise.

“‘His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady,’ said Mrs.

Worksop, the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond
plagued more than he hated), and the old gentlewoman looked
significantly toward the late lord’s picture; as it now is, in the
family, noble and severe-looking, with his hand on his sword and
his order on his cloak, which he had from the Emperor during the
war on the Danube against the Turk.

“Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait

and the lad, the new viscountess, who had still hold of the boy’s
hand as she looked at the picture, blushed and dropped the hand
quickly, and walked down the gallery, followed by Mrs. Worksop.

“When the lady came back, Harry Esmond stood exactly in the
same spot and with his hand as it had fallen when he dropped it
on his black coat.

“Her heart melted, I suppose (indeed she hath since owned as

much) at the notion that she should do anything unkind to any
mortal, great or small; for when she returned, she had sent away
the housekeeper upon an errand by the door at the further end of
the gallery; and, coming back to the lad, with a look of infinite pity
and tenderness in her eyes, she took his hand again, placing her
other fair hand on his head, and saying some words to him, which
were so kind, and said in a voice so sweet, that the boy, who had
never looked upon so much beauty before, felt as if the touch of a
superior being or angel smote him down to the ground, and kissed
 the fair protecting hand, as he knelt on one knee. To the very last
hour of his life, Esmond remembered the lady as she then spoke
and looked—the rings on her fair hands, the very scent of her
robe, the beam of her eyes lighting up with surprise and kindness,
her lips blooming in a smile, the sun making a golden halo round
her hair.”

The story now digresses, returning to Esmond’s early life, the vague
recollections of his childhood abroad, his coming to Castlewood, his
education by Father Holt, a Jesuit priest, the plots and intrigues of
the family on behalf of King James, the seizure of the great house by
King William’s troops, the arrest of the viscountess in her bed, and
the death of the viscount at the battle of the Boyne.

The young page was warmly welcomed by the new viscount, as well
as by Lady Castlewood, and he became the instructor of their
children. There are exquisite descriptions of their domestic life in the
earlier pages of the book.

“There seemed, as the boy thought, in every look or gesture of

this fair creature, an angelical softness and bright pity—in motion
or repose she seemed gracious alike; the tone of her voice,
though she uttered words ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that
amounted almost to anguish. It can not be called love that a lad of
twelve years of age, little more than menial, felt for an exalted
lady, his mistress; but it was worship. To catch her glance, to
divine her errand, and run on it before she had spoken it; to
watch, follow, adore her, became the business of his life.
Meanwhile, as is the way often, his idol had idols of her own, and
never thought of or suspected the admiration of her little pigmy
adorer.

“My lady had on her side her three idols; first and foremost, Jove
and supreme ruler, was her lord, Harry’s patron, the good
Viscount of Castlewood. All wishes of his were laws with her. If he
had a headache, she was ill. If he frowned, she trembled. If he
joked, she smiled, and was charmed. If he went a-hunting, she
was always at the window to see him ride away, her little son
crowing on her arm, or on the watch till his return. She made
dishes for his dinner; spiced his wine for him; made the toast for
his tankard at breakfast; hushed the house when he slept in his
 chair, and watched for a look when he woke. If my lord was not a
little proud of his beauty, my lady adored it. She clung to his arms
as he paced the terrace, her two fair little hands clasped round his
great one; her eyes were never tired of looking in his face and
wondering at his perfection.”

But it was not long until my lord began to grow weary of the bonds in
which his lady held him and at the jealousy which went hand and
hand with her affection.

“Then perhaps, the pair reached that other stage, which is not
uncommon in married life, when the woman perceives that the
god of the honeymoon is a god no more; only a mortal like the
rest of us; and so she looks into her heart, and lo! vacua sedes et
inania arcana!”

One unhappy day Esmond brings the smallpox to Castlewood from

an ale-house in the village, which he has visited, and where he has
met Nancy Sievewright, the blacksmith’s pretty daughter. Lady
Castlewood, on hearing this, breaks out into a strange fit of rage and
jealousy; but when Esmond is taken ill she nurses him tenderly,
contracting the disease herself, while the viscount with his little
daughter Beatrix flees from the contagion. He returns to find his
wife’s beauty marred a little for a time, whereupon his love for her
grows weak and she betakes herself to the affection of her children.
With a little legacy that comes into her possession, she sends
Esmond to the University, whence he returns on vacation to find a
skeleton in the household. His kind mistress is shedding tears in
secret, while her husband drinks heavily, neglects her for an actress
in a neighboring town, and brings home Lord Mohun, a notorious
rake, with whom he spends his nights at play, and squanders his
fortune. At last Mohun is suspected of designs against my lady, and
in a drive with this unscrupulous man Esmond warns him to leave
Castlewood. An accident occurs; Mohun is thrown out and injured.
The viscount tells his wife that “Harry is killed” (Harry being the name
both of Esmond and Mohun). She screams, and falls unconscious. A
duel follows, and Lord Castlewood is slain by Mohun’s sword, but
before his death confesses that he has learned from Father Holt that
Esmond is the legitimate son of his predecessor, and the lawful heir
to Castlewood. Esmond burns the confession and resolves not to
profit by a claim which will bring sorrow upon his kind mistress and
her children. He is sent to prison for participating in the duel, from
which he had endeavored to dissuade his patron and afterwards to
defend him. Here Lady Castlewood visits him. She brings no
comfort, however, but upbraids him in her wild grief:

“‘I lost him through you—I lost him, the husband of my youth, I
say. I worshiped him—you know I worshiped him—and he was
changed to me. He was no more my Francis of old—my dear,
dear soldier! He loved me before he saw you, and I loved him!
Oh, God is my witness, how I loved him! Why did he not send you
from among us? ’Twas only his kindness, that could refuse me
nothing then. And, young as you were—yes, and weak and alone
—there was evil, I knew there was evil in keeping you. I read it in
your face and eyes. I saw that they boded harm to us—and it
came, I knew it would. Why did you not die when you had the
smallpox, and I came myself and watched you, and you didn’t
know me in your delirium—and you called out for me, though I
was there at your side. All that has happened since was a just
judgment on my wicked heart—my wicked, jealous heart. Oh, I
am punished, awfully punished! My husband lies in his blood—
murdered for defending me, my kind, kind, generous lord—and
you were by, and you let him die, Henry!’”

He is crushed by her injustice, but does not waver in his devotion.

After his imprisonment is over he procures an ensign’s commission
and participates in the destruction of the French fleet in Vigo Bay. On
his return he hears that his mistress is about to marry the chaplain of
Castlewood, and he hastens to prevent the match. The rumor is
unfounded, but it furnishes the opportunity for reconciliation. They
meet in Winchester Cathedral after the service:

“She gave him her hand—her little fair hand; there was only her
marriage ring on it. The quarrel was all over. The year of grief and
estrangement was passed. They never had been separated. His
mistress had never been out of his head all that time. No, not
once. No, not in the prison, nor in the camp, nor on shore before
 the enemy, nor at sea under the stars of solemn midnight, nor as
he watched the glorious rising of the dawn; not even at the table
where he sat carousing with friends, or at the theater yonder,
where he tried to fancy that other eyes were brighter than hers.
Brighter eyes there might be, and faces more beautiful, but none
so dear—no voice so sweet as that of his beloved mistress, who
had been sister, mother, goddess to him during his youth—
goddess now no more, for he knew of her weaknesses, and by
thought, by suffering, and that experience it brings, was older now
than she; but more fondly cherished as woman perhaps than ever
she had been adored as divinity. What is it? Where lies it? the
secret which makes one little hand the dearest of all? Who ever
can unriddle that mystery?”

And then when Esmond gently reproaches her that she had never
told him of her sorrow for her cruel words, and that the knowledge
would have spared him many a bitter night:

“‘I know it, I know it,’ she answered, in a tone of such sweet
humility as made Esmond repent that he should ever have dared
to reproach her. ‘I know how wicked my heart has been; and I
have suffered too, my dear. I confessed to Mr. Atterbury—I must
not tell any more. He—I said I would not write to you or go to you;
and it was better, even, that, having parted, we should part. But I
knew you would come back—I own that. That is no one’s fault.
And to-day, Henry, in the anthem, when they sang it, “When the
Lord turned the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream,” I
thought, yes, like them that dream—them that dream. And then it
went, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy; and he that goeth
forth and weepeth shall doubtless come home again with
rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him;” I looked up from the
book, and saw you. I was not surprised when I saw you. I knew
you would come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine round your
head.’”

“‘If—if ’tis so, dear lady,’ Mr. Esmond said, ‘why should I ever
leave you? If God hath given me this great boon—and near or far
from me, as I know now, the heart of my dearest mistress follows
me—let me have that blessing near me, nor ever part with it till
death separate us. Come away—leave this Europe, this place
which has so many sad recollections for you. Begin a new life in a
new world. My good lord often talked of visiting that land in
Virginia which King Charles gave us—gave his ancestor. Frank
will give that. No man there will ask if there is a blot on my name,
or inquire in the woods what my title is.’

“‘And my children—and my duty—and my good father, Henry?’

she broke out. ‘He has none but me now; for soon my sister will
leave him, and the old man will be alone. He has conformed since
the new Queen’s reign; and there in Winchester, where they love
him, they have found a church for him. When the children leave
me I will stay with him. I cannot follow them into the great world,
where their way lies—it scares me. They will come and visit me;
and you will, sometimes, Henry—yes, sometimes, as now, in the
Holy Advent season, when I have seen and blessed you once
more.’

“‘I would leave all to follow you,’ said Mr. Esmond; ‘and can you
not be as generous for me, dear Lady?’

“‘Hush, boy!’ she said, and it was with a mother’s sweet, plaintive
tone and look that she spoke. ‘The world is beginning for you. For
me, I have been so weak and sinful that I must leave it, and pray
out an expiation, dear Henry. Had we houses of religion as there
were once, and many divines of our church would have them
again, I often think I would retire to one and pass my life in
penance. But I would love you still—yes, there is no sin in such a
love as mine now; and my dear lord in heaven may see my heart;
and knows the tears that have washed my sin away—and now—
now my duty is here, by my children while they need me, and by
my poor old father, and—’

“‘And not by me?’ Henry said.

“‘Hush!’ she said again, and raised her hand to his lip. ‘I have
been your nurse. You could not see me, Henry, when you were in
the smallpox, and I came and sat by you. Ah, I prayed that I might
die, but it would have been in sin, Henry. Oh, it is horrid to look
back to that time. It is over now and past, and it has been forgiven
me. When you need me again I will come ever so far. When your
heart is wounded then come to me, my dear. Be silent! Let me say
all. You never loved me, dear Henry—no, you do not now, and I
thank Heaven for it. I used to watch you, and knew by a thousand
 signs that it was so. Do you remember how glad you were to go
away to College? ’Twas I sent you. I told my papa that, and Mr.
Atterbury too, when I spoke to him in London. And they both gave
me absolution—both—and they are godly men, having authority
to bind and to loose. And they forgave me, as my dear lord
forgave me before he went to heaven.’

“‘I think the angels are not all in heaven,’ Mr. Esmond said. And as
a brother folds a sister to his heart; and as a mother cleaves to
her son’s breast—so for a few moments Esmond’s beloved
mistress came to him and blessed him.”

After this wonderful chapter there comes another of almost equal

beauty, if it stood alone, but the two together make a strange
discord. For when they reach Walcote, which is now the family
home, Beatrix, the daughter of Lady Castlewood, comes down the
stairs to greet him.

“Esmond had left a child and found a woman, grown beyond the
common height, and arrived at such a dazzling completeness of
beauty that his eyes might well show surprise and delight at
beholding her. In hers there was a brightness so lustrous and
melting that I have seen a whole assembly follow her as if by an
attraction irresistible; and that night the great Duke was at the
playhouse after Ramillies, every soul turned and looked (she
chanced to enter at the opposite side of the theater at the same
moment) at her, and not at him. She was a brown beauty—that is,
her eyes, hair, and eyebrows and eyelashes were dark; her hair
curling with rich undulations, and waving over her shoulders. But
her complexion was as dazzling white as snow in sunshine;
except her cheeks, which were a bright red, and her lips, which
were of a still deeper crimson. Her mouth and chin, they said,
were too large and full, and so they might be for a goddess in
marble, but not for a woman whose eyes were fire, whose look
was love, whose voice was the sweetest low song, whose shape
was perfect symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot, as it
planted itself on the ground, was firm but flexible, and whose
motion, whether rapid or slow, was always perfect grace—agile as
a nymph, lofty as a queen—now melting, now imperious, now
sarcastic—there was no single movement of hers but was