THE FALL OF THE BRITISH LABOUR GOVERNMENT IN 1951, IN THE MIDST OF THE NATIONALISATION OF THE ANGLO-IRANIAN OIL COMPANY’S CRISIS.
By the end of June, Morrison had already been consulting with the Cabinet that negotiations with, Musaddiq were not making any progress, and that Britain relied too much on the United Nations, thus the possibilities of military and naval actions had to be reconsidered. At the same time Britain imposed sanctions on Iran. The export of a number of goods from the United Kingdom to Iran became prohibited; goods such as alloys, railway, trucks, steel, sugar, iron non-ferrous metals and materials. The British Ambassador in Teheran, Sir Francis Shepherd, an imperialist of the Curzon school, complained angrily about the Americans, pressing for negotiations with Iran, and getting involved. E.A. Berthoud of the Foreign Office Eastern Department minuted that Dr. Musaddiq’s removal was Britain’s number one objective, and action should be taken accordingly. Britain and Iran drifted into a state of near war.
The fact that a vital British interest in the Persian Gulf had been successfully expropriated, and the fact that the British had not used, or seriously threatened the use of, force in its defence, underlined, as nothing else could have done, the change which had taken place in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the littoral states of the Persian Gulf. The Persian Gulf was no longer under British influence; British hegemony had been successfully defied. Barely ten years earlier, the British had been able to overturn a government easily, for example in Iraq, because the government of that country was pursuing policies inconvenient to the British war effort. Now the case was different. A new world order had emerged: the creation of the United Nations, the necessity for avoiding giving offence to the United States, the necessity of not giving any excuse for Russian intervention, all had narrowed the choice of British foreign policy and options. By the second half of 1951 Britain’s economy had been under considerable pressure anyway. The nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company added to that pressure. The United Kingdom was purchasing more from abroad in dollars than it was earning from exports. At the same time there was the British rearmament programme going on. In August of 1951, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, gave as estimation of an expected deficit of $1200 million, which was record level by standards of the time. Now, in the short-term Britain was also forced to seek more expensive alternative supplies, replacing the Iranian oil.
There seemed to be only one remedy. Gaitskell flew off to Washington to seek American help. The cost of defying President Truman’s objections to the use of force in Persia had become prohibitive.8
Attlee was under strong pressure from the Tories, as well as from those within the government such as Morrison and Emmanuel Shinwell (now Minister of Defence) to take a stronger line. Churchill told Attlee that he ‘had never thought that the Persian oil fields could be held by force, but that Abadan Island was quite another matter.’9
Though, as was said, negotiation to settle the dispute was genuinely the option that was preferred by the British, nevertheless the military option had been kept in the background, a paper was circulated to the Cabinet, by Morrison, on 20th July 1951, explaining that the Chiefs of Staff believed that Abadan could be taken on short notice and could be held against Iranian resistance. A plan evolved, code named MIDGET, later replaced by BUCCANEER, as MIDGET appeared in the early stages of planning to have little or no chance of success. BUCCANEER, however, was thought to have a high rate of success, and could hold the island of Abadan indefinitely. The Chiefs of Staff were in a tough mood. On 17th July 1951, Field Marshal Slim, the CIGS, urged the need to retain military control at Abadan as long as possible. The alternative would be a massive loss of British prestige, which would play into the hands of the Russians. Lord Fraser, the First Sea Lord, impatiently expressed his desire for military action.
The ultimate objective of UK policy in the dispute between the Persian Government and AIOC, is a satisfactory agreement which will
(i) ensure that Persia remains non-communist;
(ii) maintain the flow of oil through control by a British company;
(iii) safeguard the UK balance of payments;
(iv) not injure UK interests in other countries.10
- J. CABLE, Intervention at Abadan: Plan Buccaneer, (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 94.
- PRO, London, FO 371,91555, The General Political Correspondence of the Foreign Office, note of a meeting between Attlee and Churchill, 27th June 1951.
- PRO, London, FO 248/15275, The General Political Correspondence of the Foreign Office, the British Embassy and Consular Sections: Iran (Persia), Treasury Chambers, 7th June 1951.
