ABSTRACT
Not all Arabs were eager for an Egyptian victory in the war which broke out on 5 June 1967. Nasser had numerous Arab opponents and none were more bitter than the leaders of the federation of South Arabia. The federation had been established under British auspices by a number of tribal leaders from the Western Aden Protectorate in 1959. From the outset it was condemned by the Egyptians as a typical British contrivance designed to perpetuate imperial influence in the Arab world. Two events in September 1962 further animated the hostility between Egypt and the federation: at British prompting the Aden Legislative Council voted to join the federation despite resistance from the local population, while across the federation’s northern border a Republican revolution brought Egyptian troops to Arabia to fight the counterrevolutionary forces mustered by the Imam of Yemen. During the next five years the British and the federal rulers encouraged anti-Republican forces in Yemen and even conducted their own attacks on Egyptian forces. For their part, the Egyptians trained and armed National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgents in Yemen, who were then dispatched south to continue the campaign against British and federal authority. Consequently, when the Foreign Office invited the British High Commissioner to offer an opinion on the attitudes of the federal leadership following Israel’s attack on Egypt, Trevelyan explained that, although they were obliged to offer public support for the Arab cause, they were ‘wholly cynical in their support for Nasser, whom they would like to see battered, but if he came out on top against Israel . . . they would probably compete to see who could get to Cairo first.’1 Despite getting the result they wanted from the war, the federal leaders endured a series of catastrophes in its aftermath: the police force in Aden mutinied, the insurgents took over the district of Crater for two weeks and then, one by one, the rulers themselves were expelled from their patrimonies. On 29 November 1967 the last British forces withdrew and the NLF established the People’s Republic of South Yemen (PRSY). The purpose of
this chapter is to examine the collapse of British and federal authority in Aden and the Protectorates, including the significance of the June 1967 war to this outcome. Both the British and their opponents have suggested that the June
1967 war contributed to the defeat of the federation and the triumph of the NLF. The nationalists in Aden purportedly interpreted the war as a signal to intensify their efforts to liberate the region from British control. Although the federal rulers were delighted by Nasser’s humiliation, the wider population were angered both by Israel’s victory and Egyptian propaganda implicating the British. The so-called ‘Big Lie’ that the British and Americans had participated in the Israeli attack, was transmitted to Aden where it was widely heard and widely believed. A population that was already receptive to nationalist sentiments was quite ready to accept that British treachery had contributed to the defeat of the Arab armies in the Sinai. Many thought that the British would continue their subterfuge in Aden and this disposition contributed towards the mutiny in the police force on 20 June 1967 and the overrunning of Crater by the NLF. Jonathan Walker’s account of these events notes, ‘it was clear many Arabs saw the Crater occupation as retribution for the crushing defeat of Arab armies in the Six Day War only two weeks before. Nasser had famously linked Britain to the Israeli cause and the NLF duly capitalized on Arab desires to see face restored.’2 Prior to the mutiny Trevelyan had been sufficiently concerned about the post-war intensification in anti-British feeling to withdraw civilians from isolated posts in the federal states and the nationalist stronghold of Crater.3
