ABSTRACT
A mere five years after the end of fighting in the Civil War, the Greek state engaged in a protracted effort to detach Cyprus from British colonial rule and pave the way for the union of the island with Greece. The initiative lay with the leadership of the Greek Cypriot community, which was bitterly divided between a pro-Soviet Left and a nationalist Right. The latter rallied round the Ethnarchy, the powerful ecclesiastical and lay institution through which the Church of Cyprus maintained the decisive political role it had enjoyed since the period of Ottoman rule. In January 1950, the Ethnarchy collected the signatures of the vast majority of the Greek Cypriot population in favour of Enosis. This informal plebiscite was intended as the first step towards the internationalization of the issue. Subsequently, the Ethnarchy secured the support of the Church and other pressure groups in the mother country in an effort to prompt the government towards the United Nations doorstep. Its tactics of relentless pressure nearly brought it to collision with the moderate ruling coalitions of the immediate post-Civil War period. In July 1952, after he failed to induce the government of Plastiras and Venizelos to raise the issue at the United Nations, Archbishop Makarios went on the air denouncing the Greek leaders’ ‘lack of ‘patriotic courage’. He then appealed to the people to ‘impose’ internationalization upon its reluctant rulers.
