ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how in June and November 1920 the British Government finally announced that it would retain Cyprus indefinitely against the wishes of the pro-enosis supporters. Many British politicians, especially Conservatives and Unionists, opposed renewing the October 1915 offer to cede Cyprus to Greece. Lord Curzon, a strong opponent, even referred to Cyprus as the ‘Heligoland of the Eastern Mediterranean’ and felt that it would be a strategic miscalculation, as had been the Heligoland-Zanzibar exchange in 1890, to give Cyprus to Greece. On 16 January 1919, Sydney Armitage Smith, a Treasury official, penned a memorandum on the financial objections to ceding Cyprus to Greece. There was little pressure on imperialists from the UK, Greece or Cyprus, and the demand for enosis was weak, illegitimate and contradictory, thus the retention of the island for dubious future strategic gain was hardly questioned.
