The London Conference, 1955

The EOKA violence and Makarios= growing prominence internationally led the British to convene a conference in London to discuss the Cyprus question. Left out of the proceedings were Cypriots themselves, a pattern that would repeat over time. Harold MacMillan, then foreign secretary, was keen to freeze Cypriot enosis activism by engaging Turkey more fully, though by this point Ankara was fully attentive, and to discuss Aself-governance@ under certain tight restrictions. This ATripartite@ conference, while inconclusive, was symbolically important. Here, historian Robert Holland, who teaches at the University of London, explains the behind-the-scenes significance of the meeting in his 1998 book, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954-1959.

The Turkish Government had accepted the invitation on 2 July, and on 8 July the Greek Government followed suit. In securing these acceptances, explicit assurances were given to both Athens and Ankara that the British Government would not attempt a fait accompli by 'bouncing' the conference with a Cyprus plan of its own. This was exactly what Macmillan intended to do. Although the plan he began to evolve came to be referred to amongst the civil servants as a tridominium, the term was not really appropriate, since Greece and Turkey were merely to be invited to appoint 'Assessors' to advise the Governor and his Executive Council on certain matters. Because the Foreign Secretary's main purpose was to 'bury' self-determination, it was, he argued, tactically necessary to be 'really bold' with regard to self-government, in order to 'set Left and Right in Cyprus fighting one another and forgetting Enosis" (this was where liberalism' came in). A vital element in the conference scheme concerned the date. This had been left out of the original invitations. By delaying its occurrence till the end of August, the Greek Government might be lulled into optimism about an outcome favourable to their hopes, and not have the time, once this was confounded, to go through all the procedures involved in inscribing Cyprus again on the agenda of the forthcoming United Nations session. Averting further discussion in New York was the underlying objective of the whole exercise. This scenario did not, of course, bode well for relations with Greece. Ambassador Peake, for example, warned that the moment the British suggested that Turkey regain a role in the administration of Cyprus after the long interval since 1878, the Greeks would walk out of the conference. What Peake did not grasp was that this was far from being seen as disadvantageous in Whitehall. 'This is an excellent point,' a Foreign Office official noted approvingly. 'On this showing the [Tripartite] talks are bound to break down -- and possibly explode.'

The high-risk nature of this gambit, and its not entirely respectable character, generated tensions. The United States Embassy in London sensed this when their usual Whitehall contacts appeared 'more and more jumpy' whenever Cyprus was mentioned, and finally clammed up altogether. Relations between departments in Whitehall assumed a fractious tone. Colonial Office officials were instinctively opposed to subjecting a complicated problem in their own sphere of responsibility to all the distortions of international politics. Whatever may have been true earlier, most saw the advantages in steering the Cyprus problem if possible back into the more conventional channels of internal colonial political development which were working well enough elsewhere in the remaining British Empire. Hostility to the Macmillan plan was forcefully expressed by the Assistant Under-Secretary, H. T. Bourdillon, who caustically remarked that the scheme was in truth not one for 'tridominium', but for 'Pan-demonium', and that the real purpose seemed to be to kill 'any chance of the Cypriots making up their own minds about their future in conditions of orderly progress.= >I am disturbed . . . that we are aiming for a deadlock,= Bourdillon remarked in terms Makarios himself might have approved, adding acidly, 'with great respect I do urge that we . . . pursue our proposal for self-determination with the real object of bringing it about, regarding it as I think we do as the only means of achieving a permanent solution.' Nevertheless, the ball had effectively been taken out of the Colonial Office court. Nor is there much sign that Alan Lennox-BoydCalways caught between the pragmatism of his department an

his close alignment with the 'colonial' right-wing within his own partyCpressed with any vigour on his senior colleagues the compromise of self-determination after a fixed interval which Armitage had floated with Archbishop Makarios in Nicosia. On 7 August the Cabinet confirmed that at the Tripartite Conference any mention of self-determination should be excluded. >It would now seem to be impossible', a minute in the Colonial Office recorded, 'to find a formula which would be acceptable to both the Cabinet and the Cypriots.'

This careful formulation of the essential struggle was itself very telling. The Cabinet decision of 7 August in effect handed the initiative in British policy, temporarily, to Macmillan. Everything now hinged on the management of the conferenceCand of the explosion, or more properly the threat of an explosion, which was part and parcel of the strategy of bringing Greece to heel over Cyprus. But why had the Greek Government accepted an invitation which many people pointed out might be used for a hostile purpose? For one thing, the Americans pressed them to accept, and in doing so gave assurances that the conference was a genuine attempt on Britain's part to forge a compromise. Whilst some parts of Greek opinion reacted strongly against the matching invitation to Turkey, Greek ministers had never denied that Ankara had a legitimate interest in the Muslim minority in the island. What they did not accept was that Turkey had an equivalent interest in Cyprus to that of Greece. No hint of this had been given in the invitation precisely to avoid scaring them off. Entry to a conference on Eastern Mediterranean affairs in London afforded a recognition of Greece's integration into the West, the yearning for which was still close to the sensitive surface of Athenian political psychology. While, therefore, Archbishop Makarios rushed to Athens on 11 July and pressed on politicians his suspicions of British tactics, he could not sway them. In accepting the conference invitation, the Greek Foreign Minister, Stephanoupoulos, told Macmillan in Strasbourg that he hoped it would mark the 'renewal of the traditional friendship between Greece and the United Kingdom', though he added the rider that the 'centre of gravity' of the Greek position over Cyprus remained self-determination. Makarios had, however, gained one compensation: it was simultaneously announced in Athens that if the Tripartite meeting proved abortive, Greece remained committed to raising Cyprus at the United Nations thereafter. This episode served, nonetheless, to intensify the rivalry between the Archbishop and the 'Rally' ministry, the latter made weaker by Papagos' illness (he was dying of cancer, and from the late summer was never seen again in public). When Makarios preached at Trooditissa monastery on15 August, he strikingly emphasized not the theme of Enosis, but that of liberty', stressing in his address that Cypriots 'could manage their own fate and future'. The potential of Cyprus for dividing British officialdom always paled besides its capacity to set Greeks against each other.

Yet the most ominous possibility was not that of setting Greek against Greek, or Left against Right, but rather that of setting Greek against Turk and vice versaCtriggering, that is, ethnic rivalry, with all its capacity for a more extended violence than that currently blighting the island's life. We must at this point go back somewhat on our chronology to focus more sharply on developments within the Turkish-Cypriot community, and its relations with both the Cyprus and Turkish Governments, since so much was eventually to hinge on these factors. The volatility of Greek-Cypriot politics during the early 1950s had been echoed on the Turkish side where a new, essentially opportunist grouping, the Federation of Turkish Associations, sought to monopolize minority politics, just as the Enosists strove to dominate majority politics. What the Federation wanted, however, was not merely guarantees against any future Greek domination, but distinct privileges within the existing orderCprivileges which, it was calculated, the hard-pressed Cyprus Government might be badgered into giving them. Furthermore, in trying to extract such advantagesCincluding Federation control over the Evkaf, with its money and patronage, over a revived Muftiship, as well as special rights in educationCTurkish-Cypriot politicians set out to secure the sponsorship of Ankara. That it was the Turkish-Cypriots who in the first instance embroiled a reluctant 'Motherland' on their own behalf, not the other way round, is noteworthy, since it was a fact later obscured by the degree to which the Cypriot Muslims became purely and simply the pawns of Ankara's diplomacy, in stark contrast to the more complex and fractious relations always subsisting between Greek-Cypriots and Athens.

The classic approach of the Cyprus authorities to its Muslim subjects, and inter-communal relations generally, was laid out by Governor Sir Andrew Wright when he had visited the Turkish capital in December 1953Cthe visit itself, indeed, was a sign of heightened concern with Turkish-Cypriot political activity in the colony. On that occasion Wright stated his Government's aim that 'the Turks in Cyprus should develop from their past history as good Turks, just as the Greeks should develop as good Greeks. It was not their policy to attempt to turn either Turks or Greeks into Englishmen.= Wright went on to warn the British Ambassador to Turkey, Sir James Bowker, that 'it would not be either wise or helpful' to enlist the influence of the Turkish Government to counter the Greek movement in Cyprus; and he concluded with the stern declaration that the Government in Nicosia 'must be master in its own house'. Mastery in its colonial house, insofar as communal matters were concerned, meant preserving a stable equilibrium in which British authority could not be credibly impeached as favouring one community over the other. During the Emergency, and ever afterwards, much Greek-Cypriot opinion came to believe that the British power in the island had sought to 'divide and rule' ever since their arrival in 1878. The truth was that as late as the beginning of 1954 the beau ideal of British rule in Cyprus was not to be soiled and compromised by involvement in communal politics, but rather to be suspended above it, mitigated only by encouragement to the Turkish underdog to 'keep its end up' within Cypriot society and commerce.

The trouble was that circumstances made such impartialityCat once benevolent and self-interestedCincreasingly hard to sustain. Initially the guidelines shifted almost imperceptibly. After Wright's visit, the British Embassy in Ankara, backed by the Foreign Office in London, maintained its pressure for some 'discreet differentiation' to be shown to Turkish-Cypriots over their Greek compatriots. Whereas Wright, for all his passionate contempt of Enosis, was in fact more interested in Greek than Turkish affairsChis wife, for what it is worth, was a Greek-speakerCArmitage began his Governorship when conditions were forcibly edging the administration towards meeting at least some Turkish desiderata. Discreet differentiation shortly began to assume a more overtly political form. Something of this atmosphere is conveyed by the report of the two British counsellors from the Ankara Embassy who visited the colony in June 1954, and whose report recorded that the local authorities had taken 'considerable trouble for us to meet the majority of the responsible and reliable Turks on the island'. Although, the account added, this category amounted to no more than ten individuals, it was noted that things seemed about to improve since 'a number of younger men were coming on'. 'Coming on' meant tacit grooming under British patronage; one of these rising stars in the small Turkish-Cypriot world was Rauf Denktash, just then beginning a legal and political career in which his relationships with the British were to turn full circle not once, but several times over. As we noted previously, it was the need to lubricate this gradually tightening Anglo-Turkish tie within the island which was one factor shaping the fateful 'Never' statement of 28 July 1954.

Meanwhile, the everyday realities of communal coexistence in Cyprus remained, if not impervious, then resistant to fundamental change. There were no communal incidents during the United Nations debates in the autumn of 1954. The outbreak of violence on the island on 1 April 1955 inevitably had an impact on communal affairs, as the banding together of various Muslim bodies (including the Federation) into the 'Cyprus is Turkish Party' suggested. Yet for some time there was no direct conflict between the two main ethnic groups. EOKA violence was initially directed against British installations, and then against Greek 'traitors'; Grivas, indeed, explicitly forbade any victimizing of Turks. In this he was quite practicalCEOKA could not fight everybody at once. Rather the process of ethnic polarization at first worked indirectly by differentiating Greek and Turkish relationships with the colonial power. Whilst the Greek community, therefore, distanced itself from the British administration, local Turks seized the opportunity to press their own distinctive claims and grievances on the Cyprus Government with a new stridencyCan attitude described by Armitage, whose patience quickly wore thin, as 'aping the oppressed minority'. Through the summer of 1955 events pushed the Turks and the British into closer harness, as the formation of the Auxiliary Police illustrated. Relations between Greeks and Turks in the colony began to change for the worse, therefore, not as a result of mutual violence or even innate hostility, but by dint of the shift in the connection each had with the local administration, and especially the security machine. The Times of Cyprus, for example, referred to the 'picture of contrasting life' between the two main communities as they reacted differently to events, or were variously affected by the actions of the Army and Police. In this way Greek and Turkish Cyprus were progressively sealed off from each other, allowing suspicion and even hatred to fester. This still had a long way to go on the eve of the Tripartite conference, but the possibilities were visible enough for thoseCon all sidesCwith an interest in exploiting racial and religious feeling.

The same complex distortions began to obtrude at the international level. The mainland Turkish press had responded to the initial news of 1 April, not by outright attacks on the Greeks, but by criticizing the Cyprus Government for failing to prevent the outrage. Although the Ankara regime distanced itself from the more extreme of these outbursts, so that Prime Minister Menderes refused an audience to the Turkish-Cypriot delegation which immediately rushed to Ankara, it was not long before signs emerged that the Turkish Government was 'raising its price' for supporting the United Kingdom. For the British, it was vital that as much of the price of Turkish help as possible was paid by people other than themselves. In this connection considerable interest was taken in the Foreign Office when it appeared that a campaign was under way in Turkey to implicate in the dispute the Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul, with its penumbra of Greek civilization and commerce. This was described in London as having 'interesting possibilities'; there was also a recrudescence of the sentiment, expressed at a slightly earlier point, that 'a few riots in Ankara would do us nicely', the implication being that such disturbances would provide a useful background to events by obscuring all traces of Turkish 'equivocations' over the Cyprus issue. In this context riots in Ankara (where there was no exposed Greek community) was one thing, and in Istanbul quite another. Nevertheless, Greek concern about the safety of their own compatriots in Turkish cities, and above all the preservation of the great religious and cultural legacy of Constantinople, was to emerge as a consistent thread running through the Cypriot power-struggle.

Doubts and hesitations in Whitehall about the ramifications of the projected Eastern Mediterranean conference went beyond the confines of the Colonial Office. Even some individuals in the Foreign Office felt uneasy. When, however, it emerged that the Greek Government had made a preliminary overture of its own to Turkey, the Foreign Secretary instructed his officials to put aside all 'scruples' in what everybody recognized was to be a diplomatic sleight of hand. 'The stronger the position the Turks take at the outset [of the conference] the better it will be for us and for them' was how Macmillan stated the position on 16 July. Sir James Bowker was set to work to get this message across to his hosts in Ankara. It was not a very difficult task for an accomplished diplomat. The consequences of setting things up in this way were to be such that it is important to be clear as to Macmillan's real purposes. He did not set out to generate violence beyond the conference chamber, though it may well be deduced that incidental violence in certain places was an acceptable risk. Nor was it his intention that the meeting itself should break up in public acrimony, though this, too, would not necessarily be bad from the British vantage-point, so long as the Greeks could be portrayed as the culprits. What Macmillan aimed at was an outcome in which the Greeks should be confronted head-on with a 'negative' Turkey, so creating a gap into which he could successfully insert himself as an arbitrator and man of peace. The problem was that it did not take much knowledge of history to realize that holding a conference between Greece and Turkey on such a basis was like standing close to a pile of explosive material with a burning brand. When Prime Minister Menderes saw the Turkish delegation off to the Tripartite Conference at the end of July he spoke emotively in his address of the 'day of massacre' which Enosis would bring to the Turks of Cyprus, and recalled the glorious triumphs of the infant Turkish Republic against Greece in 1922. When the American Embassy in Ankara smelling danger, dispatched an official to the Turkish Foreign Office to complain at such provocative use of language, the only answer he got was that It had to be done'. . .

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Macmillan presided over the proceedings, since the Colonial Secretary was away in Africa, and only turned up for the closing stagesCan index of the degree to which the Colonial Office had been sidelined in Whitehall over Cyprus policy. The Foreign Secretary kicked off the opening session with a self-confessedly 'dull and pompous orationCa tactic which helped to lift the British Government above the fray. He outlined the list of British achievements in Cyprus and denied claims that British troops were engaged in a 'reign of terror' in the island." Yet there was also a vein of threat when, in descrying the evils of EOKA, he sought to widen the obloquy by stating that if a 'heavy burden rests with those who commit these outrages . . . a still greater responsibility lies on those who have encouraged the perpetrators to believe that their acts of barbarism are noble and heroic' ( just in case the Greek delegates did not let this pass, the Foreign Secretary had with him a prepared brief on Greek complicity in gun-running, based, inevitably loosely, on the Aghios Georghios case). After adopting this subtly threatening tone, Macmillan quickly assumed his other pose, that of conciliator and man of reason, stressing that the introduction of self-government in Cyprus 'must be the first aim', though he was careful not to say precisely what he had in mindCnot least since the Turkish Foreign Minister, Fatin Zorlu, had warned him personally the previous day of his Government's hostility to any new constitution for Cyprus. The British minister wound up his presentation by saying how much he looked forward to the opening statements of the Greek and Turkish Governments to be made the following day 'not only to prevent difference [over Cyprus] but to establish a still closer cooperation with our two NATO allies in the Eastern Mediterranean'.

The intended effect of the Greek and Turkish responses to Macmillan's carefully chosen words was not, of course, to prevent differences over Cyprus, but to highlight their utter irreconcilability. Over the next two days Greco-Turkish divisions over Cyprus were laid bare for all the world to see. The responsibility for this did not lie with the Greek delegation, if only because, closeted with people more powerful than they were, it was in their interest to keep matters as cool and restrained as possible. Stephanoupoulos, Foreign Minister of Greece, therefore spoke with moderation, whilst not giving away any part of his country's position. By contrast, Zorlu proceeded to put the Turkish case in its most extreme form, as he had been encouraged to do. It need have surprised nobody that, rhetorically, he went the whole hog. His argument that any alteration of the status quo in Cyprus would automatically throw into question the legal basis of the settlement arrived at in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 was grist to this mill. Turning from law to geography, Zorlu pointed out that not only was Cyprus closer to Anatolia than to Greece, it was part of Anatolia, having been linked to it by land within recent geological eras, so that 'when we take into account the state of the population in Cyprus, it is not sufficient to say . . . that 100,000 Turks live there. One should rather say that 24,000,000 Turks live there.' Zorlu went on to make the claim that if self-determination were ever to be applied in Cyprus, 'the guiding principle shall not be the consideration of majorities and minorities, but rather the granting of full equality to the two [ethnic] groups=Cthat is, the wishes of the 18 per cent of the population comprised of Turks was to be put on a par with the 80 per cent comprised of Greeks. To make the point in the most practical way, a group of Turkish-Cypriots turned up at the Colonial Office asking to be directed to sources in London where they could obtain guns. A brazen quality was henceforth to attach itself to Turkish dealings over Cyprus; it was their way of doing business. The Turks, Macmillan had assured Eden in advance, would be 'rigid in substance'. Zorlu now left no doubt how rigid the substance might be.

After these preliminary exchanges, both the Greek and Turkish delegations saw no point in continuing with a conference in which there was clearly no chance of any agreement. For the British Foreign Secretary, however, one of his key objectivesCgetting a British plan 'on the table', so that it could be claimed afterwards at the United Nations that a new generous 'offer' had been madeChad not yet been achieved. It took a good deal of cajoling by Macmillan, and the use of his position as chairman, to keep the conference going by insisting on an adjournment until 6 September. He used the interim to introduce into his private talks with Stephanoupoulos and Zorlu the tridominium proposal which up till this point had been kept under wraps. The Greeks were promised 'a real, genuine advance' in the political life of Cyprus (though one which did not prejudice British control of foreign policy, defence, and internal security). The Turks were offered participation in a 'partnership at the centre' including an advisory role in the administration of Cyprus under continuing British sovereignty. On self-determination itself, Macmillan was careful to emphasize, the interested parties should continue to 'agree to differ'. In that difference lay, according to Macmillan's scenario, the United Kingdom's best guarantee of its continued mastery over the island.

That the Greek Government would reject such a 'partnership' as just a way of smothering self-determination was certain. What mattered much more for Macmillan was that it should be accepted by Turkey. Any mention of a 'real, genuine advance' in Cypriot self-government, however, was to Zorlu and his colleagues a danger sign that the British, having marched the Turks up to the top of the Cypriot hill, would send them marching down again if it suited them. They were convinced that any constitution in the island would prove to be a slippery slope to Enosis. Their fear of such an outcome reflected the sense of vulnerability which was the obverse of the public, bullying face which ultimately was to make Zorlu anathema in Whitehall. When the latter saw Macmillan alone on 7 September he told him that the Turkish Cabinet had stayed up all night discussing the new British plan formally unveiled the day before, and that they rejected it categorically. The Foreign Secretary pleaded with him about the 'deplorable impression' which would be created if at the end of the conference the Greeks ended up seeming more reasonable than the Turks. The price the Turkish minister demanded, and received, for going along with Macmillan's scheme was that at the final plenary session he should be allowed to put carefully framed questions meeting the Turkish desiderata, and that he should receive certain prescribed answers.

The conclusion of the 'Tripartite Conference on the Eastern Mediterranean' was therefore just as stage-managed, and perhaps even more phoney, than the beginning. Stephanoupoulos began on Greece's behalf by stating that he would submit Macmillan's ideas to the Cabinet in Athens, but held out little hope of agreement to anything which so blatantly sought to deny self-determination to the Cypriots. Immediately afterwards Zorlu posed his crucial questions. The first was: 'Does the British Government intend to maintain in the present and in the future the right of sovereignty on the island of Cyprus, devolved upon Great Britain by the Treaty of Lausanne?' In the course of an intentionally prolix answer, the Foreign Secretary stated, >I am bound to say that there is no prospect of any change in the foreseeable future.= More definitive still was Zorlu's second question: If the British Government is determined to maintain sovereignty on the Island, does it, for the present or the future, accept any principle which might ultimately lead to the independence of the Island or its accession to another country?' To this Macmillan's unequivocal reply was, 'We do not accept the principle of self-determination, as one of universal application. We think that exceptions must be made in view of geographical, traditional, historical,

strategical and other considerations.' This was, in effect, just another, more complicated way of falling back on Hopkinson's 'Never' statement of 28 July 1954. That assertion, nonetheless, had at least been a unilateral British formulation, and as such retractable should Her Majesty's Government's views undergo a transformation. What had now been done was to inaugurate a process of making British policy on Cyprus hostage to Turkish interests, which was quite another matter. Armitage had already warned that the consequence of any repetition of the Hopkinson principle would be further violence in Cyprus. Fresh violence was already under way, though not in the manner, or the place, the Governor had predicted.

From Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954-1959 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 64-70, 72-75. The foot notes are not included.