Cover Notes

What has happened to Aden? Why did we go there? Why did we leave? Since November 1967 when the last helicopter took off from the golf-course carrying the Royal Marine rearguard that had been covering the evacuation the last battle-scarred vanished from the news.

Yet, as Stephen Harper shows in this vivid and exciting book, the departure of the Imperial power has by no means inaugurated an era of satisfied tranquility where each man lives peaceably under his own vine and his own fig tree.  On the contrary, Aden has become the lair of international terrorists.  In the church where the Governor used to read the lessons on Sundays recruits to such organizations as the Japanese Red Army or the Palestine Liberation Front attend courses in urban guerilla tactics and the techniques of murder and kidnapping. Figures like Carlos and the disciples of the Bader Meinhof group enjoy a hospitality extended to the most vicious enemies of the human race.  The wheel has come full circle.  Aden in the 1970s is in modern terms what it was in the 1830s when the East India Company reluctantly allowed an enterprising officer to obtain a lease from a minor sheikh – a nest of pirates.

Stephen Harper was frequently in Aden during the last ten years of the British presence, covering for the Daily Express the series of local wars and subversive activities by which Britain’s enemies tried to prise her hold loose.  As he shows from brilliant first-hand reporting the courage and skill of our forces rose to the most desperate occasions.  Indeed Colonel Mitchell and the Argylls showed the world that urban violence could be met and mastered.  It was not military quality but political will that was lacking.
Besides giving a lively account of the 129 years of British occupation Stephen Harper surveys the scene in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa as it is today and points to some little noticed and not unhopeful developments.  His assessments of the double threat presented by Soviet seapower and Arab diplomacy to the oil supplies on which the Western economy is so dangerously dependent gives food for thought.  But it is people that interests him and will interest his readers: Arab Sheikhs, revoluntionary leaders, colonial administrators and policemen, above all soldiers and airmen whom he knew as only those who shared their dangers and hardships could.  As a first-hand account of the final scenes of the Empire this book could hardly be bettered.
 

Reviews

I served in Aden 1967 during our final year of British rule.
Though I read the book when it first came out - I have been searching for a copy.
Stephen Harpaer not only saw if from a journalist view but he captured it from a soldiers view - one best I have seen published on that stage of the British presence in Aden

Please note that your review will not show up on this page straight away.