Britain's Bloody

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AT THE beginning of his book on War Since 1945' ically observes that "British servicemen, principally soldiers, have been fighting somewhere in the world every year since 1968"

In fact 1968 - with Britain's undercover war in Oman - was no exception.

It is no accident that British forces have been bombing, shooting and killing in dozens of countries over the last 37 years, while Britam has not been troubled by the slightest hint of invasion.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain, as the pioneer capitalist power, gained a huge world empire. For every democrat in London, as Leon Trotsky observed, there were ten slaves in the colonies.

Since World War 2 the British Army has been resisting, or trying to control, the decline of that imperial power in face of the newlyconfident revolt of the oppressed millions of the colonial world.

Its biggest operation was in Palestine (then a British "mandate territory') in 194548. With 100,000 British troops (the equivalent in relation to the population of cou: sion turt tary million in Britain), " the ntry" , as Carver dis paslately records, was red into a form of n nili" camp"

In Palestine the Bri tish Army was not trying to keep British rule but to control, to Britain's advantage, the battle between the Zionist Jews and the anti-Zionist Arabs.

Britain clashed Zionist groups armed under its own wing:

Yet techniques of colonial war were developed, in a series of massive cordon and search operations.

At the same time British troops were helping , the monarchy in Greece to beat down left-wing Resistance forces. In 1948 they started a major colonial war in Malaya.

In June 1948 a state of emergency was declared, after a wave of strikes in the tin mines and rubber plantations. Left-wingers led by the Malayan Communist Party went underground and started armed struggle. The war was to continue even after independence was finally won in 1957.

The strategy of the British Army - 45,000 strong by 1954 - was to Daily sweep entire areas, moving all the people into military camps. Once in the camps, people were subjected to strict curfews and controls.

Identity cards were checked every day. Food was supplied only after the identity checks. Even then, communal cooking had to be imposed to make sure no food reached the guerrillas.

By the end of 1953, 500,000 people had been moved into these camps.

Malaya was a model not only for the techniques but for the outcome. In strict military terms the Army could defeat the guerrillas. But the political cost of doing so made it clear that Britain had to grant independence. What the war achieved (in this case though not in others) was to secure the crushing of the most militant or left-wing forces while independence was granted.

Britain's colonial war in Kenya used similar methods. It began in October 1952, when the colonial adminismail tration declared a state of emergency, imposed new pass laws, deported 100,000 Africans to reserve areas, and jailed Jomo Kenyatta and 182 other nationalist leaders.

Over the following years, more than one million Africans were herded into special camps or villages. 80,000 were interned detention camps.

Rural areas were ruthlessly swept by the British forces. In 'prohibited' areas the troops coula shoot al sight; in 'special' areas, they could shoot anyone who did not stop when challenged. Areas were surrounded by ditches filled with bamboo spikes - built by press-ganged African labour -while the soldiers swept them, or the RAF bombed the forests.

But the revolt affected the towns, too. So in April 1955 almost the whole African population of Nairobi was driven out into the fields to be surveyed and searched. 17,000 were interned. 2,400 deportea to the "reserves'.

The rebellion was crushed after some 10,500 had been killed, and, as In The of BI wars nationalised, British power was very clearly on the wane. In Cyprus 20,000 troops in an island only 60 miles by 140, with some 550,000 people, were not able to preserve British control.

Cyprus became independent in 1959, Kenya and many other African countries in the 1960s.

But Kenya and Cyprus had been not just colonies but important military bases for British influence in the whole Middle East. In 1962 the British government decided to concentrate its forces in Aden. They would be there "permanently, it said.

A base, it reckoned, could surely be maintained in this tiny Crown Colony of 30 square miles, with only 220,000 people, surrounded by largely desert hinterland.

But the trade unions and the People's Socialist Party in Aden thought different, demanding the union of Aden with Yemen, where a Nasserite revolution took place that same year.

By 1965, "strikes, riots and demonstrations became weekly, if not daily, occurrences" , as well as guerrilla imas | itain' since there was a major mutiny in the locally-recruited, Britishled 'South Arabian Army' In November 1967 Britain withdrew.

Today Britain continues with its efforts to beat down the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and its undercover war against rebels in Oman. Its colonies are fundamentally gone for ever, but the British ruling class still tries to maintain itself as a world military power.

That is the motive behind sending the fleet to the Falklands. It also tells us something about the nature of the British armed forces being sent there.

Defeats in colonial wars since 1945 has pushed the top brass of the French armed forces into two coups, one successful (May 1958), one not (April 1961).

Britain's wars have been much smaller than France's. (There were 152,000 French troops in Indochina and 200,000 in Algeria as against 10,000 British troops in Kenya or 20,000 in Cyprus).

But already some British veterans of colonial wars have been openly active in right-wing politics, like Mad Mitch' of Aden and Walter

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Michael Carver, former chief of the British Army lacon-