The recent events across the Middle East and North Africa, and particularly the current upheaval within Libya, make it a topical time to look back at the Conservative Party’s dealings with and attitude towards this country up to Gaddafi’s seizure of power in September 1969.
Newly-independent from an Anglo-French UN trusteeship in December 1951, the outlook for the country was grim:
Raw materials being almost completely lacking, the outlook for industrial development is dim. Over-population and under-employment are certain to be increasingly difficult problems, and there is a cancerous growth of petty officialdom.
[Reports by the Conservative Commonwealth Council*, 1955 and 1956: CCO 507/3/1].
Libya’s viability was ensured in the short-term only by the signing of a 20-year mutual defence treaty with Churchill in July 1953 which allowed the establishment of a British military base in the country, as well as a similar agreement with the United States for a massive US Air Force base:
Libya’s principal asset is her strategic position, and military facilities her most saleable commodity, without which her financial position would be hopeless… What Libya receives in return, directly and indirectly, represents 50% of her total national revenue.
It must be stressed that even where Britain, the liberator of Libya is concerned, it is sheer economic necessity that leads the Libyan Government to exploit its strategic position for financial ends.
However, in reviewing the future of Britain’s military position in the Middle East, the outlook was already pessimistic:
Politically, Libya is still in its infancy, with no innate stability. Lacking strong guardianship, it is moreover already the cockpit of conflicting interests and ambitions. The recent murder of the Minister of Court, who was the power behind the Throne, has spotlighted the dissensions that exist among the ruling family, with its ailing King, who is shortly expected to abdicate.
Although the author of the report was 14 years premature in his anticipation of the King’s abdication, he went on to list a number of additional factors affecting Libya’s stability, including Egyptian expansionism and The preaching of emancipation from all Western influence by the numerous Egyptians in Libya; Soviet encouragement of nationalist extremism throughout Libya and French North Africa; and the lack of any real affinity between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, which may easily lead to the break-up of the union, a goal apparently being encouraged by the growing Italian influence within the country. That Libya, not yet an oil producer, might discover its own resources, would however, render her independent of British financial support and would tend to intensify the struggle for political predominance, both internal and external.
Libya in the 1950s was considered simply as a client state during the Cold War struggle for influence between East and West. Interestingly, noting that the Government has recently revoked licences for the sale of arms to Libya during today’s troubles in the country, the view in 1956 was that:
A great deal of resentment is caused in Arab countries by hesitation or delay in supplying them with the arms to which they believe themselves entitled. Every Arab country desires an army, as an expression of its independence, and will have it by hook or by crook, as surely as a Bedouin will have a gun.
With a certain amount of resignation, the report concluded that:
As things are, it would certainly be hazardous to take for granted that no situation will supervene which is likely to jeopardise our treaty rights….So long as Libya is financially dependent on Britain and the United States, and so long as the present King is on the throne, it is unlikely that our position is in immediate danger.
The predictions proved correct. Oil reserves were soon discovered, and the King’s death precipitated the coup which brought Gaddafi to power in September 1969; British and American treaty rights were soon abrogated.
In Opposition at the time of the coup, the main issue of concern before the Conservative Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee was the Libyans’ recent acquisition of British-made Chieftain tanks and the risk of them coming into the hands of the Russians, whose:
influence was spreading along the North African coast towards Tunisia
[Minutes of the Foreign Affairs Committee, 16th December, 1969: CRD 3/10/16].
In attempting to guide future British policy in the region, the Conservative Commonwealth and Overseas Council* argued in 1971 that support to the countries of North Africa and the Middle East for:
their genuine independence, free of all binding ties with larger powers… was likely to be ‘the most fruitful policy for Britain to pursue….
But that Libya was:
‘going through a period of uncertainty, initiated by the revolution of September 1969, which brought President Qaddafi to power….Some little time must pass, however, before the country settles into a pattern whose development can be reasonably predicted. [Report entitled, ‘Britain’s role in a changed world’, March 1971: CCO 507/3/3].
Below, extracts from Overseas Review (No. 65, Aug/Sep 1971) – the monthly commentary on foreign affairs published on behalf of the Conservative Overseas Bureau – featuring a review of ‘recent’ unrest across the Middle East, between May-September 1971, including attempted coups in Egypt, Morocco and the Sudan, as well as conflict in Jordan, and union between Egypt, Libya and Syria instigated by Col. Gaddafi, which provided for intervention in another member country to restore a regime which had been overthrown [PUB 135/2]:
*[The Conservative Commonwealth Council (from 1966, the Conservative Commonwealth & Overseas Council) was a group of Conservative parliamentarians and Party members set up in 1953 with the approval of Conservative Central Office, with the purpose of ‘stimulating study and activity within the Party on Commonwealth and Colonial matters, and would become a rallying-point for anti-Communists and anti-Socialists in the Commonwealth.’ Records of its deliberations can be found in the Conservative Party Archive]