CYPRUS: Time for a Change

Two years ago London sent out one of its finest soldiers as Governor of Cyprus with orders to hold the island at all costs as a base for British forces in the Middle East. Doughty Field Marshal Sir John Harding did the job with soldierly ruthlessness. But, the chastening experience of Suez destroyed all thought of a reasserted British dominance in the area, and Cyprus was no longer essential to British strategists. Last week Her Majesty’s government announced that in December Harding will be replaced by Sir Hugh Foot, 50, now Governor of Jamaica.

As governor, Harding had become identified with the policy of repressing EOKA underground terrorism by hangings, curfews, communal fines and 20,000-soldier man hunts. He deported Archbishop Makarios for leading the Greek Cypriot agitation for union with Greece, and publicly declared that Britain should never negotiate with him. Clearly, if Britain hoped to negotiate a political settlement, Harding had to go.

His successor is a career diplomat with a reputation for getting along with all kinds of people on every side of a dispute. Sir Hugh is a brother of Ipswich’s new Labor M.P. Dingle Foot and left-wing Laberite Michael Foot, editor of Aneurin Beva.i’s Tribune. Tall, shrewd, Cambridge-trained Sir Hugh has served in posts ranging from Nigeria (where a terrorist slashed his jacket in an assassination attempt) to Palestine (where both Arabs and Jews considered him a friend). He is favorably remembered in Cyprus as a World War II civilian official who was liked by both Greeks and Turks. In his six years in Jamaica, he has been a key figure in the island’s move toward independence within the Caribbean Federation. Though as a diplomat he eschews politics, he is a close personal friend of Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell. Said a government official,”If anyone can solve the tangle of Cyprus, Hugh Foot can.”

The government disclaimed any intent to go back on Harding’s stern regulations, but one highly placed Londoner who knows Sir Hugh says: “He would never have accepted this thankless job without a broad agreement with the government, without a prospect of resolving the conflict.” In New York, where he was busy lobbying for next month’s U.N. Cyprus debate, Archbishop Makarios shrugged: “A solution is just a matter of time. Cyprus will be free.” But Turkey’s President Celal Bayar still growled that Turkey will never let an island 40 miles off its coast fall into Greek hands. Most hopeful solution: an independent Cyprus within the British Commonwealth, with defense facilities on the island to be British in fact, but NATO’s in name.