INTRODUCTION This publication reproduces in full Rohan Butler’s 1962 report on British Policy in the Relinquishment of Abadan in 1951.1 Butler, a Fellow of All Souls College Oxford, joined the Foreign Office in 1945 as an editor of the official documentary history of British foreign policy, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939. He compiled the Abadan report in response to a suggestion made in 1957 by the Cabinet Secretary that Whitehall departments should commission internal histories of significant episodes of policy or administration that would enable the administrator ‘to see current problems in perspective’. Submitted in March 1962, the report documents the loss of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s key refinery at Abadan, Britain’s biggest single overseas investment, following the nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry. The episode was a humiliating blow to British prestige and influence in the Middle East brought about by a range of factors: a weakened Labour government, unimaginative and complacent thinking in official circles, an inability to project military power following the loss of India, and a lack of support, as well as adverse interference, from the United States. Butler’s critical study of the crisis not only provided a comprehensive narrative of events but also drew out political and administrative conclusions for the future administration of foreign policy. Despite the length of the report, there was general agreement that it was a valuable document not only in substance but for the lessons it drew and it was circulated internally, to certain heads of mission and to other government departments. The report is published along with several related documents. The first is a commentary by Lord Strang, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office at the time of Abadan. He candidly assessed his own performance, along with that of Ministers, diplomats and the Foreign Office during the crisis, making his commentary an important and interesting addendum to the report itself. Strang concluded by picking up on Butler’s call for a ‘resolute reappraisal’ of British foreign policy as the basis for ‘a more compact and positive policy,’ and asked whether British diplomacy needed ‘a new look’ in the post-imperial age, one based more on national self-interest, like that of the French. Sir Harold Caccia, Permanent Under-Secretary when Butler’s report was submitted, posed this question in a letter to heads of mission in February 1963. Coming just after the rejection of Britain’s first application to join the EEC, the letter prompted plenty of response. Butler was asked to analyse and synthesise the replies, which he submitted in May 1963 as ‘A New Perspective for British Diplomacy’—the second additional document. In it Butler made several recommendations: increased public relations at home in mobilising support for British foreign policy, matched by ‘sharper thinking and plainer speaking’ in its execution; the strengthening and modernisation of representation abroad; and a high-level ‘Positive Planning Committee’ to review possibilities for imparting ‘extra thrust’ into diplomatic effort. This latter recommendation was to lead to the formation of the Foreign Office Planning Staff (today called the Strategy Unit). The final additional document is a despatch from the British Ambassador in Tehran from December 1956, reflecting on the state of 1
FO 370/2964, The National Archives (hereafter TNA).
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