EYEWITNESS TO THE DEATH OF EMPIRE AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN BELLOBE

“IT IS A FORGOTTEN STORY OF MILITARY INCOMPETENCE, SHAMEFUL COVER-UPS AND A UNIQUE GLIMPSE INTO AN EMPIRE ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE”

“THERE WAS DEFINITELY A PECKING ORDER DEPENDING ON HOW LONG YOU HAD BEEN ON CYPRUS AND WHETHER YOU’D ‘GOT YOUR KNEES BROWN’”

The Cyprus Emergency was one of the biggest military operations by the British armed forces since 1945. 35,000 British soldiers were stationed in Cyprus between 1955-59 to defeat a guerrilla insurgency whose numbers could be counted in their hundreds. Although war was never officially declared, the ‘Emergency’ was a bitter conflict between the colonial authorities and armed Greek Cypriot nationalists (known as ‘EOKA’) who wanted self-determination and union with Greece.

The Emergency turned Cyprus into a warzone, and the British introduced unpopular military policies to counter the insurgency, including detention without trial, severe press censorship, roadblocks, anti-riot patrols and the death sentence for bearing arms. Despite these punitive measures and vastly superior numbers of soldiers, Britain failed to defeat EOKA, and Cyprus’s