"Most Intractable Question"

In the 33rd week of the Cyprus emergency, Prime Minister Eden got up in the House of Commons and announced the failure of "another approach to this most intractable question on the international level." The British government had finally agreed to the principle of self-determination for the Cypriots, Eden explained, but its valued ally Turkey would not stand for it. Therefore "Her Majesty's Government have to accept that for the moment progress by this means cannot be realized."

At this point, having brought things to a dead stop, Eden sought to regain the appearance of momentum. He announced that Lord Radcliffe. the eminent constitutional lawyer who arbitrated the tangled boundaries between new India and new Pakistan in 1947 would be sent to Cyprus to work on "the framework of a new liberal constitution." Then Eden set about fencing in Radcliffe's area of maneuver. Radcliffe may confer and chat with British officials on Cyprus and "any others who may wish to speak to him," said Eden, in fact with anyone except the man who mattered most, the exiled Greek Cypriot leader Archbishop Makarios. "If the Archbishop were to take action to denounce the terrorism," Eden conceded, "a new situation would be created." And in any event, no new Radcliffe constitution could go into effect until "terrorism" had been crushed.*

Eden's statement pleased his diehard Tory backbenchers, but no one else. Opposition Leader Hugh Gaitskell raised such sharp questions that an ex-guardsman major on the Tory side got up, pale and indignant, to say that Gaitskell's remarks amounted "to one of the most highly treasonable statements ever made by a member of the Opposition." Amidst outraged howls, the major was forced to withdraw. Writing in the Spectator, waspish Randolph Churchill protested that Britain now had a Turkish Foreign Secretary, and added, "This is what passes for statesmanship in the Eden era."

For all its retreat under Turkish pressure, the Eden government had made a concession of a sort in sending Lord Radcliffe to Cyprus, having hitherto refused to take any step at all while terrorism continued. Governor Sir John Harding, hoping to save face, said that Radcliffe was coming "now that the terrorists are beginning to crack." In Nicosia, "with deep resentment," the Greek Cypriot community declined to treat with Radcliffe while Archbishop Makarios was still in exile.

* In the crushing process, Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd noted last week, 105 Cypriot youths aged 14-18, and 13 boys under the age of 14, have been sentenced to whipping.

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