Naval General Service Medal 1915-62

The Persian Gulf 1909-14 - Towards the end of the 19th Century the trafficking of arms in the Persian Gulf area had escalated to dangerous proportions.

 

The British Government pressurised the Governments of Persia and Muscat to take action to bring this business under control. By 1897 Persia had managed to reduce the involvement of their nationals but Muscat was still a serious problem.

 

In 1908 the Brussels Arms Conference was held but France refused to give up her treaties with Muscat which allowed them to import and export both arms and other goods.

 

The real concern for the British Government was the large amount of weapons and ammunition that were going from Muscat and ending up on the North West Frontier of India. Britain and India continued to negotiate with France and the Sultan of Muscat.

 

Agreement was soon reached with the Sultan of Muscat but not with France. So the Royal Navy, with support from the Royal Indian Marine, carried out what was effectively a war in support of the Sultan’s efforts to end the trade in arms; an activity which also threatened to destabilise the whole area.

 

A number of Royal Naval and Royal Indian Marine ships were continuously deployed in the area to stop the running of arms from Muscat, which were usually carried in small dhows.

 

The approach adopted was to use patrols by not only the Warships but also to deploy their boats to act as independent cruising boats on separate patrols. These were also supplement by a number of small armed launches that also patrolled independently. By allocating areas to each vessel a large amount of the coastline could be covered.

 

The Iraqi Revolt Against The British - The Iraqi revolt against the British, also known as the 1920 Iraqi Revolt or Great Iraqi Revolution, started in Baghdad in the summer of 1920 with mass demonstrations by Iraqis, including protests by embittered officers from the old Ottoman army, against the British occupation of Iraq. The revolt gained momentum when it spread to the largely tribal Shia regions of the middle and lower Euphrates. Sheikh Mehdi Al-Khalissi was a prominent Shia leader of the revolt.

 

Sunni and Shia religious communities cooperated during the revolution as well as tribal communities, the urban masses, and many Iraqi officers in Syria. The objectives of the revolution were independence from British rule and creation of an Arab government. Though the revolt achieved some initial success, by the end of October 1920, the British had crushed the revolt. Although the revolt was largely over by the end of 1920, elements of it dragged on until 1922.

 

During the 1920 revolt, another anti-British rebellion took place in the north Iraq by the Kurds, who were trying to gain independence. One of the major Kurdish leaders of the Kurdish revolt was Sheikh Mahmoud Barzanji.

 

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The British Mandate In Iraq - On 11 November 1920 Iraq became a League of Nations mandate under British control with the name 'State of Iraq'. The British established the Hashemite king, Faisal, who had been forced out of Syria by the French, as their client ruler. Likewise, British authorities selected Sunni Arab elites from the region for appointments to government and ministry office.

 

Faced with spiralling costs and influenced by the public protestations of war hero T. E. Lawrence in The Times, Britain replaced Arnold Wilson in October 1920 with new Civil Commissioner Sir Percy Cox. Cox managed to quell the rebellion, yet was also responsible for implementing the fateful policy of close cooperation with Iraq's Sunni minority. The institution of slavery was abolished in the 1920s.

 

Britain granted independence to the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932, on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases and transit rights for their forces. King Ghazi ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal's death in 1933, while undermined by attempted military coups, until his death in 1939. Ghazi was followed by his underage son, Faisal II. 'Abd al-Ilah served as Regent during Faisal's minority.

 

On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and members of the Golden Square staged a coup d'état and overthrew the government of 'Abd al-Ilah. During the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War, the United Kingdom invaded Iraq for fear that the Rashid Ali government might cut oil supplies to Western nations because of his links to the Axis powers. The war started on 2 May and an armistice was signed 31 May.

 

A military occupation followed the restoration of the pre-coup government of the Hashemite monarchy. The occupation ended on 26 October 1947. The rulers during the occupation and the remainder of the Hashemite monarchy were Nuri as-Said, the autocratic Prime Minister, who also ruled from 1930–1932, and 'Abd al-Ilah, the former Regent who now served as an adviser to King Faisal II.

 

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The British Caspian Flotilla - The British Caspian Flotilla was a naval force of the Royal Navy established in the Caspian Sea in 1918. It was part of the allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.

 

The force was established under the command of Commodore David Norris in September 1918. Norris traveled by road from Bhagdad to Enzeli with a convoy of lorries transporting naval guns.

 

In January 1919 he was reinforced by 12 Coastal Motor Boats sent by train from Batumi the Black Sea. The force was built up by threatening unarmed Russian Merchant ships with torpedoing unless they surrendered. These ships were then armed with the naval guns, officered by British officers with a crew guarded by Royal Marines.

 

The flotilla maintained bases at Enzeli and Krasnovodsk, and in addition facilitated lines of communication between British land units in Baku, Petrovsk (Chechen Island), Alexandrovsk.

 

The Flotilla included: HMS Kruger and HMS Orlionoch which for a period hosted No. 266 Squadron RAF.

 

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The Arab Revolt In Palestine 1936-39 - The 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine was a nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine against British colonial rule, as a demand for independence and opposition to mass Jewish immigration.

 

The revolt consisted of two distinct phases. The first phase was directed primarily by the urban and elitist Higher Arab Committee (HAC) and was focused mainly on strikes and other forms of political protest. By October 1936, this phase had been defeated by the British civil administration using a combination of political concessions, international diplomacy (involving the rulers of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan and Yemen) and the threat of martial law.

 

The second phase, which began late in 1937, was a violent and peasant-led resistance movement that increasingly targeted British forces. During this phase, the rebellion was brutally suppressed by the British Army and the Palestine Police Force using repressive measures that were intended to intimidate the Arab population and undermine popular support for the revolt.

 

According to official British figures covering the whole revolt, the army and police killed more than 2,000 Arabs in combat, 108 were hanged and 961 died because of gang and terrorist activities. In an analysis of the British statistics, Walid Khalidi estimates 19,792 casualties for the Arabs, with 5,032 dead: 3,832 killed by the British and 1,200 dead because of terrorism, and 14,760 wounded.

 

Over ten percent of the adult male Palestinian Arab population between 20 and 60 was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled. Estimates of the number of Palestinian Jews killed range from 91 to several hundred. Although the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine was unsuccessful, its consequences affected the outcome of the 1948 Palestine war.

 

It made the British Mandate give a crucial support to pre-state Zionist militias like the Haganah whereas on the local Palestinian Arab side the revolt forced the fleeing into exile of the main local Palestinian Arab leader of the period as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini.

 

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The British Post-War Activity In South-East Asia - After the Japanese surrender of 15 August 1945, large numbers of Japanese forces were left in positions of occupation, particularly in Java, Sumatra and French Indo-China. In the absence of an Allied occupation force, the Japanese forces retained responsibility for policing and security activities.

 

Gradually, these Japanese forces were relieved by Allied forces and taken in to captivity as POW's before repatriation to Japan and the territories involved could be handed over to their former colonial powers.

 

Jewish Insurgency In Palestine - Jewish insurgency in Palestine refers to violent campaigns carried out by Jewish underground groups against the British forces and officials in Mandatory Palestine between 1939 and 1947.

 

The tensions between Jewish militant underground organizations and the British mandatory authorities rose from 1938 and intensified with the publication of the MacDonald White Paper of 1939, which proposed restrictions on Jewish immigration and independence for Palestine with an Arab majority after ten years.

 

Though World War II brought relative calm, the tensions again escalated into an armed struggle towards the end of the war, when it became clear that the Axis Powers were close to defeat. The struggle lasted until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

 

The armed conflict escalated during the final phase of the World War II, when Irgun declared a revolt in February 1944, ending the hiatus in operations it had begun in 1940.

 

Starting from the assassination of Lord Moyne in 1944, the Haganah actively opposed the Irgun and Lehi, in a period of inter-Jewish fighting known as the The Hunting Season. However, in autumn 1945, after the end of the war the Haganah began a period of co-operation with the two other underground organizations, forming the Jewish Resistance Movement.

 

The Haganah refrained from direct confrontation with British forces, and concentrated its efforts on attacking British immigration control, while Irgun and Lehi attacked military and police targets. The Resistance Movement dissolved in recriminations in July 1946 following the King David Hotel bombing, with Irgun and Lehi going their own way, while the main underground militia Haganah acted mainly in supporting Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.

 

The conflict lasted until the UN partition plan, on 29 November 1947, after which the civil war between Palestinian Jews and Arabs eclipsed the previous tensions of both with the British.

 

Within Britain there were deep divisions over Palestine policy. Dozens of British soldiers, Jewish militants and civilians died during the insurgency campaign. The conflict led to heightened antisemitism in the UK and, in August 1947, after the hanging of two abducted British sergeants, to widespread anti-Jewish rioting across the UK.

 

The conflict caused tensions in Britain's relationship with the United States.

 

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The Malayan Emergency - The Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), from 1948 to 1960.

 

The Malayan Emergency was the colonial government's term for the conflict. The MNLA termed it the Anti-British National Liberation War. The rubber plantations and tin mining industries had pushed for the use of the term 'emergency' since their losses would not have been covered by Lloyd's insurers if it had been termed a 'war'.

 

Despite the communists' defeat in 1960, communist leader Chin Peng renewed the insurgency in 1967; it lasted until 1989, and became known as the Communist Insurgency War.

 

Although Australian and British armed forces had fully withdrawn from Malaysia years earlier, the insurgency still failed.

 

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The Yangtze Incident - The Amethyst Incident, also known as the Yangtze Incident, in 1949 involved the British Royal Navy ship HMS Amethyst being trapped on the Yangtze River for three months, during the Chinese Civil War.

 

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The History Of Valletta Harbour - The Grand Harbour was the base for the Knights of St John for 268 years, and after their departure became a strategic base for the British for a further 170 years. It was the site in the late 16th century of a devastating tornado that killed 600 people and destroyed a shipping armada.

 

The area was the scene of much of the fighting in the First Siege of Malta when the Turks attempted to eject the Knights of St John. The whole area was savagely bombed and mined during the Second Siege of Malta during World War II, as the docks and military installations around the port were legitimate targets for Axis bombers. However collateral damage wrecked much of Valletta and The Three Cities, and caused large numbers of civilian casualties.

 

Malta Dockyard is still active but with the departure of the British Military the harbour lost much of its military significance. A considerable part of Malta's commercial shipping is now handled by the new free port at Kalafrana, so the harbour is much quieter than it was in the first half of the 20th century.

 

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The Suez Canal Zone - The Convention of Constantinople in 1888 declared the canal a neutral zone under the protection of the British, who had occupied Egypt and Sudan at the request of Khedive Tewfiq to suppress the Urabi Revolt against his rule.

 

They were later to defend the strategically important passage against a major Ottoman attack in 1915, during the First World War. Under the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the UK retained control over the canal. In 1951 Egypt repudiated the treaty, and in October 1954 the UK agreed to remove its troops. Withdrawal was completed on 18 July 1956.

 

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The Cyprus Emergency - The Cyprus Emergency was a military action that took place in Cyprus primarily consisting of a terrorist campaign by EOKA to remove the British from Cyprus so it could be reunified with Greece. It led to Cyprus being granted independence in 1960.

 

In 1954 Britain announced its intention to transfer its Suez military headquarters to Cyprus. The terrorist campaign began on 1 April 1955. After a series of follow up incidents, the Governor General Sir John Harding declared a state of emergency on 26 November of that year.

 

The British encountered great difficulty obtaining effective intelligence on EOKA as the majority of the Greek Cypriot population supported and/or feared them. They were also hampered by a drain on manpower caused by the Suez Crisis and Malayan Emergency.

 

Towards the end of the 1950s the British enjoyed more success. Cyprus became an independent republic in 1960 with Britain retaining control of two Sovereign Base Areas, at Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

 

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The Suez Crisis - The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez Canal Crisis, Suez War, or Second Arab-Israeli War was a diplomatic and military confrontation in late 1956 between Egypt on one side, and Britain, France and Israel on the other, with the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations playing major roles in forcing Britain, France and Israel to withdraw.

 

The attack followed the President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser's decision of 26 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal, after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the building of the Aswan Dam, which was in response to Egypt's new ties with the Soviet Union and recognizing the People's Republic of China during the height of tensions between China and Taiwan.

 

The aims of the attack were primarily to regain Western control of the canal and to remove Nasser from power, and the crisis highlighted the danger that Arab nationalism posed to Western access to Middle East oil.

 

Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel, and then began to bomb Cairo. Despite the denials of the Israeli, British, and French governments, allegations began to emerge that the invasion of Egypt had been planned beforehand by the three powers.

 

Anglo-French forces withdrew before the end of the year, but Israeli forces remained until March 1957, prolonging the crisis. In April, the canal was fully reopened to shipping, but other repercussions followed.

 

The three allies, especially Israel, were mainly successful in attaining their immediate military objectives, but pressure from the United States and the USSR at the United Nations and elsewhere forced them to withdraw.

 

As a result of the outside pressure Britain and France failed in their political and strategic aims of controlling the canal and removing Nasser from power. Israel fulfilled some of its objectives, such as attaining freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran.

 

As a result of the conflict, the UNEF would police the Egyptian–Israeli border to prevent both sides from recommencing hostilities.

 

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The Jebel Akhdar War In Oman - In December 1955, Sultan Said bin Taimur of Muscat and Oman in a disagreement about land and associated oil rights, sent troops of the Muscat and Oman Field Force to occupy the main centres in Oman after Imam Ghalib bin Ali (along with his younger brother Talib bin Ali Al Hinai), led the Imamate of Oman in the Jebel Akhdar War against Sultan Said bin Taimur's with attacks on his lands.

 

In July 1957, the Sultan's forces were withdrawing, but they were repeatedly ambushed, sustaining heavy casualties. Sultan Said bin Taimur, however, with the intervention of infantry (two companies of the Cameronians) and armoured car detachments from the British Army and aircraft of the RAF was able to suppress the rebellion. Talib's forces retreated to the inaccessible Jebel Akhdar.

 

Colonel David Smiley, who had been seconded to organize the Sultan's Armed Forces, managed to isolate the mountain in autumn 1958 and found a route to the plateau from Wadi Bani Kharu.

 

On 27 January 1959, they occupied the mountain in a surprise operation. Ghalib, Talib and Sulaiman managed to escape to Saudi Arabia, where the imamate's cause was promoted until the 1970s. The Treaty of Seeb was terminated and the autonomous Imamate of Oman abolished giving way to the present day Sultanate.

 

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The Brunei Revolt - The Brunei Revolt broke out on 8 December 1962. The TNKU rebels began co-ordinated attacks on the oil town of Seria (targeting the Royal Dutch Shell oil installations) and on police stations and government facilities around the protectorate.

 

The revolt began to break down within its first hours of operation, having failed to achieve key objectives such as the capture of Brunei town and the Sultan.

 

The revolt is seen as one of the first stages of the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation.

 

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