POLICE RIOTS 1967

Police Riots 1967

In late June 1967 the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was due to take over responsibility for security in Aden's Crater district from the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. However, before this took place, on 20 June 1967 elements of the locally recruited Aden Police mutinied, seizing control over the district in alliance with insurgent forces, staging several ambushes of British troops in the Crater district's streets. Eight British soldiers from a transport unit were attacked and killed by the mutineers, and other British troops were killed in coordinated separate attacks. Three men from the Argylls (its Officer Commanding 'D' company, along with two privates) were killed when a patrol of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers that they were accompanying was ambushed. All but one of the patrol being shot and killed.

For some days a stand-off around Crater existed between British Forces and the mutineers, with the authorities hesitating. Then, just before sunset on 3 July 1967 Mitchell commanded an operation that reoccupied the Crater. The Argylls and other units entered and reoccupied the Crater, accompanied by 15 bagpipers playing "Scotland the Brave" and the Argylls' regimental charge, "Monymusk".

Mitchell subsequently used what were described as “strong arm methods” to maintain order in the Crater district for the remaining months before British withdrawal from Aden. The reoccupation itself was almost bloodless. One local man was killed and control of the Treasury building holding the Federation's currency reserves was restored. Mitchell then used an integrated system of observation posts, patrols, checkpoints and intelligence gathering to maintain Crater as a pacified area whilst security conditions elsewhere in Aden began to deteriorate. However, British troops in Crater became subject to sniper and grenade attacks.

Allegations were made of abuses by Mitchell and the troops under his command. There were also allegations that British troops had engaged in some looting within the district. Mitchell used the Chartered Bank building in the Crater district as his headquarters, and army snipers positioned upon its roof would shoot at anyone thought to represent a threat in the streets below. A BBC reporter stated "Once we stood together in Crater watching the Argylls stacking, as in a butcher's shop, the bodies of four Arab militants they had just shot and Mad Mitch said: 'It was like shooting grouse, a brace here and a brace there'." Mitchell (nicknamed 'Mad Mitch' by sections of the press) imposed what was described as "Argyll law" in Crater.

The reoccupation of Crater made Mitchell popular with sections of the British press and public. At the same time it brought disapproval from Mitchell's superiors in both the Army and the High Commission. He was criticised for being a publicity-seeker, and there were accusations that the troops under his command lacked discipline. One High Commission official in Aden describing the Argylls as "a bunch of Glasgow thugs" (a statement for which he later apologised). The reoccupation and subsequent control of the Crater district were controversial. General-Officer-Commanding Middle East Land Forces, Major-General Philip Tower, feared that it would merely provoke trouble. He was of the view that engaging in a full reoccupation of Crater, with its risk of casualties, was pointless given that British withdrawal from Aden was imminent and British strategy was moving to the role of neutral peacekeeping.

Lt. Col. Colin Mitchell with Chief Superintendent Mohammed Ibrahim of the Armed Police - Crater 5th July 1967

Tower had authorized a probe into Crater but Mitchell had used this authority to carry out a full military reoccupation. Tower subsequently ordered Mitchell to "throttle back" on the operation. Mitchell stated that he considered Tower’s approach to be “wet hen tactics”. The situation that developed was described in The Times as follows:

“Mitchell frequently appeared on television: a small, handsome man with a direct, pugnacious manner, speaking the robust, un-minced words that the British had not heard from their army officers since the acceleration of the Imperial decline had begun nearly two decades before. Newspapers took him up as a popular hero, proudly bestowing upon him the sobriquet of 'Mad Mitch' "

The final British withdrawal from Aden took place in November 1967. Mitchell and the Argylls arrived back at their Plymouth garrison on 27 November. Between July and November the regiment had suffered 5 dead and 25 wounded in Aden, a near 5% casualty rate. Unlike all the other battalion commanders from Aden, Mitchell was not decorated, receiving instead only a Mention in Despatches. It was also indicated to him that further career advancement within the army was unlikely.

Interviewed by the BBC in 1985, General Tower said "Colonel Mitchell, for reasons of his own, wanted to cut a dash with the Argylls in the Crater" thereby accepting unnecessary casualties. Reports began to circulate to the effect that the Argylls were to be disbanded as part of a general cutback in defence spending. In July 1968, Mitchell gave notice of his intention to resign his commission at the end of the year. Although he had not given the customary 7 months’ notice required of senior officers, his resignation was accepted with effect from 1 October 1968.

Mitchell died in his 71st year on 20 July 1996 at Westminster in London, after a short illness.