Sir Humphrey Trevelyan

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Although I was an outsider, from the Foreign Office and not from the Aden Service, I had an insider’s view of the last six months of British rule in Aden thirty years ago. This was because the last High Commissioner, Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, decided that he wanted a private secretary from the Foreign Service, to which he himself had belonged. I was already in the country because the Foreign Office wanted one of their people to have some knowledge of it in readiness for the Embassy which would be accredited to the independent government.

 

I do not know if Trevelyan grasped from the beginning that his real task would be just to get the British army and civilian officials out with the minimum bloodshed. I suspect he did, because he was extraordinarily acute and the minister who appointed him, George Brown, was of the school that saw no future at all in Britain’s presence in Arabia.

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Trevelyan, a veteran of the Indian Political Service and a former Ambassador in Moscow (and avid reader of Pushkin), was a truly great man, shrewd and kind, leader, manager and tactician. Some examples: relations between Government House and the military were traditionally tense, so on his second day in Aden Trevelyan overrode protocol and insisted on visiting the Commander in Chief in his headquarters; so simple the gesture, so great the benefit! He seems to have been the only official in the Foreign Office who understood that a clear decision from George Brown at breakfast was worth any amount of fuddled discussion later in the drinking day.

 

On a larger issue, he successfully fought against London’s determination to set a date for final withdrawal, arguing that it would leave control of the end game entirely in the opposition’s hands. He was right, and at final departure, to the strains of "Fings Ain’t Wot They Used to Be", not a shot was fired.

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Sir Humphrey Trevelyan (b.1905-d.1985) served as High Commissioner of Aden from 22 May 1967 to 30 Nov 1967