Anthony McIntyre
shares some thoughts on a book about the British military figure, Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell. 


Back in 2014, upon completion of this book, I began pulling my thoughts together for a review. Something else intervened that consumed a lot of my time and diverted my attention away from one site of British state terrorism, the Crater in Aden, to another, West Belfast. Not exactly how the author of this industrious work, Aaron Edwards, would express it. But our widely differing opinions on such matters have never proved an obstacle to healthy dialogue. 

Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell did not like what he saw in June 1967 as he surveyed the scene of an attack on British troops in the Crater district of Aden. In what subsequently became known as "Black Tuesday", members of the South Arabian Army and the Aden Armed Police revolted against the military might of their colonial masters, inflicting serious casualties. 

The British military death toll for the day was 23, the biggest one-day loss sustained by the British Army since the Korean war. It was the type of casualty rate not to be repeated for another twelve years when the Provisional IRA mercilessly punished the psychopathic Parachute Regiment for its war crimes in Ballymurphy and Derry. 

The Provisional IRA was obviously aware of the Aden conflict. It was a few short years after it that the IRA found itself pitched in full guerrilla warfare against the British Army. One of the calculations then was that if the IRA could kill as many soldiers as had been lost in Aden, then the British would have to consider withdrawal. It was a woefully inadequate understanding of the dynamics driving British involvement in Ireland and was in part responsible for the prolongation of the armed conflict, serving to entrench an impossibilist republican objective. 

The troops in Aden were of course forfeiting their lives to keep some other country within the British sphere of influence, echoing that memorable Basil Fawlty quip about the glory of British soldiers dying to keep China British. Their Arab killers were just as determined to be rid of them. The battle to either impose or shake off a shackle was pitched at an auspicious international time for those seeking to expel foreign powers. 

More specifically, a Labour government no longer as eager on jingoism and empire had decided to pull the plug. A serious cut back in military expenditure combined with a shrinking economic field of crops meant that Britain’s “time in the front rank of great powers was sadly at an end.” Readers like myself would not see this as something to wax sad at.

The conflict had its provenance in the 1830s when some in British officialdom came to see Aden in terms of its strategic value as a useful blocker to the expansionist ambitions of both France via Egypt and Russia through Persia. Its importance was enhanced as Britain considered how best "it could project its military power while protecting the key commercial arteries, particularly India.” Which helps explain why Aden had been governed until 1937 as part of “British India.” From then on it became a fully fledged British crown colony in its own right. In essence, until being kicked out in 1967, the British remained in possession of stolen goods.

In 1963 the port city became the state of Aden, the same year which saw a hand grenade attack against the British High Commissioner, Sir Kennedy Trevaskis. It was the first salvo in heralding a campaign of political violence that would sound the death knell for another of Britain’s land grab projects. The British had taken a bloody nose at Suez, which saw Egypt get its tail up. Nasser, with Soviet approval, began to encourage a push against the British in the wider region. Radio Cairo was urging Arabs everywhere to put an end to British imperialism. A head of steam was building up, and when it blew Britain would get burned.

Termed Britain’s Vietnam by the Daily Express, the violent conflict never remotely reached the levels of destruction and obliteration that took place in South East Asia.  

After the deaths of his 23 comrades Colin Mitchell was determined to reoccupy the Crater district and impose his own brand of Tribal Law, or in military parlance Argyll Law. Mitchell was determined to avenge the deaths, three of whom were from his own regiment, the Argyll and Southern Highlanders, veterans of the Borneo campaign. He was not beyond bullying his superior officer to get his way, having neither time nor patience for the caution of “the nutters up there”. One of the "nutters up there" later described the Argylls as a "bunch of Glasgow thugs." 

While livid at the deaths inflicted on his comrades Mitchell was motivated by something more than slaking the thirst for vengeance.  "A self confessed imperialist from boyhood" he was now embarking "on his one man crusade to arrest the decline of British prestige in Aden." He survived to make it to Aden only because of a decision 21 years earlier to leave the King David Hotel minutes before the Irgun blew it apart. In the army for the long haul, being in the military “was like a religion to him.” In the end it proved to be as illusory as religion as well.  

He successfully took back Crater on 3 July, two weeks after the attacks, the Daily Mirror triumphantly proclaiming:

For the first time in two weeks, - since twenty three British soldiers, three of them Argylls, were murdered – the British were back in Crater.

Taking it back was the easy part – the result of a tacit agreement between British officials and the NLF - whom the British claimed not to recognise but were willing to talk to. Keeping it quiescent was something else. A lot of animosity was generated amongst the local population by the methods "Mad Mitch" employed and which later led to allegations of brutality and the by now standard accusations Britain faces whether in the North of Ireland, Afghanistan or Iraq. 

The author too readily takes Mitchell at his word in regard to “tolerant toughness”. One retired veteran spoke of “using terrorist weapons and tactics against terrorists". We who have experience of the British military in the North know only too well what that means. A year before Mitchell’s takeover of Crater Amnesty International had issued a damming report on British methods.

The book might have been more academically defensible were the author not so sympathetic to the people he writes about and indeed extols. Yet, there is a refreshing honesty about his tendentiousness which he makes no attempt to dress up as an impartial account. Edwards has made good use of both archival material and veterans prepared to talk to him, and has been complimented for bringing to the fore a lot of material previously inaccessible. The descriptions of the military clashes often aided by the accounts of British troops who took part in them are vivid. Yet, the book despite its title remains more a history of the withdrawal from Aden than it is a straightforward biography of Colin Mitchell.

Aaron Edwards, 2014, Mad Mitch's Tribal Law: Aden And The End Of Empire. Transworld Books. ISBN 978-1-78057628 - 2.

 ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Mad Mitch's Tribal Law

Anthony McIntyre
shares some thoughts on a book about the British military figure, Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell. 


Back in 2014, upon completion of this book, I began pulling my thoughts together for a review. Something else intervened that consumed a lot of my time and diverted my attention away from one site of British state terrorism, the Crater in Aden, to another, West Belfast. Not exactly how the author of this industrious work, Aaron Edwards, would express it. But our widely differing opinions on such matters have never proved an obstacle to healthy dialogue. 

Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell did not like what he saw in June 1967 as he surveyed the scene of an attack on British troops in the Crater district of Aden. In what subsequently became known as "Black Tuesday", members of the South Arabian Army and the Aden Armed Police revolted against the military might of their colonial masters, inflicting serious casualties. 

The British military death toll for the day was 23, the biggest one-day loss sustained by the British Army since the Korean war. It was the type of casualty rate not to be repeated for another twelve years when the Provisional IRA mercilessly punished the psychopathic Parachute Regiment for its war crimes in Ballymurphy and Derry. 

The Provisional IRA was obviously aware of the Aden conflict. It was a few short years after it that the IRA found itself pitched in full guerrilla warfare against the British Army. One of the calculations then was that if the IRA could kill as many soldiers as had been lost in Aden, then the British would have to consider withdrawal. It was a woefully inadequate understanding of the dynamics driving British involvement in Ireland and was in part responsible for the prolongation of the armed conflict, serving to entrench an impossibilist republican objective. 

The troops in Aden were of course forfeiting their lives to keep some other country within the British sphere of influence, echoing that memorable Basil Fawlty quip about the glory of British soldiers dying to keep China British. Their Arab killers were just as determined to be rid of them. The battle to either impose or shake off a shackle was pitched at an auspicious international time for those seeking to expel foreign powers. 

More specifically, a Labour government no longer as eager on jingoism and empire had decided to pull the plug. A serious cut back in military expenditure combined with a shrinking economic field of crops meant that Britain’s “time in the front rank of great powers was sadly at an end.” Readers like myself would not see this as something to wax sad at.

The conflict had its provenance in the 1830s when some in British officialdom came to see Aden in terms of its strategic value as a useful blocker to the expansionist ambitions of both France via Egypt and Russia through Persia. Its importance was enhanced as Britain considered how best "it could project its military power while protecting the key commercial arteries, particularly India.” Which helps explain why Aden had been governed until 1937 as part of “British India.” From then on it became a fully fledged British crown colony in its own right. In essence, until being kicked out in 1967, the British remained in possession of stolen goods.

In 1963 the port city became the state of Aden, the same year which saw a hand grenade attack against the British High Commissioner, Sir Kennedy Trevaskis. It was the first salvo in heralding a campaign of political violence that would sound the death knell for another of Britain’s land grab projects. The British had taken a bloody nose at Suez, which saw Egypt get its tail up. Nasser, with Soviet approval, began to encourage a push against the British in the wider region. Radio Cairo was urging Arabs everywhere to put an end to British imperialism. A head of steam was building up, and when it blew Britain would get burned.

Termed Britain’s Vietnam by the Daily Express, the violent conflict never remotely reached the levels of destruction and obliteration that took place in South East Asia.  

After the deaths of his 23 comrades Colin Mitchell was determined to reoccupy the Crater district and impose his own brand of Tribal Law, or in military parlance Argyll Law. Mitchell was determined to avenge the deaths, three of whom were from his own regiment, the Argyll and Southern Highlanders, veterans of the Borneo campaign. He was not beyond bullying his superior officer to get his way, having neither time nor patience for the caution of “the nutters up there”. One of the "nutters up there" later described the Argylls as a "bunch of Glasgow thugs." 

While livid at the deaths inflicted on his comrades Mitchell was motivated by something more than slaking the thirst for vengeance.  "A self confessed imperialist from boyhood" he was now embarking "on his one man crusade to arrest the decline of British prestige in Aden." He survived to make it to Aden only because of a decision 21 years earlier to leave the King David Hotel minutes before the Irgun blew it apart. In the army for the long haul, being in the military “was like a religion to him.” In the end it proved to be as illusory as religion as well.  

He successfully took back Crater on 3 July, two weeks after the attacks, the Daily Mirror triumphantly proclaiming:

For the first time in two weeks, - since twenty three British soldiers, three of them Argylls, were murdered – the British were back in Crater.

Taking it back was the easy part – the result of a tacit agreement between British officials and the NLF - whom the British claimed not to recognise but were willing to talk to. Keeping it quiescent was something else. A lot of animosity was generated amongst the local population by the methods "Mad Mitch" employed and which later led to allegations of brutality and the by now standard accusations Britain faces whether in the North of Ireland, Afghanistan or Iraq. 

The author too readily takes Mitchell at his word in regard to “tolerant toughness”. One retired veteran spoke of “using terrorist weapons and tactics against terrorists". We who have experience of the British military in the North know only too well what that means. A year before Mitchell’s takeover of Crater Amnesty International had issued a damming report on British methods.

The book might have been more academically defensible were the author not so sympathetic to the people he writes about and indeed extols. Yet, there is a refreshing honesty about his tendentiousness which he makes no attempt to dress up as an impartial account. Edwards has made good use of both archival material and veterans prepared to talk to him, and has been complimented for bringing to the fore a lot of material previously inaccessible. The descriptions of the military clashes often aided by the accounts of British troops who took part in them are vivid. Yet, the book despite its title remains more a history of the withdrawal from Aden than it is a straightforward biography of Colin Mitchell.

Aaron Edwards, 2014, Mad Mitch's Tribal Law: Aden And The End Of Empire. Transworld Books. ISBN 978-1-78057628 - 2.

 ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

2 comments:

  1. Great review - there's an interesting documentary about Mitchell on YouTube: "End of Empire" and it also has an episode on the Irgun gang.

    Mitchell's son Angus is an historian and writer, specialising in histories of Roger Casemount:

    https://www.obrien.ie/angus-mitchell

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for that Brandon - one to watch on Youtube, bourbon in hand over Christmas! Watched one on Stalingrad like that the other evening!

    ReplyDelete