1963-67: The Last Post
‘British forces struggled to defend one of the last bastions of the Empire’
Thanks to the BBC’s latest primetime drama series, The Last Post, suddenly everyone has heard about Aden, a hitherto little-remembered colony established by the British Empire to protect its ships sailing to and from India.
Royal Marines first landed in Aden in 1839 and a protectorate was established to stop attacks by pirates against British shipping. The place became a strategic transit stop between Britain, India and the Far East and by the late 1950s it was the second-busiest port in the world after New York, with the BP oil refinery in Aden a crucial asset.
During the 1950s Yemeni-armed rebel tribes were in revolt and in 1955 the British Army resumed control from the RAF to preserve internal security; although the garrison’s existence served to increase anti-British feeling. In the i960s. Britain’s only Arab colony became another proxy battleground of the Cold War and British forces struggled to defend one of the last bastions of the Empire.
Many regiments rose to the challenge, but, in a rapidly changing world, the ‘Aden Emergency’ was also the graveyard of military and political careers. The last go…
