With a fanfare that was all but lost on the audience that he most sought to impress, British Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd last week offered rebellious Cyprus a constitution and a parliament.
Drawn up by Lord Radcliffe, the eminent British jurist who arbitrated the border between India and Pakistan in 1947, the long-heralded "liberal constitution" proposed to give control of domestic affairs to a 36-man legislature in which Greek Cypriots, who make up four-fifths of the island's 500,000 inhabitants, would hold a comfortable majority of 24 seats. Of the remaining twelve members, six would be appointed by the British Governor and six elected by the Turkish minority. In fact, however, the constitution would leave ultimate power in Cyprus in the hands of the British Governor, who, besides retaining overt control of defense, foreign affairs and internal security, would possess "reserve powers" which, in effect, give him an irrevocable veto over legislation.
Freedom Must Wait. Far more serious an objection to the Greeks than the elephant traps in Lord Radcliffe's constitution was the fact that the British proposals made no real concession to the basic Greek Cypriot demand for self-determination, i.e., union with Greece. To have made any such substantial concession at this moment might have so enraged the flag-waving, Suez-group backbenchers as to threaten Sir Anthony Eden's stay in office. But there was more than one lesson to be drawn from Britain's failure in Egypt. Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, veteran African desert fighter of World War II, wrote to London's Sunday Times: "Unless I, as a soldier, am grossly at fault in my estimate of Cyprus ... it has none or practically none of the requisites of an efficient military base." Unshaken by this argument, Lennox-Boyd last week clung stubbornly to the line that Cyprus is strategically vital and that self-determination must wait. If Greek Cypriots continued to insist on union with Greece, he said, the "inevitable" result would be partition of Cyprus' 3,572 square miles into Greek and Turkish zones.
"Illiberal & Undemocratic." Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. who argues that Greek control of Cyprus would pose an intolerable threat to Turkey's security, found the Radcliffe constitution "logical material for negotiation" and Lennox-Boyd's partition talk "an interesting, attractive idea." Yet one high British official who should know insists that "partition could never work because . . . you would have to shift whole villages. There is no one area where Turks predominate." Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Averoff denounced the British plan as "illiberal and undemocratic" and angrily pressed Greece's demand for a U.N. debate on self-determination for Cyprus. In Cyprus itself, the port of Famagusta was closed down by a protest strike.
Spruced-Up Façade. What Lord Radcliffe's constitution offered Cyprus was, in fact a façade of self-government carefully designed to preserve what the British in India used to call their paramountcy. The British government declared its readiness to transport a "reasonable" number of Cypriots to the lonely Seychelles Islands to discuss the Radcliffe constitution with Archbishop Makarios, exiled leader of the enosis (union with Greece) movement.