The Greek Disaster

Painting by Alexandros Alexandrakis

75 years ago Britain ceased to stand alone against fascism.

True, 'alone' had a rather broad meaning as we had Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the rest of the British Empire on our side, but from the fall of France on 17th June 1940 until 27th October 1940 we were the only nation in Europe not conquered, collaborating or neutral.

Then, unexpectedly, we had an ally.

How Not To Run A War

Fascism was supposed to restore the vitality of a decadent Europe. Dithering democracies would be
replaced by decisive leadership. Reason, and the other trappings of the Enlightenment, were to be ditched in favour of Will.

The results were some of the worst decisions ever made by the leaders of nations at war. Hitler's decisions to declare war on first the Soviet Union and then the United States were, with hindsight, ghastly mistakes. His decision to pursue the Final Solution was not just objectively immoral, it was also subjectively stupid at a time his nation was fighting for its own survival and Jews were willing to serve. Japan's decision to attack Pearl Harbour led inevitably to the nations defeat and ruin. On the other side Stalin's decision to appease Hitler rather than prepare for war almost ended his rule.

Meanwhile Churchill's decision not not to surrender in May 1940 and Roosevelt's choice to aid Britain were clearly the right things to do. Democracy, the evidence suggests, is a better way to make decisions.

However of all the bonkers choices made by dictators in the Second World War, Mussolini's decision to attack Greece is possibly the daftest. But this mistake was not just the error of a vainglorious fool. It was the result of a rotten political system.

The Other Dictator

El Duce had once been the leading fascist in Europe. By 1940, with Hitler having conquered half the continent in a series of successful gambles, El Duce was looking very much like the junior partner. He had joined in the invasion of France, but the French threw in the towel after a week in which the Italians had done little more than drop a couple of bombs on Corsica. This wouldn't do for the man who wanted to found a second Roman Empire. Mussolini wanted his piece of the action. What's more he believed he had the men to do it.

The reality was that the Italian army was a joke that everyone got except him. One observer in Milan on the eve of war noted:

Everyone thinks only of eating, enjoying themselves, making money, and relaying witticisms about the great and powerful. Anyone who gets killed is a jerk ... he who supplies the troops with cardboard shoes is considered ... a sort of hero.

But if the Italian Army was seriously lacking in trouser, it more than made up for it in mouth. Mussolini's generals could certainly talk a good fight, and the great dictator was more than ready to listen.

The Braggart ... 

The obvious target for Italy was Egypt.  If they could capture the Suez Canal Britain would be cut off
from most of its empire and the fascists would have free reign in Europe.

What's more, with Britain fearing invasion across The Channel, the Middle East was seriously short of troops and equipment.

Italy had 300,000 men next door in Libya and 200,000 down the road in Ethiopia. Britain had 35,000 in Egypt, half of whom were pen pushing admin staff. However things didn't go well. First of all General Balbo, the Commander-in-Chief, died after being shot down by his own anti-aircraft guns. Then when Italian tanks met British armoured cars on the border the crews, in the words of the report afterwards, 'dispersed'.

Balbo's replacement, Graziana was at least smart enough to realise his army was pants. However, rather than deliver this unwelcome news to his boss, he took the opposite course of bigging up the British forces he was opposing until he claimed he was facing more soldiers and armoured cars in Egypt than existed in the whole empire.

When the advance actually began General Maleti, who liked to be known as 'the old wolf of the desert', got lost before he'd even crossed the Egyptian border. The only part of the Italian operation that actually worked was the catering. If an army really did march on its stomach the Italians would have reached Cairo in a week. In the event they crawled across the desert at a snail's pace.

The advance ground to a halt, and just to add injury to insult a surprise attack by Royal Navy carrier aircraft sank half the Italian fleet in harbour. Mussolini though was not bothered. He declined Hitler's offer of specialist troops to help and had every confidence Graziani would finish off the decadent Brits.

... And The Fool

However Graziana wasn't the only one around shooting his mouth off. Up in Italian occupied Albania there was Lieutenant-General Visconti Prasca. Highly ambitious he also appeared to have a fairly vague grasp of reality. It was to be a fatal combination.

Like most Italians at the time, he had a fairly low opinion of the Greeks. Prasca talked of 'liquidating' and 'shattering' the nation with his 'iron will'. A war would be little more than a 'rounding up' operation. The Italian High Command estimated it would require 20 divisions to capture Athens. However as a junior general Prasca was only allowed to command five, so he refused to allow his command to be reinforced.

Presca's fellow officers knew he was talking out of his fundament, but he had the ear of El Duce and in fascist Italy that was everything.

Fateful Choice

With his Egyptian expedition stuck in the sand Mussolini was looking for someone else to fight.

Yugoslavia would have been his first choice, but the target varied so often his generals fully expected to have to draw up plans to move on Iraq.

Then on 10th October he found out Hitler's had made a deal with the Romanian fascists that saw German troops deployed to Bucharest.

Worried Hitler would gobble up the Balkans the same way he'd snatched France from him, Mussolini made the fateful choice two days later to invade Greece. He wasn't going to wait either, and so he gave his staff two weeks to make the plans.

The tactical and logistical difficulties of invading a mountainous country with few modern roads, in autumn would have challenged a Rommel or a Guderian. It was completely beyond the Italian general staff. Never-the-less Presca informed El Duce that the operation had been prepared 'down to the most minute detail and as is as perfect as is humanely possible.'

That was enough for Mussolini.  He would have his triumph, and his revenge.

Hitler always faces me with a fait accompli. This time I am going to pay him back with his own coin. He will find out from the papers that I have occupied Greece. In this way the equilibrium will be re-established.

Ancient Greece gave the world democracy, but by 1940 modern Greece had a dictator - Metaxas - who was possibly the dullest man to ever hold that title. Ancient Greece also gave us irony, and on the morning of 28th October 1940 Metaxas, who was a great fan of both Germany and Italian fascism found himself being told by Mussolini's envoy to occupation or invasion. Popular legend has it he replied with the single Greek word "Οχι" ("Ochi" - "No"). In reality he answered in French for some unknown reason: "Alors, c'est la guerre" ("Then it is war").

The Disaster

And so at 6AM on 28th October 1940 Prasca's men crossed the Greek border. Demoralised, badly equipped and disorganised they waded through the mud of a Balkan autumn and crashed into a Greek army bravely defending its homeland.

A week later the attack had fallen apart. Another week and the Italians were being pushed back into Albania. When the front eventually stabilised Prasca's men were thirty miles behind where they had started from. The news electrified Europe. For the first time since Hitler had occupied the Rhineland, the fascists had been defeated.

To rescue Prasca the Italians sent as many men as they could from Africa to Albania. They felt that they had little to fear from General O'Connor's puny force. General Berti even went back home to get his piles looked at. He never saw his troops again.

On 8th December O'Connor attacked and in the next 8 weeks his 25,000 men captured 150,000 Italian soldiers, 400 tanks and 1200 guns. Many of those taken prisoner were found to have packed their suitcases in anticipation. As Sir Anthony Eden said

"Never had so much been surrendered by so many to so few".

Big Ripples

Ultimately the Greek adventure turned out pretty badly for everyone. Hitler had to divert troops from the invasion of Russia to rescue his ally. The British Army entered Greece to fight them, but was defeated and had to be rescued by the Royal Navy.

Prasca was relieved of command after two weeks. In 1943 he joined the Italian resistance. He was captured by his old allies the Germans and sentenced to death. This was commuted to life in prison. He escaped and completing a bizarre journey from fascist to communist as he ended up joining the Red Army and taking part in the Battle of Berlin.

Mussolini found himself in a war that he could neither win nor control. Italian soldiers followed the Germans into Russian and died horribly in the snow. Italy was invaded and occupied.

Greece, meanwhile, endured occupation, starvation and repression. Relatively Greece suffered worse than any other European nation except Poland. In 1945 World War was followed, not by liberation, but by Civil War. Italy fared little better. The weak underbelly of fascist Europe she was invaded, changed sides and fought over by almost every nation involved in the war. Mussolini was imprisoned, rescued, captured again and ended hanging by his heels in front of a jeering mob.

But Mussolini's decision to invade Greece was one of the decisive factors that led to the defeat of the fascists. It wasn't just that those early Greek victories inspired the resistance to fascism. Had Mussolini seen sense and concentrated on Egypt Italian troops might have taken Cairo, and with no distraction on their southern flank German forces then might have reached Moscow. The war may well  have taken a very different turn.

But Italian fascism, rather than restoring the greatness of Rome, had created a system where sycophancy had replaced merit, fantasy had replaced reality, and where decisions of national importance made on the basis of one man's vanity.

We should be profoundly grateful for the courage, skill and sacrifice of the Greeks who fought fascism, but perhaps we should be more grateful to Greece for giving us the weapon that really defeats totalitarianism: democracy.

A trusty tool, it still serves us well today.

Sources:
Fateful Choices by Ian Kershaw
Military Blunders by Geoffrey Regan
Inside Hitler's Greece by Mark Mazower

Speech to Manchester Greek Solidarity Day Rally

Καλό απόγευμα Μάντσεστερ. Σήμερα βρισκόμαστε με την Ελλάδα.

Good afternoon Manchester. Today we stand with Greece.

We hear that Greece needs to pay its debts. But what of the debt we owe to Greece?

The legacy of Classical Greece is incalculable. They were the greatest thinkers, scientists, artists and, it is often forgotten, engineers of Ancient Europe. But what about the debt we owe to modern Greece?

On 28 October 1940 they rejected Mussolini's ultimatum and joined the Second World War. for the first time since the Fall of France Britain had an ally in the war on fascism, and an ally that could win battles.The Italians couldn't beat them so the Germans had to. That delayed Operation Barbarossa by five weeks, meaning when the snow came in the winter of 1941 the Nazi's panzers were still fifteen miles from Moscow.

The Communist Greek guerrillas continued to fight and as a result of fighting, famine, massacres and
the Holocaust, up to 800,000 Greeks died during the war, or more than one in ten of the population. Proportionately only Poland suffered more.

Their reward from Winston Churchill, was the re-arming of the Nazi Security Battalions with British
weapons, which they turned on their fellow citizens. The communist party was banned and many were exiled, some only returning in the 1980s.

In 1967 the military seized power. It took Britain a whole 24 hours before we recognised the Colonels as government. More repression of the Left followed.

And so on.

But I don't want to end it there. Because there are links between Britain and Greece we should be proud of, and times that people from this country have stood side with the Greeks.

The Greek revolt against the Ottoman Empire was mostly funded by a private committee in England. Our greatest Romantic poet, Lord Byron went out to fight and died in Greece. By the end of the war our greatest living sailor commanded the Hellenic Navy. The mightiest ship in their fleet, possibly in the world, was Karteria, built in London and Captained by Frank Hastings from Leicestershire. The head of their army was Irish by the way.

Greece eventually gained her freedom when the commander of a Royal Navy squadron sent to observe the situation took it upon himself to wipe out the Turkish navy. The Duke of Wellington sacked him, but the Greeks names several streets after him.

During the Second World War, whilst Greece starved, a group of Quakers met in Oxford to do something about it. Ignoring the government that opposed sending any aid to an occupied county, they raised over £10,000 for the Greek Red Cross. The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief eventually changed its name to Oxfam, and continues to help victims of war today, but it all started in Greece.

In 1961 the lawyer Peter Benison wrote an article in The Observer on The Forgotten Prisoners, highlighting six people around the world imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs. Amongst them was Toni Ambatielos, a Greek Communist arrested for his Trade Union activities. The article led to the creation of Amnesty International. Ambatielos was released in 1963.

Syriza, for the most part it seems, studied in this country. Two of their central committee still work in British universities. Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek Finance Minister, has worked for University of Essex, the University of East Anglia and the University of Cambridge. His wife studied sculpture at St Martin's College in London where she met a young Jarvis Cocker and may have inspired the 90s anthem Common People.

Then there is my connection with Greece. Jarvis Cocker wasn't the only 'lanky northern git' to meet a
Greek student. I have a message for you from her today:

"We can't say Yes to lose our freedom and hope for our children. Doing the same mistake twice is not a wise thing to do! If we allow them to rule our life we will become animals."

There has always been a connection between Britain and Greece. But this is not an alliance of governments, but of ordinary people who want to make the world a better place. That's why I am very proud to stand her today with all of you, with my friend Maria, with all the Common People of Greece but also with everyone else around the world, whoever they are and wherever they may be, who supports justice and fairness and who believes that the debts of courage and friendship human beings owe to each other are far more important than the money we owe to the banks.

OXI!

How Britain Made Greece Free

Revolt in the Levant

A revolution breaks out in the eastern Mediterranean. Volunteers from Western Europe rush to join the rebels lured by romantic dreams of a noble cause, but when they arrive they find themselves in the middle of a bloody guerrilla war, fighting alongside religiously inspired fanatics with a taste for beheading their opponents. At first European nations ignore their citizens who go to fight in this far-off war but eventually, fearing trouble at home when these 'freedom fighters' return, they take steps to stop the volunteers leaving. No, this is not the story of the Arab Revolt, but Greek War of Independence nearly 200 years ago.

The Greek Revolt was a curious business. Although it only concerned the fate of a small population on the fringe of Europe, it was always an international affair. The flames of the revolution were fanned not from within Greece, where the Orthodox Church was on friendly terms with the Ottoman Empire, but by Greeks living abroad who wanted the Byzantine Empire back, and by the non-Greeks, the Philhellenes, who dreamed of a return to the glories of the days of Pericles.

Greece and Britain are at opposite ends of the Europe and politically seem to have little in
common. We send them our tourists and in return they send repeated requests for the return of their Marbles.

Yet, it is strangely the case that probably no-one did more to create the modern Greek state than the British. I suppose I should add "except for the Greeks themselves" but, as we shall see, that may not actually be the case. True, the Greeks did most of the fighting and most of the dying, and had they not fought so hard the revolt would have been over in weeks. But it was only with the support of the European powers that the revolt in Greece, alone amongst the many that broke out in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, was able to succeed. Britain produced more Philhellenes than anywhere else and, in one of the many ironies of the situation, it was in no small part because we had the Parthenon Marbles that so many were inspired to help Greece.

This is a part of our history we have largely forgotten for far too long, so here is the story.

British Greece

A ship of the East India Company in Corfu harbour

Britain acquired the Ionian Islands from the shattered Venetian Empire after the Battle of Waterloo. They were the last outpost of Christianity before the Moslem world began.

It was always unfortunate that for the Classically trained Englishmen than ran the show that the British Empire mostly consisted of places they'd never heard of. However, in the Ionian Islands they could visit Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus, and Lefkada, from whose cliffs the poet Sappho is supposed to have thrown herself to her death. 

Unfortunately, the reality of a marginal life on a small island meant that the actual Greeks they governed rarely fitted their preconceptions of Homeric heroes and Sapphic beauties. "The constant use of garlic and the rare use of soap, impress an Englishman very disagreeably," wrote one disappointed administrator.

British rule was mildly benevolent despotism. The enlisted men of the garrison seemed to spend most of their time drunk on the local wine, thus setting the trend for the British tourists that would arrive 150 years later, whilst their social superiors promenaded in the sunshine. Enough Greeks tried to copy the latter that new Orders of Chivalry were created to reward them and the rules of cricket were translated into Greek (απο ξυλα means 'bowled' apparently).

Lord Guilford

Some of the Brits who travelled out to the islands did though put some serious effort into improving the lot of the locals. Lord Guilford, a convert to the Orthodox Church and fluent speaker of both ancient and modern Greek, was so shocked that there was no university in Greece that he founded one in Corfu. It opened its doors in 1824 and had a library of 25,000 books.

Guilford, like most of the other Brits in the Ionian Islands, was sympathetic to the Greek cause, but maintained the strict neutrality that his government demanded. His islands, though, provided a haven for thousands of refugees and a vital postal service that allowed the beleaguered Greek rebels to communicate with the outside world, but he could not help the Greeks directly in their fight.

Commodore Gawen Hamilton

HMS Cambrian by Jack Sullivan (1976)

The British government though was not prepared to just follow the action from the sidelines in Corfu. They wanted a man on the spot. That man was the Royal Navy's Commodore Gawen Hamilton. 

Born and educated in France, and wounded in the Egyptian campaign, he would spend five years sailing round the war zone in his frigate HMS Cambrian, turning up when most needed, dispensing sage advice to both sides, and keeping his head when all about him were loosing theirs, sometimes literally. 

In 1823, for example, he arrived in Napflio just as the town had fallen to the rebels and the victorious Greeks were getting ready to slaughter all the Turks. Hamilton persuaded the Greeks that another masscare would just about finish their cause in Western Europe and they agreed to let the Turks leave in chartered ships and on the Cambrian.

Edward Trelawny

Then, in 1824 when Lord Byron's friend Edward Trelawny found himself lying seriously wounded in a cave on Mount Parnassus, having been shot in the back by an insane fellow countryman, his life ended up being saved by a British doctor dispatched from the Cambrian by Hamilton.

The next year Hamilton was back in Nafplio. The revolt had just suffered a major defeat and an Egypt army in Turkish service was closing in on the seat of the revolutionary government, which was paralysed with fear. But when the Egyptians arrived they found three ships bearing the White Ensign moored in the harbour and a rumour sweeping the countryside that the British had orders to fire in the defence of the town. The Egyotians withdrew and the revolution survived.

Finally, he appears again in 1827. Two main factions were each claiming to be the legitimate government of Greece, each with their own base, and the revolt was paralysed with neither party prepared to back down. Once more the Commodore arrived in the nick of time and once again he managed to sort things out, arranging a meeting at a neutral venue where, even though they failed to sort out who ran the country, they at least managed the vital task of agreeing who was to lead the army and the navy.

The Regiment and the Legion

The Battle of Peta

For all the help that Hamilton gave the revolt, he always kept to the letter of the law of strict neutrality. But for many across Europe though this just would not do. The romance of the Greek adventure was too much for many, especially the thousands of demobilised soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars knocking around with nothing to do.

Volunteers from across Europe flocked to the Peloponnese with dreams of fighting alongside a modern Leonidas in a new Battle of Marathon. Along the way they usually promoted themselves a few times, so that a sergeant who left France might be a full colonle when he got to Greece. When they arrived they found themselves in a confusing guerilla war alongside bandits-turned-rebels, who often as not turned back to bandits again, and who cared nothing for chivalrous warfare, and even less for military discipline.In the mountains of Greece these methods worked well, whereas the standing-bravely-shoulder-to-shoulder tactics of the volunteers proved suicidal in the face of superior Turkish numbers and artillery. 

With few Greeks wanting to be trained in an alien way of fighting, the self-appointed officers found themselves back in the ranks in a regiment of Philhellens. They ended up being wiped out gloriously in battle in an insignificant village called Peta on 6 July 1824. Ten days later Greek guerrillas exterminated a Turkish army retreating from Larisa, thus showing the Philhellenes the correct way to fight a war in the moutains. A few disillusioned survivors of the regiment returned to Europe to warn of the futility of it all, but still people volunteered. 

The next unit formed was called the German Legion. It went out six months later and suffered the same fate as the Regiment. When this disaster failed to stop the exodus of hopeful heroes the French authorities took action and shut the port of Marseilles to volunteers.

The Crown and Anchor Committee

The Crown and Anchor

Whilst these naive romantics were fighting and dying in Greece, a far more organised group were meeting in the Crown and Anchor Tavern in The Strand, London. Long since demolished, the pub was then a home to meetings of Radicals and other reformers.

The London Philhellenic Committee meant business. They had access to vast quantities of cash, in the form of loans and bonds, and they would eventually end up sending to Greece both Britain's greatest poet and her most famous sailor, as well as commissioning the most potent fighting ship then afloat.

Lord Byron

Lord Byron lands in Greece

Lord Byron was on the face of it an unlikely choice to send to Greece, but to be fair to the committee they never actually asked him to go there, just to help them distribute its money.

However, nobody who knew him could have believed he would have been happy just to be the banker of the revolution. It was Byron's poems that had inspired many of the Philhellenes to volunteer for Greece, so it would have been a surprise if their author had not followed them. 

Stopping off in the Ionian islands on the way, where he contemplated buying Ithaca, he eventually landed in Missolonghi, where one of those claiming to be leading the revolt had his HQ.

Byron soon acquired an entourage of Albanian bandits who were happy to take his money and strut their stuff, but who all promptly ran away when he tried to use them to attack the Turkish fort at Lepanto. He was contemplating the utter failure of his plans when he fell ill and, after bloodletting failed to make him any better, he caught sepsis and died.

Whilst it was certainly a death in Greece and probably a death because of Greece, it was hardly a death for Greece. Byron had absolutely no desire to pop his clogs in such a depressing manner. But it was a death, and the Hellenic Republic still celebrates Byron as the foreigner who died to free their country; a pity really, because there are many better candidates, the chief one of which we are about to meet.

Frank Abney Hastings

Bouboulina

A quick look at a map shows that anyone who wants to fight in Greece must have a navy. If there's one thing the Greeks can do apart from fall out amongst themselves, it's sail. The sea is part of their heritage and when I started learning the language I quickly realised they have as many words for boat as Inuits allegedly have for snow.

The Greek Revolutionary Navy was a nautical version of the guerrillas of its army; small, lightweight vessels that could run rings around the lumbering Turkish men-o-war. The leaders of the Hellenic Navy were a colourful bunch, the most outlandish of which was a woman called Laskarina Bouboulina, who was supposedly so ugly she had to take her lovers at gunpoint. 

Frank Hastings

Joining her at sea was one Frank Abney Hastings, formerly of the Royal Navy. He had served at Trafalgar whilst just eleven years old and had spent fifteen years in the Senior Service, rising to the rank of Commander, before being sacked for challenging a fellow officer to a duel. He wasn't short of money and went to Greece purely for the adventure.

There he had to get used to the regular beheading of captured Turks on the deck of his ship, and the democratic nature of the Hellenic Navy, where everyone shouted orders but nobody obeyed them, and each ship voted on whether to follow the orders of its admiral. He had some success in a small, borrowed Greek vessel, and when no ship was available he used an island, laying siege to the Turkish forces in Napflio from an off-shore fort.

Hastings had grand plans though. He wanted nothing less than the most powerful warship afloat, and thanks to the money from the Crown and Anchor Committee he intended to get it.

Thomas Cochrane

Thomas Cochrane

A relatively modest man, Hastings never had any ambitions to lead the Hellenic Navy himself, he just wanted his ship. Instead the Greeks, via the London Philhellenic Society, looked to recruit Britain's most flamboyant sailor to that post.

In Nelson's navy of brilliant but eccentric sea captains, Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, was the most brilliant and eccentric of them all. As a frigate captain he had made more prize money out of capturing French ships than anyone else. He was the inspiration for the heroic captain in Master and Commander, which  was written by one of his midshipmen.

Buying himself a seat in the House of Commons as a Radical he had made himself unpopular by railing against corruption in the navy. When in 1814 he was the only person to make money out of a hoax that Napoleon had died he was imprisoned for fraud. He was dismissed from the navy, expelled from parliament and lost his knighthood. Still protesting his innocence he served in the wars that freed South America from colonial rule, commanding the navies of Chile and then Brazil. He performed heroic feats of arms for both, and then argued about the money afterwards.

The second siege of the Acropolis

Wild and red-headed, Cochrane was the opposite of the calm Hastings in demeanour and also in motivation. Whilst Hastings went to Greece for the love of adventure, and stayed for the love of Greece, Cochrane fought only for cash. His fee for the job was equal to the total annual tax revenue of the country. Unfortunately, the nation did not get good value for its money.

Cochrane arrived as the crisis was approaching. The rebels had assembled their largest army yet and, under the command of an Irish General called Church, were trying to relive the siege of the Acropolis. They had captured the port of Piraeus from which they could approach the citadel under cover of olive trees, safe from Turkish cavalry and cannon.

Rather confusingly Church, the General, was at sea on a yacht and Cochrane, the Admiral, had come ashore. Not surprisingly this unorthodox command system failed miserably. Church and Cochrane tried an alternative route and the Greek army was mown down in the open. The two leaders escaped by wading out to waiting boats, but most of the soldiers weren't so lucky. The rebellion looked doomed.

SS Karteria

SS Karteria

At sea though things were going a lot better, for Hastings had finally got the ship he wanted. Twenty years after Trafalgar the navies of the world still consisted entirely of wooden ships propelled by sails and firing solid iron shot. But Hastings was looking to the future.

At his direction the London Philhellenic Society had launched the SS Karteria, an iron ship powered by steam engines and equipped with monster 68 pounder cannons firing explosive shells. It's difficult to appreciate how far ahead of its time this ship was. Even getting the vessel to Greece probably broke several records for an iron ship.

The Karteria was soon in action. In a series of hit and run operations Hastings wiped out Turkish forts, transports and warships. His opponents probably had no idea what they were fighting. Belching smoke, steaming straight into the wind and firing shells that reduced wooden warships to splinters it must have seemed like they were being attacked by some malevolent Greek god of old.

Hastings' ambition was to catch the Turkish fleet becalmed at sea, wipe it out and win the war in an afternoon. Had luck been with him he could probably have done it. As it was he did contribute to the end of the war, but not in a way he could have imagined.

Sir Edward Codrington

Sir Edward Codrington

The Great Powers were now starting to take an interest in Greece. Initially they were reluctant to get involved in what they saw as the internal affairs of the Ottomans, and even more reluctant to be seen to be supporting a revolt against an established empire.

However, an Egyptian army marching across Greece laying waste to entire provinces was something they couldn't ignore. Hamilton was still around bringing home tales of Greeks hiding in caves and surviving by boiling grass. Something had to be done. Britain, France and Russia, each worried that either of the others would act alone and thus acquire a bit of valuable strategic real estate, together put forward a peace proposal called the Treaty of London.

The Greeks accepted it, as they were done for if they didn't, but the Turks refused. The three Great Powers then sent fleets to Greece to make the Sultan comply. This called for very delicate diplomacy. Unfortunately for the Turks they gave the command to Sir Edward Codrington. He'd already made a name for himself as the youngest captain to command a ship at the Battle of Trafalgar. The British government expected Codrington to stay neutral, but King George IV took a break from his debauchary to advise the admiral to "go in, Ned, (and) smash those damn Turks."

Codrington found the Turkish fleet holed up in the harbour at Navarino, formed in a defensive horseshoe covering the entrance. The Turkish Admiral was understandably miffed that Codrington was asking him to lay down his arms whilst Cochrane's navy was still attacking him. Codrington explained that the Greeks had accepted the treaty and so weren't his problem.

The allied fleet entering Navarino harbour

Things would probably have remained at an impasse had Hastings hadn't picked that moment to try out some new ammunition in the Karteria. He wiped out nine Ottoman gunboats in a night raid and when the Turks tried to send out a squadron to deal with him, but they were blocked by Codrington. The French and the Russians then arrived, as did Hamilton in the Cambrian.

Codrington now decided that there had been enough diplomacy and tried a tactic that even Nelson might have felt was a bit rash. He sailed into Navarino Bay and moored his ships inside the horseshoe, right under the Turkish guns. He was outnumbered, out-gunned and trapped by an unfavourable wind. It was an amazing bit of chutzpah, as if he was daring the Turks to try something, which he probably was. Sure enough, they did.

The Battle of Navarino

It was the last battle of the Age of Sail, although all the ships were actually at anchor, and Codrington's veterans blew the Turks to pieces. He lost one hundred and eighty men and no ships. The Turks lost over 3000 men and sixty ships.  

He had done what Byron, Hastings, Cochrane and Church had all failed to achieve and won the war for Greece.  To the British public he was a national hero. To his own government though he was an embarrassment. British policy then was to preserve the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against Russia. Now Codrington had just destroyed the fleet of an ally. When the public clamour had died down he was quietly dismissed from the service.

Aftermath

So Greece was free. Ruined, diseased, bankrupt and indebted, but free. Or at least some of it was sort of free. Athens, along with two thirds of the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire, was not part of the new kingdom.

However, there was no denying that for the first time in history a small nation had come into existence based on a unique ethnic mix, a model that was to be followed around the world in the next century as the Age of Empires came to an end.

The Ionian Islands remains British until 1864, when they opted for enosis with the rest of Greece, a decision which their colonial masters couldn't understand. Guilford's Ionian University though is still there. For the first twenty years of the new Greek state almost all the doctors, lawyers, academics and senior civil servants were its alumni.

HMS Cambrian eventually foundered of Crete and, although Hamilton survived.

Statue of Byron in Athens (Jennifer)

The loans organised by the London Philhellenic Society turned out not to be the great investment they had promised. Most weren't repaid until the 1870s and their existence caused many problems for the Hellenic Kingdom.

Lord Byron posthumously became the hero in Greece that he never had been at home, and today there are more statues of him there than there are here.

Hastings, the most useful Philhellene of them all, continued in the service of his adopted nation. In the year after Navarino he fired what may have been the last shot of the war at a Turkish fort near Missolonghi. Following up through the marsh he was shot in the arm and died of blood poisoning, aged 33. It would be another 25 years before the Royal Navy would launch a ship comparable to the Karteria.

Cochrane returned to Britain where he was forgiven and reinstated in the Royal Navy, had his honours restored and was eventually buried in Westminister Abbey.

Codrington spent the rest of his life defending his actions at Navarino and denying he was a secret Philhellene. Like Byron, he is now better remembered in Greece than at home, having several roads named after him.

Greece meanwhile is once again bankrupt and indebted, although still free. Let us raise a glass of Greek wine to them today, or maybe they should raise a glass of English beer to us?

Bibliography

Heaven's Command by Jan Morris (1973)
The Greek Adventure by David Howarth (1976)
Captain of the Karteria by Maurice Abney-Hastings (2001)

SYRIZA: A guide for Brits who hope.

Greece solidarity demonstration, London, 11 Feb 2015

Imagine a small political party, polling only a few percent in elections and made up of assortment of colourful characters from the progressive fringe of politics, seemingly unable to agree on lunch let alone policy. Imagine then that this party suddenly becomes the only anti-austerity party in town and starts to build up an irresistible level of support from those disillusioned by mainstream politics. It stands in a General Election and becomes the government.

Over here the Green Party in England and Wales must be dreaming of such a result, but this really is the story of SYRIZA in Greece, the only country in the world where the citizens voluntarily attend pro-government rallies. But what does it mean for those of us in Blighty hoping that the recent surge in support for the Greens mean Natalie Bennett will be our Alex Tsipras?

It's all Greek to me

Syntagma Square, Athens, 11 Feb 2015

The first thing to say about politics in the Hellenic Republic is, it's complicated. I've been trying to follow it for twenty five years ago and I'm as confused as ever. The second thing to say is when we speak of a war between Left and Right in the UK we are speaking metaphorically. In Greece it's literal.

The story could begin in 1924 with the formation of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), or in 1936 when the fascist Metaxas, a charming man who liked strapping opponents to blocks of ice, suspended parliament, but instead we'll start with the end of the Second World War

Athens 1944, Photograph: Dmitri Kessel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

In Britain 1945 saw a victory at the ballot box for the centre-left Labour Party, but Greece it was the far left guerrillas of the ELAS who appeared to have the upper hand. However before they could form a government Churchill rearmed the Nazi Security Battalions with British guns and turned them on their fellow countrymen.

The Greek Civil War that followed was a confused and bloody business. Often as not it saw neighbouring villages settling scores with only a pretence to political motives, but for the Greek Left it was a catharsis. Defeated and then brutally suppressed in the 'democratic' post-war Hellenic Republic, the Left spent the fifties either in hiding or exiled to island gulags. Even the hint of a return to power in the late sixties was enough to provoke a military coup and worse repression.

Athens Polytechnic 1973, tanks getting ready to attack students.

When the youth of Greece eventually rebelled in the seventies it wasn't, like over here, against the imagined inequity of their parents, but the very real oppression of the Colonels. Their 1973 uprising was a bloody failure, but democracy did return a year later in the form of the centre-right New Democracy Party.

The KKE became legal again, but this didn't actually help them very much as, in the time honoured tradition of the Left, it was time for a split. Events in Paris and Prague in the spring of 1968 had shaken communist parties across the continent. The British Communist Party had almost ceased to exist by this point, but elsewhere the Eurocommunists were ousting the old guard. Embracing democracy they thrust themselves to the forefront of the liberation struggles of the decade.

It was this split that would ultimately lead to the Eurocommunists joining SYRIZA, but for now it was the pro-Moscow grouping that was the larger faction. Partly because of the historical wartime struggle against the Nazis, partly because of the contemporary struggle against military rule and no doubt partly because Greeks are just permanently contrary. The main effect of the in-fighting though was to leave the popularist Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) effectively unchallenged on the left of Greek politics.

When the seventies turned into the eighties Britain and Greece went in very different directions. Here the selfish hedonism of the sixties turned into the selfish monetarism of the eighties, but in Greece the youth who'd rebelled by listening to Greek bands playing Western rock music under the dictatorship helped to elect the country's first post-war left wing government. Andreas Papandreo's PASOK swept into office with the rallying cry "Change". A National Health Service was created, former Communist guerrillas were given pensions, the exiles returned and the generation excluded from society by The Colonels was rewarded with easy jobs in the public sector.

Athens Polytechnic 1995, riot police get ready to attack students

The 1990s in Greece saw a new wave of student radicalism and anarchists, who I've not really had time to mention yet, made most of the running. Murray Bookchin used to read Aristotle and Greek anarchists read Bookchin, so in a sense Social Ecology was coming home.

In Britain we occupied trees to stop roads, in Greece they occupied schools and universities. The Greek police were once again their usual liberal selves and there was a non-negligable body count in these actions. It was also not uncommon to see lorry loads of machine gun wielding coppers parked up in anarchist parts of Athens. It all came to a head in 1995 when 3000 people occupied the Polytechnic. (Just to confuse Brits who remember polytechnics as cut price higher education, the Athens Polytechnic is one of their top universities). The police moved in, the media, who often ended up being attacked by anarchists at demos and so weren't minded to give them good press, had a field day and when it was all over the movement was effectively dead.

Anti-war graffiti on NATO vehicles, Greece 1999

In 1999 the brief war between NATO and Serbia gave the Left another cause. Meanwhile the Battle of Seattle had opened a new front against Capitalism, and as the Eurocommunists and other far left groups prepared for the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa they decided to decided to form something they initially called Space for Dialogue for the Unity and Common Action of the Left, but which became SYRIZA three years later.

The PASOK government  meanwhile, having employed Goldman Sachs to cook the books, had been allowed to join the Eurozone. The ruse appeared to be paying off and the country was on the up for most of the noughties. Then the Credit Crunch hit, and the Eurozone economies crashed. The centre-right New Democracy Party was in power by this time. They were unsurprisingly booted out in 2009 when George (son of Andreas) Papandreo's PASOK ran against under the slogan "there is money". Unfortunately nobody had told him there wasn't.

In Britain the centre-left had been in power when the Credit Crunch hit but left the austerity to the opposition, in Greece it was the other way round. In Britain the damage was serious. In Greece it was fatal. In the 2015 elections PASOK came seventh, behind both the far-right fascists of the Golden Dawn and the ultra-left communists of the KKE.

Unlike in Britain, the far left was still alive and well. The Hellenic Republic had its equivalent of Occupy in the Squares Movement, but the Left had shown its power three years early, in December 2008. When the Greek police shot dead Andreas Grigoropoulos, a fifteen year old boy out celebrating his name day, the resulting riots were the worst since the fall of the Colonels. Just like in 1974 students were central to the revolt, but this time the reasons were more obscure.

Protest in front of Greek parliament, May 2011

Greece had problems of corruption, youth unemployment and inequality, but at that time no worse than many other European countries. The anger of its young people seemed to be directed at the Neoliberal world generally rather than the Hellenic Republic in particular. It was if, as before, Greece was a decade behind the times and it was fighting the Battle of Seattle all over again.

The KKE though had nothing to do with this. For them nothing short of a Revolution would do and they denounced the Squares Movement as nothing less than a "mechanism of the ruling class". When you see Occupy as too reactionary you are seriously left! This retreat from reality opened the door for SYRIZA who started their march to power with the anti-austerity campaigners in Syntagma Square.

Christodoulos Xeros

If you think with the KKE we're reached the edge of Greek progressive politics, you'd be wrong. If you want further proof that the Hellenic Republic really is stuck in a seventies time warp there are the terrorists. Yes, some on the Greek Left really are still trying to bomb their way to a Revolution forty years after our own Angry Brigade stopped blowing up fashion boutiques and went off to do more useful things. Indeed, recently rearrested terrorist Christodoulos Xeros even looks like he should be fronting his own Prog. Rock band. To understand Greek politics you have to realise that for some these people do almost have pop star status. When the New Democracy HQ was bombed during the recent election campaign, SYRIZA supporters celebrated online.

SYRIZA then has sprung from a very different political landscape to our Green Party. Here, the
Second World War united the country not split it apart and in the sixties our Left was moderated by being in power not radicalised by oppression, and I guess that's nothing to complain about.

SYRIZA may be a new party, but the continuity of the Greek Left is contained within it. When Tsipras lays a wreath at a memorial to Greeks killed by the Nazis it links the present crisis to a historical struggle whilst Caroline Lucas visiting a wind farm doesn't.

Manolis Glezos, still fighting at 91

This continuity is illustrated by the remarkable Manolis Glezos. As a teenager he snuck onto the Acropolis via a cave sacred to the ancient god Pan and tore down the Swastika flying over the Parthenon. As part of the Greek resistance he once nearly blew up Winston Churchill.  The post-war government sentenced him to death but he was reprieved. He was elected to parliament whilst in prison and released after going on hunger strike. He was imprisoned again under the Colonels then on release he became a PASOK MEP. He now sits in the Greek parliament for SYRIZA when he's not protesting on the streets. So much for becoming more right wing as you get older.

SYRIZA obviously owes its election to government to the scale of the disaster that overtook Greece after the Credit Crunch. Britain may not have lost 25% of its GDP since 2008, nor do we have to bring your own drugs when we go to hospital, but the same factors that have pushed mainstream voters into the arms for the far left are playing out here; the descent of the underclass into utter poverty, the collapse of the Middle Class into working poor, the destruction of the public sector and the flight of the lucky 1% who can afford it out of the big cities, and into their gilded cages of private schools and hospitals. It's all our happening here too, just a little slower.

But whilst SYRIZA may well be the response to this in Greece, but we mustn't jump the gun in assuming it's the solution. Tsipras sometimes sounds like he's the next of the Papandreo dynasty. "Change" or "there is money" could have been his mottos this time around, and the reason PASOK has been wiped out is because the riposte to both was "there wasn't". SYRIZA's Green credentials are also rather thin. A belated change of policy to Eldorado mine project and some warm words on Climate Change and ecosocialism, but that's it.

Despite that they are clearly better than the alternatives though. However if we think a British SYRIZA is inevitable we may be disappointed. The Greek Left isn't back so much as it never went away. In the UK it was buried years ago.

Britain, Europe and indeed the world need an alternative to rapacious capitalism, unsustainable consumerism and unjust austerity, but ultimately liberation is something each country must build for itself, not a franchise we can buy into.

How Greece Can Get Its Marbles Back

A reproduction of the Parthenon East Pediment

Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible!

“Can I have both?”

“Can I have both?”

“Can I have both?”

“Can I have both?”

So the Hellenic Republic has a new government , Alexis Tsipras has managed to keep his coalition of Communists, Anarchists, Greens and other assorted lefties together long enough to become Prime Minister, a task that must herding cats seem easy.

I celebrated with a glass or two of finest malt whisky - because Greece decided to hold the election on Burns Night.

Paul Mason interviews Alexis Tsipras (Channel 4)

Tsipras says what he wants now is debt relief and the return of the Elgin Marbles. Given that the
Germans make most of the rules and the French own most of the debt, this doesn't seem terribly likely. But what about his second wish?

At first glance this seems about as likely as Tsipras becoming Der Spiegel's Man of the Year. However I believe a change of tactics might just succeed, what's more if you look carefully at what the new PM says, I think he realises this.

A Set of Lies Agreed Upon

Lord Elgin

First a bit of history, or rather two versions of it.

In Scenario One evil British aristo Lord Elgin, Her Majesty's ambassador to the Turks sends his nefarious agents to Greece. Seeing an opportunity, a bit of money changes. Regretting that they can't get the whole Parthenon in their ship, they instead start chiselling away at some of the prettier bits. The loot returns to England where the dastardly Lord spends the rest of his life trying to flog it to the highest bidder.

In Scenario Two kindly Lord Elgin, friend to the Greek people and lover of Greek culture, sends a mission to Athens to study the treasures of the ancients. However once there his team are shocked by the indifference of the half of Athens who are Greek Orthodox and for whom the Marbles were just so many embarrassing pagan relics and the Acropolis just a free quarry. The Turkish authorities seem no more interested and due to the dilapidated state of the monument the man on the spot makes a decision to save what he can.

Lord Byron

Returning to Britain the Marbles spark a renewed interest in Ancient Greece. Lord Byron objects to their removal, but then he also called them "misshapen monuments". He is drowned out by other Romantics such as Goethe and Keats who enthuse about these marvels from the Levant. Elgin's love of ancient Greece eventually empties his noble coffers, but rather than see the treasures be split up he sells them to the British Museum.

The public adores them and the ensuing spirit of Philhellenism comes in very useful twenty years later when the Greeks finally revolt against Turkish rule. The British Museum keeps the Marbles safe through two sieges of the Acropolis whilst England sends to the aid of the Greeks a vast sum of money, a selection of our best Sea Captains and eventually a battle fleet which obliterates the Turks and wins the war.

Amal Clooney

The Hellenic Republic, for obvious reasons, as always preferred the first version of the story. What patriot wouldn't like a story involving corrupt Turkish officials, foreign yobs hacking away at one of the wonders of the Ancient World and a villain straight out of a Mel Gibson movie?

Battle was renewed last year when Amal Clooney took time off from making women jealous over her choice of husband and gave the Greek government the benefit of her legal advice. She's not the first beautiful woman to try to get the Marbles back. Melina Mercouri and Nana Mouskouri both tried and failed, as did Demis Roussos - although he didn't look half as good in a dress.

Those Who Cannot Change Their Minds Cannot Change Anything

The word rhetoric today is now used to mean empty words, but when Aristotle was writing about ῥητορικός (ri̱torikós) it meant "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion".

Athens 1821

It seems to me the Hellenic republic needs to be a bit cleverer about the ῥητορικός it is using on the British museum. Three tiny flaws in the current strategy seem immediately obvious.

Firstly, tough though it is for Greeks to admit, the Turks really were in charge in 1805 and the
Marbles really were theirs to sell. Once the Emperor of Byzantium had refused to buy a certain dodgy Hungarian's canons and the Ottoman Empire had used them to knock down the walls of Constantinople the Turks were in charge. End of.

The Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum

Secondly it's quite hard to prove a legal transaction was unlawful when you haven't got the original paperwork. Maybe they did mess up the paperwork, but the Turks were legitimate sellers and Elgin was a legitimate buyer, and after two hundred years I think the museum can be forgiven for not having the original receipt.

But mostly a venerable institution like the British Museum, one of, if not the, greatest museum in the world, doesn't like being written into the story as the baddie.

That's a very important point when you want to change someone's mind. You can offer them a carrot - a pretty juicy carrot in this case, just think what Greece could swap for the Marbles - you can threaten them with a stick - although in this case it's a very short and blunt stick. But if agreeing with you means admitting to being great big hypocrites they are quite likely to reject the carrot and face the stick.

Even the sort of psychopaths who think the way to get people to change their minds is to pour buckets of water over their head realise that.

“These stones don’t feel at ease with less sky”

I expect most Greek readers will have written me off as another Αγγλίκα μαλάκα by now given up, but just in case there are any left let me say this; I think the Marbles should return to your country.

The Parthenon

Why? Two reasons stand out for me.

Firstly they are an integral part of the Parthenon, and for aesthetic reasons alone I like my ancient treasures whole. Indeed Poseidon is actually split in two, half in London and half in Athens.

By the way, I'm equally annoyed that the lid of the Frank's Casket is in France whilst the rest of it is in Britain and that the Sutton Hoo treasure is split between London and Suffolk. It's as if Nelson had been removed from his column and taken abroad, which incidentally was what Hitler planned to do if he's invaded us instead of Greece in 1941. 

Nike in the Acropolis Museum

Secondly, whilst it's perfectly possible to a Brit to go through life without ever seeing the Elgin Marbles, or even the British Museum, to be Greek and not see the Parthenon would be rather difficult. Half the population of the country can pretty much sees the Acropolis every day of the week. The Marbles are simply far more important to the Greeks than they are to us.

And the finally there's the Acropolis Museum. This world class building, within sight of the Parthenon but not part of it, is where the remaining Parthenon Marbles now reside. How did they get there? The Greek authorities chiselled them off the Acropolis and carried them there for safe keeping, doing exactly what Lord Elgin's agents did two hundred years ago.

And the thing is these reasons stand regardless of how the Marbles got to London or who legally owns them.

Property is Theft

So who does actually own them?

According to the new Prime Minister "everyone" and I can't really argue with that. My namesake Martin Luther King once said "property is intended to serve life" and so he would probably agree.

My plan is to get the Marbles back to Greece, and if when they arrive they have a little plaque underneath them saying "on loan from the British Museum" who cares?

The Plan

So how should the Hellenic Republic go about persuading the trustees of the British Museum to change their minds about the Marbles? :

Replica of the Parthenon, Nashville, USA

Step one: acknowledge that everything that's been said and done so far was wrong. Tsipras's government has more-or-less been elected on this motto, so this shouldn't be too hard.

Step two: forget about ownership. Most of the current government of Greece claim to be inspired by a man who said his political theory could be summed up by the slogan "abolish all private property" so that should be easy enough.

Step three: forgive Elgin. Perhaps putting a statue of him up next to Byron would be going a bit far, but at least acknowledge that this was a man who loved Greece and, whatever his motives were, accept that his actions kept the Marbles safe from sieges, smog and Nazi occupation. Some people may take a bit of convincing, but Greece is about to really annoy most of Germany and a significant part of France, so she could do with some new friends, even dead ones.

Vigil for the return of the Parthenon Marbles January 2015

So there you have it. Greece, go and get them back. I for one will support you. So, according to the polling company Yougov, will most of my fellow Brits.

The Hellenic Republic in recent years has seen poverty that would have disgraced Lord Elgin's England. The best and brightest of her young people have been, like the Marbles, ripped from the land of their birth and scattered across Europe.

Returning the Marbles won't help with the debt relief, won't ward off a Grexit and won't make Greece any more popular with the Troika, but it will help mend the wounded pride of a great European nation and it will be the right thing to do.