Aden

[j.sabourn]

Can remember talking to an ex Hogarths master years ago who was in Aden during the time of mad mitch. Said he was at the buoy at steamer point, when all the trouble was going on ashore, were all ready to sail and singled up ready for the pilot. The pilot came onboard and refused to sail and departed. He told the mate to chop the line and went full ahead to clear the port, unfortuanetly the pilot boat got in the way and he cut it in two but kept going. Said he could never go back to Aden in case they were keeping a file on him. Cheers John Sabourn. P.S. Did Hogarths amalgamate with Lyles, believe there are people on this web who may know. Cheers John Sabourn.

[Doc Vernon]

"Scottish Ship Management Limited was formed in 1968 as a result of the merger of the shipping staff of H. Hogarth & Sons and Lyle Shipping Co. Unfortunately, in 1986, as part of the demise of the British Merchant Navy, the company ceased to exist.

The purpose of the site is to provide a bit of background to the history of SSM and to serve as an archive of material. (..)

H. Hogarth & Sons had been shipowners since 1862 whilst Lyle could trace their origin back to 1798. In 1980 Lyle aquired the 50% of Scottish Ship Management owned by H. Hogarth & Sons, making SSM a wholly owned subsidiary of Lyle Shipping. SSM continued to manage the Hogarth fleet as well as that of its parent, Lyle. In its heyday, Scottish Ship Management maintained offices in the U.K., Australia and U.S.A. and employed over 400 people."

[John Pruden]

mad Mitch and his men were forced by gunpoint by our own troops to get out of Aden i read a book on him and paddy main he was another he should have had a handful of Victoria crosses but the powers that be did not like him he was one of the founder members of the SAS look up his life he was a character same as Lawrence but men that got the job done hardly got any recognition for there deeds? they did put a statue of paddy in his native Ireland he was a true hero.... jp

[Louis the Amigo]

Hi shipmates I sailed with one of mad mitchs' men he was a headcase on hard drugs D.H.U., he was in that camp in hereford ,before Aden he was very spoken and a true gentleman .He never talked about it to anyone else or what he did.

[Bill Cameron]

My younger brother served in Aden with Mad Mitch and never said they were driven out of Aden, they marched out of Crater with Pipes playing and Glengarries on. Mitch's men all loved him and liked his manner of dealing with trouble. The Government of the day could not cope with what they considered a loose cannon, but while the Argyll's and Mad Mitch were in crater there was very little trouble.

[Captain Kong]

The Government refused to allow them to use heavy weapons against the enemy, so they were fighting on behalf of a government that did not want them to win. How crazy are these MOD Ministers.
Brian

[John Pruden]

there was a tale that he strapped a chair on top of the bonnet of a jeep and sat in it while moving they did march out under orders i think it was because soldiers bodies were hung and boobie trapped so he fought them on their own terms what we would call against their human rights as regards a loose cannon he got the job done? he was interviewed during the Falklands war and wanted any munitions over to be used on the Argentinian mainland he was not interviewed again? question is he still alive???jp

[Captain Kong]

Colin Campbell Mitchell (17 November 1925 – 20 July 1996) was a British Army lieutenant-colonel and politician. He became famous in July 1967 when he led the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the British reoccupation of the Crater district of Aden. At that time, Aden was a British colony and the Crater district had briefly been taken over by nationalist insurgents. Mitchell became widely known as “Mad Mitch”. His reoccupation of the Crater became known as "the Last Battle of the British Empire". Although some observers questioned whether the Last Battle was ever worth fighting, the event marked the end of an era in British history and made Mitchell an iconic figure.

After leaving the British Army in 1968, Mitchell embarked on a career in politics. He was elected as a Member of the British Parliament in 1970 but stood down at the February 1974 general election. After subsequent involvement in a failed business venture he made his living until 1989 as a military consultant.

From 1989 until his death in 1996 he managed a charitable trust involved in the removal of land mines from former war zones.

BRIAN ON GOOGLE.

[Captain Kong]

AdenMitchell was promoted to substantive lieutenant-colonel on 31 December 1966,[12] and made Commanding Officer 1st Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (the ‘Argylls’) on 12 January 1967. He achieved fame in the Aden Emergency, which was acted out in the final few years of British rule in Aden. He became known as "Mad Mitch" and was Mentioned in Despatches.[13]

Britain's Aden territory consisted of the Aden City Colony attached to Protectorates with a total land area similar to that of the UK. Within Aden City was a district known as the Crater. The Crater was the old part of the City.[14] According to Mitchell's autobiography, Crater was a "town of 80,000 inhabitants".[15] By 1967, the British position in Aden was coming under pressure from groups of armed Arab nationalists (who were competing for future power after the final British withdrawal), resulting in a counter-insurgency campaign known as the Aden Emergency.

In June 1967 the Argylls were due to take over operational control of the Crater from the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. However, before this could happen, on 20 June Arab members of the locally recruited Aden Armed Police mutinied and seized the Crater in association with nationalist insurgents. Eight British soldiers from a transport unit were ambushed and killed by the mutineers. Other soldiers were killed in separate clashes.

On 5 July 1967 Mitchell led a force that reoccupied the Crater district accompanied by 15 regimental bagpipers of the Argylls playing "Scotland the Brave"[16] and the regimental charge, "Monymusk".[17] Mitchell subsequently used what were described as “strong arm methods” to keep control of the Crater in the remaining months before British withdrawal.

The reoccupation itself was almost bloodless (one local was killed)[18] and Mitchell then used an integrated system of observation posts, patrols, checkpoints and intelligence gathering to maintain the Crater as a tranquil area while security elsewhere in Aden began to deteriorate.

However, allegations of atrocities were made against Mitchell and the troops under his command.[18] There were also allegations that the Argylls had been guilty of widespread looting.[19] The Argylls used the Chartered Bank building in the Crater as their headquarters and snipers stationed on its roof would shoot at anyone thought to represent a threat in the streets below. A BBC journalist wrote "once we stood together in Crater watching the Argylls stacking, as in a butcher's shop, the bodies of four Arab militants they had just shot and Mad Mitch said: 'It was like shooting grouse, a brace here and a brace there'." [20]

The imposition of "Argyll law" (as Mitchell described it) on the Crater endeared Mitchell to the media and to the British public. But it did not endear him to certain of his superiors in both the Army and the High Commission.[21]

Mitchell's critics stated that he was a publicity seeker and that the troops under his command lacked discipline. One High Commission official described the Argylls as "a bunch of Glasgow thugs" (a statement for which he later apologised).[22]

The reoccupation and subsequent control of the Crater district were controversial. The GOC Middle East Land Forces, Major-General Philip Tower, had feared that reoccupation of the Crater would ignite more disturbances. Tower (a veteran of the North African campaigns and Arnhem) also considered that undertaking a full reoccupation of the Crater was pointless given that British withdrawal from Aden was imminent. Tower had authorized a probe into the Crater to be led by Mitchell using the Argylls and other units. Mitchell used this authority to carry out the reoccupation. Tower later instructed Mitchell to "throttle back" on his operations within the Crater.[21]

Mitchell stated that he considered Tower’s approach to be “wet hen tactics”. The situation that developed was described in The Times as follows:[23]

“ Mitchell frequently appeared on television: a small, handsome man with a direct, pugnacious manner, speaking the robust, unminced words that the British had not heard from their army officers since the acceleration of the Imperial decline had begun nearly two decades before. Newspapers took him up as a popular hero, proudly bestowing upon him the sobriquet of 'Mad Mitch'. ”

The Crater reoccupation was carried out on Mitchell’s own initiative. Some MPs asked questions about this in Parliament. Tam Dalyell (Labour, West Lothian) asked whether it was true that: "Mitchell disobeyed operational and administrative orders of his senior officers during the recapture of the Crater".[24]


Mitchell in full dress uniform as Lieutenant Colonel commanding the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, January 1967Mitchell himself later stated that he had been rebuked over the reoccupation by General Tower. The nature of this rebuke was explained by Defence Minister Denis Healey as follows:[25]

“ … the brigade commander thought it necessary to emphasize to Colonel Mitchell that the maintenance of law and order with minimum force leading to an orderly withdrawal from Aden with minimum casualties was the policy that had to be followed. ”

The final British withdrawal from Aden took place in November 1967. Colonel Mitchell and the Argylls arrived back at their Plymouth garrison on 27 November. Unlike all the other battalion commanders from Aden, Mitchell was not decorated, receiving only the Mention in Despatches.[13] In the normal course of events, an OBE might have been routinely awarded to him. It was indicated to him that further advancement was unlikely. Reports began to circulate to the effect that the Argylls were to be disbanded.

In July 1968, Mitchell gave notice of his intention to resign from the Army at the end of the year. Although Mitchell had not given the customary 7 months’ notice required of senior officers, his resignation was accepted with effect 1 October 1968.[26]

[edit] Political careerOnce he was a civilian, Mitchell assumed a prominent role in the “Save the Argylls” campaign. He wrote his memoirs (“Having Been a Soldier”), undertook some freelance journalism and briefly took a job as management trainee with Beaverbrook Newspapers. However, he had become a popular public figure and turned this to his advantage when he started a new career in politics.

In 1969 he was adopted as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Aberdeenshire West. This was a Liberal held seat although the sitting member was retiring at the next election. Mitchell took the seat[27] with a 5,000 vote majority in the 1970 general election.[28] His main opponent in that election was Laura Grimond, wife of former Liberal leader Jo Grimond.

Mitchell proved to be an energetic and effective constituency member. He also served for a year as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Scotland. However, it became apparent that he was not likely to progress as a minister. His main political interest was the British Army and he was frequently critical of the Army’s leadership. For example, in August 1970 he was quoted as having referred to ”… those bastards in Whitehall”.[29] He gravitated towards the right wing of the Conservative party. He opposed British membership of the European Community, Rhodesian sanctions and the arms embargo on Israel. He became a prominent member of both the Monday Club and the Anglo-Rhodesian Society. Mitchell became known as a maverick MP and was one of 39 Conservative rebels who defied the Party whip to vote against British entry to the EEC in the Commons vote on 28 October 1971.[30]

Although never promoted to ministerial office, Mitchell was a high-profile backbench MP in demand by society and the media. Notably, he was a popular member of the Garrick Club and was reported to enjoy a “gregarious social life”.[31]

In 1973 he was approached by a consortium that was planning to establish a giant sporting and agricultural estate in Scotland. Mitchell was invited to take a stake in the project and become its general manager at an impressive salary. Mitchell accepted this offer and announced that he would not seek re-election to Parliament on grounds that he “…could not afford to be an MP” — a statement that would come back to haunt him.[32] He left Parliament at the time of the February 1974 general election, very much against the advice of both his wife Sue and fellow maverick MP Tam Dalyell.

[edit] 1974 to 1989The Scottish estate job offer fell through and Mitchell became unemployed. He later stated that giving up his seat in Parliament had been a disastrous mistake. He spent much of the next 10 years trying to get back into Parliament. He applied to several Conservative associations (for example, Bournemouth East in August 1977). But at every selection interview he was questioned about his reasons for giving up Aberdeenshire West in 1974. No winnable constituency would adopt him.[33]

He remained on the fringes of Conservative politics. The Times diary reported on a meeting of the Monday Club that he addressed at the 1976 Conservative Party conference on the subject of white-ruled Rhodesia:[34]

“ I went to mock, but came away with much sympathy for Mitchell personally rather than for the lost cause he espouses. He is quite at odds with the world in which he finds himself ”

Mitchell remained sporadically active in a series of consultancies, mostly of a military or security nature. He is known to have provided services to backers of the Mujahideen insurgents in Afghanistan and Contra rebels in Nicaragua.[35] However, he became increasingly dissatisfied with his situation, as evidenced by the following extract from his Times obituary: "At times his disappointment showed and it amounted to bitterness. He turned angrily against the media, which he had used so brilliantly … and against old friends who had tried to help him in difficult times. Once a popular member of the Garrick Club, he avoided it for years, finally stopping his subscription".[23]

[edit] The Halo Trust and post 1989In 1989, Mitchell took a leading role in the Halo Trust (the hazardous areas life-support organization). This non-profit making organization undertook de-mining operations in former war zones. It employed a core of (mostly British and Commonwealth) de-mining experts and a large number of locally recruited and trained personnel. Most of the Halo personnel were former servicemen.[36]

Halo became active around the world in areas such as Mozambique, Cambodia and Afghanistan. Mitchell appeared comfortable in his work with Halo. It raised his public profile once again, and in a manner that was both positive and uncontroversial.

Mitchell died in 1996 after a short illness. His family did not disclose the nature of that illness. His obituary in The Independent was written by his friend the Labour MP Tam Dalyell. Dalyell stated :

“ In the course of my last conversation with him in 1995 Mitchell said that in perspective the "Mad Mitch" image had ruined his prospects of a serious senior military career, and had deprived him of being taken seriously as a politician ...

[Bill Cameron]

a wee film and song about the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and Mad Mitch

700 GLENGARRIED MEN - YouTube