COMPROMISE ON CYPRUS
SIR,—I agree with much in Mr. Harold Soref's letter, but surely he is wrong in saying 'Up to three years ago AKEL, the local Communist Party, was opposed to enosis.'
On the contrary, AKEL was an active cham- pion of enosis, doing its best to outbid the Church and the Right-wing Nationalists, when I was in Cyprus in 1946 (as a correspondent of The Economist). It had strong affiliations with the Pan-Cyprian Trade Union Committee, whose leaders, with some members of AKEL, recently had been convicted of sedition. Its propaganda in the party paper sought to embarrass Athens as well as to stir up local sentiment by declaring 'Although Cyprus has not yet been mentioned by the Greek Govern- ment as unredeemed Greek territory, there can be no doubt that it will appear as Item No. 1 on the list of Greek claims at the Peace Conference'; and, again, 'It is the imperative duty of the Ethnarch to hurry up and lead the last Phase of the enosis campaign . . this following Mr. Bevin's curt acknowledge- ment of the London Cypriot Committee's memorandum.
Let's be fair.—Yours faithfully,
URSULA BRANSTON
5 Nottingham Street, London, WI ,
Previous page
