12. 'Likely to attract publicity': The cold war context of the Beatles' Greek island plans
At the time it approved the Beatles’ application for property currency, the British government was having to weigh public opinion on Greece against geopolitical reality
For the Beatles, their dreams of buying a Greek island in 1967 were about wanting to “drop out” and create a “sort of hippie commune where nobody'd interfere with your lifestyle”. The mundanities of politics may have seemed irrelevant to musicians taking psychedelic trips into the mysteries of consciousness.
Nonetheless, the group’s island plans took place in a political context – and that context was the cold war. In the delicate geopolitical balance between East and West, Greece had a particularly significant role. By visiting the country and planning to buy property there, the Beatles therefore became actors on a political stage. The circumstances meant that the group, in effect, needed permission from the British government to go ahead with their planned purchase. And while the government’s decision was ostensibly on a technical financial policy matter, the Beatles’ fame and economic clout gave it various political dimensions.
As I wrote previously, many people in the UK felt revulsion towards the new Greek regime’s authoritarianism. As well as protests from the public and cultural figureheads, Britain’s Labour government was also facing strong pressure from much of the media to speak out against the colonels. The Guardian urged Western countries to mark their “thorough disapproval”, while the New Statesman commented that “there can be no excuse and no forgiveness for the silence that means a condonation of evil”.
But government ministers had to weigh calls like this against strong pragmatic arguments for working with the regime. In the context of the cold war, a key consideration was Greece’s role as a NATO ally in a part of the world where Soviet influence was strong. Alexandros Nafpliotis, the author of a book on the British government’s policy towards the junta1, told me that Greece’s fellow NATO members saw it as a crucial partner “right on the edge of the iron curtain”. Bordering communist Albania and Bulgaria as well as Tito’s Yugoslavia, it was seen as “the only reliable bastion of stability in the eastern Mediterranean”. Similarly, the historian Konstanina Maragkou writes that Greece had a “special geostrategic significance to NATO”, with British officials “acutely conscious” of the need to stay on good terms with it2.
This importance grew after June’s six-day war in the Middle East, which led to increased Soviet presence in the Mediterranean and underlined NATO’s need for an ally there. Continued working relations with Greece were also seen as important for British commercial interests, and to retain influence over the tense political situation in Cyprus, where Britain had military bases. Mindful of this, the British government soon began to establish a policy of working with the junta.
The government’s dilemma is evident from discussions soon after the colonels’ coup, recorded in the UK National Archives. At a meeting on 3 May 1967, the foreign secretary George Brown asked the British ambassador to Greece, Sir Ralph Murray, "whether our policy should be to take the coup calmly and carry on business as usual or to act very disturbed by what had happened and show our displeasure", according to the minutes . Murray recommended continuing a "normal working relationship" with Greece, saying “it would be right to do business with the regime and try to push them into a suitable political evolution".
"We could use the strength of feeling in this country about the coup as a way of pushing them in the right direction," suggested the ambassador. Brown commented that cooperation with the colonels could be combined with "a certain aloofness", such as having no British ministers visit Greece for the time being.
The foreign secretary circulated a note to cabinet on 17 May outlining the government's policy of entering “working relations” with Greece while aiming to influence it towards democracy and civil liberties. Publicly condemning the regime and ending relations, said Brown, "would have fitted the sense of shock and repugnance that we felt and still feel", but "would have left us with no direct means of speaking our minds to the new leaders".
Moral outrage
The UK’s stance was in line with that of the US and many other Western European countries. As the historian Effie Pedaliu has written: “Most allied governments ranked Greece’s geostrategic location as being of a higher priority than the undemocratic behaviour of the ‘Colonels’”.3
But many in the Labour party retained a strong sense of moral outrage. This included the backbench MPs Malcolm MacMillan and Arnold Gregory, who in May produced a report, based on a recent visit they had made to Greece, arguing that until democratic rights were restored, "this fascist-type dictatorship should be ostracised by all civilised nations". Disapproval remained strong at the Labour party’s conference in October 1967, when a motion calling for Greece to be expelled from NATO was passed – though this was disregarded by the party’s leadership.
Despite such misgivings within its own party as well as the wider public, the government held firm in its pragmatism. In the House of Lords on 7 June, the foreign office minister Lord Chalfont stated that as long as the colonels upheld their promise to return to constitutional government, "public condemnation would do more harm than good" – a stance backed the following week by the prime minister Harold Wilson.
Government approval needed
So the Beatles were making plans to buy an island in Greece at the same time that British ministers were uncomfortably trying to justify their stance towards the country’s regime. The group also needed the UK government’s consent for any purchase to go ahead. There were strict controls on currency exchange at the time, and any British person wanting to buy property abroad needed official permission to buy a special currency known as ‘property dollars’ to do so.
The £120,000 that the group needed for the island was higher than most requests, and officials were concerned that approving this amount would risk freezing up the property dollars market. Documents in the National Archives show that the request was discussed in detail by officials, including at the highest levels of the Treasury. It was eventually referred to a senior government minister – John Diamond, chief secretary to the Treasury – who approved the application on 13 August.
This approval was by no means a formality. In the archive documents, the official who first reviewed it wrote that “my inclination would…be to refuse consent”. But several civil servants argued instead that permission should be granted. These included the Treasury’s most senior official, the permanent secretary Sir Dennis Rickett – though he acknowledged that authorisation would “put some strain on the market”. Following the approval, the original official confessed in a memo: “The counsels of my masters are almost invariably wise, but on this occasion I think they were wrong!”
Political dimension
On the face of it, the decision being made by the government was on a technical policy question. And in policy terms, it would have been justifiable for the government to reject the Beatles’ request.
But of course, it wasn’t just any request. The Beatles were among the most famous people in the world. And the group’s high profile meant that the government’s decision would inevitably have a political dimension. In his 1968 authorised biography of the group, Hunter Davies explained how many politicians wanted to be associated with the Beatles:
“It might seem slightly far-fetched that governments should wish to court four members of a beat group. Many said the Labour government did, by giving them an MBE. But it has always happened, since the beginning, from trying to get them to go to embassy or government parties to state visits. Most governments see the Beatles as a way of giving themselves a young identity and keeping in with the young voters.”
As Davies suggests, prime minister Wilson had been believed by some to be seeking this kind of reflected glory when he awarded the Beatles MBEs in 1965. And similarly, Greek tourism officials had apparently sought to benefit from the Beatles’ presence in their country.
So ministers had an incentive not to disappoint the Beatles if they could help it. A further possible factor to consider was the group’s achievement in bringing foreign currency into the UK through sales of their music. In their application letter, the Beatles’ lawyers pointed out that the group had been given MBEs for services to export, adding that the four had “contributed very substantially to the earnings of foreign currency by the United Kingdom in the last five years”, as well as paving the way for other groups to do so. According to Davies, this was indeed a factor in the decision: he wrote that “it was agreed that as they’d [the Beatles] bought so many millions into the country they should be allowed to buy an island refuge”. But in the archive files, no official or minister states this as a reason in favour of allowing the purchase.
Another relevant issue, that the records only briefly touch on, is any possible publicity arising from the decision. Officials knew the matter might well generate attention, with Rickett saying the request should be referred to a minister partly on the grounds that "anything to do with the Beatles is likely to attract publicity".
The concern seems to have been about the decision itself being subject to particular scrutiny. But I wonder whether the possible impact on wider media coverage also occurred to anyone within government. The British government was well aware of the strength of public opinion on Greece, and considered this when deciding its policy towards the junta. And if the Beatles had gone ahead with their purchase plans, it could have had an appreciable effect on the country’s portrayal in the British media. Their vision of holiday homes in Greece contrasted markedly to calls from others for a tourism boycott – and could conceivably have contributed to softening the country’s image if it had actually happened. It’s easy to see how that might appeal to the Greek junta as it faced a decline in tourism. Might it also have appealed to British ministers experiencing criticism over their stance towards Greece?
Of course, this publicity dimension wasn’t officially a factor in the government’s thinking – and there’s no evidence that it had any influence unofficially either. There were valid policy reasons to approve the Beatles’ request. And if political factors were at play, a desire to keep the group on side (or in any case avoid annoying them) would probably have been chief among these. At the same time, it would be surprising if the impact on media coverage and public opinion didn’t at least cross the minds of any of the senior political figures involved.
If faced with a similar situation today, it seems likely that a British government would consider the ‘optics’ of whatever decision they made. That would also seem to apply to a government in power during the cold war. But if any ministers or civil servants did turn their thoughts to such matters in 1967, there is no record of that in the archive file.
Alexandros Nafpliotis (2020) Britain and the Greek Colonels: Accommodating the Junta in the Cold War
Konstantina Maragkou (2019) Britain, Greece and the Colonels 1967-74: Between Pragmatism and Human Rights
Effie G. H. Pedaliu (2016): Human Rights and International Security: The International Community and the Greek Dictators, The International History Review, DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2016.1141308