Get Real! wrote: erolz3 wrote:Oracle wrote: Also, the Brits generally treated the TCs better than the GCs.
Easy to say but do you have any credible evidence to actually support this claim ?
Go to…
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.ar ... ?PubID=648…and click
“Download it Now” on your right to open the PDF:
“Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Insurgencies”Page 35/62
“On the eve of the insurgency in 1954, the Cyprus Police consisted
of 1,386 men, a disproportionate number (37 percent) drawn from
the Turkish Cypriots (18 percent of the population).”Feel free to read on from there to attain even more evidence.
You are using this report as evidence that because at the outbreak of violence TC were disproportionatley represented in the Police, that was evidence of them NOT being 2nd class citizens ? Even thought the same report clearly says
The British long had tried to police Cyprus on the cheap, and they
got what they paid for. Police in Cyprus always had been poorly
paid, and postwar inflation made things especially bad. In the mid-
1950s, unskilled laborers could earn £25-30 per month, more than the
starting salary for a police constable, £21 per month.64 It was hard
to attract recruits with even a minimum standard of education to a
service in which the police officers earned no more than government
livestock managers or bailiffs. In comparison to other colonies,
pay was also low for the officers who might transfer from Britain
or another colonial police force.65 Simply put, the Cyprus police
did not attract a high caliber of enlisted or officer personnel. The
27
colonial government’s attitude towards police working conditions,
or even basic police equipment, followed the same pattern. Police
stations did not have mess halls, and many were in old, ramshackle
buildings that the government refused to refurbish on the grounds
of economy.66 The quest for budget cutting extended even to a failure
to supply flashlights for the police. Before the insurgency, colonial
officials denied a request for £175 to equip the police with flashlights.67
Indeed, the entire Cyprus Police budget for 1954 amounted to only
£600,000. As one might expect, police morale was low, and the force
had a reputation for incompetence, poor leadership, and corruption.
Policemen stationed in villages had a reputation for avoiding duties
that might require actually confronting criminals, so banditry and
even vendetta killings were said to go unnoticed by policemen
unwilling to risk their lives for a pittance.
Does not sound to me like the job of policeman at the time was some coverted position that represented 'favouritism' if onw got the kob, but in fact exactly the opposite. If anything your report GR is just more evidence that TC were the 'lowe class' of the two communites.
Thanks for the link, I was not aware how 'menial' the job of policeman was in Cyprus under the British so I have learnt something new.
