The power behind a Jordan king

Press, 26 April 1984, Page 21

The power behind a Jordan king

TIM HEALD

of the London “Daily Tele-

graph” talks to a Briton who was a legend in his time in Jordan.

The Queen’s visit to Jordan last month had much drama — the bomb which almost led to the whole thing being abandoned; the heavily armed King’s guard in their swirling headdresses; the highspeed Mercedes; the diminutive warrior king; the world’s leading Harrovian Hashemite and his Valkyrie-looking American-born Queen. For the connoisseur there was just one missing ingredient — Glubb Pasha.

For those who thought Glubb Pasha was a long-dead name in the history books, there is good news. Despite being in his 87th year Sir John is alive and well and living in Mayfield, Sussex. It was in 1956 that King Hussein relieved him of his command of the Arab Legion, a post he had held since 1939. It was a dramatic dismissal. Some suspected stringpulling by Egypt’s President Nasser (it was the year of Suez) and it was certainly a blow to British prestige.

When he returned to Britain after a lifetime’s soldiering in the Middle East he was effectively destitute. Yet he has never spoken ill of King Hussein and the two men remain on good terms. Is Hussein a strong man? “Oh yes, I think so,” says the Pasha. A colleague of General Glubb once said of him: "The Pasha is always on parade.” It remains a perceptive remark. His biographer, James Lunt says of him: “Living as he had to do among bedouins who will gossip far into the night, and

in a tent which was open to every passing wayfarer, Glubb constructed round himself a kind of carapace inside which he could retain his privacy, while outwardly he would be sitting there patient and calm.”

The house in Mayfield is no tent but the Pasha’s carapace appears intact. He is still neatly military in his bearing and scrupulously polite. “Do you keep up with your friends from Jordan?” “Oh yes. But one doesn’t write politics to one’s friends.’”

That wonderfully prosaic surname is a West Country one and though there are, according to him and his wife Rosemary, now more Glubbs in New Zealand than England, the Glubbs have been successful professional people ever since Henry Glubb was member of Parliament for Okehampton at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Sir John’s father and grandfather were both soldiers, so there was a certain inevitability about his chosen career. After school at Cheltenham he passed second into “The Shop” at Woolwich and went to France in 1915. He was very badly wounded two years later Immediately after the war he went for training at the Royal Engineers’ depot in Chatham. Then

a year later there was an Arab revolt in Mesopotamia. Reinforcements were required and young Jack Glubb volunteered. It was the beginning of an adventure which was to turn him into one of the most influential figures in the Middle East (one contemporary magazine described him as “The Uncrowned King of Jordan”). He became as legendary a figure of the desert as Lawrence of Arabia.

“You must realise,” he explains, “that Jordan was originally a very rural country. I understand Amman is quite a city now, but when I knew it, it was really only a village.” When he first went to Jordan his job was to take law and order into the desert. Jordan’s tiny army only functioned in settled areas. He took it out into the wilderness, forming a “Desert Patrol” which rapidly became Arabia’s most glamorous unit — known rudely as Glubb’s Girls because of their long hair and flowing robes. In the hall of the house in Mayfield there are three pastel portraits of patrolmen — nothing girlish about them. “They had a tremendous sense of chivalry,” Glubb says, slightly unexpectedly. “They were very honourable men. Simple and straightforward. Extremely intelligent.

They picked things up very quickly.”

When Glubb first went to Jordan he travelled by camel. One of those who met him was the present King’s great-grandfather, also called Hussein. When old Hussein realised that Glubb had come all that way on camel he exclaimed: “By my God, this fellow is a Bedouin.”

It was King Abdullah, the present Hussein’s grandfather, who was Glubb’s mentor. “He was the foundation,” says the Pasha. “Quite a statesman and a very fine man.” He was assassinated at mid-day prayer in the Great Mosque in Jerusalem and Glubb Pasha never enjoyed quite the same rapport with his grandson. “It’s best not to go back,” he says, explaining why he has never returned, despite numerous invitations. “Especially if you’ve been very happy. You find things have changed and you don’t like it as much as you used to.”

The Glubbs have lived in the Mayfield house for most of the past 30 years. It’s full of clutter — photographs and mementoes and Lady Glubb’s collection of china cats. Until very recently he lectured, especially in America, and wrote books, the most recent of which appeared in 1982. He finds the Queen’s visit gratifying because it’s a sign that “Jordan has remained a close ally. There’s never been any great swing against Britain.” An achievement for which he is too modest to claim credit.