Command of the Army, Charles Gwynn and Imperial Policing: The British Doctrinal Approach to Internal Security in Palestine 1919–29

Abstract

This article explores, through a case study the nature of ‘imperial policing', its myriad problems, and the issues confronting the chiefs of the Imperial General Staff as they sought to maintain security against falling budgets and increasing nationalist unrest across a variety of theatres in the period 1919–39. In particular it examines the significance of Charles William Gwynn's (1870–1963), short book Imperial Policing (London: Macmillan, 1934), especially his observations about managing unrest in Palestine in 1929. This work and the official manual of the same title were not the first to offer advice about the containment of civil unrest or the neutralising of insurgency, but it was perhaps one of the most influential of the interwar period and was candid about some of the problems that confronted British forces in the empire. Military Aid to the Civil Power (MACP) was rarely if ever popular with the army, but Gwynn's work at least drew attention to a problem that the army was frequently forced to confront. Several studies have, in recent years, applied scholarly analyses to the tactical and operational issues of MACP, but it is harder to find investigations into the command of ‘imperial policing’, where senior officers had to maintain internal security in regions across the empire with very limited resources under the spotlight of unsympathetic politicians and international media. The relative success of that effort is explored in this article.