Hilary Gavin

, , , , , ,

Biafran War Insights: Frederick Forsyth on “Britain’s Shame” and why he rebelled

By HILARY GAVIN

LAST WEEK I posted a Facebook message for my friends to read after discovering that the author, former BBC journalist and MI6 self-confessed Cold war “asset”, Frederick Forsyth had sadly passed away earlier this month in his early eighties.

Now, if you don’t recognise Freddie Forsyth by name, you’ve probably heard of his 1971 political thriller The Day of the Jackal, which was made into a movie starring Edward Fox and directed by Frank Zinnemann a couple of years later.

I have to confess that I’ve never read The Day of the Jackal but I have seen Zinnemann’s gripping movie in which Edward Fox plays the ice-cool assassin hired by the shadowy right-wing OAS group, disaffected by Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule, to kill their president Charles de Gaulle in the Sixties.

Of course, I also never met the esteemed author Mr Forsyth in person but I once proof-read one of his Daily Express columns as a freelance sub-editor and was surprised to have to pull him up on a couple of facts about my favourite period in British history, the English Civil War (now known as the War of the Three Kingdoms).

At the time, I was puzzled that Mr Forsyth had made such rudimentary mistakes because he was, without any doubt in my mind, an astute, intelligent journalist – as the YouTube clip of his 2013 interview at the Frontline Club above illustrates.

As you can see from this YouTube clip, it would seem that some of Mr Forsyth’s lofty circle of BBC foreign correspondents revered Freddie’s journalistic prowess in the mid-Sixties, as his ex-colleague Mr Martin Bell explains as he introduces the event’s “star turn”.

You only have to read “Freddie’s” Wikipedia page to realise he was a high achiever from a young age flying fighter jets during his National Service in the late Fifties before joining Reuters News Agency in 1961 and subsequently “Aunty Beeb” in the mid-Sixties.

But, if you watch the YouTube clip, you’ll hear Mr Forsyth telling the audience, who had gathered for the “When Reporters Cross the Line” event in London in 2013, that he hadn’t realised that he had become part of the British Establishment by accepting the post of the BBC’s Assistant Diplomatic Correspondent at the “unnaturally young”, and “offensively young” for some, age of 28 years old.

At the time, he had not been aware how “cynical, manipulative and, when crossed, how cruel…” the British Establishment could be and he only learned the hard way after he was, in his own words, “busted” to a general reporter by the BBC following his recall from reporting on the Nigerian Civil War in 1968.

When quizzed by Martin Bell, Mr Forsyth revealed that he had “crossed the line” three times as a reporter during the otherwise-known Biafran War; firstly, when he inadvertently joined the British Establishment at the BBC; secondly, by resigning from the national broadcaster because he refused “to serve” said Establishment by subscribing to their pro-Nigerian Federal bias in managing news; and thirdly, he admitted, by quite deliberately raising the awareness of starving children who were dying needlessly in the “concocted famine” in Biafra, Nigeria.

(Click here for other eyewitness accounts of the conflict from the more enlightened BBC News in 2020 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-51094093 )

According to the late Mr Forsyth, at least half a million children starved to death after mothers in the deep bush started presenting them to Catholic missionaries with “lolling heads”, “unglazed eyes” and “swollen bellies” around April 1968.

Their loving mothers told nuns that they were feeding their children so they had no idea why they were starving – but, as Mr Forsyth told the Frontline Club – they were being fed empty carbohydrates and not essential proteins so necessary in child development.

Of course, the late Mr Forsyth was well placed to report on the man-made, “concocted” Biafran Famine as an eyewitness – and he admitted he helped promote the emaciated children’s plight by stringing stories and images taken by photographers who joined him later in 1968.

Growing up the Sixties, many children like me, were shocked by these images of African children with bulging eyes and bellies, so we saved up our milk bottle-tops for the BBC’s Blue Peter Children’s Appeal to send in aid and much-needed food for Biafrans.

You can still see the late self-confessed rebel Mr Forsyth’s pulpable anger as he tells the Frontline Club that the Biafran War was “the most shameless episode in our normally humane” country’s modern-day foreign policy, and he has never forgotten the conflict or forgiven those he considered culpable.

At the time, our Labour Government was refusing to back the US’s disastrous Vietnam War in the Far East, but it was willing to support a violent military junta in Nigeria that was killing its own citizens in the oil-rich region of Biafra.

“The second question you may like to ask is ‘Why?’”, Mr Forsyth added. Why did Britain assist a dictatorship to slaughter its own people after an insurrection? The answer, according to Mr Forsyth, was the “massive vanity” of senior members of the Civil Service who could not, and would not, admit that they were wrong.

As Mr Forsyth said, as he posed his questions to the Frontline Club audience: “When in our long history has our government ever assisted a dictatorship to kill its own citizens? The answer is ‘Never, save one’.

I suspect anyone reading this blog post might have been surprised to read that it was Harold Wilson’s anti-colonialist Labour Cabinet who supported the Nigerian federal government in the progressive Swinging Sixties.

Given the horrors witnessed by her family in the Biafran War, you can possibly forgive the Nigerian academic Uju Anya in America for Tweeting that she hoped Queen Elizabeth II had suffered “an excruciating death” in September 2022.

Saying that, I despair at the lack of rigour among modern-day academics who consistently fail to place history in the context of its time. In the Sixties, the US, Britain, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc in Europe were locked horns in the Cold War, so you might also be surprised to discover that both Britain and the Soviets supported the Nigerian junta during the Biafran War.

Why? I hear you ask, and the reason is quite simple as both Britain and the Soviet Union wanted to control the oilfields in Nigeria’s Eastern Region, so you could say the Biafrans were simply regarded as collateral damage as the Soviet’s MiG fighter jets, flown by Egyptian pilots, bombed ‘soft’ civilian targets in the conflict.

It’s a long time since I’ve researched the Biafran war, but I believe it is widely accepted that the Soviets stepped in to supply fighter jets after the Nigerian government had approached Britain for air power.

If you want to know more about Britain’s involvement in supplying arms to Nigeria during this time, take a look at the Declassified UK’s report, “How Britain’s Labour government facilitated the massacre of Biafrans in Nigeria – to protect its oil interests”, written by Mark Curtis and published on the media company’s website on April 29th 2020.

(For more information on Declassified Media UK Ltd, registered company no 11953540, visit Companies House at the Gov.UK)

At this point, I should tell you why I decided to write about Frederick Forsyth and the Nigerian Civil War. As I told my Facebook friends, I’d “bristled” a week or so ago when an acquaintance, who is in her seventies and whose opinion I value, said she felt lucky that she had lived in peace in Britain for the majority of her life.

All I can say in response is that it is so easy to turn your head, or bury it, in the sand if you are living “the good life” in peace away from the frontline. And, yes, I agree, that the majority of us would rather shun and ignore nasty news than confront it head-on, but all I say is: “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Ignoring global conflicts, in which our country may have played some part, and the resulting chaos and human suffering abroad can, in certain situations, result in displaced people seeking “the good life” in our own backyard.

And my question to you is: “Who can blame them?” You reap what you sow.

By HILARY GAVIN

Copyright June 26th, 2025

Hilary Gavin

PS: If you watch all the Frontline Club trailer, you’ll see the late Mr Frederick Forsyth reveal that he was “well-smeared” by Britain’s Foreign Office in the early Seventies after becoming “a self-confessed rebel” over the Biafran War. By then, he had returned home to this country and he had no job prospect after being branded all-sorts in the press. I believe he says he was sleeping on a friend’s couch when he decided to write a thriller based on stories he had heard of the OAS whilst reporting in Paris, France, in the early Sixties. The result: The Day of The Jackal.

I suppose it all goes to show that you should never lose hope no matter how desperate your lives seems in troubled times. Anyhow, I’m posting the official trailer to the 1973 movie for you to view. Enjoy!

A freelance journalist who wants to see a return to public accountability in the local press

Hilary Gavin,

Journalist & Writer

T/A Business ‘n’ Commas

Hunston

CHICHESTER

PO20 1NY

Discover more from Hilary Gavin

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Hilary Gavin

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading