Arnold Wilson

For the British politician and solicitor, see Arnold Muir Wilson.

Sir Arnold Wilson
Born	(1884-07-18)18 July 1884
Died	Eringhem, France
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army British Indian Army Royal Air Force
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel, Pilot Officer
Unit	32nd Sikh Pioneers, No. 37 Squadron RAF
Battles/wars	World War I
Awards	DSO

Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson KCIE CSI CMG DSO (18 July 1884 –31 May 1940) was the British civil commissioner in Baghdad in 1918–1920. Wilson served under Percy Cox, the colonial administrator of Mesopotamia (Iraq) during and after World War I, including the Iraqi revolt against the British in 1920. Wilson was the third Member of Parliament (MP) to be killed in World War II when serving as aircrew at the advanced age of 55.

Early life and career

Wilson was born in 1884 and educated in England at Clifton College, where his father James Maurice Wilson was a headmaster. His younger brother was the tenor Sir Steuart Wilson.

Wilson was tall and strong. He began his military career as an army officer in 1903, having been awarded the King's Medal and sword of honour at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He then served as an officer of the British army in India serving for six years with the Sikh Pioneer Regiment. In 1904, he went to Iran as a Lieutenant to lead a group of Bengal Lancers to guard the British consulate in Ahvaz and to protect the work of the D’Arcy Oil Company, which had obtained a sixty-year oil concession in Iran and was pursuing oil exploration in partnership with the Burma Oil Company. Wilson was an officer in the 32nd Sikh Pioneers, a regiment of the Indian Army and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

In 1907, Wilson was transferred to the Indian Political Department and sent to the Persian Gulf, where he served as a political officer, Wilson oversaw the discovery of the first oil site in the Middle East, Masjid-i-Suleiman in 1908. Soldier and senior administrator as Consul-General of Muhammerah (1909–11): he was put in charge of the Turko-Persian Frontier Commission. He looked like the traditional figure of the 1857 Indian Mutiny in a top buttoned bright red tunic, the Indian Army uniform. "His flashing eyes, his beetling eyebrows, his close-cropped hair, his biblical quotations", recalled Gertrude Bell. Wilson was a hard worker, a workaholic, who was tirelessly energetic, shifting mountains of paperwork. He inspired a younger colleague Harry Philby, while Hubert Young, a favoured subordinate found him domineering.

In January 1915 as the British were moving troops from India into Mesopotamia through the Persian Gulf and Basra, Wilson was designated as the assistant, and then deputy, to Sir Percy Cox, the British Political Officer for the region. Based in Baghdad, he then became the acting Civil Commissioner for Mesopotamia. The problem remained that there was no official "Arab Policy" it had not been defined in law nor by the Civil Service. India wanted Mesopotamia as a Province; but Arabists from Cox downwards wished for a semi-autonomous policy separate from the Arab Bureau in Cairo. Policy was made ad hoc; but Wilson disagreed.

During his tenure in Mesopotamia, Wilson worked to improve the country's administration according to the principles he learned in India. In Wilson’s views, the priority was to reconstruct and stabilize the country, by establishing an efficient government and administration as well as a fair treatment and political representation of the various ethnic and religious communities (i.e. in the case of Iraq: Arabs, Kurds, Persians, of religions such as Islam Shiite and Sunni, Christianity and Judaism). In doing so, he was nicknamed "The Despot of Mess-Pot".

Capt Wilson told me the staggering news that he had been appointed to Tehran ...Capt Wilson and I are excellent colleagues and the best of friends and I know I can do a good deal by seeing people...I am going to compile an intelligence book on Persia.

However, after World War I he found himself progressively opposed to other British officials who believed that Arab countries should be granted independence under British supervision.

In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference which followed World War I, he was among the few who successfully recommended adopting the Arabic name Iraq, as it had been known for more than 1400 years by Muslim and Arab worlds, instead of the Greek name Mesopotamia which was only used by Westerners. This political entity covered the planned northern expansion of the newly created country under the British Mandate to include the oil rich Mosul region of Kurdistan, in addition to the Mesopotamian provinces of Baghdad and Basra.

In 1920 he joined the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as resident director in the Persian Gulf. He worked for the company until 1932.

In April 1920, at the Conference of San Remo, the League of Nations agreed to the British mandate over Iraq. In the spring and summer of 1920, various riots erupted across central and southern Iraq. These riots were often violently repressed by Wilson's administration. The total number of Iraqi casualties of these riots was estimated at 10,000 people.

In the summer of 1920, Wilson proposed a compromise, suggesting that Feisal, the former King of Syria, be offered the Iraqi throne. This proposal was intended to obtain support from the Iraqis as well as British officials who favored semi-independence. It was eventually accepted by the British government, but Wilson was not there to participate in its implementation. The British government decided not to follow Wilson's views, and instead granted independence to Iraq. The British government removed Wilson from his position in Iraq and knighted him. Deeply disappointed by the turn of events, he left the public service and joined the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as manager of their Middle Eastern operations.

World War II

In 1933, he was elected in a by-election as MP for Hitchin. Before World War II, his outspoken views evoked a lot of criticism. The New Statesman described him as "an admirer of Hitler and an unscrupulous propagandist for Mussolini and Hitler". George Orwell called him a Fascist, although he also praised his courage and patriotism.

However, in October 1939 after the outbreak of the war, he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, serving as a pilot officer (air gunner) in 37 Squadron of RAF Bomber Command. He stated that "I have no desire to shelter myself and live in safety behind the ramparts of the bodies of millions of our young men." Still an MP, he was killed in northern France, near Dunkirk, on 31 May 1940 when his bomber aircraft, Wellington L7791 crashed. He is buried at Eringhem churchyard, half-way between Dunkirk and Saint-Omer.

His book, The Persian Gulf, was published in 1928. His book, S.W. Persia: Letters and Diary of a Young Political Officer 1907–1914, was published posthumously in 1941.

See also

• Iraqi revolt against the British

External links

• Winning his spurs as a stoker—this includes a photograph of Wilson, taken around 1916
• Wasserstein, Bernard. "How far did the UK aristocracy’s love of the Nazis really go?", The Jewish Chronicle, 22 July 2015

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Viscount Knebworth	Member of Parliament for Hitchin 1933–1940	Succeeded by Seymour Berry