MODERN GREECE: A History since 1821 - Amazon Web Services

THE POST-CIVIL-WAR PERIOD (1949–67) 131
following decade. Besides spurring growth these policies helped to
concentrate wealth in a limited number of hands. The Ministry of
Merchant Marine and the Greek Shipowners’ Union were in harmony
as the state helped the merchant marine rebuilt itself after the war and
ship-owners in their turn made sure they employed Greek seamen. 3
On December 15, 1954, Papagos restructured his government to
include two deputy prime ministers, Panayotes Kanellopoulos and
Stephanos Stephanopoulos, one of whom would replace him if he was
debilitated by his poor health. Younger members of the party were
given senior posts – the dynamic Constantine Karamanlis was given
the Ministry of Transport and Public Works and the bright Panagis
Papaligouras became minister of coordination. Papagos’s health however
deteriorated soon after.
Throughout his term in Athens, American ambassador John Peurifoy
played a decisive role in Greek politics. Thanks to his preference for the
simple majority system the Greek Rally Party won its resounding mandate
in 1952. This victory however made the conservatives less malleable
to American instructions. From the outset of his term the former
commander-in-chief proved more dedicated to his patriotic quest than
to his Western allies. Whereas Plastiras had discouraged the Greek
Cypriots from demanding unification (enosis) with Greece in 1950,
Papagos adopted the Archbishop of Cyprus Makarios’s demand for
recourse to the UN that had been overruled by the British authorities.
Occupied by Britain in 1878 and a British colony after 1925, Cyprus
was no exception to the rule of anti-colonial struggles that rocked the
British Empire after the war. Greek Cypriots, who represented 80 percent
of the island’s population, repeatedly appealed to Greek governments
for support and hoped for unification (enosis) with Greece.
Although Greek liberal politicians discouraged such pleas, it was the
Conservative government of Alexandros Papagos that, in 1954,
embraced the cause of the Greek Cypriots. When Archbishop Makarios,
political and spiritual leader of the Greek Cypriot community, introduced
the issue to the forum of the United Nations, Britain responded
by bringing the previously neutral Turkish Cypriots and Turkey into
the dispute. The foundations of future inter-communal conflict were
thus laid and what began as a struggle for independence gradually
deteriorated into a confrontation between Greeks and Turks.
On September 6, 1955, under the pretext of a staged bomb attack
against the home of Kemal Atatürk in Thessaloniki (used as the