The British sailors who couldn't steer straight in the Shatt al-Arab waterway caused an incident last week which could have sparked a major diplomatic row or even armed clashes. Fortunately, sanity prevailed. The Iranian authorities handed the men back with a minimum of fuss. In future, the Royal Navy will navigate with more care.
I couldn't help but chuckle when I read the story. There was a similar confrontation on the Hong Kong border in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, a blunder which could have led to bloodshed and political eruption.
Both sides reacted smartly and swiftly to treat it as farce rather than force. All were eager to pour water on a potentially explosive situation. That episode ended in laughter, a very rare commodity at the time along the border where British soldiers and Hong Kong police faced large contingents of the People's Army, People's Armed Police and armed militia. The Red Guards who had once rampaged bloodily through the paddy fields of Shenzhen had, thankfully, been dispersed a couple of years earlier. Otherwise there could have been a much nastier outcome.
It was a sunny spring afternoon in May 1971 when an eight-man squad of the 1st Battalion, the Irish Guards, bumped along Shataukok Road a few metres from the border. The newly arrived soldiers were in a four-tonne lorry loaded with supplies and ammunition, following a Land Rover carrying their company quartermaster sergeant.
There were prominent signs along the narrow road in English, Chinese and Gurkali with a large arrow pointing to the right with big warning letters and signs emphatically saying no entrance. The driver followed the no-go sign and swung right, directly into the narrow shop-lined lane that is Chung Ying (China England) Street. The border runs down the middle marked only by small stone blocks. The Irish unit crossed that road and ended up in China.
Astonished Hong Kong policemen saw the truck cross the border and raised the alarm. Four years earlier, rampaging militiamen had stormed out of Shataukok, machine-gunning police, killing five and wounding 12. During the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution there had been frequent riots, parades, demonstrations and noisy confrontations in the divided town.
Two Hong Kong constables grabbed on Chung Ying Street in 1967 were held for two months. An inspector, Frank Knight, was kidnapped on our side of the border by angry farmers, dragged across and held prisoner until he made an astonishing escape over the wire.