Irish scholar of Middle East international politics and South Yemen
His 1985 LSE thesis on the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and the 1990 book built on it are the standard study cited when assessing the South Yemeni socialist state's achievements and limits.
Simon Frederick Peter Halliday (1946–2010) was an Irish writer and scholar of international relations and the Middle East, born in Dublin. He read PPE at Queen's College, Oxford, took an MSc in Middle East politics at SOAS, and sat on the New Left Review editorial board from 1969 to 1983. His 1985 LSE doctorate on South Yemen's foreign relations became the standard study of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and he taught international relations at the LSE, as professor from 1985 until 2008.
Also known as: Simon Frederick Peter Halliday
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1967Graduated in PPE from Queen's College, Oxford
- 1969Took an MSc in Middle East politics at SOAS, University of London
- 1969–1983Member of the New Left Review editorial board
- 1973–1985Fellow of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam and Washington
- 1974Published his first major book, Arabia Without Sultans
- 1985Awarded his LSE doctorate on South Yemen's foreign policy
- 1985–2008Professor of International Relations at the LSE
- 1990Published Revolution and Foreign Policy: The Case of South Yemen, 1967–1987
- 2002Elected a fellow of the British Academy
Related historical events
Political Positions on Imperialism and Intervention
Halliday did not judge imperialism and intervention by bloc alignment but case by case. He was forthright in advocating justice, human rights and socialist democratic values, and he rejected apologetics for tyrannies in developing nations made in the name of anti-imperialism. This formed part of his wider view that imperialism and capitalism had often been progressive forces in many parts of the world, notwithstanding their oppressive and exploitative elements.
On that basis he assessed interventions individually. He considered the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan favourable on balance, and regarded the period of communist control there as a progressive episode within the violence and oppression that preceded and followed it. He also favoured Western interventions in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, treating Saddam Hussein's regime as by far the greater evil, while criticising what he saw as the arrogance and incompetence of the US and British administrations that carried them out and the tragic consequences. From the mid-1970s he was a regular participant in a London Middle East study group set on critiquing existing tendencies in the field and working out an alternative, mainly Marxist approach, and his interest in Soviet policy and the cold war, together with his critical stance on US intervention in Afghanistan, were recurrent themes in his writing.