Introduction

This chapter begins with an explanation of the study’s rationale, methodology and terminology. This is followed by brief sections on post-Second World War Spain and historical Anglo-Basque relations. Together, these sections provide the reader with a modest background to the socio-political conditions from which ETA emerged, as well as some of the historical factors that prefigured London’s view of ETA and the “Basque problem” thereafter. This chapter concludes with the first references by British diplomats to ETA in the early 1960s and the double killing of Guardia Civil traffic officer José Antonio Pardines and ETA militant Javier “Txabi” Echebarrieta on 7 June 1968.