by Richard Toye
Over the next months, Labour’s problems got worse. The outbreak of the Korean War in June set back economic recovery, forcing tough choices about how rearmament would be paid for. Early in 1951, Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell’s insistence on introducing prescription charges in the National Health Service led to the resignation of the fiery socialist health minister Aneurin Bevan. In May, a new crisis emerged in Iran, a country which could fairly be described as part of Britain’s informal empire. (Informal empire is the domination of one nominally independent nation by another country, especially by virtue of economic control.) For years there had been much political meddling. In 1941, the British had deposed the Shah and replaced him with his son. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) was also of vital importance. Before World War I, Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had played a part in securing a majority government stake in the company, a move intended to help secure the Royal Navy’s oil supplies.94 Now, AIOC was Iran’s most sizeable foreign investor. Its refinery at Abadan was the world’s biggest and represented Britain’s largest overseas investment.95 Many Iranians felt, with some justification, that they did not get a fair deal from the existing concession agreement. After the British refused to allow moves that would have increased Iran’s annual payment, Mohammed Mossadegh’s nationalist government announced it would nationalize AIOC’s operations in the country. The Attlee government did consider military action, but concluded that it would be unwise without US backing. This was not forthcoming; at this stage the Americans saw Mossadegh as a buffer against communism. Churchill had a difficult line to steer too. On the one hand, he had to satisfy backbenchers eager to lay into the government for pusillanimity. On the other, he too saw the need not to act without US support, and he wanted to avoid the ‘warmonger’ label that Labour was keen to pin on him.96
On 19 September Attlee called another general election. Things then developed fast. On the 26th the Iranians issued an ultimatum, demanding the withdrawal of AIOC’s remaining personnel from Abadan. The British complied within a week. Churchill now had a clear reason to revive the charge of ‘scuttle’. A few days later Egypt denounced its 1936 treaty with Britain, and proclaimed King Farouk to be King of the Sudan.97 (In practice, the British ignored this and its troops remained in the Suez Canal Zone.) Churchill spoke of ‘the great decline of British prestige and authority in the Middle East which followed inevitably from the loss of India’. Now it was known that Britain would ‘not in any circumstances offer physical resistance to violence and aggression’ it was to be expected that ‘Egypt will treat us more roughly still’.98 This in turn helped Labour make use of the ‘warmonger’ card. The Daily Mirror had already cast the issue in terms of ‘Whose finger on the trigger?’ Was it to be calm, methodical Mr Attlee or the unpredictable Churchill? Herbert Morrison, the Foreign Secretary, stopped short of saying that the Tories actually wanted war: ‘I do not accuse the average Conservative of being a warmonger [. . .] it would not be fair and it would not be true. But it is their temperament; it is the background of their mental outlook – the old imperialist outlook.’99 Churchill, for his part, tried to rebut the charge that, had he been returned in 1945, Britain would have become involved in a war with the Indian people. At that time, he said, all parties had been pledged to granting India Dominion status, ‘carrying with it the right to secede from the British Empire and Commonwealth. The only question was how the transference of power was to be made.’100 This was an interesting reading of history, given that there had been no unequivocal Tory pledge in 1945 (although at that time Churchill had publicly lauded Amery’s efforts ‘to bring India to the status of a Dominion’).101 Churchill had, of course, spent many years opposing Dominion status precisely because it carried with it an implicit right of secession.
It is not clear whether either side drew a clear advantage from such rows. Amery observed at the end of the campaign that ‘Winston has wound up with an impassioned defence of himself as a lover of peace. I am sure he does in principle, but he has always thoroughly enjoyed a war.’ He added the charge, ‘Naturally, as usual, the Empire might be non-existent so far as his speeches are concerned’ – an apparently absurd accusation best understood in terms of Churchill’s failure to talk constructively about imperial development in the future.102 After the election dust had settled, the Manchester Guardian suggested that, although the warmonger charge had not brought much response from voters, the crises in Iran and Egypt helped the Tories less than once they would have done. Moreover, ‘The Empire, still fragrant with the aroma of groundnuts, was hardly in the picture.’103 Austerity and the cost of living were the major issues, and Churchill worked hard to portray Bevan as a left-wing extremist who would call the shots in a new Labour government. ‘Abadan, Sudan and Bevan are a trio of misfortune’, he said.104 Polling day was 25 October. Labour won a majority of the votes cast but, owing to the vagaries of the first-past-the-post electoral system, the Conservatives won a seventeen-seat majority in the Commons. At the age of seventy-six, Churchill was back in Downing Street.
IV
In Canada the news was greeted warmly by the press, although the Liberal government of Louis St Laurent, Mackenzie King’s successor, was more doubtful. Churchill’s talk of Commonwealth solidarity was thought to raise the old threat of centralization.105 In Australia, Robert Menzies had been back in power since 1949 while Labour had been defeated in New Zealand by the opposition National Party. The Canberra Times, welcoming Churchill’s comeback, suggested, ‘Within the British Empire the disappearance of socialist governments may pave the way to a more closely knit and effective organisation’.106 In India there was some scepticism about his return, but it was generally viewed with a slight sense of detachment. The Hindustan Times said that it was no secret that Asian countries would have preferred Labour to stay in power: ‘As far as India is concerned, she cannot forget Mr Churchill’s references to the scaling down of her sterling balances [. . .] Now that Mr Churchill is at the head of the British government, he will have to undo his own past mischief if the faith in Britain is to be preserved.’107 Some reassurance was offered by Churchill’s appointment of Lord Ismay, his wartime military secretary, as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations. In 1947 Ismay had risked Churchill’s disapproval by acting as Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff, but it appears that he won the confidence of Indians. The Times of India felt that the Tories could help the cause of international peace, but warned Churchill not to ‘reimpose some of the outmoded concepts of Empire and colonialism’.108 Nehru himself was relaxed.109 African nationalists, who had yet to win their independence, felt a greater sense of alarm. According to the West African Pilot: ‘As the return of the “old war horse” means to Britain “more raw materials from the colonies” and [a] greater rearmament drive, so too to the West Africans, it symbolises the era of greater youth solidarity; it is the climax of our struggle; it is the period when, perhaps like the Americans of 1776, we might have to sing one tune, and one tune only: “independence in our life time”.’110 The Soviets, unsurprisingly, portrayed the Tory victory as a sign of imperialism’s menacing progress.111
At home, the installation of the new government coincided with a moment of national optimism. In February 1952 George VI died of lung cancer and was succeeded by his daughter Elizabeth. In his broadcast tribute to the late King, Churchill gave a subtle reworking of an old theme. ‘The Crown has become the mysterious link – indeed, I may say, the magic link – which unites our loosely bound but strongly interwoven Commonwealth of nations, States and races’, he said. ‘People who would never tolerate the assertions of a written constitution which implied any diminution of their independence, are the foremost to be proud of their loyalty to the Crown.’112 With Britain fading as a great power, Churchill stressed the moral authority of the Crown as a substitute for military might. He spoke effectively to the public sense that the new reign might usher in an era of British resurgence. It seemed highly symbolic, for example, that, on the eve of the coronation
in 1953, news came through that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had conquered Mount Everest. The former was from New Zealand and the latter from Nepal, but Churchill was far from unique in hailing their climb as a ‘memorable British achievement’.113
Such episodes could boost optimism about a ‘new Elizabethan age’, but the Empire could not survive on prestige alone. The economic situation was serious. At a time of global shortage, Britain could no longer rely on cheap supplies of raw materials from the colonies. Oliver Lyttelton, the new Colonial Secretary, told the Cabinet, ‘Amery economics are no longer applicable.’ He also warned that financial constraints made colonial economic development ‘impossible’.114 Far from launching a new rearmament drive, the new government was forced to retrench the existing programme inherited from Labour. In July 1952 – by which time the government had already ditched a bold plan, Operation ROBOT, to free up the economy by floating the pound – Churchill told a rowdy House of Commons of his concerns.
Tragic indeed is the spectacle of the might, majesty, dominion and power of the once magnificent and still considerable British Empire having to worry and wonder how we can pay our monthly bills. I fully admit I am tortured by this thought and by the processes which I see around me, and I shall do everything in my power – [Hon. Members: ‘Resign!’] – to bring home to the mass of our race and nation the sense of peril and the need for grave and far-reaching exertions.115
Meanwhile, nationalist pressures were making themselves felt in many parts of what was left of the Empire. Perhaps the most pronounced crisis was the communist insurgency in Malaya, where a state of emergency had been in place since 1948. Just prior to Churchill’s re-election the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, had been shot dead when his car was ambushed. The man appointed to replace him was General Sir Gerald Templer, who is generally credited with devising the strategy that eventually defeated the insurgency. ‘You must have power – absolute power – civil and military power,’ Churchill said to him at the outset. ‘And when you’ve got it grasp it, grasp it firmly. And then never use it. Be cunning – very cunning. That’s what you’ve got to be.’116
Sitting above all these problems was that of America. Churchill returned to power at the tail-end of the Truman era. The 1952 election race was between the Democrat Adlai Stevenson and, for the Republicans, Dwight Eisenhower, with whom Churchill had worked closely during World War II. The sculptor Oscar Nemon was visiting the Prime Minister at Chequers when the news of the result was due and, according to Nemon’s unpublished memoirs, Churchill was hoping for a Stevenson victory. He was looking at his tropical fish tanks when an assistant told him of Eisenhower’s win. ‘And now I shall also have a fish that can talk’, he said. Nemon replied that he did not know that any such fish existed. ‘Believe me it does,’ answered Churchill, ‘and this one speaks with an American accent.’117 Whatever his reservations about the new President, Churchill understood the importance of cultivating him, although his efforts to this end were rather transparent. Eisenhower noted in his diary that Churchill had ‘fixed in his mind a certain international relationship he is trying to establish – possibly it would be better to say an atmosphere he is trying to create’. He felt that Churchill’s hope that Britain and the Commonwealth would receive privileged treatment from the US was inappropriate and was reluctant to be seen to be propping up colonialism. ‘In some instances immediate independence would result in suffering for people and even anarchy’, he acknowledged, but, ‘In this situation the two strongest Western powers must not appear before the world as a combination of forces to complete adherence to the status quo.’ He concluded: ‘Much as I hold Winston in my personal affection and much as I admire him for his past accomplishments and leadership, I wish that he would turn over leadership of the Conservative Party to younger men’.118
However, whenever British and American interests coincided, Eisenhower was happy to collude with Churchill’s efforts to shore up Britain’s power. This was the case in Iran, where attempts to reach a negotiated settlement had failed. The threat of a coup by the Iranian Communist Party, which was lending its support to Mossadegh, helped convince Washington that it was necessary to strike first. Eden, as Foreign Secretary, was cautious. In June 1953 he flew to Boston for medical treatment. Churchill used his absence to approve Anglo-American plans to remove Mossadegh with the cooperation of the Shah. On the 23rd Churchill suffered a massive stroke, which took him out of action for several weeks. His illness was kept secret from the public. The Iranian coup which brought down Mossadegh went ahead in August. Initially, things went wrong and the Shah briefly fled. However, the CIA orchestrated street protests that ended with the Shah’s return and with Mossadegh in jail.119 Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore and distant relation of Franklin) was the plot’s CIA mastermind. After it was over, he visited Churchill at Downing Street where he found him in bed, propped up by pillows. As he related the tale of the coup, the Prime Minister sometimes listened attentively and at others nodded off, ‘consumed alternately by curiosity and by sleepiness’. ‘Young man,’ he said when the story was over, ‘if I had been but a few years younger, I would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture!’120
The problem of Egypt proved more difficult. In 1952 King Farouk was forced to abdicate following a nationalist coup. General Mohammed Neguib and Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser were key figures in the regime that replaced him; in due course Nasser dispensed with his rival. Through all this the British, who still had many troops in the Canal Zone, remained eager to negotiate a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty to secure their future military presence in the region. The Egyptians had little incentive to negotiate, as the existing treaty was due to expire in 1956, at which point they could hope to see the back of the troops. The Americans were not prepared to do much to help the British, as they did not want to risk driving Egypt into the Soviet camp. Eden’s efforts to strike a deal could therefore only be an exercise in saving face: it was not realistic to think that the soldiers could remain. In spite of this, Churchill talked tough, although he cleverly modulated his message. In 1953 Leo Amery, still watching affairs from the sidelines, described how ‘Winston [. . .] made a splendid speech on Monday which entirely captured the opposition by his suggestion of discussions with Russia and a new [Treaty of] Locarno, and the Right by being firm with Neguib.’121 To his fellow Commonwealth Prime Ministers Churchill insisted that Britain’s interest in the Near East was ‘No case of so-called imperialism.’ Britain was in Egypt ‘for international reasons’, in order to protect an international waterway and to maintain a base important to NATO.122
Churchill’s ‘no surrender’ attitude may have been a good parmentary tactic but, in general, it did not make Eden’s job any easier. It was already hard enough. Churchill’s troubled relationship with his Foreign Secretary was rotting the government from within. Having anointed Eden as his successor during World War II, he stubbornly refused to relinquish the throne. At times he could be positively malicious about this. An eminent doctor who was lunching with him told him, after watching him eat and drink, that he had the glands of a man of forty: ‘Whereupon Winston at once said, “Pass the glad tidings on to Anthony!” ’123 His diehardism on Egypt was certainly the product of conviction. (As a parliamentary candidate in 1899 he had declared that England would ‘leave Egypt when the pyramids fell down, and not before’.)124 But it was also a very effective way of needling Eden. On one occasion – when Eden was not present – he went into ‘a rage against A.E., speaking of “appeasement” and saying he never knew before that Munich was situated on the Nile’. Churchill seemed to regard the quest for agreement as a sign of weakness and even to positively want the talks to break down.125 He was particularly resistant to including in any agreement the termination of joint Anglo-Egyptian rule of the Sudan – the legacy of Kitchener’s River War campaign in which he had fought. The majority of the Cabinet was against him, and he knuckled under, although, as the negotiations prog
ressed, he continued to tell colleagues: ‘I care far more about Sudan (a great & living trust) than about [the] Canal Zone.’126 By conceding the principle of Sudanese independence – which came in 1956 – the Egyptians were able to eliminate the vestiges of British control there.
Churchill’s attitudes had much in common with the so-called Suez Group of Tory backbenchers. Much influenced by the experience of the Abadan crisis, they demanded a halt to imperial retreat.127 Prominent amongst them was Julian Amery, who had been elected in 1950. ‘I thought the base in Suez was the key to our position in the Middle East and in Africa’, he recalled. ‘And I made a rather bitter attack on a speech Eden had made foreshadowing withdrawal.’ The next morning Amery received a phone call from No. 10, but he did not get the ‘rocket’ he anticipated. Instead the Prime Minister’s secretary told him, ‘Mr Churchill asked me to let you know that he’s read your speech and he is very impressed by it!’ Moreover, Amery remembered, in ‘subsequent conversations in the House, on three or four occasions, when I was leading this campaign against the withdrawal from the base, he would say, “Keep it up! I agree!” ’128
There were, of course, limits to how far Churchill could go in undermining his own government’s policy. He muttered about acting as Foreign Secretary himself should Eden resign, but he could hardly have withstood such a calamity. So he unenthusiastically accepted Eden’s line. Finally, an agreement between Britain and Egypt was reached whereby the troops would be evacuated by June 1956, but they would be allowed to return in the event of war. Civilian technicians would stay for seven years after the withdrawal to keep the base facilities in good order.129 It must have been a bitter moment for Churchill.130 When a meeting of backbenchers discussed the deal, and started to become truculent, the government Chief Whip found the Prime Minister and told him, ‘I think you ought to go up. Our side is in trouble!’ With a grunt, Churchill replied, ‘I’m not sure I am on our side!’ But he did go and, reluctantly backing Eden, carried the meeting.131 ‘You cannot maintain prestige with folly’, he told the would-be rebels.132