by Andrew Marr
Before the Second World War Egypt had been forced to sign a treaty making it clear that the country was under Britain’s thumb. Eden’s head was even placed on Egyptian postage stamps to mark this humiliation. One wartime episode makes the relationship clear. In 1942, as Rommel’s tanks drew nearer, and Churchill was fulminating about Cairo being a nest of ‘Hun spies’, the British ambassador told Egypt’s King Farouk that his prime minister was not considered sufficiently anti-German and would have to be replaced. The King summoned his limited reserves of pride and refused. It was, he insisted, a step too far, a breach of the 1937 treaty. Britain’s ambassador simply called up armoured cars, a couple of tanks and some soldiers and surrounded King Farouk in his palace. The ambassador walked in and ordered the monarch to sign a grovelling letter of abdication, renouncing and abandoning ‘for ourselves and the heirs of our body the throne of Egypt’. At this royal determination crumbled. The king asked pathetically if, perhaps, he could have one last chance? He was graciously granted it and sacked his prime minister. Life went on, the war went on. But Egyptians took note. Down in the Sudan a young Egyptian army officer, Lieutenant Nasser, seething with indignation, complained in letters to friends about the surrender and servility shown to the British. Colonialism, he said, ‘if it felt that some Egyptians intended to sacrifice their lives and face force with force, would retreat like a prostitute’.
The son of a postal worker, Nasser was soon at the centre of a group of radical army officers, Egypt’s Free Officers Movement, discussing how to get the British out and how to build a new Arab state, socialist rather than essentially Islamic. At this time, and later under Nasser, the Muslim extremists, whose thinking would one day influence al Qaeda, were being persecuted and even executed. Nasser was a ruthless, quietly determined man who naturally attracted followers; when King Farouk was eventually ousted by the Free Officers in July 1952 it took just two years for the young Nasser to oust the interim leader and seize control of the country himself. For him, this was good timing. After the war Arab nationalism had made things much tougher for Britain. Its oil interests began to be challenged. Visiting British ministers found themselves stoned by Arab crowds. To Churchill’s fury, Iran’s prime minister, the popular and independent-minded Mohammed Mossadeq, had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Though he was overthrown in a CIA-organized coup two years later (organized by a president’s grandson, the gloriously named Kermit Roosevelt), Mossadeq’s action was a curtain-raiser for what Nasser would do in Egypt. In Iraq, a British-sponsored king and prime minister were holding on by their fingertips and would later both be murdered by mobs. In Jordan, the British soldier who had commanded an Arab Legion there since 1939, Sir John Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha, was sacked by the young King Hussein in March 1956; an Arab now wanted an Arab in charge of his army. Though it seems a small matter now, at the time it was seen as a slap across the face for London, provoked by the uppity Arabism sweeping the region. Eden blamed Nasser for this, and told a junior minister: ‘What’s all this poppycock…about isolating and quarantining Nasser? Can’t you understand that I want Nasser murdered?’
Egypt was where the confrontation between old colonial power and the new Arab nationalism was always going to take place. Britain’s military base at Suez, guarding its interest in the canal, was more like a small country than a barracks. It was about the same size as Wales, with a vast border which was expensive and difficult to defend, so much so that Attlee had considered closing it and pulling out shortly after the war. The base depended for survival on supplies and trade with the surrounding Egyptian towns and villages. But in the latter days of Farouk’s reign, it was already being boycotted by nationalist Egyptians. One incident produced another. The tension rose. Off-duty British servicemen were shot. After one act of bloody retaliation involving the slaughter of poorly armed Arab policemen holed up in a building by British soldiers, the Cairo crowds turned on foreign-owned clubs, hotels, shops and bars and set them alight. Britain found herself facing a guerrilla war.
Eventually, following yet another coup, London began to negotiate a British withdrawal – there were, after all, other bases nearby, notably in Cyprus, where however another nationalist guerrilla war was going on, and in Jordan. Eden, then Foreign Secretary, came to think that withdrawal was inevitable and pointed out to his colleagues that ‘we are ourselves in serious breach’ of the treaty, having eight times as many troops in the country as stipulated. To start with, all was civilized enough. Nasser even briefly met Eden, though he didn’t much enjoy being lectured by the British leader in fluent Arabic. He complained later that Eden in the grandiose surroundings of the British Embassy, which made the British ‘look like princes and the Egyptians like beggars’, treated him like a rather dim junior official. The agreement stipulated that Britain would keep her rights over the canal, a deal soon broken by Nasser.
At this stage, how great a threat was Nasser? His ability to rouse Arab opinion was impressive, and he wanted to make himself a spokesman for the non-aligned world generally. His Cairo Radio, broadcasting across the Middle East, was the al Jazeera of its day, though considerably less independent. At different times in the coming crisis Nasser would be compared by British politicians and newspapers to Mussolini and Hitler, presented as a stooge of the Soviet Union, and then as a regional Arabist menace. He was a dictator, certainly. He was also a socialist of a kind, with great plans for a healthier, stronger, better-educated country. He wanted to spread his power throughout the Arab world, beginning with the Yemen, Syria, Sudan and Jordan. Like Saddam Hussein, he had used poison gas against enemies and, like him, was regarded with alarm by other Arab rulers. Like Saddam, Nasser believed in the destruction of the then new State of Israel.
Yet he would have remained a local irritant had it not been for a catastrophic blunder by Washington. Nasser’s great ambition was the creation of the so-called High Dam at Aswan, a gargantuan project which had been dreamed about since the mid-forties and which might transform Egypt’s economy. Three miles wide, it would create a 300-mile-long lake which would give the Egyptians eight times as much electric power as they then had and increase the country’s fertile land by a third. It was much more than just another civil engineering project. Nasser talked of it being ‘seventeen times larger than the greatest pyramid’. With Aswan, here was a new Pharoah bringing a new age to Egypt after centuries of colonial humiliation. The problem was that such a dam was also far beyond the resources of Nasser’s Egypt. Loans had been discussed for years and in 1956 Nasser had every reason to think that the Americans, followed by the British, were about to sign the cheques. Partly out of pique when he thought he was being given an ultimatum, Nasser’s ambassador implied they could get help from the Russians and Chinese if the American terms were not good. The US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, abruptly cancelled the offer. Nasser was livid. To show his anger and to find a new and secure source of revenue, he abruptly retaliated by seizing control of the Suez canal, triggering the coup with code-words given to a mass public rally.
If the dam was not just a dam, the canal was not merely a canal. It was the ultimate liquid motorway, a vital artery of world trade, connecting Europe through the Mediterranean, with India, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East. In the days before mass air freight the only other way was round the Cape, infinitely further, slower and more expensive. Years before Eden had called it the jugular vein of the British Empire, and in the mid-fifties a quarter of all British exports and imports came through it. It wasn’t only Britain. Three-quarters of Europe’s oil came from the region, half of it through the canal. Indeed, a sixth of the whole world’s cargoes went through it, some fifty ships every day, all of them paying tolls. Because of its international importance and the fact that it had been built by a French engineer, using French and British money, it had since 1888 been administered as an international facility, not an Egyptian one. It was run by a company, 44 per cent of which was in turn owned by the British government, t
hanks to an inspired piece of High Victorian entrepreneurship by Disraeli. It was not hard to see how this streak of colonial-owned internationalism running through Egypt felt like a violation. Nasser’s plan, having seized it by military force just days after Dulles turned down his loan request, was to use payments from canal traffic to finance the next phase of his dam. The legality of the seizure was much debated around the world but to the British government Nasser’s action was simple theft and a clear breach of international treaties. Worse, you couldn’t leave Egyptians running something as sophisticated as a canal. Worse still, if it was allowed to stand, this act of impudence or bravado would inspire other Arab radicals and threaten the whole region.
Since Nasser’s act had been provoked by Washington, and since his revenge hurt Britain and France, Washington’s allies, it might have been expected that President Eisenhower would staunchly back action against Nasser. The situation turned out to be rather more complicated. For one thing Washington was pursuing a vigorous policy of trying to turf out the old colonial powers from the Middle East in favour of America herself. The US had oil of her own but was always worried about the future and acutely aware that two-thirds of the then known world reserves were in the region. Special deals had been made with the Saudis and Iranians. This economic interest was augmented by loud and pious anti-colonialism, particularly from the Secretary of State, Dulles, a devious and sanctimonious character who hated British imperialism with a Founding Fathers fervour. He also loathed Eden, who cordially returned the feeling. Next, there was the intense worry in Washington about the Russians, who were making menacing noises about the liberal regime emerging in Hungary. Next, there was the ticklish question of the Panama Canal which was controlled by the United States in a similar way to Anglo-French control in Suez. Ike and Dulles wanted no agreement emerging from the Middle East about international control of waterways which might affect Panama. Finally, by 1956 President Eisenhower was in the throes of trying to be re-elected on a peace and prosperity ticket and was outraged by his allies’ untimely sabre-rattling. For all these reasons, America would prove to be Britain’s enemy in her confrontation with Nasser, not her friend.
Little of this was understood in London, where Eden’s tough line with Nasser was hugely popular. The Conservative Party was roaring its support. The Labour Opposition under Hugh Gaitskell sounded if anything even more bellicose (as it would later in the opening phases of the Falklands War, under Michael Foot). With a couple of exceptions – the Manchester Guardian and the Observer – the press, commentators and cartoonists were all on-side, and demanding punishment. The new science of opinion polling, and individual messages of support pouring into Downing Street, showed that public opinion agreed. Nasser must be sorted out. But timing in politics is everything. Under American pressure, there followed months of diplomatic manoeuvring during which Eden and his passionately anti-Nasser Chancellor, Harold Macmillan, began to lose the initiative. There were international conferences, proposed compromise deals under which the countries dependent on the canal would have a new role in administering what would formally be Egyptian property, and intensive negotiations at the United Nations. Britain kept hinting that it might yet come to war. Eisenhower and Dulles insisted that a peaceful solution should be found. By saying that America would have no part in trying to ‘shoot our way through’ to the canal and by referring to the problem of colonialism, they encouraged Nasser, who brusquely rejected all outside initiatives. America’s attitude also encouraged Moscow, which led the diplomatic charge against Britain and France. Throughout this episode and despite the crisis caused by Russia’s crushing of the Hungarians, the US and the USSR stood shoulder to shoulder against London.
This all felt increasingly ominous. And then a possible shortcut presented itself through the unlikely agency of Israel. It depended on America in the mid-fifties almost as much as it does half a century later, but the Israeli government believed Nasser and his pan-Arabism was a threat to their existence not properly appreciated in Washington. Egypt had taken delivery of large quantities of Soviet bloc armaments, including the latest jet fighters and bombers; Nasser’s anti-Israeli rhetoric was bloodcurdling and he was increasingly closely echoed by the Syrians and Jordanians. The Suez crisis gave the Israeli government a one-off opportunity to strike their most serious enemy, and even enjoy Western air support while they did it. Thus came about the plot finally hatched by Britain, France and Israel to finish off Nasser. Harold Macmillan, the Chancellor, had originally suggested that Israel be used to attack Egypt from one flank, and the idea was enthusiastically taken up by Churchill in retirement. When first mentioned to Eden he thought it eccentric and dismissed it. But as the international talks dragged on and the government began to lose support and momentum at home, the idea of a plot resurfaced.
We do not know all the details for the very good reason that Eden insisted no notes were taken at the key cabinet committee discussions. He even insisted that private diaries of the time, including Macmillan’s, be torn up or burned. But the Israelis approached the French who revived the idea. Israel was being harassed on her borders by guerrillas. The French, fighting a vicious colonial war in Algeria, thought Nasser was a menace to their interests there as well as in the canal. The specific plot, for an Israeli attack to be followed by an Anglo-French demand for a ceasefire, which would be refused and then followed by a ‘police-action’ intervention, was dreamed up by the French war hero, General Maurice Challe. So cloak-and-dagger discussions began. The place at which the details were hammered out was a modest borrowed villa at Se`vres outside Paris, a house that had once been a French resistance hideout. Eden’s Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, attended, reluctantly, having tried to disguise himself by wearing a battered old raincoat as he left London. (It did not work.)
There he met his French opposite number, the Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, the country’s chief of staff, Moshe Dayan, and Shimon Peres from the Israeli defence ministry. It was not an easy meeting. Britain had a close defence agreement with Jordan, another enemy of Israel at the time, and it was not so long since Israeli terrorists had been killing British soldiers. For their part, the Israelis deeply mistrusted the British. The French were also suspicious after Britain’s decision a year earlier to shun the new Common Market. Finally, the deep secrecy of the meetings created its own layer of mistrust, particularly since Eden was obsessive about nothing being written down. (Eventually the outline agreement was written down, at the Israelis’ insistence, and initialled by a British negotiator.) At the Se`vres house, with the help of local fish and wine, a deal was finally done. Those present solemnly swore not to reveal the details during their lifetimes, and for good reason. The agreement to ensure that French paratroops from Algeria and a British invasion force from Malta and Cyprus could attack, theoretically to separate the two sides, but in fact to grab back control of the canal, was wholly illegal. It required that ambassadors, other ministers, the head of MI6 and the Commons as well as the White House, must all be kept in ignorance. That, at least, was done highly successfully. Despite leaks from Paris to the CIA, President Eisenhower never guessed what was happening until it was too late.
Meanwhile the mood in Britain had changed. Anti-colonialism, the international rule of law and the rights of young countries were all issues which enthused Labour and the left generally. The United Nations, Nato and the European Convention on Human Rights, still smelled of fresh paint. As American hostility to military action became clearer, some MPs and commentators began to have second thoughts. Eden, rather like Thatcher and Blair later, complained that left-wing intellectuals were stirring things up against him, while ‘The BBC is exasperating me by leaning over backwards to be what they call neutral and to present both sides of the case.’ There was nothing quite like the drama of the Hutton Inquiry and the resignation of the BBC’s Chairman and Director General in 2004, yet at a fundamental level the earlier clash went further: Eden made menacing noises about taking the BBC under di
rect government control. According to BBC lore, troops were placed in a building on the Strand, awaiting orders to take over the BBC’s external services in Bush House: meanwhile the Corporation’s engineers there had been issued with sledgehammers and told to destroy their own equipment rather than let it fall into the hands of Eden and the government. Inside the government, some ministers became uneasy about the whole escapade. Sir Anthony Nutting, a Foreign Office minister, would resign in protest, though without the public drama achieved by Robin Cook before the Iraq War. And as with the Iraq War nearly half a century later, late in the day when the opposition really organized itself, crowds turned out to protest and private unease spilled into public anger.