The Suez Crisis (1956-57)

Anthony Eden, Prime Minister (1955-57)

Suez: the forgotten crisis. In our Brexit-obsessed 24-hour news era, it just isn’t that interesting to think about 1950s Britain. Black and white television, the end of rationing. Those are probably some of the things you think about if you cast your mind back to that era. The Suez crisis was possibly one of the most pivotal moments of the decade, and yet it is one of those historical events that seems to pass most people by.

In the 1950s, the Conservatives were riding high. Churchill, Britain’s wartime leader, had been able to stage the mother of all comebacks in 1951, having been swept out of power by the Labour landslide of 1945. Six years of post-war inflation and continuing rationing, plus a devaluation of the Pound, ushered in a period of entrenched Conservative rule from 1951 onwards. The Korean War dominated headlines in 1950-53, but with the Cold War in progress, conflicts like the Korean War had a habit of coming to a standstill, as superpowers turned their attention to different parts of the world.

By 1955, Churchill had retired from the political stage, having started his political career as a Liberal in the 1900s. The welfare state, including the NHS, remained in place, almost a decade after it had been put in place. Churchill had come to accept the actions of his predecessors, and entered retirement after a long and eventful life in politics. Anthony Eden, Churchill’s Foreign Secretary, emerged as the man to lead the Conservatives into the 1955 general election.

By this time, the Conservatives had managed to unwind rationing and the economy was enjoying something of an economic boom. Unemployment had fallen to a low of 1% (that’s right) and wages were soaring at a rate of 6.8%. However, a concerning trend was starting to emerge - a trend that would bring an end of the cosy post-war consensus of governments. Stagflation was starting to rear its head, even in 1955.

UK workers were less productive than French, German or Japanese ones. Infrastructure was stifling growth, and booms were unsustainable. Britain was slowly losing its empire, and its political elite was dominated by a generation of men born during the reign of Queen Victoria. The “sick man of Europe” moniker has its origins in this period, as the country was starting to drift along in the economic slow-lane, outpaced by more dynamic neighbours on all sides.

High wages and low productivity were resulting in an increasing rate of inflation, putting pressure on Sterling. Eden managed to secure victory in the 1955 general election, largely as a result of the boom, but as his premiership progressed, stagflation became embedded in the economic picture, impeding his government’s progress.

By 1956, Eden’s government was presiding over a weakening economy. Growth was ebbing away and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan, was raising interest rates, to prevent inflation rising further. One of the worst ways for a government to enter into a crisis is when it is distracted by economic weakness. Eden literally couldn’t afford to make a mistake in 1956.

Meanwhile in Egypt

The Suez Canal

The Suez Canal was, and still is, one of the great transport routes on the planet. Its existence allows cargo ships to move from the South Indian Ocean, through the Red Sea and up into the Mediterranean, sparing a costly journey around Africa. By the 1950s, the canal was a lifeline to the global economy, which was becoming increasingly dependent on a steady flow of cheap oil.

In the early-1950s, Britain was attempting to ameliorate relations with Egypt by ending British rule in Sudan, on the condition that Egypt would surrender its control over the Nile Valley region. By 1954, Britain had agreed to slowly withdraw British troops from the canal region in phases. Ultimately, the aim was for the canal to fall under the jurisdiction of the Egyptian government by November 1968. At least that was the original idea. History had other plans.

In Egypt, change was in the air. 1956 was a year of political upheaval for the country, as it had drafted a new constitution, in which it was decided that the people should be led by a single-party system. Gamal Abdel Nasser became President of Egypt in June 1956. Just four years before, the people had overthrown the monarchy, establishing the Republic of Egypt.

Major shifts in the running of nations were watched with great interest at the height of the Cold War by the likes of Washington and Moscow. Any sign of upheaval abroad was of great interest. Both sides were anxious to ensure that developing countries followed their model of development, and each new hotspot risked being the battleground to a proxy war, or worse: a war to end all wars.

The United States was gearing up for a Presidential election in 1956. It entered into the Suez crisis under the leadership of Republican President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, a five-star army general who had served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe during the Second World War. America had entered into the post-war world in an ideal position. It was now the richest country on the planet, and had overseen the reconstruction of Europe (through the Marshall Plan).

In 1955, the UK, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey opted to sign up to an agreement that would later be dubbed the Baghdad Pact, an agreement that effectively served as a means of containing the USSR and preventing it from making incursions into the Middle East. Nasser was concerned by the pact’s apparent Iraq-centric bias, resulting in him taking an anti-Western stance from 1955 onwards.

In his eyes, the Baghdad Pact was a mere extension of Western colonial ambitions, a means to meddle in the development of developing nations. Egypt’s signing of an arms deal with Czechoslovakia, a Soviet-bloc state, in September 1955 raised alarm bells in Britain. Nasser was signalling that Egypt no longer required the West to arm itself. Britain and her allies perceived Egypt to be edging ever closer to the Soviet Union with each passing minute.

In mid-May 1956, Nasser decided to recognise the nascent People’s Republic of China, a country that had only existed as a Communist state since 1949. Nasser’s actions angered the United States; Eisenhower believed Nasser had done this as part of a broad plan to play the West against the Soviets and he moved to cancel US funding for the construction of the Aswan Dam, a structure Egypt was planning to build in order to ensure the industrialisation of its economy.

The move was made known on 19th July 1956. Eisenhower’s logic behind this move was to force the Soviets to come to Nasser’s aid in paying for the Dam instead, which had the potential to put a strain on the USSR financially, owing to the monumental cost it would require to build.

Just a week later, on 26th July 1956, Nasser gave a televised speech in which, through the use of a codeword, he ordered the seizure and nationalisation of the Suez Canal. Upon uttering the name “Ferdinand de Lesseps” (the man who built the canal), Egyptian forces stormed into the Suez Canal Company headquarters and nationalised it. Shipping by Israel was blocked from moving through the Canal, as well as being blocked through various other routes.

The move sent shockwaves throughout the world. It seemed to come out of the blue. By this time, Eden was in the midst of an addiction to a powerful painkiller, drynamil, otherwise known as “purple hearts”, following a botched medical procedure in 1953. The drug was eventually banned in 1978, and many consider its side effects to include hallucinations, paranoia and becoming disconnected from reality.

Eden had grown increasingly suspicious of Nasser, and now that the canal had been nationalised, his worst fears appeared to have come true. The seizure of the Canal risked cutting off Britain from supplies of oil, and risked economic meltdown in his eyes.

In the early days after the nationalisation, the groundswell of public opinion appeared to support some kind of response, but interestingly, some were more cautious about what this response should be. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell went as far as to compare Nasser to Hitler, before changing his tune. By August, Gaitskell was keen to ensure that Eden would not intervene militarily, and believed Eden’s reassurances on the matter. Stressing the importance of the UN Charter (barely a decade old at the time), Gaitskell wanted to make sure any response by Britain was rational and not open to condemnation by the international community.

However, concerns mounted that, if the blockage continued for another couple of years, with a dwindling supply of fresh oil, in the words of Ambassador Sir Ivone Fitzpatrick: “Our gold reserves will disappear…the Sterling area will disintergrate…”. Despite this threat, the US seemed unwilling to get involved, and yet it became clear that any overt move by Britain to intervene in Egypt, to reclaim the canal, would risk condemnation from the US and the rest of the international community. Thus, a secret pact was born.

The French Fourth Republic was in its final days by the time the Suez Crisis had started. France was led by a series of unstable governments, prone to collapse. Violence had flared up in Algeria, and its Prime Minister, Guy Mollet, was determined not to lose influence over developments in Egypt. Mollet’s views were shared by much of the French public, and by 29th July 1956, the French Cabinet had agreed to take military action against Nasser, in agreement with the Israelis. The French extended an invitation for Britain to join in the intervention if Eden wished.

Between July-October 1956, the US tried and failed to implement initiatives to de-escalate tensions between the key players, and the UK and France grew closer in their determination to act, when it appeared that the Americans were offering no willingness to act themselves. An informal meeting between Chancellor Harold Macmillan and President Eisenhower in September 1956 did much to muddy waters over the whole matter.

Macmillan was under the impression that the US wouldn’t oppose the toppling of Nasser. In actual fact, the US was vehemently opposed to any act of aggression against Egypt. Such aggression would simply reinforce the archaic notion that the West hadn’t gotten over its imperialist tendencies.

Eden went into the Suez crisis, wrongly assuming that French-British military action would be tolerated by the States. Britain’s motivations for intervention centred around it perceiving Nasser’s actions as a form of obstruction. By cutting the Suez Canal off, Britain would lose prestige. It would look as if Britain had not only lost its empire, but also its control of trade routes and access to power supplies.

The French were convinced that Nasser had played a role in destabilising Algeria, and wanted to act in order to prevent any of its other North African territories being destabilised by him. Israel entered into the conflict, hoping to restore access to trade routes. Israel was also concerned about Egypt as an increasingly militaristic actor, and sought to use an intervention to strategically weaken it.

Tory backbenchers grew increasingly restless about the situation in 1956, with many seeing stark parallels with the Chamberlain government’s appeasement of Hitler in the late 1930s. It wasn’t until October 1956 that members of the British, French and Israeli governments met in secret, to establish a clear strategy to handle Nasser’s canal seizure. Assembling in the town of Sèvres, these figures organised an invasion plan where Israel would attack first, by sending troops to the Sinai. Britain and France would wait before sending in their troops, using them to secure the canal under the pretext that they had come to separate the warring Israeli and Egyptian troops. The plan was dubbed the “Protocol of Sèvres”.

Each country retained a copy of the protocol, signed in French. It wasn’t long before news of the agreement was leaked. Within four days of the signing, Israel initiated the first stage of the conflict, sending its air force over the Sinai. Paratroopers were dropped into the region with air support, to counteract Egyptian air force attacks. Phase Two kicked in on 31st October 1956, when the British and the French ordered Egyptian and Israeli forces to stand down.

Operation Musketeer (or Mousquetaire) began in earnest, with the British and French air forces bombing the Egyptian air force, doing great damage to it in the process. The domestic response back in Britain was severe. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell took to the Commons despatch box during the first fiery debate on Suez, on 1st November, saying: “Is the Minister aware that millions of British people are profoundly shocked and ashamed…that British aircraft should be bombing Egypt, not in self-defence, not in collective defence, but in clear defiance of the United Nations Charter?”. The Hansard entry for the debate records that an MP was heard shouting “fascists” during this segment of Gaitskell’s address, highlighting the mounting tension in Westminster.

The 1st November debate almost descended into an all-out brawl. Gaitskell was incensed that the Prime Minister had spent months claiming no action would be taken against Nasser, only to launch an all-out bombing campaign without any prior warning. Public opinion was quite negative by the time the bombing began. An anti-war march on 4th November assembled at Trafalgar Square, with as many as 30,000 people taking part, ordering Eden to resign immediately.

The Labour Party became firmly anti-war as a result of Eden’s actions, and the BBC offered Gaitskell airtime to address the nation with his views about the mounting crisis. The BBC was facing a dilemma with Suez. In WW2, the threat of the Third Reich was obvious and the BBC was sure about how to cover events.

In 1956, the BBC was aware of the public's anger and the opposition party's position against the government, and ultimately decided to reflect the divisions in society. This move greatly angered Eden. As a sign of how insecure Eden’s government had become over the public perception of the crisis, it briefly considered punishing the BBC in some shape or form, which would have likely led to full government control over its editorial stance. The BBC would face similar backlash in the early 2000s, at the height of the War on Terror saga. In the end, no action was taken against the BBC.

The international response to the crisis was immensely negative. The US was contending with the fallout from a Soviet incursion in Hungary at the time, and the Suez Crisis simply made the West look hypocritical. The US had been lecturing the Soviets about interfering in Hungary, and then Britain went and undermined them by just inflaming tensions in the Middle East. This gave the Soviets something to crow about. The Saudis reacted to the intervention by turning off the oil taps to Britain and France, to cripple them economically. In Pakistan, the British High Commission was burnt to the ground by a crowd of angry protesters.

Eisenhower, disappointed by Britain’s behaviour, opted to punish Eden for his actions. The US began to exert its immense financial power on Britain, effectively crushing it to bring an end to the crisis. When Britain sought financial aid from the IMF, the US managed to deny them access to funds. Eisenhower also threatened to order the US Treasury to sell British government bonds. The UK government risked fiscal disaster, as the move would have resulted in bond yields soaring, something that Eurozone countries suffered from at the height of the 2011 Euro Crisis. At a time when Britain’s debts were immense and its economy was weak, it couldn’t afford to antagonise the people who now held the purse strings.

In Downing Street, a political power play was in progress. Chancellor Harold Macmillan was confirming to the government that the US wasn’t bluffing about selling UK bonds. Macmillan is also alleged to have overblown the whole thing, speculating that it might cause the Pound to crash and drain the Treasury’s reserves, for the UK to suffer systemic disruption of fuel and food, and for the economy to effectively grind to an absolute halt. It is likely that Macmillan was using his position to over-exaggerate the situation in order to force Eden out of office.

The Suez Crisis was just the first of many post-war crises that could have quite possibly triggered WW3. The Soviets indicated they would have to intervene to protect Nasser, possibly launching missiles at France, Britain and Israel. Eisenhower knew that if the Soviets came into direct confrontation with members of NATO, he would no-longer be able to serve as a neutral player and would be obliged to enter the fray as a NATO member, to directly confront the Soviets. History now tells us that the Soviets are unlikely to have actually had the technology to make good on their threats, but at the time, their threats had to be taken seriously, as the technology behind the threats was unlike anything seen before.

On 2nd November, a US-backed resolution was passed by the UN General Assembly, calling for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of combatants behind clearly-defined armistice lines, as well as an arms embargo and the re-opening of the Suez Canal. Britain didn’t comply until 6th November, when it finally announced a ceasefire. Forces weren’t expected to fully withdraw from the fray until December 1956, and by the spring of 1957, the Canal was finally re-opened, almost a year after the whole crisis had begun.

Eden’s political fate was now sealed. In the midst of this firestorm, Eden opted to take a holiday in Jamaica, and just two days after he announced a ceasefire, he survived a vote of confidence in Parliament. His health spiralled in the ensuing weeks, and a consensus formed that he had misled Parliament, the country and the world at large. He was condemned by some for going into Egypt, and he was condemned by some on his own side for pulling out through the ceasefire before even reaching his objectives. Eden’s Jamaican holiday simply allowed Macmillan to cement his position back in Westminster, and by the time Eden had returned from holiday in December, his days in office were numbered.

Government papers from 1956 were declassified in 1987, revealing that the Cabinet had been fully aware about plans for the operation on 23rd October, but Eden had defiantly claimed to Parliament that his government had no foreknowledge of any planned Israeli invasion. On 9th January 1957, Eden resigned on health grounds, and Harold Macmillan succeeded him as Prime Minister. Macmillan or “Super Mac” as some would dub him, would lead the country for the next six years. The economy would soften in 1958, but he led the Tories to yet another electoral victory in 1959, on the back of yet another economic boom.

Macmillan would claim during his tenure that Brits had never had it so good, and the people would believe him. He performed an electoral miracle for the Tories, and the blame for Suez was firmly lodged at Eden’s door. Eden would live well into his eighties, passing away in 1977 after a battle with cancer. Macmillan’s premiership would usher in a period of decolonisation; the countries that once made up the British Empire started to gain independence, and as the UK sought to recover lost ground economically, it allowed people from the Commonwealth to emigrate to the UK to boost the labour force.

The Suez crisis wasn’t the cause of Britain’s 20th Century decline, but simply a symptom of it. The age of empire was long gone and the decline in British influence arguably started in the 1920s, when Britain emerged from WW1. America was calling the shots now and it had no time for a country like Britain stirring up trouble in the Middle East during a tense period in geopolitical history. Suez was a turning point. To paraphrase someone, Britain had lost its empire but hadn’t found a role yet.