Suez 1956, page 10
It was true that America was failing to think through its long-term engagement in the Middle East. Truman, like his predecessor, seemed to believe that economic self-interest would eventually bring Jews and Arabs together, a naive assumption that fatally underplayed the religious and racial divide. Meanwhile, there was some satisfaction among the anti-colonial establishment in Washington at witnessing Britain’s discomfort. Next on the list of intractable problems was Egypt. It would be interesting, it was said over the cocktails, to see what the Brits would make of that.
It was taken for granted in London as in Cairo that a change in Anglo-Egyptian relations was overdue. Even so, the sense of urgency was all on the Egyptian side. While Bevin had in mind a variation on the economic and political partnership he sought with the colonies, a policy that needed time to evolve, the Egyptian government demanded the immediate evacuation of all British troops. With plenty else to occupy him, Bevin was slow to respond – after all, the 1936 treaty still had ten years to run, so what was the hurry? But when he did get round to accepting that the Egyptians had a case to answer, he acknowledged that the withdrawal of British troops from Cairo and other urban centres was the prerequisite for constructive negotiations. This brought Churchill into the fray, the old warrior accusing the government of a humiliating climb-down. Nothing was calculated to anger Bevin more than doubts cast on his patriotism. The two ailing giants (both had heart trouble) traded insults across the floor of the House of Commons, each claiming to be the standard-bearer of a greater Britain.
In truth, there was not much difference between them. While Bevin was keen to reduce the British presence in Egypt it was only on condition of the right of re-entry in an emergency. This in turn was dependent on keeping military installations in the Canal Zone. The Egyptian government wanted none of that. Another complicating factor was the status of the Sudan. Egypt had a long-standing claim to sovereignty over the country which Britain had marked out for independence under British tutelage. The hope was to establish there a military base strong enough to deter Egypt from any intemperate adventures.
The diplomatic blockage was broken in October 1946 when the Egyptian prime minister, Sidqi Pasha, and his foreign minister came to London for direct talks with Bevin. The deal hammered out was more fragile than either side anticipated largely because they underestimated both the strength of anti-British feeling in Egypt and the strength of dissident forces that were building up against Farouk and his ministers. But at the start all seemed to be going well. A draft treaty allowed for a British evacuation of Cairo, Alexandria and the delta by 31 March 1947, and the rest of Egypt, with the exception of the Canal Zone, by 1 September, 1949. A Joint Defence Board was to be set up to discuss ‘all events which may threaten the security of the Middle East’ and to recommend action for both governments to approve in concert.1 On the question of the Sudan, Egyptian sovereignty was implicit in the agreement, but in the end it was up to the Sudanese to decide their future.
Determined to have the compromise ratified, Sidqi was less than straightforward with the Egyptian parliament. Approval was gained on the understanding that the Sudan was now Egyptian. When Bevin put him right, Sidqi was forced to resign and the revised treaty was relegated to the file of lost causes. Britain now acted unilaterally under the 1936 treaty. On the unwarranted assumption that a troublesome Egypt could be replaced by a compliant Palestine, British troops began to move out of Alexandria and Cairo. At one farewell party, the guest of honour was an English matriarch who, as a girl, had cheered the arrival of Wolseley’s troops.
The final departure from Cairo a few days later was a subdued affair: The last armoured cars slipped out of Kasr-el-Nil barracks at 5 a.m. on March 28, yet a large crowd had gathered to gaze calmly at them through the pre-dawn gloom. As daylight came, Egyptian soldiers were to be seen at every window of the barracks, tirelessly waving their flags to celebrate the re-occupation of this, the most conspicuous symbol of the British raj, once the scene of Arabi’s first great triumph, always a magnet for bugs.2
The building was soon pulled down to make way for a skyscraper hotel.
Though British occupation of the Canal Zone was set to continue, even there a withdrawal might have been expected had not Palestine turned out to be inhospitable territory for a military base. With Egyptian attention diverted by the Arab-Israeli war, relations with Britain were put on hold. It was only a short respite. The Zionist victory fuelled Egyptian resentment of a corrupt leadership as much as of foreign intervention. Farouk, no longer the handsome boy king, more the overweight profligate who had so deluded himself as to order a new palace to be built at Gaza so that he could preside over a ‘Palestine Arab Government’, was clearly at risk. An attempt to suppress the radical Muslim Brotherhood led to the assassination of the prime minister. His successor struck back with wholesale arrests and the murder of El Banna, the founder and Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood.
Less easy to pinpoint and thus destroy was the Blessed Movement of Free Officers, a military conspiracy for which Major Gamal Abdel Nasser was the prime mover. Wounded in the recent fighting, Nasser was convinced that defeat had been self-inflicted by a venal and incompetent senior command. Of the same persuasion was Major-General Muhammad Neguib, a respected leader whose war injuries testified to a courage his peers lacked. His outspoken criticisms marked him out as a likely front man for the revolution that the Free Officers were now energetically plotting.
They were encouraged by events in Syria, where a military coup had disposed of the legitimate government, and in Iraq, where a revised treaty with Britain, which Bevin regarded as a model of its kind, signalled an eruption of mob violence that put a stop to any immediate hopes for a constructive partnership between the two countries. In August 1951 the Iranian government spurred on the nationalist frenzy throughout the Middle East, nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and expelled the British employees. It was a sign of the times that, on American urging, Britain held back from direct action. By now Bevin’s health had given way. His last attempt to hold the ring in the Middle East was to forge the 1950 Tripartite Agreement with America and France to limit the supply of arms to the region, a fanciful notion when the demand for modern weaponry was so strong. Egypt, in particular, saw the agreement as an attempt to frustrate its recovery as a power to be reckoned with and was not comforted by the unreal promise of the three signatory powers to ‘immediately take action’ should any Arab country or Israel be attacked.
Further aggravation was caused when, after taking over at the foreign office, Herbert Morrison came up with a plan to create a Middle East Command with the USA, Britain, France and Turkey working in friendly collaboration with Egypt to protect her interests, but in reality to watch over the canal and to deter Soviet meddling. There was no chance that Egypt would agree. It was too much like old times. Any attempt at forging an association with the West was the equivalent of a resignation speech for the politicians held responsible.
Hoping to recover his waning credibility, the wily Nahas Pasha, who was serving his fifth term as prime minister, decided to make his own bid for nationalist support by unilaterally abrogating the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. For good measure, Farouk was declared King of the Sudan as well as of Egypt and a state of emergency imposed. This was the preliminary to a campaign of systematic harassment of British troops in the Canal Zone. Civilian workers who were pressured into finding a living elsewhere could not be replaced, food supplies had to be flown in and, at night, raiding parties purloined anything that was not screwed to the ground. The army hated the place. It was a posting associated with ‘violence, squalid discomfort, bitter desert cold and unvarying ugliness’.3 Much of the resentment of ordinary British citizens against Egypt at the time of the Suez crisis can be traced to military service in the Canal Zone.
‘No other troops in the world’, reported the Conservative MP Charles Mott-Radclyffe,
would show such discipline and restraint, in face of such provocation, as the British troops in the canal zone . . . Life is extremely monotonous. There are few amenities. Accommodation is very poor, with no prospect of improvement in view of the uncertain future. Some men are doing guard duty every other night; the luckier ones every third night. All vehicles have to travel in pairs; all senior officers have a jeep escort, and, except in a few places, even bathing parties are accompanied by an armed escort . . . To sit in a sandbagged post, illuminated at night by arc lamps, with a village 100 yards away from which shots are fired every night and quite often during the day, without the slightest prospect of being able effectively to return the fire, is quite an ordeal for the old sweat, let alone for the National Serviceman.
There were also doubts as to the military relevance of the Canal Zone. Kenneth Hunt served as a lieutenant colonel (operations) in Egypt from 1953 to 1956.
There were about 80,000 troops in Egypt. All we were really doing was taking in our own washing. We had about 40,000 logistics and support troops maintaining the existing Base, and the other 40,000 were guarding it and ourselves. We had some spare forces, so that when there was trouble in the Dhofar or elsewhere in the region, a battalion or so could go there, but basically we were doing little but looking after ourselves. We had no connection with Egypt. We were confined to the Canal Zone. We were acutely aware of the problem there would be if we did have to go into the Delta proper. The Delta could soak up men – as of course could Cairo, a seething mass of people.4
Harassing British soldiers helped to divert the energies of the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups that might otherwise have been attacking their own government for its failure to control prices and raise living standards. But for the nationalists, it was not a strategy that had lasting appeal. The ramshackle structure that was the Egyptian government showed every sign of imminent collapse. King Farouk was despised even by the royal parasites who benefited most from his extravagant lifestyle. ‘ Intelligent enough to be cynical about the political life of the country but lacking the intellectual and moral stamina to be interested in its improvement’,5 Farouk stepped up efforts to remove the bulk of his wealth to a Swiss banking haven. In October 1951, he told his recently anointed queen to prepare for exile.
Farouk was not alone in realising that Egypt was about to explode. Cultivating direct contacts with Nasser and his Free Officers, the CIA in Cairo marked out the would-be leader as an Arab politician with whom Washington could do business. He was clearly intelligent, capable of arguing a case with a self-assurance that demanded attention. Though with a high, piercing voice, he was gifted at handling a crowd. ‘On a platform’, commented one observer, ‘his personality blazes like a naphtha fire.’6 He spoke passionately of social and economic reform and of stamping out corruption. He had a devoted wife, a happy family and lived modestly. If there was a drawback to Nasser it was that the visionary in him tended to ‘identify his own ambition with the will of Providence’,7 which could lead him to overplay his hand.
The moving force in the American relationship was Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, a supremely self-assured young operative who had no sympathy with the British way of doing things. In his view, problems in the Middle East arose from the British faith in shaky alliances with old and discredited regimes. Roosevelt determined on a push ‘to encourage the emergence of competent leaders, relatively well disposed toward the West . . . including, where possible, a conscious, though perhaps covert, effort to cultivate and aid such potential leaders, even when they are not in power’.8 Nasser was one such.
As early as 1950, the CIA was backing a military programme in the USA for more than fifty young Egyptian army officers, at least six of whom were close associates of Nasser. Two future members of the Revolutionary Command Council were part of the programme, while Ali Sabri, chief of air force intelligence and a supporter of the Free Officers, attended a six-month intelligence course normally reserved for NATO officers. Later, Sabri conceded that ‘the attendance of many Egyptian officers at US service schools during the past two years had a very definite influence on the coup d’état in Egypt’.9
Though less well informed on the imminent revolution, British intelligence was sufficiently up to speed to recognise that Farouk was at risk. Anticipating growing pressure on the Canal Zone, a plan was devised for taking control of Cairo and other strategic centres, in effect a repeat performance of the 1882 occupation. Along with other more sensible proposals for solving the Egyptian crisis, it was to remain in abeyance while a general election in October 1951 saw the departure of the Labour government and the return of the conservatives under Churchill, with Eden, yet again, as foreign secretary. There was a neat irony here in that the two men who had signed the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, Nahas and Eden, were now compelled to try again to resolve their differences. Left to themselves, they might have worked out a settlement. But both were hostages to domestic pressures that frustrated their best intentions. Eden had the more difficult job. Though temperamentally inclined towards compromise, he was up against a leader whose contempt for the Egyptians was matched by his determination that Britain should not be pushed around by a subservient race.
With little encouragement, Churchill would rage against what he saw as Eden’s tendency towards appeasement, declaring that ‘he never knew before that Munich was situated on the Nile’. Pushed further, he threatened that ‘if we have any more of [Egyptian] cheek we will set the Jews on them and drive them into the gutter from which they should never have emerged’. After his tantrum Churchill would warmly recall his visits to Cairo in the days when the Egyptians had understood their place in the scheme of things.10
Like the military, Churchill was seemingly unable to understand that Britain no longer had the capacity to play the world power. For him, as for the generals, a strong presence in Egypt and the Middle East was essential, not just for the protection of oil but for strategic bases that could be used to launch air strikes against a Soviet attack. Yet Britain’s only long-range bomber, the Lincoln, could not fly above 19,000 feet and was capable of hitting only a very small part of the southern Soviet Union.11 Even the more limited objective of simply defending the Middle East was more than Britain alone could manage. It might have been different if America had been willing to commit forces to the region, but Washington had already made the decision to focus on Europe rather than the Middle East as a first line of defence. Paradoxically, this was seen in some quarters as a benefit to Britain because it helped to avoid competition with America for influence over Arab states. The stark fact that Britain could do nothing to prevent a Russian takeover without American support was conveniently ignored.
Echoing Churchill’s declaration in 1941 that ‘the loss of Egypt would be a disaster of the first magnitude to Great Britain’, a small but vocal minority in the Conservative Party kept up an imperialist chant. Known as the Suez Group, its two leading lights were Captain Charles Waterhouse, a backbencher who had once held minor ministerial posts with no great distinction, and Julian Amery, son of Leo Amery, a cabinet minister in Churchill’s wartime administration. It was the tragedy of the Amerys that Julian’s wayward elder brother, John, had wound up in Berlin during the Hitler years when he had been recruited for Nazi radio propaganda directed at British audiences. At the end of the war, and despite clear medical evidence of a personality disorder that had carried him over into insanity, he was found guilty of treason and hanged. With this family background, it is hardly surprising that Julian should have pushed his credentials as a front-line patriot. Having served in Special Operations in the Balkans during the war, he subsequently made great play of his connections with British intelligence, building on what was almost certainly an inflated reputation for knowing a thing or two about subversive movements, particularly in the Middle East. That he was Harold Macmillan’s son-in-law helped him to acquire privileged information.
Amery and Waterhouse were made for each other. Both were political blusterers, immune to strategic and economic realities, who were convinced that higher powers were intent on destroying Britain’s imperial heritage with dire consequences for the mother country and for the rest of the world. It must have seemed almost providential when the two conspiracy theorists ran into each other in a hotel in Cape Town.
We had a drink and began talking. He [Waterhouse] had just returned from the Sudan, where he had been very shocked by what he had seen there. He thought that we were about to hand it over to Egypt. I told him that much more dangerous was the threat to the Base in the Canal Zone because, as long as we were there, we could stop any nonsense in the Sudan, but if we went from there, we would have no power in the area any more. He was rather interested by this and we agreed to meet again after dinner, which we did.
When the House met after the summer recess, we found a number of like-minded and rather significant people at what I call the higher end: Ralph Asheton, John Morrison (Vice-Chairman of the 1922 Committee), Christopher Holland-Martin, who was Treasurer of the Party; and then, at the younger end, we had Enoch [Powell], Angus Maude, Fitzroy Maclean and a number of others. It grew slowly as the evidence accumulated of what looked like a readiness to hand the Sudan over to Egypt and to get out of the Zone.12
Such a betrayal, as seen by the Suez Group, would spell the end of British influence.
When we pulled out of India and Palestine, we remained to an extraordinary extent a world empire. The fulcrum of power was now exclusively based on the Canal Zone. This was the base of British power in the Middle East, Africa and, to a large extent, the Far East, because to get there we had to go through the Mediterranean and the Canal Zone. Strategically, this was the hub for any continued role for Britain as a world power. If that went, the backbone of the bird would snap, you would have two wings. In my pursuit of getting the thing right, I got a curious message from the Indian General Staff. I had consulted them, and they replied that their Prime Minister would tell us to get out, but that they felt that if we did, we would be written off as a military factor in that part of the world. All through the Arab world, you got tremendous double talk telling us to get out, but in private saying, ‘For God’s sake, don’t dream of it’.13
