Suez 1956, page 11
For Amery, standing up to Egypt was ‘a chance to rekindle past greatness’. He told Churchill of his conviction that ‘the Egyptian business is going to mark a turning point in our affairs. The Middle East and indeed the whole world may realise that we are still alive and have a heart as well as teeth and claws’.14
Trying to hold the balance within his own party, Eden adopted the tough and tender approach. He was ready to consider a fresh treaty, he told the Egyptian prime minister, but while negotiations progressed, the old treaty held good. The Egyptian government would be ‘responsible for any breach of the peace and any damage to life and property’. The warning went unheeded. Attacks on British persons and property became so frequent as to put pressure on the army to retaliate. With troop numbers up from 35,000 to 64,000, General Sir George Erskine, the British commander in Egypt, certainly had the means to retake the initiative. Without firing another shot it was within his power to cut off that part of the Egyptian army around Cairo by closing the El Firdan swing bridge near Ismailia. Recognising the threat, Egyptian forces had attempted to take the bridge but had been pushed back with the loss of two men. They now kept their distance behind what was known as the Erskine line.
It was not only the bridge which the Egyptians had to worry about. The oil pipeline on which Cairo depended started in Suez. Erskine contemplated starving the city of fuel and power and, indeed, cut supplies to prove his point. But though tempted to go farther, he was persuaded to hold back from a provocation that was tantamount to a declaration of war. Instead, yet more military reinforcements were flown in and civilian labour from Cyprus was recruited to fill the gaps left by the Egyptian workers who had fled the Canal Zone.
What next? Everyone knew that the stand-off could not continue for long. Rather, the question was whether there was time enough for the diplomats to patch up a settlement before tempers gave way. Beset by conflicting advice, Eden prevaricated. His own foreign office was no help. Though more realistic than the military in assessing British prospects in the Middle East, senior officials were torn between the need to accept Egyptian demands and the heartfelt desire not to do anything that might lose prestige. The contradiction was expressed succinctly if unhelpfully by Sir Pierson Dixon, later British ambassador to the United Nations but then a deputy under-secretary of state in the Foreign Office.
Thinking over our difficulties in Egypt, it seems to me that the essential difficulty arises from the very obvious fact that we lack power. The Egyptians know this, and that accounts for their intransigence.
On a strictly realistic view we ought to recognise that our lack of power must limit what we can do, and should lead us to a policy of surrender or near surrender imposed by necessity.
But the basic and fundamental aim of British policy is to build up our lost power. Once we despair of doing so, we shall never attain this aim. Power, of course, is not to be measured in terms alone of money and troops: a third ingredient is prestige, or in other words what the rest of the world thinks of us.
Here the dilemma arises. We are not physically strong enough to carry out policies needed if we are to retain our position in the world; if we show weakness our position in the world diminishes with repercussions on our world wide position.
The broad conclusion I am driven to is therefore that we ought to make every conceivable effort to avoid a policy of surrender or near surrender. Ideally we should persuade the Americans of the disaster which such a policy would entail for us and for them, and seek their backing, moral, financial and, if possible, military, in carrying out a strong policy in Egypt.15
But the drawback to Dixon’s analysis was that the USA and Britain were increasingly at odds over global strategy. As seen from the Pentagon, Britain made too much of the importance of the Middle East, especially Egypt. Holding down large numbers of troops in the region could not in the end guarantee the flow of oil or stop a major Soviet offensive which, in any case, was unlikely. The US view was neatly summarised in a Foreign Office minute:
There is no military or political advantage in a continuation of the present state of affairs in Egypt, and there is little prospect that they will change for the better. The Egypt base must therefore be written off, and arrangements made for the defence of the Eastern Mediterranean without it. Meanwhile the British can best serve our common interests by withdrawing from Egypt as gracefully as they can, and thereby make it possible to get the Arab states to co-operate in the defence of the area.
Unless, therefore, there is soon a favourable turn of events in Egypt, this document may prove to be the starting point of an important schism between the foreign policies of the US and ourselves.16
One of the three contributors to this analysis went on to emphasise the hopeless position Britain was in.
We have done everything we can to help [the Egyptian government] with face-saving devices but we have never had the slightest response. After all that has gone by, I frankly cannot see that any ‘popular’ and parliamentary Egyptian Government can now abandon the national aspirations as its ideal, if it is not to be shouted down by its opponents. It may be that the Egyptian public will in time lose interest in the national aspirations as being impracticable, but this would be a historical novelty and must, I think, be discounted.
All this, if correct, points to the fact that the only sort of Government with which we can hope to get an accommodation is a frankly authoritarian government which is strong enough to sit on nationalism, to pack or if necessary do without a Parliament altogether, and control the press. It would have to be both ruthless and efficient. The question is where to find a man with the courage, force of personality and sagacity to run such a Government. King Farouk is clearly not he, although he might be happy enough to back up a suitable candidate. We need another Mustafa Kemal, to secularise and Westernise his country and direct the political energies of the people away from the British towards the reconstruction of their own economy and social structure. Even so Egyptians are not Turks, and men like Mustafa Kemal cannot be ordered à la carte!17
A colleague added, ‘The outlook is not encouraging.’ But still the military continued to insist that a base in Egypt was vital to protect British interests. ‘Our standard of living stems in large measure from our status as a great power and this depends to no small extent on the visible indication of our greatness, which our forces, particularly overseas, provide.’18 The chiefs of staff urged the seizure of all points of entry and exit in the Canal Zone and the ordering out of Egyptian troops and ‘their removal by force, if necessary’.19
Meanwhile, clashes between British troops and Egyptian police culminated in January 1952 in Ismailia when the occupants of two police barracks refused to surrender their arms. An attempt to enter the Bureau Sanitaire, formerly part of a hospital, was met by a fusillade of small-arms fire. Force was met with greater force. A Centurion tank smashed through the outer wall of the barracks, clearing the way for an assault by the Lancashire Fusiliers. The occupants of the other barracks, the Caracol, held out until noon, suffering minor casualties. In all, the Egyptian police lost fifty killed with one hundred wounded while the Fusiliers counted four dead and ten wounded.
Government supporters proclaimed a decisive victory. ‘Britain has made a mighty affirmation of its Imperial destiny,’ whooped the Daily Express. But the strength of Egyptian resistance surprised the British military, who were now less convinced of the Churchillian view that the natives would always submit to the smack of firm government. Indeed, Churchill himself had to accept that the simplest solution was not necessarily the best, though he continued to advocate a tough line while Eden still searched for a way out by negotiation.
Further evidence of just what the British were up against came at the end of January. ‘On the morning of the 26th’, wrote General Muhammad Neguib, soon to be installed as first president of the Egyptian republic, ‘mobs began to gather all over Cairo . . . Before long they were attacking and setting fire to numerous foreign and luxury establishments.’20
On what became known as Black Saturday, Egyptian police and army were nowhere to be seen. The royal calendar, which had Farouk attending a banquet to celebrate the birth of his son, continued uninterrupted, and the prime minister was said to be otherwise engaged.
If it was an orgy it was a controlled orgy. It was confined to the centre of the city, and large European residential quarters, such as Zamalek and Gezira, were virtually unaffected. It began about midday, when small gangs – they were said to have been composed of auxiliary police and unemployed ‘refugees’ from the Zone – under well-briefed leaders, converged on Opera Square and the streets leading off it. The targets were hotels, restaurants, bars, banks, cinemas and luxury shops, either European or Jewish owned or with obvious European associations. The destruction of property by arson, pillage and looting was the chief aim; the lives were not spared. In Barclay’s Bank clerks, who had taken refuge in the underground strong-rooms, died of suffocation. In the Turf Club, which was attacked when members were going in to luncheon, twelve men – they were most of the elderly retired civilians who had spent their lives in Egypt, but a senior Canadian diplomat was among them – were murdered. At Shepheard’s Hotel the guests, who included a cabaret star and a reporter from the New York Times, sheltered under a palm tree in the exiguous garden while the hotel blazed and crumbled in front of them. Farther along the street the Continental Hotel, which was closed for repairs and redecoration, was similarly assaulted and destroyed. The attacks were vengeful and selective. Another distinguished American journalist, who chanced to arrive by air from Saudi Arabia that morning, was advised by his taxi-driver not to go to Shepheard’s, deposited his bag at the Semiramis Hotel and for several hours roamed the streets unmolested, until (it was alleged, for his own protection) he was taken into custody by the police.21
If the Egyptian authorities were slow to act so too were British troops, who were within easy reach of Cairo and might have been expected to dash to the rescue of fellow citizens. But though, according to Eden, there was a plan for intervention, the preferred solution of both Eden and Erskine as advised by the ambassador, Sir Ralph Stevenson, was for the Egyptian army to act first, this being the best chance of preventing a wider conflagration. It did so in the late afternoon. By the end of Black Saturday, nine Britons, one Canadian and some fifty Egyptians had died and over four hundred buildings were destroyed. What was the point of it all? Probably none whatsoever, except to give further proof to the British – as if any were needed – that they were not welcome. The risk to Farouk and Nahas of letting mob violence get out of hand was in demonstrating to Nasser and his revolutionary friends the weakness of the regime. But in the short run it was Farouk who gained best advantage. Protesting shock at the outrages against persons and property, he took the opportunity to dispose of Nahas in favour of his old ally, Ali Maher.
The new regime at least gave Eden the opportunity to reopen negotiations. But first he had to come to an accommodation with his allies, ‘to persuade the US’, as he put it, ‘to assume the real burden . . . while retaining for ourselves as much political control, and hence prestige and world influence, as we can’. He put his faith in a Middle East Defence Organisation centred on Egypt, backed by Britain, America, France and Turkey and ‘carrying with it the grant of full facilities to allied forces in time of war’.22 Once this was in place, British forces could be withdrawn from the Canal Zone within a year. Civilian technicians would replace military personnel at the canal base. It was an ingenious face-saving scheme but it was too much for Churchill, who was not prepared for evacuation to precede the arrival of allied forces under a Middle East command. Eden gave way, even though it was widely accepted in the foreign office that too little was being offered to satisfy the Egyptians.
At the moment I can see no hope whatever of our reaching agreement with the Egyptians. We are not at present prepared to make the minimum concessions necessary to secure an agreement, and it seems impossible to make people here realise this fact and to understand the possible results of failure to reach an agreement . . . It does of course remain to be seen how far down the Egyptians are prepared to climb. Ali Maher, and even I suppose the King, must know quite well that if they do not reach an agreement with us, it may mean the deluge so far as they are concerned.
On the other hand, if they do not achieve something which can be dressed up to look like their national aspirations, it may equally be the end of them. On our side, it seems to me that if we push the Egyptians too far we might get an agreement which no Egyptian Government could get ratified; on the other hand if we hold out for our full requirements and do not get an agreement at all, there may be such an explosion in Egypt that we shall be buried in the ruins.23
At this point in his career, Eden was living in the real world. It was all very well for Churchill to demand firmness but his foreign secretary knew that there was no escaping a climb-down. ‘We shall be bound to get out of the Canal Zone anyway in 1956 in the absence of some new agreement. If we have to leave, this would mean withdrawing not only our troops but also the stores in our base and leaving the base installations behind.’ On the other hand, if there was a four-power Middle East command, the Egyptians could be expected to cooperate in the maintenance of the Middle East base. ‘We hope that Egypt would agree that British technicians should be retained in it, while Egyptian troops would probably have to take over guard duties. This base would provide the means of sustaining all the forces of ourselves and our Allies in the Middle East in time of war, and it is thus that we should hope to protect the Suez Canal.’ But following Churchill’s train of thought,
If we merely seek to hold the Canal Zone by force, we must expect sooner rather than later a revolution in Egypt. This will mean disturbances in the Delta on a far larger scale than on January 26th, with inevitable loss of many British lives and interests. We may be compelled to reoccupy the Delta towns, which will place upon us an administrative commitment which we cannot possibly afford in terms either of men or money. We must expect that all our commercial interests in Egypt will be lost. As for the base, our military authorities already admit, that, under the conditions prevailing during the last five months, it would be useless from an operational point of view if war came, since our entire resources have been devoted to maintaining ourselves, and we have not had enough to spare to maintain the base. Moreover, we should have no troops for the defence of the Middle East, since they would all be required to hold the position in Egypt.
In these circumstances, Eden could see no chance of winning American support. What, then, was left? ‘The plain fact is that we are no longer in a position to impose our will upon Egypt, regardless of the cost in men, money, and international goodwill both throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world.’24
Eden might have saved his energies. His good sense was outweighed by the intransigence of Churchill, who could rely on the sheep-like connivance of senior colleagues and the slow-witted strategists on the general staff who continued to insist that a base in Egypt was essential in wartime. Though Eden had all the best arguments, he had not the force of personality to win them, a foreshadow of his brief and inglorious premiership culminating in the Suez crisis, when he allowed himself to be swayed by the small but vocal diehard force in his party.
While, in right-wing parlance, Britain held firm, Egypt fell apart. Martial law and heavy-handed censorship conveyed the popular impression of a society that was firmly under control, but in reality trouble for Farouk and his government was never far away. Efforts to identify and neutralise dissidents in the military were counter-productive as Nasser and his Free Officers continued to attract converts. Farouk had left it too late to make his mark as a creditable leader, and he knew it. The recklessness of his actions in the closing weeks of his reign suggest a card-sharp who was bluffing with a weak hand.
As one government followed another in quick succession (Ali Maher lasted only four weeks, his successor but one a mere seventeen days) Farouk turned to the army command to protect his throne. Aware that the Free Officers were ready to act, the generals sent a company of infantry to arrest Nasser and his accomplices. Instead, they joined the revolutionaries and were sent back to arrest the generals. Farouk was at his summer palace in Alexandria when in the early hours of 23 July 1952 armoured cars and tanks rolled up at Cairo airport, the radio station and the telephone exchange. News of unusual troops movements was passed to Farouk. He gave no orders.
At 7 a.m. a proclamation was broadcast in the name of General Neguib announcing that the army, having delivered the country from ‘one of its darkest periods of history’, would ensure a smooth transition of power, including the preservation of lives and property of ‘brother foreigners’. Following up with a tour of the country, the friendly and approachable Neguib, puffing contentedly at his pipe, exuded confidence, confirming his reputation as a leader who would curb the excesses usually associated with military coups. There were even encouraging words for the British people. ‘Egypt will always value their friendships,’ declared the avuncular Neguib, extending an olive branch all the way to the hard men of the British Treasury who released £10 million to support Egypt’s fragile economy.
