Suez 1956, page 24
There were too few transport aircraft for paratroops and those that were able to get into the air were the old side-loading type, whereas modern equipment and vehicles were designed for back-loading planes.
The news was a little better from France, where the annual holiday trek to the south was hampered by straggling military convoys heading for Toulon. As early as 2 August, the French and British press were giving out details of the strength of the French fleet with pride of place going to the 35,000-ton battleship Jean Bart. Not all the ships were ready for battle – the Jean Bart had only one of its guns in place and the sole carrier could boast just twenty-five modern planes capable of taking on Nasser’s MiGs – but the general effect was of a massive show of force. Equally impressive was the turnout of the French paras.
The aircraft which carried them into battle were French, as were the parachutes which each soldier packed himself. As yet unseen by most British soldiers, if not undreamed of, were their SS10 wire-guided ground-to-ground missiles, the revolutionary antitank weapon which the French took to Suez. Even their medical packs were pre-sterilised and standardised for single treatments, the envy of the British medical officers.29
First impressions could be deceptive. General Beaufre had his work cut out to bring his troops and their equipment up to scratch.
The troops themselves were in need of re-training; the regiments were first-class but had been employed on anti-guerrilla operations for months . . . In addition . . . regiments had to familiarise themselves with equipment not used in Algeria, in particular the 106 SR anti-tank gun, which was new to them . . . The staff of Force A, the signals, the whole air support system, the services and the base, all of which had been hurriedly thrown together, had to be organised and trained. Regimental parachute jumps had to be carried out, range practice, tactical training, loading and landing exercises – and all this in fifteen days!30
Beaufre began to wonder whether he would be ready in time. He was not alone in his doubts. In 10 Downing Street, the stress level was mounting. Increasingly disillusioned with the military, aware of growing disaffection within his own ranks (Walter Monckton at defence was the first of the ministerial doubters), Eden was nervous of giving the impression of ‘order, counter-order, disorder’. After one midnight meeting, the PM’s press secretary, William Clark, was driven home by Norman Brook, who, as cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, was one of the most powerful members of the administration.
He came in for a drink and began by saying that he had felt he must warn the PM that the idea of using force was growingly unpopular. ‘How do you do it in this age? Call together Parliament, send in the troops and get a positive vote of perhaps forty-eight in Parliament, and a vote against you in the UN? It just isn’t on.’ We agreed that Britain now found herself almost isolated, the Arab world against us, Asia against us, America wobbly, the Old Commonwealth wobbly, only France as an ally and she is a definite liability with world opinion. Clearly Brook is advising against aggressive action, but I don’t know if he’ll win. As he said, the bluff etc. is all very well until this Armada sails, then we are committed because it can neither turn back nor sit offshore. As he left, Brook sighed, ‘Our Prime Minister is very difficult. He wants to be Foreign Secretary, Minister of Defence and Chancellor. Of course if there is war,’ he added, ‘he will have to be Minister of Defence.’31
America was certainly wobbly, as Brook suggested, but it was on the special relationship that Eden now pinned his faith that all would be well in the end. Just hours after Nasser had made the speech of his life, Eden dispatched an urgent appeal to Eisenhower:
Dear Friend
You will have had by now a report of the talk which I had last night with your Chargé d’Affaires about the Suez Canal. This morning I have reviewed the whole position with my Cabinet colleagues and Chiefs of Staff. We are all agreed that we cannot afford to allow Nasser to seize control of the Canal in this way, in defiance of international agreements. If we take a firm stand over this now, we shall have the support of all the maritime powers. If we do not, our influence and yours throughout the Middle East will, we are convinced, be irretrievably undermined.
Eden went on to stress the threat to oil supplies, but ‘it is the outlook for the longer term which is more threatening’.
The Canal is an international asset and facility, which is vital to the free world. The maritime powers cannot afford to allow Egypt to expropriate it and to exploit it by using the revenues for her own internal purposes irrespective of the interests of the Canal and of the Canal users. Apart from the Egyptians’ complete lack of technical qualifications, their past behaviour gives no confidence that they can be trusted to manage it with any sense of international obligation. Nor are they capable of providing the capital which will soon be needed to widen and deepen it so that it may be capable of handling the increased volume of traffic which it must carry in the years to come. We should, I am convinced, take this opportunity to put its management on a firm and lasting basis as an international trust.
Dismissing legal quibbles as to Egypt’s right ‘to nationalise what is technically an Egyptian company’, Eden was ready ‘to use force to bring Nasser to his senses’ should economic and political pressure fail to produce results. He added an urgent request for Eisenhower to send a representative to an Anglo-French meeting in London on 29 July.32
Eisenhower had a more excitable version of the same message from Christian Pineau via the US embassy in Paris. Nasser’s action was ‘an outrage’ that warranted strong action. Otherwise, ‘the inevitable result would be that all Middle East pipelines would be seized and nationalised within the next three months and Europe would find itself totally dependent on the goodwill of the Arab powers’. Obviously, said Pineau, this was an ‘unacceptable situation’.33
Eisenhower was thrown into a mild panic by these missives. Crisis was written all over them but the president was hazy on the details of the canal and its importance to Britain and France, as his diary entries make plain.34 Still recovering from a serious heart attack, he more than ever needed Dulles to front up for him. But the secretary of state was in South America, and it was not thought politic to pull him back so abruptly. Instead, it was the under-secretary of state, Robert Murphy, who set off for London. ‘Just go over and hold the fort,’ Eisenhower told him.35 He was to express the president’s ‘grave concern’ but to give ‘no hint as what we are likely to do’.36
Murphy’s hosts, however, had quite other ideas in mind. Their aim was to convince him of their government’s resolve and to squeeze from him some expression of US support for recovering control of the canal by whatever means. A campaign of gentle intimidation started with a lunch at No. 10, as Harold Macmillan recorded.
Bob Murphy arrived yesterday . . . It is clear that the Americans are going to ‘restrain’ us all they can . . . We had a good talk, and the PM did his part very well. The French are absolutely solid with us, and together we did our best to frighten Murphy all we could . . . We gave him the impression that our military expedition to Egypt was about to sail. (It will take at least 6 weeks to prepare it, in fact.)37
The follow-up with Murphy was a dinner hosted by Macmillan, whose association with the American diplomat went back to war days when they were both in North Africa. Adopting the role of prophet with grave tidings, Macmillan laid onthick Britain’s determination to rise to Nasser’s challenge. To do otherwise was to relegate Britain to the world’s also-rans (‘another Netherlands’), a prospect too dreadful for Macmillan, the hardliner, to contemplate.
Murphy ‘shared British indignation over Nasser’s high-handed action’ but he knew very well that ‘United States policy opposed the type of eighteenth century strategy which was in the minds of our friends’.38 His fear was that Britain and France would be tempted to go it alone with potentially catastrophic consequences for the whole of the Middle East. Immediately following the dinner with Macmillan, who expressed himself delighted with the results (‘It seems that we have succeeded in thoroughly alarming Murphy’39), the president’s emissary cabled Eisenhower ‘a strictly factual account of the evening’s conversation’. It was enough to persuade Eisenhower that it was time for Dulles to show an interest.
It was precisely what London and Paris most wanted, a sign from Washington that the Suez crisis was receiving attention at the highest level. But Dulles was disinclined to play that game. When he returned from his South American tour, his first instinct was to try to lower the tension by authorising Murphy to keep talking with Lloyd and Pineau while holding off on any firm decisions.
Eisenhower saw it differently. He insisted that Dulles should get involved. At a White House conference on Suez only one voice, that of Admiral Burke on behalf of the joint chiefs of staff, was raised in support of Anglo-French direct action. But he stopped short of proposing US participation, instead urging a search for ‘means of splitting off Egypt from other Arab and Moslem groups’. The president responded tartly that ‘we have been trying to do this for several months’.40 In Eisenhower’s view only Dulles had the stature to make clear American opposition to the precipitate use of force. Eden had to be disabused of the impression that the USA would go along with anything Britain and France did. As Murphy put it:
As is often the case among allies, the material interest of the United States was not identical with that of either France or the United Kingdom. France and Britain had very substantial holdings in the Canal Company. American holdings were insignificant. France and Britain were directly dependent on the flow of Middle East oil. The United States was not.41
But if diplomacy and economic pressure failed, then what? ‘Even though our commercial interests were not as vitally affected as those of our British and French friends, we certainly were fully aware of the importance of Western prestige in the Middle East.’42 Dulles believed he had the answer. A conference of maritime powers would be called to secure an ‘international regime to operate the Canal’.
Arriving in London on 1 August, Dulles played tough and tender, asserting that Nasser had to be made to ‘disgorge’ his ill-gotten gains while promoting the expectation that his conference would produce a peaceful settlement. British and French hopes of drawing the USA into preparations for military action were dashed. The negotiating route had to be taken first, however long it turned out to be.
Pineau was furious and made no effort to conceal his contempt for what he called American naivety. But for the moment Eden was not prepared to move without American support. Dulles was able to reassure Eisenhower that he had made no commitment to a ‘military venture by Britain and France which, at this stage, could be plausibly portrayed as motivated by imperialist and colonialist ambitions’.
He had also made clear that an operation without at least the moral support of the United States would ‘be a great disaster’.
Egypt was much stronger militarily, and was getting moral and material support from the Soviet Union and Egypt’s prestige and influence in the Arab world was [sic] much greater. I said they would have to count not merely on Egyptian reaction but on Egyptian reaction backed by assistance from the Soviet Union at least in the form of military weapons and supplies, and perhaps ‘volunteers’. All the Arab and parts of the Moslem world would be arrayed against the United Kingdom and France. Also they would be in trouble in the United Nations. I could not see the end of such an operation and the consequences throughout the Middle East would be very grave and would jeopardize British interests, particularly in the production and transportation of oil even more than the present action of Nasser. I felt that it was indispensable to make a very genuine effort to settle this affair peacefully and mobilize world opinion which might be effective.43
Meanwhile, reasoned Dulles, if Nasser was to finance his Aswan Dam from canal tolls, he would not move against Britain and other prime users of the canal. So why the hurry? He might have added that given the state of British and French military unpreparedness, immediate action was, in any case, out of the question. The pencilled-in D-Day was still six weeks away.
Later, Dulles was accused of inconsistency. The charge is unfair. In public, Dulles felt that he had to stand alongside his allies. To show an apparently united front, he was ready to go along with a joint communiqué from the three foreign ministers condemning the ‘arbitrary and unilateral seizure by one nation of an international waterway’. In private, however, he was unequivocally against bringing in the military. If it appeared otherwise the problem was with the sabre-rattlers who were giving close attention only to what was pleasing for them to hear.
The pressure for Dulles to adopt a stronger line was kept up in Paris, where Mollet, in a ‘highly emotional state’, told the American ambassador that Nasser was ‘acting in close accord with the Soviet Union,’ and though comparisons with Hitler might seem banal, Nasser had adopted a familiar tactic in ‘always talking peace after each aggression’. Mollet wound up with a thinly veiled threat.
As I got up to leave Mollet said he wished to tell me one more thing in greatest confidence which he had not mentioned previously. He said that it was made clear to him by the Soviet leaders when he was in Moscow that they were prepared, in concert with Nasser, to agree to bring about peace in Algeria on a basis acceptable to his government provided he would agree to come part way to meet their views on European matters. They did not ask that France make any dramatic moves, such as the abandonment of NATO, but only that she be less faithful to the West and become in effect semi-neutralist. Mollet said I must realize the temptation that such an offer regarding Algeria offered to any French statesman. He hoped that I would understand when he said that he felt that his firm rejection of this Soviet offer gave him the right now to speak frankly of his fears for the Western position and to request a sympathetic hearing by the US Govt.44
But Eisenhower and Dulles were not to be bullied. The message back from the president was for the world to be shown that ‘every peaceful means to resolve this difficulty’ had been exhausted before military action was contemplated.
Eden and Mollet gave way with as much grace as they could muster. Invitations to a conference in London went out to those nations that had signed the 1888 Convention and others with shipping interests. Deliberations would begin on 16 August. The date was a matter of contention. Having little faith in the ability of the conference to come up with a solution, Pineau was keen to get the whole business out of the way as quickly as possible. According to the French timetable Anglo-French forces should by mid-August have been well on the way to Cairo. Oblivious to such plans, Dulles argued that time was needed for serious deliberations; 16 August was the eventual compromise between the French and American preferred dates. By then, Eden had put his signature to Musketeer.
The busy congregation of diplomats and the approaching military drumbeat did little to disturb the placid surface of life in Egypt. Douglas Stuart, the BBC correspondent in Cairo, observed the scene near his back-street parking place.
Most days I park the car in the same spot in the centre of Cairo and then walk to my various appointments. Over the weeks, I’ve got to know the people near the parking place quite well, particularly the steady customers of the small soft-drinks shop. We smile at each other, say good day and exchange platitudes about the weather; then they sink back into their chairs on the pavement and return to their newspapers and gossip . . . I’ve not encountered hostility anywhere; on the contrary, I’ve found a great deal of friendliness and enjoyment of even the slightest of jokes.
On the other hand: ‘. . . the Egyptian government is doing its best to stir up popular indignation against the West’.45
The newspapers and the radio played up the ‘Anglo-French military threat to Egypt’. Everywhere there were preparations to meet ‘imperialist invasion’. Schools became recruiting centres for the new National Liberation Army. Every day the newspapers carried pictures of veiled Egyptian women holding sub-machine guns. Children were not excluded. Douglas Stuart saw army instructors showing six-year-olds how to drill.
. . . Colonel Nasser’s military dictatorship, with all the skill of modern propaganda techniques, is seeking to create a martial mood among the people. The streets of Cairo are decorated with huge photographs of their leader in army uniform. An enormous silver eagle, the symbol of the revolutionary regime, blazes across the Nile at night in neon-lit splendour. A giant plywood soldier straddles one of Cairo’s main shopping streets. In the air-conditioned cinemas the people watch films glorifying the Egyptian Army. From time to time there’s a little clapping.46
Of a more practical nature were the preparations for putting the Suez Canal out of action, should this prove necessary. A retired and rusty tank landing craft was moored some 200 yards from the jetty at Ismailia. The Akka was loaded with cement and scrap iron. No one had to be told why it was there. Nonetheless, there were still close observers, including the British ambassador, Humphrey Trevelyan, who were struck by the absence of jingoism. ‘For weeks Mars presented a warlike face, blood red and looming large in the Eastern sky. Surely, we thought, this must be a good omen; for the Heavens would not foretell war in such an obvious way.’47
President Nasser shared this optimism. For now, he was prepared to wait on events.
14
On 8 August Eden went on television to put the black spot on the Egyptian leader. ‘The pattern’, he declared, ‘is familiar to many of us . . . we all know this is how fascist governments behave and we all remember, only too well, what the cost can be in giving in to fascism.’ He promised that ‘an act of plunder which threatens the livelihood of many nations will not be allowed to succeed’.
The news was a little better from France, where the annual holiday trek to the south was hampered by straggling military convoys heading for Toulon. As early as 2 August, the French and British press were giving out details of the strength of the French fleet with pride of place going to the 35,000-ton battleship Jean Bart. Not all the ships were ready for battle – the Jean Bart had only one of its guns in place and the sole carrier could boast just twenty-five modern planes capable of taking on Nasser’s MiGs – but the general effect was of a massive show of force. Equally impressive was the turnout of the French paras.
The aircraft which carried them into battle were French, as were the parachutes which each soldier packed himself. As yet unseen by most British soldiers, if not undreamed of, were their SS10 wire-guided ground-to-ground missiles, the revolutionary antitank weapon which the French took to Suez. Even their medical packs were pre-sterilised and standardised for single treatments, the envy of the British medical officers.29
First impressions could be deceptive. General Beaufre had his work cut out to bring his troops and their equipment up to scratch.
The troops themselves were in need of re-training; the regiments were first-class but had been employed on anti-guerrilla operations for months . . . In addition . . . regiments had to familiarise themselves with equipment not used in Algeria, in particular the 106 SR anti-tank gun, which was new to them . . . The staff of Force A, the signals, the whole air support system, the services and the base, all of which had been hurriedly thrown together, had to be organised and trained. Regimental parachute jumps had to be carried out, range practice, tactical training, loading and landing exercises – and all this in fifteen days!30
Beaufre began to wonder whether he would be ready in time. He was not alone in his doubts. In 10 Downing Street, the stress level was mounting. Increasingly disillusioned with the military, aware of growing disaffection within his own ranks (Walter Monckton at defence was the first of the ministerial doubters), Eden was nervous of giving the impression of ‘order, counter-order, disorder’. After one midnight meeting, the PM’s press secretary, William Clark, was driven home by Norman Brook, who, as cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, was one of the most powerful members of the administration.
He came in for a drink and began by saying that he had felt he must warn the PM that the idea of using force was growingly unpopular. ‘How do you do it in this age? Call together Parliament, send in the troops and get a positive vote of perhaps forty-eight in Parliament, and a vote against you in the UN? It just isn’t on.’ We agreed that Britain now found herself almost isolated, the Arab world against us, Asia against us, America wobbly, the Old Commonwealth wobbly, only France as an ally and she is a definite liability with world opinion. Clearly Brook is advising against aggressive action, but I don’t know if he’ll win. As he said, the bluff etc. is all very well until this Armada sails, then we are committed because it can neither turn back nor sit offshore. As he left, Brook sighed, ‘Our Prime Minister is very difficult. He wants to be Foreign Secretary, Minister of Defence and Chancellor. Of course if there is war,’ he added, ‘he will have to be Minister of Defence.’31
America was certainly wobbly, as Brook suggested, but it was on the special relationship that Eden now pinned his faith that all would be well in the end. Just hours after Nasser had made the speech of his life, Eden dispatched an urgent appeal to Eisenhower:
Dear Friend
You will have had by now a report of the talk which I had last night with your Chargé d’Affaires about the Suez Canal. This morning I have reviewed the whole position with my Cabinet colleagues and Chiefs of Staff. We are all agreed that we cannot afford to allow Nasser to seize control of the Canal in this way, in defiance of international agreements. If we take a firm stand over this now, we shall have the support of all the maritime powers. If we do not, our influence and yours throughout the Middle East will, we are convinced, be irretrievably undermined.
Eden went on to stress the threat to oil supplies, but ‘it is the outlook for the longer term which is more threatening’.
The Canal is an international asset and facility, which is vital to the free world. The maritime powers cannot afford to allow Egypt to expropriate it and to exploit it by using the revenues for her own internal purposes irrespective of the interests of the Canal and of the Canal users. Apart from the Egyptians’ complete lack of technical qualifications, their past behaviour gives no confidence that they can be trusted to manage it with any sense of international obligation. Nor are they capable of providing the capital which will soon be needed to widen and deepen it so that it may be capable of handling the increased volume of traffic which it must carry in the years to come. We should, I am convinced, take this opportunity to put its management on a firm and lasting basis as an international trust.
Dismissing legal quibbles as to Egypt’s right ‘to nationalise what is technically an Egyptian company’, Eden was ready ‘to use force to bring Nasser to his senses’ should economic and political pressure fail to produce results. He added an urgent request for Eisenhower to send a representative to an Anglo-French meeting in London on 29 July.32
Eisenhower had a more excitable version of the same message from Christian Pineau via the US embassy in Paris. Nasser’s action was ‘an outrage’ that warranted strong action. Otherwise, ‘the inevitable result would be that all Middle East pipelines would be seized and nationalised within the next three months and Europe would find itself totally dependent on the goodwill of the Arab powers’. Obviously, said Pineau, this was an ‘unacceptable situation’.33
Eisenhower was thrown into a mild panic by these missives. Crisis was written all over them but the president was hazy on the details of the canal and its importance to Britain and France, as his diary entries make plain.34 Still recovering from a serious heart attack, he more than ever needed Dulles to front up for him. But the secretary of state was in South America, and it was not thought politic to pull him back so abruptly. Instead, it was the under-secretary of state, Robert Murphy, who set off for London. ‘Just go over and hold the fort,’ Eisenhower told him.35 He was to express the president’s ‘grave concern’ but to give ‘no hint as what we are likely to do’.36
Murphy’s hosts, however, had quite other ideas in mind. Their aim was to convince him of their government’s resolve and to squeeze from him some expression of US support for recovering control of the canal by whatever means. A campaign of gentle intimidation started with a lunch at No. 10, as Harold Macmillan recorded.
Bob Murphy arrived yesterday . . . It is clear that the Americans are going to ‘restrain’ us all they can . . . We had a good talk, and the PM did his part very well. The French are absolutely solid with us, and together we did our best to frighten Murphy all we could . . . We gave him the impression that our military expedition to Egypt was about to sail. (It will take at least 6 weeks to prepare it, in fact.)37
The follow-up with Murphy was a dinner hosted by Macmillan, whose association with the American diplomat went back to war days when they were both in North Africa. Adopting the role of prophet with grave tidings, Macmillan laid onthick Britain’s determination to rise to Nasser’s challenge. To do otherwise was to relegate Britain to the world’s also-rans (‘another Netherlands’), a prospect too dreadful for Macmillan, the hardliner, to contemplate.
Murphy ‘shared British indignation over Nasser’s high-handed action’ but he knew very well that ‘United States policy opposed the type of eighteenth century strategy which was in the minds of our friends’.38 His fear was that Britain and France would be tempted to go it alone with potentially catastrophic consequences for the whole of the Middle East. Immediately following the dinner with Macmillan, who expressed himself delighted with the results (‘It seems that we have succeeded in thoroughly alarming Murphy’39), the president’s emissary cabled Eisenhower ‘a strictly factual account of the evening’s conversation’. It was enough to persuade Eisenhower that it was time for Dulles to show an interest.
It was precisely what London and Paris most wanted, a sign from Washington that the Suez crisis was receiving attention at the highest level. But Dulles was disinclined to play that game. When he returned from his South American tour, his first instinct was to try to lower the tension by authorising Murphy to keep talking with Lloyd and Pineau while holding off on any firm decisions.
Eisenhower saw it differently. He insisted that Dulles should get involved. At a White House conference on Suez only one voice, that of Admiral Burke on behalf of the joint chiefs of staff, was raised in support of Anglo-French direct action. But he stopped short of proposing US participation, instead urging a search for ‘means of splitting off Egypt from other Arab and Moslem groups’. The president responded tartly that ‘we have been trying to do this for several months’.40 In Eisenhower’s view only Dulles had the stature to make clear American opposition to the precipitate use of force. Eden had to be disabused of the impression that the USA would go along with anything Britain and France did. As Murphy put it:
As is often the case among allies, the material interest of the United States was not identical with that of either France or the United Kingdom. France and Britain had very substantial holdings in the Canal Company. American holdings were insignificant. France and Britain were directly dependent on the flow of Middle East oil. The United States was not.41
But if diplomacy and economic pressure failed, then what? ‘Even though our commercial interests were not as vitally affected as those of our British and French friends, we certainly were fully aware of the importance of Western prestige in the Middle East.’42 Dulles believed he had the answer. A conference of maritime powers would be called to secure an ‘international regime to operate the Canal’.
Arriving in London on 1 August, Dulles played tough and tender, asserting that Nasser had to be made to ‘disgorge’ his ill-gotten gains while promoting the expectation that his conference would produce a peaceful settlement. British and French hopes of drawing the USA into preparations for military action were dashed. The negotiating route had to be taken first, however long it turned out to be.
Pineau was furious and made no effort to conceal his contempt for what he called American naivety. But for the moment Eden was not prepared to move without American support. Dulles was able to reassure Eisenhower that he had made no commitment to a ‘military venture by Britain and France which, at this stage, could be plausibly portrayed as motivated by imperialist and colonialist ambitions’.
He had also made clear that an operation without at least the moral support of the United States would ‘be a great disaster’.
Egypt was much stronger militarily, and was getting moral and material support from the Soviet Union and Egypt’s prestige and influence in the Arab world was [sic] much greater. I said they would have to count not merely on Egyptian reaction but on Egyptian reaction backed by assistance from the Soviet Union at least in the form of military weapons and supplies, and perhaps ‘volunteers’. All the Arab and parts of the Moslem world would be arrayed against the United Kingdom and France. Also they would be in trouble in the United Nations. I could not see the end of such an operation and the consequences throughout the Middle East would be very grave and would jeopardize British interests, particularly in the production and transportation of oil even more than the present action of Nasser. I felt that it was indispensable to make a very genuine effort to settle this affair peacefully and mobilize world opinion which might be effective.43
Meanwhile, reasoned Dulles, if Nasser was to finance his Aswan Dam from canal tolls, he would not move against Britain and other prime users of the canal. So why the hurry? He might have added that given the state of British and French military unpreparedness, immediate action was, in any case, out of the question. The pencilled-in D-Day was still six weeks away.
Later, Dulles was accused of inconsistency. The charge is unfair. In public, Dulles felt that he had to stand alongside his allies. To show an apparently united front, he was ready to go along with a joint communiqué from the three foreign ministers condemning the ‘arbitrary and unilateral seizure by one nation of an international waterway’. In private, however, he was unequivocally against bringing in the military. If it appeared otherwise the problem was with the sabre-rattlers who were giving close attention only to what was pleasing for them to hear.
The pressure for Dulles to adopt a stronger line was kept up in Paris, where Mollet, in a ‘highly emotional state’, told the American ambassador that Nasser was ‘acting in close accord with the Soviet Union,’ and though comparisons with Hitler might seem banal, Nasser had adopted a familiar tactic in ‘always talking peace after each aggression’. Mollet wound up with a thinly veiled threat.
As I got up to leave Mollet said he wished to tell me one more thing in greatest confidence which he had not mentioned previously. He said that it was made clear to him by the Soviet leaders when he was in Moscow that they were prepared, in concert with Nasser, to agree to bring about peace in Algeria on a basis acceptable to his government provided he would agree to come part way to meet their views on European matters. They did not ask that France make any dramatic moves, such as the abandonment of NATO, but only that she be less faithful to the West and become in effect semi-neutralist. Mollet said I must realize the temptation that such an offer regarding Algeria offered to any French statesman. He hoped that I would understand when he said that he felt that his firm rejection of this Soviet offer gave him the right now to speak frankly of his fears for the Western position and to request a sympathetic hearing by the US Govt.44
But Eisenhower and Dulles were not to be bullied. The message back from the president was for the world to be shown that ‘every peaceful means to resolve this difficulty’ had been exhausted before military action was contemplated.
Eden and Mollet gave way with as much grace as they could muster. Invitations to a conference in London went out to those nations that had signed the 1888 Convention and others with shipping interests. Deliberations would begin on 16 August. The date was a matter of contention. Having little faith in the ability of the conference to come up with a solution, Pineau was keen to get the whole business out of the way as quickly as possible. According to the French timetable Anglo-French forces should by mid-August have been well on the way to Cairo. Oblivious to such plans, Dulles argued that time was needed for serious deliberations; 16 August was the eventual compromise between the French and American preferred dates. By then, Eden had put his signature to Musketeer.
The busy congregation of diplomats and the approaching military drumbeat did little to disturb the placid surface of life in Egypt. Douglas Stuart, the BBC correspondent in Cairo, observed the scene near his back-street parking place.
Most days I park the car in the same spot in the centre of Cairo and then walk to my various appointments. Over the weeks, I’ve got to know the people near the parking place quite well, particularly the steady customers of the small soft-drinks shop. We smile at each other, say good day and exchange platitudes about the weather; then they sink back into their chairs on the pavement and return to their newspapers and gossip . . . I’ve not encountered hostility anywhere; on the contrary, I’ve found a great deal of friendliness and enjoyment of even the slightest of jokes.
On the other hand: ‘. . . the Egyptian government is doing its best to stir up popular indignation against the West’.45
The newspapers and the radio played up the ‘Anglo-French military threat to Egypt’. Everywhere there were preparations to meet ‘imperialist invasion’. Schools became recruiting centres for the new National Liberation Army. Every day the newspapers carried pictures of veiled Egyptian women holding sub-machine guns. Children were not excluded. Douglas Stuart saw army instructors showing six-year-olds how to drill.
. . . Colonel Nasser’s military dictatorship, with all the skill of modern propaganda techniques, is seeking to create a martial mood among the people. The streets of Cairo are decorated with huge photographs of their leader in army uniform. An enormous silver eagle, the symbol of the revolutionary regime, blazes across the Nile at night in neon-lit splendour. A giant plywood soldier straddles one of Cairo’s main shopping streets. In the air-conditioned cinemas the people watch films glorifying the Egyptian Army. From time to time there’s a little clapping.46
Of a more practical nature were the preparations for putting the Suez Canal out of action, should this prove necessary. A retired and rusty tank landing craft was moored some 200 yards from the jetty at Ismailia. The Akka was loaded with cement and scrap iron. No one had to be told why it was there. Nonetheless, there were still close observers, including the British ambassador, Humphrey Trevelyan, who were struck by the absence of jingoism. ‘For weeks Mars presented a warlike face, blood red and looming large in the Eastern sky. Surely, we thought, this must be a good omen; for the Heavens would not foretell war in such an obvious way.’47
President Nasser shared this optimism. For now, he was prepared to wait on events.
14
On 8 August Eden went on television to put the black spot on the Egyptian leader. ‘The pattern’, he declared, ‘is familiar to many of us . . . we all know this is how fascist governments behave and we all remember, only too well, what the cost can be in giving in to fascism.’ He promised that ‘an act of plunder which threatens the livelihood of many nations will not be allowed to succeed’.
