Suez 1956, page 26
Nevertheless I am sure you will agree that we must prepare to meet the eventuality that Nasser will refuse to accept the outcome of the conference; or, no less dangerous, that he, supported by the Russians, will seek by stratagems and wiles to divide us so that the conference produces no clear result in the sense we both seek. We and the French Government could not possibly acquiesce in such a situation. I really believe that the consequences of doing so would be catastrophic, and that the whole position in the Middle East would thereby be lost beyond recall. But by all means let us first see what the conference can do – on the assumption that Nasser commits no further folly meanwhile.20
Eisenhower made do with a gentle stand-off reply, saying how good it was of Eden ‘to send me so promptly your thinking on the subject’, adding that he ‘was glad to hear from Foster that you are looking so well’. Whatever Eden’s outward appearance he was certainly not feeling well. His mood changes were more erratic and were no longer reserved for those closest to him. Richard Freeborn was an interpreter for a Soviet delegation invited to the Commons to meet Eden and other members of the cabinet led by Selwyn Lloyd.
[Eden] appeared to me extremely nervous and somewhat uncontrolled in his address to the Soviet delegates. He spoke quickly and at some length, forgetful of the need for translation, it seemed, and though I took notes I could not convey the full extent of what he said when he had spoken for 3 or 4 minutes (as I recall) before allowing a pause for translation. I managed to express the gist but I know I was not adequate to the task of full translation. He then spoke at length again and I noticed that Selwyn Lloyd had gone quite puce in the face. The Soviet delegates were beginning to glance at each other, aware that they were in the presence of someone whose behaviour was abnormal. I made a further stab at translation but was interrupted by Eden starting again. Shortly afterwards the meeting closed on Eden’s departure accompanied by Selwyn Lloyd and the other cabinet members.21
The prime minister’s fragile temper and contradictory behaviour lost him many friends. Air Chief Marshal Sir William Dickson, chairman of the COS, confessed to John Colville that he ‘had never been spoken to in his life in the way the PM spoke to him during those tempestuous days’. Freddy Bishop, Eden’s principal private secretary, concurred, adding that he had ‘finally given up making allowances for AE or feeling sorry for him’.22 The liberal use of amphetamines almost certainly accounts for Eden’s frenetic energy. Often, said Dickson, he was ‘like a prophet inspired’ sweeping the cabinet and chiefs of staff along with him, ‘brushing aside any counter arguments and carrying all by his exaltation’.23 But the possible side effects, including anxiety and paranoia, may also have affected Eden. Signs of him cracking up were observed even by junior colleagues such as Anthony Nutting at the foreign office, and Nigel Birch and Christopher Soames at the air ministry.24 But their outspoken criticism of the prime minister was restricted to table talk. Their assumption at this stage was that if action were called for it would surely be taken by those farther up the political pecking order.
As it happened, resistance to Eden was beginning to emerge within the cabinet. Among the six waverers identified by the Cabinet Secretary were R. A. Butler, Heathcoat-Amery (agriculture minister) and, more critically, Walter Monckton, the minister of defence, who was the only senior minister to come out against the use of force.25 Macmillan quickly marked him down as one of the ‘weaker brethren’ and noted, after a fraught meeting of the Egypt Committee on 24 August, that Monckton was ‘calm but obviously distressed’.26 But he remained at defence until 18 October, when instead of leaving the government he was made paymaster general, a ministerial position with nebulous responsibilities, but with cabinet status. As such Monckton was to be landed with the task of coordinating the government’s propaganda and information during Suez, a reminder of his wartime days when he did the same job but from Cairo.
How did Monckton square his conscience? In retirement he claimed not to have been ‘fundamentally troubled by moral considerations’. His anxieties had more to do with ‘allying ourselves with the French and the Jews . . . [who] were bound to bring us into conflict with Arab and Muslim feeling’.27 But at this early stage in the crisis, Israeli involvement was not an option; indeed, it would have been strenuously opposed by the whole cabinet with the exception of Macmillan. It seems then that Monckton’s initial anger was directed against France, though fuelled by an objection to ‘taking warlike action against Egypt behind the back of the Americans’.28 As to resignation:
Naturally I anxiously considered whether I ought not to resign. Resignation at such a moment was not a thing lightly to be undertaken. I felt that I was virtually alone in my opinion in the Cabinet and that I had not the experience or the knowledge to make me confident in my own view when it was so strongly opposed by Eden, Salisbury, Macmillan, Head, Sandys, Thorneycroft, and Kilmuir; for all of whom I had respect and admiration. I knew that if I did resign it was likely that the Government would fall, and I still believed that it was better for the country to have that Government than the alternative. What the Labour people had in mind was a kind of rump of the Tory Government led by Butler, which they would support. This could not last. Moreover, far more than I knew at the time, the ordinary man in the country was behind Eden.29
The tortured rationale of this excuse for inactivity hardly bears examination. That Monckton believed his resignation would sink the government suggests a level of self-delusion to match that of the prime minister. But there was more to the story. Personal circumstances limited Monckton’s freedom of action. A messy divorce had deprived him of his chance of becoming Lord Chief Justice and had left him short of money. There was only one other attractive prospect for a post-parliamentary career. But an acrimonious departure from the government would have taken him out of line to be the chairman of the Midland Bank. In other words, Monckton sold out. He was not the last to do so.
On 16 August representatives of twenty-two nations gathered at Lancaster House close by Buckingham Palace. Only two of the original invitees to the Canal Users’ Conference failed to turn up; Greece cited its grievance against Britain for holding out against the demands of the Greek Cypriots while Egypt declined for reasons of self-interest already spelt out by Nasser to the US ambassador in Cairo. As a senior politician of the host country and, according to Dulles, because ‘he so desperately wanted it’, Selwyn Lloyd took the chair. He did not have an easy time of it. Many of those seated around the table in the Long Gallery, hot and stuffy in a humid London summer, were not at all sure why they had taken the trouble to come.
Under Egyptian management, the canal was providing the shipping companies with a service that was in no way inferior to that delivered by the Canal Company. There was no indication that Nasser was about to interrupt the flow of oil. Why should he, since he needed the revenue from canal tolls? The act of nationalisation had been well received by most countries and, indeed, acclaimed by thirty-two governments ranging from China to Spain and representing two-thirds of the world’s population.30
Now it was up to Britain and France to show why other states should be compelled to give their blessing to what was beginning to look uncannily like the last throw of old-fashioned colonialism. Eden was aware of the risks, which was why he opposed having Russia along to peddle the inevitable anti-colonial rhetoric. But, as Dulles pointed out, to exclude Russia would be to add to the already loud chorus of complaint that the conference was weighted in favour of the Western bloc. Not that he expected Russia to toe the Anglo-French line. In a pre-conference talk, foreign minister Shepilov made clear to Dulles that, in his view, ‘under international law and historic precedent Egypt have the right to nationalise the Canal’, though he had the company rather than the waterway itself in mind. When it came to guaranteeing freedom of navigation, ‘military preparations undertaken by the UK and France were not warranted’. Friendly negotiation was the way forward.31 These comments were made less than three months before Russian invaded Hungary. But in swallowing the large doses of hypocrisy, Shepilov was saying no more than was in the minds of Dulles and Eisenhower, the latter having stated categorically, at a press gathering on 8 August, that he could not conceive ‘of military force being a good solution, certainly under conditions as we know them now’.
Once the conference was under way, Eisenhower was urging Dulles ‘not to allow the British and French to insist on too rough a line with Nasser’. Maybe, mused the president, ‘supervision’ rather than ‘control’ could be exercised by a ‘commission of smaller countries’ including Egypt. Disagreements on tolls or investment in maintenance could be referred to the World Court ‘or other suitable body’.32
Eisenhower was right to concentrate on the precise wording of any joint proposal that was to be put to Nasser. Dulles understood the point. The purpose of the conference was to come up with a formula for the management of the canal which gave right of way to the maritime powers without compromising Egyptian sovereignty. To produce a document that satisfied both sides was a matter of delicate drafting. Britain and France wanted a Canal Authority capable of imposing its will on a recalcitrant Nasser. But that was to throw away any chance of conference unanimity and to invite certain rejection by Egypt.
Offering himself as the advocate of reasonable compromise, Dulles edged the Western allies towards supporting the setting up of a Suez Canal Board, with an international membership, to work in partnership with Egypt to secure the ‘maintenance and development of the Canal’. Vague as it was, the document failed to win the approval of Russia. This was wholly predictable since Soviet best interests demanded that Western influence on Egypt should be eradicated. But while Shepilov left Dulles in no doubt as to his views, he was uncharacteristically withdrawn in the conference debate, deferring to India’s Krishna Menon to act as spokesman for Nasser.
Menon was a curious and in many ways a contradictory character. Though an ardent left-wing Indian nationalist, he spoke no language but English, rejected spicy Indian food and was more inclined to sport a tweed jacket and flannel trousers than traditional Indian dress. Most of his political career, including ten years as a Labour councillor, had been spent in Britain where, as Nehru’s trusted adviser, he had risen to be Indian high commissioner and representative at the United Nations.
Menon was much disliked, even by those who were counted among his closest allies. A self-righteous arrogance combined with long-winded oratory caused resentment not least in Cairo, where there was anger at Menon’s assumption that he could speak on behalf of Nasser without prior consultation.
All that said, Menon was the only delegate to the Canal Users’ Conference to come close to a practical solution to the Suez crisis. Instead of handing over authority to a Canal Board requiring Nasser to rescind his act of nationalisation (the equivalent of political suicide), Menon suggested an international ‘advisory’ committee backed by a new version of the 1888 Convention. Any breach of the terms of the Convention would be subject to UN sanctions. The scheme had the virtue of treating Egypt as an equal, not as a renegade nation in need of strict paternalism.
Unfortunately, Menon made his debut late in the proceedings when delegates had long since given up any pretence of glancing at their watches. Bad timing was aggravated by a truly awful speech ‘delivered from notes, rambling and repetitive’.33 Predictably, the British and French dismissed Menon as a mischief-maker unworthy of serious attention. Less predictably, Dulles was equally unimpressed.
At our session this afternoon, Menon made a long speech and introduced his proposals which were all right as generalities but which could be accepted by Nasser without there being any assurance whatsoever that the Canal could not be one hundred per cent operated purely in the political interests of Egypt as an instrument of its national policy. There are references to international bodies but they are pure scenery.34
The following day, eighteen of the countries represented lined up behind Dulles. They included Ethiopia, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, ‘so that . . . the programme becomes not just a western programme but one with African and Asian support’.35 A minority of four – the Soviet Union, India, Indonesia and Ceylon – supported the Menon plan. There was only one other pressing decision. Who was to carry the message to Cairo? Eden had no doubts on that score. Dulles was the only candidate to lead the five-nation delegation. It was, after all, Dulles who had put most into the plan. To make it stick, he had to be seen to be giving it his full backing.
But this was not the prime consideration. Neither Eden nor his closest colleagues in the British and French governments really expected Nasser to submit placidly to the dictates of the London conference, even with Dulles leading from the front. If there was to be a rejection, it was important for Dulles to receive it at first hand. It would then be hard for him to disassociate the USA from what Eden and Mollet saw as the inevitable next step – a show of force to make Nasser toe the line or, better still, to bring about his downfall.
The omens did not look good to at least one young national serviceman. On 20 August Lieutenant Peter Mayo of the Royal Marines noted in his diary:
We are preparing to go to war if the need arise in the next few weeks, though no-one has really understood that yet. The excitement of the move and the vague and vaguely romantic notion of going to defend one’s country’s ‘rights’ still prevail. I imagine a few weeks of the sunny aridity of Malta will cure this. I was just thinking of what little consequence it would be if I were to end my life next month in some obscure brush with some obscure Egyptian. The whole thing would be senseless and insignificant, and I doubt it would make much difference to the world.36
15
The charm offensive now mounted on Dulles to persuade him to go to Cairo was shamelessly outrageous. Eden set the tone with frequent references to Dulles’s ‘masterly performance’ at the conference, while going out of his way to tell senior US diplomats, whom he knew would be reporting home, ‘what a wonderful job Foster has done here’ and that the Secretary of State was ‘the only one who stands a chance of negotiation with Nasser’.1
But it was Macmillan who stretched the bounds of ingratiation beyond embarrassment. As Dulles recorded for Eisenhower’s benefit:
As I was leaving Sir Anthony Eden’s Reception last night, Harold Macmillan said he would like to speak to me privately. We went into one of the private rooms. Macmillan asked first of all whether I planned to stay on as Secretary of State. He said that he was thinking of perhaps going back to take over the Foreign Office in the reasonably near future and that his decision in this matter would be influenced by whether I would be his vis-à-vis in the United States. He spoke of the very happy relations we had together when we were both Foreign Ministers and that he would very much like to renew this.2
Dulles was not to be seduced. He had no intention of finding himself trapped in what could soon be a war zone. His worries on this count were well founded. Along with the protestations of peaceful intent from Eden and the others came the frequent threats of force if they did not get their way. Two days before Macmillan urged Dulles ‘most strongly to take on the negotiation with Nasser’ he was telling the secretary of state that if ‘we accept Nasser’s refusal . . . Britain is finished’. He added that in this event ‘I will have no part in it and will resign,’ but there was a clear implication that before it came to that the troops would be sent in.3
The message from Paris was put more bluntly. Pineau was not one to lose a single opportunity to impress on Dulles that ‘military action would be inevitable in the Suez dispute’. This was also the uncompromising line taken by Ivone Kirkpatrick. As the chief adviser on foreign affairs to Selwyn Lloyd, he might have been thought to have exceeded his brief when, at the very same Downing Street reception used by Eden and Macmillan to praise Dulles to the skies, he spelt out his creed to a bemused US embassy official:
He said in effect that we would, as he put it, ‘have to have a row’ with Nasser. He said we might as well have it early as late. He compared Nasser to Hitler and the Rhineland and said it was just a question of how long all of us would have to go along appeasing Nasser ‘before we had the inevitable row’. I do not know to what extent Ivone was speaking in the official British view; but if he was, then the British like the French feel sure that force is the only answer. I did say to Ivone that I did not believe that public opinion in the United States, or for that matter in Great Britain, would support a resort to force at this time. He snapped back that he did not care about public opinion, that it was the business of informed leaders to lead their countries in what they thought was the right course of action and not merely to ‘follow public opinion’.4
With Dulles having put himself out of the running as fall guy for the Cairo negotiations, the search was on for a credible replacement. The choice fell on Robert Menzies, prime minister of Australia, who had given strong support to the eighteen-nation proposals for settling the Suez issue. He was also on record as being among the first major politicians outside the Anglo-French circle to declare against Nasser.
Trading on his credentials as a lawyer and statesman, Menzies argued that those who regarded the problems as purely academic, that Egypt as a sovereign power had the right to nationalise an Egyptian enterprise, ignored ‘two salient facts’:
First, for historical reasons . . . the concession had an international character recognised by an international convention. It could not, therefore, be regarded as a merely domestic enterprise under the sole control of the Egyptian Government. Secondly, what Egypt did was to repudiate this contractual concession twelve years before its due date without consultation and without agreement. If such a repudiation is not a breach of international law then there is no international law.5
