Suez 1956, page 30
In the taxi, he explained that he had been to look for me at White’s Club, where he had picked up my trail to King’s Cross. There was the possibility of a military expedition to recover the Suez Canal; it had been decided to set up a special planning staff, and both he and I were to be on it. It was of course ultra-secret. The thing was in its infancy, and he himself didn’t know much about it yet; but over a couple of drinks in White’s he told me what little he did.31
Richard Hannay could not have put it better.
Fergusson’s self-deprecating conviviality, together with a talent for disbelieving the worst, helped him to endure the tribulations that he was about to experience. British and French radio for Arab consumption had been pushing the anti-Nasser line from late July.32 A ‘Free Egyptian’ station transmitted from France operated at a frequency close to the opposition Voice of the Arabs, while British radio was pumped out from Libya, Cyprus and Aden. The longest-established and most professional radio operation was Sharq-al-Adna, based in a collection of Nissen huts near a Cypriot village appropriately named Polymedia. Blessed with a medium-wave transmitter powerful enough to reach all parts of the Middle East, Sharq-al-Adna broadcast a popular mix of music and drama which allowed for the almost imperceptible insertion of pro-British comment.
Just as effective, and for the same reason that it did not overplay its hand, was the British government-funded Arab News Agency, which ‘operated the most comprehensive service in English and Arabic available in the Middle East with branch offices in Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Amman and representatives in fifteen other cities including Paris and New York’.33
But these advantages had been thrown away when, prompted by British intelligence, the decision had been taken to raise the stakes, in effect to match Nasser’s Voice of the Arabs radio with an equally virulent campaign of ‘black’ propaganda. The first move was to attach to the staff of the Arab News Agency in Cairo two of the more ludicrous characters to emerge from the wartime Special Operations Executive, the body that had dropped agents and saboteurs behind enemy lines in the Second World War, usually with tragic consequences for the agents and saboteurs. William Stevenson was accompanied by Sefton Delmer, his former assistant in SOE. Delmer was seconded from his job as foreign correspondent of the Daily Express, where his byline photo with Sam Spade hat pulled low over his forehead supported his image as a man of mystery. They were no match for the home team. In August, Egyptian intelligence denounced the Arab News Agency (ANA) as a cover for an MI6 spy ring. There were thirty arrests. Of the four Britons rounded up, James Swinburn, the business manager of ANA, lightened his sentence to five years by cooperating with the authorities. Those expelled from the country included Stevenson and Delmer and two bona fide journalists who had proved troublesome, Ann Sharpley of the Evening Standard and Eileen Travis, an American writing for the Daily Mail. Having gained the initiative, Egyptian intelligence now began to put pressure on other press correspondents who were known to be none too friendly towards the Nasser regime. Clearly, Fergusson would have his work cut out to make a favourable case for Allied intervention in Egypt.
While Fergusson struggled with the demands of shaping mass opinion, the man who was indirectly responsible for landing him with his unenviable task had his own difficulty in winning friends. Following his summit in Paris, Eden returned to what had become a regular chore – writing to Eisenhower to urge a tougher stance against Nasser. His immediate aim was to persuade the president to put pressure on American shipowners, whose vessels sailed under the Panamanian and Liberian flag, to pay their canal dues to the SCUA account. The Soviet threat was yet again called into play to reinforce Eden’s plea. Dispatched on 1 October, his cable brought a dusty response from Dulles, who by now was thoroughly alarmed at all the talk of forcing Nasser to submit to the dictates of SCUA. Rounding on a journalist who suggested that Dulles was deliberately undermining the SCUA set-up by depriving it of its power to bite, the Secretary of State professed amazement: ‘What is this talk about teeth being pulled out of the plan? I know of no teeth. There are no teeth in it, so far as I am aware.’
Anthony Nutting was with Eden at i0 Downing Street when the news came in. ‘Eden read the Dulles statement quickly and then, with a contemptuous gesture, he flung the piece of paper at me across the table, hissing as he did so, “And now what have you to say for your American friends?” I had no answer. For I knew instinctively that this was for Eden the final let-down. We had reached breaking-point.’34
Eden refused to take comfort from messages fed back from Washington by Macmillan, who was there on IMF business. Eisenhower was sure that Nasser had to go, claimed the chancellor. Moreover, Dulles recognised Britain’s right to use force. Macmillan was repeating Eden’s frequent mistake of hearing only what he wanted to hear. Eden failed to respond. He knew at last that there could be no prospect of the USA standing alongside Britain and France. The disappointment and the pressure were too much for him. Visiting his wife in hospital, where she was recovering from a dental operation, Eden himself became a patient when he collapsed with a high fever. Back in Downing Street after a few days’ rest, he seemed strangely calm, a personality adrift, functioning, as Chester Cooper observed, ‘on a level 10 per cent removed from reality’. It was a critical 10 per cent, Cooper added, and ‘virtually guaranteed that his Suez policy, flawed as it was, would turn into a grave national and personal tragedy’.35
17
The same day that Eden fell ill, 5 October, Lloyd and Pineau took their places at the horseshoe table of the UN Security Council, to all appearances intent on finding a peaceful solution to the Suez crisis. The debate was initiated by an Anglo-French draft resolution endorsing the majority proposals of the London Canal Users’ Conference, including the setting up of an international board to run the canal. Predictably, the Soviet Union, represented by Shepilov, denounced the scheme as a capitalist plot, but Dr Mohammed Fawzi was more accommodating. Hinting at a compromise on some degree of user participation that acknowledged Egyptian sovereign rights, he called for a fair system of tolls with a reasonable share of canal revenue allocated to infrastructure. What counted as fair and reasonable was left open for a discussion over which Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN secretary general, was happy to preside. ‘I will be acting merely as a chaperon,’ he told Dulles, who retorted: ‘My understanding of a chaperon is a person whose job is to keep two people apart. Your job is to get the parties together.’1
Over three days from 9 to 11 October, Hammarskjöld sought the common ground. It turned out that there were six broad principles acceptable to all parties, starting with unrestricted movement through the canal. Any agreement had to respect Egyptian sovereignty, protect the canal from the political interference of any one country, fix a level of tolls acceptable to Egypt and SCUA, decide on how much was to be spent on development, and determine the level of compensation to be paid to the defunct Canal Company.
Temporarily free of the stream of advice that Eden was accustomed to throw at him, Lloyd felt close to a diplomatic breakthrough. Though distrustful of Fawzi, he saw strong hints that Egypt was ready for a settlement. The leaders of other Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia, were leaning on Nasser to accept some form of user participation in the management of the canal. The last thing they wanted was for the Egyptian leader to promote his nationalist credentials at the expense of their oil-exporting economies. But while Lloyd was full of the joys of optimism, Pineau was cast down. With his government colleagues having made up their minds to teach Nasser a lesson, Pineau could not expect to be well received in Paris if he returned with a draft settlement that was anything but a climb-down by Egypt. Recognising the nuances, Hammarskjöld expected the split between Britain and France to widen, the more so after Pineau began telling everyone, including the press, that the talks were going nowhere.
Lloyd took a more positive line. The rush of confidence brought on by the experience of at last coming into his own persuaded him that he was close to achieving the substance of what was needed to guarantee the efficient running of the canal. The proposition was at best dubious. Fawzi later claimed that he knew all along that Pineau was negotiating in bad faith.2 If this is true, it made it all the easier for him to play a double game that would have met with Nasser’s approval. Egypt stood forth as the innocent party, ready to compromise on the unreasonable demands of the imperialist powers while knowing full well that there was next to no risk of these professed good intentions ever being put to the test. French intransigence would see to that. Fawzi must have known that Nasser would never allow Israel to be included in the ‘unrestricted movement through the Canal’ or accept the participation of SCUA, already rejected as an infringement of Egyptian sovereignty. Yet he encouraged Lloyd to believe that a serious offer on both counts was within reach.
The view in Washington was closer to reality. Dulles had the advantage of direct contact with Ali Sabri, chief of Nasser’s political cabinet, who was installed in a suite at New York’s Waldorf Astoria. Putting it bluntly, Sabri warned that ‘the policies of the Western governments made it extremely difficult for the Egyptian Government to foresee a solution of the Suez controversy, since obviously it could not accept a settlement which was designed in part to bring about its own collapse’.3 The only way forward, thought Sabri, was for Britain and France to accept a loose association between a users’ association and the Egyptian government on the lines suggested by Krishna Menon at the first London conference. No chance. The plan had already been turned down once, and though Menon was tireless in arguing his case, his persistence, not to mention his hectoring manner, had repelled those he was trying hardest to impress. Fawzi in particular could not bear Menon, whom he suspected, almost certainly correctly, of trying to upstage him. Much to his chagrin, Menon was excluded from the UN-sponsored talks between Fawzi, Pineau and Lloyd.
All this was very confusing for Dulles, who was beginning to feel that he was losing track of events. Signs of exhaustion and irritation, which may also have been the first symptoms of the cancer that was to kill him three years later, showed up in official communications. ‘Never before, in recent years,’ he declared at a meeting of the National Security Council on 4 October, ‘have we faced a situation where we have no clear idea of the intentions of our British and French allies.’4 Yet those same allies banked on unconditional support for whatever they had in mind while using the USA as a scapegoat for their ineptitude.
In the long term, Dulles surmised that ‘their answer is to be found in increased European unity so that they will have together the strength which they need to be a powerful force in the world comparable to that of the Soviet Union and the United States, and more able to carry out their own policies’.5 Meanwhile, the best that Dulles could hope for was to ‘keep the lid [on the Suez crisis] a little longer’, in the hope that a compromise plan would emerge.
On this last point at least, Lloyd would have agreed with him. He felt sure that an arrangement to ensure that the interests of the canal users would be safeguarded was almost within reach. Eden was having none of that. Restored to energy, he reminded Lloyd that it was not his job to bargain away what he most wanted – a decisive victory over Nasser. An order was given. Lloyd and Pineau emerged from behind closed doors and, without further reference to Fawzi or to Hammarskjöld, tabled a resolution for the Security Council which revived the Eighteen Power proposals that Menzies had tried and failed to sell to Nasser a month earlier. Fawzi reacted coldly, giving Russia the perfect excuse to use its veto. Eden was delighted. Applying the twisted logic that underpinned British policy in the Middle East, the prime minister concluded that he was now close to justification for military intervention.
On the morning of Sunday, 14 October, the day after the Anglo-French resolution had been vetoed by Russia, Eden cabled Lloyd.
Should not we and the French now approach the Egyptians and ask them whether they are prepared to meet and discuss in confidence with us on the basis of the second half of the resolution which the Russians vetoed? If they say yes, then it is for consideration whether we and the French meet them somewhere, e.g. Geneva. If they say no, then they will be in defiance of the view of nine members of the Security Council and a new situation will arise.6
But Eden was misinterpreting the Security Council majority (nine votes to two) for the Anglo-French resolution. There was no indication of support for tougher action, only for further negotiation.
What Eden had failed to register was Fawzi’s freshly acquired status as the voice of reason. There is no way of knowing whether Fawzi anticipated this outcome of the private talks, but everybody knew that he had offered concessions that had been rejected. Whether or not he had gambled on an Anglo-French, but particularly French, determination not to be reasonable was irrelevant. The fact was, he had not been called upon to deliver on his concessions. Even if this came as a relief, because there was no guarantee that Nasser would have backed him, he could safely proclaim that his efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement were entirely genuine. Dulles for one thought there was value to be had in persevering with Fawzi. He urged Hammarskjöld to reopen talks. As late as 24 October, the secretary general outlined a plan for operating the canal in cooperation with a body representing the canal users. Fawzi waited until 2 November to send a genial response. This was four days after the Suez fighting had started.
In mid-October the Anglo-French alliance was back on track save for one complication: Jordan. The Hashemite kingdom was showing signs of falling apart, a prospect that excited Israel with the anticipation of territorial gain. On 10 October an Israeli attack on the border village of Qalqilya had left 100 Jordanians dead. Invoking the Anglo-Jordanian Defence Treaty, King Hussein had called on Britain for support. The response was muted. A promise to honour the pact with Jordan was limited to a robust protest at Israeli behaviour. It was not enough to satisfy Hussein, who knew that the sword as wielded by Ben-Gurion was a good deal mightier than diplomacy. It was only natural that Hussein, casting around for help elsewhere, should turn to Israel’s prime enemy. An urgent appeal went to Cairo. Eden must have despaired of receiving anything but bad news from the Middle East. The thought of diverting troops from the forthcoming Suez campaign was bad enough, but the nightmare was having to fight on two fronts, defending one Arab state while attacking another.
There was only one way out of the quandary, a friendly occupation by Iraqi forces. As Hussein’s cousin, King Faisal could be expected to sympathise. He knew too that if Jordan fell, Iraq would not be far behind. Faisal’s Anglophile prime minister, Nuri el-Said, was happy to accede to Eden’s wishes, the more so because he shared the belief that Nasser had to be cut down to size. Why did Hussein not think of all this before? The probability is that he did but a falling out over a failed plan for merging Iraqi and Jordanian forces under a joint command may have deterred him from asking favours. In any event, happy relations were now restored and the Iraqi offer of a brigade to bolster Hussein’s rule was accepted with relief.
The news was not well received in Tel Aviv. The presence of Iraqi troops was no guarantee of Jordanian independence. On the contrary, Iraq would be in a strong position to take over the whole country, so frustrating Israeli designs on Jordan and posing a direct threat to the Zionist state. Nuri had to be told to pull back. There was only one person he would listen to and that was Eden. And there was only one person Eden would listen to and that was Mollet. For Ben-Gurion, the time had come to test the strength of the French connection.
Mollet’s warning that the movement of Iraqi troops would precipitate one conflict too many in the Middle East was taken seriously by Eden. Against the advice of Anthony Nutting who, in Lloyd’s absence, was in charge of the foreign office, Eden sought to allay Israeli fears by urging Nuri to keep his troops well away from the Israeli border, and when this proved to be not enough, to reduce his armed force to a single infantry regiment. In vain Nuri argued that it was not Iraq but Israel which threatened the peace. The generous supply of arms crossing from France to Israel was now common knowledge, convincing Nutting that an Israeli move to capture the west bank of the Jordan river was imminent. He was close to the mark. What he did not know was that for the moment Jordan was an unwelcome diversion for Ben-Gurion, who was intent on joining with his French allies to score against Nasser. The carve-up of Jordan could wait as long as Iraq could be contained. Ever suspicious of the British, Ben-Gurion failed to be reassured by Eden’s placatory moves. Realising that the entire Suez operation, as conceived by Paris, was at risk, Mollet decided to come clean with Eden on the likelihood of Israeli involvement, should circumstances be favourable.
On the morning of 13 October, Mollet cabled Eden to say that two French emissaries would be arriving the following day with an urgent message for the prime minister. Secrecy was essential. Albert Gazier, minister for social affairs, and, more significantly, Pineau’s deputy, and General Challe were flown to the wired-off military sector of Northolt Airport and then driven, not to Downing Street but to Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence. It was, recalls Nutting, a ‘glorious autumn day, radiant with sunshine and crisp as a biscuit’. The most eventful day of his life started with a tête-à-tête with Eden.
I told the Prime Minister that we had just heard that morning from Sir Michael Wright, our Ambassador in Baghdad, that Nuri had taken our last request reasonably well, but was puzzled by our sudden concern for Israeli susceptibilities. In view of this reaction, I hoped we would not press him for any more reassurances for Israel, no matter what our French visitors might demand of us. Eden smiled and said that from his knowledge of Nuri he would proceed very cautiously and would probably not move at all for the next day or so. This would give us time to discover what the French had to tell us and to make our plans accordingly.7
