On the 30th anniversary of the Suez affair, British public opinion suddenly appears to be taking a less critical view of the events culminating in one of this country’s greatest ever humiliations and which catapulted the glamorous and talented Prime Minister Anthony Eden from power.
This may partly reflect the current British disenchantment with present-day Arab nationalism. It is also due to a new and highly acclaimed biography of Eden, which views with sympathy his decision to reply with force to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s unilateral nationalization of the Suez Canal.
Thirty years ago, Britain and France, in secret collusion with Israel, invaded Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal, through which two-thirds of Britain’s vital oil supplies were transported. In the face of world-wide uproar, from the United States, Soviet Union and much of the United Nations, the invaders had to retreat, presenting Nasser with a spectacular political victory.
Last week, Britain was again at odds with the leading Arab nationalist state — not Egypt but Syria, whose involvement in the El Al aircraft bomb plot last April caused Britain to break off diplomatic relations with Damascus.
As in 1956, Britain finds itself uncomfortably isolated. This time, it is the Israelis and the Americans who are siding with Britain. But France, Britain’s 1956 comrade-in-arms, has turned a deaf ear to British pleas for solidarity; so did the other European Economic Community (EEC) partners, not to mention the Soviet Union which stridently supported the extreme Syrian position.
It is the Syrians themselves who have drawn a parallel between the present British-Syrian rift and the events of 1956. Syrian officials are claiming that Britain had conspired against Damascus with the U.S. and Israel just as in 1956 they had plotted against Nasser with France and Israel.
THE REAPPRAISAL OF EDEN
The British reappraisal of Eden emerges in the official biography of him by historian and fellow Conservative Party politician Robert Rhodes James, published here last month.
In it, the author largely vindicates Eden’s motives for trying to topple Nasser and places much of the blame for his failure on the slowness of Britain’s military operations, on the ambiguity of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and the doubters in the British Cabinet.
He also excuses Eden’s controversial habit of equating Nasser with Hitler or Mussolini, pointing out that it was the then Labor opposition leader Hugh Gaitskell who had first made this emotive comparison. At the same time, James emphasizes the danger which the revolutionary Egyptian leader increasingly posed, with Soviet support, to British and Western interests.
In a separate article in the London Times last week, James calls Eden a frustrated peacemaker who was driven to force as a last resort. He says Eden was “absolutely right” in his assessment of Nasser, whom he describes as an “unpleasant and dangerous man.”
He concludes, however, that Eden “not only outlived Nasser but saw his old opponent’s megalomaniac dreams and stratagems collapse, his only memorial being the divided and embittered Middle East, and an Egypt that has moved from fantasy into cold reality.”
When Dulles was almost on his death bed, the writer recalls, he said to Selwyn Lloyd, Eden’s 1956 Foreign Secretary: “Hell, Selwyn, why did you stop? Why didn’t you go through with it and get Nasser down?”
James comments: “It would have been better for everyone if that had happened ….”
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