Review Article Eden the D@lomatist, 1931-56: Suezide of a Statesman?” Dai id Kqizzolds, Cbn%t’s College, Cambridge

Anthony Eden. By Robert Rhodes James. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1986. xiv + 665 pp. f16.95. Anthony Eden at the Foreign OfJice, 1931-1938. By A.R. Peters. Aldershot: Gower. 1986. viii + 402 pp. f25.00. The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries, 1939-1955. By John Colville. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1985. 796 pp. f14.95. Paperback edition in 2 volumes: 1939-41, 1941-55. London: Sceptre. Respectively: 1986, 1987. 601 pp and 448 pp. f6.95, f5.95 Descent to Suez: Diaries, 1951-56. By Evelyn Shuckburgh. Selected for publication by John Charmley. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1986. xi + 380 pp. f14.95. The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina. By James Cable. London: Macmillan. 1986. xii + 179 pp. f27.50. The Failure of the Eden Government. By Richard Lamb. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. 1987. xii + 340 pp. f16.95.

Robert Anthony Eden (1897-1977) won his first parliamentary election in December 1923 and remained an MP for 33 years. At the age of 38 he became the youngest Foreign Secretary since Lord Granville in 1851, going on to hold the post for three periods totalling over ten years (1935-38, 1940-45, 1951-55). He negotiated with Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, with John Foster Dulles, Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer. Yet, as Sidney Aster observed at the end of his short biography of Eden published in 1976, ‘the reputation he had built up since 1923 remains identified with the one event - the Suez crisis. It is a cruel fate, even by the harsh standards of politics, to be remembered by one failure and not by numerous achievements.’’

The thirtieth anniversary of Suez saw the publication of a number of books that help us to reassess the events of 1956 and the enigmatic figure at thcir heart. Was Suez one unhappy aberration by an eminent statesman? Or was it nemesis catching up with a ‘glamour boy’ promoted far above his abilities? - ‘a sphinx without a secret’ in Randolph Churchill’s malicious phrase.? In this review article I want particularly to elucidate three themes that emerge from this recent literature about Eden: the influence of his personality and temperament on his diplomacy; his complex relationship with Winston Churchill; and the two men’s increasingly divergent attitudes

‘ Sidney Aster, Anrhony Eden (London, 1976), p. 165. ’ Randolph S. Churchill. The Rise and Full of Sir Anthony Eden (London, 1959), p. 18.

64

EDEN THE DIPLOMATIST to the United Stater; - the country whose rise from isolationism to superpower status framed Eden’s career as a diplomatist.

* * * Robert Rhodes Jameis MP is Eden’s authorised biographer. His previous works include lives of Rosebery, Prince Albert and Lord Randolph Churchill and a pioneering revisionist study of Winston Churchill up to 1939. Drawing on Eden’s copious papers and diaries, he seeks particularly to combat what he calls (p. xii) ‘the consistently and mystifying hostile’ biography published in 1981 by Dr David C a r l t ~ n . ~ Despite being an official biography, however, this is no whitewash. Rhodes James finds plenty to criticise about Eden’s skill in dealing with Neville Chamberlain in 1937-38 or in handling his party as Prime Minister in 1955-56. He does not deny what so many who worked with Eden noted - his ‘notorious temper’ (p. 107) - but stresses his genuine charm, honesty and rectitude, often with little- known illustrations (e.g. p. 347). Rhodes James subscribes to the view that there were almost two Edens - the one wise, generous and high- minded, the other bad-tempered, petulant and even petty (p. 623) - and the great virtue of his biography is to situate Eden’s work as a politician and diplomatist clearly in the life-story of a man who rarely enjoyed either health or happiness.

It is, after all, easy for historians of international relations to forget the human dimension: as they move countries around on the page with a flick of the pen, they can easily lose sight of the fact that ‘Britain’, ‘France’ or ‘Germany’ are shorthands for collections of human beings. Throughout his public life Eden battled against private misfortune. His marriage in 1923 to the daughter of a prominent Yorkshire banker and Tory politician quickly turned sour. His wife could not stand politics and their lives diverged, although they stayed together until 1950 because of their sons. Denied the kind of supportive marriage enjoyed by Baldwin, Chamberlain and Churchill, Eden had almost nothing except his love of art to counter- balance his highly-strung nature and workaholic tendencies. The result was ulcers and other digestive complaints from his early 30s onwards, culminating in the botched gall-bladder operation of 1953 from which he never fully recovered.

The failure of his marriage also exacerbated Eden’s more fundamental problem - despite his debonair manner and long-standing public popularity, he was a diffident and ‘unclubbable’ figure who, unlike Baldwin, Churchill and Macmillan, loathed the Commons smoking room and had few close political friends, even in his own party (pp. 160-61). This, and his preoccupation with foreign affairs, meant, Rhodes James argues, that he was ill-prepared for party management and domestic policy on becoming Prime ]Minister (pp. 404-7, 624). Critics assumed Eden’s aloofness was a sign of vanity, but Rhodes James insists that it was ‘the apparent manifestation of a man who lived on his nerves, was very solitary and shy, and.. .lacked real self-confidence’ (p. 335). For Rhodes James, then, Eden was an honourable man, a man of intellect and industry, yet, on

65 David Carlton, Anthony Eden: a biography (London, 1981).

REVIEW ARTICLE his own admission, lacking the ruthlessness, the relish for political in- fighting, the supreme conviction of his own rightness that characterised a Churchill or a de Gaulle (pp. 202-3, 284, 625).

As biography, Rhodes James’s book is helpful and suggestive. However, his work is based largely on Eden’s papers. He uses some published diplomatic diaries and a few studies of British foreign policy, but he appears to have made no independent use of the archives in the Public Record Office and very little use of the mass of scholarly material published in recent years on appeasement, the diplomacy of the Second World War and the development of the Cold War. Such omissions are not perhaps surprising for a busy MP, faced with a pressing deadline to publish before the 30-years-on deluge about Suez; but they do weaken his analysis of Eden’s diplomacy.

On appeasement, for instance. Rhodes James’s account is conventional. Eden is depicted in similar guise to his self-portrait, Facing the Dictators. While Chamberlain was pessimistic about Britain’s position and ready to negotiate from a position of weakness, Eden, who made his name as a ‘League of Nations man’, wanted ‘genuine collective security in Europe and effective and binding guarantees and commitments, particularly with the French’ (p. 174). From the summer of 1937, Rhodes James argues, Chamberlain was out to bypass his Foreign Secretary, impatient at Eden’s resistance to negotiations with Italy. Yet, even at the time, many found Eden’s relationship with Chamberlain more complex than this and were puzzled at his decidedly muted resignation speeches in February 1938. A.J.P. Taylor, writing in 1965, claimed that ‘Eden did not face the dictators; he pulled faces at them’.4 In effect Rhodes James’s response is to explain the puzzle by reference to personality: Eden was an honourable man, he was slow to see how he was being undermined, and after resigning ‘he would not stoop to conquer’ by an all-out attack on former colleagues and by leaking confidential information about Cabinet discussions (p. 191).

A very different interpretation can be found in Anthony Peters’ account of Eden’s years at the Foreign Office in the 1930s. Although he used Eden’s diplomatic papers, the Cabinet records, the published British documents and various private collections, Peters makes scant use of the Foreign Office general files and the bibliography contains little published in the 1 9 8 0 ~ ~ Despite these deficiencies, the great virtue of this book is its careful analysis of the principal diplomatic documentation, and the sometimes ponderous prose is illuminated by periodic trenchant summaries of the issues at stake. In line with much recent work Peters does not see Eden as being perpetually at loggerheads with Chamberlain and the ‘appeasers’. He shows that their differences were more limited, more nuanced, yet he also makes comprehensible why, by February 1938, Eden had no choice but to resign.

‘ A.J.P. Taylor, English Hisiory, 1914-1945 (Harmondsworth, 1970), p. 754. ’ Among the omissions are such important studies as Lawrence R . Pratt, East of Malta, Wesr of Suez: Britain’s Medirerrunean Crkis, 1936-1939 (Cambridge, 1975); G.C. Peden, Brituh Rearmament and the Treasuy, 1932-1939 (Edinburgh, 1979); and C.A. MacDonald, The h i r e d Stales. Britain and Appeasement. 1936-1939 (London, 1981).

66

EDEN T H E DIPLOMATIST

Although Eden was identified with the League through his work for disarmament as a junior minister in 1933-34, Peters argues that he viewed the League only as ancillary to Britain’s interest in international stability and peaceful change (pp. 11-13, 371). His mentor was Austen Chamberlain, not Roblert Cecil. After he became Foreign Secretary in the wake of the Hoare-Lava1 fiasco,6 he shared in the consensus at the top of the Foreign Office on the need for an agreement with Germany as part of a new European security settlement to replace Locarno (pp. 171-73). Where he differed from Sir Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Under-Secretary, and most of his senior officials, was in his distaste for a parallel agreement with Mussolini. Any hopes he may have had in that direction were dampened by Italian involvement in the Spanish Civil War from mid-1936 and by the virulent Italian propaganda campaign against Britain’s position in the Mediterranean.

Peters plays down Eden’s differences with Chamberlain. In frequent agreement before Baldwin resigned in May 1937, the two men concurred on the need to reach a general settlement with Germany, the main threat to British security. They were preparing new plans for colonial concessions in Africa just before Eden resigned. Nor, argues Peters, were Chamberlain’s personal initiatives, such as Lord Halifax’s visit to Berlin or the sacking of Vansittart, as divisive between him and Eden as many have claimed (pp. 299-307). On Italy, however, there was a clear difference: Chamberlain believed improved relations could weaken the Rome-Berlin axis and strengthen Britain’s hand in negotiations with Hitler; Eden was sure that Mussolini was incorrigibly anti-British and that concessions would only weaken the image of the democracies (p. 298). But even here Eden was not immovable: he was willing to begin conversations while insisting on certain conditions. In the Calbinet crisis of 19-20 February 1938 his colleagues agreed that before negotiations were opened Italy must accept the British formula for the withdrawal of foreign ‘volunteers’ from Spain and that formal recognition of Italy’s position in Abyssinia would be withheld until the Spanish question was resolved. In the end the sticking point was Eden’s demand that Italy must not merely agree to the British formula but begin withdrawing its troops before talks could start.

This account, stressing the narrowness of Eden’s differences with Chamberlain while not denying their intensity, parallels that of other studies in recent years.’ Yet Peters pulls the material together into the best recent account of Eden’s Foreign Secretaryship and also shows clearly that resignation, in a sense, demonstrated the bankruptcy of Eden’s diplomacy. In 1937-38 the Service ministers were insistent that Britain faced three potential enemies - Germany, Italy and Japan - and that it would be

On which Peters, like other recent historians, suggests that the rift between Eden and Hoare was less substantial than conventionally thought. Cf. R.A.C. Parker, ‘Great Britain, France and the Ethiopian Crisis, 1935-1936: E[nghh] H[istorical] Rleview], 1974, lxxxix, 293-332; J.A. Cross, Sir Samuel Hoaire, a political biography (London, 1977), chapter 6. ’ E.g. Roy Douglas, ‘Chamberlain and Eden, 1937-38: Journal of Contemporary History, 1978, xiii, 97-1 16; Norman Rose, ‘The Resignation of Anthony Eden’, H[isforicau Jfournal/,

67 1982, XXV, 911-31.

REVIEW ARTICLE several years before her rearmament was sufficiently advanced to face them with confidence. Japan was regarded as unappeasable and, despite considerable efforts over two years, Eden had failed to improve relations with Berlin. That left Italy, and the service were adamant, in Hankey’s words, that ‘we simply cannot afford to be on bad terms with a nation which has a stranglehold on our shortest line of communication between the two possible theatres of war’ (p. 308). Chamberlain was ready, even eager, to accept the logic of that argument; so, more reluctantly, was the Foreign Office. Eden was not, and he had little choice but to go (pp.

Eden also had little clearcut to offer in place of Chamberlain’s policy: hence his ineffectual resignation speeches. Admittedly, Eden lacked Churchill’s orotund eloquence, so appropriate for the grand occasion, and Rhodes James’s defence of his speechmaking against charges of frequently being banal and pedestrian are not convincing (pp. 161, 208, 328). Nevertheless, Eden’s inability to make out a compelling case for resignation, his failure to criticise Chamberlain’s policy,8 was not merely because of his honourable nature or his tepid rhetoric but because his rift with Chamberlain was not as fundamental as mythology maintains. Peters notes his hopes, ably documented in the diaries of Oliver Harvey, formerly his Foreign Office Private Secretary, that he might return to Government if the Italian negotiations broke down (pp. 368-69). And Rhodes James himself (pp. 202-3, 216-17) admits that Eden did not, unlike Churchill, regard war with Germany as inevitable, even in the spring of 1939.

Eden’s relationship with Churchill is an additional reason for his reticence after resignation. The popular ‘father-son’ image has long been dismissed by scholars, but Rhodes James, the biographer, is particularly good on the personalities behind the policies of the 1930s. Eden was a one-nation, progressive Tory; his patron was Stanley Baldwin. The big issues of the early 1930s - protection and India - were opportunities for sustained attack on Baldwin’s leadership of the Tory party and in those battles Eden aligned himself outspokenly with Baldwin against diehards such as Churchill (pp. 104-6). Much to his chagrin the latter paid for his opposition by eight years on the backbenche~.~ It was therefore neither natural nor politic for Eden to make common cause with Churchill in 1938. In any case Churchill was 23 years older and many regarded him, like Lloyd George, as an extinct volcano.

373-79).

‘In his speech to the Commons Eden dwelt on the issue of whether or not to open negotiations with Italy ar thar moment. His Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Lord Cranborne, who also resigned. was far more outspoken, arguing that here was ‘a matter of fundamental principle ... the principle of good faith in international affairs’, and warning that to open conversations with Mussolini, given Italian conduct, ‘would not be regarded as a contribution to peace, but as a surrender to blackmail’, House of Commons, Debates, 5th series, 21 February 1938, vol. 332, cols 45-50 (Eden), 50-2 (Cranborne).

Whereas Churchill later depicted Baldwin as the prime culprit for the disasters of appeasement, Eden entered a more tempered judgment, noting acutely in 1941 of Baldwin that he ‘did not understand the storms that raged without, nor did he make Neville’s mistake of believing that he did’, The Earl of Avon, Facing the Dictators (London, 1962), p. 446. 68

EDEN THE DIPLO MATIST Yet during 1939 Churchill spoke out, while Eden, though occasionally

warning of the dangers of the wrong kind of appeasement, tended to keep his own counsel. In September 1939 the old war horse was back at the Admiralty, with a seat in Chamberlain’s War Cabinet, and Eden, though also in office again, kanguished at the Dominions Office. Opinion polls shifted dramatically from Eden to Churchill as Chamberlain’s likely successor (Rhodes Jarnes, p. 222). And when the Government did fall in May 1940, the issue was between Churchill and Halifax, with Eden nowhere in sight. His war was spent mostly at the Foreign Office - loyal lieutenant during Churchill’s finest hour.

* * * Churchill’s Boswell was ‘Jock’ Colville - grandson of the Liberal peer Lord Crewe, son of al lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary.l0 As an able and well-connected young diplomat he was seconded to Number 10 in October 1939 and stayed on when Churchill acceded to power. Initially Colville shared the Whitehall doubts about the new premier, and in his diary he recorded with some sympathy R.A. Butler’s scathing comment that ‘the good clean tradition of English politics ... had been sold to the greatest adventurer in moderrt political history’ and also Rab’s denunciation of Chamberlain and Halifax for having ‘weakly surrendered to a half-breed American’ (p. 122). Colville was soon converted, however, developing a truly ‘filial’ relationship with Churchill and becoming one of his devoted friends. The diary is full of vivid anecdotes, supplemented by Sir John’s deft pen-pictures of Churchill and of other dramatis personae. The account is fullest on 1940-41. At the end of September 1941 the young Colville, thirsting for action, left to join the RAF, despite the Prime Minister’s vehement protests, but he was brought back to the Churchill entourage in December 1943 and stayed for the rest of the war.” The entries for 1944-45 are briefer, more personal, and, for the historian, less useful, although there is, for instance, a vivid account of Churchill’s dramatic flight to Athens at Christmas 11944 (pp. 538-47) and some revelatory instances of the Prime Minister’s brooding anxieties about Soviet intentions. Churchill believed profoundly that Britain had to play its part with the two new superpowers, but in his gloomier moments he was pessimistic about Britain’s stature in the post-war world. After dinner in the Great Hall of Chequers in February 1945, with The Mikado playing far too slowly on an old gramophone, Churchill mused elegaically about the Victorian hey-day of empire. ‘After this war,’ he continued, ‘we should be weak, we should have no money and no strength and we should lie between the two great powers of the USA arid the USSR’ (p. 564).

lo The Boswell analogy was clearly in his mind. After urging Churchill in December 1940 that he must stay on after the war because there was no one else who could handle peacetime reconstruction, Colville noted in his diary: ‘This was not just Boswellian; there is not at present any man of the right calibre’ (p. 310). In the preface to volume two of the paperback edition, Sir John recalls Churchill telling him on one occasion: ‘One day you must write about all these things we have seen together’.

The second volume of the paperback edition contains some additional material from Colville’s diary as an Aircraftsman in 1942-43.

69

RE VIEW ARTICLE For Eden these were years of unrelenting toil and scant credit,

culminating in the disastrous summer of 1945 when, recuperating from another duodenal ulcer, he lost his mother, his favourite son and finally his office in a mere two months. Rhodes James reminds us of his heavy burdens during the war as Foreign Secretary, member of the War Cabinet and its Defence Committee, and, for nearly three years, Leader of the House. Behind the scenes Eden played valuable roles as ‘pacifier’ - balancing Churchill’s oscillations between depression and impetuosity - and as bridge between the Premier and the Labour ministers, with whom he got on well. Once again Rhodes James’s account would have been enhanced by fuller use of recent scholarship,’? but he takes an interesting line on Yalta, arguing that Eden was far less credulous than Churchill about Stalin (pp. 288-92). He also brings out well Eden’s growing anxieties about the United States.

The latter may seem surprising to those brought up on the conventional wisdom, inspired by Churchill’s war memoirs, about Eden’s attitude to America in the 1930s. One of the issues that exacerbated relations with Chamberlain was the Prime Minister’s reply, without consulting Eden, to President Roosevelt’s initiative of January 1938. FDR suggested to Chamberlain that he would summon foreign ambassadors to the White House and propose steps leading to a possible conference to draw up a new international settlement. Rhodes James. following Churchill, says of Chamberlain’s cool response that ‘there are few more calamitous documents in modern international politics’ (p. 188) - a judgment that, in the light of recent scholarship, would seem grossly to exaggerate the President’s vague ideas.I3 But, because of Eden’s belief that Roosevelt should have been encouraged, it is easy, though erroneous, to believe that he, like Churchill, was therefore a passionate enthusiast for an Anglo- American alliance.

Churchill was half American. His belief in co-operation with the United States was an article of faith, perhaps accentuated during the war by his intimations of the mortality of British power. ‘It is my deepest conviction,’ he wrote in 1944, ‘that unless Britain and the United States are joined in a special relationship, including Combined Staff organisation and a wide measure of reciprocity in the use of bases - all within the ambit of a world

’’ Rhodes James (pp. 254-56) stresses that in 1941 Eden capitalised on his good pre-war relations with the Soviet Union, in contrast to Churchill’s anti-Bolshevik notoriety. But Sheila Lawlor has gone further, showing how Eden, not Churchill, was the leading Cabinet exponent of aid to Russia. See Sheila Lawlor, ‘Britain and the Russian Entry into the War’ in Richard Langhorne (ed), Diplomacy and Intelligence during rhe Second World War (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 168-83. On this period in general Elisabeth Barker, Churchill and Eden at War (London, 1978) remains essential. “ S e e MacDonald, The United Stares, Britain and Appeasement, pp. 63-75, 179; David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937-41: a study in competitive co-operarion (London, 1981), pp. 19-22, 31-32. Churchill depicted Chamberlain’s behaviour as incomprehensible; the episode, he said, was ‘the loss of the last frail chance to save the world from tyranny otherwise than by war’, Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War (6 vols, London, 1948-54). i , 199. 70

EDEN T H E DIPLOMATIST

organisation - another destructive war will come to pass.’14 Eden had no doubt of the importance of working with the Americans as far as possible, but he was far more dubious than Churchill about their wisdom and integrity.15 As Rhodes James shows, he argued that the Americans ‘know little of Europe’ (p. :269), were out to replace the British Empire with economic domination of their own (p. 272) and were ready to ‘give Russia all Europe ... so that America might not be embroiled’ (p. 295). In words that were to encapsulate his attitude to the United States throughout his subsequent political career, he commented in July 1945 that ‘we couldn’t allow them to dictate our foreign policy and if they were wrong we would have to show independence’ (p. 306).

Already emerging was what would prove in the 1950s to be a profound divergence between (Churchill and Eden: the former less confident of Britain’s independent power and more prone to stress (and sentimentalise) her association with the United States; Eden more hopeful of continued independence and more suspicious of American motives. Yet Churchill and Eden were denied the chance to play a significant part in shaping the post-war world. After their election defeat in July 1945, both had to begin life anew. Churchill had his international reputation, work on his lucrative memoirs, and the Tory leadership for as long as he wanted. Eden, striving to promote progressrve Toryism and no natural partisan, disliked the automatic obligation (of the Opposition to harry the Labour Government, yet he had to bear much of that burden in the absence of Churchill from routine parliamentary business. Meanwhile his marriage crumbled into eventual divorce in 1950. However, life became much more agreeable for him when the Tories were returned to power (and he to the Foreign Office) in October 1951, and when, the following summer, he married Churchill’s niece, Clarissa, who proved a devoted wife, dedicated to his political career.

Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh was Eden’s Principal Private Secretary up to May 1954 and then the Under Secretary in charge of Middle Eastern affairs, until, weary and disenchanted, he was moved elsewhere in June 1956. About half of his 400,000-word diaries of this period have now been published in a judicious selection by Dr John Charmley, the biographer of Duff Cooper and Lord Lloyd, with an interesting prefatory essay by Sir Evelyn. Shuckburgh’s impressions of the Eden-Churchill relationship provide a nice counterpoint to those of Sir John Colville, whose diaries resume in October 1951 with his return to 10 Downing Street, at Churchill’s insistence, to be one of the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretaries.

’‘ Churchill to Richard L,aw, M 12514, 16 February 1944, Prime Minister’s Confidential Papers, PREM 4, 27/10 (P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], London). These and other Crown copyright documents are quoted by permission of the Controller of HM Stationery Office. Is As early as 1940: he called the Destroyers Deal, which allowed the USA to establish naval and air bases on eight British possessions in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic, ‘a grievous blow at our authority and ultimately I have no doubt at our sovereignty in all these places’, Reynolds, Creation of the ,4nglo-American Alliance, p. 170. See also pp. 200. 256,260, 266.

71

REVIEW ARTICLE In retrospect it is hard not to view the second Churchill premiership as a

farce of sometimes tragic dimensions.I6 Frequently the great man was living in the past, appointing old friends or wartime colleagues like Monckton, Cherwell, Ismay and Alexander to ministerial posts for which they were hardly suited. He promised Eden he would go within a year, but in the event clung on tenaciously, fearful of political oblivion - still able to triumph on the grand occasion but unable to handle the routine of government. Both Shuckburgh and Colville chronicle Churchill’s extended striptease of the frustrated Eden - periodically promising he would divest himself of power, then rallying in health and confidence to pull the robes of office firmly around him once more. ‘This simply cannot go on; he is gaga; he cannot finish his sentences,’ fumed Eden to Shuckburgh after one meeting in March 1954 (p. 157). At times a peeved Shuckburgh believed that Colville and other close associates of the Prime Minister, particularly his son-in-law Christopher Soames, exercised a dangerous influence - ‘like attendants in an oriental court, flattering him and assuring him that he was perfectly all right and fit to carry on for ever’ (pp. 94-5). Colville, himself often angry with ‘the vain and occasionally hysterical Eden’ (p. 653), faced an exceedingly delicate task, particularly when Churchill had a minor stroke in June 1953. For a month Colville and his colleagues tried to keep business moving while swearing the press lords to secrecy. Incredible as it may seem today, they succeeded.

As Rhodes James shows, that could have been Eden’s moment - had he been fit it would have been virtually impossible for Churchill to have resisted the pressures from wife and Cabinet for resignation. Unfortunately for him, Eden’s innards had been playing him up throughout his last period as Foreign Secretary - Shuckburgh carried around everywhere a black tin box full of various analgesics ranging from aspirins to morphia (p. 14) - and in April 1953 a belated operation for gall stones went disastrously wrong. The bile duct was accidentally severed, Eden nearly died, and, although the damage was patched up by specialist surgery in Boston, Eden was not fit to resume work until September - by which time Churchill had bounced back. ‘Fate can be very cruel, and seldom more so than it was to Anthony Eden in 1953,’ observes Robert Rhodes James. ‘He had lost his health and the premiership as a direct result of a medical mistake’ (p. 369).

A different man - a Macmillan, perhaps - might have concerted a discreet campaign within the Tory party to ease Churchill gracefully into retirement; but Eden would not - too decent (Rhodes James, p. 373) or too weak (Colville in Shuckburgh, p. 93). The personal relationship between Eden and Churchill never fully recovered, and it was further strained by growing differences on foreign policy. The ailing Churchill had little time for the mass of new problems now facing British policymakers -

To date the best study is Anthony Seldon, Churchill’s Indian Summer: the Conservative Government, 1951-1955 (London, 1981), written before the PRO records became available and based largely on published materials and interviews. PRO material is used in John W. Young (ed), The Foreign Policy of Churchill’.y Peacetime Administration, 19SI-55 (Leicester, 1988). 72

EDEN THE DIPLOMATIST

‘I have lived 78 years without hearing about bloody places like Cambodia,’ he grumbled in 1953.’’ He reserved his energy for occasional diplomatic forays, particularly on. the issue of a great-power summit to help control the arms race.ls In h4ay 1953 he used Eden’s illness to float the idea publicly, and then pushed it with a powerful mixture of public advocacy and backstairs manoeuverings for the next year or so. This was much against the wishes of Eden, the Foreign Office and President Eisenhower - none of whom shared Churchill’s conviction that his wartime summitry provided a model for sensible diplomacy.

Despite the personal and professional tribulations, however, 1954 was Eden’s most successful year as a diplomatist. It saw the Geneva accords on Indochina, the agreem.ent on withdrawal from the Canal zone in Egypt, the settlement over Britain’s stakes in Iranian oil, and the compromise on German rearmament which brought the Federal Republic into NATO. Talk in the exhausted and jubilant Foreign Office of an ‘ annus mirabilis’ was hyperbolic, and €den was attacked in some quarters for ‘appeasing’ Nasser and Ho Chi Minh, but these negotiations often displayed his diplomatic skills to t.he full. They may also have left Eden with an exaggerated sense of British influence.

Sir James Cable ‘was a junior member of the South East Asia Department of the Foreign Office in 1954. In retirement he has returned to the British archives of the Geneva conference, supplementing them with personal experiences i(e.g. pp. 44-45, 133), to offer a new account of the settlement in Indochina, which led to French withdrawal and the partition of Vietnam. Cable stresses that he is only examining British policy at the conference, but he offers his monograph as a contribution to the accumulation of evide:nce from various sides, and claims added importance because Geneva provides ‘the last example of an independent British policy exercising significant influence in the resolution of a major international crisis’ (p. 3).

Shuckburgh was also at Geneva, coping with the emotional demands of a Foreign Secretary who was even more highly-strung than usual. As Hegel said, ‘no man is a hero to his valet’,19 and Shuckburgh’s diary shows vividly how a Private Secretary is sometimes little more than a personal servant - racing around Geneva to find more secluded housing for the Edens, then acting as housekeeper as Clarissa Eden pushed menus under his door in the confident expectation that they would materialise on the table next day (p. 188). Cable argues that, for all Eden’s emotional insecurity and his

” Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: the struggle for survival, 1940-1965 (London, 1968, paperback edition), p. 428, diary for 28 April 1953. Eden himself noted that the work load in the early 1950s was far heaivier than in the 1930s or even during the war, and it was made worse by the fact that British capacity to influence events had declined in almost inverse proportion (Rhodes James, p. 346). ’’ For recent discussions sea J.W. Young, ‘Churchill, the Russians and the Western Alliance: the three-power conference at Bermuda, December 1953’ EHR, 1987, ci, 889-912; M. Steven Fish, ‘After Stalin’s Death: the Anglo-American debate over a New Cold War’, Diplomaric History, 1986, x, 333-55. l9 Though he adds: ‘not because the former is no hero but because the latter is a valet’, G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree (New York, 1956), p. 32.

73

REVIEW ARTICLE limitations as an orator, he was at his best in negotiation with small groups, particularly when confident of his ground (pp. 33, 64). There the charm, the relaxed intimacy, the command of goals and the flexibility on detail were all deployed to best advantage, as Rhodes James also insists (p. 382). The British press inevitably made too much of his role - the absolute determination of the French delegation to force through a settlement was the decisive factor - but Eden’s skills undoubtedly helped.

Agreement was achieved in the face of intense American opposition. David Carlton has persuasively argued that Eden’s relations with US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were not invariably bad.m However, back in 1952 Eden and Churchill had lobbied strenuously against Dulles’s appointment because of his reputation as a bellicose anti-communist,21 and the Geneva conference marked one of the worst periods in the Eden- Dulles relationship. In April 1954 Eden had rejected US calls for air strikes to save the French at Dien Bien Phu. Nor would he help Dulles build an Asian equivalent of NATO until a negotiated settlement had been properly explored. Dulles felt betrayed, particularly on the latter point,22 and at Geneva he sulked on the sidelines, leaving the British and Russians to make the running. Eden and the Foreign Office believed that the whole of Vietnam could not be saved, that no vital interests were endangered by communist success and that another Korean-style involvement by America in Asia would be disastrous. Lurking close to the surface were also Eden’s old suspicions of American expansionism, as Shuckburgh’s diary records. ‘AE’s conviction is that all the Americans want to do is to replace the French and run Indo-China themselves.’ In Eden’s own heated words: ‘They want to replace us in Egypt too. They want to run the world’ (p. 187).

Eden was over-wrought at the time, but his approach to the United States was significantly different in emphasis from Churchill’s, although both of course believed in the importance of good Anglo- American relations. After talking with Churchill in January 1953 President Eisenhower had concluded that ‘Winston is trying to relive the days of World War Two’ and that he had ‘developed an almost childlike faith that

Carlton. Eden, pp. 300-2, 323-25, 363-64. Although some of Rhodes James’s strictures on Carlton’s hostility to Eden seem justified, Carlton’s chapter on Eden’s last period as Foreign Secretary is full of shrewd insights. ’’ Eden denied this claim (Carlton, p. 323), but his telegrams home during his visit to the USA in November 1952 show clearly that he lobbied discreetly against Dulles and tried to push Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, the Republicans’ unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948, as a more acceptable Secretary of State. After lunching with Eisenhower on 20 November, Eden cabled Churchill: ‘The new Secretary of State would not have been my choice. Ike was almost apologetic. We must do the best we can with him.’ Eisenhower also hinted that the appointment might be only temporary: Dulles ‘would be his Secretary of State at least for a year’, he told Eden. See PREM 11/323 (PRO): quotations from New York telegram 852. 21 November 1952, and Washington telegram 1464, 4 December 1952.

Cable (pp. 59-60) believes Dulles was probably justified; Rhodes James (p. 377) does not, but his account of Dulles’s foreign policies relies on a few highly-critical biographies. For a recent view based on US sources see George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, ‘Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: ‘ “The Day We Didn’t G o To War” Revisited’, Journal of Americati Hktory, 1984, Ixxi, 343-63. 74

EDEN THE DIPLOMATIST all of the answers are to be found merely in British-American partnership’.23 Eden apparently believed that Churchill’s approach sentimentalised the Anglo-American relationship and underestimated Britain’s capacity to act on her own (cf. Rhodes James, pp. 352-53). His successes in 1954 seems to have reinforced these convictions, as we shall see in a moment.

Further evidence of Eden’s belief in Britain’s continued independent global role comes from the divergence between himself and Churchill over European unity. Recent scholarship has made clear that Churchill was never such an enthusiast as his calls for a ‘United States of Europe’ in the 1940s implied. He made clear to his Cabinet in November 1951: ‘I have never thought that Britain or the British Commonwealth should, either individually or collectively, become an integral part of a European federation, and have never given the slightest support to the idea.. .’.24 Eden was even less keen. H[e did believe in closer British defence co-operation with the Continent - partly to counter-balance possible American isolationism - as shown by his commitment of British troops to Germany in 1954 and, earlier, by his interest in the idea of a ‘Western bloc’ at the end of the war.25 But he had no time for talk of European federation, as both Rhodes James (pp. 347-51) and Shuckburgh (pp. 17-18) demonstrate. A cosmopolitan man, his travels had nevertheless confirmed his sense of the unity of the Commolnwealth, particularly its white nations, and, like Churchill, he believed that this was the essential foundation of Britain’s continued capacity as a world power.*6

Churchill and Eden also differed on how best to sustain this world role. Churchill’s world view was that of a late Victorian. Reluctantly acknowledging that the era of formal empire was passing, he found it hard to imagine an alternative basis for British global influence - hence his desire to hang on for as long as possible to formal British rule in places like India and Egypt. Aware of the fragility of Britain’s power, he preferred to keep the crumbling edifice in place rather than try to shore up the foundations with new materials and thereby risk accelerating its collapse.

23 Robert H. Ferrell (ed), The Eisenhower Diaries (New York, 1981). p. 223, entry for 6 January 1953. Churchill cabled Eisenhower on 5 April 1953: ‘My Number One is Britain with her 80 million white Englishi-speaking people working with your 140 million. My hope for the future is founded on the increasing unity of the English-speaking world. If that holds, all holds. If that fails no one can be sure of what will happen.’ PREM 1111074 (PRO). 24 Churchill, memo on ‘United Europe’, 29 November 1951, C (51) 32, CAB 129/48 (PRO). Cf. J.W. Young, ‘Churchilll’s “No” to Europe‘ the “Rejection” of European Union by Churchill’s Post-War Government, 1951-1952: HJ, 1985, xxviii, 923-37; David Reynolds, ‘Britain and the New Europe: the search for identity since 1940’,ibid, 1988, xxxi, 223-39.

Eden told Churchill on 2!2 November 1944: ‘It has always seemed to me that the lesson of the disasters of 1940 is precisely the need to build up a common defence association in Western Europe, which woiild prevent another Hitler, whencesoever he may come, pursuing what you have so aptly called the policy of “one by one” ’. Minute PM 44/732, PREM 4/30/8 (PRO).

He wrote in 1943: ‘I feel pretty sure that in dealing with the Dominions we should never explicitly say or even hint that if they should not elect to work in with us we should ourselves be unable to fulfil the role of a World Power’. Eden to Sir Edward Grigg, 14 July 1943, Altrincham papers, MS lO(116, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

75

REVIEW ARTICLE Eden was hopeful that formal rule could be replaced by informal influence through negotiated agreements with the new nationalist governments to protect British military bases and economic interests. Thus, on Egypt, for instance, Churchill simply wanted to stay - backing up gut feelings with imprecations about ‘scuttle’ and ‘appeasement’ - whereas Eden hoped that the agreement he had laboriously hammered out in 1953-54 with Nasser (and with his own party) would preserve key British interests in a way more appropriate to a post-colonial world in which the vast Suez base was objectionable and, because of the H-bomb, irrelevant. ‘It is a case of new times, new methods,’ he told one critic.*’

Thus, when Eden’s long vigil ended and he assumed the premiership in April 1955, he was ready and eager to leave his mark on British foreign policy. His differences with Churchill went deeper than mere personal resentment at being denied his inheritance for so long. More than Churchill he believed that Britain could continue to play an independent role in the world - without being submerged in a transatlantic alliance or a European federation. He saw agreements such as those negotiated with Iran over oil o r with Egypt - relinquishing the Suez base but safeguarding the Canal - as models for the future exercise of British influence. And his successes over Indochina and German rearmament must have left him confident that British diplomacy could still shape international affairs.2s

* * * About a third of Robert Rhodes James’s biography is devoted to Eden’s premiership, but it must now be set against Richard Lamb’s study of the Eden Government. Although half Lamb’s book is on Suez he does discuss other aspects of domestic and foreign policy. His chapter on Britain’s failure to enter the negotiations for a European Common Market following the Messina conference of June 1955 is a useful preliminary survey of the documents,?g and he reminds us that the issue for the British Government was not simply ‘Europe’ but also low tariffs. At stake was the ending of a tradition of protectionism that had been established British policy since the Ottawa conference of 1932 and the McKenna duties after the First World War. Eden, interestingly, was now willing to shift ground on Commonwealth preferences (Lamb, p. 98), but he was still no ‘European’

:’ He explained: ‘What we are trying to do in Egypt is not to run away from a regime which often says crude and hostile things, but rather to lay the foundations of security in the Middle East in the new and changed circumstances that now prevail there. By this I mean of course not so much the new regime in Egypt, as the changes in our own position in the world.’ Eden to Hankey, February 1953, copy in PREM 11/636 (PRO). 2H Within months of assuming office. for instance, he urged in Cabinet that Britain should take the lead in promoting disarmament, arguing against the Foreign Office ‘that we should be unwise to wait too long upon the Americans in this matter’. See CM 28 (55) 10, 15 August 1955, CAB 128129 (PRO). He went to the summit in Geneva in July 1955 expecting to play a role on the scale of his performance there a year before, but his confidence was misplaced. Rhodes James (pp. 417-48) glosses over Geneva, 1955; Carlton, Eden, pp. 376-82, is telling on the contrasts between 1954, when the Americans opted out, and 1955, when Eisenhower and Dulles were ready and eager to lead. ?9 See also J.W. Young, ‘Britain, Messina and the Dawn of the EEC, 1955: in M.L. Dockrill and J.W. Young (eds), Aspects of Bririrh Securiy Policy, 194SJ6 (London, forthcoming). 76

EDEN THE DIPLOMATIST and his deep feelings for the Commonwealth were indicated by his support for a bizarre proposal1 to integrate the George Cross island of Malta into the United Kingdom and give it three MPs at Westminster (pp. 145-51).

Rhodes James’s account of the premiership includes sustained criticism of Eden’s inadequacies as a domestic leader - his lack of experience outside the Foreign Office, his distaste for the ego-massaging required of a party leader. Rhodes James denies ‘the myth that Eden was a potentially great civil servant or ambassador who had wandered into politics by mistake’ (p. 624), but, as on other matters, the evidence he provides as a scrupulous historian :seems to belie his assertion. In 1955, as during the resignation crisis of 1938, Eden does seem to have displayed an astounding lack of political flair. For instance, his delay in embarking on a radical ministerial reshuffle, especially after the May election, seems incomprehensible - especially for a man who had coveted the premiership so long and who was determined to leave his mark upon it. By first making Macmillan Foreign Secretary in April and then uprooting him in December 1955 when well-established, Eden antagonised an able and ambitious colleague, whom Shuckburgh for one had found infinitely more approachable and easy to work with than Eden.30 It was hard to see Macmillan’s replacement at the Foreign Office - Selwyn Lloyd, a lawyer with minimal experience in Parliament or diplomacy - as anything but a sign that Eden intended to be his own Foreign Secretary. Shades of Chamberlain in 1937?

Rhodes James argues that ‘the weakness of his political position lay in the fact that his experience was so limited to foreign affairs’ (p. 624). Yet the implication that this was the cause of his failure seems to miss the essential point that Eden failed not in domestic politics but in his handling of foreign affairs - supposedly his mktier. On the crucial issue - Suez - Rhodes James and Lamb both offer detailed and readable accounts. The former sticks closely to Eden’s papers and the Cabinet minutes, giving ample quotations from both, while Lamb makes more use of the PRO material and of oral evidence less sympathetic to Eden - particularly that of Sir Anthony Nutting, an Eden protegi who resigned as a Foreign Office Minister over Suez.

The basic chronology of the Suez crisis has long since been established. The main events include the announcement on 19 July 1956 withdrawing Anglo-American funding for the Aswan High Dam; Nasser’s nationalisation of the Canal a week later; the protracted negotiations in August and September for a diplomatic settlement; the Israeli attack on Egypt on 29 October; the Anglo-French ultimatum the next day, followed by bombing of Egyptian targets; the invasion on 5 November; the decision

No more was seen, for instance, of Eden’s practice of working in bed, with FO staff summoned to the levee. ‘I think that AE really models himself on WSC in a sort of perverted way,’ noted Shuckburgh (p. 284; cf. 261,289, 312,314). It is a mystifying weakness of Robert Rhodes James’s biography that, unlike David Carlton, he elected not to seek access to the Shuckburgh diaries (cf. Rhodes James, p. 628). Clearly Eden’s personal vanities got under Shuckburgh’s skin more than they affected others (cf. Rhodes James, p. 158), but his diary is an essential and by no me,ans always a damning source.

77

REVIEW ARTICLE to stop on the 6th; and the unconditional Anglo-French withdrawal agreed at the end of the month. For years the central issue in the British debate about Suez was ‘collusion’: how far did Eden conspire in advance with France and Israel to attack Egypt?31 These two studies, and other publications such as the account by Sir Donald Logan, Selwyn Lloyd’s private secretary, leave little doubt about the conspiracy or about Eden’s unsuccessful attempt to have all the evidence destroyed.32 Eden’s assurance - ironically during his last speech to the Commons - that ‘there was no foreknowledge that Israel would attack Egypt’ (p. 592) was quite simply a lie.

Rhodes James is very honest about this. His main task is to shift the debate away from collusion itself by spreading more widely the responsibility for the decisions to go ahead and then to stop. Top of his list are Cabinet colleagues, notably Macmillan, who more or less willingly supported the operation but then lost heart when the going got tough (pp. 494-96, 584-85); the military who changed their invasion plan on 7 September, delaying action and, Rhodes James implies, driving the angry French into the hands of Israel (pp. 507-12); and the US Government, notably Dulles, whose ambivalence and ‘perfidy’ let down its closest ally

Rhodes James argues that Eden’s policy was consistent: ‘from the outset of the Suez Canal crisis he was determined to destroy this new Mussolini’ (p. 457, cf. 474). Lamb, in contrast, believes that by 11-13 October the outline of a viable diplomatic solution had been worked out by Selwyn Lloyd at the UN and that Eden was taking it seriously, until the arrival of the French on 14 October with their collusion plan, swung him suddenly back to the use of force (pp. 222-31). This area - the details and achievements of the international diplomacy of the crisis - requires further research now that the records are open.

Another important issue that needs clarification is the military planning, particularly the reasons for the shift in September from Alexandria to Port Said as the invasion point. The former made it easier to destroy Nasser’s government, Eden’s explicit aim, but the latter meant lower civilian casualties and fitted the pretext that Britain was simply trying to recover its property, the Canal (Lamb, pp. 209-15). Rhodes James is at pains to show that the claims by Mountbatten, Chief of the Defence Staff, that he was a vocal and steadfast opponent of the use of force are exaggerated (pp. 495-96): like other doubters he was much less forthright than he subsequently claimed. But although Mountbatten’s biographer is vague on the details, it does seem from his account that Mountbatten channelled his doubts into revising the invasion plan to a form more acceptable to international opinion. Thus, the switch of 7 September from Alexandria to

(pp. 474-77, 512-13, 516).

I ’ For a good discussion of the pre-PRO evidence see Geoffrey Warner, ‘ “Collusion” and the Suez Crisis of 1956: International Affairs, 1979, Iv, 226-39. ’* Financial Times, 8 November 1986, p. 1 . Little is left of the defence against ‘collusion’ in Selwyn Lloyd, Suez I956: a personal account (London, 1978). On the other hand Hugh Thomas, The Suez Affair (London, 1966), stands up well and it was reprinted, with a new introduction, by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1986.

78

EDEN THE DIPLOMATIST Port Said was largely his a~hievement .~~ Again more research is needed.

On the US role, Rhiodes James and Lamb also differ. The former (pp. 464-65, 474-75) presents the Eisenhower Administration as torn between its abhorrence of communism on the one hand and colonialism on the other. He argues that Eisenhower consistently opposed the use of force to recover the Canal whereas Dulles (who, the British believed, made US policy) was ambivalent. In private the Secretary of State would use language congenial to Eden; in public, particularly in press conferences (whose appearance in American public life was bemoaned by British policymakers), he oft’en made statements undermining agreed policy, as when he admitted that the plan for a Suez Canal Users’s Association (SCUA) had no ‘teeth’.34

Although it is understandable that the British did feel betrayed over SCUA, the attack on ‘American perfidy’ (Rhodes James, p. 516) can be taken too far. Both governments agreed by the summer of 1956 that Nasser was a threat to their interests, and both were preparing plans for covert operations to overthrow him.35 But the Americans believed that Suez was not the issue on which to do this, stained as it was with the dregs of empire. Ike made that point clear to Eden,36 and on 6 October he secretly vetoed CIA plans to ‘topple Nasser’ not on grounds of principle but pr~dence.~’ Lamb (pp. 218-19) quotes from a revealing memo by Macmillan to Eden about a conversation he had with Dulles on 25 September. In it Dulles talked ‘about the different methods of getting rid of Nasser. He thought that these new plans might prove successful. But of course they would take six months.’ Macmillarn said that he ‘did not think we could stand for six months’ and ‘Dulles then observed that he quite realised that we might have to act by force’, but he urged the British to delay until after the US election. He reminded Eden that Eisenhower had helped the Tories the previous year, by timing announcements of the Geneva summit to assist Eden’s re-election campaign. Could Eden ‘not do something in return and try to hold things off until after November 6th?! Similarly, in mid- November, according to a senior RAF officer, Eisenhower told him ‘that he had known thxt we did intend at some time to strike against Egypt. But

33 See Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten: the official biography (London, 1985), pp. 542-43. Pre-PRO studies of the military side include Roy Fullick and Geoffrey Powell, Suez: the double war (London, 1979); and Robert Jackson, Suez, 1956: Operation Musketeer (London, 1980). 34 Dulles was later very apologetic. See PREM 11/1174 (PRO). 35 ‘It is either him or us, don’t forget that,’ Eden told Shuckburgh on 12 March 1956. Shuckburgh noted (p. 346): ‘He was quite emphatic that Nasser must be got rid of. (This, of course, was months before the Canal was seized.) For indications of the covert operations see Anthony Verrier, Through the Looking Glass: British Foreign Policy in an age of illusions (London, 1983), chapter 4; see also Peter Wright, with Paul Greengrass, Spycatcher: the candid autobiography of a senior intelligence ofFcer (New York, 1987), pp. 160-61.

37 According to staff notes of the meeting: ‘The President said that an action of this kind could not be taken when there is as much active hostility as at present. For a thing like that to be done without inflaming the: Arab world, a time free from heated stress holding the world’s attention as at present would have to be chosen.’ Stephen Ambrose, with Richard Immerman, IkeS Spies: Eisenhower an<d the Espionage Establishment (New York, 1981), p. 240.

79

E.g. message of 3 September in PREM 1111177.

REVIEW ARTICLE he did not think it would be so soon. He thought it would be after the elections .’3*

It seems, then, that the Anglo-American dispute was about means rather than ends - about how and when to get rid of Nasser, rather than about whether he was a fundamental threat. The problem was that Eden did not feel he could wait for the Americans. Precisely why he failed to heed clear advice like that of Dulles to Macmillan is unclear. How important were military exigencies? - climatic conditions in the Mediterranean, the pressure from France and Israel, or the difficulty of keeping British troops, many of them reservists, in readiness indefinitel~.~~ What of the claim that the British underestimated Eisenhower’s political constraints, somehow believing that the Jewish vote (traditionally Democrat) would shift to his support?@ These are other issues that need further research. But it does seem that Eden believed that in the last analysis he could and should ignore the United States if British interests warranted. Back in October 1955 he had told his Cabinet:

Our interests in the Middle East were greater than those of the United States because of our dependence on Middle East oil, and our experience in the area was greater than theirs. We should not therefore allow ourselves to be restricted overmuch by reluctance to act without full American concurrence and support. We should frame our own policy in the light of our interests in the area and get the Americans to support it to the extent we could induce them to do

But Eden was not alone. In September 1956 Treasury planning for a possible war with Egypt operated explicitly on only two hypotheses: ‘Full US, and general UN and Commonwealth support’, or ‘Go it alone with France - with only limited US, Commonwealth and other support’.42 No British policymaker seems to have expected the intensity of the American reaction, both in leading opposition in the UN and in failing to support the pound. It is ironic that Anthony Eden, who resigned from Neville Chamberlain’s Cabinet in 1938 in part over the premier’s underestimation of America, should in 1956 have taken, in effect, the Chamberlain view that one should ‘count on nothing from the Americans except

Yet it would be wrong to suppose that US pressure, particularly financial, was the fundamental reason for the Cabinet decision to stop the invasion on 6 November. Neither Lamb nor Rhodes James make that the sole explanation, but they do draw on memoir accounts, particularly Macmillan’s, to argue that American refusal to support sterling was a decisive factor in the Chancellor’s U-turn and thus the collapse of Cabinet

111 Record of Selwyn Lloyd’s conversation with Air Chief Marshal Sir William Eliot, 18 November 1956, PREM 1111176. ‘’ Cf. Carlton, Eden, pp. 440-41. * Cf. Richard E. Neustadt, Alliance Politics (New York, 1970), especially pp. 83-88. “ CM 34 (55) 8, 4 October 1955, CAB 128129 (PRO).

Sir Leslie Rowan, ‘Economic and Financial Measures to be taken in the event of war with Egypt’, 1 1 September 1956, T 236/4188 (PRO). *’ Neville Chamberlain to Hilda Chamberlain, 17 December 1937, in Chamberlain papers, NC 18/1/1032 (Birmingham University Library). 80

EDEN THE DIPLOMATIST support only 24 hours after the invasion started. In his memoirs Macmillan encouraged this impression as did R.A. Butler.44 There is, however, no reference to a financial crisis in the Cabinet minutes, nor are there indications in the main overseas finance files of the Treasury that any major negotiations were then taking place. The first reference to the sterling crisis in the Cabinet minutes appears two weeks later, on 20 November. Negative evidence, particularly from official records, has its dangers, of course,45 but it is possible that US financial pressure was not of major importance in this decision to accept a ceasefire on 6 November. It was, however, decisive when the Cabinet agreed on 28-29 November to withdraw the troops unconditionally. These two decisions, often elided in accounts of the Suez ‘debacle’, should be kept distinct.

The story of the sterling crisis is in fact further evidence that the Eden Government’s problems were largely self-inflicted. The British clearly lacked the financial base for such an operation, but they proceeded regardless. As Lamb shows (chapter 3), back in February 1955 the Treasury had made sterling partially convertible again, advised by the Bank of England that this would strengthen the sterling area by making the pound more attractive to foreigners. Yet Britain lacked the reserves to combat periodic speculation against a now- convertible pound and Eden’s Government exacerbated the problem by cutting taxes to win votes. This fuelled a consumer boom with inflation and increased imports, which did nothing to enhance foreign confidence. As Chancellor, Macmillan asked Eden for tax increases or spending reductions, including cuts in defence - all of which Eden rejected - and in April 1956 Macmillan warned him ‘that the crisis will come between August and November. I would say that on present form the betting is pretty heavy odds on compulsory devaluation’ (Lamb, 13. 57).

This was hardly the basis from which to mount a costly and dangerous military operation, likely at the very least to give sterling holders the jitters and to increase the cost of Britain’s oil imports. Perhaps here Rhodes James is right: Eden might have been more sapient had he had some experience of the Treasury. However, Macmillan was in Number 11 Downing Street, and yet he was the leading hawk who as early as August

Harold Macmillan, Ridiiig the Storm, 1955-1959 (London, 1971). pp. 163-64;cf. R.A. Butler, The Art ofrhe Possible (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp. 194-95; and Lloyd. Suez, p. 209. 4s Cabinet minutes are, notoriously, not full accounts of discussions but sanitised records of agreed decisions. Those for the meeting of 6 November are dated four days later. Lamb (pp. 206-7,231-33,241-42) gives several instances during the crisis of misleading records - dissent not registered or meetings lor which there are no extant documents. It is also true that some relevant Treasury files are still closed. Nevertheless, it is surely significant, for instance, that in the Cabinet’s ‘Egypt Committee’ the review by the Chiefs of Staff of the situation on 8 November stated that ‘for political reasons we have accepted a cease fire. This has been forced upon us by: (a) UNO pressure; (b) The possibility of Russian intervention and the consequent necessity for realigning ourselves alongside the United States from whom our previous actions have estranged us; (c) The political climate in the United Kingdom: It is hard to believe that if a financial crisis had been of decisive importance, the Chiefs would not have been told or would not have been allowed to mention it. See EC (56) 67, CAB 13411217 (PRO).

81

RE VIEW ARTICLE was urging collaboration with Israel.& Even more remarkable is the evidence from the Treasury files that, despite the loss of $50 million in the first two days of November, the Bank of England still opposed a request for US or IMF assistance. To do so would be ‘bad for confidence in sterling’, whose preservation as an international currency was its over- riding concern.47 As usual, the Treasury followed Bank advice. Both seemed to have judged in late October and early November that the run on the pound was sustainable and that it would be more damaging to be seen to ask for aid. In other words, the problem was not that Britain asked for US help in early November and was rebuffed but that she failed to ask at a time, before the fighting had started, when US help would have been easier to obtain.

When overtures were made to Washington, from 7 November, the Bank and Treasury were appalled to discover that the attitude of the US Treasury was that ‘for the United States to offer financial aid to the United Kingdom and France in the light of our actions in the last ten days would be totally unacceptable politically in the United States for some considerable time’.& At the same time Eisenhower, persuaded against his initial instincts by his aids, was also blackballing Eden - making clear that only when the Anglo-French force had withdrawn would the ground ‘be favourable for our meeting’.49 Within days the Treasury and Bank, hitherto almost complacent about American goodwill, were in panic-stricken retreat, demanding that the troops must be withdrawn so that relations with Washington could be resumed as soon as possible.

Again American pressure only had such a dramatic effect because of the self-imposed rigidities of British policy. Devaluation had been ruled out by the Bank as ‘a disaster to be fought with every weapon at our disposal’ - it would mean ‘the immediate break-up of the Sterling Area’ and the destruction of ‘sterling’s international position’.50 And the Chancellor needed a solution within days because he had to make his ritual end-of- month announcement of the state of Britain’s reserves (essential for maintaining foreign confidence). Trapped in this straightjacket, the Government decided, in effect, to sacrifice its Middle Eastern policy to its sterling policy. On 28-29 November an agitated Macmillan persuaded his

46 He was also a leading advocate of drawing up a military plan not primarily to regain the Canal but ‘to seek out and destroy Nasser’s armies and overthrow his government’. See his memo of 7 August 1956, EC (56) 8, CAB 134/1217 (PRO). 47 Sir Denis Ricketts to Sir Leslie Rowan, memo, 2 November 1956, T 236/4188 (PRO). Likewise, in August the Treasury had noted the potential danger to Britain’s oil supplies in the crisis but advised against a campaign of public education and conservation because of the effect on foreign confidence - ‘there are too many sterling balances which could easily be withdrawn’. Macmillan to Eden, 29 August 1956, PREM 1111135 (PRO).

Sir Harold Caccia to FO, telegram 2272.9 November 1956, T 23614189 (PRO). Caccia was! reporting the views of the US Treasury Secretary, George Humphrey (not ‘Senator Hubert Humphrey‘ as Lamb, p. 287, bizarrely calls him). 49 Eisenhower to Eden, 7 November 1956, PREM 1111137 (PRO). Lamb (pp. 276-77) presents new and interesting evidence of Ike’s initial cordiality, immediately after Eden had announced the ceasefire. yI C.F. Cobbold (Governor of the Bank of England) to Macmillan, 17 October 1956, T 236/4188 (PRO). The Bank still recalled with horror the devaluation crisis of 1949. 82

EDEN THE DlPLOMATlST demoralised Cabinet colleagues (with Eden now absent, ill) that unconditional withdrawal must be made to ensure US financial co- operation - a humiliating surrender of military gains.51 ‘First in, first out’ was Harold Wilson’s gibe at Macmillan. Here Rhodes James’s attempts to spread the blame seern, on present evidence, justified. It will be interesting to see how Alistair I-lorne, Macmillan’s official biographer, explains his subject’s conduct during the crisis and the political dexterity with which he extricated himself to become the next prime minister.

Thus, the American role in the Suez crisis must not be exaggerated: British and American policies towards Nasser were not diametrically opposed; the US financial pressure may have counted more in the decision to withdraw than to cease fire; and even then American influence was so effective only because Eden and his colleagues had over-estimated Britain’s capacity for independent action as a great power. Shackled by the Bank of England, they could not escape the sterling crisis. Lacking battle-ready troops, adequate air transports and bases closer than Malta, they could not mount a rapid attack on Nasser soon after the Canal was seized, at a time when national and international opinion would have been more supportive than three months later over an operation characterised by inept mendacity. It was easy to blame an American stab-in-the-back, and many Tories were happy to do so. But the fatal errors were British, and most of them we.re Eden’s.

As in 1938, in fact, so in 1956, Eden does seem to have handled the whole crisis incompetently. Whatever Macmillan’s responsibility over sterling, British collusion with Israel and France was Eden’s brainchild and even Rhodes James finds it hard to understand how the Prime Minister could have convinced himself that world opinion could be deceived for long (pp. 532-33). Lamb (p. vii) excuses Eden by asserting that his judgment was distorted by drugs, but Rhodes James (p. 366) will have none of this. He does, however, show that the fevers caused by Eden’s mangled bile duct recurred during the crisis, and it is likely that the appalling pressure, ,which entailed the cancellation of a much-needed vacation, must have taken their toll. The possible inclination towards a diplomatic solution on 11-13 October, the sudden grasping of the French plan on the 14th, the ,amazing belief that collusion could be concealed - all these suggest that ill-health and strain magnified Eden’s innate volatility. And if American financial pressure was not decisive in prompting a ceasefire on 6 November - as Macmillan himself admits52 - then that strengthens the impression of an exhausted leader caving in under intense pressures at home arid abroad.

If we bear in mind1 the distinction between ceasefire and unconditional withdrawal, Eden’s continued optimism on 6-7 November is understandable: he felt that ‘we held a gage’ or bargaining position that

To reinforce the reserves, Macmillan told the Cabinet, ‘the good will of the United States Government was necessary; and it was evident that this good will could not be obtained without an immediate and unconditional undertaking to withdraw the Anglo-French force from Port Said’. CM 90 (56), 28 November 1956, CAB 128/30 (PRO).

Macmillan, Riding the Storm, pp. 164-65.

83

R E W E W ARTICLE could be exploited in n e g ~ t i a t i o n . ~ ~ But consequently it is harder to understand why, when told by his doctors to rest, he allowed himself to be spirited away to a remote part of Jamaica from which he was virtually cut off from the decisions of late November. Rhodes James admits that this was ‘a fatal mistake’ (p. 587). Temporary exile eroded Eden’s popularity and political influence, without restoring his health. Rhodes James (pp. 594-96) makes short shrift of arguments that Eden was malingering: by the end of 1956 his life was in danger and resignation was the only course left.

* * * Robert Rhodes James is right that Eden was a man of charm, intelligence, industry and skill: the diplomatic achievements in 1954 were considerable. He is also right to emphasise that Eden was often desperately unlucky (p. 428) - the miserable first marriage, the delayed Churchill succession, his near-disastrous 1953 operation, the conjunction of Suez with the Russian invasion of Hungary. But bad luck only exacerbated basic character flaws - Eden’s volatile, workaholic nature which helped to undermine his health; his lack of political skill or ruthlessness under pressure, which impaired his handling of the crises of 1938 and 1956; and, at root, an exaggerated belief in Britain’s residual power and her ability to act independently of the United States. Pondering the Suez crisis later, Churchill admitted that he could not say how he would have behaved had he still been in office. But he made two main criticisms: ‘I cannot understand why our troops were halted. To go so far and not go on was madness.’ And, secondly, ‘I wouldn’t have done anything without consulting the American~’.’~ There, in a nutshell, lay his difference with Eden.

The author is very grateful to Dr David Cannadine for commenting on a draft version

Sir Anthony Eden, Full Circle (London, 1960), p. 558. Moran, Churchill, pp. 743-44, diary entries for 26 November and 6 December 1956. I have

developed this argument further elsewhere. See David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, An Ocean Apart: the relationship between Britain and America in rhe twentieth century (London, 1988). pp. 203-20, 227. 84