Suez: End of empire

[N.O.R.F]

Fifty years ago the Suez Crisis erupted over the Egyptian president's decision to nationalise the Suez Canal. The first of a series of articles marking the anniversary looks at how the conflict spelled the end of the British Empire.

 

The Times pronounced not only on Anthony Eden's life when he died in 1977 but on the life of Britain when it wrote of him: "He was the last prime minister to believe Britain was a great power and the first to confront a crisis which proved she was not."

 

The conventional verdict on the Suez operation is given by historian Corelli Barnett, who wrote about Suez in his book, The Collapse of British Power.

 

"It was the last thrash of empire," he told me. "A last attempt by a British government to do the old imperial thing in defence of far-off interests. It was a complete folly."

 

It is not easy these days to cast back 50 years to 1956. Britain still had an empire. Memories of World War II were fresh and English schoolboys were taught that Britain (England more like) had won the war.

 

There was some understanding that the Americans had come in, but at a late stage and almost no mention of the Soviet Union at all. We were told: "British is best."

 

Underneath, though, all was not well. Although Britain kept naval ships east of Suez, the end of Empire was at hand.

 

 

Some places it knew would go - Ghana (the Gold Coast), Nigeria. Some had already gone, India mainly. Elsewhere (in Kenya, Cyprus, Malaya) it was battling to put down revolts and uprisings.

 

 

Click here to see the strategic importance of Suez

In Cyprus, a British minister announced that the island could "never" be independent. And at home, while prosperity was growing, Britain was still much weakened after the war.

 

Yet it still had pretensions to sit at the top international table. It had just taken part in the Korean War, though its reduced role should have rung alarm bells about its real power.

 

Eden himself rejected the idea that it should join the then young and continental "Common Market". He declared grandly: "Our horizons are wider."

 

He was looking back to an age that had been and not to the age to come.

 

Influence of the Thirties

 

Eden had been brought up politically in the 1930s. He was against appeasement and was particularly hostile to Mussolini. In 1938, he resigned as Neville Chamberlain's foreign secretary when Chamberlain wanted to open negotiations with Italy.

 

Herein lay the origin of the Suez crisis.

 

When in 1954 a new type of political leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, a strong Arab nationalist, emerged as leader of Egypt, Eden did not understand that the world had changed. Instead he looked and saw another dictator, another Mussolini.

 

Gamal Abdel Nasser represented a new type of political leader in Egypt

 

Eden could not accept that Egypt should run the Suez Canal, even though he had previously accepted that British troops should leave the Canal Zone. The canal had lost some of its strategic importance for Britain, but not all. And it had acquired a new importance, as a passageway for oil to get to Europe.

 

When, therefore, Nasser announced that he was nationalising the Suez Canal Company (partly, he said, to pay for the Aswan dam that the West refused to finance) in which Britain and France had controlling interests, Eden was alarmed.

 

He told his government colleagues that he would not allow Nasser to "have his thumb on our windpipe".

 

The secret plot

 

And so Eden concocted a secret tripartite plot with France and Israel.

 

France was hostile to Nasser because Egypt was helping the Algerian rebels, and attached to the canal for historical reasons. After all, a Frenchman built it.

 

Israel was longing to have a go at Nasser anyway because of Palestinian fedayeen attacks and the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran.

 

The ruse was that Israel would invade Egypt across the Sinai peninsula.

 

Britain and France would then give an ultimatum to the parties to stop fighting or they would intervene to 'protect' the canal.

 

And so it played out. The Israelis even had to moderate their attack in case they won before the 'intervention' forces could arrive. But the British and French went in to 'save' the canal.

 

There was only one thing wrong. Eden had not told the Americans.

 

And President Dwight Eisenhower, concerned about wider relations with the Arab world and horrified at such an adventure anyway, was not amused.

 

"Our closest ally pulled the plug," says Corelli Barnett. "We acted on the back of a struggling economy and there was a run on the pound.

 

"Macmillan, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the cabinet that the only way to save the situation was for an IMF loan backed by the United States.

 

"The Americans refused to back it. We were told by them to go no further and to evacuate promptly. So we did. It was a complete fiasco."

 

British and French troops left Egypt by December 1956. Eden left office early the next year.

 

The aftermath

 

The fallout was huge.

 

For a start, it got the Soviet Union off the hook, as it was brutally crushing the Hungarian uprising at the same time.

 

But it also meant that no longer could Britain - or France - act alone on the world stage.

 

They did however draw different conclusions.

 

Harold Macmillan, who succeeded Eden, decided that in future Britain had to side with America. He made good friends with President John F Kennedy and even persuaded Kennedy to let Britain have the Polaris nuclear missile.

 

Since then, Britain has been reluctant to oppose any US policy. Even during Vietnam, the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson forbade criticism of the US while shrewdly refusing Lyndon Johnson's request to send a token force.

 

French disconnection

 

France on the other hand went its own way, led in due course by de Gaulle. It left the military command structure of Nato and turned to leading Europe alongside a newly prosperous Germany.

 

Just as Britain always thereafter tended to side with the US, so France tended to oppose it.

 

Modern revisionist theories hold that the mistake was really made by President Eisenhower, in that he showed a weakness that the Soviet Union exploited.

 

Whatever one's views of that, there is no doubt that Suez represented the end of a long phase of British imperial history.

 

 

 

Suez Canal opened to traffic in November 1869

It was built by Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps using Egyptian forced labour; an estimated 120,000 workers died during construction

It stretches 192km (120 miles) between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea

It is 300m (984ft) wide at its narrowest point

By 1955 approximately two-thirds of Europe's oil passed through the canal

The waterway closed 1967 due to the Six Day War, reopened 1975

About 7.5% of world sea trade is carried via the canal today

Receipts from the canal July 2005 to May 2006 totalled $3,246m

In 2005, 18,193 vessels passed through the canal

 

Source

[N.O.R.F]

Thank you very much Mr Oodweyn

 

served in Suez from 1953-1955, and I asked then."What are we the British doing here." And I was told that we where there to safeguard British interests.When I asked who was these British people who's interest we where safeguarding, I was told I was a trouble maker, and to get on with it..Egypt, In my opinion had the right to the Suez canal, for it was in their country after all, so why should we invade again to take it back. If Egypt had invaded and taken over the running of the river thames..Would we have sat back and let it happen...Not bloody likely, so why should we complain about them running their own Canal in their country.

 

Terry, St Helens.lancs

 

It is interesting that the BBC brings up the topic of the Suez crisis at the moment. Britain, France and Israel were in it together from the beginning. Israel's job was to invade Egypt and start a war. The plan then was for France and the UK to come in as a sort of peace keeping force to separate the two armies. Of course this was just a pretext to occupy the area. Many people in the Arab world must be thinking that something similar is being planned for the Lebanon.

 

Steven Martin, United Kingdom

 

The Suez Canal crisis has completely defined my country, despite our distance and the relative unimportance of Egyptian-Canadian relations. Our future Prime Minister, and at the time, Foreign Minister, Lester B. Pearson, proposed the idea of an international peace force.

 

To this day, the myth of Canada being an honest broker and a peacekeeping nation continues. What is forgotten is Nasser's insistance on removing the peaceforce and its inability to stop conflict. Today, even as Canada fights in Afghanistan under NATO, people here still want Canada under the UN regardless of the mission's mandate.

 

The Canadian myth continues...

 

Eric Hovius, Ontario, Canada

 

The more things change the more they remain the same.

Fifty years ago as a young soldier in the British Army I was part of

the Anglo / French invasion during the Suez canal crises.The British

Government announced that when Nasser nationalized the canal he threatened our links with our empire.We were told we were fighting for our country.It was only later that we found out that our government was in total collusion with Israel whose troops also attacked Egypt.The real goal was to topple Nasser and strangle Pan- Arabism.

I learned much during this period.I learned that the British government- my government was capable of duplicity and deceit.

Nothing has changed.To wit: Iraq and Lebanon.

 

James MacDonald, Manitoba, Canada

I was in Cairo at the time, a child of just 7 years old. Life seemed one of confusion - what was going on? Blackouts at night, school down in the bedrone (cellars), aircraft overhead, bombs dropped, air riad sirens, and more air raid sirens - I only have to be watching film that contains that siren and it all comes pouring back - that prickle on the soles of my feet, fear in my soul, tension, please make it all come right again. The guards on the hospital gate where my parents worked and we lived. Every day another day of fear and lack of understanding. Local people who were our friends, were also it seemed not our friends. Finally driving out the gatewith our small bags, all we were allowed

 

chris hillman, Thropton, Northumberland

 

source

[N.O.R.F]

The day Nasser nationalised the canal

 

"It's a long story..." former head of the Suez Canal Authority Ezzat Adel pauses briefly to reflect on the day 50 years ago when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced he was nationalising the waterway.

"Of course it is a very important date, not to us as ex-Suez Canal people, but to the whole of Egypt's population.

 

"It represents a very important idea which is that the Egyptians were not thought able to run this international waterway and we proved the contrary."

 

Trained as an engineer, Mr Adel, now 84, was one of just 30 men entrusted with the president's plans for taking control of the 192km (120 mile) trading route.

 

 

As deputy to the head of the petroleum authority he was attending the inauguration of a new oil pipeline with his then boss Colonel Mahmoud Younes and President Nasser.

 

"We noticed that he (the president) whispered to Colonel Mahmoud Younes...and we noticed also that Colonel Younes disappeared from the office giving no reason for his disappearance and he returned absent minded.

 

 

Click here for map and sequence of events

"On the second day, the 24 July, he also disappeared once more without saying where he was going and what he was doing and he returned after almost one hour and he called me and one of my colleagues to his office and to our astonishment he locked the door."

 

 

When he first heard what the president had in store Mr Adel said his reaction was one of fear - not for his own safety - but the fear of not succeeding.

 

"We were told that President Nasser will declare the nationalisation during his speech in Alexandria on the 26 July, we are on the 24 July, almost 50 hours to plan. It was, I think, one of the most critical periods in my life."

 

He knew so little about the canal, he did not even know the whereabouts of the company headquarters or who was in charge, nor did he really understand what was meant by "nationalisation".

 

De Lesseps

 

Armed with just a pamphlet of information about the canal, he was instructed to go with a small group of men to Ismailia and take control of the headquarters of the Suez Canal company.

 

Two further groups were to go to other offices - all three were to wait until they heard the codeword "de Lesseps" in Nasser's speech. De Lesseps was the man who headed the French company which built the canal.

 

"I remember that we had the radio on ...and I remember that he (President Nasser) doubted that we heard this password so he repeated it two or three times.

 

"We entered the offices in Ismailia at around 7pm and there was no staff in the offices, except the nightshift. We called the senior staff, foreigners of course because there was no Egyptian in the decision-making level...and they were taken by surprise."

 

Experienced pilots

 

Even some government ministers had been kept in the dark. Keeping the mission such a closely guarded secret, was, he claims, the reason they succeeded.

 

"The first thing to do was to inform (the staff) that 'we guarantee your safety, your family's safety and we also guarantee all your salaries, premiums and everything and we moreover request you to continue working for the Suez Canal, nobody will be fired'.

 

"Everything went smoothly for a period of time, less than two weeks...until we noticed that some of the employees that were on summer holidays did not return. Some foreigners, also staff, are selling their cars, their furniture, so we anticipated that there is a move to leave the Egyptians alone to run the Suez Canal."

 

As newly-appointed Under-Secretary General of the Suez Canal Authority, Mr Adel had to move fast. If the canal was to remain open, he needed experienced pilots to guide the ships through the narrow shipping lanes.

 

"Any other speciality can be filled to a certain extent," Mr Adel said, "but this (finding new pilots) will be the most delicate part."

 

But new pilots were found and trained and ultimately the nationalisation of the canal proved a success.

 

Mr Adel rose through the ranks of the Suez Canal Company to become Chairman in the mid-80s.

 

He has never doubted that Nasser was right to nationalise the canal.

 

"Egypt lost 120,000 people digging the Suez Canal by shovels and carrying cases of sand under almost slavery conditions, very little health care, very few wages. Against this very high sacrifice Egypt did not get a fair share of the profits of the Suez Canal...

 

"Egypt paid all the head shareholders of the Suez Canal company the full value of their shares in the money market in Paris the day before nationalisation so I didn't really feel myself that we are taking something for nothing and this is the reason why I didn't blame myself.

 

"I feel that the salt water of the Suez Canal is running (in my veins) and if I go back to what I should have done, I am relieved to say that I didn't save any effort since the nationalisation of the Suez Canal."

 

So what does he say to those who regard him as a national hero?

 

"I'm a single Egyptian that tried his best."

 

bbc.co.uk

[N.O.R.F]

A very interesting read indeed