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By Root 1263 0

Race played its part, too. ‘Politicians don’t know Orientals like we do,’ grumbled a retired brigadier at a gathering of old soldiers, ‘they don’t know that the only way to deal with them is to kick their backsides.’ The Prime Minister was already smarting from the slight to Britain’s reputation caused by the expulsion of Glubb Pasha (although not sufficiently animated to ensure that the man received his general’s pension). And, in characteristic voice, the press turned on the Prime Minister. The Times declared, ‘The seizure is an act of international brigandage,’ while the Daily Mail bellowed that ‘The time for appeasement is over. We must cry “Halt!” to Nasser as we should have cried “Halt!” to Hitler. Before he sets the Middle East aflame, as Hitler did Europe.’ Since Eden had been conspicuous in his opposition to the appeasement of the 1930s, this was an especially hurtful (and stupid) accusation. Having lost two brothers in the First World War, and a son in 1945, Eden also had a great deal less enthusiasm for killing people than many a newspaper editor. His problem was that he was altogether too thin-skinned to shrug off the newspaper name-calling, and sat around in Downing Street waiting for the first editions of the newspapers to arrive so that he could immerse himself in the latest torrent of abuse from Fleet Street. As with so many bullies, the vulnerability of their victim merely egged on his oppressors.

In the event, what finished off British delusions about the country’s place in the world was not what happened in Cairo or London but attitudes in Washington. Perhaps the British government might have defied the United Nations, with its feeble decision-making mechanisms, which ensured that the Russians could block any action against Egypt. But to do so required the support of the United States, which was on the verge of a presidential election and therefore in its customary four-yearly state of paralysis. The American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, made it clear that the United States was pinning its colours firmly to the fence. ‘The United States cannot be expected to identify itself 100 per cent either with the colonial powers or the powers uniquely concerned with the problem of getting independence as rapidly and as fully as possible,’ he announced. ‘The shift from colonialism to independence will be going on for another fifty years.’ Eden thought Dulles had deliberately misrepresented the British case: the issue was not colonialism but securing international control of the canal and freedom of movement. He was too much of a gentleman to tell the world that if anyone wanted an example of a truly imperial transoceanic canal they might care to look at Panama, a country created by United States power and now cut in two by a waterway secured by US troops stationed along its banks.

What’s more, the external appearance of this dapper figure in his well-cut suits was deceptive. He had serious health problems. A botched operation for gallstones had left him with a damaged bile duct, making him prone to recurrent infections, biliary obstruction, fevers and liver failure. In October 1956 he was hospitalized after his temperature had reached 106 degrees. Doctors had also prescribed the amphetamine Benzedrine, which is now known to cause insomnia, restlessness and mood swings. Increasing exhaustion and lassitude left him moody and short-tempered under pressure: British policy was in the hands of a man whose physical condition almost precluded measured judgement. At one point he spluttered about Nasser on an open telephone line to his junior minister at the Foreign Office: ‘I want him murdered.’

The assassination did not happen. But the French government, which already loathed Nasser for his vocal support of Algerian nationalists fighting to escape French colonial rule, weighed in on Britain’s side. The political influence of both these colonial powers had been eclipsed by the United States, which continued to warn that world opinion would not tolerate a military intervention to regain the canal. But British