Empire_ What Ruling the World Did to the British - Jeremy Paxman [137]
It was the French who came up with the plot. They proposed that the Israelis launch a strike into Egypt, which would give Britain and France the excuse to intervene between warring forces, and so secure the Suez Canal. Because of the need for the utmost secrecy, almost everyone involved in planning what became an enormous national humiliation told lie after lie. The Israeli invasion went ahead at the end of October 1956, and, as agreed, British and French paratroopers were dropped around the waterway. It was the day before the American presidential election. As bad luck would have it, the Russians had chosen the same time to send their tanks into Hungary to suppress a popular uprising. Could Washington condemn that invasion without also condemning the Anglo-French operation against Egypt? Those infallible panic-indicators, the currency markets, immediately began selling sterling, whose value plummeted: the Bank of England could not arrest the fall without the help of the Americans, who refused to act until there was a ceasefire. Eden, who was now taking pills to send him to sleep and others to keep him awake, faced a choice between losing face and seeing the national currency and economy implode. It was clear that the entire operation had to be abandoned. At one point, British forces were landing and being withdrawn at the very same time. A broken Eden collapsed, telling his French counterpart, ‘I’m finished. I can’t hold on. The whole world reviles me … I can’t even rely on all Conservatives. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church, the oilmen, everyone is against me … I can’t dig the Crown’s grave.’ On 19 November, Eden’s doctors told him he had to have a complete rest, and the writer Ian Fleming and his wife Ann offered the Edens the use of Goldeneye, their villa in Jamaica, as a place to recuperate. The day after the Edens’ departure, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution by 63 votes to 5 demanding that the foreign forces be withdrawn from Egypt.
Eden’s doctors judged that his health benefited from his holiday. But his absence created the strange situation where not only was he disconnected from the party’s – and the nation’s – nervous system, but cabinet colleagues began to feel it was better all round that he was away from London. ‘Your return is likely to be regarded as a sign of panic,’ warned Lord Salisbury in a cable to Jamaica on 4 December – it was better that Eden should stay away to ‘complete your cure’. Ten days later the Prime Minister returned to England and appeared before a contemptuous House of Commons, to repeat the lie that there had been no plans to attack Egypt, and no collaboration with Israel. He swore that if he had ‘the same very disagreeable decisions to take again’, he would repeat them. There followed a miserable Christmas, and in early January 1957 Eden held a long cabinet meeting discussing anything but the Suez debacle, at the end of which he turned to the senior civil servant present and asked if there was anything more to consider. ‘For a moment he was looking directly at me,’ the official said later, ‘and I saw in his eyes a man pursued by every demon. I have never seen a look like it in any man’s eyes, and I hope I never do again.’ A few days later it was all over. Anthony Eden told senior cabinet colleagues he had decided that his position was untenable. ‘The doctors have told me that I cannot last long if I remain in office,’ he said. He was willing to risk his life by continuing as prime minister, he said, but would not do so. That evening he went to Buckingham Palace to submit his resignation to the queen. As prime minister in late-Victorian Britain, perhaps Eden could have got away with a caper like the Suez intervention: might