Vernon Bogdanor Lecture - Suez Crisis Briefings

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the second of six lectures on post-war

political crises in Britain. This lecture is on the Suez crisis of

1956, the crisis that began with the nationalisation of the Suez Canal

company in which Britain and France had a controlling interest, in July

1956 by Egypt's leader. It led to military action by Britain and

France in collusion with Israel at the end of October 1956. That

military action failed largely because of the opposition of the

United States. Suez was the most divisive foreign policy issue in

British politics since the war. Exceeded only since then perhaps by

the Iraq war. It led to furious arguments between families and

friends. It also led to the most serious breakdown in Anglo-American

relations since the war and displayed for all the world to see

British weakness when faced with the opposition of the Americans. It was

from this point of view a turning point in British post-war history.

In my last lecture on the National Health Service, said the crisis of

1951 was a point Delyn and pointed to the whole future of the National

Health Service and the problem of running a health service free at

source for which demand was, in theory, unlimited. Today I want to

show that Suez was a pointer to the future of international relations

and the threat to world order posed by radical third World nationalist

leaders. But we can only understand Suez if we look at the context of

the times. The world of 1956 was a very different world from that of

today. During the immediate post-war reach Delyn and years, Britain

sought herself as not primarily of the European power, as she does now,

but as a global superpower with worldwide interests. We were still

an imperial power though, admittedly, an imperial power in the

process of winding down our commitments. This was symbolised by

the granting of independence to India Pakistan in 1947. The African

empire remained largely intact. With a single exception of the sedan,

which had gained independence in 1954, largely through the influence

of Sir Anthony Eden who was a minister during the Suez crisis.

Some people in thinking about Suez think of Anthony Eden as an

imperialist. But he appreciated that the era of imperialism was over and

it was no longer possible in the modern world to rule over others

without consent. That was the general view of what may be called

the British establishment. But we still thought we could retain our

global influence in other ways. Firstly, by holding onto a ring of

strategic positions such as the Suez Canal, and secondly by ensuring

there where friendly Government in areas of strategic importance, such

as the Middle East. As after the withdrawal from India, Middle East

and Suez were more important to Britain because of the lake with

Asia and Australia that its providers. -- link. In the Middle

East, the Arab countries were not real directly from Britain but they

were mostly at that time ruled by a friendly and subordinate governments

which were, so to speak, advised by the British. They were not colonies.

That policy came under great pressure under World War II. The

first problem came in Palestine in 1847, which the British evacuated

and handed over to the United Nations to deal with because Britain

was too weak to resolve the problems. One of the few things

uniting Jews and Arabs at the time was facility to Britain. The Arabs

were hostile because of the Balfour declaration and Jewish immigration

to Palestine, Israel because she saw the British Government as pro-Arab.

In the Arab world, he could Britain was particularly strong in Egypt

because of the long British occupation there. When the British

withdrew from Palestine, there was a war in 1848 in which the Arabs led

then by Egypt sought to destroy Israel. In fact, it ended with an

Israeli victory and a ceasefire. Though, none of the Arab states

recognised Israel has said they were still in a state of war with her.

The West, for once, perhaps, in Iraq, had a united response to the

problems which the Americans tried to raise in the Suez crisis and that

response was in the form of the tripartite declaration of 1950 of

Britain, France and America. They said together they which preserve

the status quo in the region and come to the aid of any country

attacked by another. That they would also control the supply of arms to

both sides, so that no side would be able to achieve a superiority over

the other one. Palestine was the first pressure point, the second was

Iran in 1951. When a radical nationalist Government nationalised

the British oil company and that occurred in the last days of the

Labour Government. The Labour Government thought of using force

but, by contrast with Suez, did not do so in large part because the

Americans were opposed to it. The British troops guarding the oil

refinery were ordered out and they then went to Suez as a fallback

position and I think the success of the Iranians probably did encourage

the Egyptians in 1956 to tweak the lion's tale a bit further. Then the

rise of Egyptian nationalism cost further problems to Britain. In

1852, there was a revolution in Egypt, the monarchy was removed, and

an army doctor took power which rapidly came to be controlled by

Colonel Nasser, who established a dictatorship in Egypt. This posed

new and very difficult problems for Britain. To have a close

relationship with Egypt from imperial times, largely due to the

need to control as Britain side of the Suez Canal. In 1875, Disraeli

had bought shares in the Suez Canal company for Britain. So that the

company became a joint British and French enterprise. To ensure that

the canal was not threatened by Egyptian nationalists, Glastonbury

and Liberal Government in 1882 instituted a temporary occupation of

Egypt to ensure stability. That temporary occupation lasted 54

years. Until 1936. Even after that, Britain had a strong though

undefined role in Egypt under the Egyptian monarch came and Britain

retained a base in what was called the Suez Canal zone, actually it was

quite white, extracts from the red Sea to the Mediterranean and

westward almost to Cairo and that was to protect the Suez Canal. By

1954, there were 80,000 British troops there, to that extent

Egyptian independence was limited. There was only one occasion on which

the two antagonists in the Suez crisis met, Sir Anthony Eden, the

British are minister, and Colonel Nasser, the Egyptian leader, and

that was in early 1955. They had dinner in the British Embassy in

Cairo. Colonel Nasser said he had was wanted to visit the place from

which Egypt had been covered for so many years.

The Egyptians wanted to remove Britain from the canal base and

instituted guerrilla warfare to get the British art. The Americans took

the view that Britain should leave because they argued that the British

presence encouraged Egypt and other third World countries to believe

that the West was still colonialist and that helped the sulphate union,

so the Americans argued. Anthony Eden, in 1954, signed an agreement

with strong British troops from the base over a period of two years. He

believed that we could not maintain our position in the middle east by

the methods of the 19th century back to maintain our influence we must

try to harness the nationalist movements to our own interests,

rather than struggle against them. So, come to terms with nationalism,

withdraw British troops, women goodwill from new leaders and you

can preserve British interests, not to imperialism, but through

goodwill. Moreover, in a nuclear world, it seemed overseas bases were

pointless. If that field, there was a safeguard in the treaty because it

said that British troops could return in the case of an attack on

Egypt by an outside power or by 30. Eden negotiated the agreement in

1954. His Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was very unhappy about

it. He was supported by around 40 Conservative MPs who called

themselves this year 's group. There are remarkably, the Private surgery

for Churchill ran one of them after a backbencher in a speech in the

Commons and told him the Prime Minister agreed with his criticism

of this government. Churchill said, kindly to Eden, that he had not

realised that Munich was on the Nile. That was a reference to the

Munich conference of 1938 which marked the climax of appeasement.

This is important because from this time, Eden was under threat from the

right wing of the Conservative Party as an appeaser who was unwilling to

defend British interests abroad. The feeling that he was weak increased

after Churchill retired in 1955 and Eden succeeded as Prime Minister.

Many backbenchers contrasted his consensual, rather than only in

style with the more rumbustious approach of Churchill. Throughout

the Suez crisis, Eden was under pressure, not from the left urging

him to reach a peaceful solution, but from his right wing, that he

shouldn't surrender British interests. This pressure was also

strong from within the Cabinet and in particular from his Chancellor,

Harold Macmillan was the second most powerful man in the government, very

much a rival to Dunedin and he eventually supplanted him. They won

important effect of British withdrawal from the base, it removed

a buffer between Israel and Egypt and in consequence, Egyptian

commando raids began in Egypt, into Israel rather, worsening the Arab

dispute. For the moment, eating one over the doctors by saying it

protected British interests because they could always return to the base

if there was trouble. He didn't answer the question, if we couldn't

hold the base while there, how on earth did we return to the base

against the wishes of the Egyptians? The idea that we could return was a

hollow pretence. The truth is that agreement was sold in the

Conservative Party on the basis that Nasser was a reasonable man and once

his grievances were dealt with, he would take a reasonable approach on

relations with Britain. One cannot understand the actions of Eden in

1956 unless one remembers this. It was like Neville Chamberlain after

the Munich agreement in 1938. Chamberlain said Hitler was a

reasonable man and his work could be trusted. The Oxford Chamberlain were

shattered when Hitler occupied Prague in 1939 and so Eden's hopes

were shattered by the nationalisation of the canal company

which occurred just two weeks after the last British troops left the

base in July 19 56. Eden felt he had been personally cheated. The aim of

the 1954 agreement had been to win Egyptian goodwill, that didn't

happen and there was continual Egyptian propaganda against Britain

and the Egyptians sought to undermine the pro-British regimes in

the area and the sort of the unity of the radical Arab regimes so that

Israel could be destroyed, avenging the defeat of 1948. So Nasser, two

British eyes, seemed less a nationalist and more an arab

imperialist. Worse for Britain and America, Nasser began to purchase

arms from countries in the Soviet bloc. This brought the Soviet Union

into the middle east which had been a question sphere of influence. It

made the tripartite declaration useless because the West could no

longer control the balance between the two sides. Nasser said he was

doing that because the French were selling arms to Israel

surreptitiously with the encouragement of America and that

was not in accordance with the tripartite declaration. There were

faults on both sides. Still, Egyptian friendship with the Soviet

bloc and with the British and the Americans. They began to wonder

whether they should cut aid to Egypt as a result. In particular, whether

they should end the financing of the Aswan Dam in Egypt which they had

promised. The British and Americans consulted and decided jointly to let

the loan with on the vine and fade away, as it were. But the Americans

faced a problem from the Senedd. It was extremely annoyed at Egyptian

flirtation with the Soviet bloc and asked, reasonably, white countries

which were hostile to America should get as much aid as countries which

were friendly to America. The Senedd Appropriations Committee was

proposing that no funds be spent on aid to Egypt without specific

Congressional approval. The American Secretary of State, the last thing

he wanted was for his foreign policy to be determined by his Senedd.

Britain and America agreed they should terminate the loan pretty

quickly. This was agreed by the American Secretary of State, John

Foster Dulles, but he did it in an abrupt and humiliating way and he

could indeed be very tactless. Churchill, referring to Dulles, said

that he was the only people who carried his own china shop with him.

What he should have said to the Egyptians was that they would not

get the money because they were being helped by the Russians, but

what he said instead was that the Egyptians didn't have the technical

understanding to run the dam and that was very insulting. The

response was the canal company was nationalised. Nasser said this was

in response to the withdrawal of the funding of the dam but there is

evidence to believe that he was going to do this in any case

Antipater admitted that the Egyptians would have taken some

similar action in the future. -- and he later. Now, the canal was

Egyptian sovereign territory but the company which supervised the

operations of the canal was controlled by the British and French

and was meant to secure international control of it so it

was not under the policy of any particular country, so its status

was different from that of the Panama Canal which had been leased

to the Americans and was an American and international waterway. Still,

some could argue that if an was under the unfettered control of a

single country, why not also Suez. Suez was nowhere near as important

to the Americans as it was Europeans. Britain and France but

the international status of the Suez Canal was at risk and the canal was

crucial to them at that time because a quarter of British imports and two

thirds of her boy passed through the canal and they were very worried

that it could come under the control of a hostile power, Egypt, perhaps

with Soviet influence. Earlier, in 1956, Soviet leaders had come to

Britain and Anthony Eden had told them that the uninterrupted supply

of oil was literally vital to our economy is that I said I thought I

must be absolutely blunt about the annoyed because we would fight for

it. The trouble was it was not clear what Nasser had done was actually

illegal because he seemed to be doing no more than buying the assets

of the company and offering full compensation to those affected. Most

international lawyers, not all, but most, believe the Act was not

illegal in international law. The British cabinet which met the day

after decided, we should be on weak ground in basing our resistance on

the narrow argument that Colonel Nasser had acted illegally. The Suez

Canal Company was registered as an Egyptian company and Egyptian law

and Colonel Nasser had indicated he attempted to compensate the

shareholders at market prices. From a narrow legal point of view, the

action amounted to no more than a action amounted to no more than a

decision to buy out shareholders. The Cabinet then went on to argue,

are accused must be presented on wider international brands. Our

argument must be to Egypt could not be allowed to exploit it for a

purely internal purpose. The canal was a vital link between East and

West. It was not a piece of Egyptian property, but an international asset

of the highest importance and it should be managed as an

international trust. In other words, it should not be in the hands of the

single power. The West wasn't in a very strong position to insist on

this because Nasser had refused to allow Israeli chips to use the

canal, saying he was still at war with Israel. Some international

lawyers supported that position, but most did not and Egypt was condemned

by the UN and could have an obligation to meet Israeli chips. It

did not do so and no one did anything about it. Even if

nationalisation of the canal was not illegal, it was condemned by almost

everyone in Britain, by politicians on both right and left as an Act of

thunder that could be allowed to succeed. One of the leaders of the

British left at that time, the Labour politician Bevan, said if the

sending of 1's police and soldiers into the darkness of the night to

seize property belonging to someone else is nationalisation then Ali

Baba used the wrong terminology. The action by Nasser reminded many

people of the 1930s and none more so than Anthony Eden, he was deeply

scarred by the events of that decade. Eden had first become

Foreign Secretary in 1935 at the early age of 58. He had been Foreign

Secretary in 1936 when Hitler had preoccupied and re-militarised the

Rhineland. He felt very guilty that he had done nothing to resist this

though, in my view, there was no support in Britain for such

resistance. This reputation had been made when he resigned in 1938 when

he was just 40 years old from the government of Neville Chamberlain in

protest against the appeasement of Mussolini and then made his

reputation establishing himself in the public eye as the young,

handsome, idealistic founder of collective security and

international agreements. He seemed to personify the struggle against

dictatorship in Europe. Some argued that Eden resigning was misjudged.

Mussolini was a minor figure and it was worth trying to bring onside so

better to resist Hitler. Eden rejected that view. He argued that

if the democracies were firm with Mussolini, this would impress Hitler

and deter him or at least ensured that the German generals refused to

take the risks of four and my own personal view is that Eden was right

in that judgment. What he was fundamentally concerned with in the

1930s and in the 1950s was the fundamental problem of how to secure

the conditions of international order. Eden went back to the Foreign

Office in 1940, shortly after Churchill became Prime Minister and

again in 1951 in the eastern government led by Churchill. As

Foreign Secretary he had a record of almost unbroken success and was

described by the Australian the performance at the time as the

greatest Foreign Secretary of the century. It was generally felt he

had a great flair and instinct for foreign policy. In the 1950s he saw

the same syndrome is in the 1920s with international agreements being

broken and international order being threatened. He compared Nasser with

Mussolini, in particular. The opposition leader, she gets girl,

went further. He said in Parliament, it is all very familiar. It is

exactly the same that we encountered from Mussolini and Hitler in those

years before the war. It was just 20 years since Hitler had quite

militarised the Rhineland and such comparisons were frequent. The daily

Herald, a liberal paper, said no more settlers. The Secretary-General

of the United Nations told the British Foreign Secretary in 1955

that Nasser was comparable to Hitler. Gaitskell, the Leader of the

Opposition, give the objections to the action by matter which with the

same as those of the government. The first was that the company was

not a normal company, but because it controlled a waterway, a matter of

international concern, it could not be in the power of one person,

secondly, the manner done without discussion and force, and thirdly

and a skilled's view, part of a policy of Egyptian imperialism. He

said we cannot forget that Colonel Nasser has repeatedly boasted of his

intention to create an Arab empire from the Atlantic to the Persian

Gulf. He said the bridge by minister had called it a speech of Nasser's

and rightly said it could remind us of the speeches of Hitler before the

war. At the same time, date skill said what Nasser had done so far

offered no justification for the use of force unless authorised by the

United Nations, that is where he differed from the United Nations

committee wanted to abide by United Nations decisions. The Cabinet to

give different view. It's met on the day of the nationalisation and paste

the following question, I caught from the minutes. The fundamental

question before the Cabinet was whether they were prepared in the

last resort to pursue their objective by the threat or even the

use of force and whether they were ready, in default of assistance from

the United States or France, to take military action alone. The Cabinet

answer the question the following way. The Cabinet agreed that our

essential interest in this area must, if necessary, be safeguarded

by military action and that the necessary preparations to this end

must be made. Failure to hold the Suez Canal would lead inevitably to

the loss, one by one, of all our interests and assets in the Middle

East and even if we had to act alone, we could not stop short of

using force to protect our position if all other means of protecting

improved unavailable. But the restoration of international control

was not the only aim of the Government. The Cabinet set up an

Egypt committee. This met on the 30th of July, shortly after

nationalisation. According to the minutes, decided as follows. While

our ultimate purpose was to place the canal under international

control, our immediate objective was to bring about the downfall of the

present Egyptian Government. This might perhaps be achieved by less

elaborate operations than those required to secure physical

possession of the canal itself. On the other hand, it was argued that

our case before world opinion was based on the need to secure

international control over the canal. To most of us, it will seem

shocking the British Government sought to remove the Egyptian

Government. Regime change, if you like. That would not have seemed

shocking to British and American governments at that time. In 1953,

the British and Americans had helped remove the radical Government in

Iran that I'd nationalise the oil company in 1851 and re-established

the Shah in power. In 1854, the Americans had helped remove the

Government that Allah -- what Allah, and under Kennedy, it helped remove

the Government in the Nam, in Granada in 1883, in Panama in 1989,

leaving aside Iraq. None of these governments, it is fair to say, had

been democratically elected, nor were the governments that displace

them. The bridges, where the Americans oppose the man Suez, but

this was an example of American hypocrisy -- British. Later on you

will see examples of British hypocrisy as well. In my view, a

minority view, most people disagree, they except I have caught it from

the British Government, the Cabinet minutes, -- quoted -- the British

Government was not committed to using force against Egypt. It is

true they meet military preparations during the summer but, in my view,

these were contingency plans to be put into practice only if other

methods of achieving a satisfactory settlement had failed. If that

happens, it have to go back to the Cabinet which would decide on the

use of force. In my view, the British had had too much trouble

over the Suez space to wish to go back with a renewed physical

presence in Egypt. I believe the hope was that a united front by

Britain, America and France would compel a settlement acceptable to

Britain, as in Iran, a settlement on the Thames untestable to Egypt would

lead to the removal of Nasser's Government and the replacement of a

more pro-Western Government. There was also a general presumption that

Nasser would undertake some further action, such as blocking the canal,

which may well provide a justification for source but he was

far too shrewd to do that. Yet it moderately during this period.

Whatever the Cabinet minutes say, the British were unwilling to act

alone. From the start they were anxious to secure American support.

American support was essential because, though Britain and France

intervened in Suez, that led to Soviet action. The two countries

would then need the protection of the Americans. American acquiescence

was essential. Anthony Eden told an American diplomat, we do hope you

will take care of the bat, the bad being Russia. At first sight,

chapters at the United front seemed good -- bear. The president of the

US was Eisenhower, a strong Anglo file, he had known Anthony Eden and

Harold Macmillan the Chancellor, he was particularly good at

understanding the British sensibilities and popular in

Britain, he worked with Churchill as well. His particular skill essential

on D-Day was handling coalition politics between different

countries. For him, the unity the Allied armies was more important

than any national interest, even national interest of America. He

would immediately sent back on the next boat home any officer, however

senior, who disparaged Britain. One such officer complains to Eisenhower

that he was being sent back to America for calling the British

officer a son of a bitch. And Eisenhower were replied, you called

him a British son of a bitch, that is unforgivable. Britain was to

complain during the Suez crisis that and Erica had not understood the

British point of view. I think it is also true that Britain didn't

understand the American point of view. There was a tendency in the

post-war years Elliot, perhaps it is still there, for the British to

think of the American Government as a checkout a charitable institution

whose purpose was to provide the money to sustain British interest in

the world without asking too many questions about what Britain did

with that influence. President Eisenhower himself complained to a

colleague in 1953. He said, at times I get weary of the European habit of

taking our money, presenting any slight hint as to what they should

do, and then criticising us as bitterly as they may desire. The

Americans felt they were being patronised by the British. They were

worried, understandably, that Britain may present them with a fait

accompli in Suez, that they would invade and the Americans would offer

support. Indeed, to the Suez invasion, the American Secretary of

State, John Foster Dulles, told the president, they deny they are

thinking maybe that they will confront us with a de facto

situation in which they may acknowledge they have been rash but

would say the US could not sit by and let them go under economically.

Eisenhower made clear from the very beginning that he thought there was

no justification for the use of force. He shared the critics view

that Nasser was a menace to best interest and that policy had to be

worked out a deal with him but he did not believe that the

nationalisation of the canal company was the right issue on which to act.

He drew a strong distinction, which I think the British perhaps did not

graph, between military action and covert operations. Again, you may

say that is a sign of American hypocrisy but we will come to

British hypocrisy later on. Eisenhower made his view absolutely

clear, not much in public statements, though there were public

statements, but letters to Eden and these have now been published. The

letters are very courteous, he was writing to a friend and ally, but

there was no room for misunderstanding that he was

particularly insistent on a peaceful sedition expect solution because he

was facing a presidential election on November the 6th on watching this

containing as the candidate who would maintain the peace between the

jury difficult days of the Cold War. The last thing he needed was a war

in the Middle East which may undermine that claim. In his

memoirs, Eisenhower said, my conviction was that the Western

world had got into a lot of difficulties by selecting the wrong

issues about which to be tough. To choose a situation in which Nasser

had legal and sovereign rights and in which world opinion was on his

side was not, in my opinion, a good one on which to make a stand. Still,

even if the Americans didn't support what the British were doing, there

may be acquiescence, that the Americans would turn a blind eye,

perhaps opposing in public but in practice doing nothing to stop the

operation. Part of the reason for this was that Eisenhower did not say

what he would do if the British did use force, partly because he

believed they would not do it without American support and he did

not want to appeared to threaten and ally. The British were encouraged in

their view that they may win American support for force by an

American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. That was paradoxical

since, while British leaders like Eisenhower, almost everyone in the

faces of the 1950s, like Ike, they put British leaders did not like

Joss deliver John Foster Dulles very much and they were irked by his

self-righteous approach to foreign policy. He prided himself on his

flair and intuition on foreign policy, didn't like listening to

sermons and moralising for the Secretary of State of America.

Aren't Macmillan rather unkindly said of him, his speech was slow but

it easily kept pace with his thoughts. Eisenhower like Dulles but

few others did and Eden certainly didn't. He called on in his memoir

is the preacher in a world of politics. It is fair to say that

Dulles and many other Americans did not like Eden, with his languid,

aristocratic manner and his habit of calling colleagues, my dear, which

rather grated on American opinion. Dulles's long-winded speeches left

many wondering what precisely they meant. That was in parts deliver it

cost Dulles was deliberately using delaying tactics. He thought the

danger of war would disappear once negotiations started. And that he

should keep the pot boiling so that tempers cooled down a bit. To get

the British and French fully committed to negotiations, he had to

give the impression that if these failed, the Americans may consider

supporting force. In other words, he wanted to string the British and

French along. Despite all this, despite the fact that he was

disliked by British leaders, Dulles, oddly enough, was more sympathetic

to the British position than Eisenhower was. He couldn't disguise

that sympathy in Britain. So there were a crucial misunderstandings on

both sides of the Atlantic. In particular, boar crucial mistakes

were made in handling that American relationship. -- boar. The first

mistake was the British assumed that Dulles, it was more sympathetic than

Eisenhower, was in charge of American foreign policy, because he

tended to be more outspoken. That wishful thinking. The British

assumed that Dulles was under the power of the British Foreign

Secretary, at that time a powerful politician with the constituency of

his own, as Eden had had under Churchill, and Iris Bevan -- Aneurin

Bevan and the Labour Government. But the American Secretary of State

position is not like that. He is a delegate of the president. He is

more like the permanent secretary of the Foreign Office that he British

Foreign Secretary. He cannot act independently of the president.

Dulles was aware of that because of what had happened in 1947. An

American Secretary of State had tried to do just that, James Burns,

he rather underestimated Truman and was attempting to carry out a

foreign policy of his own but was dismissed by President Truman for

insubordination. That was even Bill Burns had a political base of his

own, had not been a senator. In 1982, President Reagan was to

dismiss Alexander Haig as the Secretary of State because they find

personally incompatible. Dulles, by contrast with Burns, had no

electoral constituency or political base. He had been defeated in a

attempt to secure a Senate seat in 1850 and was dependent on the

president. His only claim to his post was his technical ability and

his confidence, the confidence secretary to the Mac president

placed in him. Whatever his views were, he would not challenge the

president. Eisenhower had made the decisions, his ideas were what

happened to Lima counted. The British did not understand that. The

second mistake was made by Dulles. He were dead British opinion and saw

the Labour Party together with some conservatives are members of the

public were against the use of force. He assumed a force would not

be used. He was comparing parliamentary opposition in Britain

to senatorial opposition in America. He no doubt remembered the havoc

that Senator McCarthy had caused in American foreign policy through his

wild charges concerning commonest in the State Department and he noticed

the great power wielded by Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic leader in

the south. The British system is different. The British by Minister,

unlike the president, controls the legislature. There could be no

American comparison to the House of Commons and opposition and hostility

to Government policy is standard, expected. Cameron said he would not

act in Syria without opposition support but he does not have to take

such a line. A determined by Minister need not bother with the

opposition in parliament and as far as Parliament founded in 1956, it

was in the form of the right wing of the Conservative Party, pressing

Eden to adopt more forcible measures. Clamouring for the use of

force. Contrary to what Dulles of thought, Parliamentary pressure was

spurring Eden on, not holding him back. The third mistake was made by

the British. They saw Eisenhower at a fairly passive figure who would go

along with British policy. There was a idea at the time in Britain but

also amongst Americans that he was a lazy president who spent more time

on the golf course and in his office. One of Eisenhower's letters,

Eden said, the only thing that is true to Eisenhower is his signature

and that is illegible. Churchill told his doctor, the president is no

more than a Ben Toolis's doll. With an election due in November, the

British hope he would not go against Israel, the allies there, because of

the importance of the Jewish vote in New York on a swing state then.

Eisenhower was then in control of American foreign policy and Dulles

was his agent. To be seen as a concert use about the battle and

retain popularity, Eisenhower was a strong president with strong views

on foreign policy. Far from being a golf playing amateur, you had from

his wartime experiences in his post what leadership in Nato, an

unrivalled experience of foreign policy.