As I came to know more about it, I drew four lessons from this sad episode. First, we should not get into a military operation unless we were determined and able to finish it. Second, we should never again find ourselves on the opposite side to the United States in a major international crisis affecting Britain’s interests. Third, we should ensure that our actions were in accord with international law. And finally, he who hesitates is lost.
At the time, I fiercely supported the Suez campaign in argument. I was repelled by what seemed to me the opportunism of the Labour Party in turning against the operation after initially supporting it. Denis and I were among the thousands of readers who cancelled the Observer and pledged never to read it again because of its opposition to Suez. This is not to say that I had no misgivings. Even though in those days I was much less conscious of international legal niceties than I later became, I did think it slightly rum that the evening paper which I dashed across Chancery Lane in a downpour to secure blared out the headline ‘Ultimatum!’ Britain and France were demanding that the Egyptians and Israelis withdraw from the canal and allow an Anglo-French force to separate them and protect the waterway. It was not quite clear to me how the British could issue an ultimatum to the Egyptians to withdraw from their own territory. Still, I swallowed my hesitations and supported Eden.
Politically, the failure of the Suez operation came as a body blow. Although it took many years for the full picture to emerge, it was immediately clear that the Government had been incompetent, and that its incompetence had been exposed in the most humiliating fashion. For a Conservative government — particularly one led by someone whose reputation was founded on the conduct of foreign affairs — the outcome was particularly damaging. There was a mood of dismay bordering on despair among Conservative supporters. Denis’s reaction, as an ex-officer in the Royal Artillery, was sharpened by anger that our troops had been let down when the operation was halted close to completion. As he said to me: ‘You never announce a ceasefire when your troops are out on patrol.’ I would remember this: politicians must never take decisions in war without full consideration of what they mean to our forces on the ground.
We also blamed harshly the conduct of the United States. Some Conservatives never forgave the Americans, and the fact that anti-Americanism lingered on in some generally right-wing circles when I was Prime Minister must be in part attributed to this. I too felt that we had been let down by our traditional ally — though at the time, of course, I did not realize that Eisenhower felt equally let down by the Anglo-French decision to launch military operations on the eve of a Presidential election in which he was running on a peace ticket. But in any case I also felt that the ‘special relationship’ with our transatlantic cousins had foundations too solid to be eroded by even such a crisis as Suez. Some people argued that Suez demonstrated that the Americans were so hostile to Britain’s imperial role, and were now so much a superpower, that they could not be trusted and that closer European integration was the only answer. But, as I have argued, there was an alternative — and quite contrary — conclusion. This was that British foreign policy could not long be pursued without ensuring for it the support of the United States. Indeed, in retrospect I can see that Suez was an unintended catalyst in the peaceful and necessary transfer of power from Britain to America as the ultimate upholder of Western interests and the liberal international economic system.
I was not so preoccupied with Suez as to be unconscious of the wicked ruthlessness of the Soviet Union’s behaviour in crushing the Hungarian revolution in November 1956 — even under bouncy Nikita Khrushchev, who had visited Britain with his amiable wife just a few months earlier. I never imagined that communism even with a human face could somehow generate a human heart. But at the time it seemed extraordinary to me that the Soviet Union should be prepared to undo all the efforts it had made since the death of Stalin to improve its image by such a crude and barbarous affront to decency. Some years later I discussed my reaction with Bob Conquest, who was to provide me with so much wise advice when I became Leader of the Opposition and whose The Great Terror in the late 1960s first fully exposed the scale of Stalin’s murders. He said that the classic error we all made in dealing with the Soviets was in assuming that they would behave as Westerners would in their circumstances. They were shaped by a very different and much more brutal political culture. It was my recollection of all this that led me, after Iraq attacked Iran in September 1980, to ask our Intelligence Services to look back over events like Hungary, which we had not foreseen because we had failed to penetrate the psychology of the aggressor, and draw out any conclusions for future action.
Yet there is little we could have done to prevent the Hungarian tragedy — and no way that NATO would have risked a major war for Hungary, with or without Suez. But many Hungarians thought that they had been encouraged to think otherwise, which added to their bitterness at our betrayal. I remember a Sunday newspaper interview with a Hungarian woman sheltering in a basement. She said: ‘The West will not come and help. Freedom is very selfish.’ I burned at the reproach. Whatever we were or were not in a position to do, it seemed to me that a world divided into spheres of influence which condemned this woman to live under communism was one which had to be changed.
After the fiasco of Suez it was clear that Anthony Eden could not remain as Prime Minister. He fell ill during the crisis and resigned in January 1957. There was much speculation in the circles in which I moved as to who would succeed — in those days, of course, Conservative Leaders ‘emerged’ rather than being elected. My Conservative friends in Chambers were convinced that Rab Butler would never be summoned by the Queen because he was too left wing. By contrast, the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of Suez, Harold Macmillan, was considered to be the right-wing candidate. All of which shows how little we knew of the past and present convictions of both men — particularly the brilliant, elusive figure who was shortly to become Prime Minister.
Harold Macmillan had the strengths and weaknesses of the consummate politician. He cultivated a languorous and almost antediluvian style which was not — and was not intended to be — sufficiently convincing to conceal the shrewdness behind it. He was a man of masks. It was impossible to tell, for instance, that behind the cynical Edwardian façade was one of the most deeply religious souls in politics.
Harold Macmillan’s great and lasting achievement was to repair the relationship with the United States. This was the essential condition for Britain to restore her reputation and standing. Unfortunately, he was unable to repair the damage inflicted by Suez on the morale of the British political class — a veritable ‘Suez syndrome’. They went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing. This was always a grotesque exaggeration. At that time we were a middle-ranking diplomatic power after America and the Soviet Union, a nuclear power, a leading member of NATO, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the centre of a great Commonwealth.
Macmillan’s impact on domestic affairs was mixed. Under his leadership there was the 1957 decontrol of private sector rents — which greatly reduced the scope of the rent control that had existed in one form or another since 1915 — a necessary, though far from popular move. Generally, however, Macmillan’s leadership edged the Party in the direction of state intervention, a trend which would become much more marked after 1959.