Fall of Eden and the Suez cabal

Tim Fischer reveals how a future Australian MP sparked the political crisis 50 years ago that brought down a British prime minister. Fischer is a former deputy prime minister, trade minister and leader of the National Party, and an author.

The Weekend Australian, October 28-29, 2006

It was a dramatic and powerful point of order on the floor of Britain’s House of Commons. Arguably it was as powerful a point of order as ever put down in the Westminster system, certainly one of the most contentious. The date: November 1, 1956. The issue: the Suez crisis.

As often happens, the focus of an unfolding crisis was on the floor of the Commons with the lord privy seal, Rab Butler, and many others in intense debate into the evening of November 1. The debate on Egypt and Israel was reaching its climax, a vote of confidence in the Conservative government, when the member for The Wrekin from 19555 to 1966, Bill Yates, raised what may aptly be described as a wrecking point of order.

Now a retired beekeeper at Tallangatta in Victoria, Yates had served in the Foreign Office in the Middle East, working in military intelligence in the Suez Canal Zone, and had lived briefly in Lebanon.

The Commons Hansard of November 1, column 1716, reveals all:

Mr W. Yates: “On a point of order, I am a young member of the house and I desire to have your advice, Mr Speaker. I have been to France and I have come to the conclusion that Her Majesty’s government has been involved in international conspiracy.”

Mr Speaker: That is not a point of order.”

Honourable members: “Let him speak.”

There was uproar on the floor of the house; in a sense all hell broke loose and Butler sought to calm the waters by closing the debate on the crisis. The government survived the division but, as the young first-term backbencher, Yates, walked out into the lobby, he came upon the prime minister, Anthony Eden, who was leaning on a mantelpiece.

Yates said to the prime minister: “I have been to France and I have come to the conclusion that you are involved in international conspiracy.” An exhausted-looking Eden replied in perfect French, Perfide Albion.”  An exact translation is “treacherous Britain”. The question is, was it an admission by Eden or an attempt to make light of a tense situation as the joint armed forces of the three ostensibly conspirator nations raced towards the Suez Canal.

The point of order revealed the tip of an iceberg: the unholy secret alliance of Britain, France and Israel double-crossing the US and Commonwealth countries such as Canada. It led to Australia’s shortest sea-route to Europe, through the Suez Canal, being cut off for several critical months. Technically, it was not a point of order at all, as the speaker pointed out in vain, but the damage was already done.

The speaker was Shakes Morrison, a Conservative, who wne t on to become Lord Dunrossil, governor-general of Australia.

The Suez point of order on conspiracy created the beginning of the end of the Conservative prime minister, Eden, who within 100 days had resigned from 10 Downing St.

Australia’s foreign minister of the day, Richard Casey, was visiting Westminster and wrote in his diary: “There was turmoil throughout the parliament and ministers and members on both sides were in consternation. The scenes in the House of Commons have been amazing and beyond anything I have ever witnessed. I am told only the most intense whipping has kept the Conservative Party intact.”

Curious enough, Casey completed an Aussie troika as Casey and Morrison were both to become Australian governors-general, while Yates subsequently became a member of the Australian House of Representatives. Yates went on to vote with the Conservative government on this particular occasion but days later abstained on related motions.

After the point of order and the close debate, as Yates left the Commons chamber late that night Gilbert Longdon, a senior Conservative, leaned across and said just four words to the new backbencher. “You are absolutely right.”

What Yates had done was to let the cat out of the bag with regard to a secret agreement between Britain, France and Israel known as the Sevres agreement or protocol. It had been signed at the Villa Bonnier near Paris, and the only copy remaining is held by the Israeli Government as Eden ordered the British copy to be destroyed and the French copy, held by foreign secretary Christian Pineau, went missing.

As Yates has laid out in an excellent thesis, The Post-War Middle East and the Kennedy-Nasser Letters, for the history department at the University of Melbourne, the plan was a simple one under the Sevres  conspiracy: “Israel, having crossed the Egyptian frontiers, was to advance to the Suez Canal, and at that moment Britain and France would issue an ultimatum declaring that the safety of the canal was at stake and that all military force, both Israel and Egyptian, should withdraw 10 miles [16km] away from the canal. Britain and France would take over the canal once again to ensure the safety of international shipping. Speed was essential and attached to the ultimatum to both Israel and Egypt there was going to be a condition that they must reply within 12 hours.”

History records that after president Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt announced the Suez Canal takeover on July 16, 1956, there had been a huge reaction from Britain and France but a more level-headed reaction from the US. The latter was led by a furious US secretary of state John Foster Dulles and president Dwight Eisenhower, who was up for re-election.

In the aftermath of the unilateral action to take over the ownership and operation of the canal from the Suez Canal Company, headquartered in Paris, the US moved through the UN to devise the Suez Canal Users Association concept and enter into discussions with Egypt to find a peaceful way forward. The US Republican administration was opposed to the sue of force and deeply concerned at the prospect that the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War, might enter the conflict.

For his part Eden, aided and abetted by the French, carried perhaps two conflicting chips on his shoulders. He was, after all, the Conservative successor to the great warrior Winston Churchill and wanted to show he was up to the task. For three long periods he had been foreign secretary of foreign minister of Britain most notably as a key member of the war cabinet during World War II. Conversely, Eden had lost two brothers and one son in world wars, a big personal loss, and so initially he was keen on a diplomatic solution, but soon he drifted towards sneaky military intervention to recapture the canal: fading empires did those sorts of things, with the successful Falklands venture to come.

To create distraction and some cover for the real objective, Eden invited the Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, to go to Cairo in August and September 1956 to try to negotiate and open discussions with Nasser, but these talks quickly collapsed as Nasser felt under threat and saw what was coming.

Perhaps unfairly, the mission was dubbed a misadventure.

History records that on October 28, 1956, Israeli armed forces invaded Egypt, travelling quickly to within 16km of the Suez Canal. Britain and France immediately issued a 12-hour ultimatum, which an angry Dulles described as “a crude and brutal as anything I have ever seen:, adding that it was utterly unacceptable.

As the debate unfolded on the floor of the House of Commons, RAF planes started attacking Egyptian airfields and military installations and the conflict had begun, namely the move by Britain, France and Israel to recapture the canal from Egypt. Eisenhower did not allow the presidential election to distract him and the US administration took the matter to the UN.

Although Eden and his cabinet had voted for military action and had hoped to seize the Suez Canal quickly and present a fait accompli, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire.

The combined British and French invasion fleet, after a short burst of action lasting six days and making limited progress, was ordered by a crushed Eden to cease hostilities.

Years later British colonel Tubby Butler, who led his parachute unit down the West Bank of the canal, stated that they needed just 24 hours more and the canal would have been recaptured. It is now known that the British cabinet meeting on November 6, which ordered the ceasefire that led to total withdrawal by December 22, 1956, was also told there would be no needed support for British sterling through the International Monetary Fund or directly from the US unless the ceasefire or cave-in was ordered. So powerful forces were pointing a financial pistol at the English pound and the financial stability of Britain, threatening a devastating currency collapse.

At about the same time, the US Sixth Fleet intervened, in part to extract US nationals, but effectively to block or impede the British and French invasion force.

Meanwhile, Egypt had been busy blocking the canal by blowing up the Ismailia railway bridge at Kantara, an unforgivable action, dare I say. They also took the opportunity to blow up a number of oil pipelines and sank some ships in the canal.

It was many months before Egypt reopened the canal.

As part of the equation, Israel was obliged to withdraw its armed forces from Egypt, but the biggest Middle East ramification was the launch of what many, including Yates, describe as the pan-Arab revolution. It continues in many forms to this day.

It has been suggested the secret Sevres protocol not only was a double-cross of the US but directly led the US effectively to side with Egypt against the forces of the Anglo-Franco empires and one of their creations – under the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and later the UN – the independent state of Israel.

For a period after the Suez crisis, the re-elected Eisenhower and the US were much admired in the Arab world, and Nasser was an Arab superhero. Eisenhower was extremely popular among the Arab states and the US was regarded as having taken the correct stand on the Suez Canal in favour of Egypt and the Arab world and against France and Britain.

Sadly, the US did not use this leverage to sort the Palestinian question at that time.

It was a grand opportunity missed, as the US alone was able to insist that Palestine be given recognition as a nation-state, comprising the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. This would have greatly helped peace in the Middle East.

Had Dulles in 1956 (or for that matter Tony Blair in 2006) written the missing letter balancing Balfour, then peace might have more chance in the Middle East.

It would be easy to draft, along the pattern of the short 1917 letter by then British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour that led to Israel’s creation and that read:

 “His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The new letter could read: The cabinet has decided today to recognise Palestine as a nation-state forthwith, as comprising all of the Gaza, East Jerusalem sensibly defined and the available areas of the West Bank: with a commitment to help negotiate further. In so doing nothing should arise injurious to bona fide minority residents or refugees.”

It has been suggested in some quarters that the Yates point of order was subject to a D-notice preventing media publication, and no reference to it is to be found in the media of 50 years ago, lending credence to the possibility the British government ordered suppression of the contents of the point of order and absolute suppression of the Sevres protocol to which the point of order referred.

What happened to Yates in the aftermath? Alas, he was not tog ain ministerial rank and subsequently departed Britain for Australia, where he was elected and served as the Liberal member for the Melbourne seat of Holt in the Australian Parliament from 1975 to 1980. Today he’s as punchy as ever, as tenacious as ever, and quietly proud that his busy, timely working visits to Egypt and France in October 1956 led to the point of order that made history.

As Churchill might have observed, never in the history of Westminster had so much consternation been caused for so many by just one extraordinary point of order, which was not even a true point of order but contributed mightily to the political destruction of one prime minister.

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FT comment: Tim Fischer is also a great friend of the Iranian people who still hold him in fond memory, something his successor, former Trade Minister Mark Vale, did not achieve. By removing Vale from the post Australia has lost direct political contact with the Iranians, thereby making it easier for the Howard government to move against Iran.