717. The Suez Crisis: Anarchy in the Middle East (Part 1)

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Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal

2:49Citizens, we shall not let imperialists or exploiters dominate us. We shall not let history repeat itself. The Suez Canal Company was a state within a state, relying on imperialism and its stooges. The canal was built for the sake and the benefit of Egypt, but it was a source of exploitation and the draining of wealth. Today, citizens, our rights have been restored to their owners.

3:23Today, we achieve true sovereignty, true dignity and true pride. Today, when we regain our rights, I say in name of people of Egypt, that we shall defend these rights and we shall hold fast. We shall sacrifice our lives and our blood in defending them. And when we build the edifice of our dignity, freedom and pride, we will eradicate domination, humiliation and submission.

3:55The canal constituted an edifice of humiliation. But today, citizens, the Suez Canal Company has been nationalized. Today, citizens, our wealth has been restored to us. So, that was Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, and he was speaking to an estimated 250,000 people in Alexandria, a port on the north coast of Egypt on the 26th of July, 1956.

4:29And listeners may have been wondering, did Nasser speak with a Yorkshire accent? Well, in one sense, no, but in another sense, perhaps, because he was the son of a humble post office clerk. And as I've said, he's a native of Alexandria, which lies in the north of Egypt. Kind of quite upwardly mobile, but always proud of his roots. And so, in a sense, Dominic, would you not say, in British terms, perhaps, he's like a kind of Yorkshire grammar school boy made good. Is he Harold Wilson?

5:00A slight hint of Harold Wilson, perhaps, don't you think? Wow. I like that. Yeah. So, he's a man of the people, isn't he? He's from northern Egypt, and he's very internationalizing things. So, I think that, you know, there are kind of echoes there. And this is a seismic speech. It was carried live, not just across Egypt, but across North Africa and the whole of the Middle East by the Cairo radio station, the voice of the Arabs. And to say that it has massive political consequences, well, that would be an understatement, wouldn't

5:32it? It would be an understatement. I wondered if you were trying to do Andy Burnham there for a second. And this was the sort of nationalization was the theme. That had given you your way into NASA's character. No, no, no, no. My thoughts are kind of more, what would the vibe be in the 1950s? Fair. Yeah. Very good. So, yes, you're right. This is actually a massively important speech. It's the speech that kicks off the Suez Crisis of 1956. So, for people who don't know, this was the attempt by Britain and France in collusion with Israel to invade Egypt, to recapture the Suez Canal from NASA, to overthrow NASA and to

6:10restore their kind of imperial dominance of the Middle East. And a lot of listeners will know, as you will know, Tom, that thanks to the American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it ended in total disaster and humiliation. And it's always seen as this sort of landmark in the decline of the British Empire and the decline of British power more generally. So, you know, we're a patriotic podcast, aren't we? Are you going to find this a difficult recording, do you think? Well, I'm looking forward to our next series, which is going to be on the Crimean War, where,

6:44again, Britain and France head east. And although there are certain disasters in the course of that, ultimately, we win that. So that's something to look forward to. Anyway, Suez is a brilliant window into post-war Britain, into the politics of the Middle East, into the Cold War, and, of course, the decline of the European empires. But it's also part of this bigger drama. There are some years in the 20th century where everything seems to be happening at once, and 1956 is one of them. So at the very moment, I mean, literally at the very moment, when Red Army tanks are fighting

7:18their way into the Hungarian capital, Budapest, to crush the Hungarian Revolution, Britain and France are preparing their attack on Egypt. And these two dramas happen side by side. So there's a great book on this by my friend Simon Hall, about 1956, which basically does it kind of month by month. And it gives you a real sense of the sort of narrative momentum that in the newspapers at the end of October, beginning of November, these two stories, Suez and Hungary, I mean, they're on the same front pages. It's extraordinary.

7:48They're both about imperial bullies, right? Trying to, you know, crush upstart rebellions. So what we're going to do is this week we'll do Suez, next week we'll do Hungary, and a lot of club members will say, well, is there something for us here? And the good news is there is, because there is a special bonus series uniting the two stories, and it's about the sporting ramifications of these great events of the 1950s. And we're recording this series with the brilliant football writer, Jonathan Wilson, and the two

8:18great citadels of sport and indeed culture in the mid-1950s. So Budapest and Wolverhampton. So that's something for everyone to look forward to. Good grief.

Anthony Eden's background

8:30Can't believe it.

Anthony Eden's background

8:31Let's start with Suez, Tom. And let's start with the protagonist of our story, and he's the British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden. Are you an Anthony Eden fan? I'm a massive Anthony Eden fan. Shall I tell you why? Go on. Is it to do with Wiltshire and the Salisbury area? It is. The Chalk Valley, actually. He lived in the beautiful Wiltshire village of Alva Diston, and we shared a doctor. So he was very ill in his last days, and his doctor was Dr. Brown. who lived just up the road from where we lived. And I was a sickly child.

9:01So Dr. Brown was always coming round. He was always coming round. And he was a lovely man. And he was the only person in the village who had a swimming pool. It was ice cold, but we would go in occasionally. So the same doctor who inspected your tonsils had previously been grappling with Anthony Eden's. Yes, exactly so. Wow. What a brush with greatness. So in a sense, you know, this is my brush with the history of these convulsive events. Well, that's poignant. And maybe you'll be able to offer some interesting apesu as the story continues.

9:32I mean, I never met him, but I felt that I knew him. Yeah, you didn't need to, did you? I mean, at that point. Not really. Dr. Brown told me everything.

9:43And a big shout out to Dr. Brown. He was a wonderful man. Great to get him on the show. Anyway, Eden is the paradigmatic example of how you go from hero to zero. He starts as, you know, he's Churchill's lieutenant in the Second World War. And he ends up basically being the 20th century's Liz Truss. All the sort of surveys of British academics and whatnot rank him bottom of modern British prime ministers. I mean, Liz Truss was always hopeless, right? Yes. Whereas Anthony Eden was seen as the great star of, I mean, kind of heroic, suave, dashing, opposed to Hitler, all of that.

10:16This is exactly the thing. You're totally right. So Eden is a great character. He's a brilliant character. And when people moan about modern politicians being boring, I mean, Anthony Eden is not boring at all. He's genuinely a really interesting guy. So he was born in County Durham to a landed family in 1897. His father, Sir William Eden, was a local magistrate. And he was, everyone said Sir William Eden, was an incredibly egotistical man. And he was sort of had these violent rages, like incredibly unstable.

10:49I mean, please assure me that his mother was very stable. His mother, Sybil Gray, Sir the Gray family, you know, another aristocratic, big aristocratic northern family. I think related to your friend, Sir Edward Gray, your gray hero. Yeah, from Faladon. So she was a massive, she was profligate. She was flighty. She was incredibly promiscuous. So flighty and given to rages, did Eden inherit this? He did. So his sort of deputy, Rab Butler, in the 1950s described Eden as half mad baronet, half beautiful woman, which actually does capture his character quite well.

11:21So it would astound people to know that Eden went to Eton. And then he volunteered. Not really with a feather. He volunteered for the army. He served as second lieutenant on the Somme when he was 19. And he was incredibly brave. So his sergeant said afterwards, everybody liked him. He was popularly known as the boy because he was only 19. And this sergeant was injured in no man's land. And Eden went and single-handedly rescued him. And Eden won a military cross for this. And he hated talking about it afterwards.

11:51He didn't even mention his military cross, you know, in sort of his CV because he thought it was vulgar and he thought it was demagogic to mention it. I really respect that. Yeah, completely. So he went back to England. You will definitely respect this, I would imagine. He went to Christchurch, Oxford, and he studied unusual, very unusually, Oriental languages, in which he got a first. So he learned Arabic and Persian. He became an absolute devotee of Persian literature. That was what he did for work. For fun, he read Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal, Zola in the original French.

12:26And he collected this fantastic library of French and Persian, particularly Persian literature and poetry. And he also loved Shakespeare, didn't he? He was always quoting Shakespeare. Massive Shakespeare buff. So he always, he used to say he never left the house. He had a different Shakespeare play in his pocket. So at any given moment, he would whip it out and read some Shakespeare. So it's a massive theatre buff. He collects art. He's just this unbelievably urbane and cultured man. And also the best-dressed man in Britain.

12:56Incredibly suave. He's famous for this. Anyway, in 1923, when he was 26, he became the Tory MP for Warwick and Leamington. And his two favourite politicians were great friends of the rest of his history and bode very well for his future career. They were Herbert Henry Asquith, masterful war leader in the First World War, and everybody's favourite prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. Who was, of course, prime minister at the time. But Baldwin is subsequently condemned for having appeased Hitler, whereas Eden makes his name, doesn't he, as someone who sides with Churchill in this debate and is against appeasement.

13:33Eventually. So Eden is kind of making his way up the ladder in the 1930s in particular. So because he's so handsome and he's so elegant and articulate, he's a sort of future England captain. And by 1931, he's a junior foreign office minister. So appeasement is kind of his thing for the first part of the sort of 30s. By 1935, at the age of just 38, he's foreign secretary. But you're right, in 1938, he makes his reputation, not just in Britain, actually, but internationally, by walking out of Neville Chamberlain's government because he says,

14:07you're appeasing Mussolini. Basically, we're giving Mussolini too much, we're giving him too many chances, enough. And so he first becomes an international star by opposing a military dictator. Exactly. A moment that lodges in his, you know, in his kind of consciousness. His mighty brain. His mighty brain is a huge part of his self-image. And why wouldn't it be? I mean, fair enough. So he's elegant, he's fashionable, but he's also a man of principle. And this brings him into alliance with Churchill. When Churchill becomes prime minister in 1940, Eden becomes foreign secretary again and leader of the House of Commons.

14:42He's a political star. He's incredibly famous worldwide. He's clearly going to be the next Tory prime minister when Churchill retires. Churchill loses in 1945 and comes back in 1951. Eden becomes deputy prime minister and foreign secretary again. And he's basically waiting now for Churchill to pack it in. Churchill keeps having strokes and has become a sort of shadow of his former self, but refuses to leave. Four years go by, Eden is chafing. He's chafing. He's chafing.

15:13Butter on the nipples, I gather. Oh, my God. I mean, where's Dr. Brown when you need him? So April 1955, Churchill retires and Eden is prime minister. Now, there are very few prime ministers in British history who have taken over with their star so much in the ascendant. And so that is the difference with Liz Truss. That's a definite difference with Liz Truss. So when Eden becomes prime minister, there are warm tributes, not just from the Tory benches, but from the Labour benches as well. People say, you know, what a tremendous fellow he is.

15:43We don't necessarily agree with him, but obviously he's the man for the hour. His public approval rating is 73%, which, you know, politicians would give anything for something like that today. I mean, everyone says of him, you know, he's suave, he speaks foreign languages, he's met everybody now, he's met Stalin, he's met, you know, every world leader. Including Eisenhower, because he'd worked with Eisenhower through the Second World War. Exactly. The Yorkshire Post. I mean, we've had a bit of Yorkshire on the show, let's have some more. We're so lucky that there exists to succeed Sir Winston, a leader who's a world statesman in his own right.

16:15And a brilliant fact, my favourite Anthony Eden fact, there was a French-English dictionary published in 1955, and it advised French speakers that the way to translate the phrase, il est très distingué, it's very distinguished, was, he's a regular Anthony Eden. That's a tremendous, was that in your book? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I must have got it from somewhere, I didn't make it up. That's a great detail. Do you think that reflects French admiration for him? Because he'd been de Gaulle's great supporter throughout the war years, he'd kind of consistently backed him.

16:50But also, he's the kind of man who's always taking the boat train to Paris, dressed in absolutely terrific suits. Milord. Yeah, very baggy trousers, but a massively brilliant suit, and a lot of tweed, I imagine, and he just looks great and he's got a lovely moustache, so that's all good. He calls an immediate general election, he boosts the Tory majority by 20 seats, he's got then, I think, a record 49.7% of the vote, so basically, what could possibly go wrong? Well, there are actually a few shadows already, a few clues to Eden's downfall.

17:23So first of all, he's actually had quite a tragic life. So one of his brothers was killed at Ypres, another of his brothers was killed at the Battle of Jutland. His first marriage was a disaster, so he and his wife were both unhappy and they had loads of affairs. They had three sons, one of them died after a few weeks. Another, his eldest son Simon, was killed in a plane crash in Burma during the war in 1945. Sweden got divorced, very unusual to have a divorcee as prime minister. In fact, I think he may be the first divorcee to be prime minister. He married Churchill's niece Clarissa, who was 23 years his junior, but they had a very successful marriage.

17:58Despite all the elegance and the tremendous suits, he's actually quite a sort of, he's quite a shy, lonely man, a tense man. You know, he appears debonair and insouciant, but actually he's eaten up by anxiety. He's not a good mixer. He doesn't hang out with other MPs. He's a workaholic. He has these massive tantrums, inherited clearly from his father, and sort of meltdowns. And people would always say of him, everyone who worked with him said, the thing that drove them mad about Eden was Eden would, he was addicted to the telephone.

18:30So he would ring them up at all hours. He would start at six o'clock in the morning and he'd be ringing people up. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. This is very gold-hanging presenter behavior, I have to say. I'm thinking of some gold-hanging presenters in particular. Well, I mean, I have often been described as half mad baronet, half beautiful woman. Have you? All the time. Anyway, your health is, you're robust, but his health is very precarious. Well, thank God he's got a good doctor on hand. Yeah, well, exactly.

19:01We've finally sorted him out. So before the war, he'd been plagued by all kinds of things like gallstones, migraines, whatever. And in April 1953, he went under the knife for a routine gallbladder operation. And this operation went hideously wrong. Basically, he started losing loads of blood. I think amazingly, right, part of the reason it went wrong was that Churchill insisted on instructing the surgeon personally, using the acumen that he'd brought to the operation at Gallipoli.

19:32Churchill put loads of pressure on the surgeon who was shaking because he was under such pressure from Churchill. The surgeon slipped. He accidentally cut Eden's bile duct. Eden started losing loads of blood and then he just saved his life. He needed a second operation to fix the damage from the first operation. This second operation also went unbelievably wrong. He lost loads more blood and he came close to death. And finally, he was given a third operation in Boston. And they said to him, you know, it's about 50-50 if you make it after this operation, but you need it.

20:02This is your last chance. And it took eight hours and he did make it, but he was never the same man again. So, this very suave, very dapper, sensitive and very sickly man is taking office in 1955 and he's taking office at a really tricky time to be a British Prime Minister.

The decline of the British Empire

20:21It's 10 years after the Second World War and the British Empire is coming under intolerable pressure. So, in some ways, it's already started to break up. So, India, of course, has gone. Pakistan has gone. It was then called Ceylon. Sri Lanka has gone. And the problems are piling up. So, to put it very, I mean, I'm trying to do the decline of the British Empire in 30 seconds. Here we go. So, for various reasons, from the impact of the Second World War to the fact that they have tried to modernize their colonies economically because they're desperate for money, all of this has provoked this upsurge of anti-colonial protest, of nationalism, everywhere from the Gold Coast in West Africa to Malaya in Asia.

20:59So, on every front, the British colonial authorities are sort of fighting fires. On top of that, the international climate is not sympathetic to European empires. So, the two big superpowers, the two big winners of the 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union, are both overtly unsympathetic to other people's empires, even though, of course, they're both informal empires themselves. The Soviet Union and China are promoting these communist and nationalist insurgencies, obviously, because they want the European empires to break up so they can profit.

21:33The United States thinks that European imperialism is a bad look. They want the British and French to disengage in an orderly way so that they can basically replace these formal empires with informal American hegemony. And on top of all that, Britain just can't afford it. So, Britain can't afford to fight these police actions and whatnot. Britain's been bankrupted by two world wars. Its defense budget is putting a massive strain on the national economy. Germany's sterling is kind of flooding out of the country because we're spending so much money abroad.

22:05So, that puts pressure on the balance of payments and, therefore, on the value of the pound. So, you know, all of this is very stressful for any British government. And there's basically not really much point in fighting it, that the ship has sailed. And it's a reminder that the British Empire was always basically a drag on the British economy. Yeah, that it's a massive drag. And once it all starts to kick off, you're not going to be able to fight all these fires at once. In fact, you're not really going to be able to fight any of them. What's the point? And also, people at home don't really care. So, just get rid. Now, the pace of change is much faster than the British would like.

22:36But by the time Eden takes over, spring 55, the direction of travel is very clear. So, there was a colonial office report at the beginning of the year. This process cannot now be halted or reversed. And it is only to a limited extent that its pace can be controlled. So, whenever people say in that sort of blithe, airy way they do, oh, these people in the 50s with their massive moustaches were like dyed-in-the-wool imperialists. They didn't realize the writing was on the wall. That's just rubbish. They absolutely, they're not idiots. They know more about it than we do. They absolutely know the writing is on the wall.

23:09Now, all of this brings us to one place in particular, which is Egypt. Egypt was never a formal colony. But obviously, because of its location, it's so important strategically to British power in the Mediterranean. And to India, right? I mean, that's the key thing for most of the British Empire's existence. The reason it matters for India is, of course, because of the Suez Canal. So, if people think of the map, the Suez Canal, 120 miles long, the waterway cut through the desert. It goes from Port Said on the Mediterranean coast all the way south to Suez, which is basically the gateway to the Red Sea.

23:43And what this means, you start from the top of the canal, you go down to the bottom. It means that you can basically go straight through to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. You don't have to go all the way around Africa. And that basically cuts 5,000 miles off the journey from Europe to India.

History of the Suez Canal

23:58And the backstory of the canal, the canal is actually French. So, the canal was designed by a Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, in 1858. And it was opened 11 years later. And it was owned and run by the Suez Canal Company, which was half French, half Egyptian, basically a concession. But the Egyptians got into a terrible economic mess, financial mess, in the 1870s. And Benjamin Disraeli saw the opportunity to buy it up.

24:28So, he got Queen Victoria to borrow £4 million from Rothschilds. And she bought, effectively, for the British taxpayer, a 44% stake in the Suez Canal Company. So, Britain is the largest single shareholder in the Suez Canal Company. The rest of the shareholders tend to be French investors. And after that point, protecting the canal becomes one of Britain's great strategic priorities. So, in 1882, there were riots in Alexandria.

24:58And Britain used the opportunity to send troops into Egypt. And from then on, Egypt was a colony in all but name. So, you've got thousands of British soldiers guarding the canal. Even after, in the 1920s, Egypt becomes independent. Under Tom Kingfoward I. Now, how do you know all about him? You've been inspecting his relics or something. No. I was having cocktails in the British Embassy in Cairo, as one does, a couple of weeks ago. And they had a gallery of photographs illustrating Anglo-Egyptian history.

25:33So, King Fawad was there. King Farouk. Yeah. The ultimately very obese playboy. Yeah. Who gets kicked out, doesn't he? Goes off to the fleshpots of Monte Carlo. No. He's basically like that bloke in Naples when Nelson was there. Yeah. He's like King Ferdinand or whatever his name was. No, I think he's fatter, isn't he? He's very, very fat and very, very fond of the ladies and a card game. Anyway, they've got great photographs. They've got Howard Carter. They've got Churchill looking at a baby so that it's very hard to tell them apart.

26:06They've got, who is it? It's Lord Allenby with his pet stork in the gardens of the embassy. And they have a photograph of Anthony Eden with Colonel Nasser. And I'm sure we will be coming to that meeting in due course. But it's all there. It's wonderful. Yeah. Well, this is a great lesson, by the way, to aspiring podcasters. Because what this is telling you is that even when Tom was having drinks at the British Embassy in Cairo, you were still effectively working. Yeah, of course. You were doing research, which is great. I'm never off duty, Dominic. No. Good. Very good.

26:37So let's get into the early 50s. Egypt is still seen as vitally important to Britain's national interests. So a foreign office paper in 1951, envisaging what would happen if there were a third world war, Egypt would be the essential central point from which to defend the Middle East. As it had been in the second, right? I mean, that's the whole thing. El Alamein and stuff. Exactly. And of course, oil is so important now. So oil from the Middle East provides 70% of Europe's energy, and of that oil, two-thirds of it passes through the Suez Canal to Europe.

27:11So this will be familiar to listeners, won't it? The idea of throttle points on the global oil trade. What kind of fool would kick off a military adventure over a crucial strait that controls oil supplies? Well, we'll find out. So the canal is still being operated by the Suez Canal Company, and it is being protected by British troops. And these troops are based on what's called the Canal Zone. The Canal Zone stretches for 120 miles along the canal. It's this kind of wasteland of airfields and ports and barracks and warehouses and ammunition

27:44depots and all this kind of thing. It's the biggest military base in the world, and it's guarded by about 40,000 British troops. But Dominic, just to ask, it's not like Gibraltar or those air bases in Cyprus. It's not British sovereign territory. It's owned by the company. And so the British are basically, I mean, what, are they employed by the company? Or, I mean, what's there? There's basically a concession that they can establish bases there. The Egyptian government have agreed to it. But the Egyptian government could technically kick them out, as we'll discover.

28:15In fact, the Egyptians hate the Canal Zone. They loathe it. They see it as a standing affront, a massive insult to their national pride. They always complain the British behave very badly, that they are bullying, that they're condescending, they're racists, their troops get drunk and interfere with local women, all of this kind of thing. And in October 1951, King Farouk's prime minister, who's a sort of moderate nationalist, says, enough is enough. Get out. You've got to go. Winston Churchill, who was prime minister at the time, responded to this with precisely the

28:46tact and sensitivity that one would expect. Do you want to give us a little taste of your turtle? Tell them if we have any more of their cheek. We will set the Jews on them and drive them into the gutter from which they should never have emerged. So that's Churchill's reply. He says that to Eden, doesn't he? I don't know whether Eden relayed the message quite as expressed. Anyway, the Egyptians cut off water and food supplies to the Canal Zone. They started to launch kind of guerrilla attacks on the Canal Zone to try to get the British

29:18to leave. The British fought back. In January 1952, British troops end up killing 50 Egyptian policemen who have been kind of acting as kind of informal guerrillas. This kicks off huge riots in Cairo. People burn down the banks and hotels, the cinemas, the gentlemen's clubs and whatnot, the department stores, and they kill 26 people, these riots, half of whom are British. So, you know, big story in Britain.

29:50And this kicks off months of tension and instability in Egypt itself. And all of this culminates in a military coup against King Farouk in July 1952.

The rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser

30:01And this is led by a group of military officers who call themselves the Free Officers. And chief among them is a young man called Gamal Abdel Nasser. So Nasser, as you said, he was born in Alexandria in 1918. And his father did indeed run a post office. So he's not from the very bottom of society, but he's kind of lower middle class. And Nasser was sent away to school. He became involved in nationalist student politics. He actually is a massive reader. And he loved Churchill's book, My Early Life.

30:32So all the stuff about Churchill escaping from the Burrs and all of that. Churchill Harrow. What a strange thing to read in Alexandria in the 1920s and 30s. Anyway, Nasser thought this was brilliant. He joined the military academy. He was a rising star at the military academy. And he becomes this sort of key figure in the Free Officers movement. And the Free Officers, they sit around. They're obviously not drinking alcohol. They're drinking coffee and smoking endless Egyptian cigarettes. And they're talking, you know, they're quite idealistic.

31:02They're saying, you know, how can we reconcile socialism and Islam? How can we kick out the British? How can we make Egypt great again? All this stuff. And Nasser, the funny thing is, you know, I have a soft spot for Anthony Eden with his nice mustache and his dress sense. And Nasser is kind of the same. Nasser is very tall. He's very handsome. He's got a tremendous mustache. He's got a massive grin. You know, the kind of grin lights up the screen. He's very charismatic. He loves the limelight. For two years, because he's only a colonel, he operates behind the scenes.

31:36There's a guy called General Neguib. But by 1954, he feels confident enough to push this general aside and take power himself as the boss of Egypt. And there are some parallels, I think, with another 1950s sort of strongman, Juan Perón. You know, the sort of nationalist colonel who rises to the top. And no one is quite sure where he stands politically. You know, he's a bit of this and a bit of that. But he's a modernizer like Perón. So he's committed to public works and to welfare and stuff.

32:08I mean, to be fair, so with the pharaohs. So it's not that modern. Well, I mean, Nasser would enjoy the comparison with the pharaohs because he's a very committed Egyptian nationalist. And what he's trying to do is he's trying to reconcile lots of different things. So he's a socialist. He's very pragmatic. He's an Egyptian nationalist, but he's also a pan-Arabist. So he believes in Arab unity. He is a devout Muslim, but he's absolutely not an Islamist. He really cracks down on the Muslim brotherhood. And this is a very effective formula in the 1950s. It makes him hugely popular across the Middle East and North Africa.

32:40He is the great champion, Nasser, of Arab identity and Arab pride. One Egyptian writer said, he made us feel that there existed in the whole Arab world only one intelligence, one power, one personality. And that, of course, is Nasser. And a big part of this formula is standing up to the British after years of being second fiddle. So right from the start, kicking the British out of the canal zone is a huge priority for Nasser. He said, you know, we can't feel free and sovereign until they go. I mean, fair enough. Yeah, I mean, you can't really argue.

33:11You can't really argue with that because, I mean, the truth of the matter, I mean, just as a massive spoiler, the Egyptians take over the canal and they run it perfectly well. So the idea that the British are essential to the running of the canal is just not correct. Now, the good news for Nasser is the British are actually getting sick of this themselves. Defending the canal is costing Britain about 50 million pounds a year. And I did some calculations at measuringworth.com. And that, I reckon, is about eight billion pounds today. And the thing is, the Egyptians are never going to stop attacking them and trying to

33:42get them to go. And also, people are starting to say, well, if there is a war, it'll be a nuclear war. Like, why do you need a base in Egypt? Like, the days of, you know, trudging across the desert are gone. So in October 1954, they make a deal. The British say, we'll take all our troops home in the next 20 months. So by June 1956, we'll be gone, and it'll be yours again. The canal zone we're talking about, not the canal itself. We're talking about the base. With this deal, in London, people say to themselves, well, maybe we can now get back on a better

34:14footing with Egypt. Maybe we can get Nasser on side, do a deal with him. Maybe he's a man we can do business with. And so in February 1955, Anthony Eden, who's only weeks away from becoming prime minister, goes off to Cairo to see Nasser at where else? The British Embassy, where you were doing that important research. So that's where the photo was. And do you know, something else that I learned in my intensive research in the British Embassy in Cairo was that, I think, maybe a week before, the Nasser had forcibly purchased the bottom

34:52stretch of the British Embassy Garden, which ran down to the Nile, because he wanted to build a corniche along it. He did. He did build a corniche. Yeah. Why do people go on about Suez Karnal and not about this? This is absolutely disgraceful. I think this is the real flashpoint. Yeah. Unbelievable. Well, Eden turns up, so you've got two men, two of the most elegant mustachioed men in all the world in the 1950s, and both of whom speak Arabic, both of whom speak Arabic. So Eden arrives, and he's on his most charming form.

35:22He greets Nasser in Arabic. They sit down together on the sofa, and they chat about the Quran. And Eden, of course, read the Quran at Oxford in Arabic, and they exchange their favorite Arabic proverbs. He who steals the canal shall never come to a good fate. A man in possession of a mustache is very, whatever. Anyway, Eden says to Nasser, listen, I'd like to interest you in our latest wheeze. And this is a thing called the Baghdad Pact. The Baghdad Pact is a kind of NATO for the Middle East.

35:56So it'll be Britain, and it will be Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan. People can perhaps already see why this didn't become a tremendously successful, lasting alliance. They will be together in a military alliance to contain the Soviet Union. And Nasser says, I don't like the sound of this. This sounds very much like you're trying to bring back the British Empire in a disguised form. But actually, the meeting isn't that bad. Nasser was quite impressed by Eden. He's got a little bit of the kind of cultural cringe.

36:27He says to his aide, Mohammed Haikal, afterwards, what elegance. It was made to look as if we were beggars and they were princes. But they part on fairly decent terms. And Nasser actually says to Eden, you know, I'd actually quite like to come to Britain. Never been to Britain. Like to come on a state visit, maybe in the autumn. But this visit never happens because after this, things start to go wrong. So first of all, four days after their meeting, Britain signs this Baghdad pact. And Nasser doesn't like this at all.

36:57He denounces it and he gets the voice of the Arab's radio station, which is broadcast across the Middle East, to denounce it. The British are very upset by this. And so they back away from a deal to sell Nasser some arms. Nasser has been desperate for weapons to build up Egypt's army on their borders with Israel, to whom, of course, they'd lost a war at the end of the 1940s. And the British say, no, we're not going to sell you these arms, actually, because you won't join the Baghdad pact. So at this point, Nasser sends some feelers to Moscow and the Kremlin are only too happy

37:31to organize some arms sales. So in September 1955, Nasser announces to his great glee that he's signed an arms deal with Czechoslovakia. They're going to send him loads of tanks and planes and rocket launchers and all this. And in the West, this is perceived as a very worrying development in the Cold War. And actually, Eden thinks to himself, is Nasser a communist? And he writes to President Eisenhower, I suspect Nasser's relations with the Soviet Union are a good deal closer than he admits. So actually, he's in a complete muddle about whether Nasser is a fascist or a communist.

38:04He's just a bad man. He's an evil dictator. He's probably a bit of both. Now, for Eden, the final straw comes the following spring. And I'm sorry to say, the Arabs behave very poorly to a product of our great British boarding schools. So one of Britain's closest allies in the Middle East is Jordan. So we're very close to Jordan because we kind of installed the Hashemite dynasty on the throne of Jordan. Our army is called the Arab Legion, and it's commanded by Sir John Baggett Glob, who was a product of Cheltenham College. And he was called Glob Pasha.

38:34So everyone knows Glob Pasha, you know, he runs the Jordanian army. He's basically the sort of boss of Jordan behind the scenes. Jordan has a new king in King Hussein, who's only 20. And King Hussein is coming under pressure from Arab nationalists himself. And he decides, I don't want people to think of me as a British puppet. So on the 1st of March, 1956, he sacks Glob Pasha and all the senior British officers in his army. And in London, this is a tremendous shock. And everybody says, God, this is dreadful.

39:06This is the end of our influence in the Middle East. This must be NASA's doing. It's actually not NASA's doing at all, but they kind of, he makes a scapegoat for it. And Eden, by this point, he's taking all this really personally. So for him, NASA has become the personification of what clearly is this inevitable process, which is Britain's retreat from its overseas empire. And Eden, for obvious reasons, which we've already discussed, he sees this through the lens of his own experiences.

39:36So he is a really good example of somebody who's a prisoner of his past. He sees everything through the lens of the 1930s, appeasement, Mussolini, Hitler, Spain, Abyssinia, all of this. So as early as March, 56, he's telling President Eisenhower, our policy of appeasement will bring us nothing in Egypt. We must do our utmost to contain Egyptian policy. So basically, what's got stuck in Eden's head is the idea that NASA is the new Mussolini and he must be contained and resisted and not appeased.

40:10So there's that. And then I think there's another element to all this, which is that Eden is also running into trouble domestically. So things haven't gone brilliantly since he became prime minister. Prices are rising too high. The pound is under pressure. He's got tense relations with his Tory ministers. So in particular, these two guys, Rab Butler and Harold Macmillan, who we'll talk about a bit later, they've both got ambitions of their own. There's a sort of sense, I think, that Eden is a bit past his best, that he's one of these people who waits for ages to become prime minister.

40:42And then when he gets the job, he's not quite as good as everybody thought he would be. A bit shop-soiled. A bit shop-soiled. So Harold Macmillan, who's a great man for a witty aphorism, said, Well, the trouble with Antony was that he was trained to win the Derby in 1938, but unfortunately he wasn't let out of the starting stalls until 1955. Fabulous. Because he's not clubbable. He doesn't hang out with the backbenchers. He's not good at shaking hands in the House of Commons. I think a lot of people think that he's basically too elegant and cultured.

41:13He's a bit too smooth. I actually think there's a sort of, this is a bit like what, I don't know, people on the right of the Tory party used to think about David Cameron. You know, it's all a bit too effortless and a little bit too smooth and shiny. Effortless superiority, which always goes down well with state agents in Essex. Right. So The Telegraph ran an editorial about Eden in 1956, which ended up sort of creating a phrase. They said that Eden had a gesture that what he would do is when he was making a speech,

41:44he would punch his fist into his other palm, the emphasis. But he never quite followed through. So you never heard the blow. You never heard the smack. They want a smack. They want the firm smack of government. Readers of The Telegraph love getting a smack. They do. The Telegraph wanted a smack and they weren't getting one. So Eden is very sensitive and he finds all this enraging and upsetting. And he's even more enraged that he's being frustrated by this jumped up Egyptian colonel who's, you know, Eden probably thinks that NASA's Arabic is not as good as his.

42:16And on the 12th of March, a famous incident for people who read about the Suez Crisis, he gets a memo from a junior foreign office minister, a protégé of his called Anthony Nutting. Nutting? Nutting, yeah. Unbelievable. Nutting says, I feel that we can, we should, we can isolate, we can isolate Egypt by building bridges with other Middle Eastern countries. And Nutting that evening is having dinner at the Savoy. Of course. When he's summoned to the phone, telephone call for you, sir, the prime minister. And Eden is on the phone and Eden shouts at him down the phone. He says, what's all this nonsense about isolating NASA or neutralizing him as you call it?

42:49I want him destroyed. Can't you understand? And Nutting tries to calm him down and says, look, you know, I don't think we should be destroying NASA. I think we should, you know, we should try to find an alternative. The only result of removing NASA would be anarchy in Egypt. And Eden just shouts at him down the phone. I don't give a damn if there's anarchy and chaos in Egypt. And then he slams down the phone. So as Nutting said, from that point onwards, Eden completely lost his touch. Driven by the impulses of pride and prestige and nagged by mounting sickness, he began

43:23to behave like an enraged elephant charging senselessly at invisible and imaginary enemies in the international jungle. Now, NASA is not behaving like an element. He's behaving like a panther. So on the 13th of June, the last British troops, as per the deal, leave Port Said. They leave the canal zone. And NASA declares a three-day public holiday. He says, this is brilliant. Again, Egypt is no longer under the domination of the imperialists. We're entering a bright new era. All of this. Ten days later, they hold presidential elections in Egypt.

43:55NASA, I have to say, does incredibly well. I mean, he really does do well. He wins 99% of the vote. Are there any other candidates? There are no other candidates. So the question, which surely will be passing everybody, what happened to the other 1%? I think that's just spoiled ballots or something. Who knows? People have let themselves down. So NASA has promised the Egyptian people this great new age of national renewal, public works, modernization, welfare, education, all this.

44:27And what's going to lie behind all this is this great new project, the Aswan High Dam. Oh, terrible for archaeology. They moved. Like, what did they move? They moved the statue of Ramesses II. Yeah. Abu Simbel. Abu Simbel, exactly. But it just looked brilliant by the Nile. It doesn't look as good now. But I'm aware that, you know, obviously the electrification of Egypt is possibly more important. Yeah. So this was, at the time, the most ambitious engineering project in the world. They were going to build this three-mile-wide dam, 365 feet high.

44:59It's 17 times taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Nice fact for you. It will create this reservoir, Lake Nasser, which will store all this water. They will be able to regulate the Nile. They will reclaim millions of acres for irrigation and for farming. They will produce colossal quantities of electricity. You know, this dam is going to transform Egypt economically. But it's incredibly expensive. And Nasser is going to pay for it with a loan that he's got. He's got loans basically from the USA, from Britain, and from the World Bank for a total of $270 million.

45:32Anyway, a month after his election, Nasser gets a terrible shock. The American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, on the 19th of July, calls in the Egyptian ambassador and says, The deal is off. American public opinion has turned against you. You know, maybe you are a communist. And actually, this is the most insulting thing. And it's actually wrong. We don't think the Egyptian people are capable of this. But, you know, you're just Egyptians. You're never going to be able to build this dam. I mean, an American saying that to the people who built the pyramids. Yeah, exactly. Mad.

46:04The very next day, Britain pulls the plug as well. And then the World Bank. And it is obvious to Nasser this is a concerted effort to cut him down to size. Now, he was on a visit to another splendid post-war dictatorial character. He's been on a trip to see Tito in Yugoslavia. So they've been, like, swimming, eating kebabs and stuff. And Nasser's flying back. He's had a brilliant time with Tito. And he hears the news that he's not going to get this money. And he said, What stung me was not the loss of the money.

46:35It was the insulting attitude with which the refusal was declared. And he thinks, Right. I'm going to get my own back on the British in particular. And I have the perfect way to do it. I will strike a blow that will bring the British Empire to its knees. And will confirm my reputation as the supreme champion of the Arab world. Wow. What is his move going to be? Only one way to find out. Join us after the break.

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Reaction to the nationalization

49:16Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Rest is History where it is the 26th of July, 1956. And it's the fourth anniversary of the coup that toppled King Farouk. Very large, very fond of the ladies. Had a massive coin collection, interestingly. And this is the coup that obviously brought the free officers to power in Egypt and specifically Colonel Nasser. And Nasser is due to give a speech in Alexandria. And there are all these kind of rumours that he's planning something special. And so this is the speech

49:46with which we opened this episode, right? And we said 250,000 people perhaps have gathered in to Liberation Square in Alexandria to hear him. And, Dominic, what does he reveal? Well, he speaks for three hours, so he reveals quite a lot. And as you said at the beginning, his voice is carried on the voice of the Arabs across North Africa and the Middle East. And a lot of it is devoted to sort of a little Vladimir Putin-style history lesson. He says, you know, we're the heroic... I'm tempted to keep up with the New Yorkshire accent. Yeah, good for it. We're the heroic people of Egypt,

50:18striving and fighting to cast off foreign imperialism. Never again will we feel the British boot on our throat. They thought they could undermine us over the Zaswan Dam business, but they were wrong. And then he sort of lambasts the British, and then he turns to the Suez Canal. And he says, I remember how I used to read about the year 1854. That was the year that Ferdinand de Lesseps arrived in Egypt to dig his canal. It was dug with our skulls, bones and blood.

50:49But then he goes on to say, we didn't make any money from it. We made only $3 million a year, but the Suez Canal Company gets $100 million a year. Well, this is actually untrue. The Suez Canal Company gets about $35 million a year. Anyway. Yeah, but still, I mean, point made. Yeah, point made. And Nasser keeps coming back to Ferdinand de Lesseps. And he mentions his name 14 more times, which is quite a lot. And then suddenly he says, but good news, the days of foreign exploitation are over.

51:19Earlier today, I signed a decree to nationalize Suez Canal Company. And even as we speak, my troops are taking it over. And they are. And the signal for the operation were the words Ferdinand de Lesseps. That's why he said it 40. He was worried that people would miss it. So he just kept mentioning Ferdinand de Lesseps. Anyway, at the first mention, Egyptian troops started pouring into the offices and installations of the Suez Canal, which of course now do not have British troops guarding them. They've just got officials and stuff doing all the work.

51:51And by the time Nasser gets to the end of this enormous speech, the operation is done. They're in. They've taken it over. The Suez Canal has been nationalized and is in Egyptian hands. And in Egypt, people go absolutely berserk. They're so excited. There are these huge crowds on the streets and they're chanting, Long live Nasser, Lord and Savior of the Arabs. And the next morning, Nasser gets the train from Alexandria to Cairo. The train stops at every single station. There are huge crowds.

52:21When he gets to Cairo, there are supposedly 100,000 people on the streets who are throwing flowers at him and stuff. There are crowds in Amman, in Jordan. There are crowds in East Jerusalem, in Libya, in Tunisia, in Morocco, all of these places. Everyone says this is one of the great victories in Arab history against the colonial oppressors. A Moroccan newspaper said, Today, colonialism is drawing its last breath. Tomorrow, it will be dead. So in the Arab world,

52:53Nasser is the absolute star of the hour. The reaction couldn't be better. The colonialists have not taken it quite as well. So news of Nasser's speech reached London about 10 o'clock on the night of the 26th of July. And Eden was at number 10 and he was hosting a dinner for King Faisal of Iraq and Faisal's prime minister, Nouri al-Sayed, who was very pro-British. And they're having this dinner. A quarter past 10,

53:24Eden gets a little note from the duty secretary, which says, you know, can you come to the phone or whatever? There's news. And Eden comes back and he sits down with Nouri al-Sayed, who hates Nasser. And Nouri says, Well, I think what you should do is, the Egyptians will charge you to use the canal. That's how it makes money. You have to pay a sort of tariff, a toll. You should refuse to pay. And then NASA will probably close the canal to punish you. And you can use that as a pretext for war. And Nouri says,

53:54Hit him hard and hit him soon. Otherwise, it will be too late. Important advice, which Eden does not heed. Actually, preparing this episode, I was thinking so much about the Austrians in 1914, you know, who dither and are so slow. You know, act straight away or don't act at all. Well, as it turns out, that Eden doesn't either. Now, because of the state dinner for the Iraqis, almost all the big political names in Britain are in Downing Street, including the Labour leader, Hugh Gateskill. And Eden takes Gateskill aside.

54:25And Gateskill says, This is what's happened, you know. I'm sharing this with you because it's national security. And Gateskill appears to agree with Nouri.