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00:23The 6th of November 1956.
00:28Elite British paratroopers have landed in Port Said.
00:34They're fighting to take back control of the Suez Canal from Egypt.
00:38The Suez Canal is the most important strategic asset in the world.
00:43Nobody knows it yet, but Britain is at a turning point.
00:47This is a big moment which is going to help define not just Britain, but the future shape
00:53of the world.
00:54In the next 24 hours, Britain's military intervention in Egypt will plunge the world
01:00into a crisis.
01:01They were absolutely terrified that what was happening here was World War III.
01:06And see Prime Minister Antony Eden humiliated on the world stage.
01:12This is without doubt the worst 24 hours of Antony Eden's life.
01:17Eden wanted to start a war.
01:19He just didn't want anyone to know about it.
01:22Tolled through the eyes of historians...
01:24Really quite tricky.
01:25...and those at the heart of government...
01:27Gotcha.
01:27...this is the inside story of the final day of the Suez Crisis.
01:31Team, take one.
01:32Oh.
01:33Exactly as it happened.
01:35Hour by hour.
01:36Minute by minute.
01:3824 hours that changes Britain forever.
01:41The old order was gone.
01:44The age of empires was finished.
01:48It's a story that still resonates today, redefining our global status.
01:52It's a seminal turning point.
01:55Nothing will ever be the same again.
01:58There's no going back from this.
01:59And casting a shadow over current political power struggles.
02:04The Suez Crisis is existential for Britain because it reveals that Britain is no longer
02:11a power able to exercise its influence around the world.
02:34It's just after midnight, the beginning of 24 hours that will redefine Britain's future.
02:41British troops have been fighting in Egypt for less than a day when a message arrives at
02:4610 Downing Street.
02:49British Prime Minister Antony Eden is hauled out of bed to read a message from Moscow.
02:58The letter was secretly drafted by Nikita Khrushchev, the most powerful man in the Soviet Union.
03:07Under the name of Nikolai Bulganan, the premier.
03:11Except it's not just a message, it's a threat.
03:19It's said that the Anglo-French aggression in Egypt was a restoration of colonial slavery and an act against the
03:26Arab people.
03:31Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons against Britain.
03:38If you're in government and somebody's squaring up to you like this, it's terrifying.
03:43You're being bullied.
03:44But you're being bullied by somebody with a nuclear weapon.
03:47And the risk that you're taking when you're standing up to them is beyond imagining.
03:54So why are British troops fighting in Egypt?
04:05Antony Eden says it's to stop a war between Israel and Egypt that threatens the Suez Canal.
04:13The Suez Canal was effectively a marvel of engineering.
04:19It's a 120 mile piece of infrastructure that connects the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and allows for shipping routes
04:30between Europe and Asia to flow freely.
04:35Rather than having to go around the Cape of Africa, they could just go straight through the Suez Canal and
04:41effectively half the time that it took to actually make that journey.
04:46It was built in 1869 by Ferdinand de Lesseps.
04:51It was absolutely essential to the British economy.
04:54And when oil became the global mainstay of power, the canal suddenly became even more important because that was the
05:02vein through which this black blood could flow.
05:08There was a kind of confusion around who owned the canal.
05:12The physical structure of the canal had been Egyptian since the beginning.
05:17And Britain owned 44% of the shares in the Suez Canal Company, which ran the canal.
05:24Britain did think that they owned the canal.
05:27I mean, to some extent, I think Britain thought that they owned Egypt.
05:29The canal is so important to the British economy that 80,000 troops are stationed in the canal zone to
05:37protect it.
05:39British troops were certainly not popular in Egypt.
05:41They were a symbol of colonial authority and power and an occupying force.
05:50Britain hadn't wanted to colonize Egypt, to formally turn it into a colony of the Empire or Dominion,
05:56because it just wanted really to secure the Suez Canal.
06:03There was a strong element of Orientalism in the way that the British viewed the Egyptians.
06:08They saw them as inferior, unruly, in need of civilization.
06:13It was an utter offense to any self-regarding Egyptian.
06:18What is this country doing? Controlling an asset and creaming the profits off that asset,
06:26which is everything to do with Egypt.
06:40But in 1952, Egypt is changing.
06:44From Cairo come these first authentic pictures of the bloodless coup by which the army took over control of Egypt.
06:50It was the end of the king's attempt to maintain power.
06:52In July 1952, a group of Egyptian army officers, the so-called free officers, mounted a military coup in which
07:03King Farouk was unceremoniously ditched.
07:07Meantime, from Alexandria, the royal yacht Marusa sails with the ex-king for Capri.
07:12What a change will mean to the rest of the world, we have yet to see.
07:19They got rid of the king, who is widely regarded as a British puppet, and declared Egypt a republic.
07:30The architect of the revolution is 36-year-old Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser.
07:40He'd come from an unpretentious, ordinary background, and risen up really by talent.
07:45And he was a very impressive man, who's often described as having film-style looks.
07:51He was very young to be a leader of a country, but he was an incredibly charismatic leader.
07:58He was regarded as a son of the land.
08:03And his leadership very much reflected that.
08:06It was, I'm an Egyptian like you, I'm ready to die for Egypt like you.
08:18One of Nasser's main priorities was to get British troops out of Egypt.
08:31He said, we don't dislike the British, we just don't like the presence of British troops in our country.
08:37If you remove those troops, a great friendship will exist between us.
08:43Eden, unlike a lot of others in the Tory party, recognizes somebody that is a new type of Egyptian leader.
08:51Somebody that wants to modernize and see his nation progress in the world.
08:56And Eden's instinct is to work with him.
09:00At long last, agreement has been reached.
09:02The main clause of the agreement states that all our troops will have left Egypt within 20 months.
09:07The pact has put Colonel Nasser in an even more powerful position.
09:11The final agreement to withdraw British troops from the Canal Zone was signed in 1954 and said that all British
09:18troops will be withdrawn by the 18th of June 1956.
09:29It was a diplomatic triumph and further evidence that Nasser really was the hero of Egyptians who was going to
09:38expel foreign rule from Egypt once and for all.
09:45After the British troops withdraw, the British presence in Egypt is effectively just civilian and so the Suez Canal is
09:52going to be run by a combination of British and Egyptian engineers, officials, but there's no longer any military presence.
09:59The Suez Canal is still vitally important to Britain's economy, so they put a clause into the troop withdrawal agreement.
10:09This clause said that in the event of an attack by an outside power on Egypt, Britain could re-militarize
10:19the Suez Canal Zone. It could bring its troops back in.
10:30The clause made perfect sense at the time, but two years later, on the 6th of November 1956, it has
10:38paved the way for a global crisis and a countdown to nuclear war.
10:49France, a co-owner of the Suez Canal Company and Britain's ally in the fight to stop the war between
10:55Egypt and Israel, has also received threats from the Soviets.
11:09At 3am in Paris, the tension is mounting.
11:13The French Prime Minister Guy Mollet summoned the American Ambassador Douglas Dillon,
11:18and he handed him these news sheets from TASS, the Soviet press agency, reiterating this threat of a potential nuclear
11:24attack on Britain and France.
11:29In some ways, it's more terrifying for the French. They don't possess their own nuclear deterrent.
11:33They are completely at the mercy of a potential attack from Russia.
11:39Mollet was really spooked by this.
11:41He was saying, what happens if there's a direct attack from the Soviet Union on France?
11:46Is Eisenhower going to defend us?
11:47And Dillon said, well, of course, the American president will respond to a direct attack on France.
11:52But Mollet was so unsure that he actually wanted him to call Washington and really confirm this.
11:57And Dillon had to say, well, it's the middle of the night in Washington.
11:59Eisenhower's going to be asleep, so I'm not going to do that.
12:06That night from the 5th to the 6th of November, 1956, I don't think anyone in London or Paris got
12:11a whole lot of sleep.
12:12Guy Mollet was at his desk when a phone call came through from Anthony Eden in London.
12:19And Eden said he could only really keep the military operation going for maybe another 24 hours at most.
12:25Despite the threats from the Soviets, Guy Mollet urges Eden to continue their mission to protect the Suez Canal.
12:34Guy Mollet and the French wanted to carry on and get this done.
12:38It was very frustrating for Mollet to hear that Eden was losing his mettle.
12:49Anthony Eden's day has barely begun and already he's facing a brutal choice.
12:54Stop the mission and endanger the Suez Canal or press on and face catastrophe.
13:02This could have meant the beginning of a nuclear war.
13:24British Prime Minister Anthony Eden is five and a half hours into the day that will define his career.
13:30And Britain's future.
13:33Anglo-French paratroopers are fighting to reach the Suez Canal.
13:40But at 5.30am, Eden receives intelligence that the Soviets are posing a far more immediate threat.
13:50The message is a terrifying one, that there's a possibility that Russians could intervene on the battlefield.
13:57There was real concern that the Soviet Union would get directly involved and that could well be in the form
14:04of Soviet boots on the ground somewhere in the Middle East.
14:11The test for Eden, as for anyone standing up to a superpower, is how on earth do you put your
14:18morality, your national interests and then just practical calculations of what's possible together.
14:23And you have to remember that the number one thing that concerned him was, of course, the Third World War.
14:37Meanwhile, in Egypt, the military operation to secure the Suez Canal is intensifying.
14:45At 10 to 6, British gunships open fire on Port Said.
15:01At 6.15, you have fighter jets strafing the beach, wiping out any remaining defenses.
15:14Then, Royal Marine Commandos stormed the beach in their amphibious vehicles.
15:40At 9.45 in the morning, on the 6th of November, 1956, Eden caused an emergency cabinet meeting.
15:48The atmosphere in the cabinet room must have been incredibly tense.
15:52If your country is threatened with nuclear attack from another country that you know has nuclear warheads, that's going to
15:59cause a level of panic.
16:03Some of them thought that threat was probably a bluff.
16:06But do you want to be the guy who didn't take it seriously if a British city gets wiped out?
16:13When you get extreme threats, such as you see sometimes from Putin, different people respond differently.
16:19I remember being invited by Ukraine before the invasion to their annual celebration of independence.
16:26And the Foreign Office advised me not to go because they thought I might provoke Putin.
16:30But in my understanding, that was not going to provoke Putin.
16:34He'd already invaded in 2014.
16:36So, some people are much more worried about upsetting somebody.
16:40And often the defense joke of the Foreign Office is, in trying to not upset anyone, the Foreign Office usually
16:45upsets everyone.
16:46I don't know.
16:48Eden is carrying an enormous amount on his shoulders.
16:53And the risk of the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons and Third World War means that the entire world could be
16:59destroyed around him.
17:00That's not a very pretty place to be as Prime Minister.
17:05Eden was under an extraordinary amount of pressure here.
17:10He was under pressure from the Soviets, threatening a possible nuclear attack.
17:14And at the same time, Guy Mollet, his ally, was really trying to persuade him not to stop and to
17:19go on.
17:20There was no way to hold out against the combined muscle of all of these forces.
17:25The crisis in Egypt didn't explode out of thin air.
17:29It was seeded two years earlier in Cold War power struggles.
17:48When Nasser becomes Egypt's leader in 1954, his mission is to drag his country into the 20th century.
17:56Egypt was pretty poor.
17:58I mean, he had two thirds of the population living in quite harsh rural conditions.
18:06Nasser thought his country had really fallen behind economically.
18:10And for Egypt to move forward, he knew it needed to modernize and industrialize.
18:17Central to Nasser's plan is building a dam across the Nile called the Aswan Dam.
18:24The Aswan Dam would control the flooding of the Nile.
18:28But perhaps more important was the hydroelectric potential of the Aswan Dam, which could go on to provide electricity to
18:38millions of Egyptians that hadn't previously had access to electricity.
18:43But it was a very, very ambitious project.
18:47It would cost about 1.3 billion US dollars at that time, which was an absolutely enormous sum.
18:52And although the Americans and British weren't especially keen on this project, what made them interested is that there was
18:59a suggestion that the Soviets might fund it.
19:01Now that would extend Soviet influence in the Middle East, potentially threaten the canal, threaten their oil supply, all of
19:07this kind of stuff.
19:08That was intolerable.
19:09So at that point, Britain and the US became more open to the idea of funding a dam.
19:17But before construction could begin, the financing runs into a major setback.
19:24On the 19th of July, Ahmed Hussain, the Egyptian ambassador, went to see John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State.
19:31And this controversial subject of the dam came up.
19:34And Hussain said, don't say you're going to cut off funding to the dam because I have the Soviet offer
19:40to finance it right here.
19:42And Dulles said, well, since you have funding, you don't need ours anymore.
19:46So we're cutting it off right now.
19:51As far as Narsid was concerned, it was a humiliation.
19:55The US in particular, but the UK as well, had strung him along.
19:59And then they turn around at the last minute and say no.
20:02So he really saw it as an attempt to control Egypt and put it in its place.
20:12Narsid wasn't going to give up on his plans to fund the Aswan Dam.
20:16He would just find a different way to fund the project.
20:23The plan Narsid comes up with turns the financial setback into a bold political gesture.
20:31It's an expression of the kind of leader that he was.
20:34He was brave.
20:35And he was a risk-taker.
20:37And he was somebody who really cared about Egypt's future.
20:44But Narsid's actions will have far-reaching and bloody consequences.
20:50Narsid makes a plan to strike at this beacon of imperialism in his country.
20:55The big symbol of British Empire.
20:58And that symbol is the canal.
21:28It's 10.30 a.m.
21:30on the 6th of November, 1956.
21:33As British and French troops advance on the Suez Canal,
21:37Antony Eden and his cabinet discussed the growing threat from the Soviets.
21:42By 1956, the Cold War is still pretty much in the freezer section.
21:48East and West, the Soviet bloc, the US-led Western bloc,
21:51are looking at one another in deeply suspicious, mistrustful terms.
21:56And, of course, the Cold War contains within itself the seeds of a hot war.
22:01Whenever there is a local crisis somewhere in the developing world,
22:05the Cold War has that potentiality to go hot and to go nuclear hot.
22:12Any prime minister, including Antony Eden,
22:15has to have a very confident, optimistic view of their country,
22:18but they also have to be realistic.
22:20You can get a glimpse of this when you see people dealing with Donald Trump.
22:24My goodness.
22:25You want to be idealistic, you want to stand up for the right thing,
22:28but you're also aware that this is a man who has the largest economy in the world,
22:32who has nuclear weapons, and the consequences for your own country
22:35could be completely catastrophic.
22:39The Suez Crisis wasn't born in Downing Street.
22:52It began three months earlier with an act of defiance by Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
23:03On the 26th of July, 1956, Nasser is preparing to give a speech to his people.
23:10It's a speech that will go down as a pivotal moment in Egyptian history.
23:18But all is not as it seems.
23:39Nasser is driven to Alexandria, and he's greeted by huge crowds.
23:58Manchea Square was packed with about a quarter of a million people,
24:03an absolutely enormous crowd who turned out to hear him speak.
24:07And it was also broadcast on Voice of the Arabs, his radio station.
24:24Nasser begins his speech really highlighting the humiliation
24:28that Egypt has historically endured as a result of the British-Egyptian relationship.
24:41As he's giving his speech, Egyptian troops are stationed outside the Suez Canal Company.
24:55When Nasser is speaking to the Egyptian people,
24:57he's telling them to raise their heads and be proud that they are Egyptian.
25:04And then he started talking about Ferdinand de Lesseps,
25:10who had built the Suez Canal in the 19th century.
25:14And then he started repeating it, de Lesseps, de Lesseps, de Lesseps.
25:20And people weren't quite sure what was going on, but the reason is that was a signal.
25:24Ferdinand de Lesseps.
25:40The Lesseps is a code word.
25:43And the Egyptian troops, that's the moment to enter and take control.
25:49Egyptian officers stormed the officers of the Suez Canal Company and drove the British out, took it for Egypt.
25:58When Nasser learns that his troops have successfully taken control of the Suez Canal Company, he tells the crowd in
26:05Manchaya Square.
26:06He was able to announce, tonight I can tell you that this canal, this Egyptian canal will be run from
26:13now on by us, by Egyptians.
26:21This was such an important nationalistic moment that there was a huge celebration, a massive party broke out.
26:31Fireworks were set off, people were celebrating, singing, chanting, crying.
26:39Egyptian people wholeheartedly identified with their president.
26:50There's always been this promise that Egypt could control its own destiny, that one day, one day the canal might
26:56be Egyptian, but it's happened.
26:57It's happened in their lifetimes, it's happened in this moment, and it's Nasser that's made it happen.
27:05From that moment, he becomes an international symbol of resistance to colonial rule.
27:20Meanwhile, in 10 Downing Street that evening, Anthony Eden was actually holding a rather fancy dinner party for King Faisal
27:27II of Iraq, with his old friend Nourie S Saeed, the Prime Minister of Iraq, there as well.
27:33I've had dinner in that room in that room in that room.
27:35It's a lovely, intimate room, in which all the most famous people in the world have dined, and Eden is
27:42serving this dinner, formal dinner, and he suddenly hears that Nasser, who he knows, and who he thought he'd developed
27:50a relationship with, has physically attacked with troops the Suez Canal and seized it.
27:56It's an incredible moment of humiliation, but he hears it with his friend Nourie S Saeed, the Iraqi Prime Minister.
28:03And Nourie S Saeed is an Arab, and Nourie S Saeed is advising Eden that the only thing that Nasser
28:09understands is strength and he needs to act.
28:11And of course, I relate to that too, because one of the ways we often went wrong in Iraq and
28:15Afghanistan is when an Iraqi or an Afghan friend told us to do something, we would tend to believe them,
28:22even if subsequently they turned out to be completely wrong.
28:29Eden sees this as complete theft. It's a personal outrage. It's a personal insult.
28:35He's the one who negotiated the 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. He's the one who agreed to pull British forces out.
28:41He's the one who said it was an act of faith in Egypt, and here's Nasser breaking that faith.
28:46The distressing thing for Eden is that Nasser's actions are entirely legal.
28:52Nasser didn't steal the Suez Canal Company. It was Egyptian land.
28:56He compensated the shareholders of the Suez Canal Company exactly as he should.
29:03On the one hand, we will think, OK, what Nasser did was perfectly reasonable.
29:08Everybody's nationalising, he nationalises, he's paid the shareholders.
29:12But it doesn't feel like that at all to Eden.
29:15It's not just a building he's seized, he's seized the jugular throat of Britain.
29:22This is the canal down which everything comes. It's the most important strategic asset in the world.
29:30It would be insane from Eden's point of view to just let a guy who's cosying up to the Soviet
29:35Union seize that asset.
29:37And for Britain, which still sees itself as a significant global power, not to stand up for its businesses, not
29:43to stand up for its strategic interests.
29:44The Suez Canal is a name familiar to everyone.
29:48Eden's attitude to Nasser changes overnight. He is determined to take back the Suez Canal.
29:55But convincing the British people to go to war isn't going to be easy.
29:59This has created a very grave situation.
30:02On the 8th of August, 1956, he broadcasts to the nation.
30:07Our quarrel is not with Egypt. Still less with the Arab world. It is with Colonel Nasser.
30:13When he gained power in Egypt, we felt no hostility towards him.
30:18But he has shown that he's not a man who can be trusted to keep an agreement.
30:24But this, I must make play.
30:27We cannot agree that an act of plunder, which threatens the livelihood of many nations, should be allowed to succeed.
30:40Eden argued that the seizure of the Suez Canal fundamentally threatened British interests and that, essentially, Nasser couldn't be trusted
30:48with operating this really important strategic waterway.
30:53This is imperial arrogance, plain and simple.
30:56Eden genuinely believed that they could manipulate weaker nations and get them to do what they wanted without consequence.
31:03Do you think it's time we took strong action in the Middle East?
31:06I certainly do.
31:07My own personal opinion is that we've done the right thing.
31:10Well, I think it's time we made a show of force.
31:15The British Empire has been created by endlessly intervening in other people's countries very successfully.
31:21Militarily, it is absolutely the case that the Egyptian army is pretty useless.
31:24And if you move quickly enough, you can seize the Suez Canal, get your paratroopers on the ground.
31:29You know what you're doing, because you've just been fighting in the Second World War.
31:33So, he's not paralysed in the way that we would be today by the sense of, is it all going
31:39to go wrong? Can we do it?
31:41He has literally only one risk to worry about, and that's the United States.
31:47And that's the one thing that he assumes when push comes to shove isn't going to go wrong,
31:52because who is America going to choose in the end?
31:54Obviously, they're going to choose their allies, right?
32:01Dwight Eisenhower didn't trust Colonel Nassar, but Dwight Eisenhower didn't hate Colonel Nassar.
32:14Britain viewed America in the 1950s as a bit of a sugar daddy.
32:18America would always be there with bags of cash and would not expect much in return.
32:28America shouldn't tell Britain what to do.
32:32America should just keep on writing checks.
32:36It's possible to go on arguing who was the aggressor.
32:39Anthony Eden wants America to back his war.
32:44But Eisenhower is fighting an election.
32:47And American presidents don't get re-elected,
32:52because they sent American boys overseas to die in foreigners' wars.
33:01So Dwight Eisenhower says, no, we will not support you.
33:08Do not go to war in Egypt.
33:14It is completely flabbergasting for Eden.
33:19This matters to him intensely, emotionally, intellectually.
33:22This is his big project.
33:24This is his big moment, which is going to help define not just Britain's role,
33:30but the future shape of the world.
33:31The UK fought alone at the beginning of the Second World War and then was joined by the US.
33:36And they fought as equal partners.
33:40And Britain came out of the Second World War, permanent member of the Security Council with France,
33:47feeling that they, along with the US and Russia, were a great global power.
33:52They had a special relationship with the US, but it was taken for granted that it was more like the
33:57relationship between Batman and Superman.
34:00They had slightly different powers, but they were sort of equals working together.
34:06Suez suddenly reveals that isn't the deal at all.
34:09It's Batman and Robin.
34:11And from now onwards, suddenly it's revealed that you're not an independent actor.
34:16You're a sidekick.
34:18And you cannot do anything without the demands of the US.
34:27Without Eisenhower's backing, Eden cannot attack Egypt and take back the Suez Canal.
34:42But then, three months later, everything changes.
34:46After weeks of stalemate, the Suez crisis burst dramatically into the news again.
34:50For Israel has invaded Egypt.
34:52Britain and France have declared the canal in danger.
34:57The pretext for Israel invading Egypt was effectively skirmishes
35:02There were two wars that had been taking place on the Egyptian-Israeli border.
35:07And the Israeli invasion was very much regarded as an act of war.
35:13The French Prime Minister Guy Mollet went to London for urgent talks about this with Anthony Eden.
35:19And on the 30th of October, at 4.15pm, Guy Mollet and Anthony Eden issued their ultimatum to Israel and
35:27Egypt.
35:27And what this ultimatum said is that both those countries had to stop fighting.
35:32They had to withdraw 10 miles from the canal.
35:35And they had to accept an Anglo-French force to occupy and secure the canal zone.
35:41And what's more, they had to do this within just 12 hours.
35:45Nasser reacted to the ultimatum exactly as you would expect him to react, which was to absolutely refuse it.
35:52He was not going to be told what to do by Britain and France in his own country.
35:59He will do what it takes to defend Egypt.
36:03Nasser's refusal gives Eden the excuse he needs to send British soldiers back into Egypt to protect the Suez Canal.
36:12But it is all a cynical pretext.
36:15The whole thing was so underhand and deceitful and outrageous.
36:24Nasser himself could barely believe that it could have happened.
36:44At 11am on the 6th of November, Eden had to go to Parliament because it was the state opening of
36:49Parliament.
36:49A fairly major event in the British parliamentary calendar.
36:56So the Queen was there, arriving in the state coach.
36:59And she, of course, and the Lords had to read out the Queen's speech,
37:02which had been written for her by the government of the day.
37:06My government had been gravely concerned of the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Egypt.
37:13They resolved, in conjunction with the French government,
37:16to make a quick and decisive intervention to protect the lives of our nationals
37:22and to safeguard the Suez Canal by separating the combatants and restoring peace.
37:29But what she delivers is a pack of lies.
37:33Her government are openly misleading the British people and Parliament
37:37about the real truth of what's happening at Suez.
37:55Two weeks earlier, on the 22nd of October, at a villa in a quiet suburb of Paris called Sèvres,
38:03a group of politicians met in secret.
38:09It was a private villa owned by a friend of a government minister.
38:13So this is a very discreet location.
38:15And this was worthy of a James Bond sequence.
38:19Among the men gathered in Sèvres are French Premier Guy Mollet
38:23and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
38:29At around 4pm, Eden's representative, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd arrives.
38:37These three countries had assembled their representatives in secret to plan a secret war.
38:45All of them wanted to get rid of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
38:50This is a moment where Eden, but also France and Israel have convinced themselves that this man Nasser is an
38:57existential threat.
38:59We hear that a lot.
38:59Israel calls Iran an existential threat.
39:02Hezbollah is an existential threat.
39:04And the problem in politics is you can never really prove whether somebody is or isn't.
39:09You're guessing about the future.
39:13But, of course, once you create these systems, you can create a very elaborate and convincing story
39:20for why this particular man Nasser is leading a pro-Soviet, anti-Western nationalist movement
39:27that will completely destroy the position of the West.
39:29And Eden thinks Nasser is the most dangerous thing that he's seen since Hitler.
39:35They all had to really work through the details of this plan in Sevre.
39:39And they were all taking a huge risk because this was being planned in secret.
39:44So this was less of a straightforward planning mission and more of a conspiracy.
39:53The Israelis wanted a cast iron pledge that the UK would come in and destroy Egypt's air force.
40:01If they had the pledge, they would invade Egypt.
40:05The British view is they wanted the invasion of Egypt to happen first.
40:10Then they would intervene because the British didn't want to be regarded
40:14when history came to tell the story of Suez as instigators.
40:19They wanted to be seen as responders.
40:23What the French outline is a plan for Israel to attack Egypt,
40:28which would then give a cause for war for Britain and France.
40:32They could point back to that 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty,
40:35to that clause that said that Britain could go back and take control
40:39if the Suez Canal was ever under threat.
40:41The French are very clever.
40:43They pitch it as an idea that's come from the Israelis.
40:46When the French pitch it to the Israelis,
40:48they pitch it to them as an idea that's come from Britain.
40:51Israeli Prime Minister David Bangor records in his diary
40:54how it was a British idea that they invade Egypt.
40:59After two days, the men forge a secret plot,
41:03the pretext for a war to topple Nasser
41:05and return control of the Suez Canal to Britain.
41:10The plan they came up with was so extraordinary and so foolhardy
41:15that actually afterwards lots of people would find it very difficult
41:18to believe it was true.
41:22The plan is Israel will invade Egypt
41:26on the false pretext that Egypt had attacked them first.
41:30Then Britain and France will demand that both sides cease fire
41:33and withdraw ten miles from the Suez Canal.
41:36The conspirators are gambling that Nasser will refuse the ultimatum
41:40while Israeli troops are still inside Egypt's borders.
41:44This would then give Britain and France the excuse they need
41:47to launch an attack from their military bases in Cyprus.
41:50They would invade Egypt, topple Nasser,
41:53and take back control of the Suez Canal,
41:56all under the guise of a peacekeeping mission.
42:01The plan they came up with went under the name of the Protocol of Sevre.
42:04It was a complete piece of deceit from start to finish.
42:08It required Israel to kind of masquerade as this lone aggressor
42:14when in fact it was being backed by Britain and France.
42:20This is dirty international politics at its worst.
42:26And along the way, a lot of innocent people,
42:28and they'll be primarily Egyptians, are going to die.
42:33Eden creates this incredibly complicated secret scheme.
42:38And what that tells you is that this is still a moment in world history
42:42where international law matters and where the UN matters,
42:44and where you feel you have to at least pretend
42:47that you're following proper legal procedures.
42:49It's not like today where Donald Trump says,
42:51I'll have Greenland, and makes literally no legal or moral arguments for doing it.
42:57Eden thinks that he needs to keep at least a fig leaf,
43:00that what he's doing is separating Israel and Egypt,
43:04and that will make it easier with international opinion.
43:08After Selwyn Lloyd had left Sevre,
43:10the two British negotiators could hear a typewriter going.
43:14They didn't really know what was going on.
43:16And then the French came out with this document in French
43:19that they wanted them to sign.
43:21And they said, this is the Protocol of Sevre.
43:23It kind of sets down our whole plan.
43:25And that was quite scary as a moment
43:27because they hadn't been told there would be anything for them to sign,
43:30and it was supposed to be very secret.
43:31So they were thinking, well, should we sign this?
43:35But also they hadn't been told not to sign anything.
43:39So in the end, they signed it,
43:42but they said this was pending approval from the British government.
43:59When the British negotiators arrived back in London
44:02with their signed copy of the Protocol of Sevre to show it to Eden,
44:06he lost his temper.
44:08Eden tears his hair out.
44:10He cannot believe that this has been committed to paper.
44:16This was supposed to be a secret war,
44:18and they'd signed this document that was like a smoking gun
44:22saying exactly what was going on.
44:24Eden wanted to start a war.
44:26He just didn't want anyone to know about it.
44:30He immediately ordered that the document be destroyed,
44:33and he sent the negotiators straight back on a plane to France
44:36to tell the French and Israelis that they had to destroy their copy too.
44:40Well, they weren't going to do that.
44:43This is Eden's worst nightmare.
44:47He's a man who throughout his life has been principled, diplomatic,
44:51and the one time that he decides to go against all of that
44:56because of his own personal hatred,
44:58there's evidence, there's written evidence,
45:00that might one day come to light.
45:15At around 3 p.m. on the 6th of November,
45:18as British and French troops push closer to the Suez Canal,
45:22Anthony Eden telephones French Prime Minister Guy Mollet.
45:26Eden was under tremendous pressure.
45:28He was under pressure from the Soviets
45:30who were threatening a possible nuclear attack,
45:34and Mollet kind of pleaded with him and just said,
45:36could we do another two to three days, just occupy more of the canal,
45:39just try and take it, try and finish this operation?
45:42And Eden said, no, I can't. I don't think we can hold on.
45:45And Mollet said, try to.
45:51As the sun sets on the 6th of November,
45:54the Served Protocol is no longer just a secret pact.
45:57It's a war unfolding in real time.
46:00And Anthony Eden knows it could all come crashing down.
46:04The truth is circling,
46:06and Britain's darkest hours are still ahead.
46:12Later that night,
46:14the French Defence Department receives intelligence
46:16from a reliable source
46:17that six Russian submarines have been spotted approaching Egypt.
46:22Is World War III about to break out?
46:47The truth is Bibliography,
46:49And we're Всем Innen Bakehouse.
46:49Now let's see what's happening with us,
46:50including Elizabeth Quitcaya.
46:50It's a war quotas.
46:51Exactly, the injustice.
46:52People actually have a little bit to maintain,
46:53and we have all he did on which way to save people.
46:53It was trying to weaken the road.
46:56The decision of the collision between promises
46:56or the kind of charge of what their unlock was 18事
46:56with theраш bater Leslielatego has been identified.
46:58The national edition of Stain 大 çaエ
46:58seviock milcaux
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