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suez 24 hours that broke the british empire s01e02
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00:22Sixth of November 1956, a day that will change Britain forever.
00:2724 hours that will mark the end of the British Empire.
00:32The Suez Crisis was the beginning of the end. There was no going back from this.
00:37Prime Minister Antony Eden has conspired to drag Britain into an illegal war in Egypt.
00:43Underlying this war is a sleazy little deal.
00:48This is dirty international politics at its worst.
00:54Eden has lied to the British people and Britain's closest ally.
00:59People could tell it was lies because they could see what was happening.
01:02He's risked nuclear war with Russia.
01:04The number one thing that concerned people was of course the third world war.
01:09And triggered a global crisis.
01:11The USA and the USSR turned incredibly strongly against Britain and France.
01:17Told through the eyes of historians and those at the heart of government.
01:21What I need is a little white handkerchief.
01:24This is the inside story of the final 24 hours of the Suez Crisis.
01:29Exactly as it happened. Hour by hour. Minute by minute.
01:34Suddenly it's revealed that you're not an independent actor. You're a sidekick.
01:4024 hours that will destroy a prime minister and end Britain's dominance as a superpower.
01:47Militarily and economically Britain was not the great power that it once was.
01:53And damaging its reputation forever.
01:56And suddenly there was only one game in town and that was the United States.
02:00And that you couldn't do anything without them.
02:03You go from being an adult to being a toddler.
02:37It's 5pm on the 6th of November.
02:391956.
02:43Anglo-French troops are on the ground in Egypt.
02:47British Prime Minister Antony Eden claims they're there to separate Egyptian and Israeli troops.
02:53But this is not a peacekeeping mission.
02:57It's a lie.
03:07Two weeks earlier, senior politicians from Britain, France and Israel struck a clandestine deal.
03:18A plan to stage a war to seize back control of the Suez Canal.
03:24And bring down Egypt's defiant leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser.
03:29The plot becomes known as the Protocol of Sevres.
03:34It was a complete piece of deceit from start to finish.
03:38It required Israel to kind of masquerade as this lone aggressor.
03:44And Britain and France to masquerade as peacekeepers when in fact they had put Israel up to this all along.
03:50It was Britain and France thinking they could push around an Arab state the way they had pushed around Arab
03:58states through the entirety of the British and French Empire.
04:09So far, everything is going according to British Prime Minister Antony Eden's plan.
04:14But that is about to change.
04:18Eden is focused on the question of what are the Egyptians going to do.
04:22And from that point of view, it's going pretty well.
04:25Israel, France and Britain have basically got it done.
04:30Very few casualties.
04:32They're going to retake the Suez Canal.
04:36And all that needs to happen is for the rest of the world to take a deep breath.
04:39The UN processes to do their thing and the whole thing will be resolved.
04:43What he isn't looking at is the US.
04:45And that turns out to be a much more powerful enemy than NASA.
04:55It's a big day for Eisenhower. It's the US presidential election.
04:59Ike is actually campaigning as the man that's going to keep the peace for the next four years.
05:06America was sick of war.
05:08World War II was fresh in everybody's mind.
05:11Dwight Eisenhower wants to be Mr. Peace.
05:15He promised people there would be no more war.
05:22Ike can't believe that Eden has ignored his public warnings, his private warnings, and he's gone to war.
05:31The timing couldn't be worse from Eisenhower's point of view.
05:37What America does is not just to say, well, it's your problem, we're not going to have anything to do
05:42with it.
05:42What actually happens is the US sanction Britain.
05:48They basically block off their oil and block off their loans from the International Monetary Fund.
05:55Basically, the United States says, we are going to bankrupt you unless you back up and abandon everything that you've
06:03just taken.
06:03And this is something that Eden totally did not see.
06:10Eisenhower's action instantly impoverishes Britain.
06:16Because the world's currencies are based on the US dollar, Eisenhower is in the position of crushing the British economy
06:26instantly.
06:29What the US does is absolutely unbelievable betrayal from the British point of view.
06:34It's extraordinary, excruciating to see your entire foreign currency reserves dropping,
06:40your debt and deficit getting out of control, being driven into a financial crisis.
06:45And America learns to do this all over the world.
06:48What they're basically doing is saying, we control the international system.
06:52And if you don't do what we say, you're finished.
06:57Chancellor Harold McMillan briefs Eden on the devastating impact of the American sanctions.
07:06Harold McMillan had been a real hawk for this war.
07:09He'd really wanted it to happen.
07:10But he also seemed to be the person that panicked most when the financial side of it started to bite.
07:19He is extremely concerned.
07:21The lifeblood, he says, is hembraging out of the UK economy.
07:28Gold and dollar reserves are tanking.
07:31We have to stop this.
07:36What McMillan had saw yawning before him was the potential for a collapse of sterling,
07:42for a collapse of the British economy.
07:43And that was such a serious prospect that actually he became somebody calling very strongly for a ceasefire.
07:56As Eisenhower and McMillan press Eden to call a ceasefire,
08:02his fellow conspirator, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet, urges him to keep fighting.
08:09Britain and France had somewhat different reasons to come together to plan this military operation.
08:15Guy Mollet was deeply concerned about opposition to French rule in Algeria.
08:21He thought Gamal Abdel Nasser was behind all of this, which wasn't true at all.
08:25Algeria was having its own independence movement.
08:27But he'd convinced himself that Nasser was inspiring it,
08:30that if you remove Nasser, that would be gone.
08:43By 5.30pm, calls were still coming through to Eden's private office at the House of Commons.
08:50The British ambassador to Paris was on the phone,
08:53saying that Guy Mollet was desperate to talk to him,
08:56to try to convince him not to call a ceasefire.
09:00He was convinced that actually if they carried on even for a matter of hours,
09:05they could change the course of this operation.
09:08Guy Mollet is saying to Eden,
09:11Keep going. We are here for you.
09:13Hold your nerve.
09:15Another 36 hours, another 48 hours.
09:17The canal is ours.
09:19Nasser can't survive the knock to his prestige of the canal being recovered in this way.
09:26But Eden refuses to speak to Guy Mollet.
09:31His attitude towards the French Prime Minister has shifted sharply from just a week earlier,
09:37when the two conspirators met and presented a show of unity to the world.
09:50Most vitally concerned in the future of the canal are Britain and France.
09:54Down to Downing Street come French Premier Guy Mollet and Foreign Minister Christian Pino.
10:00On the 30th of October, the day after Israel invaded Egypt,
10:04Guy Mollet arrives in London, supposedly for emergency talks.
10:09But actually, this is just the next stage of their secret plan.
10:14These two governments face one of the most vital decisions since the war.
10:18It was a piece of theatre designed to look like they were responding to current events.
10:25This is a charade. This is just a kind of Anglo-French make-believe moment to persuade the outside world
10:35that they knew nothing about what the Israelis were going to do.
10:39And so they go through this deceptive dance.
10:44It seems really extraordinary now to think that Mollet and Eden could have thought that they would get away with
10:49this,
10:50that they could actually carry out this kind of performance,
10:53and that people wouldn't realise that all of this had been planned and was a conspiracy.
11:02After their meeting, Eden and Mollet put the next stage of the Sevre Protocol into action
11:08and issue their ultimatum to Egypt and Israel.
11:16It was in the House of Commons that the government's decision was announced following Israel's advance into Egypt.
11:22Sir Antony said, Britain and France have called upon Egypt and Israel to stop all warlike action forthwith.
11:30They say, we call upon the warring parties to separate.
11:35They must allow Anglo-French forces, which are conveniently on the doorstep now,
11:39to intervene as well to protect the canal, and we are giving them 12 hours.
11:47The ultimatum that they give to the Israelis and the Egyptians is completely nonsensical.
11:53The French and the British tell the Egyptians and the Israelis they need to pull back from 10 miles on
11:58each side of the canal.
12:00The irony is, the Israelis are nowhere near the canal.
12:06When the British and French issue their ultimatum on the 30th of October,
12:11there is no fighting near the Suez Canal.
12:14The front line is around 125 miles east in the Sinai Desert.
12:20Yet Britain and France demand that Egypt, the victim, pull back 135 miles.
12:27And Israel, the aggressor, is effectively given permission to advance up to 115 miles.
12:37When Eisenhower finds out, he explodes.
12:41He was a mild-mannered man in public.
12:44Put in private, he's an old soldier.
12:46He was swearing like a trooper, and he was seeking harsh, immediate solutions.
12:52Eisenhower was so furious, actually, that he phoned Anthony Eden
12:58and started on just an absolute tirade of fury at him.
13:05What he didn't realize is that the person who'd answered the phone and said hello
13:11was actually not Eden, it was one of his aides.
13:18By the time Eden could be brought to the phone, Eisenhower had finished swearing and hung up.
13:25Everybody in Washington knows that President Eisenhower has given Anthony Eden his marching orders.
13:34Everybody in London knows.
13:37The President just shouted at the Press Secretary.
13:46Nasr couldn't believe the ultimatum.
13:48He didn't think Britain would risk alienating the whole of the Arab world for the sake of the Suez Canal.
13:56This is imperial arrogance, plain and simple.
14:01Eden and Molle genuinely believed that they could manipulate weaker nations
14:06and get them to do what they wanted without consequence.
14:11And he wasn't going to have it.
14:13On October the 30th, NASA rejects the Anglo-French ultimatum.
14:20The trap is sprung.
14:23The countdown to war has begun.
14:37On the 31st of October at 4am London time, the ultimatum expired.
14:44And within half an hour, the British had given the order, we're going to go and invade Egypt.
14:50British planes spearhead the attack.
14:55NASA couldn't believe that British planes were bombing Cairo.
15:00He actually ran up to the roof of his house to see if this could possibly be true.
15:04And there indeed he saw British planes flying over and bombing Cairo's international airport.
15:18NASA, of course, had had the ultimatum. He understood that this was a possibility.
15:23But it still seemed so improbable.
15:25He couldn't quite believe they would go through with it until they did.
15:30When Eisenhower hears that Britain and France are bombing Egyptian targets,
15:35he's apoplectic with rage.
15:40He had done his utmost to stop the British starting a war.
15:47And the British went ahead and did it anyway.
15:56American intelligence services are noticing something strange is going on.
16:02When the British are bombing to stop forces fighting, they're bombing the Egyptians, not the Israelis.
16:21And they were dropping leaflets on Egyptians that said things like, we're going to bomb your villages.
16:27You've committed a sin by supporting Nasser. Rise up against him.
16:31It was pretty obvious that this was a coordinated psychological warfare campaign.
16:37Not a peacekeeping mission.
16:39The American intelligence picture is developing.
16:44This is a war between Israel and Britain and France against Nasser's Egypt.
16:53The British and the French have been lying all along.
16:59Dwight Eisenhower felt personally betrayed by Anthony Eden.
17:07Eisenhower represents a very, very small window in American thinking where they're really leaning into the idea of international law.
17:16That you can't take preemptive action.
17:18That you can't use military force without a full UN resolution.
17:23The America of the earlier 50s was unbelievably roostless.
17:29But Eden's just unlucky enough to find this brief moment where America is, if you're on their side, at their
17:36most idealistic.
17:37If you're against them, perhaps you might say they're most hypocritical.
17:40The Democrats who were opposing Eisenhower were accusing him really of being a part of this, of plunging the Middle
17:47East into war.
17:48He actually went on television and gave a speech from the Oval Office really decrying this and saying there'd be
17:54no American involvement.
17:55The United States was not consulted in any way about any phase of these actions, nor were we informed of
18:02them in advance.
18:03Eisenhower wants to be a peace president.
18:06He doesn't want to take America into a war.
18:10So he can't threaten war against Britain or France.
18:14Eisenhower has to seek a different weapon to stop Britain and France fighting in Egypt.
18:33The weapon Eisenhower chooses is the United Nations.
18:44The UN has been meeting around the clock since Israel invaded Egypt.
18:51Several international representatives accused Britain and France of collusion with Israel.
18:56The Soviet Union.
18:57And then something extraordinary happened.
18:59The United States.
19:00The United States and the Soviet Union both voted together against Britain and France.
19:06The United Kingdom.
19:07They had actually forced the US and the Soviet Union into an alliance against them.
19:13This is staggering.
19:14This is the United States.
19:15Britain's closest ally in the world.
19:19Openly condemning them and asking the world to join them in doing it.
19:24This could have been the end of NATO.
19:27This could have been the end of the post-war order.
19:31This was a big deal.
19:36There was a real question of how the UN could deal with this crisis and what sort of force it
19:42could bring to bear.
19:44The UN had no real means of enforcing any of its decisions.
19:49It was seen as perhaps a bit of a talking shop.
19:51It had sent observers to some conflict flashpoints.
19:54But it didn't have an army.
19:56It didn't have anyone who could intervene.
19:58And actually, it was the Canadian Minister for External Affairs, Lester Pearson,
20:01who suggested that they should create a UN peacekeeping force to intervene in Suez.
20:07And Anthony Eden says, well, of course, we'll send British troops to be in the peacekeeping force.
20:14The whole idea that Britain could start a war with fake peacekeepers
20:22and then think that Britain could end the war by joining the real peacekeepers.
20:29Eisenhower was having none of it.
20:35On the 6th of November, 1956, Eden is under the most immense physical stress.
20:44He's up all the time. He's not sleeping.
20:47He's been under pressure, really, since July.
20:49But it is clearly peaking now in early November.
20:55Politics is unbelievably stressful. I know this.
20:58You're not sleeping well.
21:00You have to be in debates in the House of Commons till 2 in the morning.
21:03If you're Prime Minister, you're being woken in the middle of the night with telegrams coming in from Russia.
21:07And everybody hates you. The press hates you.
21:09Your international enemies hate you.
21:11But worst of all, your own party hates you, your own cabinet.
21:16Therefore, you get two types of politicians.
21:18You get the type we're increasingly getting, who are weirdly completely rhinoceros skinned and don't care what anybody thinks about
21:26them.
21:26I remember Liz Truss, for example, coming into the lobby of the House of Commons when there'd be newspaper articles
21:31about her with a big grin on her face, apparently completely unaffected.
21:34But Eden is the other sort. Eden takes things incredibly personally, and the pressure of this is ripping him apart.
21:43The rigors that he's enduring in this crisis would have been very hard for a fit person, but Eden has
21:49never been a well man.
21:53Shortly before the Suez Crisis really hit, the 5th of October, he'd collapsed.
21:59He's hospitalised for 48 hours with a temperature of 107 degrees.
22:06One Whitehall official said after this he was pretty much living on Benzedrine.
22:13Amphetamines like this are quite serious drugs, and if you were regularly taking methamphetamine today, you shouldn't be driving a
22:19car, let alone be in charge of a secret war.
22:25Eden's behaviour in 1956 was completely out of character. He had built a career going back three decades and more
22:32as a brilliant diplomat.
22:36He had such a run of diplomatic successes that there was talk about him winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
22:41And yet he's engaged in a reckless madcap gamble. That does need explaining. And of course one can reach for
22:52the drug cabinet, if you like.
22:57To make matters worse, Eden's military operation in Egypt is being met with heavy resistance.
23:13The British and French troops have secured the ports at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal.
23:20But they're still a long way from capturing the whole canal.
23:31The Egyptian resistance to the British incursion was really strong.
23:38The British and French governments are both surprised by just how much resistance they encounter.
23:45And also how much popularity Narsid has on the street.
23:51I think they're really hoping that this is a situation where they can go in and actually get Egyptians to
23:57turn against Narsid.
23:59And the opposite happens.
24:02The plan completely backfires.
24:121956 was also a presidential year.
24:15Occupancy of both White House and Capitol brought some 60 million voters out to cast their ballots.
24:20Near his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the Republican candidate, President Eisenhower, voted with his wife.
24:32On the 6th of November at 5.38, Eisenhower arrives back at the White House after casting his vote in
24:41Gettysburg.
24:46Eisenhower gets his senior people together and he's got to take options on what action to take.
24:57It was absolutely imperative to de-escalate this conflict.
25:02He had no way of knowing whether the Soviets would send armed forces to help defend the Egyptians.
25:11If Soviet forces in Egypt are shooting at the British and the French, formal allies of the United States, then
25:22America might have to shoot back.
25:25Nuclear-armed America, nuclear-armed Soviet Union, shooting at each other in Egypt.
25:34This is the spark that could destroy the world.
25:38This is the spark that could destroy the world.
26:03It was composed.
26:05But behind the scenes, he was really starting to feel the strain.
26:14There was a popular song at the time that had the lyrics,
26:17we have left Egypt to trust in your hands.
26:20And Nasser became quite obsessed with this song.
26:22And whether he had actually betrayed that trust or served it well.
26:31Colleagues reported that he quite often had bouts of weeping over potentially losing Egypt's freedom.
26:41He really doesn't want to be the man that hands Egypt back to the British.
26:50Nasser knows he has a target on his back.
26:53But he decides to go to the front to witness the British and French aggression with his own eyes.
26:59Nasser did get someone to drive him from Cairo to Port Said through areas of broken-down, burnt-out trucks
27:06that had been shot to bits by the British, French and Israeli forces.
27:10And he became very depressed about this.
27:12He said, these are the remnants of a destroyed army.
27:16When he got to the front, though, he was actually rather lifted
27:20to find that the morale of Egyptians fighting back on the front line was very high.
27:25They were extremely ready to keep fighting and repel these foreign invaders.
27:31He instructed his commanders to call up all military reserves
27:35and add a third battalion to the two already at Port Said.
27:40600 National Guards, several companies dedicated to organizing guerrilla war, are sent into battle.
27:49They sent a train full of small arms to be distributed amongst the people.
27:58Nasser refused to give up.
28:01Nasser refused to give up.
28:01He was going to fight till the end.
28:03The people of Egypt are ready to fight and die for Nasser.
28:09In contrast, Eden is losing the support of the people of Britain.
28:26On the 3rd of November, Eden felt that he needed to rally the nation.
28:30So, he broadcast on television.
28:33All my life, I've been a man of peace.
28:38Working for peace.
28:39Striving for peace.
28:41Negotiating for peace.
28:43It's extraordinary watching Eden say those words.
28:46It's got this kind of sing-song tone.
28:48He sounds a bit like a vicar reading a sermon.
28:51I couldn't be other, even if I wished.
28:54He's convinced himself completely of the righteousness of what he's done.
28:59And he can't let go of that.
29:01It's like if a tiny crack appears in that facade, somehow the whole thing will be blown apart.
29:07But I'm utterly convinced that the action we have taken is right.
29:12As a British Egyptian and an Egyptian, you know, by blood,
29:16it's absolutely infuriating to hear him frame what he's doing as an act of peace.
29:25There are times for courage.
29:27Times for action.
29:30And this is one.
29:33But I think it's also very interesting as to the power of self-delusion.
29:42Eden really believes that going into Egypt is the right thing to do.
29:47He was completely wrong, but he believed it.
29:52Eden says that NASA is an existential threat to global security.
29:57And one of the things that happens with politicians, and I'm aware of this in my own life,
30:00is you talk yourself into a more and more paranoid, megalomaniac mind frame.
30:11A different Eden, maybe not as a politician, could step back and say,
30:15whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe that's a bit over the top.
30:18Maybe this guy isn't really meaning to do that.
30:20And that's slightly the position that the US takes.
30:24But that's not where Eden is.
30:29He's got himself really dug into this paranoid worldview.
30:32And you can see echoes of it from Tony Blair, from Netanyahu, from George Bush,
30:37and many others all around the world.
30:38You get yourself in this mindset where you think, this is the only thing that matters in the world.
30:43Good night to you all.
30:46But Eden's broadcast fails to convince the British public that his military action in Egypt is justified.
30:54Do you think we're right in using force in the Suez situation?
30:57No, not to the extent that we have.
30:59Well, I think we're in a very serious predicament over the appear.
31:02I think we've done wrong.
31:04We're in a terrible state now, I think.
31:06What do you think of the Suez situation, madam?
31:09Well, I think it's a terrible thing.
31:10This just has happened.
31:13But we must find a way to get ahead of it without all this fighting.
31:20On the 4th of November, there was a substantial protest in London against Anthony Eden's invasion of Egypt.
31:27And there were about 20,000 people in Trafalgar Square.
31:32Those protests were really significant.
31:34They were the largest protest that Britain had seen in the post-war era.
31:38They had a different view of what Britain was, what its place in the world was.
31:42And they wanted Britain to act within international law.
31:48Britain couldn't behave as if it was an imperial power.
31:52People are saying, we cannot exert our weight in the world in this way anymore.
31:58It is law, not war.
32:01One of the key speakers that day was the Labour MP Anurin Bevin.
32:05Anthony Eden has been pretending that he is now invading Egypt in order to strengthen the United Nations.
32:15So if Anthony Eden is sincere in what he is saying, then he is too stupid to be a prime
32:22minister.
32:29People knew what Eden had said was lies, because they could see what was happening.
32:33They were being told one thing, that this was a peacekeeping force, but they could see very clearly that it
32:37wasn't.
32:40In Whitehall, there's a series of corridors that run between Downing Street and the Cabinet Office Building.
32:48And Eden crept through them to get out of Number 10 and into the Cabinet Office Building.
32:58And watched some of this demonstration happening.
33:02As the crowd marched from Trafalgar Square to 10 Downing Street, the mood really turned quite ugly.
33:13The police on horseback were charging into the crowd.
33:19People were throwing fireworks and smoke bombs. It was a real scene of chaos.
33:26And afterwards in his memoir, he actually wrote, these were not just extreme left-wing agitators that always do this
33:33kind of thing.
33:34It was actually a cross-section of thousands of members of the public who were incredibly angry about my policy.
33:41By nightfall on November the 6th, Anthony Eden is backed into a corner.
33:46His conspiracy to take back the Suez Canal and topple Gamal Abdel Nasser is a complete failure.
33:55I think Eden had reached the point of no return.
33:58Everybody had worked out that collusion was going on.
34:02Plus you had pressure coming in from the West, from the US, threatening Stirling.
34:09And you had pressure coming in from the East, from the Soviet Union, threatening rocket attacks on Britain and France.
34:15Under this kind of pressure, Eden had to stop.
34:41On the 6th of November at 5.55pm, a call came through from Eisenhower.
34:48The tone of the phone call is polite, but very cold.
34:52Eisenhower is being quite restrained in his language.
34:55Eden informs him that there will be a ceasefire.
34:58Eisenhower says, I see.
35:01Eden tries to push him a bit more on this.
35:04He clearly wants some kind of response positively from Eisenhower,
35:08who eventually says, you can say I was delighted you found it possible to cease firing tonight.
35:12You can see that Eden is hoping that we're just going to ride this out.
35:16The special relationship's going to be fine.
35:18And you can also tell that Eisenhower doesn't feel like that.
35:22He tries to cling to what's left of the special relationship.
35:27He asks Eisenhower, how's the election going?
35:31Eisenhower responds that his government's been entirely focused on the Middle East.
35:36I can't give a damn about the election, Eisenhower says.
35:41That really tells you that by this point, Eisenhower had chosen to do morally the right thing.
35:48To intervene against this Anglo-French aggression, even if that did cost him votes.
35:53Even if people thought, this is ridiculous, you should back our allies.
36:08At 6.04pm, Eden went to the House of Commons.
36:12And as he walked in, there was what an observer called a profound silence.
36:17No applause for him, no welcome for him, just complete silence.
36:22Very unusual in the House of Commons.
36:24And he gave this extraordinary speech.
36:28During the night we received from the Secretary-General of the United Nations
36:32a communication in which he informed us that both Israel and Egypt had accepted an unconditional ceasefire.
36:43Pending the confirmation of the above, Her Majesty's government are ordering their forces to cease fire at midnight tonight.
36:51And at that point, the cheering started.
36:57It was mostly coming from the Labour benches from the opposition.
37:03But actually some of it was also coming from Conservatives who deeply disapproved of what had happened over the last
37:09few days.
37:10Our object has been to put a force between the belligerents.
37:15Our intention had as its object not only to stop hostilities, but to prevent a resumption of them.
37:23Eden tried to climb down in a way that preserved his dignity.
37:26And for him, that clearly meant not admitting that he'd lied, not admitting the collusion.
37:35He paints this picture of Britain's aims being achieved, as Britain being a peacemaker.
37:41He paints this entire series of events as being the success that he'd hoped for all along.
37:48But it's a complete and total lie.
37:53It was sort of ridiculous, and actually it makes the whole thing feel more pathetic really,
37:58in that everyone knew he was lying, and he must have known he was lying.
38:04And maybe psychologically that was something he needed to do, but politically it couldn't possibly wash.
38:17At 9.21pm, Eden sends a cable to the French Prime Minister Guy Mollet about the cease fire.
38:24The French are angry, they are distraught, they are upset at the British decision,
38:31which is really a unilateral decision.
38:33They weren't properly consulted to pull the plug on military operations.
38:40Eden is apologetic, he does his best to explain himself to Mollet,
38:44but they feel let down, they feel betrayed.
39:03Nasser and the Egyptian people are, of course, massively relieved that a cease fire has been called.
39:10It's a great diplomatic win for Nasser.
39:17It is one of the most important moments in Egyptian history.
39:22In Cairo, Colonel Nasser, Egyptian leader and hero of the moment, is mobbed as he tries to make his way
39:28through Port Sai.
39:29The fact that Egypt was able to repel and force the withdrawal of Britain and France was incredible.
39:38It was an incredible achievement on Nasser's part.
39:42When the British troops and French troops finally withdrew,
39:45Nasser led a victory parade in an open-topped car, people cheering in the streets.
39:5150,000 people make it quite clear how they feel about this historic event,
39:55which has caused much argument in Britain, but is certainly a triumph for Egyptian opinion and for Nasser himself.
40:01He lowered the British flag on the canal and raised the Egyptian flag, an incredible moment of Egyptian victory.
40:10And in Port Said, people rallied to the port and there was a great statue there of Ferdinand de Lesseps,
40:17the Frenchman who had started this all by building the Suez Canal.
40:20And they packed it with explosives and they blew it up.
40:28Leaving just its boots on the pedestal and there they stood, a monument to this European folly in Egypt.
40:47At midnight Britain's imperial adventure in Suez ended, the ceasefire came into effect, the war was over, it had failed.
40:59It was pretty hard to imagine at this point that Eden could really continue as Prime Minister, that he could
41:06politically survive this incident.
41:10This is the BBC Home Service. The time is 12 o'clock.
41:16Eden made it back to 10 Downing Street and then collapsed into bed.
41:20A ceasefire has come into effect in Egypt. The military operation to protect the Suez Canal is now over.
41:26I think the first thing to understand as a politician is how personally invested you get in these things.
41:32He believed so strongly that what he was doing was right for the world.
41:36And who knows what his wife is saying to him when he's lying in bed.
41:39But if I think about my own wife, she will be saying, darling, don't forget you've done 40 years of
41:46public service.
41:47You've tried so hard. You've killed yourself. You've broken your health.
41:51Don't forget what you did during the Second World War.
41:54Don't forget that you fought against Hitler.
41:56But she will be saying it knowing, as Eden will know, that all that will be forgotten.
42:02He will be remembered as a failure, as a villain, and the most unsuccessful Prime Minister in British history, and
42:10despised by posterity.
42:11And that everything he did before, will count for nothing.
42:18Eden goes to his grave, clinging to the manifest delusion that what happened at Suez was right.
42:24He refuses to admit that there was any collusion, any lie that led to war.
42:36But in 1987, there's a whole tranche of documents that come out under the 30-year rule.
42:43And they include proof that Eden was colluding.
42:49There are a number of documents that are deemed too sensitive, too secret, to be allowed to be released in
42:541987.
42:55And they're held back for decades more.
42:59Because they reveal that this sense that international law could be broken wasn't just a view held by Eden and
43:05a few ministers.
43:06It goes far deeper into the British state.
43:10This is a secret document that should have been released 30 years after Suez, but they won't let it, because
43:15it's too sensitive.
43:17Why?
43:18Because it includes one aspect about the financial planning for the operation at Suez.
43:23They write, we obtained Egyptian currency notes by smuggling packets out of the Sudan in a diplomatic bag.
43:30The diplomatic bag is supposed to be sacrosanct. You can't use it for things like this.
43:34The document says this involved using the good offices of a British bank.
43:38And it was, of course, a breach of the Sudanese law and of the normal rules about the diplomatic bag.
43:46This is a Foreign Office document openly admitting that they're breaching international law to finance the Suez military operation.
43:56This money, it's hard to tell exactly where it's going from here, but the sense is that it's going to
44:01be used potentially for soldiers to be used for bribes, whatever is needed for those forces on the ground.
44:08It's lies. It's subterfuge.
44:11It's a rot that extends not just from the cabinet, but all the way down through the British establishment.
44:16There's this imperialist hubris here that they can do things and get away with it.
44:23Eden resigns in January 1957, just two months after the Suez Crisis.
44:33His chancellor, Harold Macmillan, takes the top job.
44:38But the country has changed and is seriously weakened.
44:48The Suez Crisis is existential for Britain because it reveals that Britain is no longer a power able to exercise
45:00its influence around the world.
45:05That decline was already happening.
45:10The empire was already being dismantled.
45:13The loss of India in 1947 and then Burma and Ceylon not long afterwards was a huge shattering for the
45:25British Empire.
45:27What the Suez Crisis showed was that Britain could no longer behave like an imperial power from 1856.
45:36This was 1956.
45:44When the word superpower emerges out of World War II, that word is used to refer to three superpowers.
45:50The United States, the Soviet Union and the British Empire.
45:55And Suez was a real dent to the status of Britain.
45:59And that is the moment where actually people stop talking about three superpowers and start talking about two.
46:07You go from being an adult to being a toddler.
46:10And from then onwards, your military, your foreign service, your intelligence service,
46:17becomes a sort of pantomime game where you puff your chest, you boast about them,
46:23but basically you can't use them without the say-so of the United States.
46:57The British Empire
46:57You
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