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Prime Minister Eden has dragged Britain into an illegal war in Egypt, lied to the British people and our closest ally, and risked nuclear war. The Suez crisis ends Britain's role as a superpower.
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00:226th 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.
01:08And 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.
01:22What I need is a little white handkerchief.
01:23This 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.
01:46Militarily 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.
02:18We can't wait to see.
02:21The United States has eaten another human race.
02:22We can't wait to see.
02:24We can't wait to see.
02:25We can't wait to see anything.
02:29It's a human being.
02:29A human being.
02:37It's 5 p.m. on the 6th of November, 1956.
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.
03:17A plan to stage a war to seize back control of the Suez Canal.
03:23And bring down Egypt's defiant leader, Gamal Abdel 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
03:58through 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.
04:24Israel, France and Britain have basically got it done.
04:30Very few casualties, they're going to retake the Suez Canal.
04:35And 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.
04:56It'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.
05:05America was sick of war.
05:08World War II was fresh in everybody's mind.
05:11Dwight Eisenhower wants to be Mr. Peace.
05:14He 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.
05:30The 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.
05:41We're not going to have anything to do with 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.
06:09Eisenhower'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.
06:28What 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, your debt and deficit getting out of control, being
06:43driven into a financial crisis.
06:45And America learns to do this all over the world, what they're basically doing is saying, we control the international
06:51system, and 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.
07:22The 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, for a collapse of the
07:42British 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, his fellow conspirator, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet, urges him
08:07to 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, but he'd convinced himself that Nasser was inspiring it, that if you removed
08:30Nasser, that would be gone.
08:43By 5.30pm, calls were still coming through to Eden's private office at the House of Commons.
08:49The British ambassador to Paris was on the phone, saying that Guy Mollet was desperate to talk to him, to
08:56try to convince him not to call a ceasefire.
09:00But he was convinced that actually if they carried on, even for a matter of hours, they could change the
09:05course of this operation.
09:08Guy Mollet is saying to Eden, keep going. We are here for you. Hold your nerve.
09:15Another 36 hours, another 48 hours. The 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.
09:49Most vitally concerned in the future of the canal are Britain and France.
09:54And 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, Guy 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.
10:17It 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.
10:38And 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.
10:49That 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 Sèvres Protocol into action and issue their ultimatum
11:10to 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, to intervene as well to protect the
11:41canal.
11:42And we are giving them 12 hours.
11:47The ultimatum that they give to the Israelis and the Egyptians is completely nonsensical.
11:52The 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, there is no fighting near the Suez
12:13Canal.
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.
12:26And 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.
12:44But 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 Antony Eden.
12:58And started on just an absolute tirade of fury at him.
13:04What he didn't realize is that the person who'd answered the phone and said hello...
13:11...was actually not Eden.
13:12It was one of his aides.
13:17By 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 Antony Eden his marching orders.
13:34Everybody in London knows.
13:38The President just shouted at the Press Secretary.
13:51The Press Secretary.
14:10And he wasn't going to have it.
14:13On October the 30th, NASA rejects the Anglo-French ultimatum.
14:20The trap is sprung.
14:24The countdown to war has begun.
14:37On the 31st of October, at 4 a.m. 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.
14:50The British planes spearhead the attack.
14:55NASA couldn't believe that British planes were bombing Cairo.
14:59He 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.
15:20He understood that this was a possibility, but 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, he is 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.
16:03When 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,
16:25we're going to bomb your villages.
16:26You've committed a sin by supporting Nasser.
16:30Rise up against him.
16:31It was pretty obvious that this was a coordinated psychological warfare campaign,
16:37not a peacekeeping mission.
16:40The 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 Antony Eden.
17:07Eisenhower represents a very, very small window in American thinking where they're really leaning into the idea of international law.
17:15That you can't take preemptive action, that you can't take preemptive action, that you can't use military force without a
17:21full UN resolution.
17:22The America of the earlier 50s was unbelievably ruthless.
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
17:46East into war.
17:48He actually went on television and gave a speech from the Oval Office, really decrying this and saying there'd be
17:53no 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.
18:09So 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...
18:39...is the United Nations.
18:44The UN has been meeting around the clock since Israel invaded Egypt.
18:50Several international representatives accused Britain and France of collusion with Israel.
18:56Soviet Union.
18:57And then something extraordinary happened.
18:59United States.
19:00The United States and the Soviet Union both voted together against Britain and France.
19:06United 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.
19:48It was seen as perhaps a bit of a talking shop.
19:51It had sent observers to some conflict flashpoints, but it didn't have an army.
19:56It didn't have anyone who could intervene.
19:57And actually it was the Canadian minister for external affairs, Lester Pearson, who suggested that they should create a UN
20:03peacekeeping force to intervene in Suez.
20:07And Antony 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 and then think that Britain could end the
20:25war by joining the real peacekeepers, Eisenhower 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.
20:45He's not sleeping.
20:46He's been under pressure really since July, but it is clearly peaking now in early November.
20:54Politics is unbelievably stressful.
20:57I know this.
20:58You're not sleeping well.
20:59You have to be in debates in the House of Commons till 2 in the morning.
21:03If you're a prime minister, you're being woken in the middle of the night with telegrams coming in from Russia.
21:07And everybody hates you.
21:08The press hates you.
21:09Your international enemies hate you.
21:11But worst of all, your own party hates you, your own cabinet.
21:15Therefore, 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.
21:36Eden 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.
21:58He'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.
22:28He had built a career going back three decades and more as a brilliant diplomat.
22:36He had such a run of diplomatic successes that there was talk about him winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and
22:42yet he's engaged in a reckless, madcap gamble.
22:47That does need explaining, and of course one can reach for the drug cabinet, if you like.
22:56To make matters worse, Eden's military operation in Egypt is being met with heavy resistance.
23:12British 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.
23:30The 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 Nasser 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 Nasser.
23:59And the opposite happens.
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.
25:10If 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.
25:33This is the spark that could destroy the world.
25:55To the outside world, Kamal Abdel Nasser appeared unshakable.
26:00He was commanding, he was composed, but 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, and Nasser became quite obsessed with this song
26:22and whether he had actually betrayed that trust or served it well.
26:30Colleagues 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, but he decides to go to the front to witness the
26:56British 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.
27:09And 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.
27:24They 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 3rd battalion to the two already at Port Said.
27:40600 National Guards, several companies dedicated to organising 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.
28:00He 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, striving for peace, negotiating 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.
28:50I 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.
29:06But I'm utterly convinced that the action we have taken is right.
29:11As 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, times for action.
29:30And this is one.
29:32But I think it's also very interesting as to the power of self-delusion.
29:41Eden 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.
29:56And 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.
30:10A 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 U.S. takes.
30:24But that's not where Eden is.
30:28He'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,
30:40this 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
30:49that his military action in Egypt is justified.
30:53Do 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
31:24against 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,
31:41what its place in the world was,
31:42and they wanted Britain to act within international law.
31:47Britain couldn't behave as if it was an imperial power.
31:52People are saying,
31:53we 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
32:08that he is now invading Egypt
32:10in order to strengthen the United Nations.
32:15So if Sir Anthony Eden is sincere in what he is saying,
32:19then he is too stupid to be a prime minister.
32:29People knew what Eden had said was lies
32:31because they could see what was happening.
32:33They were being told one thing,
32:34that this was a peacekeeping force,
32:35but they could see very clearly that it wasn't.
32:40In Whitehall, there's a series of corridors
32:43that run between Downing Street and the Cabinet Office building.
32:48And Eden crept through them to get out of Number 10
32:51and into the Cabinet Office building.
32:57And watched some of this demonstration happening.
33:02As the crowd marched from Trafalgar Square
33:04to 10 Downing Street,
33:06the mood really turned quite ugly.
33:13The police on horseback were charging into the crowd.
33:19People were throwing fireworks and smoke bombs.
33:21It was a real scene of chaos.
33:26And afterwards in his memoir,
33:28he actually wrote these were not just extreme left-wing agitators
33:32that always do this kind of thing.
33:34It was actually a cross-section of thousands of members of the public
33:37who were incredibly angry about my policy.
33:41By nightfall on November the 6th,
33:44Anthony Eden is backed into a corner.
33:47His conspiracy to take back the Suez Canal
33:50and 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,
34:05from the U.S., threatening Stirling.
34:08And you had pressure coming in from the East,
34:11from the Soviet Union,
34:12threatening 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,
34:43a call came through from Eisenhower.
34:47The tone of the phone call is polite, but very cold.
34:52Eisenhower's been quite restrained in his language.
34:55Eden informs him that there will be a ceasefire.
34:58Eisenhower says,
34:59I see.
35:01Eden tries to push him a bit more on this.
35:03He clearly wants some kind of response positively from Eisenhower,
35:07who eventually says,
35:09you can say I was delighted you found it possible to cease firing tonight.
35:13You can see that Eden is hoping that we're just going to ride this out.
35:16The special relationship's going to be fine.
35:17And 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,
35:43Eisenhower had chosen to do morally the right thing,
35:47to intervene against this Anglo-French aggression,
35:51even if that did cost him votes,
35:53even if people thought,
35:55this is ridiculous, you should back our allies.
36:08At 6.04pm, Eden went to the House of Commons.
36:12And as he walked in,
36:14there was what an observer called a profound silence.
36:17No applause for him, no welcome for him,
36:20just 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
36:35that both Israel and Egypt had accepted an unconditional ceasefire.
36:42Pending the confirmation of the above,
36:45Her Majesty's government are ordering their forces to ceasefire at midnight tonight.
36:51And at that point, the cheering started.
36:57It was mostly coming from the Labour benches, from the opposition.
37:02But actually, some of it was also coming from Conservatives
37:06who deeply disapproved of what had happened over the last few 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,
37:19but to prevent a resumption of them.
37:22Eden tried to climb down in a way that preserved his dignity.
37:26And for him, that clearly meant not admitting that he'd lied,
37:31not admitting the collusion.
37:34He 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.
37:53It 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,
38:06but politically it couldn't possibly wash.
38:17At 9.21pm, Eden sends a cable to the French Prime Minister, Guy Mollet, about the ceasefire.
38:25The French are angry. They are distraught.
38:28They are upset at the British decision, which is really a unilateral decision.
38:33They weren't properly consulted to pull the plug on military operations.
38:40Eden is apologetic.
38:41He does his best to explain himself to Mollet, but they feel let down.
38:46They feel betrayed.
39:02Nasser and the Egyptian people are, of course, massively relieved
39:06that a ceasefire 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,
39:26is mobbed as he tries to make his way through port side.
39:28The fact that Egypt was able to repel and force the withdrawal of Britain and France was incredible.
39:37It 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 side, people rallied to the port, and there was a great statue there of Ferdinand de Lesseps,
40:17the Frenchman who'd 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.
40:52The 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,
41:06that he could politically survive this incident.
41:10This is the BBC Home Service.
41:13The time is 12 o'clock.
41:15Eden made it back to 10 Downing Street and then collapsed into bed.
41:20A ceasefire has come into effect in Egypt.
41:22The 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.
41:31He 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,
41:43darling, don't forget, you've done 40 years of public 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
42:09history and despised by posterity and 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.
42:48There are a number of documents that are deemed too sensitive, too secret, to be allowed to be
42:53released in 1987. And they're held back for decades more. Because they reveal that this
43:01sense that international law could be broken wasn't just a view held by Eden and a few ministers,
43:06it goes far deeper into the British state. This is a secret document that should have been released
43:1230 years after Suez, but they won't let it because it's too sensitive.
43:17Why? Because 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 the diplomatic
43:29bag. The diplomatic bag is supposed to be sacrosanct. You can't use it for things like this.
43:35The document says this involved using the good offices of a British bank. And it was, of course,
43:39a 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
43:52the Suez military operation. This money, it's hard to tell exactly where it's going from here, but
43:59the sense is that it's going to be used potentially for soldiers to be used for bribes, whatever is needed
44:04for those forces on the ground. It's lies. It's subterfuge. It's a rot that extends not just from the
44:13cabinet, but all the way down through the British establishment. There's this imperialist hubris here
44:19so that they can do things and get away with it.
44:24Eden resigns in January 1957, just two months after the Suez crisis.
44:33His chancellor, Harold Macmillan, takes the top job.
44:48The Suez crisis is existential for Britain because it reveals that Britain is no longer a power
44:59able to exercise its influence around the world.
45:06That decline was already happening.
45:10The empire was already being dismantled. The loss of India in 1947 and then Burma and Ceylon not long
45:21afterwards was a huge shattering for the British empire. What the Suez crisis showed was that
45:30Britain could no longer behave like an imperial power from 1856. This was 1956.
45:44When the word superpower emerges out of World War II, that word is used to refer to three
45:49superpowers. The United States, the Soviet Union and the British Empire.
45:55And Suez was a real dent to the status of Britain. And that is the moment where actually people stop
46:02talking about three superpowers and start talking about two.
46:07You go from being an adult to being a toddler. And from then onwards, your military, your foreign service,
46:14your intelligence service becomes a sort of pantomime game where you puff your chest,
46:22you boast about them, but basically you can't use them without the say-so of the United States.
46:27And you can't use them without the say-so of the United States.
46:57And it's just a major thing.
46:57You
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