← Empire: World History
Empire: World History
284. Suez Crisis: The British Imperialist vs The Arab Nationalist (Part 1)
00:42:07
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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand and me, William Durable. Now, we're very excited about this because we've done the Panama Canal. We're going to do the Suez Canal. All the canals. No, not all the canals, just the Suez Canal. A mini series on the Suez Canal, and we're predominantly going to concentrate on the 1950s, where you find the Suez Canal is at the crossroads of international geopolitical fury. So that's what we're going to be talking about. Britain's imperial prestige is declining. The US and the USSR are cementing themselves into the position of global superpowers, and they are also becoming sworn enemies. So this is a story of revolutions, of colonialism, of secrecy. I mean, it's all got it all.
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A
Packed in in a sense. This is always just like if you like Plassey is said to be the moment when the sort of British Empire really kicks off in India. Suez is the moment that British imperial power is seen to be eclipsed. Never again. After this is Britain described as a superpower, which it is before this. And it's a crucial moment. It's the moment also that marks the ascendancy of the US over British foreign policy. Because by the end of this, America has just blown a whistle, cut Britain's credit, and Britain has had to fall immediately in line and the government falls. And it's the first time that America's had that power over Britain where nothing can happen without an American say so. So this is the moment, 1956, when Britain is shrunk down from an imperial power into just another European power. And this is what will then, in time, lead Britain to join the European Union, the next phase in its history. But it's a crucial, crucial turning point. And we are lucky to have with us our great, great friend, Alex von Turzelman.
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F
Hello.
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A
Author of many wonderful books. My favorite Indian book of hers is the Indian Summer. But this book, your Suez book, Blood.
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E
And Sand, Suez, Hungary and the Crisis that Shook the World, and is equally brilliant. And what you do so well, Alex, is that not only do you talk about the sort of the big geopolitics, but you sort of drill into the minutiae of people's personality, frailties as well.
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A
Very good at frailties, yes.
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E
I mean, very good at frailties, but, you know, just the kind of thing where humans, flesh and bone, just screw up in all sorts of ways, which, you know, you can link to their relationships with their daddies or their mummies or the way they to school, but these things kind of, you know, formulate the politics that we face today, which I love.
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F
Absolutely.
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A
It's a wonderful mix in all her books of really serious archival research and then written in this wonderfully light and brilliant style. So, anyway, we are lucky to have you with us, Alex. Very welcome back.
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F
Oh, thank you all so much.
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E
Yeah. So now that we've warmly welcomed you, we're going to ignore you for one minute because what we wanted to do, that's what we do to the people. We really like that. We do have a couple of ones that we love. You know, you just don't have a cup of tea and put your feet up. But what we thought, because Alex is going to take US through the 1950s, this sort of pivotal time to the Suez crisis, which you might even have heard of that phrase, Suez crisis, but not quite know what it was or what precipitated it. But just as we did with the Panama Canal, we wanted to give you the origin story of this Suez Canal as well. And there is one man, a name that is common to both, and that's Ferdinand de Lesseps. Now, you might imagine that this would be the brainchild of an engineer, but it isn't. Remember, de Lesseps, if you heard our Panama Canal program, is not an engineer. He's not builder of big things. He is a diplomat. He is ambitious and he's a blue blood. But he is a man who knows how to get people to hand over money for very big capital projects.
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A
He's a sort of entrepreneur of spectacular projects. And we've done him slightly back to front because, of course, his terrible failure in the building the Panama Canal that drives him and everyone else around him to bankruptcy is the sad end of a career which has its triumph, first of all in the building of Suez. So we're doing it back to front, but this is what comes first. This precedes the Panama Canal. And it's the success of what de Lesseps does in Suez that gives him the will late in life to take on Panama with such fatal results for him, but ultimately a triumph for America.
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E
The thing that links both of them is that de Lesseps, like everybody else, is looking for some kind of superhighway linking Europe to the East. This is the obsession at the time that there must be a faster way to get to the riches of the East. So de Lesseps himself has a private company, Campagne Universale de Canal Maritime du Suez. That's me doing my.
- [06:33]
A
Always one of the highlights of this.
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E
Podcast, but it is a private company. It's founded in 1858 by de Lesseps himself. So the financing structure. Who pays for the Suez Canal, just like with the Panama Canal, he does it with other people's cash. Okay, so primarily European shareholders and the Egyptian government under the K side Pasha and then his successor, Ismail Pasha. So the majority of funds. Let's look at where the money really came from. The majority of funds for Suez were raised through the sale of shares to private European investors. And they were mostly French. French citizens. Banks. Banks were among the largest subscribers to this. But Egypt also significantly financed this project. 44% of the money came through direct purchases of shares. But Egypt took out huge loans to pay for these shares. And this is going to be really important later in the history of Egypt and the Middle East.
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A
We should perhaps explain the geography of this, which we haven't done. And what has, in a sense, given the idea for this throughout history, ever since Vasco da Gama, but particularly since Britain established its Indian empire in the 18th century, almost all Brits trying to get to India did not go over land. They went by sea in a very odd sea road that you started off going down the coast of Spain, then you went to the Canary Islands, then you went to Brazil, which doesn't seem to be on the way at all, but that was where replenished. And this famously, was where Clive fell off the boat and nearly drowned on his way to India. And then from Brazil, you go to Cape of Good Hope and finally you end up in Bombay or increasingly, Calcutta. Now, in the 1840s, there'd been a change in that because the Brits realized that they could get a boat to Alexandria, take a nice small boat down the Nile, and then just jump on a carriage and cross to Suez, and you could then get another boat. So by the 1840s, most Brits going to India were no longer going round the Cape. They were getting off in Egypt, getting into a carriage, crossing the desert and getting a new boat at Suez. And this is the point that the French have the idea of building this canal, and this way you can just stay on the boat and never get off it. You can get all the way into the Mediterranean without unpacking your suitcases at any point.
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E
What's really interesting, a little while ago, Willi was talking about how, you know, the Brits had long seen or had the vision that, you know, this is the quickest way over, stop in Alexandria, cross over, and then, you know, pick up a boat at Suez. So you'd think, wouldn't you, that they'd be all four, the construction of a canal. But initially they are not for it at all, because partly it's the French that have done it first. Those damn French.
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A
If the French do it, it can't be a good thing.
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E
Yeah. And then, you know, they've also got a lot of money invested in the alternate route, so they're not really behind this at all. They oppose it at first, and then they're deeply sceptical about it. But construction, whatever they think, it's got nothing to do with them. It is the French, it is the Egyptians, and it is all the investors, the private investors, who are looking for a return, a bang for their buck, who are jubilant, because on the 25th of April, 1859, they start construction.
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A
We should perhaps say why the French are interested in the Suez Canal. At all, and why they hadn't been interested earlier. And the answer to that, of course, goes back to our series on the Opium Wars. At the end of the Second Opium War, the French are given concessions in China. And with those concessions comes an opioid economy that they begin to realize how much money you can make from Opium War, which is something that the British have been doing. And out of that comes the French conquest of Southeast Asia. So the French also need to get their ships from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia to their new colonies in Cambodia and Vietnam and Laos. Those are the modern names. And also to their concessions in China. And this is all part of that late 19th century European rush to make opium money which follows the Second Opium War. So as well as the Brits going to India, you've got the French chugging along the same routes, heading on further to Southeast Asia.
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E
Yeah, if you want to be an effective drug dealer, get there quicker is the moral of that story. So look, they start construction in 1859, and it is through desert terrain. Also, they've got to deal with some very hefty rocks. And they use Egyptian laborers. And at first we're talking about men basically, with hammers and pickaxes. It's really hard, intense work. The workers, and they're all Egyptian, they are peasants known as the fellaheen, who are doing the work here. And they've got terrible conditions. And just again, these are mirror images. The experience in Panama where you had disease sweeping through workers camps. This is happening as well at Suez.
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A
And we should perhaps also say that geographically how remote Suez is. I've been there, and it's in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It's a very, very bleak spot. When at the end of this story, you have the Suez Canal zone and you have troops stationed there. It's famously the worst posting you can possibly be offered anywhere in the world, because there's absolutely nothing to do for hundreds of miles around. It's dry, it's arid, it's flat, and there's absolutely no reason whatever to be there but for the strategic value of this canal cutting through the desert. So they're dealing with very bleak and remote geography, as well as the shared difficulty of cutting a canal through the desert.
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E
Well, they do it. I mean, it takes 10 years. They do it. But finally, on November 17, 1869, there is going to be this lavish ceremony to trumpet the opening of the Suez Canal. And what happens is the Egyptian ruler, who's the son of the man who starts the whole thing off, Ismail Basha, he wants to present the canal as a symbol of Egypt's modernisation, him as a new leader in a new Middle east. And he decides to throw the party to end. So for two days there are, you know, fireworks, feasting the likes of which nobody's ever seen before. Some Western journalists who are present just turn up their nose at the whole thing, calling it orientally excessive rich from.
- [12:48]
A
The British who are busy getting up to exactly the same thing in India at the same time. But yeah, we'll let that pass.
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E
Yes, but they don't throw the parties.
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A
They don't hang out spectacular quivering jellies and peacocks, plumes and all the rest of it.
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E
They may well have peacocks and jellies, but what they object to is the dancing bears and the snake charming and you know, the feasts which go on and on for, you know, 100 courses. But they are, you know, sort of making their way to Suez and they get there on the 19th of November. It's a kind of procession through the desert. 6,000 guests attend in all for this inauguration, including, and this is again, I think, just really interesting. Looking at the guest list, Empress Eugenie of France, wife of Emperor Napoleon iii, who plays, you know, sort of the lead ceremonial role here because she's sort of like the most important royal from the French side, you've got Emperor Franz Joseph, the First of Austria, you've got the King of Hungary, you've got Prince Louis of Hesse, the brother of the King of the Netherlands, the smattering of other European princes. Do you know the royal that doesn't come is any royal from Britain? They won't send a royal because this is not their party and they're not going to do it. So what they send instead is an ambassador to Istanbul because what they've done now, they've moved from pure opposition to the idea of this canal to sort of a detached scepticism. So if it is all going to turn to custard, they can say nothing to do with us. But if it does work out, they have a presence at the party. And there is this massive flotilla of 77 ships, including 50 warships from all of these countries that do this sort of procession behind the French royal yacht that go through the Suez Canal and its inauguration. And the other lovely thing that I loved about the inauguration is that there is this multi faith prayer that goes on, sort of this sort of act of worship which has, according to one journalist, William Simpson, who is there, who made his name covering the Crimean War, but he's been sent here to do sort of these very detailed reports for the Illustrated News. Latin, Greek and Mohammedan priests officiating, a mass blessing.
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A
It's very modern to have them all together. Very improbable.
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Right, but there is also, I mean, another journalist who's there, who's a Scot called Alexander Russell, who looks at this canal as an absolute beacon of hope for the future. He says it will unite the east and west not only in commerce, but ideas, and so greatly bless humanity. And he describes the celebration, cannons thundering till ears were stunned and the atmosphere thickened with smoke. So for him anyway, here when the smoke clears, you have got the greatest Kumbaya moment the world has ever known. Everybody's going to embrace, all be peaceful. The Suez Canal has fixed everything.
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A
Now you say it wasn't a British party, but only 15 years later or 20 odd years later, it becomes a British party. And we've been ignoring our poor guest Alex, who's been sitting on her sofa.
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Well, we just want to do the boring prehistory before we get to the really exciting stuff with her.
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A
So we need to bring in Alex and Alex, explain to us how the Brits get their controlling interest in this canal, which is the crucial lead up to the Suez crisis.
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Basically, the Khediv ran out of money Anita's already talked about. He was, you know, kind of up to his neck in loans, but also embroiled himself in a war that he shouldn't have and all of this, and ran out of money. And it's really crucial to say this important point and it gets missed by an awful lot of people at the time as well. But I think we need it clear in our heads. There are two entities here. There's the Suez Canal, the physical structure, the thing you talked about, this miracle of engineering that was always owned by Egypt, the physical structure is 100% owned by Egypt and was from the beginning. But the Suez Canal Company is the operating company that controls transit through the canal. So this is a different thing.
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A
I hadn't realized that the physical thing.
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F
Is always in Egypt's hand, always Egyptian, 100% Egyptian. So you know, when, when we come to nationalization, the canal is always Egyptian. The Canal Company is not Egyptian. This is the difference. And that's the one The Khediv owned 44% of. It's very large but not completely controlling share. And the French owned and various other companies own portions of. And the company is actually the really contentious thing. And actually everyone misses this. Everyone talks about it in this completely vague way, you know, oh, we Own the Suez Canal. You don't. Egypt owns it. Always has, always did, just not actually in dispute. So what happens when the Hadiv has this financial crisis? And indeed, absolutely right. Disraeli gets a very quick loan, a huge amount of money from Lord Rothschild child, to buy him out, buy this enormous share. And actually De Lesseps went bananas hearing this was happening, you know, and he sort of tried to run there and stop it happening, because, of course, this was the British taking over this great French innovation.
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You could understand why he'd be a bit pissed off, can't you?
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Really pissed off, yeah, absolutely. But the British managed to buy this huge stake in the canal company, which was indeed the company that operated. Operated those sort of pilot ships that go up and down, and this transit through it was controlled by this company.
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A
And presumably rakes in the profits from every.
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F
Exactly. It's the operating company. So everything through that. So that, you know, it was a huge coup, really, that Britain got control of that. And especially because at that stage, because of India, of course, as you've mentioned, that's the big imperial route for transit. But it continues to be incredibly important and actually become, in a sense, even more important into the 20th century, into the 1950s. Now, of course, as we will all notice, India was no longer British by 1956, quite notably so. But what was at that stage British was a load of oil fields in Iran.
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A
That's right. The Anglo Persian Oil Company had just struck lucky and Bunda Abbas and all those sort of wells were kicking off.
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F
For the first time because Mossadegh had nationalised it. But, I mean, obviously then the Brits had booted him out with the CIA and got the Shah back in.
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E
But just one other observation about the Disraeli deal, because it was so wily and canny. It's right. He didn't even ask Parliament whether this was the right thing to do for Britain. He just goes off behind a closed door, gets the money and then runs and buys it. How does Parliament react to that? I mean, is there sort of jubilation that he's done a clever thing, or are they just quite appalled they've been bypassed?
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F
Well, pretty mixed feelings, as you might imagine, that sort of time.
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A
How big was the loan? Can you remember the figure?
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F
So the loan that he Disraeli took from Lord Rothschild was about £4 million in 1875. Today, you'd have to say it would be around 5 billion, although it's pretty hard to compare the numbers at that point. There'd be lots of different ways to assess that, but an absolutely huge amount of money, I think it's fair to say.
- [19:28]
A
Alex, just to go Back to the 1950s, is there a sense that Britain's obsession about holding onto the Suez Canal in the face of Nasser's wish to nationalize it, is that in a sense a sort of ghost limb that, you know, rather like soldiers being able to feel the toes that they've lost in a battle in the trenches or whatever? Is it that Britain still feels that it needs to have control the route to India and the east, or is it specifically the oil fields that they're thinking of at this point?
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F
It's really oil at this point is what it's about.
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A
How interesting. It's the first big oil war.
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F
Absolutely. It's an enormous oil war. And that's absolutely crucial is that because Britain at this stage still controls those oil fields in Iran and has those. That's the oil that is priced in pounds. This becomes very important. So it's priced in sterling. That means for the British to buy it. It's very cheap. Oil that you get, say from Venezuela is priced in US dollars. That's much more expensive because Britain has to use its dollar reserves for that. That's very difficult. You're, you know, thinking about the converting the money and all of this. So you know that oil is what Britain sees as Britain's oil. Now, the Iranians dispute that, but, you know, that's how Britain sees it because it's priced in pounds. That's the oil that is now needed to keep the lights on and the cars running in Britain. By 1956, I hadn't realized that link.
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A
So, so interesting that Mossadegh and his coup and the Suez crisis is all part of Britain needing to keep things running.
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E
While William comes to terms with this revelation, we're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll go into more detail about how, you know the fact that this is now the super H way to oil changes everything.
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- [22:48]
A
So welcome back and we are heading now into Anita territory because we have a good looking fella turn my co host been aware of, shall we say, in the course of our podcast.
- [23:03]
E
And I thank you for that. And I thank you so much for creating this image of a boy crazy co presenter. It's not true at all. But Alex, you do do a good pen portrait and you got a doozy coming up. So sit back and enjoy.
- [23:17]
A
Tell us about Nasser, Gamal Abdul Nasser, the man who sets this whole thing off by nationalizing the Suez Canal. Give us his backstory, Alex.
- [23:27]
F
By nationalizing the Suez Canal Company.
- [23:29]
A
Ah, the Suez Canal Company. Quite right, quite right.
- [23:32]
F
Yes, I know, I know. Such a pedant. But there is a reason I'm being that much of a pedant, because it becomes very important to the story. Nasser is such an interesting figure, really important figure of the mid 20th century. He came from a pretty ordinary middle class background and he joined the army and became an army officer. Rose to quite a high point in that.
- [23:54]
A
So there is a wonderful history of Gaza by a French diplomat called Jean Pierre Filleux. And he tells a whole episode of Nasser's life which I was unaware of, that he is a staff officer in 1948 during what the Israelis called the Israeli war of Independence and what the Palestinians call the Nakba. And this is this moment when the Palestinians, who've had their leadership exiled by the British after the Palestinian revolt and who have been disarmed, lose everything in 1948 when the British pull out of the Palestine Mandate to the Israelis. The Israelis are incredibly well organized. You have David Ben Gurion, one of the great leaders of his time, an incredibly well organized military machine. Just makes mincemeat of both Arab state resistance in the form of the Egyptian army and to a Lesser extent, the Arab Legion under Glub Pasha hold their own. But the Palestinians themselves, this is the moment of their catastrophe, what they call the Nakba. 750,000 Palestinians are kicked out of their towns and villages and farms and find themselves refugees. Now of those 750,000, 200,000 end up on the sand dunes in Gaza. And the reason that Gaza remains in Arab hands is that Nasser as a junior staff officer is there, as incidentally is the young Yasser Arafat who long the founding of the PLO is there associated with and lending a hand to, though not formally part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which again is interesting for future history that he was, he was with the Brothers at that point because of course later on he becomes their enemy. So Gaza becomes a large refugee camp in the early 1950s. And so that is where Nasser first comes to prominence. And since 1948, Alex, he's orchestrated a military overthrow in 1952. Us about that.
- [25:50]
F
So Egypt had what was called the Veiled Protectorate, which was. It was sort of controlled by Britain but also sort of not so it wasn't ever fully colonized. And the reason for that was about protecting the interests around the Suez Canal for Britain. Britain wanted a stake in how Egypt was run. It wanted control over it, but it didn't want to fully colonize Egypt. By that point this was going to be very expensive. That would be a nightmare. They didn't want it. They just were quite happy to ensure the safety of the canal. And King Farouk, you know, the sort of Egyptian monarchy was really seen as a bit of a. Just a British stooge really.
- [26:26]
E
And Alex, Nasser is very much the man at the moment because, you know, he's had that military experience. He's kind of been a soldier that people respect. He's walked the walk as well as talked the talk we haven't mentioned. And Willy's going to have a great deal of fun with this that he has the looks of a matinee idol. He has sort of like a young Valentino look about him, does he not?
- [26:46]
A
You would never normally notice such things, Peter.
- [26:49]
E
I mean, look, I'm not just making it up. Just look at the man. I mean, he does look like a matinee idol but also Alex, more importantly, he's a good talker and he gives very passionate speeches that rouse people. Tell us a little bit about the personality.
- [27:02]
F
Well, he was. And I mean actually this is pretty crucial to his appeal that he was young for a political military leader. He was very good looking, very charismatic, an excellent speaker, spoke very Good English as well. He was a highly literate, intelligent man. And at this time, I mean, as you said, because of the foundation of Israel and all this that had happened, there is a kind of rise in Arab nationalism. And that's complicated. It's not kind of purely because of that. There's all sorts of reasons that's happening. It's also, you know, we're coming out still of the colonial period. So a lot of that resentment is against the British, for instance, also in the Middle East. The French and, you know, various other imperial powers that are involved in small ways, like the Americans, sort of have a little foothold, although not anything like as much yet as the British and the French and Nasser and is kind of standing up.
- [27:49]
E
Initially.
- [27:50]
F
When Farouk was ousted, he didn't take over as prime minister immediately. He actually somebody else did. And he sort of stood behind. And only a couple of years later, really, did he come out as the kind of. As the leader and really sort of take over the running of Egypt. But he was somebody who led a kind of Arab nationalism because he was this figure of surprising charisma and gravitas who seemed to have, you know, a real ability to kind of command attention on the international national stage, who also seem to be charting an interesting and quite clever route internationally.
- [28:26]
A
We had, in our episode on the partition of Yemen, the fact that everyone as far away as Yemen is listening to Nasser's speeches, that's stirring stuff up in Aden. There's also a sense in which he is the leader of the Arabs and the Algerians are looking to him in their struggle against the French. Tell us about that.
- [28:47]
F
Yes, you've got the whole really of the Middle east and North Africa, the whole Arab world, and actually also quite a lot of people beyond the Arab world listening to Nasser. He's very clever with media. He runs Voice of the Arabs radio and allows him to be heard kind of far and wide across the Arab world and indeed beyond. Often Voice of the Arabs translated, it's right.
- [29:07]
E
I mean, he becomes a sort of icon of power and freedom and resistance in Africa, too.
- [29:12]
F
Absolutely. You know, a lot of North Africa is Arab as well, and so there's a very shared kind of language. And, you know, we'll doubtless come back to this because it's exactly what the French get upset with Nasser about. But, yes, he had links with the Algerian resistance against French colonial rule. Effectively, everybody at that time who was kind of growing up who was interested in Arab independence was really looking to him as a generation of, you know, new Young, exciting, post colonial leadership that seemed to have a kind of self respect and a sort of dignity to it.
- [29:48]
E
So, I mean, you mentioned that he was annoying the French. And one of the main reasons is because he's kind of instrumental in giving a podium to the leader of Algerian resistance, a man called Ben Bella. Now, I don't know much about him. I do know there's an extraordinary story about how he gets to Cairo. Just tell us a little bit about that.
- [30:09]
F
Yes, Ahmed Ben Bella was effectively the leader of the Algerian independence movement and that had risen up against French occupation. And there were very complicated feelings about this in the, you know, the French kind of treated their colonial possessions quite differently. So they defined Algeria as an integral part of France, not a colony that it was, you know, kind of part of metropolitan France and all of this. However, you did have resistance to that from Algerian people themselves. And you can see why. I mean, for instance, instance, just after VE Day 1945, there was a victory parade in Satif in northeastern Algeria. And that turned into a protest against French rule and some rioting and about 100 people were killed in that. But then the French kind of reinforced rule, very, very strongly, actually bombed Muslim villages at that point from the air and forced 5,000 peasants from that region to grovel on their knees in front of a French flag and plead for forgiveness. So, you know, there was certainly a colonial situation that was pretty heavily enforced there. Even if the French were saying, no, no, Algeria is part of metropolitan France and this kind of stuff. Ahmed Ben Bella actually was in the French army. He left it. He joined the Algerian political opposition and the French tried to have him assassinated. They failed to do that. He went into hiding. And he was found, though, in 1950 and was imprisoned. And there was this rather wonderful scene that then happened, which I'm afraid is sort of pretty much directly out of Bugs Bunny, where actually somebody managed in prison to deliver him a loaf of bread with a metal file baked inside. He sawed through the windows.
- [31:45]
E
People actually did that.
- [31:47]
F
Yep.
- [31:47]
E
I mean, it was a thing. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
- [31:49]
F
It actually.
- [31:50]
E
So Ben Bella's out the window.
- [31:51]
F
He's out the window. Very literally fled to Cairo. And, you know, that's where he sort of got to know Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser really welcomed, welcomed those members of the Algerian Liberation Front, the fln, to Egypt and let them kind of foment their ideas.
- [32:08]
A
This is also, I think, if I'm not wrong, the kind of golden age of Cairo cinema, isn't it? Everyone's watching the movies which are Being made in Cairo by very handsome Egyptian film stars.
- [32:18]
F
Very handsome Egyptian film stars, yes. I mean, Egyptian cinema is huge. Egyptian music is huge. There's a huge cultural influence across the whole Arab world and beyond as well. You know, they're massive. So it is important that at this point, Egypt really is kind of becoming the center of sort of a younger, cooler Arab nationalism.
- [32:38]
A
And so, against that background, Nasser chooses to nationalize the Suez Canal Company on July 26, 1956. Tell us about that.
- [32:48]
F
So this is kind of the trigger incident for the Suez crisis. Crisis. Except that I kind of dispute that it is. I think it's a bit of a convenient hook. I think it's really crucial to note that by about March 1956, both Anthony Eden, Prime Minister of the UK, and Guy Mollet, the Prime Minister of France, had decided that Nasser was their number one enemy. And actually, it's the most extraordinary account of a phone call that Eden made to Anthony Nutting, his minister, in March 1956 at a hotel where he said openly on a phone that was not encrypted, I want Nasser murdered.
- [33:23]
A
Why did he want him murdered so badly? Because I seem to remember that Eden was an Arabist, wasn't he? He spoke Arabic, he spoke Persian. He might be thought to be sympathetic to somebody like Nasser, and yet the very opposite is true. He's almost unhinged about him. And people looking on, such as the Americans, regard Eden as going completely bonkers about this man and getting frothy unnecessarily about this figure who the Americans regard as quite a Bernard Post colonial strongman.
- [33:51]
F
To answer that, I'm going to have to go back and explain a bit about Eden, because I think there is something psychological going on here which is quite complicated and quite fascinating. And this is where, you know, as you said in your introduction, these kind of personalities matter enormously. It becomes hugely, hugely significant. So we do need then to understand a bit about Eden. Now, Eden, you know, had been this really major British political figure for decades, and he'd spent most of them as Foreign Secretary or in some kind of role, approximating that understudy to Churchill in many ways. Yeah, understudy. Churchill was regarded as kind of incredibly, actually intelligent and successful in that sort of role. But the first thing to say about that is that being an Arabist did not make you like Nasser. His best friend in the Arab world was Nouria Said, who was the Prime Minister of Iraq, who was a much more conservative Arab, somebody who hated Nasser, representing a much older Arab order, much more friendly to Colonialism on people who'd benefited a lot from colonialism and really made their careers on it.
- [34:51]
A
We should remember that Jordan for example has still got a very strong link with Britain at this point and you've got I think Glub Pasha still around training the, the Jordanian army so the Brits are very much around in the Arab world and associated as you say with this old elite and Nasser comes from a different class, he's got a different ideology he's friends with all the independent post colonial leaders like Nehru and and Eden sees him as a threat completely.
- [35:19]
F
So Eden hated him for that reason already Eden wanted to create something called the Baghdad Pact. He was trying to get all the Arabs to sign up to this and this is Nouria Said in charge and you know Iraq kind of leading the Arab world for you know, really in British interests I mean in the interests of that Arab elite as well for sure but like it's something that's very friendly to Britain. Nasser didn't want any of that he had no interest in joining this he didn't want to get involved in it and this is Eden's big idea so he doesn't like that at all. Wrong sort of Arab, too young, too independent.
- [35:50]
E
Again it's worth reminding ourselves we've met Eden not too long ago during our Yalta series. Now Eden is a man who does not always show the best judgment because during Yalta he was entirely enthralled by Stalin and thought he was a fabulous performer and did very, very well and was scathing about Churchill. Some of the most damning accounts of Churchill's behavior and how much he drank and what he was like and they come from eternal they either come directly from Eden's writing or briefings from Eden where he describes Churchill as being sort of a drunken sot.
- [36:19]
F
I mean not inaccurately to be fair.
- [36:22]
A
Champagne in the bath of breakfast.
- [36:24]
E
Yes, true. Also just about Eden is that to the world, you know, if you know the internal workings, you know that he can be quite a bitchy operator and takes things deeply personally and is very personal about things but to the outside world you have the demeanour of the quintessential gentleman. He's softly spoken, he has the nicest cuticles, he's very well mannered got this sort of sweep of hair that sort of makes him good looking and I.
- [36:50]
F
Think that's quite crucial to bear in mind because this is a very personal break between Eden and Nasser and particularly on Eden's side. But let me just talk a bit about the relationship with Churchill because that's also really important here. Churchill had kept Eden waiting to be Prime Minister for years. Some people remember the sort of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown denounce.
- [37:06]
A
It is exactly that. I was just about to say it's Gordon Brown to Tony and all those tensions.
- [37:12]
F
It's sort of. Except it's more complicated because Eden had also had a, you know, pretty bad marriage and a breakup and had remarried. And his second wife, who was 23 years younger than him, was Churchill's niece, Clarissa Spencer Churchill. So there's also a very, very personal connection. But these two men did not get.
- [37:28]
A
On at all and got on worse and worse as time rolled on, worse and worse.
- [37:32]
F
I mean, Jock Colville, who was Churchill's private scene secretary, described Churchill's attitude to Eden as one of cold sadism. Really disliked him. He used to tease him constantly. Eden's health was quite bad. His physical and mental health were quite fragile. And he would do things like sort of, you know, sometimes pass out at parties and things like this. And Churchill would just tease him about that all the time and say how terrible he looked and how ill he was and how he wasn't like a proper man and all of this. He was really cruel to him. So, you know, you do have Eden. Yes, at Yalta, kind of, you know, writing these horrible things about Churchill. You must also remember that Churchill was bullying Eden constantly. So really their relationship is terribly fractious, you know, so even by the point, he actually gets to be Prime Minister in, you know, in 1955, pretty worn out. He's in a bad state. He's not in great physical or mental health. And also things are going quite wrong in Britain at that point. You know, the balance of payments is unbalanced, there's austerity. It's very unpopular. Again, we might recognize some of these historical themes, themes, but it is not going well. He takes over from Churchill, he's not popular and things aren't going well. He wants to do his Baghdad Pact, try and kind of have this big hit. It's not working. Why isn't it working? Gamal Abdel Nasser is refusing to join it. So they meet once and it's in February 1955. So a little before Eden became Prime Minister is in Cairo and Eden was there with his young wife, Clarissa, and they had this dinner party and it was went horribly, horribly wrong. And I think there's something quite crucial happening here that Nasser thought Eden was trying to impress Clarissa, this young wife. And I think there you have to think a bit about the fact that Eden had been, you know, supposedly this very good looking man and all of this, but much older than Nassir and losing his powers. Nassir is there, total stone cold hottie. Absolutely gorgeous, very imposing. What do you think is happening here?
- [39:26]
E
What do you think?
- [39:27]
F
I mean, honestly, something is going on here.
- [39:31]
A
Of course, if I'm not wrong, NASA has just bulldozed the British Ambassador's garden, hasn't he? Because the British Ambassador used to have a garden which went down to The Nile and NASA's just run a motorway through the middle of it.
- [39:44]
F
I mean, so there's all sorts going on, right, and it's too far anyway at this party. So Eden kind of came in and launched into this, you know, greeted Nasser in Arabic, you know, which sort of astonished him, and then started rolling into this monologue on, you know, the Quran, Arabic poetry, the nobility of the desert Bedouin, all of this stuff which is kind of baffled Nasser as he's sitting there listening to this rather patronizing screed on Arabs.
- [40:08]
E
Yes, I know, as a.
- [40:09]
F
Yes, thanks. Yeah, super interesting, thanks.
- [40:13]
E
Glad you told me. Yes.
- [40:14]
F
And you know, and then Eden tried to sort of, you know, moved on from, from this sort of romantic orientalism into Egypt's defense arrangements and said that he thought Nasser, that he should join the Baghdad Pact, that he should get involved in all of this. It's not a crime. And Nasser said, well, it is actually. I hate it. And then Eden said, why won't you align with my nice friend Nouria said, and the Hashemite family and these people? And Nasser said, well, you know, look, we want Arab unity. We don't want to be dependent on Western powers on this sort of colonialism. We want actually our own sort of arrangement. You've got British Foreign Office observers there at the time. Ralph Murray, who's from the Foreign Office, was watching this happen and he said, you know, it was this very insensitive lecture that Eden gave NASA about what his defense arrangements should be. And he said it produced rather a bad effect on Nasser, who didn't like being lectured. And NASA said he felt that Eden was talking to him like a junior official who couldn't be expected to understand international politics. And I think we have to understand that this meeting was a complete disaster and that afterwards that seems to have been the beginning of when Eden was on his slide deciding that NASA was the source of all of his problems.
- [41:22]
E
Well, look, you know, as they're clearing away the plates from the most fractious dinner party of all time, we're going to stop here. Join us for the next episode where we continue this story. And actually those deep seated insecurities, stroke dislikes and human interactions lead into something that is far more catastrophic for the region. If you can't wait, you know you don't have to. All you do is you join our club. It's empirepod uk.com, empirepoduk.com you get the entire lot whenever you like it. So you'll have wall to wall. Brilliant. Alex von Tunsleven. And this, this serious story. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.
- [42:01]
A
And goodbye from me, William Drim.
- [42:09]
E
Psst.
- [42:09]
H
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