Andrew Roberts: Suez ... The 'betrayal' of Eden
The modern-day analogy of a prime minister called Anthony committing British troops in the Middle Eastern theatre in the face of much domestic opposition is too obvious to be laboured, although it is noticeable that Tony Blair seems to have learnt from Churchill's dictum: "We must never get out of step with the Americans - never."
If only Eden had paid more attention to the sensibilities of the Eisenhower administration as it faced the 1956 presidential elections, much might have gone differently.
Certainly Eisenhower himself years later admitted that not supporting Eden over Suez had been his greatest foreign policy mistake.
The Left have long held Suez was "no end of a lesson", arguing that the adventure proved Britain could not act without the imprimatur of the United Nations any longer, and that Anthony Eden fell as a result of his unhinged demand for unilateral - or bilateral with France - action against Nasser's perfectly justified demand for an asset that was built on the sweat of the Egyptian peasantry.
There is another version. This one puts British national interest priority over high-minded liberal internationalism.
Its heroes are not the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, First Sea Lord Lord Mountbatten and Liberal Lady Violet Bonham Carter - who opposed the Anglo-French "police action" - but the right-wing Tory MPs Julian Amery, Captain Charles Waterhouse and Fitzroy Maclean, who supported it.
The revisionist view holds that Eden was absolutely right to resist the unilateral and practical confiscation of Britain's greatest single overseas asset, that had been bought in hard currency by Benjamin Disraeli in 1875.
On the eve of victory, just as General Hugh Stockwell telegraphed Downing Street to say that within 48 hours the entire Canal Zone would be in British hands, Eden was stabbed in the back by a cabal of unscrupulous Cabinet colleagues, short-sighted allies and a small and unrepresentative group of Tory liberal internationalists.
It is undoubtedly true that Suez tragically proved that Britain was no longer a Great Power, but this was their fault, not Eden's.
The cabal - by threats and falsehoods and leaking - forced Eden to call a ceasefire only days before Stockwell's objectives of Ismailya and the town of Suez were attained....
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If only Eden had paid more attention to the sensibilities of the Eisenhower administration as it faced the 1956 presidential elections, much might have gone differently.
Certainly Eisenhower himself years later admitted that not supporting Eden over Suez had been his greatest foreign policy mistake.
The Left have long held Suez was "no end of a lesson", arguing that the adventure proved Britain could not act without the imprimatur of the United Nations any longer, and that Anthony Eden fell as a result of his unhinged demand for unilateral - or bilateral with France - action against Nasser's perfectly justified demand for an asset that was built on the sweat of the Egyptian peasantry.
There is another version. This one puts British national interest priority over high-minded liberal internationalism.
Its heroes are not the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, First Sea Lord Lord Mountbatten and Liberal Lady Violet Bonham Carter - who opposed the Anglo-French "police action" - but the right-wing Tory MPs Julian Amery, Captain Charles Waterhouse and Fitzroy Maclean, who supported it.
The revisionist view holds that Eden was absolutely right to resist the unilateral and practical confiscation of Britain's greatest single overseas asset, that had been bought in hard currency by Benjamin Disraeli in 1875.
On the eve of victory, just as General Hugh Stockwell telegraphed Downing Street to say that within 48 hours the entire Canal Zone would be in British hands, Eden was stabbed in the back by a cabal of unscrupulous Cabinet colleagues, short-sighted allies and a small and unrepresentative group of Tory liberal internationalists.
It is undoubtedly true that Suez tragically proved that Britain was no longer a Great Power, but this was their fault, not Eden's.
The cabal - by threats and falsehoods and leaking - forced Eden to call a ceasefire only days before Stockwell's objectives of Ismailya and the town of Suez were attained....