Suez Splits Britain

...And the London Times, which has throughout provided a faithful echo of every shifting mood in Government policy, quoted Disraeli's castigation of those "cosmopolitan critics, men who are friends of every country save their own"—a phrase which oddly anticipates the jargon of contemporary Stalinism...

...Hear...

...Incidentally, this was the first occasion since Hitler that the Times had referred to a foreign statesman without a complimentary prefix...

...It is certain that the Conservative party conference next month will see a revival of the "Eden must go" movement which was so noisy earlier in the year...

...The third great lesson of Suez is that, whether morally good or bad...

...Though Eden now faces appalling difficulties in climbing down without a disastrous loss of prestige, the lesson will be worth its price if it is now applied in every field of British policy...

...There will, of course, be angry bellowing from the dinosaurs of the extreme Right for years to come...

...And by publicly setting as his minimum aim the destruction of Nasser's regime, he has made it impossible to negotiate any compromise whatever without a humiliating loss of prestige...

...Not only the Labor and Liberal oppositions, and the press which habitually supports them, but nearly all the serious non-party newspapers have kept their heads throughout...

...The self-appointed "realists" will complain that international law is an irrelevant fiction...

...The reaction of Iraq, Libya and Jordan has proved finally that if a Western country attempts to exert illegitimate pressure on an Arab country the sense of Arab solidarity will override all other interests, emotions and obligations...

...while the Labor MPs took up the challenge by shouting "Hear...

...Such lucubrations would provide no more than an intriguing gloss on British social history were it not that the attitude they express seems to have played a formative role in British foreign police throughout the Suez crisis...

...Moreover, in Asia, the Middle East and Africa national feeling is immensely fortified by a sense of international solidarity among the excolonial peoples...

...But experience is...

...And of course Britain, as a country whose responsibilities in the world greatly exceed her physical power, has a greater national interest in establishing international law than many other countries...

...By now, the Times had lost its first fine careless rapture, and preferred to veil its meaning in the threadbare rhetoric of a vulgar jingoism...

...But they are passionately divided on what constitutes greatness in the second half of the 20th century...

...At the start of the crisis...

...The\ still want Britain great...

...whose personal declaration that he could not approve the use of force without prior reference to the Security Council compelled Eden to make the one concession he has so far offered to his domestic critics...

...Even more interesting was a further Times editorial on August 27 entitled "Escapers' Club...

...But if he does go, who will succeed him...

...The first instinct last weekend was to take the strongest action to insure that the canal was in proper hands, and that instinct was right...

...Moreover, a number of hack-bench Conservatives spoke up for sanity in the debate itself—notably the retired Attorney General, Sir Lionel Heald...

...In the first Suez debate on August 2, almost every Conservative speaker at some stage invoked the name of Benjamin Disraeli...

...on their own account...

...The Government benches responded to a man with a savage chanting of "Hear...

...Eden's dogged refusal to withdraw the threat of aggression ruined his case, just as his choice of France rather than India or America as his closest working partner weakened his hand...

...There is a close parallel here with the educational process to which America has been submitted under a Republican administration over Korea, Indo-China and Geneva...

...The episode summed up what has been the most remarkable feature of the whole Suez dispute in Britain...

...For at least a minute, he was unable to continue...

...On August 1, the Times printed an editorial entitled "A Hinge of History," which included the following memorable passages: "Quibbling over whether or not [Nasser] was 'legally entitled' to make the grab will delight the finicky and comfort the faint-hearted, but entirely misses the real issues...

...national feeling is the most important single reality in world politics...

...Britain had both a strong case and a strong hand to play against Nasser...

...President of the International Court, made a most impressive statement of the new doctrine when the House of Lords debated Suez on September 12...

...And the Labor party may well feel, like the Democrats in the United States, that it would do a better job of implementing a policy it has always supported than the reluctant last-minute converts on the other side, who will remain under guerrilla fire from their own extremists...

...It seems incredible that the British Government imagined that its Arab allies in the Middle East would support it in a policy of force against Egypt...

...It is tragic that the British Conservatives should have had to learn these basic facts of life by stubbornly persisting in a policy which attempted to deny them...

...In fact, when history comes to be written the Suez crisis may well be seen as "a hinge of history"—but not at all in the sense the Times intended...

...The Economist, the Financial Times, the Roman Catholic Tablet, and even the independent right-wing Spectator have consistently condemned this element in the Government's behavior...

...And the existence of a lunatic fringe of Conservative imperialists has long been known...

...Harold Macmillan, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, is quite as fully committed as Eden himself to the line of imperialist violence, and his mishandling of the economic situation has gravely weakened his standing...

...after all, the most convincing teacher...

...By shaking the foundations of Tory doctrine to the core, the Suez crisis has brought an unexpected fluidity into British politics...

...The real problem is whether a man like Eden, who has committed himself so publicly and unequivocally to the opposite view, can lead his party back to sanity...

...Hut nations do not live by circuses alone...

...The Conservatives' demand for violent action springs from something very deep in their collective subconscious, like their defenses of hanging and corporal punishment...

...Fortunately for Britain's good name, this hysteria has not spread outside the Conservative party...

...He made it quite clear that it was no longer legitimate for a nation to use force for the protection of its national interests unless the threat to its interests arose from actual military aggression by another power...

...Both sides feel that the fundamental issue at stake is nothing less than the status of Britain as a great power...

...If [the London conference] is to meet the bill, it must be speedily summoned, present the clearest of terms to Egypt, and be ready from the start to use force if Nasser answers with a refusal...

...It ended with tho superbly athletic peroration: "Doubtless it is good to have a nourishing tourist trade, to win test matches, and to be regaled by photographs of Miss Diana Dors bring pushed into a swimming pool...

...It has brought Britain face to face with some of the central facts which distinguish the modern world from the world of even one generation ago...

...That the Beaverbrook press would call for war surprised no one...

...Aggressive Tories isolated from broad public opinion SUEZ SPLITS BRITAIN By Denis Healey London Toward the end of his speech in the emergency debate on Suez, Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labor opposition, asked the Conservatives: "Surely it is of some concern to the honorable gentlemen opposite what is the reputation of this country abroad...

...The people, in their silent way, know this belter than the critics...

...It has divided the country more deeply than anything since Munich a parallel which the Conservatives never tire of quoting...

...But the second lesson of Suez is that the reaction of other governments and peoples to a nation's policy is determined to an important degree by their conception of international law and their belief that it is in their national interest to make impossible the unrestricted exercise of national power...

...What has astonished and dismayed non-party observers both inside and outside Britain has been the strength of that section of opinion which sees national greatness in the same terms as the champions of imperial expansion over a century ago...

...The first of these lessons concerns the role which national power may play in the new system of international law which has developed under the United Nations...

...And because a Conservative government holds full power and responsibility for conducting British policy through the crisis, the lessons it teaches are likely to be learned for good...

...Lord McNair...

...Though Malta is now the only secure base Britain has left in the Eastern Mediterranean, it attacked "the mood that urges for the sake of peace and quiet we should be prepared to pour more and more millions into the maw of [Maltese Premier Dom] Mintoff...

...All seems set for a comeback by "Rab" Butler, who has been resting in the background for the last twelve months...

...Hear...

...The irrational element in Eden's attitude on Suez has baffled everyone who admires his previous record as a diplomatist...

...But it was a shock to find the Times brandishing its umbrella on the same barricades...

...Small wonder that many have seen Sir William Haley, editor of the Times, seeking to follow the same path as Shepilov, from press room to Foreign Office...