Suez the tipping point in UK's final retreat from empire

The humiliating abandonment of the Anglo-French invasion of Suez in collusion with Israel 50 years ago marked a turning point in Britain's retreat from empire and ensured that London would never again attempt global military action without first securing the acquiescence of Washington and, if possible, the UN, political veterans of the crisis agree.

Yet it is also common ground that the rift caused within British society and parties by Suez was far sharper than comparable divisions over the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, because the shock was greater and pro-empire sentiment was still strong less than a decade after the loss of "the jewel in the crown" -- India's 1947 independence.

"Those of us who were anti-imperialist were very pleased in 1956. We thought the empire was terrible and that this clash exposed it in a very big way," recalls the future Labour leader Michael Foot, then a campaigning journalist on Tribune who opposed British belligerence from the moment Egyptian president Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez canal on July 26.

The Labour leadership, including Foot's hero, Nye Bevan, who disliked Nasserism, wobbled for some weeks before decisively opposing the policy. Much of the left was still Zionist. But the Conservatives too were divided. In 1956, the future Thatcher Cabinet minister Ian Gilmour, 80 last week, was both proprietor and editor of Tribune's rival, the Spectator. When news of the Anglo-French landings first came through on Nov. 6 the magazine was on deadline, but rushed out an editorial warning of the "terrible indictment" prime minister Anthony Eden, would face if the unjustified "act of aggression" failed.

He did and resigned two months later, following Anthony Nutting and Edward Boyle, junior ministers who had quit the government over the deception -- secret collusion with Israel -- of which even few ministers had been aware. Unsurprisingly, Sir Michael Palliser, then a junior diplomat at the Paris embassy, and later head of the diplomatic service, knew nothing, though the deal had been done at Sevres in the Paris suburbs.

Another future permanent secretary, Sir Michael Quinlan, then a private secretary to Christopher Soames, a junior air minister and son-in-law of the recently retired Winston Churchill, was also largely in the dark. He recalls Soames being used as a conduit to win Churchill's public support -- which never came. Like the senior officers, Soames was "uneasy about the operation," though he knew little, Quinlan recalls, and had a friendly private chat with Boyle about his misgivings.

The policy reverberations of defeat were felt far beyond the Middle East itself. Under Harold Macmillan, Suez's No. 1 hawk-turned-dove, the Conservative party quickly recovered and won the 1959 election, though the imperialist right at Westminster remained unforgiving for years as Britain's African empire was quickly liquidated. Policymakers who had seen themselves inside three interlocking circles -- involving the US, the Commonwealth and Europe -- now started tilting towards Europe.