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Is the view that the Suez Crisis sounded the death knell for the British Empire now thoroughly outdated? (2500 words)

The general consensus among most historians, ranging from Donald Maclean in 1970 to George Peden in 2012, is that the Suez Crisis of 1956, on its own, did not mark the death of the British Empire. Instead, other factors beyond the Suez War, including British economics and international relations, caused a longer term break up of Anglo-colonialism. Brian Lapping presents an argument which contrasts to this consensus, and agrees that Britain’s attack on Egypt marked the death knell for Britain’s Empire. Criticising the previous, consensus based, work of Lord Home and Anthony Lowe; Lapping presents six assertions on why the European powers’ colonial policies, principally Britain’s, came to a close after 1956. These six themes are American anti-colonial pressure, Europe’s ability to fund colonialism, Harold Macmillan’s (Prime Minister 1957-63) policy of the ‘special relationship’, the growth of colonial pressure against the European powers, the development of Gamal Nasser (Egyptian President 1956-1970) as an icon of Arab liberty, and the Soviet Union’s (USSR) movement into the Europeans’ dominion markets. This essay is to evaluate Lapping’s argument, and propose that the consensus case, developed by the majority of historians, is more accurate. The view that the Suez Crisis sounded the death knell for the British Empire is not outdated, but simply inaccurate. The closure of the Suez-Canal Crisis, significant in waking up British politicians to the need for further decolonisation, was part of a longer-term process, spanning between 1945 and the 1970s, in Britain’s termination of its colonial empire. Continued British financial weakness and international pressure, from 1945, marked the true death knell of the British colonial empire.

Lapping is accurate to an extent; the closure of the Suez War did mark a major transition in British colonialism, with a new push for a lager rate of decolonisation. Between 1957 and 1964, ‘eighteen’1 British colonies were granted independence, including Nigeria and Uganda; between 1945 and 1957 the figure had been ‘seven’2. Furthermore, sources present a dramatic movement of political opinion towards decolonisation after the Suez War. Anthony Eden (Prime Minister 1955-57), in December 1956, reflected over ‘what return for instance do we get for our armoured division in Tripoli and Libya?’, and ‘We cannot contemplate keeping an army in Germany’3. The man, who had recently sent British forces to Egypt for the protection of British interests in the Suez Canal, suggested a movement from this previous colonial policy towards a smaller global union. This immediate post-Suez thought continued under the Macmillan administration; government papers of April 1957 present:

1Martin Lynn, The British Empire in the 1950s: Retreat or Revival? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p.48 2 William McIntyre, British Decolonisation, 1946-1997: When, Why and How did the British Empire Fall (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), pp.1-176. 3 Eden on the Lessons of Suez (December 1956), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), pp. 151-152

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‘the Government are satisfied that Britain could discharge her overseas responsibilities and make an effective contribution to the defence of the free world with armed forces much small than at the present…’4.

Macmillan is, further, recorded telling the South African Parliament in 1960 that a ‘wind of change is blowing through {Africa} the Continent’5; ‘We must accept it as a fact’6, that Britain’s colonies have awakened to their national consciousness7. Evidence shows that Britain’s military spending was organised to drop ‘from 10 per cent of Gross National Product’8(GNP), the total value of production and services by a single nation’s residents, in a single year in 1957 to 7 per cent in 1960’9. A drop in military spending by a nation that needed a large combatant force for control over its outposts, presents a government that no longer found it desirable, or efficient, to have command over vast distant lands. The governments of the late-1950s and into the 1960s show a clear plan to make an extensive shift forwards in the decolonisation process. The Suez Crisis re-energized and strengthened the British decolonisation programme.

Nonetheless, Lapping’s argument is flawed. His second assertion argues that Nasser became an example for other Middle-Eastern and African colonies on how to break from the yoke of European imperialism. With Egypt’s 1956 success in keeping the colonial powers of France and Britain at bay, it gave nationalistic leaders the confidence to try the same. As a result, the colonial powers influence over their colonies weakened.10 This impression is not entirely accurate, however. Britain, though weakened in global influence, did manage to keep a colonial empire of sorts together for nearly twenty-years after Suez. Britain paid and led the Trucial Oman Scouts (soldiers for keeping order in the Persian Gulf Sheikhdoms), and kept military basis in Bahrain, Sharjah, and Oman into the 1960s. Likewise, Britain only dismantled its Far-East Empire in the 1970s, with Labour’s policy to accelerate British military withdrawals East of Suez. Even with termination of the British colonial empire, an empire of sorts survived beyond the 1970s, with the continued use of the Commonwealth. As Gordon Martel indicates, observance of the British Empire’s survival should not solely be of its vast colonies11; instead it should be noted that there was a transition in Britain’s empire to a more autonomous, and economic based, relationship. Britain in 2014, with Elizabeth II as head, keeps its influent position over global economics; having its say over an organisation which in 2013 provided ‘15 per cent’12 of the world’s GNP, and includes nations from around the globe.

As well as failing to acknowledge the British Empire’s long-term survival, Lapping fails to appreciate longstanding factors that contributed to decolonisation, impacting much earlier than 1956. Lapping asserts that after the decolonisation of the late-1940s, such as in India and Palestine, the European

4‘The Sandys White Paper’ (April 1957), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), pp. 154-155. 5 ‘Speech by the Harold Macmillan to the South African Parliament’ (3 February 1960), quoted in Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), p159. 6 ‘Macmillan to South African Parliament’, p159. 7 ‘Macmillan to South African Parliament’, p159. 8 Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), p.1569 Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman, The Suez p.15610 Brian Lapping, ‘Did Suez Hasten The End Of Empire?’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 1, no. 2 (1987), pp. 32-33.11 Gordon Martel, ‘Decolonisation after Suez: Retreat or Rationalisation?’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 46, no.3 (2000), p.416. 12 ‘The role and future of the commonwealth’, Publication and records, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmfaff/writev/commonwealth/com05.htm; consulted 21 March 2014.

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powers, particularly the British, showed no inclination to quit their remaining colonies.13 This essay perceives this view as inaccurate. Britain was in support of decolonisation of its empire. A letter from a treasury official to a member of the Colonial Office, individuals therefore who would have been aware of Winston Churchill’s colonial policy, records that ‘even if the money were forthcoming, there are very few winners in the Colonial Empire’14. This is supported by a 1950 Colonial Office International Department Paper, the official colonial policy of Churchill’s Britain, which reports that:

‘We believe that when our colonies achieve self-government, if not all, will choose to follow the recent example of Ceylon and remain in the Commonwealth’15.

Additionally, Oliver Lyttelton, Colonial Secretary (1951-1954), informed the House of Commons that Churchill’s government would help ‘the Colonial territories to attain self-government within the British Commonwealth.’16 The early-1950s Conservative governments did not ignore the issue of decolonization of the British Empire, instead were ready and open to continue its process. In Addition, Lapping is inaccurate to place so much emphasis singularly on the Suez Crisis. This essay, matching to historians such as John Darwin and R.F Holland, instead argues that the end of World War Two was the true death knell of the British Empire. American pressure and the tragic British economy slowly killed imperialism over the next thirty years. These themes are discussed in the next two sections of this essay.

The United States’ anti-colonial pressure from 1945, through the fear of financial strain for colonial nations, marked the death knell of the British colonial empire. As Peden argues, the Suez Crisis merely confirmed Britain’s dependence on America.17The United Kingdom finished World War Two in a financially feeble state; in 1946 America was required to lend Britain ‘$3.5 billion’18 to prevent bankruptcy. Financial support from The White House to Downing Street continued through the decades with Marshall Aid (1948-50), Defence Aid (1951-57), and American support for the stability of the pound, famously in 1966. Britain, due to this large economic dependency to anti-colonial America, was principally a political ‘stooge’ of the United States, rather than an independent power. The United States is presented as anti-imperialist with the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957, ‘our desire is a world environment of freedom, not servitude…’,19 a principle that Britain and France contrasted to at the time. Further evidence comes from Denis Healey (Defence Secretary 1964-1970), an individual who would have been knowledgeable of foreign policies. Healey recorded that America, since the 1940s, had tried to get Britain out of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.20 The subordinate

13 Brian Lapping, ‘Did Suez’, pp. 31-33.14 British Treasury, Treasury Disenchantment with Colonial Development (1952), quoted in Nicholas J. White, Decolonisation: The British Experience since 1945 (Pearson, 1999), p. 111.15 The Official Aim of British Colonial Policy (May 1950), quoted in Nicholas J.White, Decolonisation: The British Experience since 1945 (Pearson, 1999), p.109. 16 William McIntyre, British Decolonisation, 1946-1997: When, Why and How did the British Empire Fall (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), p.38.17 G. C Peden, ‘Suez and Britain’s decline as a world power’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 55, no. 4 (2012), p.1073.18 Judith M Brown, The Oxford history of the British Empire: Volume IV; The Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2001) , p.332 .19 ‘The Eisenhower Doctrine’ (5 January 1957), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), p.157.20 Tingvold Tore Peterson, ‘Crossing the Rubicon? Britain’s withdrawal from the Middle East, 1964-1968: A Bibliographical Review’, The International History Review, Vo.22, no. 2 (2000), p.339.

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European empires, for the most part, remained alive at the whim of American inclination. This long-term servitude of Britain to America is presented in the successful 1953 Operation Ajax; the plan of Anglo-American intelligence services to influence Iranian politics by having Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iranian Prime Minister 1952-1953) dismissed from office. Nonetheless, when the British wished to undertake similar tactics with Nasser in 1956, the United States dismissed British imperialistic requirements; Dwight Eisenhower advised Eden that diplomatic measures should be undertaken before any action took place.21 When Europe dismissed American influence, as did the Dutch when trying to keep their Far-East Empire22, but more importantly with Eden in Egypt, America was able to regain control with the contraction of financial support. The large strain on the British economy, due to the American response to Suez, caused a net loss to British reserves of the sum of ‘$300 million’23by December 1956. Britain, at the same time, was forced to remove its troops from Egypt. There is significance; shown perfectly in 1956’s Punch, that Britain can be treated as a ‘naughty school child’24, forced to retreat from Egyptian territory. Punch analogized this with Britain being forced to write lines for the American influenced United Nations. At the same time as Britain’s retreat from Egypt, the USSR was able to keep hold of its empire through the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution. The difference between Britain’s and the USSR’s position can easily be seen in the second’s independence from the United States. Though not being immediately killed off, the large loss of British independence in regards to foreign policy was the death knell of Anglo-colonialism. The view that the Suez Crisis sounded the death knell for the British Empire is not outdated but thoroughly wrong. The Suez Crisis was simply part of long term themes from 1945, including British dependence to anti-colonial America, which truly marked the true death of the British colonial empire.

So far this essay has evaluated and largely rejected the argument of Lapping, that the Suez Crisis, exclusively, sounded the death knell of the British colonial empire. Instead, this essay proposes that American anti-colonial pressure from 1945, through financial power, marked the true death knell of empire. From this point, this essay is to propose the second long-term theme of British imperialism’s end: Downing Street’s longstanding economic failure post-1945. Contrasting somewhat to Judith Brown’s point25, there seems three focal periods of British decolonisation: The Attlee government, the Macmillan government and conclusion with the 1964-1976 governments. It is significant that at all these points Britain faced considerable economic hardship. The first was marked with American economic salvation, and a drop in British GNP to one-fifth of the United States’. The second was marked with the memory of Britain’s 1956 economic suffering due to America; contemporary belief was that about ‘$300 million26 had been lost, along with a decrease in the value of the pound. The third is marked with Britain’s dip to ‘twelfth’27 in global Gross Domestic Production (value of the total

21 ‘Eisenhower warns Eden against use of force’ (31 July 1956), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), pp.65-66.22 Judith M Brown, The Oxford history of the British Empire, p.332. 23 Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman, The Suez, p.14424 ‘Punch’s view of the UN and the Suez Crisis’ (November, 1956), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), p. 12425 Judith M Brown, The Oxford, p.33026‘Macmillan Reveals the Economic Position to the Cabinet’ (20 November 1956), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), P.140. 27 David Sanders, Losing an Empire, Finding a Role: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1990), p. 117.

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goods and services produced, and kept, by a single nation, in a single year); in 1950 Britain had ranked ‘seventh’28. Britain’s 1964 overall deficit also reached ‘£400 million per annum; the deficits for 1955-1960 had reached a maximum of £250 million’29. Moreover, in documents relating to the after-effects on Britain from Suez there is little reference to British foreign relations or prestige. Instead, the dominant theme is economic based. Eden in December 1956 wrote that ‘we must ensure our financial and economic independence’30; continuously suggesting ways that Britain could save money31. Macmillan also referred to the priority of financial stability in his Need for Economics speech32, and Denis Healey (Secretary for State 1964-1970) is noted in his determination to reduce the defence ‘budget to below £1, 850 million33. This would require cutting between ‘£250 million and £400 million by halving our expenditure East of Suez’34. Evidently there is a powerful link between Britain’s continued and intensified economic deterioration with the continuation and intensification of its decolonisation programme. The Suez Crisis, on its own, did not mark the death knell of the British colonial empire. Instead, British economic decline, with American anti-colonial pressure between 1945 and the 1970s marked the death knell of the colonial empire.

This essay has examined whether the historiographical view, presented by historians such as Lapping, that the Suez Crisis marked the death knell for the British Empire is valid and relevant. This essay’s argument was set in three sections. The first examined the significance of the Suez Crisis, and argued that Lapping is inaccurate to place so much emphasis on this single event. The British colonial empire survived well beyond Suez, lasting for almost twenty-years after Britain’s retreat from Egypt. Lapping fails to place enough recognition to the decolonization process pre-1956, instead making assumptions solely on the period around Macmillan’s time in office. Lapping’s argument is not outdated, but inaccurate; most historians, examples being Darwin and David Sanders, writing at similar periods, were part of a consensus that Britain’s colonial adventure was a journey beyond 1956. The Suez War’s consequences for British decolonisation were merely part of long-term themes. The end of World War Two marked the true death knell of the British colonial empire. Britain’s submission to anti-colonial America, along with the continuation and intensification of financial problems, meant the near impossibility of durable occupation of copious foreign territories by British forces. The mid-1970s marked the culmination of these problems, and the British decision to finally complete its decolonization journey. Nonetheless, an empire of economics, along with greater emancipation of nations, through the Commonwealth, has survived to the present.

28 David Sanders, Losing an, p. 117.29 Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman, The Suez, p.161.30 ‘Eden on the Lessons of Suez’, p.151.31 ‘Eden on the Lessons of Suez’, p.151.32 Macmillan Reveals the Economic Position to the Cabinet (20 November 1956), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), p153. 33 ‘The Labour Government and Defence Commitments’ (22 October 1966), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997), p. 162. 34 ‘The Labour Government and Defence Commitments’, p.162.

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Bibliography:

Primary Sources:

Treasury Disenchantment with Colonial Development (1952), quoted in Nicholas J. White, Decolonisation: The British Experience since 1945 (Pearson, 1999).

Eden to Eisenhower (November 1956), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997).

Eden on the Lessons of Suez (December 1956), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997).

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Punch’s view of the UN and the Suez Crisis (November, 1956), quoted in Anthony Gorst, The Suez Crisis (Routledge, 1997).

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Secondary Sources:

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