Family Britain, 1951-1957 (109 page)

Suez was not the only world event this autumn. ‘What has happened in Hungary during these past days has not been a popular uprising against a dictatorial Government,’ declared the
Daily Worker
, organ of the British Communist Party, on 26 October. ‘It has been an organised and planned effort to overthrow by undemocratic and violent means a Government which was in process of carrying through important constructive measures. . .’ Now on 1 November, in a last-minute piece called ‘Through the Smoke of Budapest’ for the forthcoming issue of the
Reasoner
, an impassioned Edward Thompson asserted that the popular uprising in Hungary was part of the whirlwind being reaped by ‘Stalinism’. What of the immediate future, with the Russian troops having apparently backed off? ‘No chapter would be more tragic in international socialist history,’ declared Thompson, ‘if the Hungarian people, who once before lost their revolution to armed reaction, were driven into the arms of the capitalist powers by the crimes of a Communist government and the uncomprehending violence of Soviet armies.’ And Thompson went on to attack the
Daily Worker
, which in its editorial columns ‘has done nothing to express our thoughts or to assert our honour in the past few weeks’. High emotion in Halifax this Thursday was matched by yet higher emotion in Swansea. ‘Even if you wanted Hilly twenty times more than I do, that would not make me any more inclined to let her go,’ Kingsley Amis wrote in a long, stern, entirely unhumorous letter to the priapic Henry Fairlie, in effect telling him to lay off his wife and accusing him of being ‘selfish and ruthless by nature’ as well as ‘excitable to the point of instability’.4

Friday morning (2 November) brought predictable Suez reactions – a letter from Bertrand Russell in the
Manchester Guardian
declaring that ‘the criminal lunacy of the British and French Governments’ action fills me with deep shame for my country’, a lengthy article by Michael Foot in
Tribune
claiming that ‘not since Neville Chamberlain presented Hitler’s terms to the Czechs in 1938 has a powerful Western nation treated a small nation with such brutal contempt’, a
New Statesman
editorial condemning the British government ‘for a crime not merely against Egypt, but against the whole edifice of international law’ – but also less predictable. The
Spectator
had often in its history been a magazine of Tory reaction, but now under the editorship (and proprietorship) of Ian Gilmour it was more liberal and less easy to call. ‘Was the action taken appropriate?’ it now asked, in a leader that also hinted at collusion with the Israelis. ‘And, if so, was it timely? The answer to both questions, it is now clear, is – no.’ The other weekly to come out against Eden was the much-respected
Economist
, which accused him of ‘a strange union of cynicism and hysteria’ that could ‘arouse no confident support in the country’. Everywhere there seemed discord and division. ‘This Suez business is setting men by the ears,’ reflected Kenneth Preston in Keighley, adding that in the staffroom at his grammar school there was ‘a sharp cleavage of opinions’. Virginia Graham had lunch with ‘a gaggle of ladies’, she reported to Joyce Grenfell. ‘Of course we thrashed about like puzzled whales. Most people seem to be shocked & depressed, & even the most pro agree it’s got to be a success. Whatever “it” is.’ Nella Last continued to feel ‘sick at heart’, not to mention ‘baffled & bewildered’, though took some comfort from her acquaintance Mrs Preston quoting to her Mr Preston: ‘If we had given in, we were
done
for.’ In Chingford, Judy Haines knew her mind. ‘The Country is split as to the advisability of our action without permission from United Nations,’ she recorded. ‘I’m all for law.’ Perhaps the most disconcerted person this Friday was the undergraduate Brian Thompson. ‘I joined an anti-war protest march that was forming up outside the Cambridge Labour Club,’ he recalled. ‘An old man tottered out of the premises, reversed his walking stick and struck me a nerve-numbing blow on the arm. “Not a soldier among you,” he shouted, beside himself with rage.’

Arguably, though, the prize for discombobulation went to poor Freddy Grisewood. As usual he was in the chair for the Light Programme’s
Any Questions?
which, this Friday evening, came from the Wilton Carpet Factory in Wiltshire. The panel comprised a couple of MPs, the all-round great-and-the-good Mary Stocks, and Henry Fairlie, presumably still mulling over the Amis missive. ‘Now before we have the first question,’ announced Grisewood, ‘I must point out that the question which very many of our audience have handed in to be discussed cannot be dealt with in this programme because of the 14-day rule.’ This rule, imposed by government, stipulated there should be no discussion on radio or television of any question due to be debated by Parliament in the next 14 days, so this was presumably not a surprise to the panel, which nevertheless reacted angrily. ‘Monstrous’, erupted one of the MPs, ‘hear, hear’, concurred Stocks, ‘absolutely ridiculous’, exclaimed the other MP, and it was left to Fairlie, unable to top that, to assert ‘it seems to me a most nonsensical rule’. Over the next half-hour or so, the panel, inspired by Fairlie, proceeded to lead an increasingly irate Grisewood a merry dance, going to elaborate lengths to discuss the burning issue of the day. ‘We’re all under the illusion that Britain has invaded Egypt,’ said Fairlie. ‘I want to talk about the other invasion which has been ignored, which is that Britain has invaded a country called Ruritania.’ That directly led to the plug being pulled on the broadcast for a few minutes, and on its return Grisewood struggled through to the end as best he could.5

‘RAF ROCK ’N ROLL ’EM ROUND THE CLOCK’ was the
Sketch
’s front-page headline on Saturday the 3rd, surpassing itself, and the report started: ‘The last remnants of Colonel Nasser’s air force lay in smouldering ruins in the desert dust last night. . .’ Three papers in the other camp –
Manchester Guardian
,
News Chronicle
and
Daily Mirror
– all noted bulging postbags running heavily against Eden’s action, though both viewpoints were represented, as in the
Mirror
:

When I heard of the bombing on the news this morning, I said to my husband: ‘We don’t want war. What can we do about it?’ And his reply frightened me. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it. We voted the Government into power and it’s their policy we have to abide by,’ he said.

I’ve never written to a newspaper before, and I have no political affiliations, though I voted Tory last time, but I can remember the horror of the last war. There must be some way of stopping Eden.
(Mrs E.H., Windsor)

Thank heaven at last this country is going to stop being pushed around by all and sundry. Old Eighth Army ‘rats’ welcome the news that we are landing to protect the Suez – despite the cowardly bleats of the Socialists.
(J.M., Barnet, Herts)

Between noon and 3.00 p.m. there was in the Commons what Richard Crossman called ‘another bear-garden’, including ‘boos and catcalls’ for the Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, before the focus switched to Eden’s television and radio broadcast that evening. ‘All my life I have been a man of peace,’ he almost pleadingly insisted, but he was adamant that ‘chaos in the Middle East could permanently lower the standard of life in this country and in Europe, as well as in many poorer countries in the world’, and he continued to call the Anglo-French intervention no more than a ‘police action’. The diarists privately gave their verdicts:

A dishonest but able performance.
(Nicolson)

An odious performance to me but effective.
(Benn)

One of the most plangent appeals I have ever heard to the soapy floating voter and the liberal conscience.
(Crossman)

Sounded tired, understandably, & I thought it could be better.
(Marian Raynham)

Sounded a very tired man.
(Preston)

Not everyone tuned in. ‘It was no use planning to stay up till 10 o’clock to listen to Eden’s speech,’ ruefully noted Last, ‘it would have destroyed any chance of sleep for both of us. . .’ Fairlie, back from the West Country, also almost certainly missed it. ‘Now, of course, things have been diversified by the arrest of Henry for not appearing before the bankruptcy courts,’ related a not entirely displeased Amis next day to Larkin, adding that ‘he spent last night in Brixton’.6

On Sunday morning the most celebrated – and execrated – editorial of the Suez Crisis appeared. The action against Egypt, asserted the
Observer
, ‘endangered the American alliance and Nato, split the Commonwealth, flouted the United Nations, shocked the overwhelming majority of world opinion and dishonoured the name of Britain’, while an accompanying piece on the same page accused Eden’s government of ‘crookedness’ as well as ‘folly’. This made an appropriate appetiser to the main event of the day: a mass ‘Stop the War’ rally in Trafalgar Square, attended by at least 10,000, with many holding aloft ‘LAW NOT WAR!’ banners. The main speaker was Aneurin Bevan, whose beautifully delivered putdown would be a clip deservedly played again and again over the years: ‘If Sir Anthony is sincere in what he says – and he may be – then he is too
stupid
to be Prime Minister.’ After the demo, in the early evening, several thousand surged down Whitehall and headed for ungated Downing Street (where an apprehensive Cabinet was in session), only to be blocked by mounted police. Gaitskell, meanwhile, was rehearsing his 10.00 p.m. broadcast reply to Eden. ‘What he had to say was so compelling,’ noted an admiring Benn in the wings, ‘that all the technicians stood completely silently and listened to every word. What a contrast to their usual lulling and whispering and hurried glances at the sports news from the evening papers.’ In the broadcast itself, Gaitskell stressed the international aspect: ‘We are doing all this alone, except for France: opposed by the world, in defiance of the world. It is not a police action; there is no law behind it. We have taken the law into our own hands.’ Near the end, ill-advisedly, he called on potential Tory rebels to come out and force Eden’s resignation – a call that, with just a few exceptions, served to reinforce Tory tribalism. It also stuck in many people’s gullets that he was adopting such a critical tone only hours before British forces were due to go into battle on enemy territory, not least in the gullets of the troops themselves. ‘Such expressions of fury and disgust and revulsion as I have rarely seen among grown men’ was how Anthony Howard, on one of the troopships steaming towards Port Said, recalled their reaction.7

Over the weekend there had been another, heartbreaking international dimension. ‘SOVIET TANKS CRUSH RESISTANCE’ was the
Manchester Guardian
’s bleak headline on Monday morning, as it became brutally clear that the Russians had taken advantage of the Suez situation to exercise their military might over the Budapest rebels. ‘One feels guilty at one’s impotence – & our
folly
has distracted the attention of the world from this tragedy,’ bitterly reflected Violet Bonham Carter on the Sunday. ‘I cannot forgive it.’ Next day, the
Mirror
had no compunction about making the link. ‘Once British bombs fell on Egypt the fate of Hungary was sealed,’ asserted its leader. ‘The last chance of exerting moral pressure on Russia was lost when Eden defied the United Nations over Suez.’ Almost certainly Khrushchev would have acted as he did anyway, sooner rather than later, but undeniably Suez provided opportune cover. For Edward Thompson and John Saville, putting the final touches to the new issue of the
Reasoner
, there was just time on the Sunday to write an editorial taking account of ‘the tragic news of the attack’:

The intervention of Soviet troops in Hungary must be condemned by all Communists. The working people and students of Budapest were demonstrating against an oppressive regime which gave them no adequate democratic channels for expressing the popular will. The fact that former fascists and those working for the restoration of Capitalism joined the revolutionaries does not alter this central issue. The criminal blunder of unleashing Security Police and Soviet forces against these crowds provoked the mass of the people to take up arms, in the name of independence, liberty and justice, against an oppression that was operated in the name of Communism.

This evening the British Communist Party ran true to form, its executive committee issuing a statement that ‘the Soviet Union, in responding to the appeal made to them to help defend Socialism in Hungary, is also helping to defend peace and the interests of the world working class’. And next morning the
Daily Worker
’s main headline, ‘NEW HUNGARIAN ANTI-FASCIST GOVT IN ACTION’, was matched only by its blithe sub-head: ‘Soviet troops called in to stop White Terror’.8

Elsewhere in the press, on this Monday the 5th that saw British paratroopers landing on Egyptian soil, there was the now usual daily barrage of correspondence, including from Leslie Meek of Wembley. ‘I am firmly convinced,’ he declared in the
Daily Mail
, ‘that before long the majority of people in this country will be saying “Thank God for Eden” – just as we said “Thank God for Churchill” during the last war.’ Eva Faithfull of Reading disagreed. After explaining in the
News Chronicle
how as an Austrian she had ‘lived in Vienna during the whole Nazi regime’ and felt a ‘sense of acute shame at the actions of my own country’, and how she had then moved to England after the war and felt ‘happy and secure’, Marianne’s mother went on: ‘Now, as a grown woman, I am experiencing at the present time the same sense of helpless shame at the actions of our Government’. During the day, Raynham spotted Surbiton graffiti (‘Gaitskell is a Traitor’ scrawled just outside her gate and ‘We want Eden’ across the road), while Kenneth Williams passed a time of rare harmony with Tony Hancock: ‘We talked of Suez – the action of Eden in Egypt – we deplored it.’ This afternoon in the Commons featured the by now customary acrimonious scenes. ‘Has the Prime Minister exchanged congratulations with Mr Khrushchev?’ Healey asked Eden, to loud cheers from Labour MPs, and Bevan, ‘red-faced and bursting with fury’ according to the
Mirror
, ‘banged the despatch box and shouted, “Will the Government stop lying to the House of Commons?”’.9