Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (52 page)

However, whenever British and American interests coincided, Eisenhower was happy to collude with Churchill’s efforts to shore up Britain’s power. This was the case in Iran, where attempts to reach a negotiated settlement had failed. The threat of a coup by the Iranian Communist Party, which was lending its support to Mossadegh, helped convince Washington that it was necessary to strike first. Eden, as Foreign Secretary, was cautious. In June 1953 he flew to Boston for medical treatment. Churchill used his absence to approve Anglo-American plans to remove Mossadegh with the cooperation of the Shah. On the 23rd Churchill suffered a massive stroke, which took him out of action for several weeks. His illness was kept secret from the public. The Iranian coup which brought down Mossadegh went ahead in August. Initially, things went wrong and the Shah briefly fled. However, the CIA orchestrated street protests that ended with the Shah’s return and with Mossadegh in jail.
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Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore and distant relation of Franklin) was the plot’s CIA mastermind. After it was over, he visited Churchill at Downing Street where he found him in bed, propped up by pillows. As he related the tale of the coup, the Prime Minister sometimes listened attentively and at others nodded off, ‘consumed alternately by curiosity and by sleepiness’. ‘Young man,’ he said when the story was over, ‘if I had been but a few years younger, I would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture!’
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The problem of Egypt proved more difficult. In 1952 King Farouk was forced to abdicate following a nationalist coup. General Mohammed Neguib and Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser were key figures in the regime that replaced him; in due course Nasser dispensed with his rival. Through all this the British, who still had many troops in the Canal Zone, remained eager to negotiate a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty to secure their future military presence in the region. The Egyptians had little incentive to negotiate, as the existing treaty was due to expire in 1956, at which point they could hope to see the back of the troops. The Americans were not prepared to do much to help the British, as they did not want to risk driving Egypt into the Soviet camp. Eden’s efforts to strike a deal could therefore only be an exercise in saving face: it was not realistic to think that the soldiers could remain. In spite of this, Churchill talked tough, although he cleverly modulated his message. In 1953 Leo Amery, still watching affairs from the sidelines, described how ‘Winston [. . .] made a splendid speech on Monday which entirely captured the opposition by his suggestion of discussions with Russia and a new [Treaty of] Locarno, and the Right by being firm with Neguib.’
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To his fellow Commonwealth Prime Ministers Churchill insisted that Britain’s interest in the Near East was ‘No case of so-called imperialism.’ Britain was in Egypt ‘for international reasons’, in order to protect an international waterway and to maintain a base important to NATO.
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Churchill’s ‘no surrender’ attitude may have been a good parmentary tactic but, in general, it did not make Eden’s job any easier. It was already hard enough. Churchill’s troubled relationship with his Foreign Secretary was rotting the government from within. Having anointed Eden as his successor during World War II, he stubbornly refused to relinquish the throne. At times he could be positively malicious about this. An eminent doctor who was lunching with him told him, after watching him eat and drink, that he had the glands of a man of forty: ‘Whereupon Winston at once said, “Pass the glad tidings on to Anthony!” ’
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His diehardism on Egypt was certainly the product of conviction. (As a parliamentary candidate in 1899 he had declared that England would ‘leave Egypt when the pyramids fell down, and not before’.)
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But it was also a very effective way of needling Eden. On one occasion – when Eden was not present – he went into ‘a rage against A.E., speaking of “appeasement” and saying he never knew before that Munich was situated on the Nile’. Churchill seemed to regard the quest for agreement as a sign of weakness and even to positively want the talks to break down.
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He was particularly resistant to including in any agreement the termination of joint Anglo-Egyptian rule of the Sudan – the legacy of Kitchener’s River War campaign in which he had fought. The majority of the Cabinet was against him, and he knuckled under, although, as the negotiations progressed, he continued to tell colleagues: ‘I care far more about Sudan (a great & living trust) than about [the] Canal Zone.’
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By conceding the principle of Sudanese independence – which came in 1956 – the Egyptians were able to eliminate the vestiges of British control there.

Churchill’s attitudes had much in common with the so-called Suez Group of Tory backbenchers. Much influenced by the experience of the Abadan crisis, they demanded a halt to imperial retreat.
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Prominent amongst them was Julian Amery, who had been elected in 1950. ‘I thought the base in Suez was the key to our position in the Middle East and in Africa’, he recalled. ‘And I made a rather bitter attack on a speech Eden had made foreshadowing withdrawal.’ The next morning Amery received a phone call from No. 10, but he did not get the ‘rocket’ he anticipated. Instead the Prime Minister’s secretary told him, ‘Mr Churchill asked me to let you know that he’s read your speech and he is very impressed by it!’ Moreover, Amery remembered, in ‘subsequent conversations in the House, on three or four occasions, when I was leading this campaign against the withdrawal from the base, he would say, “Keep it up! I agree!” ’
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There were, of course, limits to how far Churchill could go in undermining his own government’s policy. He muttered about acting as Foreign Secretary himself should Eden resign, but he could hardly have withstood such a calamity. So he unenthusiastically accepted Eden’s line. Finally, an agreement between Britain and Egypt was reached whereby the troops would be evacuated by June 1956, but they would be allowed to return in the event of war. Civilian technicians would stay for seven years after the withdrawal to keep the base facilities in good order.
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It must have been a bitter moment for Churchill.
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When a meeting of backbenchers discussed the deal, and started to become truculent, the government Chief Whip found the Prime Minister and told him, ‘I think you ought to go up. Our side is in trouble!’ With a grunt, Churchill replied, ‘I’m not sure I am on our side!’ But he did go and, reluctantly backing Eden, carried the meeting.
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‘You cannot maintain prestige with folly’, he told the would-be rebels.
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When the agreement was announced in the Commons in July 1954, Churchill ‘sat glum and with bowed head’. Labour MPs taunted him with cries of ‘No scuttling!’ When Attlee pointedly asked him if the agreement had his consent, he rose slowly, looking hurt, and the House fell quiet. He opened his arms wide and said, ‘I am convinced that it is absolutely necessary.’
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In debate the next day he declared that the claim that he had encouraged the Suez Group ‘under the table’ was ‘an absolute untruth’. He rationalized his change of heart by claiming that the advent of the H-bomb had rendered the Suez Canal Base obsolescent.
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That was not a terribly convincing argument. However, his ultimate willingness to bite the bullet of withdrawal forms a reminder of the pragmatism that his wilder outbursts often obscured.

V

His relations with Commonwealth leaders similarly demonstrated his ability to adjust to new realities. He continued to develop the good relationship with Nehru that he had begun to establish in Opposition after 1947. ‘I get on very well with him’, he told Lord Moran. ‘I tell him he has a great role to play as the leader of Free Asia against Communism.’ Moran asked how Nehru reacted to this. After all, he was to be a key figure in the Non-Aligned Movement of countries that were determined not to take a side in the Cold War. ‘He has a feeling that the Communists are against him, and that’, Churchill explained with a smile, ‘is apt to change people’s opinions.’
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In fact Nehru’s appreciation of Churchill was based in part on his sense that, as a Cold Warrior, he was by no means completely hard-line.

Perhaps less surprisingly, now that the tensions of the war period were past, Churchill achieved an amicable bond with Robert Menzies. The thaw had set in with a 1948 visit to Chartwell at which the Australian had been granted a preview of the ‘three circles’ concept. Although Menzies thought that Churchill really ought to retire, he made sure to cultivate the link of friendship.
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He contributed an essay on ‘Churchill and the Commonwealth’ to a volume published to celebrate the great man’s eightieth birthday in 1954. Noting that the Prime Minister had not been identified with ‘great Empire economic policies’ – Churchill was ‘much too European for that’ – Menzies offered a slightly backhanded tribute to his wartime imperial rhetoric. ‘The great Imperialists in half a dozen countries had made millions think [of] the Empire’, he wrote; ‘it was left to Winston, the Englishman and European, to make scores of millions feel it with passion and will.’
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Churchill also retained his fondness for Canada, which he visited in 1952 and again in 1954. He was, however, deeply upset by the decision that the Canadian navy should abandon the playing of ‘Rule Britannia’. He told Lester Pearson, the country’s minister for external affairs, of his bitter disappointment and, to drive the point home, ‘recited all the verses of “Rule Britannia”, and, inspired by this, went on to recite several Harrow patriotic songs he had learned sixty years ago’.
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On his visits, the Canadian authorities tactfully ensured that the anthem was played for him on every possible occasion.

Churchill even got on well with Eamon De Valera on the one occasion that he met him. At the close of World War II, the two men had clashed over the airwaves. In his May 1945 victory broadcast Churchill had lambasted Ireland’s decision to stay out of the war, and spoke of how Britain, instead of seizing the ports, had restrainedly ‘left the De Valera government to frolic’ with German and Japanese representatives in Dublin.
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In response De Valera had offered a dignified vindication of Irish neutrality. Their September 1953 encounter, when the Taoiseach visited London, was surprisingly cordial, although they did not make any great diplomatic breakthrough. When De Valera raised the question of Irish unification, which in theory Churchill still favoured, the latter pointed out the obstacle posed by Ulster and Conservative Party opinion. To the request for the return of the bones of the Irish patriot Sir Roger Casement, hanged for treason by the British in 1916, Churchill implied that he favoured the idea, but afterwards did not act on it. (Casement was finally reburied in 1965.)
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One other point of interest came up. In 1949, when De Valera had been out of power, Ireland had left the Commonwealth for good. He now told Churchill that he would not have taken this step himself.
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Perhaps this contributed to Churchill’s beneficent reaction to his former adversary. ‘A very agreeable occasion’, he said afterwards, ‘I like the man.’
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On racial issues, though, he made no effort to adjust to modernity.
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When asked if he had seen the film
Carmen Jones
, a musical with a black cast, he replied that he had walked out early on as he didn’t like ‘blackamoors’.
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This was not just a private prejudice: it had implications for policy. Labour’s 1948 British Nationality Act had confirmed wide rights – which had previously been available to Empire subjects – for Commonwealth citizens to settle in Britain. It received little debate at the time, but immigration soon increased rapidly. Many of the new arrivals were from the West Indies. By the early 1950s the issue of ‘coloured’ immigration was rising up the political agenda and the Conservative Cabinet discussed it on several occasions. The Cabinet Secretary’s notebook records Churchill’s view in 1954. He spoke of the problems which ‘will arise if many coloured people settle here. Are we to saddle ourselves with colour problems in UK?’ Immigrants, he said, were ‘attracted by the Welfare State’, and ‘Public opinion in U.K. won’t tolerate it [immigration] once it gets beyond certain limits.’ At this stage, however, he thought it would be ‘politically wise to allow public feeling to develop a little more’ before taking action.
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The following year Harold Macmillan noted a further discussion on Caribbean immigrants: ‘A bill is being drafted – but it is not an easy problem. P.M. thinks “Keep England White” a good slogan!’
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In fact, restrictive legislation was not passed until some years after Churchill left office. He complained to the editor of the
Spectator
that he thought immigration was ‘the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice’.
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In reality, many of them shared his (undoubtedly exaggerated) concerns. His inability to get anything done probably owed much to the fact that, by this stage, his diminishing energies were focused mainly on foreign policy. Arguably, it also owed something to the difficulties of drawing up a law that would have the effect of excluding black people while appearing to be non-discriminatory.
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(Race was clearly the issue: ministers showed no concern about continuing large-scale Irish migration, even though the Republic of Ireland was now outside the Commonwealth.) Churchill disliked the idea of a ‘magpie society’, as he called it, which he thought ‘would never do’.
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Ironically, lack of decisive action to halt black and Asian migration meant that he presided, however unwillingly, over the beginnings of Britain’s multicultural society.