"Reckless & Foolish Decision"

Pale and grim, Sir Anthony Eden rose in the House of Commons at 4:35 one afternoon last week to announce the Anglo-French ultimatum to Israel and Egypt. When he had finished, the House was chill with silence, the Tories staring straight ahead with the rigidity of Guardsmen and the Laborites frozen to their seats in horror.

The first man to speak was Opposition Leader Hugh Gaitskell. Gripping the edge of the dispatch box, Gaitskell strove desperately for statesmanlike caution. "I think," said he, "it would be unwise if we were to plunge into any lengthy discussion . . ." He realized that his words must start one of the biggest battles in parliamentary history. Then, unable to contain himself, Gaitskell burst out: "But I must ask the Prime Minister under what authority and with what right he believes British and French forces are justified in armed intervention in this matter, before there has been any pronouncement by the United Nations upon it."

Angry Labor. With that, the fat was in the fire. Protests and questions came thick and fast. Would British troops land in the Canal Zone? Had the U.S. been consulted and did it approve the decision? What about the Commonwealth?

As the questions tumbled out, Anthony Eden lounged at the front bench, his long, striped-trousered legs languidly propped up on the table, his eyes on the ceiling. Occasionally he swung to his feet to give a curt, evasive answer. After an hour and 40 minutes, Speaker William Morrison recessed the debate. The Labor Party went into caucus, its members in the grip of violent anger at Eden--a man whom in international affairs they had hitherto trusted. "Comrades," declared Hugh Gaitskell, "we must attack the operation with all the strength we've got."

That night and next day the House of Commons was in tumult, with Labor angrily demanding answers and Eden confining himself to reading unresponsive extracts from earlier statements. Concluding from Eden's evasiveness that British troops were indeed going into action, Gaitskell took the floor.

"The government," he said in an unsteady voice, "have committed an act of disastrous folly whose tragic consequences we shall regret for years. Yes, all of us will regret it, because it will have done irreparable harm to the prestige and reputation of our country. This action involved not only the abandonment but a positive assault upon the three principles which have governed British foreign policy for at least the last ten years--solidarity with the Commonwealth, the Anglo-American alliance, and adherence to the Charter of the United Nations . . .

"There are wider implications than this, for this reckless and foolish decision has been taken just when events in Poland and Hungary had given the free world its greatest hope and encouragement for ten years. . .

"I must now tell the government and the country that we cannot support the action they have taken, and . . . consider it our duty . . . to proclaim to the world loudly and clearly that there are millions and millions of British people--as we believe, a majority of our nation--who are deeply shocked by the aggressive policy of the government . . ."

"Get Out." By the third day of the debate, the House knew that British planes were in action over Egypt. Cries of "Fascists!", "Cowards!" and "Murderers!" rose from Labor benches. When Labor's yellow-bearded gadfly, Sydney Silverman, demanded under what authority Englishmen were being compelled to fight in Egypt--inasmuch as Britain had not declared war--the chamber turned into a sea of waving arms and shouting mouths. Angrily, Speaker Morrison, gown flying and spaniel-wig waving, strode off his dais and out of the House. It was the first time in 20 years that a Speaker had been obliged to suspend a House of Commons sitting to restore order.

When the House reassembled half an hour later. Aneurin Bevan, who throughout the debate had been sitting at Gaitskell's elbow, summed up for Labor. Bevan reminded the House that in 1940, too, Britain had stood alone in the world. "But then," he added softly, "we had honor on our side." It was not too late, he urged, for the government to announce that it had changed its mind about intervention. "Unless the government are able to say that," said he, "in the name of mankind let them, for God's sake, get out."

Harried as he was, Anthony Eden was by no means ready to get out. By a strict party vote (324-255), the government comfortably defeated Labor's censure motion.

The Misgiving. Tory unity was more apparent than real. At least two dozen young Tory M.P.s were deeply disturbed in their consciences, and before the week was out 36-year-old Anthony Nutting, the fair-haired boy of the Foreign Office, resigned as Minister of State, in protest.

To reinforce his position, Anthony Eden promptly wheeled up the biggest gun in the Tory arsenal--Sir Winston Churchill. Breaking the political silence which he has maintained since his retirement, the old lion issued a statement: "I regret profoundly that the Egyptian reaction [to the ultimatum] has forced the present course on us. But I do not doubt that we can shortly lead our course to a just and victorious conclusion . . . I am confident that our American friends will come to realize that, not for the first time, we have acted independently for the common good."

A few hours later, in yet another effort to enlist public support, Eden made a nationwide television broadcast: "First and foremost we want to stop the fighting . . . We have stepped in because the U.N. could not do so in time." Then, in solemn tones, he added: "All my life I have been a man of peace, working for peace, striving for peace. And I am still the same. I couldn't be other."

But no amount of oratory could get around the fact that unless his gamble began to pay off soon, Anthony Eden might well find himself in desperate straits. Not since the general strike of 1926 had the British people appeared so bitterly divided. In the House of Lords the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking "with fear and trembling," declared that

"Christian opinion is terribly uneasy and unhappy."

At week's end thousands of demonstrators, fired up by a speech by Nye Bevan in nearby Trafalgar Square, tried to smash their way through police cordons in front of 10 Downing Street.

While Labor's attack hardened, the Tories pulled themselves together again, easing their doubts by the prospects of a quick victory in Egypt. Labor, too, had misgivings about its own line. It is not very easy to oppose a war already under way; opposition risks giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Into this situation came Bulganin's note, impudently suggesting to the British that "some countries now" could devastate Britain with all of modern war's destructive arsenal.

Bulganin's note shocked all Britain. In this new emergency, Labor argued that Britain must swiftly restore its damaged alliances and end its own provocative behavior in order to create the necessary unity against the common threat from Russia. Anthony Eden, announcing Britain's acceptance of a cease-fire in Egypt, turned on Bulganin. At a time when Russia is "ruthlessly crushing the heroic resistance of a truly national movement of independence" in Hungary, said Eden, "it ill becomes the Soviet government to speak of the actions of Her Majesty's Government as barbaric."

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