Collision Over Collusion

The word "collusion" hung like a mushroom-shaped cloud over the Suez debate in the House of Commons last week.

"If collusion can be established." said Labor's Aneurin Bevan, "the whole fabric of the government's case falls to the ground." The main theme of Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd's defense was to show that while "it is true that we were well aware of the possibility of trouble," there was no secret agreement between Prime Ministers Anthony Eden, Guy Mollet and David Ben-Gurion over the timing of their respective attacks on Egypt, and that there was neither deceit nor fraud in Eden's declared objective of "separating the combatants" and "removing the risk to free passage of the canal."

Lloyd's denial did not cover what the real accusation of collusion was about (TIME, Nov. 12). This was that Britain and France knew in advance that BenGurion was going to attack Egypt, though they expected the invasion to take place nearer U.S. Election Day, a few days later than it actually did (thus accounting for the initial slowness of the Anglo-French operation). France viewed with enthusiasm, and Britain with at least equanimity, an Israeli attack on Nasser, and both France and Britain conspired to keep the U.S. in the dark about their Israeli intelligence and their own military intentions.

Now that Britain had to withdraw from Suez without getting the canal or bringing down Nasser, Selwyn Lloyd had two options: to confess defeat or to brazen it through. He chose to claim a victory.

Speaking in cold, forensic tones, Lloyd raised his voice only slightly in an effort to make himself heard above the laughter and vaudeville din of the Labor Opposition, whose parliamentary behavior was about as zoolike as the House of Commons gets. Lloyd argued that the Anglo-French attack on Egypt was justified by the "failure of the U.N. to keep the peace" in the area. He claimed three important objectives achieved: 1) the Israeli-Egyptian war had been stopped. 2) an international police force had been put into position to prevent its resumption, 3) Russian designs had been exposed and dislocated. Nye Bevan called Lloyd's performance "sounding the bugle of advance to cover the retreat."

Lloyd's weak defense against the charge of collusion was meat for Labor's Big Bad Wolf. Said Bevan: "It is believed in France that the French [government] knew about the Israeli intention. If the French knew, did they tell the British government? The fact is that all these long telephone conversations and conferences between M. Guy Mollet, M. Pineau and the Prime Minister are intelligible only on the assumption that something was being cooked up." Bevan had his own picturesque fable for the situation. "Did Marianne take John Bull to an unknown rendezvous? Did Marianne say to John Bull that there was a forest fire going to start, and did John Bull then say, 'We ought to put it out,' but Marianne said, 'No, let us warm our hands by it. It is a nice fire'? Did Marianne deceive John Bull or seduce him?"

Bevan's Welsh lilt drifted round the chamber and the silver tongue stripped Lloyd's speech to shreds. Of the government's claim that the action was justified because it brought the U.N. into the area, he said: "Exactly the same claim which might have been made, if they had thought about it in time, by Mussolini and Hitler, that they had made war on the world in order to bring the U.N. into being." He poured derision on the suggestion that Eden had acted to stop the Israelis' attacking Egypt: "Israel being the wicked invader we, of course, being the nice friend of Egypt--went to protect her from the Israelis, but, unfortunately, we had to bomb the Egyptians first." On the British-French decision to invade Port Said on the ground that there was still doubt of an Israeli ceasefire: "In the history of nations there is no example of such frivolity."

Refreshingly succinct was Bevan's estimate of why Eden went to war. "We started the operation in order to give Nasser a black eye--if we could, to overthrow him--but, in any case, to secure control of the canal." But Britain miscalculated: "Did we really believe that Nasser was going to give in at once?" Bevan wound up solemnly: "If we are to be regarded as a decent nation ... we have to act up to different standards than the one that we have been following in the last few weeks."

Nye Bevan's speech, a brilliant and deadly parliamentary performance, far outshone anyone else's on either side. He made a far better impression than Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell. whom many Tories reproved for not controlling the hyena cries of his supporters. Gaitskell also lost his temper over Selwyn Lloyd's taunt that Labor arguments "were very present on the lips of the enemies of this country." Since seeking to divide the Opposition is fair parliamentary game, House of Commons Leader R. A. ("Rab") Butler, standing in for Eden, scored effectively by double punning a line from Ethel Merman's famed song in Annie Get Your Gun: "Anything Hugh can do, Nye can do better."

The Conservatives were less worried by Labor criticism than by the irascible rebel Tories who, unconcerned about collusion, were angered by the government's failure to capture the whole canal and bring the action against Nasser to a decisive conclusion. In the corridors and party rooms persuasion and coercion went on ceaselessly as whips buttonholed each rebel, plugged the argument that if the Tory government fell it would mean a Labor government in power. When the vote came for support of the government's Suez policy, the division was on party lines (312 to 260); it was the arguments of the Tory whips, not those of Bevan, that prevailed.

A modest 15 "Suez rebels" abstained, far short of the 126 who a week before objected to the course the government had just taken. Even this protest was somewhat artificial. The rebels had safely calculated the proper amount of abstentions: more might endanger the government, less would not sufficiently warn it. What the rebels wanted was not a change of government but a change of Conservative leadership.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.