The Suez War by Paul Johnson

Author:Paul Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1957-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The Plot is Hatched

With the Millstone of Mr. Dulles’ ludicrous Users’ Association hanging round his neck, Sir Anthony Eden plodded grimly on towards the diplomatic horizon. Anglo-French Suez policy was in ruins. The vast invasion force, collected in Cyprus and Malta, and growing daily, was—for the moment at least—useless. It could not now be employed on the Suez Canal issue. If the general situation in the Middle East developed ‘favourably’—and Britain and France were now determined to make sure that it would—there might be an opportunity to use it later. Meanwhile, Sir Anthony was inextricably committed to a whole series of diplomatic steps which flowed inexorably from his disastrous statement of September 12.

First, the Users’ Association had to be formed. The eighteen ‘majority powers’ of the first London Conference were unwillingly dragged back for another. As expected, it went wrong from the very first session. Most of the User States, who had somewhat grudgingly backed Dulles’ internationalisation plan, were by now thoroughly alarmed, and highly suspicious of Anglo-French intentions. Pakistan, in particular, refused bluntly to partake in anything which remotely resembled a minatory gesture towards Egypt. Norway, Spain and Italy made it clear that they would not send their ships round the Cape so long as the Canal remained open. And Dulles was studiously vague as to the ‘compensation’, both in dollars and oil, which America would be prepared to pay if anything went wrong. The State Department, it is true, had by now drawn up an emergency plan to pool the resources of the American oil companies to provide emergency supplies to Europe; but it refused to divulge its details to the Foreign Office. Moreover, Mr. Dulles had now discovered that the plan would require not only Congressional approval but a waiving of America’s antitrust laws, on which Congress was particularly sensitive; it was evident, in short, that he would only be empowered to put the plan into action in the very gravest circumstances.

Hence, at the conference, he was able to offer only the meagrest comfort to Britain and France. He gave his general backing to the Canal Users’ Association, but he was unable to guarantee that American ships would be forced to pay the Canal dues only to the Association’s fund. At the end of the conference, he issued a statement that, on his return to Washington, ‘steps will be taken with our Treasury officials, and with the representatives of American-flag vessels … with a view to perfecting this co-operation in terms of actual operating practices’. This vague phrasing meant, in practice, that the U.S. Treasury would refuse dollar licences for Egypt for shipping dues; but it was immediately pointed out in London that there were a large number of ways of evading this restraint, and that Mr. Dulles showed no particular determination to make his scheme watertight.

Other nations were even less willing to commit themselves on the matter of dues. Indeed, as the conference proceeded, it became clear that if Britain and France put forward a

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