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IN the full meeting of the ‘1922 Committee’ of Conservative ministers on Suez, both Macmillan, Chancellor of Exchequer and Home Secretary, Richard Austen Butler (“Rab”) addressed the full cabinet which included the junior minister, Enoch Powell. Macmillan, unlike the crest fallen but loyal Butler, skillfully distanced himself from the fiasco. 

The prophetic but much maligned Powell, who was well known for his ‘rivers of blood’ speech against immigration, multiculturalism and EU membership, recalls Macmillan’s performance: 

“It was one of the most horrible things that I remember in politics….seeing the way in which Harold Macmillan, with all the skill of the old actor-manager, succeeded in false-footing Rab. The sheer devilry of it verged upon the disgusting.”

The move looked like a political betrayal, and showed a side of his character Churchill had earlier noticed when he was the prime minister. Macmillan had been almost servile Churchill noted when he was hoping Churchill would give him a senior position in his cabinet. Churchill instead appointed him minister of housing. 

“Churchill, in fact, had never much taken to Macmillan as a person. He thought him pompous, and there were times when he thought him untrustworthy…..Mrs. Churchill thought him obsequious when it served his purpose…” ((Charles Williams, Harold Macmillan (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009), p.208). Eden himself was to say later of the Crisis, ’Macmillan got me into the Suez mess.’ He accused his Chancellor of Exchequer of not letting him know of Eisenhower’s objection to their intended action on Suez. 

In assessing the role of Macmillan in the Suez debacle, Charles Williams wrote: “ Macmillan was a political animal, shrewd in manoeuvre, undisputed master in his Cabinet house…His opponents think him a cold-blooded but formidable individual…This is no mean man…He has charm, politeness, dry humour, self-assurance, a vivid sense of history, dignity and character. To what extent he would bend conviction to comport with expediency one cannot say….”(Charles Williams, Harold Macmillan (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009).

British author Paul Johnson (Modern Times: The World from the Twenties; A History of the Jews; A History of Christianity) however says that Macmillan denied to him personally that he, Macmillan, had approved of the action, or had been a party to it. Johnson himself thought that Eisenhower, in denying that he had given the assurance to Macmillan that the U.S. would not intervene in the adventure, was probably ambiguous, and ‘not to say two faced’.

It is disputed whether Macmillan had completely underestimated the damage the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion would do to the Sterling once active US opposition became known or whether he had simply kept quiet and allowed Eden to walk into the quandary. It was observed that had Eden served a second term Macmillan would then be too old to step into his shoes

Perhaps the benefit of doubt should be granted to Macmillan. Eisenhower had probably held back to see what would become of the Suez action by the allies. Much, however, is made of the fact that Eisenhower was facing an election in November of that year and did not want any ‘black swan’ event to spoil his election chances.

He was reported to have said, ‘If they had done it quickly, we would have accepted it’. [Cited in Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (London: HarperCollins, 1995), p.254]

What was left unsaid was that Suez was as much a godsend to the Americans as much as it was to the Israelis. 

It opened the door to the Middle East for the Americans, and as it also signaled the end of Britain’s dream of empire, too much of its overseas possessions and colonies as well. Ball commented: “Great Britain had not yet adjusted to reality; no longer an empire, it was not merely an island nation on which the sun not only set, but set every evening – provided one could see it for the rain.” (Ball, p.209) 

Throughout the Muslim world, particularly in the Eastern colonies the British attempt to subjugate Nasser was seen as Anglo perfidy – a betrayal of their own much trumpeted value of fair-play. In Singapore and Malaya local politicians denounced the invasion as an attempted resurgence of gun boat imperialism. 

In Malaya, Colonial officials were concerned as Suez had undercut much of the goodwill that was generated by Britain’s widely-publicized declaration to grant Malaya self-government. 

In Singapore, Suez also softened British attitude toward the Lim Yew Hock government in particular, its push for constitutional reforms. Full internal autonomy was granted to the colony. ( S.R. Joey Long, Singapore in Global History {Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), Chapter II) 

Suez was ‘the calamity that would shatter Britain’s international reputation and lower the curtain on its imperial illusions’, it also ended Britain’s imperial pretensions for good. The country ended up as one writer puts it, ‘a northern welfare state in the shadow of the United States’. In a bitter aside, Macmillan remarked that the Americans would know how it feels to be in that position in two hundred years time. 

The reluctance of the Americans to get involved in what is seen today as a ‘serio-comic international event’ perhaps also confirmed his feelings about them: “[We] would find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans – great big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt.” 

A footnote to the Suez affair was given by Churchill to his secretary: ‘I would not have dared, had I dared, I would not have dared to stop.’

The person who went to kiss the hand of the Queen on 10th January, 1957 and stepped into Number 10, Downing Street was a very complex character. Harold Macmillan, whose Scottish grandfather set up the Macmillan publishing house, was born in 1809, and by those facts, he was an Edwardian gentleman, a fact he held like a badge of honour throughout his life. Like Winston Churchill, he had an American mother. 

Helen ArtemisiaTarleton Belles , known to all as Nellie, a doctor’s daughter from Indiana. She had met Macmillan’s father, Alexander, in Paris where she, a widow then, was studying music. 

Unlike Churchill’s mother, Nellie watched over her children like a mother hen and though she had three boys, Nellie dotted on the youngest, Maurice Harold. She enrolled Harold in Summerfields, a preparatory school for boys bound for Eton. When Harold was ejected from Eton halfway through, some say under circumstances less than honourable, she engaged a personal tutor to make sure he could make into Oxford as a King’s Scholar.