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.6 See in particular Leon D.Epstein, British Policy in the Suez Crisis (London, 1964),ch.5 and 6, and Sue Onslow, Backbench Debate within the Conservative Party and itsInfluence on British Foreign Policy, 1948 57 (Basingstoke, 1997) pp.124ff.7 For the Suez Group, see Onslow, Backbench Debate within the Conservative Party; Battlelines for Suez : The Abadan Crisis of 1951 and the Formation of the Suez Group ,Contemporary British History, 17/2 (2003): 1 28; Suez group (act.1953 1957) , OxfordDictionary of National Biography (Oxford, online edn, May 2007). 230 Reassessing Suez 1956The parliamentary opposition was at first wrong-footed by the crisis.Then JoGrimond, who had recently taken over the leadership of the Liberal Party fromClement Davies, spoke eloquently against government policy.For Grimond,parliament existed to promote a sense of civic moral purpose and engage in a moralcritique of the life of the nation.A product of Eton and Balliol and husband ofAsquith s granddaughter, he was a Whig grandee with a social conscience who cutan impressive figure in the House of Commons.8 But Grimond was leader of a merehandful of MPs.Far more significant politically would be the reaction of the LabourParty.Suez was the first major crisis faced by Hugh Gaitskell, who had been electedparty leader the previous December.Cautioned by Jewish Labour MPs, notablyEmanuel Shinwell, who strongly supported military intervention, he appeared atfirst to countenance armed confrontation with Egypt.On 31 October, he turned andcondemned military intervention as an act of disastrous folly , but his appeal toConservative waverers to join the Opposition s call for Eden s resignation provedcounter-productive.The press was at the heart of the debate over the rights and wrongs of Suez.TheDaily Mail urged Eden to take tough action, as did the Daily Express, known as theimperial crusader , and the Daily Telegraph, which in January 1956 had goadedthe Prime Minister with its call for the smack of firm government.Papers thatcriticized Eden courted charges of treason and jeopardized sales and advertisingrevenue.Nevertheless, Alastair Hetherington, who had just taken over as editor of theManchester Guardian, condemned the venture as an act of folly, without justificationin any terms but brief expediency , and David Astor s editorial in the Observeraccused the government of crookedness.9 The political editor of the Daily Mirror,Sydney Jacobsen, joined the attack (thereby losing 70,000 readers), as did MichaelFoot of the New Statesman and Ian Gilmour of the Spectator.Even The Times in theend distanced itself from the actions of the Prime Minister.Although these papershad an impact on opinion that was out of all proportion to their circulation, the claimthat at Suez the fourth estate vindicated its role as watchdog of the public interest hasbeen questioned since, up to a point, Eden was remarkably successful in influencingthe media.In any case, Fleet Street was by and large instinctively more bellicosethan the general public, and the BBC tended to favour Eden in its commentaries, asdistinct from its impartial reporting.10The crisis strained the political neutrality of senior military officers and civilservants, and led to tension between them.11 Sir Gerald Templer, Chief of the ImperialGeneral Staff, never wavered in his support for the invasion, but on 2 November LordMountbatten protested against plans which were bound to lead to large-scale civilian8 Obituaries by John Calder, David Steel and Tam Dalyell, Independent, 23 October1993; Ian Bradley, Grimond, Joseph, Baron Grimond (1913 1993) , Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography (Oxford, 2004; online edn, May 2005).9 See Richard Cockett, David Astor and the Observer (London, 1991), pp.207 34.10 See Tony Shaw, British Government Propaganda and Persuasion during the 1956Suez Crisis , DPhil.thesis (Oxford, 1993).11 See Saul Kelly and Anthony Gorst (eds), Whitehall and the Suez Crisis (London,2000). Suez 1956 and the Moral Disarmament of the British Empire 231casualties.Mountbatten offered his resignation, but for his own protection wasordered to remain at his post by the First Lord of the Admiralty.Air Chief MarshalSir Denis Smallwood dismissed as utterly phoney the reasons given by Eden forthe invasion.12 The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook, held to a pragmatic coursethroughout, keeping the Cabinet in step, preserving continuity of government duringthe interregnum between Eden and Macmillan, and weeding incriminating evidencefor a venture which he privately regarded as a cock-up
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