Empire: World History - 288. Suez Crisis: The End of The British Empire (Part 5)

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

How did the Suez Crisis end? Why did the Suez Crisis mark the end of the Anglo-American “special relationship”? And was it Egypt or India that marked the nail in the coffin of the British Empire? William and Anita are joined for the final time by Alex Von Tunzelmann, author of Blood and Sand: Suez, Hungary, & The Crisis That Shook The World, to discuss the end of the Suez Crisis, and how its legacy continues to shape global attitudes today. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com  For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremberg. Episode five of our Suez Crisis series and again, our guide to this really, really labyrinthine moment in history where we were on the brink of Armageddon, and we really, really were, is Alex von Tinselman. Thank you very much for coming back to speak to it.

Armageddon correspondent. Indeed. Never thought I'd have to know the plural of apocalypse. Well, it's always a useful thing, it seems, looking at this series. Now, look, we left the last episode on Eden standing before his people saying, look, I'm a man of peace, I haven't changed, you've changed, they've all changed. I'm the same guy. I'm a lover, not a fighter. What we didn't say, this is Saturday, the 3rd of November, 1956, but something monumental happens at midnight on the same day.

The same day that Eden is talking about, wasn't me, Gov. What happens, Alex? Yes, a bit of a spanner in the works. So Abba Iban, who's Israel's ambassador to the UN, pulls a bit of an unexpected move, stands off at the UN and says, actually Israel agrees to an immediate ceasefire of Egypt does too. Egypt had already accepted the call for the ceasefire. So what that meant is that there's a ceasefire. Israel and Egypt are no longer at war. In fact, there are two nations holding out against peace,

and they are Britain and France who've said that they are intervening in a police action as peacekeepers. Why does he do that? Why does Israel suddenly break ranks with its two? co-conspirators. Well, because a bit of a wild card is basically the short version of that. I mean, they've got what they want. They've managed to grab a load of land on the Sinai. Plus, Gaza, very important. They've taken over Gaza. And in the future series on the history of Gaza, we're going to talk about in some detail about the massacres that take place at this point in 1956 in Gaza, which are an echo of what's going on today. But we'll leave that for the moment.

So anyway, they've got what they want and they just want to freeze the lines at this point. Is that the idea? Pretty much. Yeah. And I mean, really, what do they think they owe Britain or France? Ultimately, don't really care kind of your problem now, Governor. They sort of also refer to them as bastards, bastards, bastards because they don't think Britain hasn't sort of kept its end of the bargain either. But Alex, why do they think they'll be allowed to keep this land?

Just because of the ceasefire doesn't mean things can just go back to where they were before. Well, not everybody thinks they will be. and there is quite a lot of discussion about that and all of this. But, you know, I think they probably just saw at this point, look, we've kind of got what we want, which is Saanai. We're dealing with the situation in Gaza as we see fit. That's happening. And yes, I mean, I think it would be really interesting in your future series

to hear more about that is pretty horrifying. That situation. Men being lined up in squares in Gaza, taken off in drugs and machine guns. Yeah, I mean, it's really horrific things are taking place at this point. The fact is that that's what Israel ultimately cares. it doesn't want to conquer Egypt. I mean, that's not the goal, and they don't want to take the Suez Canal. Ultimately, that is not of a great deal of interest to them.

So as far as they're concerned, they kind of done their thing, you know, and now they want to get on with, you know, suppressing the situation in Gaza. And they're pissed off with their allies, too. The bombing didn't place where they wanted. They think Britain is behaving in a, and the French in a useless way. But it's obviously a complete disaster for Britain and France, because they're like planning to go in and have this peacekeeping war, and there's no war.

There's no water peace keep. I should say that I grew up on this moment. And my dad, as a young soldier, who'd been, was there still conscription? They called up reserves. So I think he was called up as a reserve and he was flown to Cyprus and was awaiting being shipped to the suicide. He never got there because of this. There we go. Now, if this was a TV series, you would have a frizzle cut and maybe a voice saying, meanwhile,

meanwhile, on the other side of the world, we're talking about the stroke of midnight, Israel saying, okay, you know what, ceasefire, we're not doing. this anymore. On Sunday the 4th of November, so that's hours after everything changes for France and Britain, it is also going to change for Hungary. The Soviet troops have entered Budapest. Alex, just bring us up to speed because it is all happening at speed. What's going on? It is. I mean, effectively, this is a full-scale invasion. Soviet troops come in with tanks, with guns, and just start crushing the resistance in Budapest. And not just sort of Soviet troops. are perfectly sort of tartars, aren't they? They're sort of Mongols and from the far eastern provinces.

So they don't look like sort of fellow Europeans or people who can mistake for your neighbor from just over the border. This feels like an invasion of foreigners. There were a lot of rumors, although I was really unable to substantiate them fully, but there were a lot of rumors that those troops were told that they were actually going to Egypt to fight the British and French in an anti-imperial action to liberate Egypt, not that they were going to go and murder, protesters in Hungary. They were told that the Danube was the Suez Canal.

Now, I don't know. It kind of sounds a bit far-fetched. I don't entirely know. But I also know that if you look at what's happened with foreign fighters in Ukraine when Russia has sent them, they definitely have told them some lies about what they're going there to do. So who knows what was going on. How interesting. I mean, while bombing is continuing, the Britain and France are now actually

dropping bombs, not just loading the aircraft, but bombing portside and port-fouard. Yes, I mean, you know, basically this is all, because Britain and France haven't actually stopped their plan for peacekeeping, even though there is now peace and nobody needs to keep it. But actually, of course, as we know, they didn't want to be a peacekeeping force. They wanted to have a war. So they're still doing that. Again, this is, you know, extremely clear to everybody who's watching it. So just straight away after, you know, this deadline, they start, war planes start zooming over Egypt and start bombing. Port Saeed paratroopers floating down. So, you know, So your father may not have made it there from Cyprus, but some people did. You know, some tarotruppers did actually make it there. You know, and it's a really terrifying scene. They're bombing civilian targets. They're bombing towns. You have families screaming, running from the size of the bombs.

Are the heavy civilian casualties? Yes, there are considerable ones. Of course, as you would probably expect, pretty hard to get the exact numbers. But yes, it's a war situation. It's a really terrifying situation. Meanwhile, in Budapest, you've got tanks shooting civilians. you've got children, elderly people lying in the street, and you've got the same sort of scenes happening in Portside and Port Fouad at the same time. There's this kind of, again, sense that

this world war is happening, that this is happening all over at the same time. But Alex, while all this is going on, this bombing is going on, and they're meeting sort of very little resistance because they have just, you know, they've got the firepower, they've got the numbers in the firepower. What is he even thinking at this point? Is he thinking, woohoo, we're winning? Or is he thinking, woohoo, we've won. What is he thinking? I mean, basically, there was a sort of temporary ceasefire declared quite quickly by the local Egyptian commander in Portside and British and French.

Effectively, what this was was just saying, please could you reconnect the water supply to Portsside, which you've cut off, please stop killing civilians. The British commander said, can you surrender? The Egyptian said, no, we can't surrender, but could we just have a temporary ceasefire just for the sake of the civilian population? So this message was relayed,

and you have to think every message at this point, Once again, this isn't just going, you're not getting out your iPhone and texting somebody in London. It's going through a lot of relays. And so what you get is actually a bit of a change of the message. It's relayed from the ground commander there in Port Saeed to the British General in Cyprus. And from Cyprus, it is relayed again to London. And basically, in Cyprus, they thought what this meant is that actually the local Egyptian commander would not, make any opposition the next day when there were British and French amphibious landings.

So they say, oh, brilliant, it means no opposition. When this got all the way back to Britain, it was taken to mean that in fact Egypt had surrendered. Now, this is not what's happened. What's happened is a little temporary local ceasefire that has not been approved in Cairo. However, Eden is in the Commons, leaps out of his seat and says, we've got a ceasefire, there's up where everyone's happy, Eden runs back to Downing Street. the chiefs of staff, starts hugging them and saying, oh my dear chiefs, how grateful I am to you, you've been magnificent. It's all worked out perfectly. He thinks he's won. He has not. He has not. He has not won. And when it becomes apparent that he has not won and his hostilities then continue

and, you know, the bombs again start falling closer and closer to Cairo. It isn't the United Nations that steps in, even though they've been ignored completely by Britain and France. And the ceasefire deadline has come and gone, and both Israel and Egypt have said they agreed to the ceasefire, but the bombing continues. It isn't them. It's not the Americans who come in and say, look, what are you doing Britain and France? What the hell is this? It comes from a very unusual quarter, and it is a really stark threat. Who is it that actually steps up to Britain and France? Well, we must say the Americans were stepping up and doing a lot, but what they were doing was largely trying to squeeze Britain from a kind of financial and economic perspective.

The people who step up and say, if you go any further, we're going to kill you, are the Soviets. And they do this on a quite sort of terrifying scale. They actually threaten to bomb London and Paris. Effectually, the minute that the Soviets feel that they've completely crushed the rebellion in Hungary, they've got rid of Imre Noge, they've installed Janos Kadar as a new leader. You know, they're going to get Hungary back under control. that's going to happen. Then they turn their attention finally to Suez to Egypt. And overnight, 5th to 6th of November, this letter arrives, this extraordinary letter signed by Nicolai Borgarnem,

but actually we know it was drafted by Nikita Krustchov himself, which implied that this was about to get a whole lot bigger. And what this letter says, it's quite elliptical. It says, what would have been the position of Britain if she had been attacked by stronger powers with all kinds of modern offensive weapons at its disposal. Remember that such countries at the present time need not even send their naval and air forces to British shores, but could use other means such as rocket techniques. If rocket weapons were used against Britain and France,

you would no doubt call this a barbarous act, but how is this different from the inhuman attack carried out by the armed forces of Britain and France on an almost unarmed Egypt? So this was redneck, was elliptical. It had said rockets, it hadn't said, nuclear, but what it had done is allude to the Soviets medium-range arsenal and point out that those could be fired at London and Paris. And, you know, nobody was absolutely sure in the

West whether they could quite hit London and Paris, but they also weren't sure that they couldn't. It was pretty much on the periphery of where those weapons could have got to. It's quite interesting this particular threat that came through in that there's quite a lot of dispute about it because afterwards, after all this had happened and the sort of chewing over would have gone on, everybody was very keen to say, oh, we never took the Soviet threat very seriously. You know, we didn't believe they could do it. No, of course not. Which is sort of what happens. When something doesn't happen, people often afterwards say, oh, well, I never thought it would. Obviously, I'm far too smart. I never thought this would happen.

Actually, if you look at people at the time, it looks like they were pretty terrified, actually, when this threat came through, because they weren't 100% sure it couldn't happen. There was a possibility that the Soviets, having just absolutely raised, to the ground in Budapest, might actually fire nuclear weapons of Britain and France. You said just very briefly, before we go to the break, that the Americans were actually stepping up to Britain and France, but they were doing it economically. I mean, you know, when somebody says that, I think of sanctions, but I mean, surely not. Surely the Americans aren't doing sanctions against Britain. Surely that is not what America is doing to their

closest ally. Well, kind of are, actually. That is pretty much what's happening. So the economics of this is fantastically complicated, but just to sort of summarize it, what effectively is happening is that, as we've said, oil was not getting through from the Middle East. And as we said in an earlier episode, a very crucial thing about the oil that comes from Iranian oil fields is that that is priced in pounds. Okay, so that's the oil you can buy with your pounds that you have as Britain. There is other oil that you can get that does not come from the Persian Gulf. That oil comes from Venezuela by the US, that oil is priced in dollars. So you need to spend your dollars to do that. Britain doesn't have sufficient dollar reserves. And also what happens at this point

is that there is quite a lot happening in one go economically. So again, I'm going to try and explain this in sort of really, really simple terms because it gets hella complicated. So what you have wearing on is that the total gold and dollar reserves that Britain has actually falls below the $2 billion level which the Bank of England and the British Treasury considers is the minimum to keep the sterling area afloat. So what that means is that economically Britain is completely collapsing. And just to remind people, we came across the sterling area where we were doing the Irish series. There's a whole load of countries outside Britain which are pegged to the pound at this point, in the same way that many countries in the world today are pegged to the

dollar. Exactly. And this means more than just that domestically, Britain's pound is going to be worth less than it is. It means that the whole reputation of sterling as an international currency, which in the 1950s was still absolutely one of the super strong currencies, that that will be threatened and that Britain's financial reliability will be undermined. Exactly. So the point that they get to is basically the British saying to the Americans, okay, we're going to need to buy some oil off you. But can we please? do it in pounds because we can't afford to spend our dollars on it, we have to do it in pounds. And Eisenhower says, no. And he actually says let them boil in their own oil. Wow. He is pretty determined to let Britain run aground on this if they don't stop. So it's a really smaller move. It's an incredibly strong use. And actually, Dennis Healy said later that the only successful use of sanctions in history was America against Britain as Suez. Blimey. Gosh.

I mean, you can't imagine that these two close allies would be like this with each other. But America clearly, in Eisenhower in particular, who fought shoulder to shoulder, who entered World War II, who had such a close working relationship with Churchill, who saw so many Americans die in a war that began in Europe, is basically saying, you know what, you disrespected us, you didn't tell us anything, you've been going nuts, hate Eden, sod the lot of you. I mean, it's just amazing, just to, you know, summarize it that way. We should emphasize what happens at this point. On the ground, you have speculators from several

Middle East and oil-producing nations transferring their wealth from British to Swiss banks. China withdraws its deposits in Britain, gives them to Egypt. The whole thing is absolutely on the skids. India also at this point pulled its deposits in Britain saying, yes, well, we need to fund a new five-year plan, so we need this money now. But what's happening is basically a run on the pound. What's happening is that these countries start to think, okay, Britain's really, this is going horribly wrong. We want our money before it disappears. Yeah, the total sum of all of this panic. And, you know, people saying, actually, Britain is now no longer a safe bet for your money and withdrawing their own funds. It exacerbates the situation and gives the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, who at the time

is a man called Harold McMillan, a nervous breakdown, which he publicly shows because he publicly now calls for a ceasefire. He knows that all of this is happening because of Suez. So you have this sort of, when it happens in British politics, and it has, it is a real moment for a chancellor to publicly break with his prime minister. He is the number two to the prime minister. So to come out and be absolutely publicly at odds is the death knell for any prime minister, really, Alex. And what happens as a result of him coming out and saying, you know what? Stop. Just stop. Otherwise, we're going to go broke. Well, it's pretty bad. And something notable is that McMillan, who wrote quite detailed diaries, destroyed his diaries from the Suez period. Oh, really? Probably because, of course,

he very much supported the Suez War and, you know, was indeed seen as one of the sort of knife between his teeth hawks at the beginning of this. And then when he discovered how badly it went, suddenly he went to, no, no, no, I've always been against this. And of course, look at who the next prime minister is after Anthony Eden. And you might start to understand. That is a cliffhanger. So you've got, you know, basically the British political establishment imploding before the world's eyes. We've just had a threat on London and Paris. You've had America playing its part in the economic implosion of Britain and saying, you know, let them boil in their own oil. Join us after the break where we find out just, I mean, Eden can't stay on. Can he? Welcome back. Okay, so we left you in what I suppose political analysts would call a cluster fudge of a situation for a sitting prime minister. Anthony Eden. He must be in a right old panic at this point, Alex, because, you know, friends are now turning against him, even as you say, Howard McMillan, his number two, who probably supported him all the way through this Suez Crisis until he realised it was all going

completely wrong. Yes, yes, indeed he did. It's starting to look really quite bad. Macmillan runs to the Cabinist and says it's much worse than you think. We've lost, you know, $280 million in a week from the gold reserves thanks to this war we've been having. And actually that number he gives this completely wrong. It's massively overinflated. They'd actually lost about $50 million going up to $85 million by the end of that first week. So is he trying to get Eden to resign or what's the reason for the misinformation? Definitely at this point.

But actually, it looks like some people think that he actually confused dollars and pounds and just when he told the cabinet this incredibly wrong number. It's unclear. But he was certainly basically the guy is in a complete tiz at this point. and freaking out. Now, do you think in the back of his mind there's already somebody's going to have to take over from Eden when he inevitably falls? Maybe. Maybe there is. And certainly, you know, as I say, you can look at what happens. It's also what's saying at this point, because it's something that always comes up around the Suez crisis is that Eden was actually pretty unwell at this point. He'd been mentally and physically not well for years. And there's a lot of reports that in 1956, he'd been prescribed

and was taking large quantities of amphetamines, benz-dream particularly. But this is because he had like an existing digestive problem, a billiary problem, they put it, sort of quite prosaically, where he, you know, basically his stomach acid was eating him. And, you know, he was in pain. He was a lot of the time. He was, yeah. Day-to-day, lurching from one horrible digestive agony to another. And I think it's always worth noting that, you know, at this point, like, it was quite normal to put people on amphetamines.

JFK would later be on large quantities of them as well. You know, we find it quite shocking today. but this was something in the 50s that was quite the done thing and in the 60s. But obviously, it would affect your judgment. So there's been a lot of discussion ever since and McMillan kind of tried to push those

of like Eden's just crazy, he's off his head, smacked up on his bennies, and this is what he's doing. But of course, what we have to reckon with, and here's where McMillan's narrative starts to be a bit fishy, is that they all agreed with Eden until it went wrong. So actually they weren't all,

smacked off their heads. You know, some of them made this decision supposedly in complete sobriety. So there's been this big effort, you know, make Eden take all the blame for this. We're actually... It's an act of Tory infighting in that familiar world

where the Tory's telling each other. And McMillan looking on the horizon thinking, you know what, I could do that, I could move next door and I could be Prime Minister. It's going to be an empty chair there really soon. I've never had it so good, even, he might think. It's quite. Eden, in a last-ditch attempt to kind of try and salvage something for himself or for his legacy

or even, you know, just to stop the country going, goes to the French, and says, look, we need to stop. How does he put it to the French? Because, you know, they haven't always listened to the English historically. They've been involved in this joint enterprise. Are they about to respect their recent brotherhood or not when Aidan comes and says, can we please stop? Because it's really hurting Britain. Well, yes. How do we think they get on?

Well, basically, Eden says, look, I don't think we can go on. The English can take a lot of things, but I do not think they'd be willing to accept the failure of sterling, which would have considerable consequences for the Commonwealth, which, of course, is right, it would all fall to bits. As William said, a lot of these currencies are pegged to sterling. It's going to cause a real disaster. And he says, look, we're going to have a ceasefire in the next few hours. He says, this is in the morning of the 6th of November. He says it to Molle.

And Guillae says, gosh, that's very quick. can we just wait two or three more days? I think we can probably get some advantages then. We can occupy more of the canal, you know, take a better negotiating position. And Eden says, I cannot hold out any longer. And Molle says, try to. That's really understanding of the French. This man's currency is about to tank.

Oh, can I know? Yeah, I know, but I know it is. And Eden basically says, no, I really can't. I'm going to call Eisenhower and tell him this is what we're doing. You know, he actually does at this point. He knows the game's up at this point. It really is. And so he picks up the phone.

He calls Eisenhower unilaterally. Maybe the French are grumbling in the background, but they can't really stop him. So, I mean, how does it all sort of stop? How does everything just stop? Well, I mean, of course, they stop fighting pretty much immediately because they sort of have to. And they have to abide by that in a way. And now it looks pretty awful. And I think it's worth saying as well that Mollet trying to get Eden to go on for a few days.

Because again, this is where one of the historical myths, around this comes from. It starts quite soon afterwards. You know, the sort of people who always did quite like the idea of the Suez War, who thought NASA was awful, said, oh, if we'd just gone on for a few more days, you know, we could have got the canal, we could have got to Cairo. This is complete nonsense. There is no one, a military expert who thinks that is remotely feasible. And furthermore, the invasion plan doesn't even have. It plans for what Eden called, I'll quote, knocking NASA off his perch. It has no plan for who is going to. to go back on the perch afterwards. And we know from what subsequently happened in places like

Iraq, the war that's going to lead to is complete chaos and a disaster. So this plan is terrible. It's absolutely hopeless. It's got no chance of success. The idea they could have gone on for like another 48 hours and it would have been fine is just bonkers and just actually out of touch with what was happening on the ground. But they do stop. And obviously what you need and, you know, there's an agreement they will withdraw. Effectively, they're given some time to withdraw. They of course have ceased fighting. But the troops are given time to withdraw. withdraw basically until Christmas that year and to pull out. And what happens is that actually at this point, one of the really major consequences of the Suez crisis is that everyone starts realizing

it kind of sucks a bit that the UN has no way of dealing with this. It didn't have an army. It didn't have something that could have gone in and actually taken action had it needed to. So they actually create the UN Expeditionary Force made up of the countries of various nations. And there's an awful lot of controversy over which countries can be involved. NASA refuses anything that he thinks has any ties to Britain. You know, it becomes very complicated as to who can be in it. But this is discussed then. And actually, they then realize, crucially, that they don't have any kind of uniform that can mean that these forces drawn from various different armies can be recognized. But they do have these really handy blue bags that they've been given. So they start wearing these

as berets, basically. And this becomes the blue beret of the UN that we still see to this. Wow, that's where it dates from. That's amazing. So with the conclusion of the Suez Crisis, where everybody's sort of calming the hell down and realizing what went on, and you also have, you know, the Soviet tanks are in Hungary. That too has resolved. Maybe not to everybody's liking, but it's at least done. The fighting is done. Are we in a safer world, Alex, as a result of this or not? Well, interesting question. That's one for a whole other episode. I mean, effectively, yes, the sort of immediate hostilities have ceased. There's obviously a lot to work out still. And whereas in a really horrible world is if we look back at Hungary, that the rebellion, that first rebellion, as I say, first serious rebellion against Soviet control has been just brutally crushed, absolutely ground into the dirt. People are killed, hanged over. the Danube, people are imprisoned for years. There's a huge crackdown and that kind of incredibly illiberal Stalinist policy is rolled back in. After de-Stalinization, of Khrushchev attempted, he now decides, well, obviously if I let go of the reins at all, there's going to be this complete chaos. So he rolls back that incredibly tight control across the satellite states, across Eastern Europe. So it's a pretty, frankly, terrible outcome for Hungary. And who knows,

had this Suez thing not been going on at the same time, who knows, maybe that could have been different, but certainly it was not. So we've got the endgame in Budapest, but where are the final lines after Suez is over? The Israelis are still at Shamal Sheikh and the British paratroopers are still on the Suez Canal. What happens to both those armies? Well, Britain eventually is replaced by this UN Expeditionary Force, Britain and France, and eventually have to pull out. Effectively, they have to pull out by Christmas of 1956. So the final withdrawal of British and French forces was on the 22nd of December out of the Suez Canal zone and they took everything with them. They also took a couple of little souvenirs. The French took a clock which the Empress Eugenie had given to Ferdinand de Lesseps,

who you'll remember built the Suez Canal. British took a marble bust of Napoleon with them. And as they sort of embarked at Port Saeed the day before Christmas Eve, there was this colossal bronze statue of Ferdinand Dolesyps and Portsyat at the end of the canal. And as the British and France withdrew, there were, you know, throngs of Egyptians cheering, waving NASA's portrait aloft, and a large crowd assembled around this quayside, set explosives around that statue and blew it to smithereens. So the statue of Dolesyps, all that's left, it toppled into the canal, all that was left, were his little boots affixed to a stone pedestal, and that was all that remained of Dolesyps

in the canal. Border lessons. He has a very unfortunate, posthumous existence. It doesn't go too well. And also, I mean, you know, they need to unblock the canal because they've done a jolly good job of blockading it. How soon do they manage to get it operational again? And how does it operate again? It takes ages to clear it. And this is one of the big points of argument, really. You know, Britain and France keep trying to argue that they should be allowed to stay in to sort things out. And the UN keeps saying, no, you're not allowed to stay in and sort things out.

That's why we're going to send our expeditionary. force to sort things out, you need to get the hell out of there because you cause this problem. There's a lot of squabbling over that. But yeah, I mean, it takes weeks and weeks to clear the canal. It all takes ages to get back. And of course, during this time, even after the hostilities end, you've got to remember by this point, there's a major sterling crisis. Britain is heading into a wall and they do have to start restricting people's use of oil, which Anita has used to before, is a political disaster. It's a complete disaster. In many ways, Eden tried to cling on briefly to power after the Suez crisis. He didn't actually immediately resign as he quite

possibly should have. He tried to cling on for a little bit. And basically, so he tried to cling on to her. And on the 21st of November, so, you know, a few weeks afterwards, he obviously was, he'd be under a lot of stress. And so, you know, the cabinet office announced that Eden was going to leave London for three weeks for a little holiday on the orders of his doctor. And Rab Butler would fill in for him and take over as sort of acting prime minister. So off Eden and his wife went for Jamaica, where they stayed at Ian Fleming's villa, Golden Eye. In Fleming's Golden Eye, that's right. Yeah, absolutely. And rather naturally, this was yet another complete disaster for him because, you know, the British public who then weren't really allowed

to turn any lights on or drive their cars, sort of felt that Eden probably shouldn't reward himself for orchestration. With a Caribbean holiday. It's lovely Caribbean holiday. And actually even Ian Fleming's wife, Anne, said, Torquille. and a sunray lamp would have been more peaceful and patriotic. And, you know, Clarissa Eden tried to argue, well, it wouldn't have been good because if we'd gone to Berkshire, Anthony would have carried on working. But really, the general public didn't see it that way at all. And Eden indeed did end up having to resign, going on more holidays for his ill health,

and indeed Harold McMillan, taking his moment, having reinvented himself as the hero of the Suez Crisis, took over as Prime Minister. But as far as Britain's concerned, it's not just that Eden has resigned and they've got a new Prime Minister. Britain's entire imperial persona is now shattered. They've lost India 10 years earlier in 1947. They've been trying to sort of keep appearances up. But this is the moment that the kind of terrible weakness of Britain economically is exposed. And therefore the foundations on which this remaining imperial edifice is built looks incredibly crumbly. It's the crucial point. Post-war, the discussion is about three superpowers in the world.

You said that's at the beginning of the series, Britain, the US and the Soviet Union. And literally after Suez, people start saying, no, there are two superpowers. You know, because actually it's pretty clear because the US put these sanctions on Britain and stopped it doing it, that Britain actually cannot act without US support. It needs the US in the way that it hadn't been perceived to need it before. Exactly. Although, of course, British efforts in World War II and everything else would have come to nothing without American support. Of course, of course.

But the fiction at least survives that Britain is this imperial power until Sue is. Exactly. And so what happens in the rest of the 50s and throughout the 60s and 70s is the acceleration of that imperial retreat. Exactly. I mean, decolonialism. And in a sense, you know, with, I mean, of course, India and Pakistan and, you know, later Bangladesh has already gone. The decolonization movement had begun before this. But I think this is really the point where you just cannot sustain any longer the sense that Britain is a superlinson.

power or that that empire really means that kind of global power that Britain clearly once had, and now does not. We had in the last series when we had Sam Durhamble on with his shattered lands talking about British pulling out of the Gulf, that carries on until the 70s, but it's beginning to look completely absurd. So when the British have sort of imperial festivities in plumed hats on manicured lawns in Aden. Everyone watching knows this is a sort of joke that the empire as such no longer means anything. And Britain, just frankly, has been cut down to size by NASA. That's the key. About that NASA,

this matinee idol Arab, who even completely dismissed, has, in the eyes of the Arab world, pulled off this incredible coup and seen off Britain. This is a complete game changer for Arab nationalism. Well, absolutely. I mean, as NASA watches this happen, Mohammed Haikal said, you know, in the end, this was a personal business. It was a duel between two men. It was a situation that could only end in total victory for one and total defeat for another. NASA won and he never felt one speck of pity for Eden. And actually, we have NASA's own quote on this. When he saw Eden fall from power, lose herself and all this, NASA said, well, it was the curse of the pharaohs. So there you go. So that's how he saw it. When I was in Egypt as a young writer, I went to see Mohamed Heichel, who was NASA's great advisor during Suisse, who wrote the great Egyptian Sui's book, which I think you used in your research. Oh, yeah, yeah. That quote just came from it. And he very much took the view that it was Egypt that had cut Britain down to size. And it was NASA's Egypt, which was responsible for the end of the British Empire.

His version was not that it was Nehru or Gandhi or anything like this. It was Egypt that saw the British Lion off. Victory like this obviously suddenly had many, many fathers. So Nikita Khrushchev also started going around parties saying, I've defeated Britain and France, you know, with my threat of a nuclear attack. The Americans, meanwhile, were like, we basically just did them with our sanctions. We've defeated Britain and France. So everybody pretty much thought they'd done that.

And in a sense, I think, actually, they're all right. I mean, the fact is it was this confluence of huge pressures was probably exactly the problem, is that Britain and France just could not stand against that. Now, the other two conspirators are thrust bizarrely into each other's arms by this. That's Israel and France. Although Israel has blown the whistle prematurely and not consulted France, this becomes an alliance in the future. And am I not right in thinking that it is the French who support,

the Israeli nuclear program in the aftermath of this, giving us what we now have, which is, although never publicly acknowledged, a nuclear-armed Israel. Yes, I mean, exactly. It did come out of this quite directly, actually, that basically the Israelis and the French had actually, even during the discussions of the Protocol of Severa, that collusion document, the French and Israelis had had side discussions around that. Shimon Peres discussed with Gimoulet, the agreement for the building of a nuclear reactor. at Dimona in southern Israel and the supply of uranium to fuel it.

And the Israelis had wanted a nuclear reactor for some years. They could obviously see that the nuclear age was beginning. The collusion that they had with France over that was exactly how they managed to begin their nuclear program was through that cooperation with France. So that kind of is a fairly major outcome of the Suez crisis, which obviously is still something that we're looking at today. And this collusion, which very, very,

much accelerates in the aftermath of Suis is something that, of course, makes the French position in Algeria even more untenable. The next domino, we must definitely do a series on the French in Algeria before long because it's such a great story. But that whole thing accelerates as a result of this defeat. Yes, I mean, you know, Algeria is now an independent nation. So that didn't go the way Gimole wanted quite clearly. And so Ahmed Benbella, the the Algerian rebel leader who actually the French forces kidnapped at the beginning of the Suez crisis. He actually remained in prison in France from 1956 until 1962. And he was actually only released when Algeria won its independence.

He returned and became the country's first president who was deposed for a little while after then. It all sort of, there was a bit of back and forth. But effectively, yes, I mean, Algeria did win its independence. Massive emigration of the French in Algeria. Absolutely. Can I ask another, I mean, these days we talk about the strain that's been placed on the American and British special relationship with Trump in office and Trump saying these things unilaterally that sometimes Britain doesn't like in Britain taking stances, particularly when it comes to Gaza, for example, recently, that America does not approve of. It was in tatters at the end of Suez. You had Eisenhower, you know, sort of just basically, he didn't give a, you know, NASA didn't care what happened to Eden.

Eisenhower cared even less what happened to his ally. How long did it take to repair that relationship? I mean, so, you know, I kind of think when we talk about the special relationship, I think it's sort of bonkers that people still talk about that today. And it's only talked about in Britain. The Americans never heard of. Yeah, I was going to say, it's delusional on the part of the British, really. The special relationship that America has is with Israel. And it's only the British and only British right-wing newspapers ever referred to this mythical relationship. Yeah, I mean, it's not, you know, and it kind of stopped existing at Suez. I mean, that's the, the thing. There was a closeness, as I say, you know, after World War II. But this really did shatter it pretty badly. And although relations were patched up in the aftermath of it, you know, there are a few months of quite chippy hostility between those leaders, but it did calm down again.

You know, once Eden was gone and once they could find sort of new people to talk to and so forth, you know, everybody calmed down and Britain and America started cooperating again. But I don't think there was ever again really the idea of that complete level of trust. And I think you can see it because you can see various points in history. So for instance, you know, when the US tried to bring Britain in to Vietnam, tried to say, can you send us troops for Vietnam, actually the answer came back was, no, we remember Suez. No, we remember Suez. Oh, wow. So actually there's quite a specific impact. Yeah. The other brief moment when you get the kind of revival of this idea is, is of course Reagan and Thatcher.

That's the next time that Britain and America suddenly on the same page with two leaders that really like each other. Exactly. Although even that was quite a fractured relationship in some ways and had moments of real tension in it. Reagan goes and invades Grenada. But you have to put these things in perspective. I mean, if you look at the whole of Europe, there is no arguing that Britain is the closest ally to America.

Out of all the European powers, they'd much rather talk to Britain than they would the French, for example, where there is no. never been any trust. Yeah, but no, they much rather talk to Germany than Britain. I think they much prefer Germany as a general rule. And we lost what remaining use we ever had to America by withdrawing in Brexit. That was the moment when our usefulness finally dissolved. When you could argue that Britain was a bridge to Europe, maybe that worked, but I don't

think anymore that that's remotely functional. Yeah, this is actually the start of one of those conversations that's going to catch fire on Discord. I can just feel it because it is, you know, discuss Discord family. Poduk.com if you want to join our club and then you sort of get involved with each other and continue this conversation in earnest and I know it's a lively one. So listen, all that is left is to thank brilliant Alex Funtunzelman and I really do commend to you her book, Blood and Sand. It is, as you can imagine, a rip-boring read. It's brilliantly written as all her books are and it is such a

densely interesting story. Alex, thank you so very much. Till the next time we meet on Empire, It is goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Lerbopold.