Nigel Ashton - False Prophets: British Leaders Fateful Fascination with the Middle East from Suez to Syria

Also by Nigel Ashton

King Hussein of Jordan

Kennedy, Macmillan and the Cold War

Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2022 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Nigel Ashton, 2022

The moral right of Nigel Ashton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Quotations from the following works are reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear: Clarissa Eden: A Memoir by Clarissa Eden, copyright Clarissa Eden, 2007; John Major: A Political Life by Anthony Seldon, copyright Anthony Seldon, 1997; The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years, 19501957 edited by Peter Catterall, copyright The Trustees of the Harold Macmillan Book Trust, 2003; The Macmillan Diaries, Volume II: Prime Minister and After, 19571966 edited by Peter Catterall, copyright The Trustees of the Harold Macmillan Book Trust, 2011.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-786-49325-5

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-786-49328-6

E-book ISBN: 978-1-786-49327-9

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Dedicated to the memory of my parents,
John and Patricia Ashton

I DATE MY fascination with the Middle East back to the year 1973 when I have a strong childhood memory of watching television pictures of cheering soldiers sitting astride tanks as they drove to and from the battlefields of the October War. Equally strong is the subsequent memory of queueing for petrol in the back of my fathers car as the Arab oil embargo hit hard in Britain. It was all rather perplexing for an eight-year-old child. I would like to think I resolved then to make sense of it all by writing a book in later life, but that would be to put too firm a construction on the foundation of childhood memory. Nevertheless, what that turbulent year did underline was that one way or another Britains fate was bound up with events in the Middle East, a lesson which British leaders had already taken to heart.

Beyond these powerful childhood memories, the subsequent impetus to write this book was born of a certain impatience, which has nagged at me throughout my career as an historian, with the way in which Britains role in the Middle East has been framed. Thirty years ago, as a doctoral student I wrote a thesis challenging the notion that the Suez crisis of 1956 represented the final throes of British imperialism in the Middle East. Contemporary experience as much as historical research seemed to bear the argument out since the thesis was completed against the backdrop of another war in the region during 199091, with British forces joining an American-led coalition to liberate Kuwait from Iraq.

But the clearest vindication of the argument still lay in the future then. Tony Blairs wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which followed the 9/11 attacks on the United States provided the clearest demonstration of all that Britain had never really withdrawn from East of Suez or abandoned its role in the Middle East. Most fascinating of all was the way in which Blairs framing of the wars as an existential struggle for the preservation of Western civilization mirrored the warnings delivered by Anthony Eden half a century earlier. In this book I have set out to connect up Eden and Blair by looking at the continuing fascination exerted by the Middle East over the intervening and succeeding tenants of 10 Downing Street. As I indicate in the conclusion, I also see the book in part as an antidote to the almost pathological preoccupation with Europe which has haunted British politics over recent decades. We should not forget that it was the Middle East which was, in fact, the recurring focus of British leaders fears, and the main object of their military interventions, throughout this period.

In researching and writing the book I have incurred many debts. I am grateful to the archivists at the numerous libraries where I have worked for their curation of the documents which are the essential raw materials of historical writing. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the International History Department at the LSE for the intellectual stimulation they have provided over the course of the past two decades. My agent, Natasha Fairweather, has offered invaluable assistance, not least in placing this manuscript with Atlantic Books. At Atlantic, I am most grateful to my editor, James Nightingale, for his insight and understanding throughout the publication process.

The greatest debts of course are always personal. My wife, Danielle, and daughters, Isabelle and Sophie, have offered me unstinting love and support throughout the research and writing process. Meanwhile, my parents, who both passed away during the course of the writing of the book, always understood the value of education. It is to their memory that I dedicate this book.

IT WAS THE moment Gamal Abdel Nasser found his voice. Standing before a huge crowd assembled in Alexandrias Manshiya Square on 26 July 1956, the Egyptian President spoke, not in the stiff and formal Arabic of his earlier speeches, but in the language of the masses. The tale he told was one of sacrifice to end injustice, of the triumph of the Arab spirit over the schemes of the British occupiers. As he spoke of his quest to free Egypt from grinding poverty and oppression through the construction of a mighty dam on the Nile at Aswan, an elite band of soldiers led by Major Mahmoud Younes lay in wait outside the offices of that hated symbol of Western domination the Suez Canal Company. And then, in the midst of an otherwise mundane passage in the speech about Nassers meetings with the President of the World Bank, Eugene Black, came the code word: I started to look at Mr Black, who was sitting on a chair, Nasser observed, and I saw him in my imagination as Ferdinand de Lesseps. As he uttered the name of the notorious French architect of the Canal, Major Younes and his men sprang into action, storming the Companys offices. The Suez Canal now belonged to Egypt.

Even this moment of high drama was not without its element of bathos. Worried that his men might have missed the code word, Nasser went on to repeat de Lessepss name no fewer than fourteen times in his speech. Even as the cheering crowds drained from the square at the end of the rally, an observer from the United States embassy noted that something symbolic had been left behind. Standing forlornly amidst the detritus of the crowd was a float in rather questionable taste, depicting the Sphinx swallowing a British soldier with the Union Jack sewn on his derrire.