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Great Contemporaries: Anthony Eden (Part 3), 1939-1977
- By FRED GLUECKSTEIN
- | August 4, 2022
- Category: Explore Great Contemporaries
Eden: War and Remembrance: continued from Part 2.
Ireland: “Anything to be helpful”
With Britain at war, Anthony Eden rejoined Chamberlain’s government as Dominions Secretary, a non-Cabinet office. Although it was not a job he desired, he served faithfully for eight months, coordinating dominion support for the war. Five dominions—Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Newfoundland—opted to stand by Britain against Nazi Germany. A sixth nominal dominion, the Irish Free State, declared neutrality, though it did ask London for arms.
Eden, handled this adroitly. He and the Irish Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, had worked together cordially at the League of Nations. Dublin, Eden wrote, “wanted to do anything it could to be helpful.” De Valera did not impede the many Irish who volunteered to fight in Britain’s forces. To ease any embarrassment when they returned home on leave, “dumps of civilian clothes were provided at Holyhead.” In 1938 Chamberlain had surrendered rights to use three Irish “Treaty Ports,” which rankled the Royal Navy. At Eden’s urging, but “with reluctance,” Churchill’s Admiralty agreed not to take them back by force.1
As war approached, Eden and Churchill developed an increasingly close friendship. Of their common outlooks, Churchill said of Eden’s time at the Foreign Office: “He was a devoted adherent of the French Entente…he was anxious to have more intimate relations with Soviet Russia. He felt and feared the Hitler peril. It might almost be said that there was not much difference of view between him and me, except, of course that he was in harness.”2
“Tenacity, even obstinacy”
When Churchill became Prime Minister, he immediately brought Eden into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for War. Anthony Eden served from 11 May until 22 December 1940. He demonstrated an ability to defend a deep-felt course of action and, at times, to prevail over Churchill. One such example occurred after the fall of France and the threat of a German invasion of Britain. In June 1940, Italy entered the war as an ally of Germany, Italian forces now posed a threat to Britain’s position in Egypt and the Sudan.
Churchill, mainly concerned with the defense of Britain, was prepared to reduce troops and equipment in the Middle East. Eden was more concerned about the Italian threat from Libya and Abyssinia. Only in North Africa, he believed, could Britain come to terms with the enemy and emerge victorious. Ultimately, Eden would be proven correct.
Eden was supported by General Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief Middle East. Churchill had his doubts about Wavell and made his views known. Eden threatened to resign, Churchill relented, and more forces were sent to the Middle East. In his war memoirs, Churchill “gave no indication of the dispute,” wrote Sidney Aster. But in his own memoirs, Anthony Eden “gave himself and the War Office credit for this decisive act, though paying tribute to Churchill, for his was the final responsibility.”3
Elisabeth Barker wrote that “Eden could show great tenacity, even obstinacy, in defending his department…against Churchill’s more aggressive impulses or higher flights of fancy.”4 Yet despite their sometimes acrimonious debates, Eden’s relationship with Churchill was described by Aster and Barker as one of mutual respect.
“Complete confidence and candour”
In early December 1940 Churchill shuffled Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax to Washington as British ambassador. He then insisted that Eden return to the Foreign Office, with additional duties on the Defence Committee. Eden took over the Foreign Office for the second time on 23 December 1940. Churchill wrote that Eden’s return there was “like a man going home.”5
As Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, Churchill and Eden developed a close working relationship. It has been described as a father-son bond. For Eden it was a changed experience.
Chamberlain once sent a letter to Mussolini without showing it to Eden, saying, “I had the feeling that he would object to it.” Churchill never sent a message with international implications without either showing it to Eden or sending it over for his approval. “He was meticulous in such matters,” said Eden, “without any request or complaint having ever been made by me. Complete confidence and candour between Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary are indispensable conditions for the conduct of a successful foreign policy under our parliamentary system.”6
Before Churchill left for his Second Washington Conference in June 1942, King George VI asked him for advice about his successor. (The PM’s many missions abroad left him highly vulnerable to enemy action.) In the event of his death, Churchill advised the King to send for Eden:
[He] is in my mind the outstanding Minister in the largest political party in the House of Commons and in the National Government over which I have the honour to preside, and who I am sure will be capable of conducting Your Majesty’s affairs with resolution, experience, and capacity which these grievous times require.7
Eden isn’t getting any younger
Despite the immense strains of war, Churchill’s confidence in Eden never wavered. Both were reelected during the Conservative debacle in July 1945. Churchill was now Leader of the Opposition, Eden his designated successor. Increasingly, the party hierarchy wanted WSC to retire, but they could not insist. Then in October 1951, the Conservatives returned to office.
Eden was again Churchill’s skillful foreign minister, deftly handling the retreat from empire, the Korean War and Cold War rearmament. He established close relationships with France and Germany, maintained British interest in the Middle East. Less enthusiastic than Churchill about a “summit” with the Soviets, he nevertheless regretted intransigence to Russian negotiations by Eisenhower and Dulles.
Eden took an even firmer line than Churchill against British integration in Europe. Regarding the Schuman Plan, the first step toward a European Union, Churchill declared: “We help, we dedicate, we play a part, but we are not merged with and do not forfeit our insular or commonwealth character.”8 This quote often continues with words that were actually Eden’s: “It is only when plans for uniting Europe take a federal form that we ourselves cannot take part, because we cannot subordinate ourselves or the control of British policy to federal authorities.”9
Aged 55 in 1952, Anthony Eden married Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, Churchill’s 32-year-old niece. But WSC’s refusal to retire baffled, then frustrated and later infuriated his nephew-in-law. It amused Churchill to rub it in. In 1953 he told French Ambassador René Massigli (for once in perfect French): “Ne trouvez-vous pas qu’Anthony paraît vieilli?” (Don’t you find that Anthony seems to have aged?) There is no evidence that he also said, “I shall have to retire soon; Anthony isn’t getting any younger.” But both remarks got back to Eden.10
“I don’t believe Anthony can do it”
In April 1955, Eden finally succeeded Churchill as prime minister. A month later, he called for and won a handsome electoral mandate. Alas his tenure at the top lasted only 21 months and ended in a dismal failure for Britain and Eden. Ominously albeit privately, Churchill on the eve of retirement had made a prediction: “I don’t believe Anthony can do it.”11 Alas, another Churchillian prediction found its mark.
In July 1956, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the British- and French-owned Suez Canal Company. Europe depended on this vital Red Sea-Mediterranean waterway as shipping route for Middle Eastern oil. Britain and France, joined by Israel, responded with a “police action” to take it back. Eden, recalling Britain’s appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s, thought to restore equilibrium by force.
The attack infuriated Eisenhower who, after being safely reelected in November, sided with the Russians in the United Nations. Threatening to undermine the pound sterling, he forced Britain and France to accept a UN cease-fire. Eden never forgot this rebuke by his great ally—a historic setback for Britain. Eden’s poll numbers plummeted. He survived a vote of confidence but, sick in heart and body, he took a holiday in Jamaica. His health deteriorating, Eden resigned in December. Ironically, Harold Macmillan, who had told him after visiting Eisenhower that the Americans would not oppose Britain’s action, was Eden’s successor.
Sir Winston, now only a private Member of Parliament, had been outwardly supportive of Eden. Privately, however, he called the Suez operation “the most ill-conceived and ill-executed imaginable.” Jock Colville asked Churchill if he would have acted as Eden had. “I would never have dared,” WSC replied, “and if I had dared, I would certainly never have dared stop.”12
Ave atque vale
In 1961, Anthony Eden accepted an earldom and entered the House of Lords as Earl of Avon. His public reputation, however, was permanently beclouded over Suez. Biographer Sidney Aster wrote: “It is a cruel fate, even by the harsh standards of politics, to be remembered by one failure and not by numerous achievements.”[13]
Eden died on 14 January 1977, the last surviving member of Churchill’s War Cabinet. Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home was a fellow Conservative and himself briefly prime minister. The two had worked closely on foreign affairs over a long period of time. Home reflected: “It was particularly distressing that Suez virtually brought an end to his political career and he was particularly unhappy at the breech in relations with the United States, for he had always worked hard to keep intimate contact with our main ally.”14 Anthony Eden, Home continued, should be remembered for his “distinguished career as Foreign Secretary.”
Queen Elizabeth II provided the finest accolade. In a message of sympathy to Lady Avon, Her Majesty wrote: “He will be remembered in history, above all, as an outstanding diplomat and as a man of courage and integrity.”15 Sir Winston Churchill would certainly have agreed.
Further reading on Eden
Andrew Roberts, “Eden, America and the Suez Crisis of 1956,” 2021.
William John Shepherd, “David Charlwood, Churchill and Eden: Partners in War and Peace,” 2021.
The author
Mr. Glueckstein, of Kings Park, New York, writes about people and places related to the Churchill saga.
Endnotes
1 Anthony Eden, The Reckoning (London: Cassell, 1965), 68-70.
2 Elisabeth Barker, Churchill and Eden at War (London: Macmillan,1978), 18.
3 Sidney Aster, Anthony Eden (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 64.
4 Barker, Churchill and Eden, 16.
5 Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), 505.
6 Anthony Eden, Facing the Dictators (London: Cassell, 1962), 453.
7 Aster, Anthony Eden, 73-74.
8 Churchill, Cabinet Note, 29 November 1951, National Archives, CAB129/48C [51] 32.
9 Eden memorandum to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, 6 December 1951, in Richard M. Langworth, “Churchill Red Herrings: On a Federal Europe and ‘Keep England White,’” https://bit.ly/37vH1ud, accessed 21 April 2022.
10 René Massigli, Une comédie des erreurs, 1943-1956 (Memoirs). Paris: Plon, 1978, 361. “Anthony isn’t getting any younger” is listed among the apocryphal quotes in a draft for the expanded edition of Richard M. Langworth, Churchill by Himself (New York: Rosetta, 2016).
11 John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries 1939-1955 (New York: Norton, 1985), 708.
12 Ibid., 721.
13 Aster, Anthony Eden, 165.
14 Alden Whitman, “Anthony Eden Is Dead. Career Built on Style and Dash Ended with Invasion of Egypt.” The New York Times, 15 January 1977, 49. (As chief obituary writer Whitman based his piece on interviews with notables in advance of their deaths.)
15 Ibid.