The god that failed
John Grigg
Anthony Eden was an almost godlike figure to the general British public from the early 1920s, when he first entered Parliament, until the mid-1950s, when his career ended in the disaster and humiliation of Suez. Though he was always a Conservative his appeal was across party lines, and probably no politician has been more widely loved, admired and respected than he was.
As a young man he combined film star looks with the reassuring qualities of an officer and gentleman. He was glamorous, but also conventional. His speeches were fluent but cliche-ridden; as incapable of inspiring as of offending. Even when he resigned as Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain's cabinet, he managed to do so without ruffling the susceptibilities of loyal Conservatives, to whom Chamberlain was then an idol. Thus he succeeded in winning new support on the Left and in non-party circles, while preserving his Tory base intact.
He had volunteered for the First World War as a boy of seventeen and served with marvellous bravery as an infantry officer on the Western Front. (His account of this experience, published last year in a small volume on his early life entitled Another World, is by far the most vivid and memorable thing he ever wrote.) But it is perhaps significant that he was a battalion adjutant and brigade major, never a battalion or brigade commander. This pattern was repeated in his political life. He was at his best when serving as number two to a prime minister of genius, Winston Churchill. When he eventually became prime minister himself he was a catastrophe.
His relations with Churchill are fascinating and still considerably misunderstood. Of course there was a bond between them, but they were never really close and there was always a good deal of mutual irritation. Churchill could be sentimental about Eden as a symbol of the war generation, and at a realistic level he was aware of the younger man's competence and of his uniquely good standing in the Tory Party. This, above all, made him an indispensable colleague from the moment that Churchill became Tory leader, after Chamberlain's death.
Eden, for his part, was irked by Churchill's eccentric habits and superior talents. When he resigned in 1938 he did not join Churchill's group, but worked independently with his own. During the Second World War he (like Cadogan, Alanbrooke and others) was often driven nearly mad by the prime minister's loquacity and caprice. One small incident may be quoted as an illustration of this.
were returning from Yalta early in 1945, they stayed for a few days in Cairo, where my father at the time was minister resident. Towards the end of dinner one evening Churchill announced that he would give 'a bird's-eye view of the war,' whereupon Eden pushed back his chair, said 'Well, I'm going to have a bird's-eye view of bed' and abruptly left the room. Churchill for a moment was disconcerted and pained. 'Very uncivil of him,' he muttered—and then proceeded with his tour d'horizon. Later he said to my father: 'The trouble with Anthony is that he's all Eton and Rifle Brigade.' It was not a fair comment, but revealing of Churchill's attitude.
During the last Churchill premiership, from 1951 to 1955, Eden's exasperation was compounded by impatience at Churchill's delay in making way for him. The two men clashed over withdrawal of the British garrison from the Suez Canal zone and over summit talks with the Russians, but beneath the policy differences there was a human conflict between an old man unwilling to go and a middle-aged, now ailing, man eager to take over. Nevertheless their partnership as prime minister and foreign secretary, both during and after the war, was on the whole fruitful. Their qualities were complementary and they largely made up for each other's faults.
Eden came to the premiership without any experience of a home department, the first man to do so since Salisbury (apart from MacDonald, who became prime minister without any previous experience of government at all). Eden's ministerial career had been exclusively in the sphere of foreign or Commonwealth affairs and defence. At home,. he had shown his sensitivity to the spirit of the age by talking of 'a propertyowning democracy,' but had given no serious thought to the practical implications of such an idea. With Churchill removed, however, he had to assert his primacy over two senior colleagues who had been thinking for years about the problem of reconciling capitalism with democracy. The two colleagues in question were R. A. Butler and Harold Macmillan.
Both were, perhaps, rather jealous of him, and he in turn was suspicious and resentful of them. Butler had moved into the Foreign Office, as Halifax's under-secretary, when Eden and Cranborne resigned, and had then become a most adroit, stonewalling spokesman for the policy of appeasement. In Churchill's war-time government he had redeemed himself by a major act of social policy, the Butler Education Act, and after the war had come to be regarded as the principal architect of a new Toryism.
Macmillan seemed an even more formidable threat. Like Eden he had an excellent war record, though unlike Eden he had (incomprehensibly) not been decorated. Between the wars he had been right on the major issues, domestic and foreign, but consistently excluded from office. Latterly, however, he had made up a lot of ground and, as Butler's reputation slumped a little in 1954-5, his was riding high as the man who had built 300,000 houses a year.
Eden's downfall has all the elements of Greek tragedy. He was driven to act against the principles of a lifetime by two defects of character—the violent temper that he inherited from his father, Sir William Eden (a selfish, cranky aesthete), and his incorrigible streak of vanity. Both were brought into play by Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal, and by goading from the imperialist wing of the Tory Party, where (coincidentally) Macmillan's son-in-law, Julian Amery, was prominent.
Vanity differs from conceit in making the person who suffers from it vulnerable. Eden, as a true and courageous patriot, was stung by the suggestion that he was weak in defence of Britain's interests. He felt that Nasser had betrayed his trust, since he had risked his position in the party by standing up to Churchill on the issue of withdrawing troops from the Canal Zone. In general, he was conscious that people were comparing him unfavourably with Churchill, and he succumbed to the temptation to prove, by a dramatic stroke, that he was a masterful leader.
Suez cannot be forgiven or forgotten, but there is much to set against it in the total retrospect of Eden's career. He was, essentially, a good man. His gifts as a negotiator were unequalled in his time, and he achieved many notable successes by his chosen method—'open covenants, secretly arrived at.' During the second war he sympathised with de Gaulle and defended him against Roosevelt's pathological hostility and Churchill's inconstancy. Though he did not see far into the future, and opposed the movement which has produced the European Community, he was nevertheless, in his way,a good European. He also believed very strongly in the English-speaking connection, both with the United States and within the Commonwealth.
He was an outstanding specimen of the English upper class, yet he genuinely hated narrow class feeling and was utterly sincere in his ideal of national unity. The British people understood his virtues and responded with an affection that he never forfeited, even at the moment when his fallibility became glaringly apparent.
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