Anthony Eden

Prime minister of the United Kingdom (1955-1957)

• Born: June 12, 1897
• Birthplace: Windlestone Hall, near Bishop Auckland, Durham, England
• Died: January 14, 1977
• Place of death: Alvediston, Wiltshire, England

Although his three appointments as foreign secretary brought Eden a high reputation for firmness and diplomatic adroitness, his tenure as prime minister ended in humiliation and resignation for his part in the ill-starred invasion of Egypt that brought the Suez crisis to a head.

Early Life

The fourth of five children, Anthony Eden was born on his family’s estate near Bishop Auckland in county Durham. His father’s lineage, through local nobility, could be traced back at least to the fifteenth century; among others, Sir William Eden could claim descent from royal governors of Maryland and North Carolina. Lady Sybil Frances Grey Eden, Eden’s mother, was partly of Danish ancestry, although one side of her family was related to that of Sir Edward Grey, Great Britain’s foreign secretary preceding and during World War I. Young Anthony (he eventually preferred the middle to his original given name) was educated in part by tutors during his early years. For a time, he was taught by a German governess, from whom he evidently received more thorough instruction in French than in her native language. At the age of thirteen, he entered Eton, where he was regarded as promising and intelligent but not notably distinguished.

Before Eden could consider further studies, World War I broke out, and late in 1914, John Eden, his eldest brother, was killed while on active duty in France. Another brother, Timothy, was captured and held in Germany as a prisoner of war. Nevertheless, in September, 1915, Eden enlisted in the infantry and was commissioned a lieutenant. He was to spend more than three years on the western front, chiefly at Ypres and on the Somme. He was appalled at the carnage and suffering of war as it affected those around him. He learned as well that his younger brother, William Nicholas, a midshipman, had perished in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. Eden nevertheless performed his duties loyally and with conspicuous gallantry. In June, 1917, he was awarded the Military Cross for bringing a wounded sergeant back to safety while under German machine-gun fire. Early in the spring of the following year, he was promoted to brigade-major.

On his return to civilian life, Eden entered Oxford University. Enlarging on the example of one of his neighbors from Durham, a former diplomatic official who had taught him some elements of Turkish, Eden decided to read for a degree in Oriental languages; he concentrated on Persian, with some attention also to Arabic. When he completed his studies, he obtained first-class honors. Rather than take up a diplomatic calling, however, the lure of political challenge led him to stand as a Conservative candidate for Parliament. Although the first time, in November, 1922, he was defeated in a district where the Labour Party had a preponderant following, he was later nominated in a neighboring area, around Warwick and Leamington. Eden, espousing conventional party doctrines, campaigned diligently, and he was elected handily in December, 1923. Not long beforehand a major event took place in his personal life: He was married to Beatrice Beckett, the daughter of a Conservative member of Parliament who was the chair of the Yorkshire Post. To the young couple two sons, Simon and Nicholas, were born during the next seven years.

Life’s Work

Eden’s first speech before the House of Commons warned of the need not merely for air defense but also for the means to develop offensive capabilities that might deter any would-be attacker. Other statements, on economic concerns, recorded his beliefs that the working and lower classes had interests in social stability to the extent that they might also become property holders. Eden seemed more comfortable dealing with matters of international concern. He spoke out on issues such as imperial defense, relations with Turkey, and disarmament proposals. After a wide-ranging foreign tour he produced his first book, Places in the Sun (1926), which made little impression and was regarded by critics as platitudinous.

As his political career developed, Eden became increasingly known, by supporters and detractors alike, for his appearance and bearing. To his admirers, he was the embodiment of self-assurance and polished ease, a tall, trim figure, impeccably tailored, who gave the impression of strength and dignity. Later cartoonists and critics found his personality symbolized by his bushy eyebrows and the thick overhanging mustache that he had cultivated since his army days; his protruding front teeth contrasted with a somewhat weak chin to produce an effect of awkward irresolution. On the radio, his voice seemed thin and reedy to many, though his later television appearances produced somewhat more favorable impressions.

Eden’s growing expertise in diplomatic matters was widely recognized, and in 1931, he became undersecretary of state for foreign affairs. For some time, he represented Great Britain at the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva and later dealt with the crisis of October, 1934, when Italy and Hungary were suspected of complicity in the assassination of Yugoslavia’s king Alexander. In January, 1935, he endorsed the return of the Saar to Germany when this measure was approved by a local plebiscite. In the course of his diplomatic work, Eden met with Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and leading French statesmen. In April, 1935, he was received at the Kremlin by Soviet premier Joseph Stalin. During that summer, Eden was appointed to a cabinet-level position: minister for League of Nations affairs.

At times, Eden seemed poised between conciliatory overtures and more forthright assertions of resistance to the minatory policies of European dictators. When Italy went to war to subjugate Ethiopia , in October, 1935, Eden urged that all measures short of actual military involvement should be used to oppose Mussolini’s imperial designs. Eden became foreign secretary in December of that year, after Sir Samuel Hoare, his predecessor, was forced to concede that efforts to find a solution through diplomatic concessions had failed. While the Ethiopian issue remained unsettled, further problems were posed by Germany’s introduction of troops into the Rhineland in March, 1936, in pointed defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. In July, 1936, civil war broke out in Spain , and it was not long before Nationalist forces received active assistance from Germany and Italy. Eden sternly contended that all powers should follow a policy of nonintervention in the Spanish conflict. It would appear that during this period, Eden was at least as much concerned with Italian as with German challenges to peace, and his position began to diverge from those of others in the government. Neville Chamberlain, who became prime minister in May, 1937, clashed with Eden on certain points. His efforts to secure an understanding with Italy, in the absence of preconditions that Eden insisted were essential, were followed by secret meetings with Italian diplomats. Rather abruptly, in February, 1938, Eden resigned from the Foreign Office, though he avoided any outward recriminations that might have proved embarrassing to the Conservative government.

Subsequently, Eden’s standpoint seemed amply vindicated by events, as the fascist dictators became even more intractable, although it is not clear the extent to which principled prescience guided his decisions. In September, 1938, the prime minister took part in the Munich Accords, which consigned part of Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich. In the wake of this agreement, Eden spoke from his seat in the Commons, expressing reservations about Chamberlain’s diplomacy without venturing to judge its ultimate results. After Great Britain declared war on Germany, in September, 1939, Eden became secretary of state for the Dominions; in May, 1940, with Winston Churchill as prime minister, he was appointed secretary of state for war. That December, he again was made foreign secretary. On some matters, Eden differed sharply with Churchill; for some time he favored firmer support for General Charles de Gaulle’s French Committee of National Liberation. On some occasions, Eden believed that the prime minister’s treatment of him was high-handed. Particularly troubling questions arose in the course of Great Britain’s alliance with the Soviet Union. While Eden had earlier acquiesced in Soviet territorial claims, during the later stages of the war he was distinctly wary of Stalin’s intentions. In particular, he insisted that after the liberation of Greece from the Germans, in October, 1944, British forces stationed there should act to preclude a Communist seizure of power. Somewhat uncomfortably, Eden did agree to the repatriation of Soviet nationals found among the German troops that British forces captured in Central Europe. In carrying out this decision of the war cabinet, however, his aim was to avoid further difficulties with the Soviets over the Balkans and to assure the return of British prisoners of war who had been liberated by the Red Army.

In July, 1945, Eden was informed that his elder son, Simon, a pilot, had died over Burma. Shortly thereafter, the electorate turned the Conservative Party out of office. Late in 1946, during a visit to the United States, Eden’s wife finally wearied of her husband’s political commitments and remained behind in New York. Their marriage was formally dissolved in 1950. When after the general election of 1951 the Conservatives again formed a government, Eden once more became Churchill’s foreign secretary, though some observers detected a growing impatience on his part to succeed the older man. Eden’s personal life took a turn for the better in 1952 when he married Anne Clarissa Spencer Churchill, the prime minister’s niece, who was twenty-three years his junior.

In spite of Great Britain’s difficulties in adjusting to its loss of influence abroad after World War II, Eden’s third term as foreign secretary was distinguished by the settlement through negotiation of several troublesome issues. At Geneva in 1954, Eden was instrumental in arranging accords that brought an end to France’s prolonged war against local insurgents in Indochina; it seemed unavoidable that Communist advances there would lead to the division of Vietnam. Eden also assisted in the resolution of territorial differences in Europe, whereby Italy received Trieste and Yugoslavia was awarded much of the region east of the city. Perhaps his most notable achievement from this period was the conclusion of an agreement facilitating the entry of the Federal Republic of Germany into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To counter objections, especially from French leaders who feared German rearmament, Eden offered a continuing pledge to maintain British forces on the Continent. After this measure was accepted, in October, 1954, proposals for supranational military structures were replaced by more definite commitments within the Atlantic Alliance. For this action, Eden was formally knighted by the British Crown.

In April, 1955, Churchill retired and Eden duly became prime minister. In a bold gesture, he called for general elections the next month, to which the country responded by voting in a larger Conservative majority. Although henceforth economic issues, notably deflationary measures that would require fiscal austerity, troubled him in an area where he had little real expertise, Eden devoted most of his attention to diplomatic concerns. After a summit conference where they met Western leaders in Geneva, in July, 1955, Soviet leaders Nikita S. Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin came to Great Britain the following April for a state visit. Middle Eastern problems, however, soon became a virtual preoccupation. Efforts to form military alliances with Arab countries led to an agreement with Iraq, but President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt denounced such undertakings and turned to Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union for aircraft and other modern weapons. In March, 1956, King Hussein of Jordan dismissed General John Bagot Glubb, the British commander of that country’s Arab Legion. Eden suspected that Nasser had instigated this measure. In July, the U.S. secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, wary of mounting Soviet influence in Egypt, abruptly canceled a proposed offer for a loan to finance the Aswān High Dam. Within one week, Nasser retaliated by announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company.

Eden regarded this act as a severe blow to Great Britain’s vital interests. In discussions with the French Premier, Guy Mollet, the use of force was considered repeatedly, but at the outset of the crisis it was realized that additional time was required to make preparations from bases in the Mediterranean. Other measures, such as collective negotiations among nations using the canal, which Dulles favored, seemed both prolonged and inconclusive. By the middle of October, military alternatives, to which Eden invariably had attached great importance, were decided on in more definite terms. It is probably just as well that British leaders became involved in concurrent planning between French and Israeli commanders. Toward the end of the month, Israel invaded the Sinai peninsula; ostensibly to separate the combatants and to establish international control of the canal, an Anglo-French ultimatum was delivered to Egypt. British warplanes based on Cyprus then attacked Egyptian air bases. By the first week of November, British and French troops had landed at Port Said and advanced alongside the waterway.

The Suez expedition met with wide condemnation from many nations of the world. The pretexts under which it had been launched to maintain access to the canal and to keep Israeli and Egyptian forces apart were generally regarded as specious. Eden’s veracity was called into question and there were widespread charges of multilateral collusion in the surprise attack on Egypt. American diplomats openly called for the withdrawal of British and French troops. International speculation threatened the exchange value of the British pound. Moreover, vague Soviet threats of rocket attacks on London and Paris further complicated matters. The British and French governments were forced to agree first to suspend operations against Egypt and then to withdraw their forces to make way for United Nations troops that were dispatched to the area. At one stroke, Eden’s political stature had fallen catastrophically.

Over the years, Eden had suffered repeatedly from poor health: Early in his career at the Foreign Office heart strain was diagnosed, while on other occasions he was treated for a duodenal ulcer. Jaundice and gastric complaints had also troubled him. During the later stages of the Suez crisis, he was stricken with an abnormally high fever. Accordingly, without referring to the disturbing questions that had arisen about his political judgment, he cited medical concerns on January 9, 1957, when he tendered his resignation from the prime ministry to Queen Elizabeth II.

During his retirement, Eden did not much involve himself in political concerns, though as a former prime minister he accepted elevation to the peerage and became the earl of Avon in 1961. He wrote four volumes of memoirs, which did not appear in a chronological sequence and were considered of uneven quality. He also composed a brief treatise, Towards Peace in Indo-China (1966), which drew on his experience in negotiating the accords of 1954 and proposed that through international agencies the United States should work for a compromise settlement of the Vietnam War. Otherwise, Eden receded from public view. After struggles with cancer, Eden died at Alvediston, his farm home in Wiltshire, on January 14, 1977.

Significance

For a diplomat who had long been regarded as fortune’s favorite, the obloquy that attached to Eden’s name after the crisis of 1956 was particularly ironic: In many quarters it was thought that he had invariably come down on the right side of major questions before the Suez conflict. Some subsequent historians have regarded this verdict as simplistic; inconsistencies and moments of naïveté have been discerned in positions he adopted preceding World War II. Some have castigated Eden for his wartime dealings with the Soviet Union. Others have insisted that the national interests of his own country were paramount to him. It is arguable that Eden followed no single guiding principle but, rather, aimed to preserve order and safeguard peace. He was in no sense a great writer or orator, but for most of his career he displayed great skill as a diplomatic tactician. Against his later critics it may be contended that a lesser man would have fallen by the wayside during the 1930’s debate on appeasement or would have been daunted by the multiple concerns of Great Britain’s international role during the first decade of the Cold War.

That Eden suffered a fatal lapse of judgment in Middle Eastern concerns, an area where he was thought to be particularly knowledgeable, points up perhaps some of the conclusions that may be drawn from the tragic denouement of his public life. For one thing, it was difficult for him to act both to negotiate and to resolve on sterner measures. After a career in which difficult decisions had frequently arisen, he erred finally on the side of using force. Almost certainly, he mistook the actual trend of political events in the Middle East; his vision was derived too much from a simpler era, when Great Britain’s overseas requirements could more easily be accommodated. Finally, it seems likely that he did not readily grasp the implications of declining British power during the era following World War II. That these shortcomings should have been exhibited all at once during the single major crisis of his prime ministry suggests as well the unhappy vicissitudes of international politics, where certain tragic flaws combined to cut short a career that otherwise had offered much.

Bibliography

Aster, Sidney. Anthony Eden. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976. Brisk, popular narrative that weighs the achievements of Eden’s diplomatic work against the tragic miscalculations over Suez that brought his political career to an end.

Barker, Elisabeth. Churchill and Eden at War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978. This extensive and fair-minded study of Eden’s relationship with the prime minister during World War II is based largely on cabinet papers, Foreign Office records, and other archival materials. The author systematically traces the actual differences that existed between the two British statesmen while warning against exaggerated claims of discord or strife.

Carlton, David. Anthony Eden: A Biography. London: Allen Lane, 1981. This lengthy critical study, based on many U.S. as well as British diplomatic documents, is rather more critical of Eden’s positions during the 1930’s and World War II than other major works; on the other hand, some subsequent difficulties are traced to underlying problems of Great Britain’s declining position relative to the United States and the Soviet Union. This work is important as a kind of revisionist treatment of the British statesman’s political career.

Eden, Anthony. Another World, 1897-1917. London: Allen Lane, 1976. This slender volume combines bittersweet recollections of the author’s early years with poignant, haunting sketches from his military service on the western front. The later portions furnish grim evidence of the impact World War I had on Eden’s family and on his political outlook.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Facing the Dictators. London: Cassell, 1962. Although some episodes are treated at greater length than others, and there are some rather curious omissions, this work both traces the development of Eden’s political career and comments on diplomatic problems from 1931 to 1938. There is some reasoning from hindsight, but probably no more than in other memoirs from this period.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Reckoning. London: Cassell, 1965. Eden’s memoirs from World War II reveal some of the difficulties that Great Britain encountered in its diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and the United States. The author is not inclined to dwell on problems in dealing with Churchill or other leaders from his own country.

Pearson, Jonathan. Sir Anthony Eden and the Suez Crisis: Reluctant Gamble. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. A reappraisal of Eden’s foreign policy during the crisis, focusing on the prime minister’s personality and influences.

Peters, Anthony R. Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office, 1931-1938. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. This well-documented monograph carefully assesses the various approaches through international organizations, negotiation with individual states, and forthright opposition to fascism that Eden employed during his early diplomatic career. The author provides some rather persuasive explanations for Eden’s resignation as foreign secretary during the fateful year 1938.

Thorpe, D. R. Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon, 1987-1977. London: Chatto and Windus, 2003. Biography providing information about Eden’s life and political career, including his leadership in the Munich and Suez crises and his relationship with Churchill.

Trukhanovskii, Vladimir Grigor’evich. Anthony Eden. Translated by R. English. Moscow: Progress, 1985. Based on an original version published in 1976, this Soviet biography provides a curious riposte to certain Western writers: Trukhanovskii contends that in various ways Eden’s anti-Communist and anti-Soviet views impeded his dealings with Moscow and that his neocolonialist outlook led finally to the Suez fiasco. From this standpoint, the author, who has also published works on Churchill and on the problems of modern British diplomacy, considers the particular circumstances surrounding Eden’s rise and fall.