Anthony Eden

Last updated

Beatrice Beckett
​
​
(m. 1923;div. 1950)​
Clarissa Spencer-Churchill
​
​
(m. 1952)​
The Right Honourable
The Earl of Avon
KG MC PC MP
Anthony Eden (retouched).jpg
Eden in 1942
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office
6 April 1955 –9 January 1957
Preceded byWinston Churchill
Succeeded byHarold Macmillan
Children3, including Nicholas (by Beckett)
Parent
Education Eton College
Alma mater Christ Church, Oxford
Signature Edensig.svg
Military service
Branch/service British Army
Years of service
  • 1915–1919
  • 1920–1923
  • 1939 (as Territorial)
Rank Major
Unit
Battles/wars
Awards

Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977), was a British politician and military officer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1955 until his resignation in 1957.

Contents

Achieving rapid promotion as a young Conservative member of Parliament, he became foreign secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy. [1] [2] He again held that position for most of the Second World War, and a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, Eden succeeded him as the leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister in 1955, and a month later won a general election.

Eden's reputation as a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in 1956 when the United States refused to support the Anglo-French military response to the Suez Crisis, which critics across party lines regarded as a historic setback for British foreign policy, signalling the end of British influence in the Middle East. [3] Most historians argue that he made a series of blunders, especially not realising the depth of American opposition to military action. [4] Two months after ordering an end to the Suez operation, he resigned as Prime Minister on grounds of ill health, and because he was widely suspected of having misled the House of Commons over the degree of collusion with France and Israel. [5]

Eden is generally considered to be among the least successful of British prime ministers in the 20th century, although two broadly sympathetic biographies have gone some way to shifting the balance of opinion. [6] [7] [8] He was the first of fifteen British prime ministers to be appointed by Queen Elizabeth II in her seventy-year reign. [9]

Family

Robert Anthony Eden was born on 12 June 1897 at Windlestone Hall, County Durham, into a conservative family of landed gentry. He was the third of four sons of Sir William Eden, 7th and 5th Baronet, and Sybil Frances Grey, a member of the prominent Grey family of Northumberland. Sir William was a former colonel and local magistrate from an old titled family. An eccentric and often foul-tempered man, he was a talented water-colourist, portraitist, and collector of Impressionists. [10] [11] Eden's mother had wanted to marry Francis Knollys, who later became a significant Royal adviser, but the match was forbidden by the Prince of Wales. [12] Although she was a popular figure locally, she had a strained relationship with her children, and her profligacy ruined the family fortunes, [11] meaning Eden's elder brother Tim had to sell Windlestone in 1936. [13] Referring to his parentage, Rab Butler would later quip that Anthony Eden — a handsome but ill-tempered man — was "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman". [8] [14]

Eden's great-grandfather was William Iremonger, who commanded the 2nd Regiment of Foot during the Peninsular War and fought under the Duke of Wellington (as he became) at the Battle of Vimeiro. [15] He was also descended from Governor Sir Robert Eden, 1st Baronet, of Maryland, and, through the Calvert family of Maryland, he was connected to the ancient Roman Catholic aristocracy of the Arundell and Howard families (including the Dukes of Norfolk), as well as Anglican families including as the earls of Carlisle, Effingham and Suffolk. The Calverts had converted to the Established Church early in the 18th century to regain the proprietorship of Maryland. He also had some Danish (the Schaffalitzky de Muckadell family) and Norwegian (the Bie family) descent. [16] Eden was once amused to learn that one of his ancestors had, like Churchill's ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, been the lover of Barbara Castlemaine. [17]

There was speculation for many years that Eden's biological father was the politician and man of letters George Wyndham, but this is considered impossible as Wyndham was in South Africa at the time of Eden's conception. [18] Eden's mother was rumoured to have had an affair with Wyndham. [8] His mother and Wyndham exchanged affectionate communications in 1896 but Wyndham was an infrequent visitor to Windlestone and probably did not reciprocate Sybil's feelings. Eden was amused by the rumours but, according to his biographer Robert Rhodes James, probably did not believe them. He did not resemble his siblings, but his father Sir William attributed this to his being "a Grey, not an Eden". [19]

Eden had an elder brother, John, who was killed in action in 1914, [20] and a younger brother, Nicholas, who was killed when the battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable blew up and sank at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. [21]

Early life

School

Anthony Eden aged 14 in 1911, in his first term at Eton College Anthony Eden aged 14 in 1911.jpg
Anthony Eden aged 14 in 1911, in his first term at Eton College

Eden was educated at two independent schools. He attended Sandroyd School in Surrey from 1907 to 1910, where he excelled in languages. [22] He then started at Eton College in January 1911. [23] There, he won a Divinity prize and excelled at cricket, rugby and rowing, winning House colours in the last. [24]

Eden learned French and German on continental holidays and, as a child, is said to have spoken French better than English. [25] Although Eden was able to converse with Adolf Hitler in German in February 1934 and with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in French at Geneva in 1954, he preferred, out of a sense of professionalism, to have interpreters translate at formal meetings. [26] [27]

Although Eden later claimed to have had no interest in politics until the early 1920s, his biographer writes that his teenage letters and diaries "only really come to life" when discussing the subject. He was a strong, partisan Conservative, thinking his protectionist father "a fool" in November 1912 for trying to block his free-trade supporting uncle from a Parliamentary candidacy. He rejoiced in the defeat of Charles Masterman at a by-election in May 1914 [28] and once astonished his mother on a train journey by telling her the MP and the size of his majority for each constituency through which they passed. [29] By 1914 he was a member of the Eton Society ("Pop"). [30]

First World War

During the First World War, Eden's elder brother, Lieutenant John Eden, was killed in action on 17 October 1914, at the age of 26, while serving with the 12th (Prince of Wales's Royal) Lancers. He is buried in Larch Wood (Railway Cutting) Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in Belgium. [31] Their uncle Robin was later shot down and captured whilst serving with the Royal Flying Corps. [32]

Volunteering for service in the British Army, like many others of his generation, Eden served with the 21st (Service) Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps (Yeoman Rifles) (KRRC), a Kitchener's Army unit, initially recruited mainly from County Durham country labourers, who were increasingly replaced by Londoners after losses at the Somme in mid-1916. [32] He was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant on 2 November 1915 (antedated to 29 September 1915). [33] [34] His battalion transferred to the Western Front on 4 May 1916 as part of the 41st Division. [32] On 31 May 1916, Eden's younger brother, Midshipman William Nicholas Eden, was killed in action, aged 16, on board HMS Indefatigable during the Battle of Jutland. He is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial. [35] His brother-in-law, Lord Brooke, was wounded during the war. [32]

One summer night in 1916, near Ploegsteert, Eden had to lead a small raid into an enemy trench to kill or capture enemy soldiers to identify the enemy units opposite. He and his men were pinned down in no man's land under enemy fire, his sergeant seriously wounded in the leg. Eden sent one man back to British lines to fetch another man and a stretcher, and he and three others carried the wounded sergeant back with, as he later put it in his memoirs, a "chilly feeling down our spines", unsure whether the Germans had not seen them in the dark or were chivalrously declining to fire. He omitted to mention that he had been awarded the Military Cross (MC) for the incident, of which he made little mention in his political career. [36] On 18 September 1916, after the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme), he wrote to his mother, "I have seen things lately that I am not likely to forget". [32] On 3 October, he was appointed an adjutant, with the rank of temporary lieutenant for the duration of that appointment. [37] At the age of 19, he was the youngest adjutant on the Western Front. [32]

Eden's MC was gazetted in the 1917 Birthday Honours list. [38] [39] His battalion fought at Messines Ridge in June 1917. [32] On 1 July 1917 Eden was confirmed as a temporary lieutenant, [40] relinquishing his appointment as adjutant three days later. [41] His battalion fought in the first few days of the Third Battle of Ypres (31 July – 4 August). [32] Between 20 and 23 September 1917 his battalion spent a few days on coastal defence on the Franco-Belgian border. [32]

On 19 November Eden was transferred to the General Staff as a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3), with the temporary rank of captain. [42] He served at Second Army HQ between mid-November 1917 and 8 March 1918, missing out on service in Italy (as the 41st Division had been transferred there after the Italian Second Army was defeated at the Battle of Caporetto). Eden returned to the Western Front as a major German offensive was clearly imminent, only for his former battalion to be disbanded to help alleviate the British Army's acute manpower shortage. [32] Although David Lloyd George, then the British prime minister, was one of the few politicians of whom Eden reported frontline soldiers speaking highly, he wrote to his sister (23 December 1917) in disgust at his "wait and see twaddle" in declining to extend conscription to Ireland. [43]

In March 1918, during the German spring offensive, he was stationed near La Fère on the Oise, opposite Adolf Hitler, as he learned at a conference in 1935. [32] [44] At one point, when brigade HQ was bombed by German aircraft, his companion told him, "There now, you have had your first taste of the next war." [45] On 26 May 1918, he was appointed brigade major of the 198th Infantry Brigade, part of the 66th Division. [32] [43] At the age of 20, Eden was the youngest brigade major in the British Army. [44]

He considered standing for Parliament at the end of the war, but the general election was called too early for that to be possible. [44] After the Armistice with Germany, he spent the winter of 1918–1919 in the Ardennes with his brigade; on 28 March 1919, he transferred to be brigade major of the 99th Infantry Brigade. [32] Eden contemplated applying for a commission in the Regular Army, but these were very hard to come by with the army contracting so rapidly. He initially shrugged off his mother's suggestion of studying at Oxford. He also rejected the thought of becoming a barrister. His preferred career alternatives at this stage were standing for Parliament for Bishop Auckland, the Civil Service in East Africa or the Foreign Office. [46] He was demobilised on 13 June 1919. [32] He retained the rank of captain. [47] [48]

Oxford

The Uffizi Society Oxford, ca. 1920. First row standing: later Sir Henry Studholme (5th from left). Seated: Lord Balniel, later 28th Earl of Crawford (2nd from left); Ralph Dutton, later 8th Baron Sherborne (3rd from left); Anthony Eden, later Earl of Avon (4th from left); Lord David Cecil (5th from left). The Uffizi Society, Oxford.jpg
The Uffizi Society Oxford, ca. 1920. First row standing: later Sir Henry Studholme (5th from left). Seated: Lord Balniel, later 28th Earl of Crawford (2nd from left); Ralph Dutton, later 8th Baron Sherborne (3rd from left); Anthony Eden, later Earl of Avon (4th from left); Lord David Cecil (5th from left).

Eden had dabbled in the study of Turkish with a family friend. [49] After the war, he studied Oriental Languages (Persian and Arabic) at Christ Church, Oxford, starting in October 1919. [50] Persian was his main and Arabic his secondary language. He studied under Richard Paset Dewhurst and David Samuel Margoliouth. [49]

At Oxford, Eden took no part in student politics, and his main leisure interest at the time was art. [50] Eden was in the Oxford University Dramatic Society and President of the Asiatic Society. Along with Lord David Cecil and R. E. Gathorne-Hardy he founded the Uffizi Society, of which he later became president. Possibly under the influence of his father, Eden gave a paper on Paul Cézanne, whose work was not yet widely appreciated. [49] Eden was already collecting paintings. [50]

In July 1920, still an undergraduate, Eden was recalled to military service as a lieutenant in the 6th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. [51] In the spring of 1921, once again as a temporary captain, he commanded local defence forces at Spennymoor as serious industrial unrest seemed possible. [52] [53] He again relinquished his commission on 8 July. [54] He graduated from Oxford in June 1922 with a Double First. [50] He continued to serve as an officer in the Territorial Army until May 1923. [55]

Early political career, 1922–1931

1922–1924

Captain Eden, as he was still known, was selected to contest Spennymoor, as a Conservative. He had initially hoped to win with some Liberal support, as the Conservatives were still supporting Lloyd George's coalition government, but by the time of the 1922 general election in November, it was clear that the surge in the Labour vote made that unlikely. [56] His main sponsor was the Marquess of Londonderry, a local coal owner. The seat went from Liberal to Labour. [57]

Eden's father had died on 20 February 1915. [58] As a younger son, he had inherited capital of £7,675 and in 1922 he had a private income of £706 after tax (approximately £375,000 and £35,000 at 2014 prices). [52] [59]

Eden read the writings of Lord Curzon, and was hoping to emulate him by entering politics with a view to specialising in foreign affairs. [60] Eden married Beatrice Beckett in the autumn of 1923, and after a two-day honeymoon in Essex, he was selected to fight Warwick and Leamington for a by-election in November 1923. His Labour opponent, Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, was, by coincidence, his sister Elfrida's mother-in-law, and also mother to his wife's step-mother, Marjorie Blanche Eve Beckett, née Greville. [61] On 16 November 1923, during the by-election campaign, Parliament was dissolved for the December 1923 general election. [62] He was elected to Parliament at the age of twenty-six. [63]

The first Labour Government, under Ramsay MacDonald, took office in January 1924. Eden's maiden speech (19 February 1924) was a controversial attack on Labour's defence policy, and was heckled; he was thereafter careful to speak only after deep preparation. [63] He later reprinted the speech in the collection Foreign Affairs (1939) to give the impression that he had been a consistent advocate of air strength. Eden admired H. H. Asquith, then in his final year in the Commons, for his lucidity and brevity. On 1 April 1924 Eden spoke to urge Anglo-Turkish friendship and the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, which had been signed in July 1923. [64]

1924–1929

The Conservatives returned to power at the 1924 general election. In January 1925 Eden, disappointed not to have been offered a position, went on a tour of the Middle East and met King Feisal of Iraq. Feisal reminded him of the "Czar of Russia & (I) suspect that his fate may be similar" (a similar fate indeed befell the Iraqi Royal Family in 1958). During a visit to Pahlavi Iran he inspected the Abadan Refinery, which he likened to "a Swansea on a small scale". [65]

Eden was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Godfrey Locker-Lampson, Under-Secretary at the Home Office (17 February 1925), serving under Home Secretary William Joynson Hicks. [66]

In July 1925 Eden went on a second trip to Canada, Australia and India. [65] He wrote articles for The Yorkshire Post , controlled by his father-in-law Sir Gervase Beckett, under the pseudonym "Backbencher". [64] In September 1925 he represented the Yorkshire Post at the Imperial Conference in Melbourne. [67]

Eden continued to be PPS to Locker-Lampson when the latter was appointed Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in December 1925. [66] He distinguished himself with a speech on the Middle East (21 December 1925), [68] that called for the readjustment of Iraqi frontiers in favour of Turkey but also for a continued British mandate, rather than a "scuttle". Eden ended his speech by calling for Anglo-Turkish friendship. On 23 March 1926 he spoke to urge the League of Nations to admit Germany, which would happen the following year. [69] In July 1926 he became PPS to the Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain. [70]

Besides supplementing his parliamentary income of around £300 a year at that time by writing and journalism, he published a book about his travels, Places in the Sun in 1926 that was highly critical of the detrimental effect of socialism on Australia and to which Stanley Baldwin wrote a foreword. [71]

In November 1928, with Austen Chamberlain away on a voyage to recover his health, Eden had to speak for the government in a debate on a recent Anglo-French naval agreement in reply to Ramsay MacDonald, then Leader of the Opposition. [72] According to Austen Chamberlain, he would have been promoted to his first ministerial job, Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, if the Conservatives had won the 1929 general election. [73]

1929–1931

The 1929 general election was the only time that Eden received less than 50% of the vote at Warwick. [74] After the Conservative defeat, he joined a progressive group of younger politicians consisting of Oliver Stanley, William Ormsby-Gore and the future Speaker W.S. "Shakes" Morrison. Another member was Noel Skelton, who had before his death coined the phrase "property-owning democracy", which Eden was later to popularise as a Conservative Party aspiration. Eden advocated co-partnership in industry between managers and workers, whom he wanted to be given shares. [73]

In opposition between 1929 and 1931, Eden worked as a City broker for Harry Lucas, a firm that was eventually absorbed into S. G. Warburg & Co. [71]

Foreign Affairs Minister, 1931–1935

In August 1931, Eden held his first ministerial office as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's National Government. Initially, the office was held by Lord Reading (in the House of Lords), but Sir John Simon held the position from November 1931.

Like many of his generation who had served in the First World War, Eden was strongly antiwar, and he strove to work through the League of Nations to preserve European peace. The government proposed measures superseding the post-war Versailles Treaty to allow Germany to rearm (albeit replacing its small professional army with a short-service militia) and to reduce French armaments. Winston Churchill criticised the policy sharply in the House of Commons on 23 March 1933, opposing "undue" French disarmament as this might require Britain to take action to enforce peace under the 1925 Locarno Treaty. [2] [75] Eden, replying for the government, dismissed Churchill's speech as exaggerated and unconstructive and commented that land disarmament had yet to make the same progress as naval disarmament at the Washington and London Treaties and arguing that French disarmament was needed to "secure for Europe that period of appeasement which is needed". [76] [77] [78] Eden's speech was met with approval by the House of Commons. Neville Chamberlain commented shortly afterwards, "That young man is coming along rapidly; not only can he make a good speech but he has a good head and what advice he gives is listened to by the Cabinet". [79]

Eden later wrote that in the early 1930s, the word "appeasement" was still used in its correct sense (from the Oxford English Dictionary ) of seeking to settle strife. Only later in the decade would it come to acquire a pejorative meaning of acceding to bullying demands. [2] [80]

He was appointed Lord Privy Seal in January 1934, [81] a position that was combined with the newly created office of Minister for League of Nations Affairs. As Lord Privy Seal, Eden was sworn of the Privy Council in the 1934 Birthday Honours. [82] [83]

On 25 March 1935, accompanying Sir John Simon, Eden met Hitler in Berlin and raised a weak protest after Hitler restored conscription against the Versailles Treaty. The same month, Eden also met Joseph Stalin and Maxim Litvinov in Moscow. [84] [85] [86]

He entered the cabinet for the first time when Stanley Baldwin formed his third administration in June 1935. Eden later came to recognise that peace could not be maintained by appeasement of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. He privately opposed the policy of the Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, of trying to appease Italy during its invasion of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1935. After Hoare resigned after the failure of the Hoare-Laval Pact, Eden succeeded him as Foreign Secretary. When Eden had his first audience with King George V, the King is said to have remarked, "No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris".[ citation needed ]

In 1935 Baldwin sent Eden on a two-day visit to see Hitler, with whom he dined twice. [87] Litvinov's biographer John Holroyd-Doveton believed that Eden shares with Molotov the experience of being the only people to have had dinner with Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin although not on the same occasion. Hitler never had dinner with any of the other three leaders, and as far as is known, Stalin never saw Hitler.[ citation needed ]

Attlee was convinced that public opinion could stop Hitler, saying in a speech in the House of Commons:

"We believe in a League system in which the whole world would be ranged against an aggressor. If it is shown that someone is proposing to break the peace let us bring the whole world opinion against her". [88]

However, Eden was more realistic and correctly predicted:

"Hitler could only be stopped. There may be the only course of action open to us to join with those powers who are members of the League in affirming our faith in that institution and to uphold the principles of the Covenant. It may be the spectacle of the great powers of the League reaffirming their intentions to collaborate more closely than ever is not only the sole means of bringing home to Germany that the inevitable effect of persisting in her present policy will be to consolidate against her all those nations which believe in collective security but will also tend to give confidence to those less powerful nations which through fear of Germany's growing strength might well otherwise be drawn into her orbit". [89]

Eden proceeded to Moscow for talks with Stalin and Soviet Minister Litvinov, [90] Most of the British cabinet feared of the spread of Bolshevism to Britain and hated the Soviets, but Eden went with an open mind and had a respect for Stalin:

"(Stalin's) personality made itself felt without exaggeration. He had natural good manners, perhaps a Georgian inheritance. Though I knew the man was without mercy, I respected the quality of his mind and even felt a sympathy I have never been able to analyse. Perhaps it was because of the pragmatic approach. I cannot believe he had any affinity to Marx. Certainly no one could have been less doctrinaire". [91]

Eden felt sure most of his colleagues would feel unenthusiastic about any favourable report on the Soviet Union but felt certain to be correct.

The representatives of both governments were happy to note that as a result of a full and frank exchange of views, there is at present no conflict of interest between them on any of the major issues of international policy, which provided a firm foundation between them in the cause of peace. Eden stated when he sent the communiqué to his government, he thought that his colleagues would be "Unenthusiastic, I am sure". [89]

John Holroyd-Doveton argued that Eden would be proved right. Not only was the French army defeated by the German army, but France broke its treaty with Britain by seeking an armistice with Germany. In contrast, the Red Army finally defeated the Wehrmacht. [92]

At that stage in his career, Eden was considered as something of a leader of fashion. He regularly wore a Homburg hat, which became known in Britain as an "Anthony Eden".[ citation needed ]

Foreign Secretary and resignation, 1935–1938

Eden with French Prime Minister Leon Blum (left) in Geneva in 1936 Leon Blum, Anthony Eden, 1936.jpg
Eden with French Prime Minister Léon Blum (left) in Geneva in 1936

Eden became Foreign Secretary after Samuel Hoare had resigned after the collapse of the Hoare–Laval Pact. Britain had to adjust its foreign policy to face the rise of the fascist powers of Nazi Germany and Hitler as well as Italian fascism and Mussolini. He supported the policy of non-interference in the Spanish Civil War through conferences such as the Nyon Conference and supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his National Government in their efforts to preserve peace through seemingly reasonable concessions to Nazi Germany.

The Italian-Ethiopian War was brewing, and Eden tried in vain to persuade Mussolini to submit the dispute to the League of Nations. The Italian dictator scoffed at Eden publicly as "the best dressed fool in Europe". Eden did not protest when Britain and France failed to oppose Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936. When the French government (Sarraut II government) requested a meeting with a view to some kind of military action in response to Hitler's occupation, Eden's statement firmly ruled out any military assistance to France. [93]

Eden resigned on 20 February 1938 as a public protest against Chamberlain's policy of coming to friendly terms with Fascist Italy. Eden used secret intelligence reports to conclude that the Mussolini regime in Italy posed a threat to Britain. [94] In a 1967 interview, Eden explained his decision to resign: "we had an agreement with Mussolini about the Mediterranean and Spain, which he was violating by sending troops to Spain, and Chamberlain wanted to have another agreement. I thought Mussolini should honour the first one before we negotiated for the second. I was trying to fight a delaying action for Britain, and I could not go along with Chamberlain's policy". [95]

In 1938, when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich to Parliament with his and Hitler's signature on the Munich peace agreement, most of the MPs in the house rose in tumultuous acclamation. Eden walked out of the house pale with shame and anger. A few others remained seated: Churchill (who initially rose to catch the Speaker's eye to speak), Leo Amery, Vyvyan Adams, and Harold Nicolson. [96]

He became a Conservative dissenter, leading a group that Conservative whip David Margesson called the "Glamour Boys". Meanwhile, the leading anti-appeaser Churchill led a similar group, "The Old Guard". [97] They were not yet allies and would not see eye-to-eye until Churchill became prime minister in 1940. There was much speculation that Eden would become a rallying point for all the disparate opponents of Chamberlain, but Eden's position declined heavily among politicians since he maintained a low profile and avoided confrontation though he opposed the Munich Agreement and abstained in the vote on it in the House of Commons. However, he remained popular in the country at large and, in later years, was often wrongly supposed to have resigned as Foreign Secretary in protest at the Munich Agreement and appeasement generally.

Second World War

Eden and the Commander in Chief Home Forces, Bernard Paget, watching the 42nd Armoured Division exercise near Malton, North Yorkshire 42nd Armoured Division Exercise, Near Malton in Yorkshire, 29 September 1942 TR163.jpg
Eden and the Commander in Chief Home Forces, Bernard Paget, watching the 42nd Armoured Division exercise near Malton, North Yorkshire
Eden with Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King and Churchill meeting US president Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Quebec Conference in 1943. FDR and Anthony Eden at the Quebec Conference.jpg
Eden with Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King and Churchill meeting US president Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Quebec Conference in 1943.
Potsdam Conference: The Foreign Ministers Vyacheslav Molotov, James F. Byrnes and Anthony Eden, July 1945. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-14059-0016, Potsdamer Konferenz, Molotow, Byrnes, Eden.jpg
Potsdam Conference: The Foreign Ministers Vyacheslav Molotov, James F. Byrnes and Anthony Eden, July 1945.

During the last months of peace in 1939, Eden joined the Territorial Army with the rank of major, in the London Rangers motorised battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps and was at annual camp with them in Beaulieu, Hampshire, when he heard news of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. [98]

Two days after the outbreak of war, on 3 September 1939, Eden, unlike most Territorials, did not mobilise for active service. Instead, he returned to Chamberlain's government as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and he visited Mandatory Palestine in February 1940 to inspect the Second Australian Imperial Force. [99] However, he was not in the War Cabinet. As a result, he was not a candidate for prime minister when Chamberlain resigned on 10 May 1940 after the Narvik Debate and Churchill became prime minister. [100] Churchill appointed Eden Secretary of State for War.

At the end of 1940, Eden returned to the Foreign Office and became a member of the executive committee of the Political Warfare Executive in 1941. Although he was one of Churchill's closest confidants, his role in wartime was restricted because Churchill himself conducted the most important negotiations, those with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin, but Eden served loyally as Churchill's lieutenant. [3] In December 1941 he travelled by ship to the Soviet Union, [101] where he met Stalin [102] and surveyed the battlefields upon which the Soviets had successfully defended Moscow from the German Army attack in Operation Barbarossa. [103] [104]

Nevertheless, he was in charge of handling most of the relations between Britain and the Free French leader, Charles de Gaulle, during the last years of the war. Eden was often both critical of the emphasis Churchill put on the special relationship with the United States and disappointed by the American treatment of its British allies. [3]

In 1942 Eden was given the additional role of Leader of the House of Commons. He was considered for various other major jobs during and after the war, including Commander-in-Chief Middle East in 1942 (which would have been a very unusual appointment as Eden was a civilian; General Harold Alexander would be appointed), Viceroy of India in 1943 (General Archibald Wavell was appointed to this job) or Secretary-General of the newly formed United Nations Organisation in 1945.[ citation needed ] In 1943, with the revelation of the Katyn massacre, Eden refused to help the Polish government-in-exile. [105] Eden supported the idea of post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia. [106]

In early 1943 Eden blocked a request from the Bulgarian authorities to aid with deporting part of the Jewish population from newly acquired Bulgarian territories to the British territory of Mandatory Palestine. After his refusal, some of the people were transported to Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. [107] That same spring, Eden visited Washington, D.C., for high-level talks with Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Harry Hopkins, where they discussed anticipated postwar issues, including the occupation and future political structure of Germany. [108]

In 1944 Eden went to Moscow to negotiate with the Soviet Union at the Tolstoy Conference. Eden also opposed the Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialise Germany. After the Stalag Luft III murders, he vowed in the Commons to bring the perpetrators of the crime to "exemplary justice", which led to a successful manhunt after the war by the Royal Air Force's Special Investigation Branch. [105] During the Yalta Conference (February 1945) he pressed the Soviet Union and the United States to allow France a zone of occupation in post-war Germany. [109]

Eden's eldest son, Pilot officer Simon Gascoigne Eden, went missing in action and was later declared dead; he was serving as a navigator with the RAF in Burma in June 1945. [110] There was a close bond between Eden and Simon, and Simon's death was a great personal shock to his father. Mrs Eden reportedly reacted to the loss of her son differently, which led to a breakdown in the marriage. De Gaulle wrote him a personal letter of condolence in French. [111]

In 1945 he was mentioned by Halvdan Koht among seven candidates who were qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, he did not explicitly nominate any of them. The person who was actually nominated was Cordell Hull. [112]

Postwar, 1945–1955

In opposition, 1945–1951

After the Labour Party won the 1945 election, Eden went into opposition as Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party.[ citation needed ] Many felt that Churchill should have retired and allowed Eden to become party leader, but Churchill refused to consider the idea. As early as the spring of 1946, Eden openly asked Churchill to retire in his favour. [113] He was in any case depressed by the end of his first marriage and the death of his eldest son. Churchill was, in many ways, only "part-time Leader of the Opposition" [3] because of his many journeys abroad and his literary work, and left the day-to-day work largely to Eden, who was largely regarded as lacking a sense of party politics and contact with the common man. [114] In the opposition years, however, he developed some knowledge about domestic affairs and created the idea of a "property-owning-democracy", which Margaret Thatcher's government attempted to achieve decades later. His domestic agenda is overall considered to be centre-left. [3]

During the Palestine Emergency, Eden narrowly avoided assassination by the Stern Gang via a letter bomb sent by Betty Knouth and Yaakov Levstein. [115] Eden carried a letter bomb in his suitcase for a whole day, thinking it was a Whitehall pamphlet that he would read later in the day. He only realized it was a bomb after being warned by the police, who were informed by MI5. [116] In September 1947, a Belgian court sentenced Knouth to one year in prison and Levstein to eight months in prison for illegally transporting explosives with intent to commit a felony. [117]

Return to government, 1951–1955

In 1951 the Conservatives returned to office and Eden became Foreign Secretary for a third time. [118] Churchill was largely a figurehead in the government, and Eden had effective control of British foreign policy for the second time, with the decline of the empire and the intensifying of the Cold War. Churchill wanted to appoint Eden Deputy Prime Minister as well as Foreign Secretary, but King George VI objected and said that the office did not exist in the British constitution and might interfere with his ability to appoint a successor. [119] [120] Thus, Eden was not appointed Deputy Prime Minister. [119] [121] However, he still considered himself Churchill's "second-in-command" and had been regarded as Churchill's "crown prince" since 1942. [122]

Negotiations in London and Paris in 1954 ended the allied occupation of West Germany and allowed for its rearmament as a NATO member. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-27106-0001, Paris, Verhandlungen uber NATO-Beitritt.jpg
Negotiations in London and Paris in 1954 ended the allied occupation of West Germany and allowed for its rearmament as a NATO member.

Eden's biographer Richard Lamb said that Eden bullied Churchill into going back on commitments to European unity made in opposition. The truth appears to be more complex. Britain was still a world power or at least trying to be one in 1945–55, with the concept of sovereignty not as discredited as on the Continent. The United States encouraged moves towards European federalism so that it could withdraw troops and have the Germans rearmed under supervision. Eden was less Atlanticist than Churchill and had little time for European federalism. He wanted firm alliances with France and other Western European powers to contain Germany. [123] Half of British trade was then with the sterling area and only a quarter with Western Europe. Despite later talk of "lost opportunities", even Macmillan, who had been an active member of the European Movement after the war, acknowledged in February 1952 that Britain's special relationship with the United States and the Commonwealth would prevent it from joining a federal Europe at the time. [124] Eden was also irritated by Churchill's hankering for a summit meeting with the Soviet Union in 1953 after Stalin's death. [124] Eden became seriously ill from a series of botched bile duct operations in April 1953 that nearly killed him. After that, he had frequent bouts of poor physical health and psychological depression. [125] Despite the ending of the British Raj in India, British interest in the Middle East remained strong. Britain had treaty relations with Jordan and Iraq and was the protecting power for Kuwait and the Trucial States, the colonial power in Aden, and the occupying power in the Suez Canal. Many right-wing Conservative MPs, organised in the so-called Suez Group, sought to retain the imperial role, but economic pressures made maintenance of it increasingly difficult. Britain sought to maintain its huge military base in the Suez Canal zone and, in the face of Egyptian resentment, to further develop its alliance with Iraq, and the hope was that the Americans would assist Britain, possibly financially. While the Americans co-operated with the British in the 28 Mordad coup against the Mosaddegh government in Iran after it had nationalised British oil interests, the Americans developed their own relations in the region and took a positive view of the Egyptian Free Officers and developed friendly relations with Saudi Arabia. Britain was eventually forced to withdraw from the canal zone, and the Baghdad Pact security treaty was not supported by the United States, which left Eden vulnerable to the charge of having failed to maintain British prestige. [126]

Geneva Conference, 21 July 1954. Last plenary session on Indochina in the Palais des Nations. 1stIndochinaWar003.jpg
Geneva Conference, 21 July 1954. Last plenary session on Indochina in the Palais des Nations.

Eden had grave misgivings about American foreign policy under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. As early as March 1953, Eisenhower was concerned at the escalating costs of defence and the increase of state power that it would bring. [127] Eden was irked by Dulles's policy of "brinkmanship", the display of muscle, in relations with the communist world. In particular, both had heated exchanges with one another regarding the proposed American aerial strike operation (Vulture) to try to save the beleaguered French Union garrison at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in early 1954. [128] The operation was cancelled, in part, because of Eden's refusal to commit to it for fear of Chinese intervention and ultimately a third world war. [129] [130] Dulles then walked out early in the Geneva Conference talks and was critical of the American decision not to sign it. Nevertheless, the success of the conference ranked as the outstanding achievement of Eden's third term in the Foreign Office. During the summer and autumn of 1954, the Anglo-Egyptian agreement to withdraw all British forces from Egypt was also negotiated and ratified.

There were concerns that if the European Defence Community was not ratified as it wanted, the United States might withdraw into defending only the Western Hemisphere, but recent documentary evidence confirms that the US intended to withdraw troops from Europe anyway even if the EDC was ratified. [127] After the French National Assembly rejected the EDC in August 1954, Eden offered a viable alternative. Between 11 and 17 September, with the help of the Foreign Office's Frank Roberts, he visited every major West European capital to negotiate the rearmament and NATO membership of West Germany. The intervention was a diplomatic triumph that marked a major step in the consolidation of the Western bloc. [131]

In October 1954 Eden was appointed to the Order of the Garter [132] and became Sir Anthony Eden. [133] [134]

Prime Minister, 1955–1957

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  200. ↑ Rhodes James 1986, p. 620.
  201. ↑ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth . Retrieved 7 May 2024.
  202. ↑ "Avon, Earl, The Rt. Hon. Robert Anthony". probatesearchservice.gov. UK Government. 1977. Archived from the original on 8 November 2021. Retrieved 13 August 2019.
  203. ↑ "Special Collections". Special-coll.bham.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 28 August 2009. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
  204. ↑ "Nicholas Eden, Earl of Avon And Former Aide to Thatcher". The New York Times. Associated Press. 21 August 1985. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
  205. ↑ Sir Oswald Mosley. My Life London, 1968.
  206. ↑ Rothwell 1992, p. 250.
  207. ↑ Rothwell 1992, p. 255.
  208. ↑ Rhodes James 1986, p. 624.
  209. ↑ Rhodes James 1986, p. 161.
  210. ↑ Evelyn Shuckburgh: Descent to Suez. Diaries 1951–1956. London, 1986.[ page needed ]
  211. ↑ Rhodes James 1986, p. 623.
  212. ↑ Rothwell 1992, p. 254.
  213. ↑ Rhodes James 1986, p. 160.
  214. ↑ Rhodes James 1986, p. 162.
  215. ↑ Rothwell 1992, pp. 251–252.
  216. ↑ Aster 1976, intro (no page number)
  217. ↑ Thorpe 2010, pp. 357–358.
  218. ↑ Mark Garnett; et al. (2017). British Foreign Policy since 1945. Routledge. p. 154. ISBN   978-1-317-58899-3. Archived from the original on 8 November 2021. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  219. ↑ Rhodes James 1986, pp. 612–614.
  220. ↑ Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden.
  221. ↑ Letter, The Daily Telegraph, 7 August 1990.
  222. ↑ Anthony Nutting (1967) No End of a Lesson
  223. ↑ D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden.[ page needed ]
  224. ↑ Thorpe, D. R. (1 November 2006). "What we failed to learn from Suez". The Telegraph . Archived from the original on 19 April 2012. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
  225. ↑ Rothwell 1992, pp. 254–255.
  226. ↑ Rhodes James 1986, p. 625.
  227. ↑ "UoB CALMVIEW2: Overview". calmview.bham.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
  228. ↑ "UoB CALMVIEW2: Overview". calmview.bham.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
  229. ↑ Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage. Kelly's Directories Ltd. 1976. pp. 92–93. ISBN   978-0-610-00483-4.

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Primary sources

  • Boyle, Peter. Eden-Eisenhower Correspondence, 1955–1957 (2005) 230p.
Eden, Anthony.jpg
Premiership of Anthony Eden
6 April 1955 –9 January 1957
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