Defeat Accepted

The London sky lowered and thunder rolled in the distance as Harold Macmillan, pale and humorless, rose in the House of Commons last week to put an 'official stamp on the greatest British diplomatic reverse since Munich. "Her Majesty's Government," announced the Prime Minister, "can no longer advise British shipowners to refrain from using the Suez Canal." Payment of canal dues, he went on, would be made in sterling--though Egypt's pre-Suez balance of $300 million, which was blocked by the Eden government, would remain frozen. Curtly, Macmillan said: "A much longer view will decide the rights and wrongs. This is not by any means the end of the story."

That evening, proclaiming angrily that "appeasement leads only to disaster," eight right-wing Tory M.P.s bolted the Conservative Party. Next day sibilant, bespectacled Lord Salisbury, who until he resigned from the government over Cyprus (TIME, April 8) was one of Macmillan's closest associates, bitingly called for a House of Lords debate on the Prime Minister's statement. Said Salisbury: "It goes far too near complete capitulation to Colonel Nasser than many of us would have felt bearable, or I was almost going to say, endurable."

Twist of the Knife. Looking hopefully at this dissension amongst the Tories, the Labor Party moved to the attack in Commons, proposing a vote of censure against the government's Suez policy. With cool remorselessness, Opposition Leader Hugh Gaitskell ticked off the consequences of the Suez war--"the blocking of the canal, the cutting of the pipelines, the strain on the pound, the introduction of petrol rationing,* the check to industrial expansion, a tremendous blow to our reputation in the world." The upshot, needled Gaitskell, was that "we are now forced to accept [from Egypt] terms far worse than those demanded earlier." Worse yet, the U.S. had supplanted Britain as the dominant power in the Middle East. But, added the Opposition leader, in a final twist of the knife, "I am not one of those who grumble about that. We gave it to the United States on a plate."

Don't Shoot the Monkey. Amid Labor yells of "Salisbury!" and "Mind your back!" Macmillan plodded through a lackluster rebuttal, the gist of which was that things were not so bad as Gaitskell made out. With even less success, Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd (whose early resignation was now freely predicted by the British press) tried to put a hopeful face on it by saying that "certain practical lessons have been learned about the consequences of the canal being out of operation." Jabbing his finger toward Macmillan, Labor's honey-voiced Aneurin Bevan demolished Lloyd with a single blow. "There is no reason to attack the monkey," sneered Bevan, "when the organ-grinder is present."

In the end Macmillan had the votes, despite his government's stammering defensiveness, and won the test of confidence --308 to 259. Aside from the eight rebel backbenchers, only six Tories, including Sir Anthony Eden's nephew John, failed to support the government. Even the blimpest of Blimps had to recognize that Macmillan had no practical alternative to allowing British ships through the canal at Nasser's price.

*Which ended in Britain last week.

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