There were various different effects on Britain too. The British overseas military deployment was sharply reduced after Suez and this led to the withdrawal from Cyprus. Suez showed that Britain could no longer carry through an opposed military intervention without U. S. backing. The cost was just too high with the defence budget being cut back. Even if the British Government was determined to make an effort, it could no longer be sure that it would be able to slow down and suppress the demands for independence which African nationalists were calling for and cope with the anti-colonialist feelings which were growing in the Middle East. British politicians also changed their opinion since before Suez they were convinced that it was Britain’s duty to delay independence until the Africans were ready; after 1956 this was no longer a viable policy. Britain had been made to look vulnerable and, ‘the withdrawal from the canal zone was symbolic of Britain’s decline as a major power.’ Lapping concludes his argument by stating the main reason for Suez hastening the end of the British Empire was a shift in power. He argues that in order for the imperial governments’ authority to be respected by the local populations, and to maintain discipline among administrators, they had to use force occasionally. When force was used to re-establish order then it had to succeed otherwise their authority would be undermined. ‘In 1956 Britain and France sent against Egypt the biggest and most publicised punitive expedition in imperial history. Its failure was ignominious.’ Instead of lasting much longer the British Empire had all but collapsed within a decade. This was not due to a coincidental rise in African Nationalism but, ‘it was because Suez was one of those rare moments in history that move the oceans.’ Carlton also adds that after Suez the British did not withdraw from Africa in an unhurried, deliberate and ordered manner but rather the opposite in a state of near panic. ‘The wind of change was more like a hurricane.’ However the process of decolonisation was too complicated for just one event to have such a large impact and one has to look at the bigger picture by considering the affect of national, international and metropolitan factors on decolonisation.
The first factor to consider is the role that nationalism within the colonies played in bringing about the end of the British Empire. Advocates of the nationalist explanation argue that in order for decolonisation to occur there needed to be nationalist and anti-colonial forces and feelings present within a colony. The conditions in which these movements could grow were created by the imperial powers after the end of the Second World War when they sought to increase the productivity of their colonies and this encouraged the colonised people to challenge imperial rule. Springhall argues that, ‘rapid urbanisation plus social and political mobilisation were behind the ideology of anti-colonial nationalism.’ Furthermore the post-war growth of the world economy coupled with the economic structures put in place by the imperial powers produced conditions in which nationalism in the colonies could thrive. Therefore the effects of Suez would not have been so widely felt had their not been any nationalist movements within the colonies.
The second factor to consider is the international pressures Britain found herself facing in the post-war world. Springhall states that in a world of Cold War ideologies and nuclear deterrents, ‘colonial empires appeared as quaint survivors of a pre-war age, to be quickly dismantled lest they be knocked to pieces in the turbulent wake of superpowers.’ Britain also found that in the new atomic age the alternative prospect of having nuclear greatness seemed to be more tempting than possessing a vast empire, and a nuclear capability would move her nearer to being on par with the superpowers. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were anti-colonial in their outlook and ideas of self-determination for all people, stemming from Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the covenant of the League of Nations, the Atlantic Charter and the charter of the United Nations, created a climate which made the possession of colonial territories seem intolerable. The United Nations also played a role in decolonisation since the newly independent nations, such as India and Sri Lanka, used the U. N. as a platform to isolate and embarrass the old colonial powers. As a result the U. N. passed the, ‘Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,’ which in effect made colonial rule a denial of fundamental human rights. Given such dramatic changes in international relations after the war the dissolution of empire can appear to be natural and inevitable with or without the Suez Crisis.
The third factor to consider is the metropolitan or domestic pressures that Britain faced concerning decolonisation. Springhall argues that the ultimate decision of whether to pull out of colony lay with the British government and it had to take into account how important it was to maintain an empire in the light of the post-war economic situation and other domestic pressures. Britain was simply drifting away from her old imperial role, the ‘will to rule’ was waning, and this was accompanied by public indifference and economic decline. The change in British public opinion was a big factor in decolonisation. The post-war British population took little interest in the colonial possessions of their country and were unwilling to see scarce resources spent on preserving them. The Empire had become an increasingly large burden on the taxpayer. With the state being expected to subsidize house purchases, hospital treatment, and higher education along with the rest of the welfare state, the expanding middle class resented any diversion of resources for colonial purposes. The impulse to decolonise got stronger as, ‘the material concerns of the mass electorate dominated party political calculations in the metropole,’ since the electorate began to see that the vast amounts being spent on maintaining the Empire could and should be spent on their welfare instead. A. P. Thornton also argues that, ‘as the Welfare State began to live the Empire began to die.’ Therefore, the British Government were under pressure ‘at home’ to withdraw from Empire and this would have occurred regardless of the Suez Crisis.
Having considered the general explanations of decolonisation as a whole, I shall try to focus again on the Suez crisis, and try to show that the events of Suez were just a small part in the process of Britain’s withdrawal from Empire. To look at Suez from a nationalist point of view one can argue that it did not have any ‘cause or effect’ on nationalist movements. Anthony Low argues that the reasons for the rise of African nationalist movements lay mostly within the colonies themselves, and Carlton adds that, ‘the sudden rise of nationalism in Black Africa owed little or nothing to Nasser’s victory over Eden.’ Furthermore, none of the leading African nationalists appear to have written or said anything that indicates that they were inspired by Suez. So Britain would have been under pressure from nationalist movements without the Suez crisis.
The argument that decolonisation did not get under way properly until after Suez is also wrong. One can argue that Britain’s first loss of empire did not occur in the twentieth century but in the late eighteenth with defeat in the American Wars of Independence, 1776-1783, and there were no serious obstacles put in the way of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Contemporaries of that time justified the losses by saying that losing colonies was natural since they were, ‘like children who would eventually grow to adulthood and inevitably seek independence from the mother country.’ By 1956 Britain had also surrendered sovereignty to India, Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Palestine, and Sudan. Both Springhall and Darwin argue that decolonisation was under way before the 1956 crisis since Britain was already planning the granting of independence to Ghana and Malaya and making other African territories, such as Nigeria, and possessions in the Caribbean more autonomous even before Suez. Therefore, ‘Suez did not trigger an imperial implosion.’ Britain’s influence in the region did not collapse overnight, and the loss of her premier position in the Middle East did not produce any rapid change in her defence policies ‘East of Suez’ and the signing of the Anglo-Malayan Defence Agreement in 1957 supports this argument.
There was also a gradual change in the views and opinions of politicians back in Britain concerning the withdrawal from Empire. The British Government was already starting to adopt a more liberal policy towards colonial nationalism in the interwar period. By the 1950s some were asking whether it was worth the effort in maintaining an empire that was expensive both in monetary terms and, when it needed defending militarily, in terms of human resources and domestic political stability. Furthermore, ‘the Empire in danger,’ was no longer a rallying cry even within the Conservative Party, and the British public had become disillusioned with the fight to save the colonies. The majority of Tories were starting to draw the conclusion that ‘gunboat diplomacy’ was no longer practical in twentieth century politics, and there was already strong anti-imperialist sentiment among Labour M.P.s and activists. So successive British Governments had little difficulty in pursuing policies that greatly accelerated the rate of decolonisation. Therefore one can see that the reasons for Britain’s withdrawal from ‘East of Suez’ were more down to the practical need to make financial savings and Wilson realising that it was essential in order to keep Labour together rather than acting just on the fallout of Suez. There were also some, including Clement Attlee, who saw Britain’s influence on world affairs depending more on moral leadership rather than projection of force, and so the act of liberating colonised peoples would supply a basis for taking the lead in standards of international morality.
When Lord Home was asked to comment on the impact the Suez crisis had on decolonisation he said, ‘No, no, no…it was inevitable that the Empire should dissolve,’ and Suez made no difference to the speed of dissolution. Darwin argues that the effects of Suez on Britain’s imperial role were, ‘certainly not obvious, simple, clear-cut or immediate. It did not create a revulsion against empire at home,’ and, ‘it did not destroy the will or ability of British governments to intervene to protect other British interests.’ The real impact of Suez was more subtle and it reinforced the domestic and external constraints on British policy as well as highlighting the new pressures exerted on Britain which were derived from possession of an empire. I would tend to argue that Suez did not hasten the end of the British Empire, and that Suez was just part of the general process of decolonisation. One should take into account the domestic constraints that Britain was under to withdraw from Empire and at the same time the international and colonial-nationalist pressures to retreat from Empire became more intense. Consequently Britain had a plethora of causes for withdrawing from her empire and it was the combination of these causes that brought about the end of Empire. Suez was just one of these many causes. Finally, one can argue that the British Empire was never a fixed or static political entity and it had constantly expanded and contracted throughout its history and so one can argue that it was more of a natural or instinctive response by the British to make its imperial possessions more autonomous or grant independence in the post-war period. One can surely see now that the end of the British Empire was a rather natural process and I would have to agree with Carlton when he says that, ‘Suez was a rather dramatic hiccup in a generally well-managed transition.’
Bibliography
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D. Carlton, Britain and the Suez Crisis, Oxford 1989.
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M. Chamberlain, Decolonisation: The Fall of the European Empires, Oxford 1985.
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J. Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation, Basingstoke 1988.
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J. Darwin, The End of the British Empire, Oxford 1995.
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B. Lapping, End of Empire, London 1989.
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W. D. McIntyre, British Decolonization 1946-1997, Basingstoke 1998.
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J. Springhall, Decolonization Since 1945, Palgrave 2001.
D. Carlton, Britain and the Suez Crisis, Oxford 1989, p. 97.
B. Lapping, End of Empire, London 1989, p. 333.
J. Springhall, Decolonisation Since 1945, Palgrave 2001, p. 8.
W. D. McIntyre, British Decolonization 1946-1997, Basingstoke 1998, p. 82.
M. Chamberlain, Decolonisation, Oxford 1985, p. 2.
