Due to Suez, Britain All but Ignored Hungary Crisis, Records Say

British official records, released Thursday after 30 years, reveal a government so preoccupied with the 1956 Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt that it virtually ignored the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

The documents paint a picture of divisions within the Conservative government of the time.

Although civil servants at the Foreign Office produced around 2,000 pages of analysis on the storm brewing in Hungary, there is hardly a mention of the invasion in the meetings of the Cabinet or in ministers’ correspondence.

Prime Minister Anthony Eden and his ministers were obsessed with the landing of Franco-British forces around the Suez Canal--an attack that provoked condemnation from the United Nations--after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the vital international waterway, replacing the largely British and French company that was operating the canal.

As Soviet tanks crushed demonstrators in Budapest, the British and French landed forces around the Suez Canal on Nov. 5, 1956. The forces operated in conjunction with Israeli troops that had invaded Egypt on Oct. 9, with the aim of seizing the canal.

Complaint to Eisenhower.

“It is indeed ironical that at the very moment when we are being pilloried as aggressors, Russia is brutally reoccupying Hungary and threatening the whole of Eastern Europe,” Eden complained in a telegram to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, dated Nov. 5.

Eden, in a reference to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, said he feared Nasser would become “a kind of Muslim Mussolini” if he was allowed to retain control of the canal. The United States bitterly opposed the attack on Egypt, and the split in the Atlantic Alliance took the edge off British and French condemnations of the Soviet move to crush the Hungarian rebellion early in November.

Thousands of documents now available, many marked “Secret” and “Top Secret,” show Britain’s defense minister and the country’s chief of naval staff had grave doubts about the wisdom of the Suez operation.

Within a few days, the weight of international opinion forced both Western allies to withdraw their forces and Eden resigned in January, 1957.

In an unprecedented move for a senior serving officer, Lord Louis Mountbatten, then chief of naval staff, had begged Eden in a letter to end the attack.

Mountbatten’s Appeal

“I am writing to appeal to you to accept the resolution of the overwhelming majority of the U.N. to cease military operations and to beg you to turn back the assault convoy before it is too late,” Mountbatten wrote.

“You can imagine how hard it is for me to break with all service customs and write direct to you . . . but I feel so desperate about what is happening that my conscience would not allow me to do otherwise.”

Mountbatten was ordered to remain at his post until further orders, which he did. The assault went ahead.

Even in the planning stages of the Suez operation, British Defense Minister William Monkton questioned whether it should take place, according to Cabinet records from August.

“If . . . we took military measures against Egypt, our action would be condemned by a substantial body of public opinion in countries overseas and in Britain itself,” he said.

Divisions in Cabinet

Monkton’s view caused deep divisions within the Cabinet.

“I am horrified by the doubts expressed by the minister of defense,” Colonies Minister Alan Lennox-Boyd wrote to Eden on Aug. 24, 1956.

“I remain firmly convinced that if Nasser wins, or even appears to win, we might as well as a government (or indeed as a country) go out of business.”

One of the scant references to Hungary was on Oct. 31, when Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd rejected a suggestion from Britain’s ambassador in Moscow that Eden should send a personal message to Nikolai A. Bulganin, then Soviet prime minister.