So You Don’t Believe in Conspiracy Theories?

On May 16th 1956 the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser, recognised the People’s Republic of China. This infuriated America who recognised Taiwan (Formosa) instead. To punish Egypt, America withdrew all its funding from the Aswan Dam project on July 19th and in direct response to this Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal on July 26th.
Britain now had a problem. Economic problems had forced the Government to close the Suez military base so a swift response was now out of the question. On the other hand, some sort of response had to be made because the canal was vital for both trade and strategic purposes – not to respond would be to dispay to the world Britain’s new powerlessness. Britain approached America for support but was turned down – there was an impending US election and anyway America was mistrustful of Britain’s motives.

International talks dragged on and Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden started to worry about losing both support and momentum. This caused Eden to think seriously about a hare brained scheme suggested by his then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan. He had suggested that Israel could be used to attack one flank on the canal. (At the time the idea seemed wildly implausible because only a few years earlier Israeli terrorists such as the Stern Gang, lead by future Prime Minister, Menachim Begin, had been murdering British troops.) During the formulation and refining of this idea Eden demanded that no notes at all were taken and that all private diaries including Macmillan’s were either torn up or burned.

This idea was eventually discussed between 22nd and 24th October 1956 at Sevres, near Paris. Representing Britain with Sir Anthony Eden was Selwyn LLoyd, Foreign Secretary who arrived in disguise. Representing Israel were David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres and Moyshe Dayan. France was represented by Maurice Bourges-Maunoury, Christian Pineau and Maurice Challe.
The three parties agreed that Israel would invade the Sinai. Britain and France would then intervene and instruct both Israel and Egypt to withdraw their forces to at least 16 kilometres from either side of the canal. The British and French would then argue that Egypt’s contol of such an important route was much too tenuous, and it must be placed under Anglo-French management.

Now, this was totally illegal under international law. Because of this ( as I have already said) Eden had insisted on no notes were to be taken and all private diaries to be destroyed. He now kept the whole plan hidden from his own Ambassadors, all other Government Ministers, the Head of MI6, and the House of Commons as well as the White House. Eden hoped that by the time President Eisenhower heard about it he would accept it as a ‘fait accompli’. He didn’t and the whole plan unravelled and Sir Anthony Eden  resigned.

So there you have it – three of a large number of conspiracies that turned out to be true.  Next time someone dismisses an idea as just a “conspiracy theory” remember that the most unlikely of stories can be true.  for more true conspiracies try my web site at trueconspiracies.co.uk.