Negotiating the withdrawal from the Suez Canal Zone base 1953–54

Abstract

The Anglo-Egyptian agreement on the Sudan sealed the Suez Group’s determination to oppose Eden’s ‘appeasement’ of the Cairo regime. In the succeeding seventeen months, these MPs conducted a highly public campaign to obstruct Eden’s answer to the problem posed by Britain’s straitened finances on her position in the Middle East. Eden’s argument throughout remained that the presence of troops in the Suez Canal Zone was a heavy political and military liability, and served no useful purpose.¹ Britain needed access to base and transit facilities in peacetime and the right of re-entry in wartime, and this could only be done with Egypt’s agreement.