It is 55 years, this week, since Egyptian forces under President Nasser siezed and nationalised the Suez Canal – and triggered the eventual Suez Crisis in the process. Here is The Spectator’s leader from the time:
Safeguarding Suez, 3 August 1956
Colonel Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal provides a fitting climax to the disasters which have recently overtaken British policy in the Middle East. It is not the nationalisation itself that is
serious – the concession would in any case have lapsed in 1968 – but, judging by the Colonel’s speeches and the Egyptian press and radio it seems that the present Egyptian Government has decided to
ride the storm of hatred and xenophobia which were always potentially present in the fanatical and under-nourished Egyptian masses. To divert attention of a people from its own economic hardships
by abuse of some foreign country or minority is a traditional tactic of dictatorships, but the danger of it is that forces can more easily be conjured up than controlled by the demagogues that
evoke them.
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