Suez Crisis

When President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, the French and British response was to plot with Israel to got to war against Egypt. American threats to sell their sterling reserves, and Arab threats of oil embargo, forced a hasty and shamefaced British withdrawal, and a rethink about Britain's imperial future.

The newsreel used in class:


Further images and information, from a recent BBC documentary:

The Fifties

Most of the notes for class 4 seem to have vanished into cyberspace, leaving only the powerpoint slides (on icampus). Fortunately, this is a period extremely well covered by Andrew Marr (as you will all be aware, but here it is again).

The main events outlined in class were:

• the coronation: a moment of jubilation, the first mass ceremony of the television age (Princess Diana's funeral, at the end of our period, makes a nice complement), and a time for new hopes of British "greatness" emerging from wartime deprivation and postwar austerity.
• British achievements in science and technology (the first jetliner, the first nuclear facility for non-military purposes, an independent atomic bomb, describing the structure of DNA, etc.), giving science-fiction writers the impression that Britain would stand at the forefront of the future
• the attempts to maintain some independent standing in world affairs, and to reassert British power in Malaya and Kenya
• the Suez Crisis, for which follow this link (it's important, so do click), revealing the illusory nature of any hopes for Britain being an independent world force; two of the films used in class are here
• a long period of economic growth and prosperity, despite on-going inefficiencies in British industry
• the "Profumo Affair" (covered in detail by Marr)