Perhaps Calder Hall, now known as Sellafield, was named by someone with a sense of historical irony. No hall of the fading nobility needed to be demolished for this nuclear power station to replace it. Thus, on 17 October 1956, it became Britain’s first nuclear power station. The young queen opened it ‘with pride’. England was ready, in principle, to have her firesides warmed and her streets made safe by what Oppenheimer, the inventor of the Bomb, called ‘the destroyer of worlds’.
In 1956, England was to be weighed and found wanting. Far away, in a protectorate that had grown tired of being protected, a man had seized power – with cunning, bullets and a brilliant smile as his weapons. Gamal Abdel Nasser had plans for Egypt, and indeed for the whole Arab world. In what was proclaimed as a simple assertion of sovereignty, on 26 July 1956 he nationalized the Suez Canal. This was taken badly in Westminster.
Anthony Eden was in many respects an instinctive diplomat, with an almost preternatural gift for languages and for compromise. He had no obvious reason to clash with Nasser. They were both patriots, after their fashion; both knew well the limits and dangers of militarism. But Nasser was a consummate opportunist. In quietly shifting from Egyptian nationalism to pan-Arabism, he had amassed far greater moral resources than his British counterpart could boast.
When Nasser took the Canal, for many countries the chief artery of oil into Europe, Eden was moved to respond. And his response was unequivocally warlike and strangely personal. What moved him to compare his former ally to Mussolini and Hitler remains a puzzle. He was to claim in his wilderness years that he could not stand by and see the lessons of the Thirties forgotten. Whatever his motives, on 5 November 1956, Britain and France invaded Egypt.
The dishonesty in the plan was palpable even then. Israel was to launch an attack on Egypt, and then France and Britain would ‘intervene’ before leaving an armed force for the maintenance of peace, the cooling of tempers and the reopening of Suez. Israel had some reason for her actions; the other aggressors had only an excuse. Besides, too much in the plan had been predicated on the support of the United States. Churchill might have been able to coax them, but he would have had a deep well of respect to draw from. Eden did not, and his hunger to bring down Nasser led him to disregard the most glaring tokens of American unease. The United States had in any case made clear its opposition to any act that might so much as smell of European colonialism, and Eisenhower denied any American support for the Suez adventure. With that, a barren cause became a lost one. As they were advancing down the Canal, British and French troops were given the order: cease fire.
Reactions to the debacle were mixed. People who had never cared about the empire were moved to wonder why Britannia invicta had been worsted. Eden attempted to brazen it out but heart trouble struck, a misfortune seen by some as less an act of God than of expediency. Perhaps they were right, and his life was not in fact as deeply in peril as his doctor suggested. He never disavowed his decision over Suez. Perhaps, having committed himself so far, he could not withdraw. Eden was not stupid, but his judgement was bewildered by the fear of being considered a weakling. Churchill foresaw it all and feared for his successor: ‘Poor Anthony’ was his verdict. In any event, on 9 January 1957, Eden resigned.
It was as well that he did. The empire he had known and loved had begun to haemorrhage. The Mau Mau in Kenya were unbroken, despite the capture and execution of their leader. The EOKA fighters in Cyprus still raged. And on 6 March 1957, Ghana won independence, precipitating the end of British colonial rule in West Africa. Suez is often seen as the moment when the British Empire collapsed. It was not: the Second World War had rendered the empire unsustainable. But it represented the moment when the absence of something never before valued began to be felt.
Having lost its empire, Britain had to find its strength, or ‘credibility’, in other arenas. Britain might have established Calder Hall for innocent, or at least neutral purposes, but the nuclear arms race must still be run. On 15 May 1957, Britain tested its first hydrogen bomb. The battle to achieve this was painful for everyone, whatever their political stripe. Churchill, who had seen more wars than any of his peers, was horrified at this new development.
Aside from building houses and dismantling empires, caring for the old and for the young, and receiving guests that it had once known only as servants or slaves, England had to address the perennial problem of how to direct and mobilize its citizens. Inspired as much by the German as by the American example, the first motorway was laid. On 5 December 1958, the M6, the Preston Bypass, was opened and the ‘motorway age’ was thus tacitly inaugurated. And in 1959, the M1 was opened. The motorway was to acquire almost mythic connotations. In later years, it became, like the Thames, a cynosure of wonder.
To call national service a ‘rite of passage’ would be simplistic or misleading. For many it had the character of a pointless hiatus, robbing the participants of precious years that could have been spent working or playing. For others it was an exhilarating introduction to manhood and responsibility. In either case, it was almost impossible to avoid. A nation that had only recently emerged from war needed to keep its spine stiff and its sinews supple. National service was a typical example of how a temporary emergency can prompt a major alteration. Britain still had the peace to keep in Europe, allies to support and an empire to protect. It was promoted as a kind of trade-off for all the benefits of the welfare state. But the allies proved unstable and the empire untenable.
The training itself was if anything harsher than that imposed in wartime – there was an illusion to protect, along with the remains of empire. Dangers there were, whether roaring or skulking, and the still renowned British military was needed to face them. But in any case Britain needed its youth to be healthy, if they were not to end up like Teddy boys, shiftless and disobedient. In the event, the Teds flourished under national service. The hair was a problem, of course, but it could be hidden. In fact, the style was the only real objection of the training officers. One observed: ‘We’re a proud lot in the Airborne and feel that these modern fashions that a few of the chaps like rather lets (sic) the mob down.’
Other contemporaries were less predictable. Among the few who mourned Eden’s departure deeply were four young men whose brand of humour created at a stroke the modern alternative tradition. Eden’s consonants, snipped off by his protruding front teeth, had been succeeded by the languorous vowels of Harold Macmillan, which were far less susceptible to imitation. The Goons, the lords of Fifties radio comedy, must have sighed in disappointment at the gently genial new PM. They came together above a fruiterer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush, and their backgrounds were as difficult to represent as the new age itself. Michael Bentine was an Old Etonian, Peter Sellers a Jewish boy from Muswell Hill, Harry Secombe was a Welshman, and Spike Milligan had been born in India, his father an army captain.
Unlike many later comedians, the Goons had no interest in innuendo, or indeed in sexual matters of any sort. It was comedy in the tradition of Ben Jonson or the Restoration playwrights, with the difference that the types shown by the Goons were all not merely eccentric but palpably insane. The nation had excitement and opportunity, but too little in the way of salutary madness, which now the Goons unveiled. To get life insurance, all one had to do was to ‘get deceased’, for example. And the names were a feast. Denis Bloodnok, always blaming his wind on ‘curried eggs’, tells us nothing and suggests everything. And it was comedy for radio, for airwaves that could carry at last something more bracing than cheerful propaganda and interminable organ music. The voices, whether shrieking or whining, bellowing or wheedling, filled the home with brisk and contrary winds of every sort.