Eden, (Robert) Anthony, 1st Earl of Avon

Eden, (Robert) Anthony, 1st Earl of Avon (b. 12 June 1897, d. 14 Jan. 1977). British Prime Minister 1955–7 Born in Windlestone, Co. Durham. After finishing at Eton he served on the Western Front in World War I and was awarded the Military Cross. After the war, he resumed his education at Oxford, and became Conservative MP for Warwick and Leamington in 1923. In 1926–9, he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain. He became an Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in 1931, and in 1935 entered the Cabinet as Minister for League of Nations Affairs. Later that year, he replaced Samuel Hoare as Foreign Secretary. Initially, he supported the policies of appeasement pursued by the government, but when Neville Chamberlain replaced Baldwin as Prime Minister in 1937, Eden found that his department was being increasingly interfered with.

Eden had the good fortune to resign in February 1938, just before the signing of the Munich Agreement, so that his career was untainted by the episode. Unlike Churchill, he was not a principled opponent of appeasement, his resignation being triggered more by dislike and distrust of Mussolini than of Hitler. Officially he stepped down over the government's recognition of Italy's conquest of Abyssinia, while the underlying cause was his struggle with Chamberlain over control of policy. Subsequently, he was critical of the government's foreign policies, and did not regain office until war broke out, when he became Dominions Secretary. Made Foreign Secretary by Churchill in 1940, he emerged as the second-in-command within the Conservative Party.

After defeat in the 1945 elections, Eden became increasingly impatient with Churchill's refusal to resign, especially as Churchill left the running of day-to-day politics to him, basking in his glory as a war hero. Again Foreign Secretary from 1951, his appeal to Churchill to resign became ever more pressing, though he was unable to succeed him until 1955, a year in which he led the party to a clear election victory. However, the fiasco of the Suez Crisis made his early resignation inevitable. Though not a military disaster, it was his complete failure to foresee and then acknowledge international outrage at Britain's actions which resulted in a resounding diplomatic and national humiliation. In this sense, his long and successful involvement in foreign policy for three decades proved more of a liability than an asset, leading him not to understand that Britain was no longer the world power it had been when he first took office.