KP/JK/3/EDE/1 - Letter, Jessie Kenney to Prime Minister Anthony Eden, 3/11/1957

Reference code

KP/JK/3/EDE/1

Level of description

Item

Title

Letter, Jessie Kenney to Prime Minister Anthony Eden, 3/11/1957

Date/s

3/11/1957

Quantity & Format

2 leaves Letters (typescript)

Creator

Kenney, Jessie

Creator

Eden, Anthony, 1897-1977

Administrative/Biographical history

recipient

Scope and content

Jessie Kenney wrote to Sir Anthony Eden, UK Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957, to express her support of his methods for dealing with the Suez Crisis. The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab-Israeli War, was an invasion of Egypt in 1956 followed by the UK and France, aiming to regain control of the Suez Canal. Political pressure from the other global powers, including the United Nations and the Soviet Union, forced them to withdraw. The episode is regarded as a failure of British foreign policy and put an end to Eden’s political career. Jessie’s view was that the British invasion was justified and she commended Eden on his show of courage and strength. “We [the British] have been taking it ‘on the chin’,” she writes, “ever since we won the war of 1939, and the more we have worked for peace, the more we have subscribed to it, when we could ill afford it, and to the backward nations to help them get independence.”

Conditions governing reproduction

Existence and location of copies

A digital copy may be viewed at Suffragette Stories: https://suffragettestories.omeka.net/items/show/112

KP - The Kenney Papers
- KP/JK - Jessie Kenney
  - KP/JK/3 - Correspondence
    - KP/JK/3/EDE - Correspondence with Sir Anthony Eden
      - KP/JK/3/EDE/1 - Letter, Jessie Kenney to Prime Minister Anthony Eden, 3/11/1957