Moorhouse Affair
Encyclopedia
The Moorhouse Affair was a military confrontation between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Republic
over the abduction
and murder of Second Lieutenant
Anthony Moorhouse in Port Said
, Egypt, following the end of British military operations in the 1956 Suez Crisis
.
on National Service
in the 1st Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment. His father, Francis Gerard Moorhouse, owned a jam-manufacturing company in Leeds
, Yorkshire
, Moorhouse's Jam. Moorhouse was stationed in Port Said after 7 November 1956 ceasefire.
by a crowd of Egyptians, one of whom took his pistol. He was overpowered and driven off in a civilian car which was later found by British forces.
Lieutenant General
Hugh Stockwell
, the British Task Force commander and commander of the British Army's II Corps, ordered a house-to-house search of a five-block area and for all males over the age of 15 found there to be detained and questioned. The searches were unsuccessful in locating the missing officer.
The United Nations
also made efforts to obtain information on Moorhouse's disappearance. On 22 December 1956 Moorhouse's kidnappers allowed Major Wiks, a Norwegian UN officer, to see a man in a British uniform claiming that he was Moorhouse. After the encounter the UN officer reported that Moorhouse was ‘alive and well’. However, uncertainty as to Moorhouse's situation remained.
, the British Member of Parliament
Colonel Cyril Banks
, travelled to Cairo in an effort to establish the missing officer's fate. On Christmas Eve, 24 December 1954 he finally had a meeting with President Nasser who told him that Moorhouse had died of suffocation when held captive.
On 31 December 1956, Dag Hammarskjöld
, the Secretary-General of the United Nations received a report from the Egyptian Army that Moorhouse after capture was kept with the intention of exchanging him for Egyptian prisoners. When British troops began to search for him he was locked in a small metal cupboard; his captors returned once to feed him but, as the search intensified, they felt it unsafe to return and he was left for two days. When they finally returned they found him dead, apparently from suffocation, and buried him in the house where he had been kept prisoner.
According to an account made in 2006 by one of the Egyptian kidnappers, Moorhouse was captured and then taken to a safe house where he was trussed, gagged and hidden under the floor. It was confirmed that Moorhouse was held as a hostage with the intention of exchanging him for Egyptian prisoners. However, he was left alone and bound by his abductors for four days due to the curfew and constant British patrols, and when they returned they found him dead. He was then buried secretly in the Port Said graveyard.
In late December 1956 Banks returned to Egypt to recover Moorhouse's body and the British government asked the UN and Swiss government to mediate to recover the body with the Egyptian authorities.
The Egyptians complied with the UN request on 2 January 1957 and on 4 January 1957 Moorhouse's body was flown to Naples
, Italy, for formal identification. On 5 January 1957 British pathologists from Scotland Yard
formally identified the body as that of Moorhouse and it was flown back to the UK on 6 January 1957.
.
His memory is marked in the name of a road, 'Moorhouse Close', in Chester
, Cheshire. A small plaque refers to his "heroic death during the Suez Crisis" at the right entrance to this cul-de-sac.
government from opponents of the Suez invasion. When residents of Port Said planned to turn the house where Moorhouse had been held into a museum British public opinion was further inflamed. Moorhouse's death also raised questions regarding President Nasser's authority and the effectiveness of the United Nations
.
's The Entertainer
. It was also the inspiration for the depiction of Leslie Williams, a British conscript soldier seized by the IRA
in Brendan Behan
's play The Hostage
.
United Arab Republic
The United Arab Republic , often abbreviated as the U.A.R., was a sovereign union between Egypt and Syria. The union began in 1958 and existed until 1961, when Syria seceded from the union. Egypt continued to be known officially as the "United Arab Republic" until 1971. The President was Gamal...
over the abduction
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
and murder of Second Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
Anthony Moorhouse in Port Said
Port Said
Port Said is a city that lies in north east Egypt extending about 30 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, north of the Suez Canal, with an approximate population of 603,787...
, Egypt, following the end of British military operations in the 1956 Suez Crisis
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...
.
Biography
Anthony Gerard Moorhouse (1935 – 13 December 1956) was a Second LieutenantSecond Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
on National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
in the 1st Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment. His father, Francis Gerard Moorhouse, owned a jam-manufacturing company in Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, Moorhouse's Jam. Moorhouse was stationed in Port Said after 7 November 1956 ceasefire.
Abduction
On 10 December 1956 Moorhouse had led a raid in Port Said on the premises of an Egyptian dentist and arrested seven Egyptian commandos. On the morning of the following day, 11 December 1956, he returned to the scene alone and without military authority where he was surrounded in his army Land RoverLand Rover
Land Rover is a British car manufacturer with its headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, United Kingdom which specialises in four-wheel-drive vehicles. It is owned by the Indian company Tata Motors, forming part of their Jaguar Land Rover group...
by a crowd of Egyptians, one of whom took his pistol. He was overpowered and driven off in a civilian car which was later found by British forces.
Lieutenant General
Lieutenant General
Lieutenant General is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages where the title of Lieutenant General was held by the second in command on the battlefield, who was normally subordinate to a Captain General....
Hugh Stockwell
Hugh Stockwell
General Sir Hugh Charles Stockwell GCB, KBE, DSO & Bar was a British soldier, most remembered for commanding the Anglo-French ground forces during the Suez Crisis and his service as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1960 to 1964.-Early life:Stockwell was born in Jersey, but spent...
, the British Task Force commander and commander of the British Army's II Corps, ordered a house-to-house search of a five-block area and for all males over the age of 15 found there to be detained and questioned. The searches were unsuccessful in locating the missing officer.
The United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
also made efforts to obtain information on Moorhouse's disappearance. On 22 December 1956 Moorhouse's kidnappers allowed Major Wiks, a Norwegian UN officer, to see a man in a British uniform claiming that he was Moorhouse. After the encounter the UN officer reported that Moorhouse was ‘alive and well’. However, uncertainty as to Moorhouse's situation remained.
Confirmation of death
A family friend and former army colleague of the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel NasserGamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
, the British Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Colonel Cyril Banks
Cyril Banks
Colonel Cyril Banks MBE was a British engineer, company director, and politician. He was a Conservative Party representative, but his friendship with President Nasser and Egypt led him to sacrifice his career over the invasion of Suez.-Early career:Banks was born in Sheffield, to a lower...
, travelled to Cairo in an effort to establish the missing officer's fate. On Christmas Eve, 24 December 1954 he finally had a meeting with President Nasser who told him that Moorhouse had died of suffocation when held captive.
On 31 December 1956, Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was a Swedish diplomat, economist, and author. An early Secretary-General of the United Nations, he served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. He is the only person to have been awarded a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. Hammarskjöld...
, the Secretary-General of the United Nations received a report from the Egyptian Army that Moorhouse after capture was kept with the intention of exchanging him for Egyptian prisoners. When British troops began to search for him he was locked in a small metal cupboard; his captors returned once to feed him but, as the search intensified, they felt it unsafe to return and he was left for two days. When they finally returned they found him dead, apparently from suffocation, and buried him in the house where he had been kept prisoner.
According to an account made in 2006 by one of the Egyptian kidnappers, Moorhouse was captured and then taken to a safe house where he was trussed, gagged and hidden under the floor. It was confirmed that Moorhouse was held as a hostage with the intention of exchanging him for Egyptian prisoners. However, he was left alone and bound by his abductors for four days due to the curfew and constant British patrols, and when they returned they found him dead. He was then buried secretly in the Port Said graveyard.
In late December 1956 Banks returned to Egypt to recover Moorhouse's body and the British government asked the UN and Swiss government to mediate to recover the body with the Egyptian authorities.
The Egyptians complied with the UN request on 2 January 1957 and on 4 January 1957 Moorhouse's body was flown to Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, Italy, for formal identification. On 5 January 1957 British pathologists from Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
formally identified the body as that of Moorhouse and it was flown back to the UK on 6 January 1957.
Memorial
Lieutenant Moorhouse was buried with full military honours in Lawnswood Cemetery in Leeds on 10 January 1957 after a service at Leeds CathedralLeeds Cathedral
Leeds Cathedral, formally The Cathedral Church of St Anne, commonly known as Saint Anne's Cathedral, is the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Diocese of Leeds, and is the seat of the Bishop of Leeds. It is in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
.
His memory is marked in the name of a road, 'Moorhouse Close', in Chester
Chester
Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...
, Cheshire. A small plaque refers to his "heroic death during the Suez Crisis" at the right entrance to this cul-de-sac.
Political and social aftermath
This tragedy "aroused furious anger in Britain" and became "a national symbol of Egyptian deceit". It also led to widespread criticism of the EdenAnthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
government from opponents of the Suez invasion. When residents of Port Said planned to turn the house where Moorhouse had been held into a museum British public opinion was further inflamed. Moorhouse's death also raised questions regarding President Nasser's authority and the effectiveness of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
.
Depiction in drama
Lieutenant Moorhouse's death was the model for Mick Rice's fate in John OsborneJohn Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
's The Entertainer
The Entertainer (play)
The Entertainer is a three act play by John Osborne, first produced in 1957. His first play, Look Back in Anger, had attracted mixed notices but a great deal of publicity. Having depicted an "angry young man" in the earlier play, Osborne wrote, at Laurence Olivier's request,about an angry middle...
. It was also the inspiration for the depiction of Leslie Williams, a British conscript soldier seized by the IRA
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...
in Brendan Behan
Brendan Behan
Brendan Francis Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both Irish and English. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.-Early life:...
's play The Hostage
The Hostage (play)
The Hostage is a loose 1958 English version, with songs, adapted in a much longer text from a one-act Irish language play An Giall, by its author, Brendan Behan.-Plot:...
.