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The wider context.

The international situation in 1956 was far less than stable and the RAF was involved in several theatres of actual or potential conflict. There was the ongoing Cyprus situation with its Greco-Turkish problems. There, the RAF at Akrotiri was trying both to help stabilise things as well as protect its facilities on the island. Further away, the recent Korean conflict was still in many peoples' minds, with the border peace talks at Panmunjom still progressing intermittently and antagonistically.
In Russia, Bulganin and Kruschev were very much in charge, Molotov having recently been relieved of his post as Foreign Secretary. These two seemed to delight in goading America and its allies, taunting them and constantly probing their defences, often under so-called diplomatic cover, as though they were playing some sort of game, and a very dangerous one at that. International tensions were running high.
Only a few days after I became fully qualified as a Fighter Controller, the Poznan riots took place and there was much instability in Poland as some of the population tried unsuccessfully to lessen, or break free from, the grip of Russian Communism. This was a matter for much international concern.
The following month, July, Egypt's Colonel Nasser decided to nationalise the Suez Canal. This, in turn, led to a Royal Proclamation calling up the Army Reserve in the UK on the 3rd of August. The British Government, with some justification, was becoming worried. The number of people, it must be said, who were in the armed forces totalled almost as many as at the end of the war.
To make matters worse, the Hungarian uprising started in Budapest in October. In the same month Israel invaded Sinai, and the very next day, the RAF was bombing targets in Egypt.
On the first day of November Hungary renounced the Warsaw Pact, to be followed, the day after, by Russian military reinforcements arriving in that country. Just two days later, Russian tanks were on the streets of Budapest causing mayhem and being met by rioters. The situation was grim.
The day after this, November 5th, British and French parachute troops landed near Port Said in Egypt. That same day, Mr Bulganin threatened Russian intervention in the Middle East. On the 6th, Egypt blocked the Suez Canal. The British and French forces, under diplomatic pressure, also ceased fire. This tense situation ended with the planned but reluctant withdrawal of Israeli troops as soon as they could be replaced by a United Nations peacekeeping force.
All was far from over in Hungary, many of whose nationals were pleading for American intervention. At the same time the Russians were deporting many young Hungarian males to the USSR to face an uncertain future, whilst many others were fleeing with their families across the temporarily insecure border into the safety of Austria.
World War Three was narrowly averted by intense diplomatic pressure being brought to bear on the several combatant or potentially combatant nations.
On November 23rd, Sir Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister, became ill and had to rest for three weeks in Jamaica. Already a sick man, the diplomatic pressures and world situation had become too much for him. While he was away, early in December, with the establishment of the UN peacekeeping force, the British and French forces began to leave Egypt.
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