1956 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference 1956 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference The 1956 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference was the eighth Meeting of the Heads of Government of the Commonwealth of Nations. It was held in the United Kingdom in June 1956, and was hosted by that country's Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden. The new prime minister of Ceylon, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike pressured Eden to remove British military bases in Ceylon; Britain agreed to close the installations. In international affairs, the leaders expressed their support for the People's Republic of China and Japan being admitted to the United Nations (see China and the United Nations)
East of Suez Hong Kong, North Borneo, Sarawak) and Australia. The fall of Singapore to the Japanese on 15 February 1942 damaged the empire as it lost a strategic imperial outpost and laid the seeds of the collapse of British imperial power, post World War II. Then, with Indian independence in 1947, there was a gradual draw-down of the military presence “East of Suez”, marking the collapse of the empire. The Suez Crisis—a diplomatic and military confrontation in November 1956, caused by the nationalization of Suez Canal by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser—ended in Egypt taking full control of the canal. The economic