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Political Biography:

Maurice Harold Macmillan

(b. London, 10 Feb. 1894; d. 29 Dec. 1986) British; Foreign Secretary 1955, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1955 – 7, Prime Minister 1957 – 63; Viscount Stockton 1984 The son of a publisher (and grandson of a Scottish crofter), Macmillan was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He served with the Grenadier Guards during the First World War and was wounded three times, on the third occasion seriously. His wartime experience, surviving when much of his generation was wiped out, had a lasting impact. So too did his experience as Conservative MP for Stockton-on-Tees, representing the depressed industrial town from 1924 to 1929 and from 1931 to 1945. His experiences led him briefly to resign the Conservative whip (1936 – 7) and to write The Middle Way, espousing a moderate brand of Conservatism. His stance was essentially paternalist. He married into the family of the Duke of Devonshire and retained a fascination with the aristocracy.

His first ministerial experience came in 1940 when he was appointed as a junior minister. Two years later he took up the post of Resident Minister at Allied Forces HQ in the Mediterranean theatre, in which post he struck up a friendship with Eisenhower. He served until the caretaker Conservative government in 1945 in which he served as Secretary of State for Air. He lost his seat at Stockton in the general election but was almost immediately returned at a by-election for the safe seat of Bromley. He was a leading member of the Opposition front bench from 1945 to 1951, speaking on economic and industrial issues, but occasionally contributing to debates on foreign affairs. On the return of a Conservative government in 1951, he was appointed to the Cabinet as Minister of Housing. The post was less than he had hoped for, but he threw himself into it with vigour. He proved an effective minister. By 1953, he could claim that 300,000 new homes had been built. In 1954 he was rewarded with promotion. He was appointed Minister of Defence. His tenure of the post and, indeed, his two subsequent posts was short-lived. In April 1955, the new Prime Minister Eden appointed him Foreign Secretary. It was the post he wanted, but he served in it only nine months. Eden wanted to remain involved in foreign affairs and in December appointed Macmillan Chancellor of the Exchequer, a move that Macmillan did not appreciate. As Chancellor, he introduced the Premium Bond and variously clashed with Eden. When Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, Macmillan was among the more hawkish members of the Cabinet. When the Americans applied economic pressure, he shifted his position and came to dominate the Cabinet. Eden resigned. The majority of the Cabinet and the parliamentary party reportedly favoured Macmillan, rather than Butler, as his successor and — after taking advice — the Queen sent for Macmillan.

Macmillan quickly restored the morale of the Conservative Party. He exuded an air of calm confidence. When the Chancellor Peter Thorneycroft and the other Treasury ministers resigned in January 1958, Macmillan dismissed it as a "little local difficulty". He was able to cite continuing economic prosperity and in the 1959 budget pushed the new Chancellor Heathcoat-Amory to adopt an expansionary budget. In 1959 he led the party to a substantial victory in the general election. He was hailed as "Supermac". Conditions turned against him in the new parliament. The party's 1959 manifesto offered no clear sense of direction. Facing economic pressures, Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd adopted an unpopular "stop-go" economic policy. Macmillan decided to pursue an application for membership of the European Economic Community. The application split the party and was subsequently vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle. In 1962, government unpopularity spurred Macmillan into dismissing one-third of the Cabinet, "the Night of the Long Knives", an act that upset many of his own supporters. The following year, his handling of the Profumo affair — when his War Minister resigned after admitting lying to the House about his affair with a prostitute — left him looking out of touch with events. He looked old, and oldfashioned, in comparison with the new Labour leader, Harold Wilson. Macmillan and his ministers were on increasingly bad terms with the press. Speculation about his leadership grew. He planned to lead the party into the next general election. His plans were upset in October 1963 when he was taken ill with prostatitis and had to go into hospital for an operation. Believing he was more gravely ill than in fact he was, he resigned the premiership (a decision he quickly regretted). From his hospital bed, he set in train a process of sounding out opinion in the party as to his successor. Initially a supporter of Lord Hailsham (Quintin Hogg), Hogg's antics at the party conference led him to shift his support to Lord Home (Alec Douglas-Home). The advice received from the party appeared to confirm this view, though the process of ascertaining the view was to prove highly controversial. The Queen sent for Lord Home.

Macmillan retired from the House in 1964 and declined a peerage. He worked on his memoirs and enjoyed his position — to which he had been elected in 1960 — as chancellor of Oxford University. After twenty years out of parliament, he returned in 1984, having accepted a hereditary peerage. He was installed as Viscount Stockton. Despite being 90 years of age and with poor eyesight, he attended the House and, speaking from notes held in front of his face, criticized the economic policies of the Thatcher government, claiming that privatization was like "selling the family silver". His time in the Upper House was short. He died on 29 December 1986.

Macmillan was often portrayed as a great showman in politics. He exuded unflappability and urbaneness, an outward appearance that masked both nervousness and personal unhappiness. His earlier experiences never left his memory, his wife had a long-standing affair with another MP (Robert Boothby), and his son Maurice — an MP to whom he had denied ministerial office — predeceased him. He was committed to ensuring a stable society, free of the misery he had witnessed in Stockton. His misfortune was to be Prime Minister at a time when Britain's economic improvement ran into the buffers.

 
 
Biography: Harold Macmillan

The British politician and prime minister (Maurice) Harold Macmillan (1894-1986) was one of the outstanding Conservative leaders of the 20th century in terms of achieving both unity in his party and electoral success.

Harold Macmillan was born on Feb. 10, 1894, in London, England. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford. During his World War I service in the Grenadier Guards he was wounded three times. From 1919-1920 he was an aide to the governor general of Canada. In 1920 he married into one of the most deeply rooted Conservative aristocratic families - the Cavendishes (Lady Dorothy Cavendish, daughter of the 9th Duke of Devonshire). She died in 1966. They had three daughters and one son.

Early Career

This impeccable upper-class background served Macmillan in good stead in his prime ministerial career (January 1957-October 1963) when he wished to lead his party in directions that it would have found difficult to take from another leader. But in the early phase of his career this background could be seriously misleading. As member of Parliament for Stockton-on-Tees after 1924, he was no orthodox Conservative. He was deeply moved by mass unemployment; in such works as Reconstruction: A Plea for a National Policy (1933) and The Middle Way (1938) he advocated neo-Keynesian solutions to the economic crisis of those years that were by no means fashionable.

As an opponent of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy toward Hitler's Germany, and as a Conservative rebel, he was an obvious choice for Winston Churchill's wartime administration. Macmillan served as parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Supply from 1940 to 1942, as undersecretary of state for the colonies in 1942, and his most important office, as minister resident at Allied Headquarters in Northwest Africa from 1942 to 1945. In the latter capacity he came close to Churchill and acted as an effective link between quarreling Allied military and political commanders.

Political Service

After the war, he was made secretary of state for air in the caretaker government. In the Conservative government of 1951, Macmillan served first, and most successfully, as minister of housing and local government (1951-1954). He was then minister of defense, foreign secretary, and chancellor of the Exchequer (December 1955-January 1957) before succeeding Anthony Eden as prime minister in January 1957, a position he held until his resignation in October 1963.

As prime minister, Macmillan took over after the Suez operation, when President Abdul Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, and his party's morale and fortunes were at a low ebb. By 1959 the Conservatives had recovered enough to win a large electoral victory. His period in office was associated with developments that only Macmillan's public relations skills made acceptable to large sections of his own party: the acceptance of the move toward black African independence (1960), the initiation of formal government planning through the National Economic Development Council, and the approach to joining the European Common Market (now the European Union) in 1961. Macmillan was also instrumental in negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that was signed by the former Soviet Union, England, and the United States in 1963.

Speaking to the South African Parliament in 1960, Macmillan said, "A wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness is a political fact."

In 1963 a downturn in the economy coupled with a sex scandal involving one of the prime minister's aides resulted in Macmillan's resignation from office. When he left public life, Macmillan returned to his family's publishing business, Macmillan Ltd., of which he became president in 1974. After years of refusing his peerage, he was created Earl of Stockton in 1984. Macmillan died of pneumonia, December 29, 1986, in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, England.

Further Reading

MacMillan, Harold, Winds of Change 1914-1939 (1966); The Blast of War 1939-1945 (1967); Tides of Fortune 1945-1955 (1969).

"Earl of Stockton: British Politician," Annual Obituary 1986, New York: St. Martins Press, c1986, p. 736-739.

Horne, Alistair, Harold Macmillan, New York: Viking, c1989.

Hughes, Emrys, Macmillan: Portrait of a Politician (1962).

Sampson, Anthony, MacMillan: A Study in Ambiguity (1967).

Turner, John, Macmillan, New York: Longman, c1994.

Davenport-Hines, R.P.T., The Macmillans, London: Heineman, c1992.

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Harold Macmillan

(born Feb. 10, 1894, London, Eng. — died Dec. 29, 1986, Birch Grove, Sussex) British prime minister (1957 – 63). He served in the House of Commons (1924 – 29, 1931 – 64) and held posts in Winston Churchill's wartime coalition government. After the war he served as minister of housing (1951 – 54), minister of defense (1954), foreign secretary (1955), and chancellor of the Exchequer (1955 – 57). In 1957 he became prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party. He worked to improve relations with the U.S. and visited Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1959. Domestically, Macmillan supported Britain's postwar social programs. His government began to lose popularity in 1961 because of a wage freeze and other deflationary measures and a Soviet espionage scandal involving John Profumo, secretary of state for war. He championed membership in the European Economic Community, though Britain's membership application was vetoed in 1963 by Charles de Gaulle. Demands for a new party leader led to his resignation in 1963. He wrote a series of memoirs (1966 – 75) and served as chair (1963 – 74) of his family's publishing house, Macmillan & Co.

For more information on Harold Macmillan, visit Britannica.com.

 
British History: Harold Macmillan

Macmillan, Harold (1894-1986). Prime minister. Anglo-American by birth, Macmillan proceeded from Eton to Balliol College, Oxford, where he secured a first in classical moderations. During the war he was badly injured. After the war he served as ADC to the governor-general of Canada before going into the family publishing firm.

Macmillan was elected as member for Stockton at his second attempt in 1924. In Parliament he associated himself with a group of progressive Tories, styled the YMCA, but his career suffered a blow when he lost his seat in the 1929 general election. He won it back in 1931. The publication of The Middle Way in 1938 showed Macmillan's commitment to a mixed economy and considerable government intervention. Macmillan was also at odds with the foreign policy of the National Government and resigned the Conservative whip for the last year of Baldwin's premiership.

When Churchill became premier in May 1940 Macmillan's ministerial rewards were initially small. But in 1942 he made his first major political advance with his appointment as minister of state for north Africa. Macmillan took easily to his new authority and struck up a good working relationship with General Eisenhower.

Macmillan lost his Stockton seat again in the general election of 1945, but was soon returned to Parliament following a by-election in Bromley. As minister of housing after 1951 Macmillan achieved credit as the man who fulfilled the Conservative pledge to build 300, 000 houses in a single year. He served briefly as minister of defence, but became foreign secretary when Eden succeeded to the premiership in 1955. Too forceful in this post for Eden's liking, he was transferred to the Exchequer after six months.

An ardent proponent of the Suez adventure in 1956, its failure provided Macmillan with his opportunity. Though it was he who pressed the financial necessity of bringing the operation to an end, his earlier enthusiasm ensured the backing of the Conservative right. To the surprise of many he was preferred to Butler when ill-health forced Eden's resignation in January 1957.

As prime minister Macmillan displayed political skills which few had anticipated. Against the odds, he restored party morale after Suez and led the Conservatives to a third successive electoral victory in 1959. By 1960 Macmillan stood at the height of his power. The nickname ‘Supermac’ encapsulated the public's acclaim. But then problems arose. The collapse of the summit conference of 1960 was a particular blow which helped persuade Macmillan to seek British admission to the European Common Market. This quest ultimately met with the veto of General de Gaulle. Meanwhile difficulties mounted on the domestic front. Many sensed panic when Macmillan dismissed a third of his cabinet, including the chancellor, in the famous ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in July 1962. Thereafter the government was beset by a series of sex and spy scandals. Illness precipitated Macmillan's resignation at the time of the Conservative Party conference in October 1963.

Macmillan was a complex individual. An external self-confidence was matched by inner doubts, exacerbated no doubt by his wife's long-standing affair with Robert Boothby. The years of his premiership remain controversial. For some they represent a period of unprecedented prosperity; for others a time when a blind eye was turned to underlying problems in the British economy.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Macmillan, (Maurice) Harold, 1st
earl of Stockton, 1894–1986, British statesman. A descendant of the founder of the publishing house of Macmillan and Company, he was educated at Eton and at Oxford and served in World War I. He entered Parliament in 1924 as a Conservative. Throughout the 1930s he was an advocate of social and economic reforms and an outspoken critic of the government's policy of appeasement. When sanctions against Italy were abandoned in 1936, he voted against his party leaders and sat for a year as an independent. He held several government posts during World War II, including minister resident in N Africa. He was minister of housing and local government (1951–54), minister of defense (1954–55), and chancellor of the exchequer (1955–57). In 1957 he succeeded Sir Anthony Eden as prime minister. He restored close Anglo-American relations, damaged by the Suez Canal crisis, and attempted to establish a firmer basis for East-West negotiations by making personal appeals to Moscow and Washington. He also strove for the admission of Great Britain to the European Economic Community (Common Market) but met with the opposition of French President de Gaulle. In the 1959 election, Macmillan told the country, “You've never had it so good,” pointing to the full employment and substantial rise in real earnings of the 1950s, and he and his party won a landslide victory. However, by 1961 balance of payments difficulties had forced the government to introduce an austerity program. Macmillan accelerated Britain's decolonization, especially in Africa. In a memorable speech to the South African parliament in 1960, he said the “winds of change” were sweeping across Africa. His government suffered a series of scandals; the most famous was the Profumo scandal. He resigned the prime ministership in 1963 and in 1964 retired from Parliament. Macmillan served as chancellor (1960–86) of Oxford Univ. and as chairman (1963–74) of the Macmillan publishing house. He accepted an earldom in 1984.

Bibliography

See his memoirs (6 vol., 1966–73); biographies by N. Fisher (1982) and A. Horne (2 vol., 1988–89).

 
Quotes By: Harold Macmillan

Quotes:

"We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts."

"It has been said that there is no fool like an old fool, except a young fool. But the young fool has first to grow up to be an old fool to realize what a damn fool he was when he was a young fool."

"Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set."

"Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth."

"Jaw-jaw is better than war-war."

"If you don't believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency. Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don't think it's enough."

See more famous quotes by Harold Macmillan

 
Wikipedia: Harold Macmillan
The Earl of Stockton
Harold Macmillan
In office
11 January 1957 – 19 October 1963
Monarch Elizabeth II
Deputy Rab Butler (1962–63)
Preceded by Sir Anthony Eden
Succeeded by Sir Alec Douglas-Home
In office
20 December 1955 – 13 January 1957
Prime Minister Anthony Eden
Preceded by Rab Butler
Succeeded by Peter Thorneycroft
Born 10 February 1894(1894--)
Chelsea, London, England
Died 29 December 1986 (aged 92)
Chelwood Gate, Sussex, England
Nationality British
Political party Conservative
Spouse Lady Dorothy Macmillan
Alma mater Balliol College, Oxford
Religion Anglican [1]

Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Nicknamed 'Supermac', he did not use his first name and was known as Harold Macmillan before elevation to the peerage. When asked what represented the greatest challenge for a statesman, Macmillan replied: “Events, my dear boy, events”.[2]

Early life

Harold Macmillan was born at 52 Cadogan Place in Chelsea, London, England to Maurice Crawford Macmillan (1853-1936) and Helen (Nellie) Artie Tarleton Belles (1856-1937). His paternal grandfather, Daniel Macmillan (1813-1857), was the son of a Scottish crofter who founded Macmillan Publishers.

Macmillan was first educated at Summer Fields School and then at Eton but was expelled - according to Woodrow Wyatt - for buggery, though an alternative version is that he left due to illness.[3] He also attended Balliol College, Oxford, although he only completed two years of his classics degree before the outbreak of the First World War.

Macmillan served with distinction as a captain in the Grenadier Guards during the war and was wounded on three occasions. During the Battle of the Somme, he spent an entire day wounded and lying in a foxhole with a bullet in his pelvis, reading the Greek writer Aeschylus in the original language.[4] Macmillan lost so many of his fellow students during the war that afterwards he refused to return to Oxford, saying the university would never be the same.

Marriage

Macmillan married Lady Dorothy Cavendish, daughter of Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire on 21 April 1920. Her great-uncle was Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, who was leader of the Liberal Party in the 1870s, and a close colleague of William Ewart Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Salisbury. Lady Dorothy was also descended from William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, who served as Prime Minister from 1756-1757 in communion with Newcastle and Pitt the Elder. Between 1929 and 1935 Lady Dorothy had a long affair with the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, in full public view of Westminster and established society. Boothby was widely rumoured to have been the father of Macmillan's youngest daughter Sarah. The stress caused by this may have contributed to Macmillan's nervous breakdown in 1931. [5] Lady Dorothy died on 21 May 1966, aged 65.

The Macmillans had four children:

Brother-in-law

On 26 November 1950, Lady Dorothy's brother Edward Cavendish, the 10th Duke of Devonshire had a heart attack and died in the presence of John Bodkin Adams, the suspected serial killer. 13 days before, Mrs Edith Alice Morrell, another patient of Adams, had also died. Adams was tried in 1957 for her murder but controversially acquitted. Political interference has been suspected[6][7] and indeed, the case was prosecuted by a member of Macmillan's cabinet, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller. Home office pathologist Francis Camps linked Adams to 163 suspicious deaths in total.[8]

Political career (1924-1957)

Elected to the House of Commons in 1924 for Stockton-on-Tees, Macmillan lost his seat in 1929, only to return in 1931. He spent the 1930s on the backbenches, with his anti-appeasement ideals and sharp criticism of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain serving to isolate him.

During this time (1938) he published the first edition of his book The Middle Way, which advocated a broadly centrist political philosophy both domestically and internationally.

In the Second World War he at last attained office, serving in the wartime coalition government in the Ministry of Supply and the Colonial Ministry before attaining real power upon being sent to North Africa in 1942 as British government representative to the Allies in the Mediterranean. During this assignment Macmillan worked closely with Dwight Eisenhower, a friendship that would prove crucial in his later career.

Macmillan returned to England after the war and was Secretary of State for Air for two months in 1945. He lost his seat in the landslide Labour victory that year, but soon returned to Parliament in a November 1945 by-election in Bromley. With the Conservative victory in 1951 he became Minister of Housing under Winston Churchill and fulfilled his conference promise to build 300,000 houses per year. He then served as Minister of Defence from October 1954. By this time he had lost the wire-rimmed glasses, toothy grin and brylcreemed hair of wartime photographs, and instead grew his hair thick and glossy, had his teeth capped and walked with the ramrod bearing of a former Guards officer - acquiring the distinguished appearance of his later career.

He then served as Foreign Secretary in April-December 1955 and Chancellor of the Exchequer 1955-1957 under Anthony Eden. In the latter job he insisted that Eden's de facto deputy Rab Butler not be treated as senior to him, and threatened resignation until he was allowed to cut bread and milk subsidies. During the Suez Crisis, according to Shadow Chancellor Harold Wilson, MacMillan was "First In, First Out" : first very supportive of the invasion, then a prime mover in Britain's withdrawal in the wake of the financial crisis.

Harold Macmillan became Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party after Eden's resignation in January 1957, surprising observers with his appointment over the favourite, Rab Butler. He was nicknamed Supermac by cartoonist Victor 'Vicky' Weisz. It was intended as mockery, but backfired, coming to be used in a neutral or friendly fashion. Weisz tried to label him with other names, including "Mac the Knife" at the time of widespread cabinet changes in 1962, but none of these caught on.[citation needed]

Prime Minister (1957-1963)

Government

The situation with Suez was so desperate that when Macmillan became Prime Minister on 10 January he told Queen Elizabeth he could not guarantee his government would last "six weeks".[9] Macmillan went on to fill government posts with 35 family members, 7 of whom sat in Cabinet. [10] When Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, was later appointed (Minister for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964 amongst other positions) he described his uncle's behaviour as "the greatest act of nepotism ever".[11]

Election victory (1959)

Macmillan led the Conservatives to victory in the October 1959 general election, increasing his party's majority from 67 to 107 seats. The successful campaign was based on the economic improvements achieved, the slogan "Life's Better Under the Conservatives" was matched by Macmillan's own remark, "indeed let us be frank about it - most of our people have never had it so good." [12], usually paraphrased as "You've never had it so good".

Critics contended that the actual economic growth rate was weak and distorted by increased defence spending.[citation needed]

Independent nuclear deterrent

A succession of prime ministers since the Second World War war had been determined to persuade the Americans to share the secret of their nuclear weapons with Britain.

Macmillan believed that, if Britain could develop an H-bomb on the scale of the Americans', they would treat it as an equal and form an alliance. This led the British government and the military to increase demands on Windscale, Britains first nuclear power plant, to produce increasing amounts of material for an H-bomb. As a result of these demands, the safety margins of the radioactive materials inside the reactor were being eroded. This led to an accident on the night of 10 October 1957 when a fire ripped through the radioactive materials in the core of Windscale's reactor. Nuclear contaminants travelled up a chimney where a filter blocked some but not all of the contaminated material and a radioactive cloud spread over the UK and Europe.

Scientists had warned of the dangers of such an accident for some time but Macmillan covered up the reasons for the accident, blaming workers for "an error of judgement" rather than pressue from his government to produce even more nuclear material (Windscale: Britain's biggest nuclear disaster broadcast on Monday, 8 October, 2007, at 2100 BST on BBC Two).

Following the technical failures of a British independent nuclear deterrent with the Blue Streak and the Blue Steel projects, and the unilateral cancellation of the Skybolt missile system by US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, Macmillan negotiated the delivering of American Polaris missiles to the UK under the Nassau agreement in December 1962. (Previously he had agreed to base 60 Thor missiles in Britain under joint control, and since late 1957 the American McMahon Act had been eased to allow Britain more access to nuclear technology. These negotiations were the basis for Peter Cook's satire of Macmillan in Beyond the Fringe).

Macmillan was a force in the successful negotiations leading to the signing of the 1962 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. His previous attempt to create an agreement at the May 1960 summit in Paris had collapsed due to the U-2 Crisis of 1960.

Economy

Macmillan brought the monetary concerns of the Exchequer into office; the economy was his prime concern. However, Britain's balance of payments problems led to the imposition of a wage freeze in 1961 and this caused the government to lose popularity and led to a series of by-election defeats. He organised a major cabinet change in July 1962 - also named "the night of long knives" as a symbol of his alleged betrayal of the Conservative party - but continued to lose support from within his own party. The cabinet changes were widely seen as a sign of panic, and the young Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe said of Macmillan's dismissal of so many of his colleagues, "greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life".

Macmillan's One Nation approach to the economy was to seek high or full employment. This contrasted with his mainly monetarist Treasury ministers who argued that the support of sterling required strict controls on money and hence an unavoidable rise in unemployment. Their advice was rejected and in January 1958 the three Treasury ministers Peter Thorneycroft, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Birch, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, and Enoch Powell, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, resigned. Macmillan brushed aside this incident as "a little local difficulty".

Macmillan supported the creation of the National Incomes Commission as a means to institute controls on income as part of his growth-without-inflation policy. A further series of subtle indicators and controls were also introduced during his premiership.

Foreign policy

Macmillan also took close control of foreign policy. He worked to narrow the post-Suez rift with the United States, where his wartime friendship with Dwight D. Eisenhower was key; the two had a productive conference in Bermuda as early as March 1957. The cordial relationship remained after the election of John F. Kennedy.

Macmillan's term saw the first phase of the African independence movement, beginning with the granting of independence to the Gold Coast, as Ghana, in 1957. His celebrated "wind of change" speech (February 1960) is considered a landmark in this process. Ghana and Malaya were granted independence in 1957, Nigeria in 1960 and Kenya in 1963. However in the Middle East Macmillan ensured Britain remained a force, intervening over Iraq in 1958 and 1960 and becoming involved in the affairs of Oman.

In 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev twice interrupted a speech by Macmillan at the United Nations by shouting out "we will bury you" and pounding his desk. Macmillan famously replied, "I should like that to be translated if he wants to say anything". [13]

Europe

Macmillan saw the value of rapprochement with Europe and sought belated entry to the European Economic Community (EEC). But Britain's application to join the EEC was vetoed by Charles de Gaulle (29 January 1963); in part due to de Gaulle's fear that "the end would be a colossal Atlantic Community dependent on America" and in part in anger at the Anglo-American nuclear deal.

He also explored the possibility of a European Free Trade Area (EFTA).

Retirement and death (1963-1986)

The Profumo affair of spring and summer 1963 permanently damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government. He survived a Parliamentary vote with a majority of 69, one less than had been thought necessary for his survival, and was afterwards joined in the smoking-room only by his son and son-in-law, not by any Cabinet minister. Nonetheless, Butler and Maudling (who was very popular with backbench MPs at that time) declined to push for his resignation, especially after a tide of support from Conservative activists around the country.

However, the affair may have exacerbated Macmillan's ill-health. He was taken ill on the eve of the Conservative Party Conference, diagnosed incorrectly with inoperable prostate cancer. Consequently, he resigned on 18 October 1963. He was succeeded by the Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home in a controversial move; it was alleged that Macmillan had pulled strings and utilised the party's grandees, nicknamed "The Magic Circle", to ensure that Butler was not chosen as his successor.

Macmillan initially refused a peerage and retired from politics in September 1964. He did, however, accept the distinction of the Order of Merit from The Queen. After retiring, he took up the chairmanship of his family's publishing house, Macmillan Publishers. He then brought out a six-volume autobiography; the read was described by his political enemy Enoch Powell as inducing "a sensation akin to that of chewing on cardboard". His wartime diaries, published after his death, were much better received.

Over the next 20 years or so Macmillan made the occasional political intervention, particularly after Margaret Thatcher became Tory leader and Macmillan's premiership came under attack from the monetarists in the party. Responding to a remark made by Harold Wilson about not having boots in which to go to school, Macmillan retorted: "If Mr Wilson did not have boots to go to school, it is because he was too big for them!"[citation needed]

Macmillan is commonly thought to have likened Thatcher's policy of privatisation to "selling the family silver". In fact what he did say (at a dinner of the Tory Reform Group at the Royal Overseas League on 8 November 1985) was that the sale of assets was commonplace amongst individuals or states when they encountered financial difficulties: "First of all the Georgian silver goes. And then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go." Profitable parts of the steel industry and the railways had been privatised, along with British Telecom: "They were like two Rembrandts still left."[14] Macmillan's speech was much commented on and a few days later Macmillan made a speech in the Lords to clarify what he had meant:

When I ventured the other day to criticise the system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism. I am sure they will be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income.[15]

In 1984 he finally accepted a peerage and was created Earl of Stockton and Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden. In the last month of his life, he observed:

"Sixty-three years ago ... the unemployment figure [in Stockton-on-Tees] was then 29%. Last November ... the unemployment [there] is 28%. A rather sad end to one's life."

Macmillan died at Birch Grove in Sussex in 1986 aged 92 years and 322 days — the greatest age attained by a British Prime Minister until surpassed by James Callaghan on 14 February 2005.

Titles from birth to death

The Macmillan family graves in 2000 at St.Giles Church, Horsted Keynes. Harold Macmillan's grave is on the right.
Enlarge
The Macmillan family graves in 2000 at St.Giles Church, Horsted Keynes. Harold Macmillan's grave is on the right.

Cabinets

For a full list of Ministerial office-holders, see Conservative Government 1957-1964.

January 1957 - October 1959

Change

  • March 1957 - Lord Home succeeds Lord Salisbury as Lord President, remaining also Commonwealth Relations Secretary.
  • September 1957 - Lord Hailsham succeeds Lord Home as Lord President, Home remaining Commonwealth Relations Secretary. Geoffrey Lloyd succeeds Hailsham as Minister of Education. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Reginald Maudling, enters the Cabinet.
  • January 1958 - Derick Heathcoat Amory succeeds Peter Thorneycroft as Chancellor of the Exchequer. John Hare succeeds Amory as Minister of Agriculture.

October 1959 - July 1960

July 1960 - October 1961

October 1961 - July 1962

July 1962 - October 1963

In a radical reshuffle dubbed "The Night of the Long Knives", Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet and instituted many other changes.

Notes

  1. ^ http://trushare.com/0122JLY05/JY05GAUST.htm
  2. ^ http://www.policyreview.org/oct05/bering.html
  3. ^ Ball, Simon "The Guardsmen, Harold Macmillan, Three Friends and the World They Made", (London, Harper Collins), 2004
  4. ^ Lawton, John (1992). 1963: Five Hundred Days. Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-50846-9. 
  5. ^ Parris, Matthew (1997). Great Parliamentary Scandals: Four Centuries of Calumny, Smear & Innuendo. London: Robson Books. ISBN 1-86105-152-2. 
  6. ^ Rodney Hallworth, Mark Williams, "Where there's a will... The sensational life of Dr John Bodkin Adams", 1983, Capstan Press
  7. ^ Cullen, Pamela V., "A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams", London, Elliott & Thompson, 2006, ISBN 1-904027-19-9
  8. ^ Cullen, Pamela V., "A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams", London, Elliott & Thompson, 2006, ISBN 1-904027-19-9
  9. ^ Macmillan, Harold, "The Macmillan Diaries, The Cabinet Years, 1950-1957", ed. Peter Catterall (London, Macmillan, 2003)
  10. ^ Marr, Andrew. A History of Modern Britain, Macmillan (2007). ISBN 978-1405005388
  11. ^ Cullen, Pamela V., "A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams", London, Elliott & Thompson, 2006, ISBN 1-904027-19-9
  12. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/20/newsid_3728000/3728225.stm Harold MacMi