The Wind of Change

Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization

L. Butler, S. Stockwell, L. Butler, S. Stockwell

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137318008
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Afrikanische Geschichte

Harold Macmillan's 'Wind of Change' speech, delivered to the South African parliament in Cape Town at the end of a landmark six-week African tour, presaged the end of the British Empire in Africa. This book, the first to focus on Macmillan's 'Wind of Change', comprises a series of essays by leading historians in the field.

1

Macmillan, Verwoerd and the 1960 ‘Wind of Change’ Speech¹

Saul Dubow

I

Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ address has gone down in history as one of the great visionary speeches in post-war history, and perhaps the finest address of Macmillan’s career. As well as signalling a major policy change in respect of African decolonization, it declared that South Africa was now so far out of step with the trajectory of world events that Britain could no longer be counted upon to lend support to apartheid in the international arena. Macmillan’s speech demonstrated a sweeping grasp of historical circumstance. It was timely in its assessment of contemporary realities. Its staging was dramatic, and its formal construction and delivery magnificent. Yet the power of the address was vitiated by the broad realisation that Britain was a declining force in Africa. The speech amounted to concession dressed up as an act of statesmanship, an attempt to regain some sense of domestic control and direction in respect of external events that were no longer subject to Britain’s mastery.

The significance of Macmillan’s speech had more to do with its recognition of already existing forces than its originality or its grasp of the future. Indeed, the central message about the force of African nationalism was already a truism when Macmillan delivered it – and an understatement at that.² Neither the ‘wind of change’ metaphor, nor the sentiments it described, were novel. Stanley Baldwin had used a similar phrase to describe the growing forces of nationalism round the world in 1934.³ In 1957 Macmillan had himself observed that the growing nationalisms of Asia and Africa which had been ‘but a ripple’, were now ‘almost a tidal wave’ that had to be guided into ‘broad and safe channels’ lest it turned into communism.⁴ His message in 1960 was an elaboration of this idea in the specifically African context.

In South African historiography, the ‘wind of change’ speech is seldom discussed, though routinely noted in passing. One reason is that Macmillan’s visit is compacted into a more dramatic series of events. The year 1960 began with prime minister’s Hendrik Verwoerd’s surprise announcement that a referendum would be held later in the year to decide whether South Africa should become a republic.⁵ Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ speech on 3 February was soon occluded by the Sharpeville massacre and Langa uprisings in March; by the UN Security Council condemnation of apartheid which followed; the attempted assassination of Verwoerd on 9 April; the state of emergency and banning of the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC); the strongly contested republican referendum in October; and, in December, the controversial World Council of Churches conference at Cottesloe. South Africa’s pressured withdrawal from the Commonwealth in May 1961 was a culminating moment in eighteen months of feverish social tumult in which Macmillan’s address was merely an episode.

The success of the speech has to be judged against its objectives. To the extent that it laid a more or less clear exit strategy for Britain as an African colonial power – part of Macmillan’s larger attempt to reconfigure British attachments to the United States, on the one hand, and Europe on the other – it largely achieved its purpose. But if part of Macmillan’s intent was to persuade white South Africans to see reason and to abandon the logic of Verwoerdian apartheid dogma, it must be judged a failure. The argument put by Macmillan’s most recent biographer, D.R. Thorpe, that the ‘wind of change’ speech marked a ‘key moment in the struggle for black nationalism in South Africa’, and that it was a harbinger of the eventual ending of apartheid, oversimplifies and exaggerates. It perpetuates a myth that can be traced back to the contemporaneous boast by British high commissioner John Maud that Macmillan’s visit was ‘probably the most important event in South Africa since the Nationalist Government came to power in 1948’ and that it would likely disadvantage the South African government and bolster the opposition.⁶

The unintended effect of the speech was to help empower Verwoerd by reinforcing his dominance over domestic politics and by assisting him make two hitherto separate strands of his political career seem mutually reinforcing: republican nationalism on the one hand and apartheid ideology on the other. The speech also helped to precipitate the crisis over South Africa’s membership of the Commonwealth – which was avowedly not Macmillan’s intention. Yet the consequence for the Commonwealth was inadvertently beneficial for it allowed the ‘new’ multi-racial Commonwealth to be born in the context of a great moral cause. (The paradox here is that since South Africa’s re-entry, the Commonwealth has never seemed more lacking in direction.)

II

Macmillan’s decision to visit sub-Saharan Africa, the first time for a serving British prime minister, was arrived at towards the end of 1959. It was a good time to go. Following his convincing general electoral victory in October, Macmillan was at last in full control of his cabinet and party. Albeit bruised by his close involvement in Suez, Macmillan had managed to extricate himself from direct responsibility for that debacle. Having endured and now adopted the persona of ‘Supermac’ he considered that he now had a free hand to exercise decisive leadership elsewhere. Following the success of his 1958 visit to Commonwealth countries in Asia and Australasia, which greatly improved his standing at home and abroad, Africa offered an opportunity for Macmillan to secure his position as an international statesman and even to launch him as a ‘prophet of the multi-racial Commonwealth’.⁷

Adoption of a coherent African policy was judged vital in a context where colonial influence was dissipating and where the ensuing power vacuum invited African nationalists to seek the support of communists. The fact that Macmillan had shown only sporadic interest in the continent up until then proved an advantage, for he was relatively unburdened by past association. Africa was rising conspicuously up the domestic British agenda, the future of Central Africa in particular. The Labour party was making independence a campaigning issue, in part because it offered alternative possibilities for the renewal of British moral and political influence in the world. The Conservative party was divided between those, like the ‘Bow Group’, who welcomed or accepted the emergence of independent African nations, and a band of die-hard imperialist traditionalists, the ‘Rhodesia lobby’, that was determined to stand by kith and kin within the settler colonies.⁸ At issue was the future of the ‘greater Britain’ idea that had been a defining aspect of British identity for nearly a century. Enoch Powell’s reminder in July 1959 of the need to accept moral and political responsibility in respect of African colonial governance was a powerful challenge to Macmillan. Operating from rather different assumptions, Kwame Nkrumah likewise urged the desirability of a consistent statement of British intentions.⁹

In Iain Macleod, Macmillan had just selected an able and ambitious reform-minded young colonial secretary of state who was keen to force the pace of change.¹⁰ Macleod’s views were reinforced by ministrations from the mercurial David Stirling, war hero and founder of the SAS, now leader of the central-African-based Capricorn Africa Society, who urged the necessity of endorsing non-racial common citizenship in Africa as a whole.¹¹ Macleod was keenly aware of the deteriorating political situation in British colonial Africa. The Nyasaland (Malawi) emergency, and the intractable problem of how to hold the Central African Federation together, was a major concern. In Kenya, the Mau Mau conflict and the revelations of the Hola camp killings exposed British duplicity and continuing complicity with settler racism. In Ghana, independence had already been achieved, while in Nigeria it was about to be attained. Seen in this context – and leaving aside other colonial conflagrations beyond British responsibility, like Algeria, and the developing crisis in the Belgian Congo – Macmillan underestimated the pace of change. To refer to the ‘wind of change’ in the singular rather than the plural was to oversimplify the many different varieties of nationalism already in full display.

On 1 November 1959, Macmillan wrote to his powerful and personally loyal cabinet secretary Norman Brook. He identified a need ‘to lift Africa onto a more national plane as a problem to the solution of which we must all contribute ... by some really imaginative effort’. Macmillan had in mind an extended visit analogous to his 1958 trip to Asia.¹² His initial idea was to arrange his visit according to the length of time that particular states had been members of the Commonwealth, starting with South Africa, proceeding directly to Ghana, and somehow working in near and potential Commonwealth members like Nigeria, Kenya and the Central African Federation. This unworkable plan was soon revised, partly for practical reasons, but also because Verwoerd favoured the end of January on the grounds that this suited the parliamentary calendar (and, conceivably, because the visit fitted in with his as yet unannounced plan to announce a referendum on turning South Africa into a republic). South Africa was now to become the final destination in a journey that began in Ghana and Nigeria, proceeded to the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland, and ended up in Cape Town by way of the Protectorates.¹³

The idea of an African ‘tour’, with its nostalgic associations of a ceremonial royal progress, is revealing of the late colonial assumptions that infused the pageant. But this was not a leisurely aristocratic excursion undertaken by an Edwardian gentleman and his wife. It was a forward-looking performance of political theatre designed to seize the political initiative and to mask growing colonial enfeeblement with strength of resolve. The plot-line was broadly the following: in 1960, proclaimed ‘Africa Year’ by the Labour Party as part of an effort to rebuild the organisation following its electoral defeat,¹⁴ a modern Tory leader troops the colours of multiracialism and demonstrates how Britain can exit Africa stage right as an old-style colonial power; he then re-enters stage left as first amongst equals in the new commonwealth of nations. Securing post-colonial goodwill through a reformed Commonwealth constituted part of Macmillan’s nascent ‘Grand Design’ whereby the ‘free world’ could combine (with Britain acting as the key intermediary between the United States, and Europe) to withstand the threat of global communism.¹⁵

Accounts of the tour, including photographic records, show a mostly relaxed Macmillan meeting political and civic dignitaries, visiting development projects such as the Volta River dam site and the Tema harbour in Ghana, while personally greeting African politicians variously attired in suits and traditional dress. The welcoming crowds were rather smaller than anticipated. In time-honoured proconsular manner, Macmillan professed delight at West Africa’s ‘colourful scene’ and the glorious welcomes extended by Accra market’s ‘famous “mammies” ’. Lady Dorothy meanwhile busied herself with visits to schools and clinics.¹⁶ Macmillan was charmed by a genial Kwame Nkrumah, notwithstanding the Ghanaian leader’s public denunciation of colonialism as an ‘anachronism’ which should ‘cease’. At a state banquet in Accra, Macmillan acknowledged the ‘strong tide of feeling among Africans that this is a time of destiny’. He also spoke of ‘the wind of change [blowing] right through Africa’. Yet, the phrase was not picked up by journalists, perhaps because it seemed to be little more than ‘a statement of the obvious’.¹⁷

At the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Macmillan was surprised – without being unduly discomfited – when students displayed placards such as ‘Macbutcher Go Home’. In Blantyre, where the government state of emergency was in full force, Macmillan encountered demonstrations against Federation. Protestors bore placards demanding the release from detention of Dr Banda, whose continued imprisonment was a major point of contention.¹⁸ In Livingstone, Macmillan also encountered crowd anger; he was undeterred when a crude gelignite bomb was found in the Savoy Hotel, Ndola, shortly before he was due to address an audience.¹⁹ The political tensions of Central Africa were expressed even more volubly in Sali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Macmillan, Verwoerd and the 1960 ‘Wind of Change’ Speech
• 2. Whirlwind, Hurricane, Howling Tempest: The Wind of Change and the British World
• 3. ‘White Man in a Wood Pile’: Race and the Limits of Macmillan’s Great ‘Wind of Change’ in Africa
• 4. The Wind of Change as Generational Drama
• 5. Four Straws in the Wind: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, January–February 1960
• 6. Words of Change: the Rhetoric of Commonwealth, Common Market and Cold War, 1961–3
• 7. A Path not Taken? British Perspectives on French Colonial Violence after 1945
• 8. The Wind of Change and the Tides of History: de Gaulle, Macmillan and the Beginnings of the French Decolonizing Endgame
• 9. The US and Decolonization in Central Africa, 1957–64
• 10. Resistance to ‘Winds of Change’: The Emergence of the ‘Unholy Alliance’ between Southern Rhodesia, Portugal and South Africa, 1964–5
• 11. The Wind that Failed to Blow: British Policy and the End of Empire in the Gulf
• 12. Crosswinds and Countercurrents: Macmillan’s Africa in the ‘Long View’ of Decolonization
• Index