History
Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan was a prominent British politician who served as Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. He is known for his efforts to modernize British society and for his "wind of change" speech, which acknowledged the decolonization of Africa. Macmillan's tenure also saw significant social and economic changes in Britain, including the "affluent society" and the "never had it so good" era.
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eBook - ePubThe Benign Aristocrats
British Prime Ministers 1951 - 1964
- David Potter(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Austin Macauley Publishers(Publisher)
Chapter FiveHarold Macmillan
If there were ever a League table drawn up about who was the best British Prime Minister of the twentieth century, then the two Harolds would be high up, although the winner would really have to be the unassuming Clement Attlee who quietly changed the world. Harold Wilson was the Labour Prime Minister from 1964 to 1970, and from 1974 to 1976 and Harold Macmillan the Conservative one from 1957 to 1963. Sarcastically called “Supermac” by his enemies, Harold Macmillan nevertheless lived up to that billing, certainly in the early part of his Premiership where he could quite simply do no wrong. His demise was not entirely his fault, and possibly came at the right time for the ageing and ailing Macmillan in any case.Harold Macmillan was born at 52 Cadogan Place, Chelsea, London on February 10, 1894. Like Churchill, his mother was American, in her case from Indiana and his father Maurice Macmillan was English. His grandfather Daniel Macmillan was Scottish, having come from the Isle of Arran and he had been the founder of the Macmillan printing firm in 1843, into which the wealth of the family was bound up. Macmillan differs then immediately from the other three Conservative Prime Ministers of this era in that although, he and his family were undeniably rich, his wealth did not come from the land. It was from business and a very profitable, wealthy and now long-established business at that. It has now lasted more than 175 years, producing all sorts of books including school textbooks. If anything, and purely comparatively speaking, Harold was the poorest, in worldly terms, of all the four Prime Ministers of this era!Harold was the third son of the family. His early life was not luxurious exactly but it was certainly comfortable (or slightly more than that) with servants, nursemaids and cooks. Perhaps it was the Scottish influence on the family, but great stress was laid on education. Even before he went to Prep school he had started to learn French and Latin – French in his home from several French nursemaids and Latin at the School of Mr Gladstone (no apparent relation of the quondam Prime Minister) nearby. He also learned his physical education at a Gymnasium and Dancing Academy.
eBook - ePub- Robert Pearce, Graham Goodlad(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
12 Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) Prime Minister: January 1957– October 1963‘He understood … the art of serious political acting. He of all men knew the necessity and the potency of the mask … He built himself his Edwardian facade and it provided him with enough cover to get on with a strictly contemporary job.’Norman Shrapnel, parliamentary correspondent of the Guardian, on Harold Macmillan, 1978.1Harold Macmillan’s enigmatic personality remains a challenge to the biographer. As Prime Minister he projected a languid, mannered persona: his drooping moustache, dated clothes and urbane wit made him an irresistible magnet for the media. Yet behind the ‘Edwardian’ mask lurked a thoroughly professional politician who was capable of considerable ruthlessness. The paradoxes were many. A cynical man of the world, he was also a devout Anglican with a deeply felt sense of responsibility in public life, a legacy of his good fortune in surviving the horror of the Great War. At home in the world of the country house and the upper-class London club, he adopted modern advertising and public relations techniques for electoral purposes. Chosen by his party essentially as the candidate of the right, who offered reassurance after the failure of Anthony Eden’s 1956 Suez expedition, in office Macmillan pursued unexpectedly radical policies. He connected with the aspirations of an electorate emerging from postwar austerity, promoting an agenda of economic expansion and almost doubling his party’s majority in the October 1959 general election. At the same time he was the first Prime Minister seriously to confront the issues raised by Britain’s decline as a world power, accelerating the process of disengagement from empire and pointing towards a European destiny.The rise to the premiershipMacmillan was born into a privileged, upper-middle-class background, the beneficiary of his grandfather’s remarkable ascent from Scottish crofter to founder of a leading London publishing firm. Education at Eton and Oxford was followed by enrolment as an army officer following the outbreak of the First World War. Macmillan’s service on the Western Front left him with a deep feeling for the loyalty and courage of the ordinary soldier, and a belief that in peacetime more should be done for the welfare of the class from which his men came. His paternalistic social philosophy was confirmed by his election in 1924 as Conservative MP for Stockton-on-Tees, which he held, with a short interval, until the 1945 Labour landslide. Macmillan’s association with a depressed industrial constituency helped to persuade him of the need for greater state intervention in the economy, a case which he argued in his best known book, The Middle Way
eBook - ePubThe Wind of Change
Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization
- L. Butler, S. Stockwell, L. Butler, S. Stockwell, L. Butler, S. Stockwell(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Historical Journal.2 . A. Sampson, Mandela: The Authorised Biography (London: 2000), p. 129.3 . Stanley Baldwin, in 1934, spoke of ‘a wind of nationalism and freedom blowing round the world’ and Nehru, in 1947, referred to ‘strong winds’ ‘blowing all over Asia’. Safire’s Political Dictionary (Oxford: 2008), p. 814.4 . Cape Times, 23 Oct. 1957.5 . Hendrik Verwoerd, academic, newspaper editor and politician (1901–66) became prime minister of South Africa in 1958, having previously served as minister of native affairs. He elevated apartheid into a full-fledged philosophy in 1959 as he laid out a strategy for giving ‘self-government’ to newly created ethnic ‘homelands’.6 . D.R. Thorpe, Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan (London: 2010), pp. 453, 457–8; The National Archives of the UK (TNA), CAB 129/101, despatch by John Maud, 18 Feb. 1960, in ‘Prime Minister’s African Tour January–February’, p. 159.7 . A. Sampson, Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity (London: 1967), p. 139.8 . Sampson, Macmillan, p. 181; D. Goldsworthy, ‘Conservatives and decolonization: a note on the interpretation by Dan Horowitz’, African Affairs, 69 (1970), pp. 278–81 at p. 280; S.J. Ball, ‘Banquo’s ghost: Lord Salisbury, Harold Macmillan, and the high politics of decolonization, 1957–1963’, Twentieth-Century British History, 16 (2005), pp. 74–102.9 . R. Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the wind of change in Africa, 1957–1960’, Historical Journal, 38 (1995), pp. 455–77, at pp. 457, 471; Goldsworthy, ‘Conservatives and decolonization’, p. 279.10 . A. Horne, Macmillan Vol. II 1957–1986 (London: 1989), pp. 184–5.11 . Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the wind of change in Africa’, p. 472. See also B. Phiri, ‘The Capricorn Africa Society revisited: the impact of liberalism in Zambia’s colonial history, 1949–1963’, International Journal of African Historical Studies
eBook - ePubChurchill to Major: The British Prime Ministership since 1945
The British Prime Ministership since 1945
- R.L. Borthwick, Martin Burch, Philip Giddings(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Together with a weakening economic status there has been a reduced political and military status in the world. The decision to withdraw from east of Suez epitomised the end of the imperial era. It has been difficult for prime ministers to manage the move from the status of a world power, in which Churchill revelled, to that of a major regional power, with which Major must contend. Macmillan’s African tour in 1960, the first occasion on which a serving prime minister had set foot in Africa, epitomised the leader in command, even though in fact his message presaged the retreat from Empire. Imperial leadership slipped almost imperceptibly into domination of the Commonwealth; both relationships united people across divisions of party and class. But by the 1970s Britain found itself merely one major player in an enlarged grouping of sovereign states signally lacking in deference, as is clear when one compares the experience of Macmillan with that of Heath or Thatcher at Commonwealth heads of government meetings. Popular expectations of national status were dented. The European adventure, while instrumentally necessary, could not recreate the grandeur of the past and it failed to absolve a prime minister from the appearance of weakness. There was thus a tension between expectations and reality, a tension which weakened the status of prime ministers as it also frustrated them. The middle-power status which Britain now enjoys makes the British prime minister a figure of significantly reduced power on the world stage but, as J.M. Lee argues, the increased significance of external affairs and the possibilities for a prime minister to posture on the international scene seem initially to enhance the appearance of power.Being at the centre of things, however, is not of itself the same as being influential. Simple popular expectations and realistic possibilities for the exercise of national power increasingly fail to mesh. Thus, for as long as the electorate believe that governments, and above all the individuals who lead them, can protect the daily well-being of the British people as well as their status in the world, all prime ministers will be faced with a gap between what can actually be done and what they feel obliged to promise. This may be thought of still as the residue of Empire. But it is a reality on which hitherto no political party has had the courage to educate the public, and it places severe strains on all prime ministers. In the jargon, there are no uniquely foreign policy issues (and increasingly few purely domestic issues), only intermestic ones; and these are precisely the kind, dependent as they are on political actors beyond the United Kingdom’s shores, which the British government can no longer confidently influence.
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