She was apparently willing. However, it was thought better for him to be seen to defend his seat, and Lord Beaverbrook had already spoken to Churchill to arrange that Macmillan be given another seat in the event of defeat. [277] At times he portrayed himself as the descendant of a Scottish crofter, as a businessman, aristocrat, intellectual and soldier. [26] Prime Minister Asquith's own son, Raymond Asquith, was a brother officer in Macmillan's regiment, and was killed that month. He then returned to the front lines in France. But human sexuality is notoriously hard to regulate, and the fear of being found out does not guarantee faithful husbands, nor does fidelity necessarily make for happy wives. In 1984 he received the Freedom medal from the Roosevelt Study Center. He supported the welfare state and the necessity of a mixed economy with some nationalised industries and strong trade unions. [citation needed], D. R. Thorpe writes that by the early 1960s Macmillan was seen as "the epitome of all that was wrong with anachronistic Britain. [247] After she ended Labour's five-year rule and became Prime Minister in May 1979,[248] he told Nigel Fisher (his biographer, and himself a Conservative MP): "Ted [Heath] was a very good No2 {pause} not a leader {pause}. [66], Macmillan voted against the Government in the Norway Debate, helping to bring down Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, and tried to join in with Colonel Josiah Wedgwood singing "Rule, Britannia!" [137] The political situation after Suez was so desperate that on taking office on 10 January he told the Queen he could not guarantee his government would last "six weeks"though ultimately he would be in charge of the government for more than six years. [77] For Macmillan, the "remarkable and romantic episodes" as President Roosevelt met Prime Minister Churchill in Casablanca convinced him that personal diplomacy was the best way to deal with Americans, which later influenced his foreign policy as prime minister. He was a member of the British delegation to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1949 to 1951, and played a prominent role - as a key aide and ally of Sir Winston Churchill - in pressing for greater European integration as a bulwark against Soviet totalitarianism and to prevent a recurrence of the horrors of Nazi rule. Having had an abortion in 1951, she was unable to have children of her own and the couple adopted two sons. It was the trouble over the cheque bonds in 1941 that probably sank him. In April 1953 Beaverbrook encouraged Macmillan to think that in a future leadership contest he might emerge in a dead heat between Eden and Butler, as the young Beaverbrook (Max Aitken as he had been at the time) had helped Bonar Law to do in 1911. John Vincent, "Macmillan, Harold" in Fred M. Leventhal, ed., Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, Maurice Macmillan, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, Secretary of State for the Home Department, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, Cultural depictions of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Harold Macmillan, "The spy who rocked a world of privilege", "PM Harold Macmillan Wind of Change Speech at the Cape Town Parliament 3 February 1960", "https://twitter.com/thehistoryguy/status/1628503689890496512", 18 April 1956: Macmillan unveils premium bond scheme, Harold Macmillan; Unflappable master of the middle way, "Cabinet Papers Strained consensus and Labour", "The Reshaping of British Railways Part 1: Report", "Harold Macmillan begins his "winds of change" tour of Africa", "1963: Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell dies", SECURITY (MR. PROFUMO'S RESIGNATION) (Hansard, 17 June 1963), "SECURITY (MR. PROFUMO'S RESIGNATION) (Hansard, 17 June 1963)", "1979: Election victory for Margaret Thatcher", "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)", "Stockton, Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of", "Maurice Harold Macmillan, First Earl of Stockton. Work. He finally resigned, receiving the Queen from his hospital bed, on 18 October 1963, after nearly seven years as prime minister. However, the National Incomes Commission (NIC, known as "Nicky"), set up in October 1962 to institute controls on income as part of his growth-without-inflation policy, proved less effective. "The oratory of Harold Macmillan." He thought he had to build up the family publishing business to make himself worthy of her; he was star-struck by her. Out of partnership comes understanding and friendship. He was as trenchant a critic of his successors in his old age as he had been of his predecessors in his youth. [262], Tributes came from around the world. He bore no grudge against Thorneycroft and brought him and Powell, of whom he was more wary, back into the government in 1960. Further, suppose that the press knows all about it; that the relationship is common knowledge in Parliament and in every London club, but nobody ever breaks the story? During that time, he was married briefly to Diana Cavendish, while the birth of Sarah. [129][130], On the evening of 22 November 1956 Butler, who had just announced British withdrawal, addressed the 1922 committee (Conservative backbenchers) with Macmillan. [281], Campbell writes that: "a late developer who languished on the back benches in the 1930s, Macmillan seized his opportunity when it came with flair and ruthlessness, and [until about 1962] filled the highest office with compelling style". [118] Since the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, relations between Britain and Egypt had deteriorated. Obstacles made for desperation and excitement. Betts, Lewis David. [58] However the sitting MP, Guy Kindersley cancelled his retirement plans, in part because of his own association with the anti-Baldwin rebels and his suspicion of Macmillan's sympathy for Oswald Mosley's promises of radical measures to reduce unemployment. He worked to narrow the post-Suez Crisis (1956) rift with the United States, where his wartime friendship with Eisenhower was key; the two had a productive conference in Bermuda as early as March 1957. Whether he was ever a mainstream Conservative, rather than a skilful exponent of the postwar consensus, is more doubtful. In February 1959, Macmillan visited the Soviet Union. [246], Macmillan found himself drawn more actively into politics after Margaret Thatcher became Conservative leader in February 1975. Macmillan supported the creation of the National Economic Development Council (NEDC, known as "Neddy"), which was announced in the summer of 1961 and first met in 1962. [109] Campbell also suggests that Harold Wilson's image change during Macmillan's premiership from "boring young statistician into lovable Yorkshire comic" was made in conscious imitation of Macmillan.[72]. During the Second World War Macmillan's toothy grin, baggy trousers and rimless glasses had given him, as his biographer puts it, "an air of an early Bolshevik leader". [276] Fisher described him as "complex, almost chameleon". [143], He was nicknamed "Supermac" in 1958 by the cartoonist "Vicky" (Victor Weisz), who intended to suggest that Macmillan was trying set himself up as a "Superman" figure. [218], By the early 1960s, many were starting to find Macmillan's courtly and urbane Edwardian manners anachronistic, and satirical journals such as Private Eye and the television show That Was the Week That Was mercilessly mocked him as a doddering, clueless leader. His last speech from the backbenches was to attack the government for not doing enough to help Finland. Having had an abortion in 1951, she was unable to have children of her own and the couple adopted two sons. Gott, 'Independent British Deterrent', p. 247. the "soundings" and the accompanying political intrigues are discussed in detail in. Newsreel footage of Soviet and American nuclear tests throughout the 1950s had terrified segments of the British public who were highly concerned about the possibility of weapons with such awesome destructive power be used against British cities, and led to the foundation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), whose rallies in the late 1950s-early 1960s calling for British nuclear disarmament were well attended. But it just didn't get into the papers. [143] It was intended as mockery but backfired, coming to be used in a neutral or friendly fashion. [188] However, Macmillan did reluctantly agree if the Americans intervened in Laos, then so too would Britain. Macmillan's archives are located at Oxford University's Bodleian Library.[269][270]. The campaign cost him about 200-300 out of his own pocket;[55] at that time candidates were often expected to fund their own election campaigns. March 1957 Lord Home succeeds Lord Salisbury as Lord President, remaining Commonwealth Relations Secretary. Macmillan's speech was much commented on, and a few days later he made a speech in the House of Lords, referring to it: When I ventured the other day to criticise the system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. [11] From the age of six or seven he received introductory lessons in classical Latin and Greek at Mr Gladstone's day school, close by in Sloane Square. Within the fabric of the Commonwealth lies the future of the Colonial territories. [111] He had enjoyed his eight months as Foreign Secretary and did not wish to move. Barely 30 years later, everything is different - people's private attitudes to morality, and the public treatment of lapses. The incident prompted an inquiry from the War Office as to whether the Guards Reserve Battalion "could be relied on". It is tempting to conclude that those were more civilised times. Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC, FRS (10 February 1894 - 29 December 1986) was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963. However, Sarah lived an ultimately unhappy life and died at the young age of 39 in 1970. In his delirium he imagined himself back in a Somme casualty clearing station and asked for a message to be passed to his mother, now dead. [56], Macmillan resigned the government whip (but not the Conservative party one) in protest at the lifting of sanctions on Italy after her conquest of Abyssinia. The Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore was a close family friend of the President and actively involved in White House discussions on how to resolve the crisis. Vicky tried to label him with other names, including "Mac the Knife" at the time of widespread cabinet changes in 1962, but none caught on. He was assassinated in November, shortly after the end of Macmillan's premiership. . According to Sir Patrick Neill QC, the vice-chancellor, Macmillan "would talk late into the night with eager groups of students who were often startled by the radical views he put forward, well into his last decade."[237]. [126] D. R. Thorpe rejects the charge that Macmillan deliberately played false over Suez (i.e. It is quite true, many of Your Lordships will remember it operating in the nursery. [91] He was Secretary of State for Air for two months in Churchill's caretaker government, 'much of which was taken up in electioneering', there being 'nothing much to be done in the way of forward planning'. [210] Macmillan felt that giving in to Sukarno's demands would be "appeasement" and clashed with Kennedy over the issue. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Historian John Vincent explores the image Macmillan crafted of himself for his colleagues and constituents: He presented himself as a patrician, as the last Edwardian, as a Whig (in the tradition of his wife's family), as a romantic Tory, as intellectual, as a man shaped by the comradeship of the trenches and by the slump of the 1930s, as a shrewd man of business of bourgeois Scottish stock, and as a venerable elder statesman at home with modern youth. Macmillan believed in the value of nuclear weapons both as a deterrent against the Soviet Union and to maintain Britain's claim to be great power, but he was also worried about the popularity of the CND. Eden sent out Robert Dixon to abolish the job of Resident Minister, there being then no job for Macmillan back in the UK, but he managed to prevent his job being abolished. [250]:27 In a celebrated speech he wondered aloud where such theories had come from: Was it America? [141] Macmillan's Defence Minister, Duncan Sandys, wrote at the time: "Eden had no gift for leadership; under Macmillan as PM everything is better, Cabinet meetings are quite transformed". We must run AFHQ (Allied Forces Headquarters) as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius". [231], Enoch Powell claimed that it was wrong of Macmillan to seek to monopolise the advice given to the Queen in this way. Find out where Harold Macmillan was born, their birthday and details about their professions, education, religion, family and other life details and facts. Macmillan wrote "I held the Tory Party for the weekend, it was all I intended to do". With hereditary peerages again being created under Thatcher, Macmillan requested the earldom that had been customarily bestowed to departing prime ministers, and on 24 February 1984 he was created Earl of Stockton and Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden. [84] In May 1944 Macmillan infuriated Eden by demanding an early peace treaty with Italy (at that time a pro-Allied regime under Badoglio held some power in the southern, liberated, part of Italy), a move which Churchill favoured. [178] Macmillan feared for his own position and later (1 August) claimed to Lloyd that Butler, who sat for a rural East Anglian seat likely to suffer from EEC agricultural protectionism, had been planning to split the party over EEC entry (there is no evidence that this was so). [196], Macmillan was a supporter of the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963, and in the first half of 1963 he had Ormsby-Gore quietly apply pressure on Kennedy to resume the talks in the spring of 1963 when negotiations became stalled. [263] Two hundred mourners attended,[261] including 64 members of the Macmillan family, Thatcher and former premiers |Lord Home and Edward Heath, as well as Lord Hailsham,[260] and "scores of country neighbours". [4] He led the Conservatives to success in 1959 with an increased majority. The report The Reshaping of British Railways[181] (or Beeching I report) was published on 27 March 1963. Political pressure mounted on the Government, and Macmillan agreed to the 1957 Bank Rate Tribunal. Macmillan was given responsibility for increasing colonial production and trade, and signalled the future policy direction when in June 1942 he declared: The governing principle of the Colonial Empire should be the principle of partnership between the various elements composing it. There was something in all these views, which he did little to discourage, and which commanded public respect into the early 1960s. If they were reasonably discreet, their private lives remained a matter for themselves and their immediate circle. [8] The stress caused by this may have contributed to Macmillan's nervous breakdown in 1931. Macmillan was the last British prime minister born during the Victorian era, the last to have served in the First World War and the last to receive a hereditary peerage. This caused friction with Eden and the Foreign Office. [258], Macmillan had often play-acted being an old man long before real old age set in. "The essence of his persona was as elusive as mercury." He told his former love. [222], The Profumo affair of 1963 permanently damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government. [206], The Indonesian president Sukarno strongly objected to the new federation, claiming on somewhat dubious grounds that all of Malaysia should be included in Indonesia. It sparked debate as to whether Labour (now led by Hugh Gaitskell) could win a general election again. Thorpe argues that despite his 1960 "Winds of Change" speech, he was largely pushed into rapid independence for African countries by Maudling and Macleod. '[237] Commonwealth Secretary-General Sir Shridath Ramphal affirmed: "His own leadership in providing from Britain a worthy response to African national consciousness shaped the post-war era and made the modern Commonwealth possible. [40] As was common for contemporary former officers, he continued to be known as 'Captain Macmillan' until the early 1930s and was listed as such in every General Election between 1923 and 1931. [38] The engagement of Captain Macmillan to the Duke's daughter Lady Dorothy was announced on 7 January 1920. Despite the hostility of large sections of British and American opinion, who were sympathetic to the guerillas and hostile to what was seen as imperialist behaviour, he persuaded a reluctant Churchill, who visited Athens later in the month, to accept Archbishop Damaskinos as Regent on behalf of the exiled King George II. Despite this, three children were born to them in the first five years. Reconfiguring the nation's defences to meet the realities of the nuclear age, he ended National Service, strengthened the nuclear forces by acquiring Polaris, and pioneered the Nuclear Test Ban with the United States and the Soviet Union. Macmillan met Eisenhower privately on 25 September 1956 and convinced himself that the US would not oppose the invasion,[123] despite the misgivings of the British Ambassador, Sir Roger Makins, who was also present. in, President of the friends of Roquetaillade association, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 09:30. Lady Dorothy died on 21 May 1966, aged 65, after 46 years of marriage. All remained within the Commonwealth except British Somaliland, which merged with Italian Somaliland to form Somalia. She did feel very bitter about that and resented it desperately. He liked to say: 'I have it both ways: my grandfather was a crofter, my wife's father a Duke.'. He was not a member of "the Establishment"in fact he was a businessman who had married into the aristocracy and a rebel Chancellor of Oxford. [73], After Harry Crookshank had refused the job, Macmillan attained real power and Cabinet rank late in 1942 as British Minister Resident at Algiers in the Mediterranean, recently liberated in Operation Torch. [198] Through Lord Hailsham's role was largely that of an observer, the talks between Harriman and the Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko resulted in the breakthrough that led to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963, banning all above ground nuclear tests. In any case, these were far more modest times. Now, you have a real leader. He was appointed UK High Commissioner for the Advisory Council for Italy late in 1943. Macmillan visited Greece on 11 December 1944. Macmillan's biographer D. R. Thorpe is of the view that he was removed by his mother when she discovered that he was being "used" by older boys. Nothing short of renunciation could have restored Boothby's political hopes, and even without Dorothy he had committed plenty of other improprieties. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water until he had learnt to swim. He made the famous 'wind of change' speech in Cape Town on 3 February 1960. [223], By the summer of 1963 Conservative Party Chairman Lord Poole was urging the ageing Macmillan to retire. [204] This aim was best achieved by having the same Malay elite who had worked with the British colonial authorities serve as the new elite in Malaysia, hence Macmillan's desire to have a Malay majority who would vote for Malay politicians. [215][216], Macmillan's previous attempt to create an agreement at the May 1960 summit in Paris had collapsed due to the 1960 U-2 incident. She spent her first eight years at Holker Hall, Lancashire (located in the county of Cumbria post-1974); and Lismore Castle, Ireland. It's a shame that Harold misunderstood her. The radioactive cloud spread to south-east England and fallout reached mainland Europe. If Tim Yeo and Julia Stent's daughter grows up to live a happy life; if she knows her father's identity from the beginning, this - in the light of Sarah Macmillan's tragic life - is all to the good. [221] The following month Harold Wilson was elected as the new Labour leader, and he proved to be a popular choice with the public.

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