Everything about Harold Macmillan totally explained
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
10 January 1957 to
18 October 1963.
Nicknamed 'Supermac' (after the '
cartoon character'), he didn't 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”.
Early life
Harold Macmillan was born at 52 Cadogan Place in
Chelsea,
London, 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. 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
slit trench with a bullet in his pelvis, reading the Classical
Greek playwright
Aeschylus in his original language. 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. He joined Macmillan Publishers as a junior partner in 1920, remaining with the company until his appointment to ministerial office in 1940.
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. Her nephew
William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington married
Kathleen, a sister of
John F. Kennedy. 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. 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. Thirteen 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 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 a total of 163 suspicious deaths.
Eileen O’Casey
Eileen (née Eileen Kathleen Reynolds), the actress wife of Irish dramatist
Sean O’Casey, had a close relationship with Harold Macmillan, who had published her husband’s plays.
According to an obituary notice of
Eileen O’Casey by
Edward Marriott, published in the London
Evening Standard on
18 April 1995: “It was the death of Sean O’Casey, in 1964. and of Dorothy Macmillan, two years later, that cemented Macmillan and Eileen’s intimacy. She became the light which illuminated his twilight years, eventually even replacing Dorothy in his affections.”
Macmillan’s biographer
Garry O'Connor noted that “Eileen was the first woman whom Macmillan asked to sit in Lady Dorothy’s place at table in Birch Grove; he also took her out frequently to dine at Buck’s Club."
Eileen’s obituary in
The Times (10 April 1995) records that: ...she became one of Harold Macmillan's closest friends. The two grew even closer after the death of their respective spouses. That Macmillan never proposed marriage was a source of bewilderment to outsiders, although Eileen was understanding about his shyness....Her relationship with Macmillan, which only ended with his death in 1986, was a source of comfort to her in old age. For his part, he relied completely on her honest, outspoken Irish perspective. She recalled one lunch when Lord Home asked Macmillan to accept a peerage: “Harold turned to me and said ‘What about that Eileen?’ I told him I thought it nicer to keep the name Harold Macmillan to the end of his days and said, ‘Titles are two-a-penny these days. Butchers and bakers and candlestick makers are all getting them.’ I got the impression that
Alec Home was a bit annoyed with me.”
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 US General
Dwight Eisenhower, a friendship that would prove crucial in his later career. He was responsible for the
Betrayal of the Cossacks, the forced, and violent repatriation of tens of thousands of refugees from
Russia and
Yugoslavia to Tito's Yugoslavia in 1945. Macmillan populated his government with many who had studied at the same school as him: he filled government posts with 35 former Etonians, 7 of whom sat in Cabinet. He was also devoted to family members: 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".
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."
, 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.
Independent nuclear deterrent
A succession of prime ministers since the
Second World 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'd treat it as an equal and form an alliance. This led the British government and its armed forces to increase demands on
Windscale, Britain's 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 the
Windscale accident on the night of
10 October 1957, in which a fire engulfed 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 pressure 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'd 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'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, away on a tour of the
Commonwealth, brushed aside this incident as "a little local difficulty".
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, amongst other factors, this caused the government to lose popularity and a series of
by-elections in March 1962. Fearing for his own position, 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. Eight junior Ministers were sacked at the same time. 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 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".
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 wasn't 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 didn't have boots to go to school, it's because he was too big for them!"
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." Macmillan's speech was much commented on and a few days later Macmillan made a speech in the
House of Lords to clarify what he'd meant:
» When I ventured the other day to criticise the system I was, I'm afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I'm 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'm sure that'll be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income.
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, West Sussex, on
29 December 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. His son Maurice had become heir to the earldom of Stockton, but died suddenly a month after his father's elevation. Harold MacMillan's grandson became the 2nd Earl of Stockton.
Titles from birth to death
Harold Macmillan, Esq (10 February 1894 – 29 October 1924)
Harold Macmillan, Esq, MP (29 October 1924 – 30 May 1929)
Harold Macmillan, Esq (30 May 1929 – 4 November 1931)
Harold Macmillan, Esq, MP (4 November 1931 – 1942)
The Right Honourable Harold Macmillan, MP (1942 – 26 July 1945)
The Right Honourable Harold Macmillan (26 July 1945 – November 1945)
The Right Honourable Harold Macmillan, MP (November 1945 – 15 September 1964)
The Right Honourable Harold Macmillan (15 September 1964 – 2 April 1976)
The Right Honourable Harold Macmillan, OM (2 April 1976 – 24 February 1984)
The Right Honourable The Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (24 February 1984 –29 December 1986)
Cabinets
For a full list of Ministerial office-holders, see Conservative Government 1957-1964.
January 1957 - October 1959
Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister
Lord Kilmuir: Lord Chancellor
Lord Salisbury: Lord President of the Council
Rab Butler: Lord Privy Seal and Secretary of State for the Home Department
Peter Thorneycroft: Chancellor of the Exchequer
Selwyn Lloyd: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Alan Lennox-Boyd: Secretary of State for the Colonies
Lord Home: Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations
Sir David Eccles: President of the Board of Trade
Charles Hill: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Lord Hailsham: Minister of Education
John Scott Maclay: Secretary of State for Scotland
Derick Heathcoat Amory: Minister of Agriculture
Iain Macleod: Minister of Labour and National Service
Harold Arthur Watkinson: Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation
Duncan Edwin Sandys: Minister of Defence
Lord Mills: Minister of Power
Henry Brooke: Minister of Housing and Local Government and Welsh Affairs
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
Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister
Lord Kilmuir: Lord Chancellor
Lord Home: Lord President of the Council and Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations
Lord Hailsham: Lord Privy Seal and Minister of Science
Derick Heathcoat Amory: Chancellor of the Exchequer
Rab Butler: Secretary of State for the Home Department
Selwyn Lloyd: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Iain Macleod: Secretary of State for the Colonies
Reginald Maudling: President of the Board of Trade
Charles Hill: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Sir David Eccles: Minister of Education
Lord Mills: Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Ernest Marples: Minister of Transport
Duncan Edwin Sandys: Minister of Aviation
Harold Arthur Watkinson: Minister of Defence
John Scott Maclay: Secretary of State for Scotland
Edward Heath: Minister of Labour and National Service
John Hare: Minister of Agriculture
Henry Brooke: Minister of Housing and Local Government and Welsh Affairs
July 1960 - October 1961
Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister
Lord Kilmuir: Lord Chancellor
Lord Hailsham: Lord President of the Council and Minister of Science
Edward Heath: Lord Privy Seal
Selwyn Lloyd: Chancellor of the Exchequer
Rab Butler: Secretary of State for the Home Department
Lord Home: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Iain Macleod: Secretary of State for the Colonies
Duncan Edwin Sandys: Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations
Reginald Maudling: President of the Board of Trade
Charles Hill: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Sir David Eccles: Minister of Education
Lord Hailsham: Minister of Science
Lord Mills: Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Ernest Marples: Minister of Transport
Peter Thorneycroft: Minister of Aviation
Harold Arthur Watkinson: Minister of Defence
John Scott Maclay: Secretary of State for Scotland
John Hare: Minister of Labour and National Service
Christopher Soames: Minister of Agriculture
Henry Brooke: Minister of Housing and Local Government and Welsh Affairs
October 1961 - July 1962
Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister
Lord Kilmuir: Lord Chancellor
Lord Hailsham: Lord President of the Council and Minister of Science
Edward Heath: Lord Privy Seal
Selwyn Lloyd: Chancellor of the Exchequer
Rab Butler: Secretary of State for the Home Department
Lord Home: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Iain Macleod: Secretary of State for the Colonies
Duncan Edwin Sandys: Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations
Frederick Erroll: President of the Board of Trade
Iain Macleod: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Sir David Eccles: Minister of Education
Henry Brooke: Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Ernest Marples: Minister of Transport
Peter Thorneycroft: Minister of Aviation
Harold Arthur Watkinson: Minister of Defence
John Scott Maclay: Secretary of State for Scotland
John Hare: Minister of Labour and National Service
Christopher Soames: Minister of Agriculture
Charles Hill: Minister of Housing and Local Government and Welsh Affairs
Lord Mills: Minister without Portfolio
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.
Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister
Rab Butler: Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State
Lord Dilhorne: Lord Chancellor
Lord Hailsham: Lord President of the Council and Minister of Science
Edward Heath: Lord Privy Seal
Reginald Maudling: Chancellor of the Exchequer
Henry Brooke: Secretary of State for the Home Department
Lord Home: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Iain Macleod: Secretary of State for the Colonies
Duncan Edwin Sandys: Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations
Frederick Erroll: President of the Board of Trade
Iain Macleod: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Sir Edward Boyle: Minister of Education
John Boyd-Carpenter: Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Ernest Marples: Minister of Transport
Julian Amery: Minister of Aviation
Peter Thorneycroft: Minister of Defence
Michael Noble: Secretary of State for Scotland
John Hare: Minister of Labour and National Service
Christopher Soames: Minister of Agriculture
Sir Keith Joseph: Minister of Housing and Local Government and Welsh Affairs
Enoch Powell: Minister of Health
Bill Deedes: Minister without PortfolioFurther Information
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