Macmillan, Harold

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 shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. During the war he was badly injured and spent the last stages of the conflict hospitalized. 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. He was not a conventional Conservative and had earlier toyed with Liberalism. 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, but his unconventional views seemed to preclude a ministerial career. In domestic politics he was greatly influenced by the poverty of the north-east and was attracted by the ideas of the Cambridge economist J. M. Keynes to stimulate recovery from the depression. The publication of The Middle Way in 1938 showed Macmillan's commitment to a mixed economy and considerable government intervention. Such ideas became commonplace in the post-1945 Conservative Party; a decade earlier they marked Macmillan out as an intellectual rebel. 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. A critic of the Munich agreement of 1938, he was overshadowed in the public mind by the more elegant though intellectually less able Anthony Eden.

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. He rose steadily in the Conservative Party, but lacked popular appeal and still trailed Eden and R. A. Butler among the coming generation. He showed an interest in European integration, though perhaps not to the extent he later claimed. 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. Relations with the prime minister were never fully restored.

An ardent proponent of the Suez adventure in 1956, Macmillan profited by its failure. Though he 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. In the meantime he repaired the special relationship with America, badly damaged by Suez, using his wartime friendship with Eisenhower to advantage. His calm self-assurance stood him in good stead, especially when the whole of his Treasury team resigned in 1958. By 1960 Macmillan stood at the height of his power. The nickname ‘Supermac’ encapsulated the public's acclaim. His progressive views of the 1930s still dominated his thinking as he strove to maintain full employment (at the cost, it has been argued, of stoking up inflation) and speeded up the process of decolonization. But then problems arose. The collapse of the summit conference of 1960 was a particular blow and 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 in which Macmillan's image as an Edwardian patrician, once an asset, now suggested someone out of touch with the modern world. Illness precipitated Macmillan's resignation at the time of the Conservative Party conference in October 1963. He left the Commons a year later, somewhat discredited. In his long retirement, however, Macmillan's reputation enjoyed a considerable renaissance, especially after his elevation to the peerage as earl of Stockton in 1984 at the age of 90.

Macmillan was a complex individual. An external self-confidence was matched by inner doubts and depression, 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.

David Dutton

Bibliography

Aldous, R., and Lee, S. (eds.), Harold Macmillan and Britain's World Role (Basingstoke, 1991);
Horne, A. , Macmillan (2 vols., 1988–9);
Turner, J. , Macmillan (1994).