Harold Macmillan 1st Earl of Stockton

(Maurice) Harold Macmillan, 1st earl of Stockton 1894-1986, British statesman. A descendant of the founder of the publishing house of Macmillan and Company, he was educated at Eton and at Oxford and served in World War I. He entered Parliament in 1924 as a Conservative. Throughout the 1930s he was an advocate of social and economic reforms and an outspoken critic of the government's policy of appeasement. When sanctions against Italy were abandoned in 1936, he voted against his party leaders and sat for a year as an independent. He held several government posts during World War II, including minister resident in N Africa. He was minister of housing and local government (1951-54), minister of defense (1954-55), and chancellor of the exchequer (1955-57). In 1957 he succeeded Sir Anthony Eden as prime minister. He restored close Anglo-American relations, damaged by the Suez Canal crisis, and attempted to establish a firmer basis for East-West negotiations by making personal appeals to Moscow and Washington. He also strove for the admission of Great Britain to the European Economic Community (Common Market) but met with the opposition of French President de Gaulle. In the 1959 election, Macmillan told the country, "You've never had it so good," pointing to the full employment and substantial rise in real earnings of the 1950s, and he and his party won a landslide victory. However, by 1961 balance of payments difficulties had forced the government to introduce an austerity program. Macmillan accelerated Britain's decolonization, especially in Africa. In a memorable speech to the South African parliament in 1960, he said the "winds of change" were sweeping across Africa. His government suffered a series of scandals; the most famous was the Profumo scandal. He resigned the prime ministership in 1963 and in 1964 retired from Parliament. Macmillan served as chancellor (1960-86) of the Univ. of Oxford and as chairman (1963-74) of the Macmillan publishing house. He accepted an earldom in 1984.

Bibliography: See his memoirs (6 vol., 1966-73); biographies by N. Fisher (1982) and A. Horne (2 vol., 1988-89).

Macmillan, (Maurice) Harold, 1st Earl of Stockton (1894–1986) British Conservative statesman, Prime Minister (1957–63). His term of office saw the signing of the Test-Ban Treaty (1963) with the USA and the USSR. He advocated the granting of independence to British colonies but his attempt to take Britain into the European Economic Community was blocked by the French President DE GAULLE (1963). Macmillan resigned on grounds of ill health shortly after the scandal surrounding the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo.

Macmillan, (Maurice) Harold, 1st Earl of Stockton (b. 10 Feb. 1894, d. 29 Dec. 1986). British Prime Minister 1957–63 Born in London, into the Macmillan publishing family, he was educated at Eton and Oxford. After service in World War I (in which he was wounded three times), he went into publishing, but was soon active in politics, and was elected to Parliament for the Conservative Party in 1924. Throughout his career, he was haunted by the loss of life incurred in the war, and the suffering of the ordinary soldier. It was partly this, and the terrible poverty of his constituency of Stockton-on-Tees, that saw him placed firmly on the progressive wing of the Conservative Party. He lost his seat in 1929, but was re-elected in 1931. In the 1930s, he was highly critical of appeasement and government economic policies. He was influenced by the work of Keynes, and his belief that it was necessary for the state to cooperate with capital to create a mixed economy, in which the failures of capitalism, such as high unemployment, could be remedied.

In May 1940, under Churchill, he gained his first experience of government, as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply. In 1942, he was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, and then Minister of State in North Africa with Cabinet rank. In this post, he was responsible for British policy in the Mediterranean until the end of the war, much of which involved working with his French and American counterparts. He lost his seat in the 1945 general election, but returned in a by-election later in the year as MP for Bromley. As Housing Minister (1951–4), he was enormously successful in organizing the largest local authority building programme ever seen in Britain. He became Minister of Defence in 1954, and then Eden's Foreign Secretary in 1955. After finding that Eden liked to keep a firm control of foreign affairs, he was happy to become Chancellor of the Exchequer later that year.

Following the Suez Crisis, he replaced Eden as Prime Minister in January 1957.

Macmillan proved to be extraordinarily adept at reviving the party's fortunes, through being attuned to the wishes of the potential Conservative constituency. Subsequently much criticized for his refusal to reduce public expenditure in 1958, this nevertheless contributed to an overwhelming election victory in 1959, despite the party's unpopularity when he took over. His famous proclamation to the South African Parliament in 1960 that the days of colonialism were over as the ‘winds of change’ were blowing through Africa (see Verwoerd) was an equally pragmatic acceptance that Britain could no longer afford to keep its colonies against their will. He had an extremely close relationship with US President Kennedy, and was at the heart of the negotiations resulting in the July 1963 Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty between the USA, the USSR, and Britain. Nevertheless, he never had total control over his party, and his domestic position became particularly difficult after the 1963 Profumo Affair. He resigned in October 1963 (officially on the grounds of ill health), and subsequently devoted much of his time to his duties as Chancellor of Oxford University, to which office he had been elected in 1960. From 1984 he was a prominent member of the House of Lords, and an outspoken critic of Thatcherism.