Macmillan, Harold

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Macmillan, Harold 1894-1986

Maurice Harold Macmillan was the prime minister of Great Britain from 1957 to 1963. A member of a famous publishing family, Macmillan was born in Brixton, England, on February 10, 1894. He was educated at Eton and Oxford University, and served in the British army during World War I (1914–1918). Macmillan was elected as a Conservative to the House of Commons in 1924. During the Conservative governments of Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) and Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940), he criticized their appeasement policies toward Nazi Germany. During World War II (1939–1945), Macmillan served as a civilian official in the Ministry of Supply and later as a British liaison to American forces in North Africa and the Mediterranean. In this position, Macmillan developed a friendship with American general and future president Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969).

From 1951 until 1957, Macmillan served in various cabinet positions under prime ministers Winston Churchill (1874–1965) and Anthony Eden (1897–1977). Appointed chancellor of the Exchequer in 1955, Macmillan succeeded Eden as prime minister in 1957. Eden resigned in part because his foreign policy strained British relations with the United States through his controversial military intervention in the Suez Canal and his effort to develop an independent nuclear deterrent.

Consequently, Macmillan was determined to develop a more cooperative, harmonious relationship with the United States in cold war foreign and defense policies. Both Republican president Eisenhower and Democratic president John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) valued Macmillan’s advice and diplomatic support. Macmillan persuaded Kennedy to deliver Polaris nuclear missiles to Britain in 1962, advised Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and helped to negotiate the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. Macmillan also oversaw the continuing dismemberment of the British Empire as such former colonies as Malaya, Kenya, and Nigeria became independent nations. He tried but failed to overcome French opposition to Britain’s application for membership in the European Economic Community.

In domestic and economic policies, Macmillan pursued a moderate course. He assured working-class Britons that his Conservative government would not dismantle the Labour-initiated welfare state and would manage it more efficiently. He also promised to promote economic growth through tax cuts and fewer regulations on business. Macmillan’s centrist yet reformist rhetoric and policies contributed to a sharp increase in the Conservative majority of seats in the 1959 parliamentary elections.

Disagreements among cabinet officials about how to solve Britain’s problems with its balance of payments and Macmillan’s unpopular wage freezes to control inflation contributed to the loss of Conservative seats in the byelections of 1961 and Macmillan’s decision to make major changes in his cabinet in 1962. The growing disunity of the Conservative Party and declining support for Macmillan’s government were intensified by the Profumo affair of 1963. John Profumo (1915–2006), secretary of state for war, misled Macmillan and the House of Commons in March 1963 about his adulterous relationship with Christine Keeler, a showgirl who also had a relationship with the Soviet embassy’s naval attaché. Labour members of the House of Commons asserted that such a relationship by the secretary of state for war endangered national security in the cold war.

In June 1963, Profumo publicly admitted his deceit and resigned from the cabinet, House of Commons, and Privy Council. Suffering from declining health and less credibility with the public and Parliament, Macmillan resigned as prime minister on October 18, 1963. He retained enough influence within the Conservative Party, however, to ensure that Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1903–1995), instead of Rab Butler (1902–1982), succeeded him as prime minister. Still tainted by the Profumo scandal, the Conservative Party lost its majority in the House of Commons in the 1964 parliamentary elections, and Labour Party leader Harold Wilson (1916–1995) became prime minister.

Macmillan retired from politics in 1964 and rarely commented on British politics publicly. During the 1980s, however, Macmillan was rumored to be displeased with some of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s more aggressive privatizing and monetarist economic policies. Busy with the chairmanship of the Macmillan publishing firm, Macmillan became a peer in 1984 as the earl of Stockton and died in Sussex on December 29, 1986.

SEE ALSO Balance of Payments; Chamberlain, Neville; Churchill, Winston; Cold War; Colonialism; Conservative Party (Britain); Decolonization; Eisenhower, Dwight D.; Empire; Imperialism; Kennedy, John F.; National Security; Parliament, United Kingdom; Suez Crisis; Thatcher, Margaret