Harold Macmillan Aspects of a Political Life

274 Pages·1999·31.05 MB·English

by  Richard Aldous

HAROLD MACMILLAN: ASPECTS OF
A POLITICAL LIFE
Also edited by Richard Aldou sand Sabine Lee
HAROLD MACMILLAN AND BRITAIN'S WORLD ROLE
Also by Sabine Lee
AN UNEASY PARTNERSHIP: British-German Relations between
1955 and 1961
Harold Macmillan
Aspects of a Political
Life
Edited by
Richard Aldous
Lecturer in Modern History
University College, Dublin
and
Sabine Lee
Lecturer in German History
University of Birmingham
Foreword by Alistair Home
flfl
First published in Great Britain 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2l 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-40312-7 ISBN 978-0-230-37689-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230376892
First published in the United States of America 1999 by
ST. MARTIN~S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. !0010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harold Macmillan : aspects of a political life I edited by Richard
Aldous, Sabine Lee.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
L Macmillan, Harold, 1894- . 2. Great Britain-Politics and
government-1945-1964. 3. Prime ministers-Great Britain
-Biography. I. Aldous, Richard. IL Lee. Sabine.
DA566.9.:0,133H373 1998
941 .085'5'092-dc21
[B] 98-38450
CIP
Selection, editorial matter and Introduction© Richard Aldous and Sabine Lee 1999
Foreword© Alistair Horne 1999
Chapter 8 © Sabine Lee 1999
Chapter 9 © Richard Aldous 1999
Chapters 1-7 and 10-15 ©Macmillan Press Ltd 1999
All rights reserved. \lo reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Totten ham Court Road, London W l P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages,
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources,
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99
Contents
Foreword vii
Alistair Home
Acknowledgements xii
Notes on the Contributors xiii
1 Introduction 1
Richard Aldous and Sabine Lee
2 Macmillan: aView from the Foreign Offic e 6
Sir Oliver Wright
3 The Cots of Myth: Macmillan and teh Illusion fo the
'Special Relationship' 16
W. Scott Lucas
4 Opportunity Knocks: Macmillan at the Treasury,
1955-7 32
Lewis John man
5 Much Ado about Nothin?g Macmillna and
Appeasement 59
N. J. Crowson
6 Macmillan and Europe 75
Richard Lamb
7 'Ne pleurez pas ,Milord': Macmillan and France
from Algiers to Rambouillte 95
N. Piers Ludlow
8 Pragmatism versus Principl?e Macmillan and
Germany 113
Sabine Lee
VI Contents
9 Perfect Peace? Macmillan and Ireland 131
Richard Aldous
10 Dear Brendan and Master Harold 145
Charles Lysaght
11 Macmillan, the Second World War and the Empire 162
S. J. Ball
12 Macmillan and East of Suez: the Case of Malaysia 177
John Subritzky
13 Macmillan and the Soviet Union 195
Sir Curtis Keeble
14 Macmillan and Nuclear Weapons: the SKYBOLT Affair 217
Donette Murray
15 Managing Transition: Macmillan and the Utility of
Anglo-American Relations 242
Nigel Ashton
Index 255
Foreword
Alistair Home
In July 1996 I had the greatest good fortune to be invited to at
tend the oration to the joint Houses of Parliament by Nelson Mandela
in St Stephen's Hall. During it I reflected how, as a young journal
ist, I had had the equal good fortune to listen to President de
Gaulle, in the same place and on the last such auspicious occasion,
when he had been invited by Harold Macmillan in 1960. Looking
round the great hall, I reckoned that I was probably one of a very
small handful privileged to have been at both. In his remarkable
speech, Mandela singled out Macmillan and The wind of change'
as one of the few British statesmen deserving of any praise. De
Gaulle, in his speech, duly lauded Macmillan and British institu
tions; then returned home to slam the door on Macmillan's appli
cation to join the EEC less than three years later!
The bracketing of those two red-letter events reminded me last
summer of the remarkable range covered by Harold Macmillan's
seven years in office. From the turmoil which accompanied Eden's
resignation in 1956, from Suez to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the
frenzy that surrounded Macmillan's resignation in 1963, these years
covered some of the most dramatic events in recent British history.
His first four years were triumphant - he established closest
relations with both Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy; as first peace
time PM to visit Moscow, in 1959, with Khrushchev he began to break
the log-jam of the Cold War; and, that same year, he returned the
Tories to power with a hundred majority. From then on, events
conspired against him; the economy turned sour; he recognized
the 'wind of change' in Africa, but failed to resolve the crisis in
Rhodesia; and, in 1963, de Gaulle vetoed his application to join
the EEC. That same year the Profumo scandal came close to destroy
ing him. But his premiership was redeemed by his pioneering the
Nuclear Test Ban with the Soviets, which presaged the Gorbachev-
Reagan accords of the 1980s. In October 1963, a sudden prostatectomy
forced his retirement - in all probability, unnecessarily.
December 1996 marked the tenth anniversary of Macmillan's death,
and therefore it seems to me most timely and apposite that this
Vlll Foreword
conference should have been set up in Christ's College, Cambridge,
in September of that year to re-examine his career.
Political reputations have a curious way of advancing and reced
ing with almost indecent speed. Who can now recall how once the
British popular press trumpeted Nigel Lawson, following his famous
tax-slash budget, as the 'greatest Chancellor since ...'; since who. ..?
Indeed, perhaps, there may be British schoolchildren in a decade's
time unable to recall who, and wherefore, was the 'Iron Lady'?
When he died, in the middle of the Thatcher epoch, Harold
Macmillan was covered in laurels. Perhaps it was because he was
regarded, romantically, as some kind of king-over-the-water antithesis
to Thatcherdom. Now, derided once again as the 'old actor-manager',
his reputation seems to lie at the other end of the scale.
In the 1980s, the years of his extreme old age, Harold Macmillan
emerged into a kind of new golden age. Though the Enoch Powells
and the Tebbits may have growled, his maiden speech in the Lords,
with its highly emotive appeal about the miners and the dangers of
a divided society received widest acclaim. So did his less well-judged,
rather mischievous subsequent sally about 'selling off the family
silver'. In December 1986 he died venerated as the grand old man
of British politics, in affection and respect.
Yet, had he died in 1996 one feels he might almost have shuffled
off the scene the forgotten Prime Minister, if not actively misprized
(especially by the 'young fogeys' of Tory journalism) as the pro
genitor of all our current woes. Why this sudden reversal in his
fortunes? Could it be that at the peak of Monetarism, people yearned
for those halcyon days of 'You've never had it so good'? That we
reached towards 'Supermac' as a kind of antidote to Maggie? That
in contrast, perhaps, the less confrontational, more 'middle-road',
world of John Major's resembled a little too closely Macmillan's own?
There are some rather tendentious parallels. If Macmillan had
come back to earth around the time of the sacking of Norman
Lamont, he might well have thought that - with all the talk about
soaring unemployment, high interest rates, inflation, and a slug
gish economy - Selwyn Lloyd was still at the Treasury, and long
overdue for a 'night of the long knives'. (Except, of course, that
Selwyn would have gone without such a frightful, undignified howl
as Norman! Times change.)
Selfishly, this official biographer comes out of this swing in repu
tations as an extremely lucky man. Had my two volumes appeared
Foreword IX
in the 1990s instead of the 1980s, I have little doubt that they would
have almost disappeared without trace, relegated to the dustier
shelves of Hatchards!
Often one is asked - now that the 30-year rule has released most
of the papers for the Macmillan years, and other material has
emerged - would you have changed much? My answer: some de
tails, some fine-tuning possibly, but otherwise not a great deal; tactics
versus strategy. Since the Aldington v. Tolstoy case, I would now be
a good deal less harsh in apportioning blame to Macmillan for the
repatriation of the Cossacks in 1945; in fact I would absolve him
almost entirely. I would be harsher on him for the cover-up over
Calder Hall in 1957 - which I certainly missed in writing my
biography; and I think I would be harsher over his whole handling
of the EEC business. Pace the reproofs of the young fogeys, I do
not think I would be any more severe with Macmillan over his
handling of the economy, or the trades unions, than I have been
already. Perusal of the Public Record Office documents for 1963
showed little to change one's recounting of the Profumo Affair.
Nevertheless, doubtless time will show that there are still nuggets
to be found - missed by an idle and incompetent official biographer!
But what does change, has changed, is the point of view.
When writing an 'update' on Macmillan back in 1993 (to mark
the thirtieth anniversary of his resignation), I interviewed a number
of survivors from his entourage - including the late Lord Thorneycroft
(who, however, remained unforgiving, and critical, of the 'little
local difficulties' of 1958 and the reasons behind his own resigna
tion). Most agreed on four scores: with the one aberration of the
'Night of the Long Knives' (when he sacked a third of his Cabinet in
July 1962), he was superb in his appointments, and particularly in
the 'team' which ran his inner office. Secondly, his reputation as
a thinker survives intact. (Part of the duties of his 'team' was to
protect the space he created for himself in which to think -
and read.) None of his successors can challenge his claim to have
been Britain's best-read PM. Thirdly, and not least, 'Supermac'
did have that elusive, indefinable quality of style; nobody can take
this away from him, and with him it vanished from Westminster
forever.
And, fourthly, he and the Tory Party of his times could reckon
on - what seems today - an amazing degree of traditional loyalty,
in both directions. Sacked ministers did not immediately sit down