From the same year Macmillan permitted the US Navy to station Polaris submarines at Holy Loch, Scotland, as a replacement for Thor. In any case, these were far more modest times. that as the US replaced Britain as the world's leading power, British politicians and diplomats should aim to guide her in the same way that Greek slaves and freedmen had advised powerful Romans). Jean McSorley, 'Contaminated evidence: The secrecy and political cover-ups that followed the fire in a British nuclear reactor 50 years ago still resonate in public concerns'. [99][100], Macmillan was Minister of Defence from October 1954, but found his authority restricted by Churchill's personal involvement. January 1958 Derick Heathcoat Amory succeeds Peter Thorneycroft as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Macmillan and Lady Dorothy lived largely separate lives in private thereafter. [224] On 17 June 1963, he survived a Parliamentary vote with a majority of 69,[225] one fewer 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. "[122] Macmillan knew President Eisenhower well, but misjudged his strong opposition to a military solution. Lord Hailsham, the former Lord Chancellor, believes the law should be changed to protect people's privacy: politicians or anyone else. As a Conservative, I am 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. [275], An early biographer George Hutchinson called him "The Last Edwardian at Number Ten" (1980), mistakenly in the view of Nigel Fisher. Further, suppose that the press knows all about it; that the relationship is common knowledge in Parliament and in every London club, but nobody ever breaks the story? Whether he was ever a mainstream Conservative, rather than a skilful exponent of the postwar consensus, is more doubtful. [198] Macmillan had a pressing domestic reasons for the nuclear test ban treaty. Brendan Bracken advised him not to quit. [7] He had two brothers, Daniel, eight years his senior, and Arthur, four years his senior. Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC, FRS (10 February 1894 - 29 December 1986) was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963. Nevertheless, the affair put an end to any hopes Boothby might have cherished of achieving high office. In 1935, believing that the affair with Dorothy was on the wane, Boothby proposed to one of her cousins, Diana Cavendish. [40] As was common for contemporary former officers, he continued to be known as 'Captain Macmillan' until the early 1930s and was listed as such in every General Election between 1923 and 1931. [29] His hip wound took four years to heal completely, and he was left with a slight shuffle to his walk and a limp grip in his right hand from his previous wound, which affected his handwriting. It is pointless and we cannot afford that kind of thing. In the 1950s Macmillan served as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Anthony Eden. [78] Macmillan wrote in his diary during the Casablanca conference: "I christened the two personalities the Emperor of the East and the Emperor of the West and indeed it was rather like a meeting of the late Roman empire". Macmillan's wartime diaries were better received. Many of the salacious revelations about the sex lives of "Establishment" figures during the Profumo affair damaged the image of "the Establishment" that Macmillan was seen as a part of, giving him the image by 1963 of a "failing representative of a decadent elite". John Vincent, "Macmillan, Harold" in Fred M. Leventhal, ed., Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, Maurice Macmillan, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, Secretary of State for the Home Department, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, Cultural depictions of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Harold Macmillan, "The spy who rocked a world of privilege", "PM Harold Macmillan Wind of Change Speech at the Cape Town Parliament 3 February 1960", "https://twitter.com/thehistoryguy/status/1628503689890496512", 18 April 1956: Macmillan unveils premium bond scheme, Harold Macmillan; Unflappable master of the middle way, "Cabinet Papers Strained consensus and Labour", "The Reshaping of British Railways Part 1: Report", "Harold Macmillan begins his "winds of change" tour of Africa", "1963: Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell dies", SECURITY (MR. PROFUMO'S RESIGNATION) (Hansard, 17 June 1963), "SECURITY (MR. PROFUMO'S RESIGNATION) (Hansard, 17 June 1963)", "1979: Election victory for Margaret Thatcher", "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)", "Stockton, Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of", "Maurice Harold Macmillan, First Earl of Stockton. Macmillan wrote in his diary: "If Nasser 'gets away with it', we are done for. Although scientists had warned of the dangers of such an accident for some time, the government blamed the workers who had put out the fire for 'an error of judgement', rather than the political pressure for fast-tracking the megaton bomb. However, Butler and Reginald 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. [citation needed], D. R. Thorpe writes that by the early 1960s Macmillan was seen as "the epitome of all that was wrong with anachronistic Britain. After Munich he was looking for a "1931 in reverse", i.e. The child of their tempestuous liaison, Sarah Macmillan, had an unhappy life and an early death at the age of 40. Churchill seemed to agree with all this. Lady Dorothy Cavendish, third daughter of the ninth Duke of Devonshire, was born in 1900 and brought up in the old tradition of great houses, nannies, governesses and noblesse oblige. [276] Fisher described him as "complex, almost chameleon". Responding to a remark made by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson about not having boots in which to go to school, Macmillan retorted: 'If Mr Wilson did not have boots to go to school that is because he was too big for them. Boothby wrote to his friend Beaverbrook: 'Don't let your boys hunt me down.' [283], Richard Lamb argues that Macmillan was "by far the best of Britain's postwar Prime Ministers, and his administration performed better than any of their successors". [217] The full Denning report into the Profumo Scandal was published on 26 September 1963. During the Second World War Macmillan's toothy grin, baggy trousers and rimless glasses had given him, as his biographer puts it, "an air of an early Bolshevik leader". Lamb argues that it is unfair to blame Macmillan for excessively quick African independence (resulting in many former colonies becoming dictatorships), or for the Beeching Plan (which was accepted by Labour in 1964, although Macmillan himself had reservations and had asked civil servants to draw up plans for extra road-building), and argues that had he remained in power Macmillan would never have allowed inflation to get as far out of hand as it did in the 1970s.[5]. in, Ovendale, Ritchie. It's a shame that Harold misunderstood her. The Profumo affair directly contributed to Macmillan's departure from 10 Downing Street in October 1963,. This did not meet with Eden's approval at Cabinet on 7 January. They are a band that in the end does not amount to more than 15 or 20 at the most.[235]. Her husband, who was created Earl of Stockton in 1984, outlived her by 20 years. [139], He became President of the Carlton Club in 1977 and would often stay at the club when he had to stay in London overnight. [106] By the 1950s he had had his teeth capped, grew his hair in a more shapely style, wore Savile Row suits and walked with the ramrod bearing of a former Guards officer, acquiring the distinguished appearance of his later career. [137] The political situation after Suez was so desperate that on taking office on 10 January he told the Queen he could not guarantee his government would last "six weeks"though ultimately he would be in charge of the government for more than six years. Harold Macmillan; Date of birth: 10 February 1894 Chelsea: Date of death: 29 December 1986 Sussex: Place of burial: Sussex; Country of citizenship: United Kingdom; Educated at: . encouraged Eden to attack in order to destroy him as Prime Minister), noting that Macmillan privately put the chances of success at 5149. 35253 Eisenhower said these words in a meeting with Treasury Secretary, OCR A Level History B: The End of Consensus: Britain 194590 by Pearson Education. In October 1942 Harold Nicolson recorded Macmillan as predicting "extreme socialism" after the war. [3], In 1920 she married publisher and Conservative politician Harold Macmillan, who had been on her father's staff in Canada. He behaved immaculately throughout her long affair, giving his name to Sarah, her daughter born in 1930, fathered by Boothby. He resumed working with the firm from 1945 to 1951 when the party was in opposition. In October 1963 he disclaimed his peerages for life, took the name Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and succeeded Harold Macmillan as prime minister during a Conservative Party crisis, the most spectacular feature of which was an adultery scandal involving John Dennis Profumo, secretary of state for war from 1960 to 1963. [65], Macmillan visited Finland in February 1940, then the subject of great sympathy in Britain as it was being attacked by the USSR, then loosely allied to Nazi Germany. He loved her - and in any case, divorce was unthinkable for both family and political reasons. [11] From the age of six or seven he received introductory lessons in classical Latin and Greek at Mr Gladstone's day school, close by in Sloane Square. [177] Butler leaked to the Daily Mail on 11 July 1962 that a major reshuffle was imminent. [223], By the summer of 1963 Conservative Party Chairman Lord Poole was urging the ageing Macmillan to retire. The Cabinet changes were widely seen as a sign of panic, and the young Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe said of Macmillan's dismissals 'greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life'. Britannica Quiz. In 1929 Lady Dorothy began a lifelong affair with the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, an arrangement that scandalised high society but remained unknown to the general public. [231], Enoch Powell claimed that it was wrong of Macmillan to seek to monopolise the advice given to the Queen in this way. US President Ronald Reagan said: "The American people share in the loss of a voice of wisdom and humanity who, with eloquence and gentle wit, brought to the problems of today the experience of a long life of public service. [205] Macmillan wanted Britain to retain military bases in the new state of Malaysia to ensure that Britain was a military power in Asia and thus he wanted the new state of Malaysia to have a pro-Western government. [204] During the Malaya Emergency, the majority of the Communist guerrillas were ethnic Chinese, and British policies tended to favour the Muslim Malays whose willingness to follow their sultans and imams made them more anti-communist. Macmillan was a major proponent and architect of decolonisation. Within months they were engaged. He behaved immaculately throughout her long affair, giving. Eden appointed Duff Cooper as Representative to the Free French government in Algeria (after the liberation of mainland France, he later continued as Ambassador to France from November 1944) and Noel Charles as Ambassador to Italy to reduce Macmillan's influence. Once, when I got engaged to an American heiress, she pursued me from Chatsworth to Paris and from Paris to Lisbon. This may have been true, but nothing can detract from his generosity to Sarah, whose paternity was never in doubt. Macmillan was the last British prime minister born during the Victorian era, the last to have served in the First World War and the last to receive a hereditary peerage. Harold Macmillan, 1957-1963 Queen Elizabeth II invited Harold Macmillan to form a government in 1957 after the leadership of the Conservative party became vacant between elections. The Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore was a close family friend of the President and actively involved in White House discussions on how to resolve the crisis. In the 1980s the aged Macmillan was seen as "a revered but slightly pathetic figure". 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. [258], Macmillan had often play-acted being an old man long before real old age set in. His mistress figures neither in the index nor the book, though this probably sprang from discretion rather than bitterness. [109] Campbell also suggests that Harold Wilson's image change during Macmillan's premiership from "boring young statistician into lovable Yorkshire comic" was made in conscious imitation of Macmillan.[72]. Nigel Fisher tells an anecdote of how Macmillan initially greeted him to his house leaning on a stick, but later walked and climbed steps perfectly well, twice acting lame again and fetching his stick when he remembered his "act". Although it is sometimes stated that he believed himself to have inoperable prostate cancer, he in fact knew it was benign before the operation. He was born and raised in London and completed his education from the 'University of Oxford.' However, he argues that Macmillan is remembered as having been "a rather seedy conjuror", famous for Premium Bonds, Beeching's cuts to the railways and the Profumo Scandal. Sir Alistair Horne. Eden sent out Robert Dixon to abolish the job of Resident Minister, there being then no job for Macmillan back in the UK, but he managed to prevent his job being abolished. [229] Macmillan was almost ready to leave hospital within ten days of the diagnosis and could easily have carried on, in the opinion of his doctor Sir John Richardson. [143] It was intended as mockery but backfired, coming to be used in a neutral or friendly fashion. [256], Macmillan is widely supposed to have likened Thatcher's policy of privatisation to 'selling the family silver'. Dorothy did her best to persuade her lover that the world would be well lost for her sake; but Boothby's political career would have been wrecked by a divorce and his means did not allow him to support her in anything like the style she took for granted. [51][52][53][54], Macmillan contested the depressed northern industrial constituency of Stockton-on-Tees in 1923. [9] He was often treated with condescension by his aristocratic in-laws and was observed to be a sad and isolated figure at Chatsworth in the 1930s. Because Singapore with its ethnic Chinese majority was the largest and wealthiest city in the region, Macmillan was afraid that a federation of Malaya and Singapore together would result in a Chinese majority state, and insisted on including Sarawak and British North Borneo into the federation of Malaysia to ensure the new state was a Malay majority state. Leading an advance platoon in the Battle of FlersCourcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme) in September 1916, he was severely wounded, and lay for over twelve hours in a shell hole, sometimes feigning death when Germans passed, and reading the classical playwright Aeschylus in the original Greek. 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