Number 10 Downing Street

Harold Macmillan was a Conservative politician and Prime Minister from January 1957 to October 1963. The half-American son of a publisher, he was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford and served in both World Wars. He rose quickly through the Conservative hierarchy and when the Conservatives were elected in 1951, he was made Minister of Housing, then Minister of Defence, Foreign Secretary and finally Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

When Eden resigned in January 1957, Macmillan emerged from the wreckage of Suez to lead a demoralised Conservative party and a country that was still in the depths of turmoil. Despite telling the Queen that he did not think the new Government would last longer than six weeks, Macmillan quickly restored the country’s confidence and its fortunes. In domestic policy, he was determined to avoid the mass unemployment he had witnessed in the 1930s as MP for Stockton-on-Tees. A champion of economic planning and a moderniser at heart, as living standards and prosperity in Britain increased, Macmillan was able to claim that the British public had ‘never had it so good’. Dubbed ‘Supermac’, the Conservative party increased its majority in the October 1959 General Election. 

On the international scene, Macmillan was preoccupied with the complexities of the Cold War. He led the country through the Cuban Missile crisis and was the first truly nuclear-armed Prime Minister, taking important steps to maintain the effectiveness and credibility of the nuclear deterrent well into the 1980s. Macmillan was also responsible for re-orientating British foreign policy. He repaired the damage done to the Anglo-American relationship through his close relationships with Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and with his “winds of change” speech in 1960 he distanced himself and the country from Apartheid and speeded up the process of decolonisation following a series of studies into the costs and benefits of the British Empire. He also acknowledged that Britain’s future lay with Europe. But his plans for entry into the new European Economic Community were set back when the French President General Charles de Gaulle said ‘No’ to Britain’s application in January 1963. Devastated, Macmillan wrote in his diary that ‘all our policies at home and abroad are in ruins.’ His greatest achievement on the international scene came a few months later in August 1963, when he was heavily involved in negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, earning praise from Presidents Kennedy and Khrushchev for his patience and diplomacy.

By 1963 the economy, thanks to problems with the balance of payments, was faltering. Macmillan was also increasingly portrayed as out of touch. The sacking of six cabinet ministers in an event that became known as the ‘night of the long knives’ did little to rejuvenate the Government. After a series of scandals, the most damaging of which involved the minister John Profumo, Macmillan resigned in October 1963. He was created Earl of Stockton in 1984 and died in 1986.

 James Jinks, Mile End Group