Britain's Macmillan
Harrison, John F. C.
Britain's Macmillan Reviewed by John F.e. Harrison IN THE late 1950s the political car toonists suddenly familiarized us with a new face. To some English readers it was not entirely unknown,...
...Harold Macmillan was premier for nearly seven years until his retirement in 1963 and has now produced the first volume of that ritual memoir which is apparently the last compulsive effort of retired politicians...
...First you have to choose the right parents, which in Macmillan's case meant a father who was a prosperous publisher in a family business and a mother who was American...
...Macmillan proceeded to Eton and Balliol College, Oxford...
...The gulf between the patriarchial splendor of an aristocratic Christmas at Chatsworth House with his wife's family and the poverty of the unemployed in his constituency troubled him...
...His heroes were Disraeli and Keynes...
...Some of the most delightful passages in the book describe childhood memories of a vanished world of nannies and lamplighters and white flannels and straw hats...
...In his northeastern industrial constituency of Stockton he encountered working class conditions and problems which made him realize the inadequacy of old-time Toryism...
...World War I cut short his studies, and he jqined that elite corps, the Brigade of Guards...
...Here are laid out plainly the elements necessary for success in the British Conservative Party, and here lies part of the secret of the continued appeal of conservatism in British life...
...Macmillan was never quite the daring radical he imagined himself to be...
...For the reader who hopes to learn something significant about past political events which he did not know before, such memoirs are usually unprofitable, and Winds of Change is in this respect only too typical of its genre...
...But as a revealing picture of modern British conservatism Harold Macmillan's book is extremely valuable...
...Nevertheless, his progress as a politician was by no means rapid...
...As a young grenadier officer he was badly wounded on the Western front and came home with a gallant war record...
...A brief spell as aide to the Governor-General of Canada in 1919 afforded the opportunity for falling in love and marrying into the aristocracy...
...and the impressions made by the years of economic depression colored all his later thinking...
...If this seems a slim basis for the new conservatism which was to blossom under his premiership in the 1950s, it suggests how hard the winds have to blow before they can change British conservatism...
...He explored the idea of a Middle Way as a "constructive alternative to socialism," but was rewarded by charges of being a socialist in disguise...
...Through his wife, Lady Dorothy Cavendish, Harold became a son-in-law of the Duke of Devonshire, one of the greatest names among the landed proprietors of England...
...After his election to Parliament in 1924 he sat in the Commons for five months before he made his maiden speech, and it Was another sixteen years before he achieved even a junior post in a ministry...
...Harrison IN THE late 1950s the political car toonists suddenly familiarized us with a new face...
...Britain's Macmillan Reviewed by John F.e...
...As a guide to How to Succeed in the Conservative Party Without Really Trying, the book could hardly be bettered...
...At most there is a genuine awareness THE PROGRESSIVE of social and industrial problems and a sincere desire to avoid the horrors of economic depression at almost any cost...
...From his memoir emerges a picture of a fundamentally decent chap who wants to strive for moderation in all things...
...What had gone wrong...
...Thus equipped, Macmillan had every opportunity for pursuing the political career which he desired...
...Reading between the lines it is clear that Harold Macmillan's "unorthodox" views were suspect in the higher echelons of the Conservative Party, and that the very qualities which were later to be his greatest asset were disregarded in the 1930s...
...To some English readers it was not entirely unknown, but Americans were surprised to learn that the rather sleazy Edwardian figure with bags under his eyes like a basset hound was a caricature of the British Prime Minister...
Vol. 30 • December 1966 • No. 12
