WikipediaExtracts:Harold Macmillan
Extracted from Wikipedia --
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Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1957 to 1963. Nicknamed "Supermac", he was known for his pragmatism, wit, and unflappability.
Educated at Eton and Oxford, Macmillan was seriously injured as a captain of the Grenadier Guards during the First World War and suffered pain and partial immobility for the rest of his life. After the war he joined his family's book-publishing business, then entered the Commons at the 1924 general election representing Stockton-on-Tees. Losing his seat in 1929, he regained it in 1931 as a supporter of economic planning. He opposed the appeasement of Nazi Germany practised by the government and entered the Cabinet soon after the Second World War broke out as a protégé of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
In the 1950s Macmillan served as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Anthony Eden. When Eden resigned in 1957 following the Suez Crisis, Macmillan succeeded him as prime minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. He was a One Nation Tory of the Disraelian tradition and supported the post-war consensus of the welfare state and the mixed economy, with some nationalised industries and strong trade unions. He championed a Keynesian strategy of deficit spending to maintain demand and pursued corporatist policies to develop the domestic market as the engine of growth. Benefiting from favourable international conditions, he presided over an age of affluence, marked by low unemployment and high—if uneven—growth, as well as modest social reforms. In July 1957, Macmillan told the nation it had "never had it so good", but warned of the dangers of inflation, summing up the fragile prosperity of the 1950s. He led the Conservatives to success in 1959 with an increased majority.
In international affairs, Macmillan worked to rebuild the Special Relationship with the United States after Suez—of which he had been one of the architects—and, citing the "wind of change blowing across the continent", presided over much of the decolonisation of Africa, beginning with the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1957. Reconfiguring the nation's defences amid the Cold War, Macmillan ended National Service, strengthened the nuclear forces by acquiring Polaris, and pioneered the Nuclear Test Ban with the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Skybolt Crisis undermined the Anglo-American strategic relationship, he sought a more active role for Britain in Europe, but his unwillingness to disclose US nuclear secrets to France contributed to a French veto of the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community, and the independent French acquisition of atomic weapons in 1960.
Beginning in the 1960s, Macmillan's government was rocked by the Vassall Tribunal and the Profumo affair, which to cultural conservatives and supporters of opposing parties alike seemed to symbolise the moral decay of the British establishment. Amid declining Conservative Party popularity, Macmillan fumbled a controversial Cabinet reshuffle before resigning the premiership in October 1963 and his seat in Parliament shortly thereafter, citing ill health. He was succeeded by Foreign Secretary Lord Home, who was defeated by Labour in the 1964 election. Following his resignation, Macmillan lived out a long retirement as an active member of the House of Lords before dying in December 1986 aged 92.
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