Abstract
Prime Ministers cannot ignore the value of drama in political life; but neither can they ignore the risk of dramatic upheavals being misinterpreted by colleagues and public. To describe Macmillan’s summary dismissal of one-third of his Cabinet in July 1962, the press revived a term used during the Mau-Mau revolt in Kenya, the ‘night of the long knives’. Most historians have since explained his action as a gambler’s last throw, while scandals burst and creditors pressed in.
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Notes and References
R. A. Butler, The Art of the Possible (1971), p. 133.
H. Macmillan, At the End of the Day (1973) p. 69: diary entry for 24 May 1962.
Noted by Sewill, 29 December 1961, CRD Box 502 EF1/9; also J. Ramsden, Making of Conservative Policy (1980), p. 219. With vivid memories of Liberal by-election success, the Research Department argued the rights of ‘the fixed income groups, the professional people, all those who normally come at the end of the queue’ (CRD Box 502 E/PT/5, May 1962).
According to Macmillan and R. D. Thorpe, Selwyn Lloyd (1989), pp. 338–9, he consulted Butler on 21 June, who agreed Lloyd should go. Butler claims that the first discussion occurred on 6 June (Art of the Possible, p. 233), but this may have been intended to mitigate his own indiscretion about an ‘autumn reshuffle, which Thorpe argues contributed to the Prime Minister’s unusual haste.
TUC EC 7,16 April 1963. After a proposal for closer contact (by Kipping in 1962), six industrialists, drawn more widely than FBI or BEC, and six officials met for dinner. The Civil Service side included all the top men concerned: William Armstrong and Frank Lee (Treasury), Sir Henry Hardman (Defence), Laurence Helsby (Labour), Richard Powell (Trade) and Norman Brook (Cabinet Office) (see Norman Kipping, Summing Up (1972), pp. 66–7).
Cf. FBI, The Regional Problems (May 1963) which accepted Orange Book thinking and supported Maudling’s expressed intention to reverse the drift to the South-East, by a policy to revive Scotland and the North-East, see also FBI, Management and Training: The Needs of Industry (1963).
J. Bruce-Gardyne and N. Lawson, The Power Game (1976), pp. 80–117, Chapter 4, gives a lively and comprehensive account of the RPM case.
Wayne Parsons, The Political Economy of British Regional Policy (1988), chap. 7.
A. Peacock et al., Structural Economic Policies in West Germany and the UK (1980), Chapter 4.
The cost of state industries’ investment and modernisation programmes, as a percentage of total budgets, fell sharply during 1963–64, at exactly the moment when greater sums were needed to see rationalisation through, to recover from technological backwardness and to aspire to European standards of services. Only British Gas came through effectively (J. Redwood, Public Enterprise in Crisis, 1980, Chapter 3). Overmanning continued, and the fatal ‘Guillebaud principle’ ensured that labour costs remained high.
They were aware, for example, that Macmillan’s tactical skill in dealing with both his party opposition and the Commonwealth’s Prime Ministers was based on the proposition that Britain could still choose between the two (P. A. Norton and A. Aughey, Conservatives and Conservatism, 1981, pp. 135–7).
Among a substantial literature, see M. Camps, Britain and the European Community 1955–63 (1964) and European Unification in the Sixties (1967);
Robert J. Leiber, British Politics and European Unity (1971);
and Uwe Kitzinger, Diplomacy and Persuasion: How Britain joined the EEC (1973).
Lord Roll, Crowded Hours ( 1985), p. 212;
Camps, Britain and the European Community, (1964) p. 459–63; see also Bruce-Gardyne and Lawson, The Power Game, p. 61.
R.J. Lieber, British Politics and European Unity (1970) p. 200.
S. Brittan, The Treasury under the Tories (1964), p. 213.
The Treasury’s National Economy Division, though ‘established to oversee the impact of government operations on the real resources of the nation, was still oriented to the management of aggregate consumption and investment rather than to the sectoral organisation or performance of industry’: Peter Hall, ‘Patterns of Economic Policy’, in S. Bornstein et al., The State in Capitalist Europe (1984), p. 34.
R. Maudling, Memoirs (1978), pp. 102–4.
Maudling’s memoirs are reticent about these events. According to S. Brittan, Steering the Economy (1972) William Armstrong urged the Chancellor not to upset business confidence by any hint of stop (p. 180).
Brittan, The Treasury under the Tories (1964), p. 252. The White Paper in October reflected this mood of confidence; as did reports from NIESR. Only the Bank remained unconvinced.
James Callaghan, Time and Chance (1987), pp. 153–4.
According to John Barnes, ‘The Record’ in Chris Cook and D. McKie (eds), The Decade of Discontent (1972), Wilson acted at the instigation of Thomas Balogh.
According to Sir Alec Douglas-Home, The Way the Wind Blows: An Autobiography (1976), p. 190, Lord Blakenham, Chairman of the Party, advised that in a June election the Conservatives would fall below Labour by 60 to 70 seats. Sir Michael Fraser’s estimate was only slightly better; hence Home’s announcement that he would continue until October. The report on party organisation, prepared by Selwyn Lloyd and delivered in June 1963, had already recorded substantive resentment and antipathy to Macmillan’s leadership, so that his recommendation to concentrate on safeguarding marginal seats carried even more weight after the October leadership crisis.
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© 1990 Keith Middlemas
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Middlemas, K. (1990). The Strategy of Growth. In: Power, Competition and the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378780_3
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