Prime Minister in hospital; chaos at Party Conference; and the leader 'emerges' for the final time.
Part 1 of 2 on the 1963 Conservative leadership selection.
This is the first in a two-part series on the most dramatic change at the top of a political party in the post-war era: the 1963 Conservative leadership selection.
'My letter of resignation was sent and delivered to [the] Palace at 9.30am… So ended my premiership.' This was how Harold Macmillan, still recovering from surgery at King Edward VII Hospital for Officers, recorded the end of his six and a half years as Prime Minister on 18th October 1963. The Queen graciously accepted his resignation and, even more graciously, attended him at his bedside. During their audience she asked Macmillan whether he had a recommendation to make regarding his successor. He did. He advised that she send for the Foreign Secretary, the fourteenth Earl of Home. In advising his Sovereign, Macmillan ensured his departure from office was the most dramatic transition of power in the Conservative Party’s modern history.
1963 had been a miserable year for Macmillan. In January, French President Charles de Gaulle ended British hopes of joining the European Economic Community with his three letter rebuke: 'non'. Within weeks, rumours began swirling about the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, and his relations with a showgirl. The ensuing scandal would be a permanent stain on this period of Macmillan’s leadership, which some Conservative MPs had started to demand come to an end. The pressure on the Prime Minister was compounded by Labour’s new leader, Harold Wilson, who was discovering new heights of political skill - and new depths of Parliamentary skulduggery - in his attacks on the government.
By the summer, Macmillan was beginning to wonder whether he had it in him to fight the next election, due by October 1964. 'I am now beginning to think seriously, and serenely… about my own future… the question of the leadership of the party cannot be left uncertain beyond October,' Macmillan wrote in his diary on 16th August. Over the weeks ahead he frequently changed his mind about whether to carry on, but by the 20th September it appeared the matter was settled. He informed the Queen that he would be resigning before the next election. Within days Macmillan began to doubt his decision and by 7th October he had reversed it. He went to bed that night resolved to inform the Cabinet, due to meet the next morning, that he would in fact stay on and fight the next election.
An 'unhappy stroke of fate' brought Macmillan’s vacillating to an end. The night before Cabinet he suffered the symptoms of prostatic obstruction, including excruciating pain and an inability to pass water. Sir John Richardson, Macmillan’s highly trusted personal doctor, was away in Windermere; nevertheless, medics were at Macmillan’s side by 5am and temporary relief was offered. It was enough to get Macmillan into the chair for the morning’s Cabinet meeting. Reginald Maudling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was sitting opposite the Prime Minister and remembered how 'it was apparent from his face that he was in considerable pain.' Rab Butler, Macmillan’s deputy, observed the same and offered his ailing leader a valium. Macmillan ploughed on and informed the assembled ministers of his plan to stay and fight the next election. With their support he would announce his intentions at that week’s party conference in Blackpool, which he still planned to attend. Macmillan departed for them to consider the matter frankly. Despite some reservations, the Cabinet agreed to back him with one exception, Enoch Powell. The Prime Minister’s position was secure from his colleagues; his fate now rested with the doctors.
Throughout the evening, Macmillan flittered between two events: a drinks party for staff to celebrate their return to Number 10 Downing Street after extensive refurbishments, and a meeting of his doctors to determine the necessary course of action to restore him to health. The doctors concluded the situation was not life threatening, but surgery was required. Macmillan would need to be admitted to hospital that very evening. Recognising that his physical strength - already in decline - would struggle to take on both the burdens of recovery and the premiership, he decided to resign.
Historians have since divided as to whether it was necessary for Macmillan to resign. Richardson, who did not arrive at Downing Street until late afternoon, was optimistic about his patient’s prospects and wrote, 'I feel that he will be fit and well able to continue to lead the party in six weeks’ time.' A view has since emerged, shared by Alastair Horne, Macmillan’s official biographer, that if Macmillan had had the benefit of Richardson’s advice throughout the day he may never have resolved to resign. However, Richardson’s temporary absence did not leave Macmillan bereft of qualified doctors; he was, in fact, seen by the foremost consultant urologist in the country. What’s more, Macmillan’s final decision to resign did not occur until after Richardson had arrived at Number 10 and been consulted. Far from being bounced by uncertain medical advice, it is much more likely that the besieged Prime Minister grasped the opportunity to depart with dignity. Painful though it was, Macmillan’s prostate trouble meant that the primary drivers of his resignation - fatigue, backbench grumblings and his 'obviously fading sense of direction' - could all be overlooked in favour of his medical ailments.
Macmillan recognised that his resignation would set off a contentious battle for the succession. Had the illness occurred a month earlier, he could have resigned then and a new Prime Minister would have addressed the party conference that was gathering in Blackpool; had it been a month later, the conference would have passed by without taking on the heated atmosphere of an American nominating convention and an orderly leadership change could have been completed. As it happened, Macmillan reflected in his memoirs, his resignation 'could not have come at a worse moment' for a party with no clear successor.
The man most widely expected to succeed Macmillan, Butler, was one of the first people to know about the Prime Minister’s decision to resign. Harold Evans, Macmillan’s PR advisor, recorded in his diary that Butler 'seemed rather surprised and said that surely this was going rather far, but shrugged his shoulders.' Home was much more active. The following day he visited Macmillan in hospital where he urged him to end the speculation and announce that he would be resigning at the earliest. Macmillan agreed and a letter was drafted for Home to read, as President of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, which organised the conferences, to the assembled delegates in Blackpool. As he prepared to break the bombshell news to 4,000 of the party faithful, Home noted that 'the hall was hushed with anticipation that something ill was in the wind.' He then read the Prime Minister’s letter:
... It is now clear that, whatever might have been my previous feelings, it will not be possible for me to carry the physical burden of leading the Party at the next general election... I would not be able to face all that is involved in a prolonged electoral campaign. Nor could I hope to fulfil the tasks of Prime Minister for any extended period, and I have so informed the Queen. In these circumstances I hope that it will soon be possible for the customary processes of consultation to be carried on within the party about its future leadership…
The Prime Minister’s appeal to 'customary processes' was, no doubt, carefully phrased to give legitimacy to the means by which a new leader would be chosen. Yet it was disingenuous. There were no leadership rules or customary processes and what precedents there were would be torn up by Macmillan and written anew. Vernon Bogdanor has more accurately described the consultation process as 'guided democracy.'
The guiding began with the very timing of Macmillan’s announcement. Whilst he had no intention of surrendering the selection to the conference, by making his resignation public during the Blackpool gathering he was giving the party’s activists a role. In the crucible of the party conference - 'democracy by decibels', as Butler would later describe it - candidates would be evaluated by their reception from the party’s grassroots. This was widely expected to benefit former Party Chairman and hereditary peer Lord Hailsham, who Macmillan had privately pledged to support, and Home, whom he would ultimately endorse. Both were widely admired by grassroot Tories. In contrast, Butler’s following was greatest among the Cabinet and MPs; party members had grown weary of his perceived attempts to drag the party leftwards.
The star that burned brightest during the conference was Hailsham. Randolph Churchill, son of the wartime premier, was the loudest of Hailsham’s cheerleaders - albeit a counterproductive one. He arrived in Blackpool with a batch of Q badges (Q for Quintin, Hailsham’s Christian name) for delegates to wear in support of the candidacy. Churchill went around Blackpool pinning them on delegates freely, even on Butler himself. Amid the growing fervour, Macmillan’s son and son-in-law, Maurice Macmillan and Julian Amery respectively, arrived from the Prime Minister’s bedside to tell Hailsham he must disclaim his hereditary peerage 'at once' in order to signal his availability to lead. With their encouragement, Hailsham had every reason to believe that he still had the Prime Minister’s support to succeed him. His campaign peaked when, addressing the Conservative Political Centre, the party’s political education body, he took their advice and announced his intention to surrender his viscountcy. Years later, he recorded the audience’s reaction in his memoirs:
… the effect was one of the most dramatic in my lifetime. The whole audience, and the platform, went mad, standing, cheering and waving in the full light of the national television; and, of course, the whole press was full of it the next morning.
Yet it was all seen as too vulgar by party grandees. Contrary to Hailsham’s recollection, Dennis Walters, an instrumental figure in his campaign, recalled that the platform party were distinctly unimpressed. Chief Whip Martin Redmayne looked 'stony and prefectorial, clearly not best pleased' whilst most of the others were simply embarrassed by the exuberance of the moment. Conveniently forgetting his own role in hyping up Hailsham both directly and through the conduit of his family, Macmillan sided with Hailsham’s critics, writing in his diary that Hailsham’s supporters were 'upset at the rather undignified behaviour of [Hailsham] and his supporters at Blackpool… [he has] almost thrown it away.' By the end of the conference Hailsham’s campaign for the leadership was effectively over.
Butler used the Blackpool conference to give the impression that he was the heir apparent. His first move was to quite literally jump into Macmillan’s bed, taking up residence in the Prime Minister's suite (room 127) at the Imperial Hotel. Next, he sought to acquire Macmillan’s speaking slot. In the 1960s, the annual conference would close with a rally addressed by the party leader. When it became clear that Macmillan would not be making the final speech himself, Butler asserted his right to do so, believing that if he didn’t give the speech he would be out of consideration for the leadership. Butler showed a 'firmness bordering on stubbornness' in securing the prestigious place on the agenda, traits that were otherwise missing from his efforts over the coming week. Alas, his insistence backfired. Butler’s high profile speech was remembered by Edward Heath as 'monotonous and ineffective' and did little to create momentum for his campaign. (A bad speech had also done irreparable damage to the case for Maudling. His speech was lampooned by That Was The Week That Was as 'if not the dullest speech in history, it would do until the dullest was made.').
With Hailsham’s campaign overheating and neither Butler or Maudling exciting the party’s grassroots, support began to grow for an alternative. Home had previously ruled himself out of the contest at Cabinet on 8th October, a declaration which would be held against him by several senior Conservatives, especially Powell. Yet Home had been acquiring powerful backers since the summer when John Morrison, chairman of the influential 1922 Committee, first told him that he should be the next leader of the party. Home did not dismiss the idea but agreed to consult his doctor. Prior to Home’s departure for Blackpool, at the meeting in which he was commissioned to read the letter confirming the Prime Minister’s resignation, the incapacitated Macmillan had also encouraged Home to consider standing. (This was before Hailsham had indicated his intention to disclaim his peerage, an event widely cited - including by Macmillan himself - as losing him critical support. It is clear Macmillan’s support was already elsewhere). Support for Home continued to grow as ministers, MPs and activists mingled on the Fylde coast. By 11th October Lord Chancellor Dilhorne, Chief Whip Redmayne and a majority of the 1922 Committee Executive were all in Home’s camp. Even beyond the upper echelons of the party, the mood was turning in Home’s direction. Nigel Birch, so long a thorn in the side of Macmillan, told anybody who would listen: 'I’m an Alec Home man. There aren’t any other possibilities. He’s going to get it.' By the time ministers were returning to London, Home had become the man to beat.
To be continued…
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