Negotiations for a package deal nevertheless
seemed to be making reasonable progress when de
Gaulle in January 1963 brought them to a halt,
declaring that Britain’s Commonwealth ties and
Atlantic interests prevented it from becoming a
fully committed European partner. It was a body-
blow to Macmillan’s aura of success.
Supermac’s second administration proved a
disappointment to the electorate, not least
because the brakes had been applied to the
economy immediately after the election of 1959.
The new chancellor Selwyn Lloyd attempted to
introduce a ‘pay pause’ in 1961, but lack of agree-
ment with the trade unions doomed it to failure,
and its application to the wages controlled by gov-
ernment led to strikes by railwaymen, postmen
and nurses. In 1962 Macmillan replaced Selwyn
Lloyd with Reginald Maudling, who exuded con-
fidence and optimism, qualities much needed in
the face of growing unemployment, particularly
in the north, which reached 800,000 in the
winter of 1962–3. Maudling went for an expan-
sionary policy and planned to break out of the
dreary ‘stop–go’ cycle of deflation and boost and
achieve sustained growth by accepting a substan-
tial once-and-for-all deficit on the balance of pay-
ment. The problems this caused were inherited by
Harold Wilson’s Labour government in 1964.
Macmillan appeared to have lost his magic
touch. With the economy in difficulties, Britain’s
attempt to join the European Economic
Community vetoed by de Gaulle, and the ‘inde-
pendent’ nuclear deterrent dependent on
American missiles, the only relative success was
the continued disengagement from colonial
responsibilities: in Africa, Nigeria, Sierra Leone,
Tanganyika, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and
Zanzibar all gained their independence between
1961 and 1964, as did Cyprus, Malta, Trinidad
and Jamaica, and the queen gained many new
titles as former colonies became sovereign
members of the Commonwealth. But independ-
ence did not solve all problems at a stroke.
Nigeria was to be rent by a terrible civil war, and
Uganda suffered grave misfortunes at the hands
of its own rulers. In Cyprus internal conflicts have
not been resolved. The problems of Rhodesia
were to plague successive Conservative and
Labour governments for more than a decade. But
the most serious problem facing not only Britain
and the Commonwealth but the Western world
as a whole was the denial of equal rights to the
non-white majority in South Africa. By 1961
South Africa had recognised that it had become
impossible for it to remain in the new Common-
wealth, the majority of whose members were now
Asian and African countries. But Britain retained
close and friendly relations with South Africa, par-
ticularly in trade, while at the same time rejecting
the policy of apartheid. Opposition, however, was
confined to rhetoric and, later, sporting contacts;
Macmillan, in one of his more memorable
speeches, admonishing his white South African
audiences in 1960 that he had been struck by
the strength of African national consciousness:
the ‘wind of change is blowing through the
continent’.
Macmillan was soon to feel the ‘wind of
change’ much more immediately at home.
Conservative voters, disillusioned with the gov-
ernment, seemed to be switching to the Liberals
in droves. Macmillan took drastic action, reshuf-
fling his Cabinet in 1962 by sacking an unprece-
dented number of Cabinet ministers simultane-
ously, a display of ruthlessness that became
known as the Night of the Long Knives. Then
security scandals began to haunt the government
and to throw doubt on Macmillan’s grip on
affairs. The most dramatic concerned John
Profumo, the secretary of state for war, who had
shared an attractive mistress with a Soviet military
attaché. There was probably no breach of security
in bed, though nobody could listen in, but the
secretary of state, having earlier denied the asso-
ciation in the House of Commons, later admit-
ted to it and resigned. A sexual scandal in high
political places was, of course, a great media
event. Macmillan was described as gullible and
failing. In the House of Commons Labour’s bril-
liant young leader, Harold Wilson, made the most
of the government’s discomfiture. But Macmillan,
perhaps the most astute and skilful politician of
the post-war era, might still have recovered had
his prostate not incapacitated him in October- He was rushed from Downing Street to
hospital and there resigned the premiership.
546 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s