First government, 1957–1959 From the start of his premiership, Macmillan set out to portray an image of calm and style, in contrast to his excitable predecessor. He silenced the klaxon on the Prime Ministerial car, which Eden had used frequently. He advertised his love of reading
Anthony Trollope and
Jane Austen, and on the door of the Private Secretaries' room at Number Ten he hung a quote from
The Gondoliers: "Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot". Macmillan filled government posts with 35 Old Etonians, seven of them in Cabinet. He was also devoted to family members: when
Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire was later appointed (Minister for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964 among other positions) he described his uncle's behaviour as "the greatest act of nepotism ever". Macmillan's Defence Minister,
Duncan Sandys, wrote at the time: "Eden had no gift for leadership; under Macmillan as PM everything is better, Cabinet meetings are quite transformed". Many ministers found Macmillan to be more decisive and brisk than either Churchill or Eden had been. Macmillan frequently made allusions to history, literature and the classics at cabinet meetings, giving him a reputation as being both learned and entertaining, though many ministers found his manner too authoritarian.
Economy Besides foreign affairs, the economy was Macmillan's other prime concern. His
One Nation approach to the economy was to seek high or full employment, especially with a general election looming. This contrasted with the Treasury ministers who argued that support of sterling required spending cuts and, probably, a rise in unemployment. Their advice was rejected and in January 1958 the three Treasury ministers —
Peter Thorneycroft, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Nigel Birch,
Economic Secretary to the Treasury, and Enoch Powell, the
Financial Secretary to the Treasury and seen as their intellectual ringleader — resigned. D. R. Thorpe argues that this, coming after the resignations of Labour ministers
Aneurin Bevan,
John Freeman and Harold Wilson in April 1951 (who had wanted
higher expenditure), and the cuts made by Butler and Macmillan as Chancellors in 1955–56, was another step in the development of "stop-go" economics, as opposed to prudent medium-term management. Macmillan, away on a tour of the Commonwealth, brushed aside this incident as "a little local difficulty". He bore no grudge against Thorneycroft and brought him and Powell, of whom he was more wary, back into the government in 1960. This period also saw the first stirrings of more active
monetary policy.
Official bank rate, which had been kept low since the 1930s, was hiked in September 1958. The change in bank rate prompted rumours in the
City that some financiers – who were
Bank of England directors with senior positions in private firms – took advantage of advance knowledge of the rate change in what resembled
insider trading. Political pressure mounted on the Government, and Macmillan agreed to the
1957 Bank Rate Tribunal. Hearing evidence in the winter of 1957 and reporting in January 1958, this inquiry exonerated all involved in what some journalists perceived to be a
whitewash.
Domestic policies During his time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out. The
Clean Air Act 1956 was passed during his time as Chancellor; his premiership saw the passage of the
Housing Act 1957, the
Offices Act 1960, the
Noise Abatement Act 1960, and the
Factories Act 1961; the introduction of a graduated pension scheme to provide an additional income to retirees, the establishment of a
Child's Special Allowance for the orphaned children of divorced parents, and a reduction in the standard
work week from 48 to 42 hours.
Foreign policy and wife Anjana, daughter of
Sudhi Ranjan Das Macmillan took close control of foreign policy. He worked to narrow the post-
Suez Crisis (1956) rift with the United States, where his wartime friendship with Eisenhower was key; the two had a productive conference in
Bermuda as early as March 1957. In February 1959, Macmillan visited the Soviet Union. Talks with
Nikita Khrushchev eased tensions in east–west relations over
West Berlin and led to an agreement in principle to stop nuclear tests and to hold a further summit meeting of
Allied and Soviet heads of government. In the Middle East, faced by the 1958 collapse of the
Baghdad Pact and the spread of Soviet influence, Macmillan acted decisively to restore the confidence of
Persian Gulf allies, using the Royal Air Force and
special forces to defeat a revolt backed by
Saudi Arabia and Egypt against the Sultan of Oman,
Said bin Taimur, in July 1957; deploying airborne battalions to defend
Jordan against
United Arab Republican subversion in July 1958; and deterring Iraqi demands of
Kuwait by landing a brigade group in June 1961 during the
Iraq–Kuwait crisis of 1961 . Macmillan was a major proponent and architect of
decolonisation. The
Gold Coast was granted independence as
Ghana, and the
Federation of Malaya achieved independence within the Commonwealth of Nations in 1957. "The material strength of the Old Commonwealth members, if joined with the moral influence of the Asiatic members, meant that a united Commonwealth would always have a very powerful voice in world affairs," said Macmillan in a 1957 speech during a tour of the former British Empire.
Nuclear weapons test—Operation Grapple X Round C1, which took place over
Kiritimati In April 1957, Macmillan reaffirmed his strong support for the
British nuclear weapons programme. A succession of prime ministers since the
Second World War had been determined to persuade the United States to revive wartime co-operation in the area of nuclear weapons research. Macmillan believed that one way to encourage such co-operation would be for the United Kingdom to speed up the development of its own
hydrogen bomb, which was
successfully tested on 8 November 1957. Macmillan's decision led to increased demands on the
Windscale and (subsequently)
Calder Hall nuclear plants to produce
plutonium for military purposes. As a result, safety margins for radioactive materials inside the Windscale reactor were eroded. This contributed to the
Windscale fire on the night of 10 October 1957, which broke out in the plutonium plant of Pile No. 1, and nuclear contaminants travelled up a chimney where the filters blocked some, but not all, of the contaminated material. The radioactive cloud spread to south-east England and fallout reached mainland Europe. Although scientists had warned of the dangers of such an accident for some time, the government blamed the workers who had put out the fire for 'an error of judgement', rather than the political pressure for fast-tracking the megaton bomb. Concerned that public confidence in the nuclear programme might be shaken and that technical information might be misused by opponents of defence co-operation in the
US Congress, Macmillan withheld all but the summary of a report into the fire prepared for the
Atomic Energy Authority by
Sir William Penney, director of the
Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Subsequently released files show that 'Macmillan's cuts were few and covered up few technical details', and that even the full report found no danger to public health, but later official estimates acknowledged that the release of
polonium-210 may have led directly to 25 to 50 deaths, and anti-nuclear groups linked it to 1,000 fatal cancers. On 25 March 1957, Macmillan acceded to Eisenhower's request to base 60
Thor IRBMs in England under joint control to replace the
nuclear bombers of the
Strategic Air Command, which had been stationed under joint control since 1948 and were approaching obsolescence. Partly as a consequence of this favour, in late October 1957 the US
McMahon Act was eased to facilitate nuclear co-operation between the two governments, initially with a view to producing cleaner weapons and reducing the need for duplicate testing. The
Mutual Defence Agreement followed on 3 July 1958, speeding up British
ballistic missile development, notwithstanding unease expressed at the time about the impetus co-operation might give to
atomic proliferation by arousing the jealousy of France and other allies. Macmillan saw an opportunity to increase British influence over the United States with the launching of the Soviet satellite
Sputnik, which caused
a severe crisis of confidence in the United States as Macmillan wrote in his diary: "The Russian success in launching the satellite has been something equivalent to
Pearl Harbour. The American cockiness is shaken....President is under severe attack for the first time...The atmosphere is now such that almost anything might be decided, however revolutionary". The "revolutionary" change that Macmillan sought was a more equal Anglo-American partnership as he used the Sputnik crisis to press Eisenhower to in turn press Congress to repeal the 1946 MacMahon Act, which forbade the United States to share nuclear technology with foreign governments, a goal accomplished by the end of 1957. In addition, Macmillan succeeded in having Eisenhower to agree to set up Anglo-American "working groups" to examine foreign policy problems and for what he called the "Declaration of Interdependence" (a title not used by the Americans who called it the "Declaration of Common Purpose"), which he believed marked the beginning of a new era of Anglo-American partnership. Subsequently, Macmillan was to learn that neither Eisenhower nor Kennedy shared the assumption that he applied to the "Declaration of Interdependence" that the American president and the British Prime Minister had equal power over the decisions of war and peace. Macmillan believed that the American policies towards the Soviet Union were too rigid and confrontational, and favoured a policy of détente with the aim of relaxing Cold War tensions.
1959 general election Macmillan led the Conservatives to victory in the
1959 general election, increasing his party's majority from 60 to 100 seats. The campaign was based on the economic improvements achieved as well as the low unemployment and improving standard of living; the slogan "Life's Better Under the Conservatives" was matched by Macmillan's own 1957 remark, "indeed let us be frank about it—most of our people have never had it so good," usually paraphrased as "You've never had it so good." Such rhetoric reflected a new reality of working-class affluence; it has been argued that "the key factor in the Conservative victory was that average real pay for industrial workers had risen since Churchill's 1951 victory by over 20 per cent". The scale of the victory meant that not only had the Conservatives won three successive general elections, but they had also increased their majority each time. It sparked debate as to whether Labour (now led by
Hugh Gaitskell) could win a general election again. The standard of living had risen enough that workers could participate in a consumer economy, shifting the working class concerns away from traditional Labour Party views.
Second government, 1959–1963 Economy Britain's
balance of payments problems led Chancellor
Selwyn Lloyd to impose a seven-month
wage freeze in 1961 and, amongst other factors, this caused the government to lose popularity and a
series of by-elections in March 1962, of which the most famous was
Orpington on 14 March. Butler leaked to the
Daily Mail on 11 July 1962 that a major reshuffle was imminent. Macmillan feared for his own position and later (1 August) claimed to Lloyd that Butler, who sat for
a rural East Anglian seat likely to suffer from
EC agricultural protectionism, had been planning to split the party over EC entry (there is no evidence that this was so). In the 1962 cabinet reshuffle known as the "
Night of the Long Knives", Macmillan sacked eight Ministers, including Selwyn Lloyd. The Cabinet changes were widely seen as a sign of panic, and the young Liberal MP
Jeremy Thorpe said of Macmillan's dismissals, "greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life". Macmillan was openly criticised by his predecessor
Lord Avon, an almost unprecedented act. Macmillan supported the creation of the
National Economic Development Council (NEDC, known as "Neddy"), which was announced in the summer of 1961 and first met in 1962. However, the National Incomes Commission (NIC, known as "Nicky"), set up in October 1962 to institute controls on income as part of his growth-without-inflation policy, proved less effective. This was largely due to employers and the
Trades Union Congress (TUC) boycotting it. (or Beeching I report) was published on 27 March 1963. The report starts by quoting the brief provided by the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, from 1960, "First, the industry must be of a size and pattern suited to modern conditions and prospects. In particular, the railway system must be modelled to meet current needs, and the modernisation plan must be adapted to this new shape", and with the premise that the railways should be run as a profitable business. This led to the notorious
Beeching Axe, destroying many miles of
permanent way and severing towns from the railway network.
Foreign policy , Finland. In the middle, the Finnish Minister
Ahti Karjalainen, and
Sir Anthony Lambert standing to the right. In the age of jet aircraft Macmillan travelled more than any previous prime minister, apart from Lloyd George who made many trips to conferences in 1919–22. Macmillan planned an important role in setting up a four power summit in Paris to discuss the Berlin crisis that was supposed to open in May 1960, but which Khrushchev refused to attend owing to the U-2 incident. Macmillan pressed Eisenhower to apologise to Khrushchev, which the president refused to do. Macmillan's failure to make Eisenhower "say sorry" to Khrushchev forced him to reconsider his "Greeks and Romans" foreign policy as he privately conceded that could no "longer talk usefully to the Americans". The failure of the Paris summit changed Macmillan's attitude towards the European Economic Community, which he started to see as a counterbalance to American power. At the same time, the Anglo-American "working groups", which Macmillan attached such importance to turned out to be largely ineffective as the Americans did not wish to have their options limited by a British veto; by in-fighting between agencies of the U.S. government such as the State Department, Defense Department, etc.; and because of the
Maclean-Burgess affair of 1951 the Americans believed the British government was full of Soviet spies and thus could not be trusted.
Relations with the United States The
special relationship with the United States continued after the election of President John F. Kennedy, whose sister Kathleen Cavendish had married
William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, the nephew of Macmillan's wife. Macmillan initially was concerned that the Irish-American Catholic Kennedy might be an Anglophobe, which led Macmillan, who knew of Kennedy's special interest in the Third World, to suggest that Britain and the United States spend more money on aid to the Third World. The emphasis on aid to the Third World also coincided well with Macmillan's "one nation conservatism" as he wrote in a letter to Kennedy advocating reforms to capitalism to ensure full employment: "If we fail in this, Communism will triumph, not by war or even by subversion but by seemingly to be a better way of bringing people material comforts". Macmillan was scheduled to visit the United States in April 1961, but with the
Pathet Lao winning a series of victories in the
Laotian Civil War, Macmillan was summoned on what he called the "Laos dash" for an emergency summit with Kennedy in Key West on 26 March 1961. Macmillan was strongly opposed to the idea of sending British troops to fight in Laos, but was afraid of damaging relations with the United States if he did not, making him very apprehensive as he set out for Key West, especially as he had never met Kennedy before. Macmillan was especially opposed to intervention in Laos as he had been warned by his Chiefs of Staff on 4 January 1961 that if Western troops entered Laos, then China would probably intervene in Laos as Mao Zedong had made it quite clear he would not accept Western forces in any nation that bordered China. The same report stated that a war with China in Laos would "be a bottomless pit in which our limited military resources would rapidly disappear". Kennedy for his part wanted Britain to commit forces to Laos if the United States did for political reasons. The meeting in Key West was very tense as Macmillan was heard to mutter "He's pushing me hard, but I won't give way". Macmillan did reluctantly agree if the Americans intervened in Laos, then so too would Britain. The Laos crisis had a major crisis in Anglo-Thai relations as the Thais pressed for armed forces of all SEATO members to brought to "Charter Yellow", a state of heightened alert that the British representative to SEATO vetoed. The Thais wanted to change the voting procedure for SEATO from requiring unanimous consent to a three-quarter majority, a measure that Britain vetoed, causing the Thais to lose interest in SEATO. The failure of the
Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 made Kennedy distrust the hawkish advice he received from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA, and he ultimately decided against intervention in Laos, much to Macmillan's private relief. Macmillan's second meeting with Kennedy in April 1961 was friendlier and his third meeting in London in June 1961 after Kennedy had been bested by Khrushchev at a summit in Vienna even more so. It was at his third meeting in London that Macmillan started to assume the mantle of an elder statesman, who offered Kennedy encouragement and his experience that formed a lasting friendship. Believing that personal diplomacy was the best way to influence Kennedy, Macmillan appointed
David Ormsby-Gore as his ambassador in Washington as he was a long-time friend of the Kennedy family, whom he had known since the 1930s when Kennedy's father had served as the American ambassador in London. He was supportive throughout the
Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and Kennedy consulted him by telephone every day. The Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore was a close family friend of the president and involved in White House discussions on how to resolve the crisis. About the Congo crisis, Macmillan clashed with Kennedy as he was against having United Nations forces put an end to the secessionist regime of
Katanga backed by Belgium and the Western mining companies, which he claimed would destabilise the
Central African Federation. By contrast, Kennedy felt that the regime of Katanga was a Belgian puppet state and its mere existence was damaging to the prestige of the West in the Third World. Over Macmillan's objections, Kennedy decided to have the United Nations forces to evict the white mercenaries from Katanga and reintegrate Katanga into the Congo. For his part, Kennedy pressed Macmillan unsuccessfully to have Britain join the American economic embargo against Cuba. Macmillan told his Foreign Secretary, Lord Home "there is no reason for us to help the Americans with Cuba". Macmillan was a supporter of the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963, and in the first half of 1963 he had Ormsby-Gore quietly apply pressure on Kennedy to resume the talks in the spring of 1963 when negotiations became stalled. Feeling that the Secretary of State,
Dean Rusk, was being obstructionist, Macmillan telephoned Kennedy on 11 April 1963 to suggest a joint letter to Khrushchev to break the impasse. Though Khrushchev's reply to the Macmillan-Kennedy letter was mostly negative, Macmillan pressed Kennedy to take up the one positive aspect in his reply, namely that if a senior Anglo-American team would arrive in Moscow, he would welcome them to discuss how best to proceed about a nuclear test ban treaty. The two envoys who arrived in Moscow were
W. Averell Harriman representing the United States and
Lord Hailsham representing the United Kingdom. Though Lord Hailsham's role was largely that of an observer, the talks between Harriman and the Soviet foreign minister
Andrei Gromyko resulted in the breakthrough that led to the
Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of August 1963, banning all above ground nuclear tests. Macmillan had pressing domestic reasons for the nuclear test ban treaty. Newsreel footage of Soviet and American nuclear tests throughout the 1950s had terrified segments of the British public who were highly concerned about the possibility of weapons with such destructive power being used against British cities, and this led to the foundation of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), whose rallies in the late 1950s-early 1960s calling for British nuclear disarmament were well attended. Macmillan believed in the value of nuclear weapons both as a deterrent against the Soviet Union and to maintain Britain's claim to be a great power, but he was also worried about the popularity of the CND. For Macmillan, banning above-ground nuclear tests, which generated film footage of the ominous mushroom clouds raising far above the earth, was the best way to dent the appeal of the CND, and in this the Partial Nuclear Ban Treaty of 1963 was successful.
Wind of Change of the
Barotse in Northern Rhodesia, 1960 Macmillan's first government had seen the first phase of the
sub-Saharan African independence movement, which accelerated under his second government. The most problematic of the colonies was the Central African Federation, which had united Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland together in 1953 largely out of the fear that the white population of Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) might want to join South Africa, which had since 1948 had been led by Afrikaner nationalists distinctly unfriendly to Britain. Though the Central African Federation had been presented as a multi-racial attempt to develop the region, the federation had been unstable right from the start with the black population charging that the whites had been given a privileged position. Macmillan embarked on his "Wind of Change" tour of Africa, starting in Ghana on 6 January 1960. He made the famous
'wind of change' speech in
Cape Town on 3 February 1960. It is considered a landmark in the process of decolonisation. on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly, 1960 Nigeria, the
Southern Cameroons and
British Somaliland were granted independence in 1960,
Sierra Leone and Tanganyika in 1961,
Trinidad and Tobago and
Uganda in 1962, and Kenya in 1963.
Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika to form
Tanzania in 1963. All remained within the Commonwealth except British Somaliland, which merged with
Italian Somaliland to form
Somalia. Macmillan's policy overrode the hostility of white minorities and the
Conservative Monday Club. South Africa left the multiracial Commonwealth in 1961 and Macmillan acquiesced to the dissolution of the
Central African Federation by the end of 1963. In Southeast Asia,
Malaya (which had gained independence on its own in 1957), Sabah (
British North Borneo),
Sarawak and Singapore formed a new independent nation of
Malaysia in 1963. Because Singapore with its ethnic Chinese majority was the largest and wealthiest city in the region, Macmillan was afraid that a federation of Malaya and Singapore together would result in a Chinese majority state, and insisted on including Sarawak and British North Borneo into the federation of Malaysia to ensure the new state was a Malay majority state. During the Malaya Emergency, the majority of the Communist guerrillas were ethnic Chinese, and British policies tended to favour the Muslim Malays whose willingness to follow their sultans and imams made them more anti-communist. Southeast Asia was a region where racial-ethno-religious politics predominated, and the substantial Chinese minorities in the region were widely disliked on the account of their greater economic success. Macmillan wanted Britain to retain military bases in the new state of Malaysia to ensure that Britain was a military power in Asia and thus he wanted the new state of Malaysia to have a pro-Western government. This aim was best achieved by having the same Malay elite who had worked with the British colonial authorities serve as the new elite in Malaysia, hence Macmillan's desire to have a Malay majority who would vote for Malay politicians. Macmillan especially wanted to keep the British base at Singapore, which he like other prime ministers saw as the linchpin of British power in Asia. The Indonesian president
Sukarno strongly objected to the new federation. On 8 December 1962, Indonesia sponsored a rebellion in the British protectorate of Brunei, leading to Macmillan to dispatch Gurkhas to put down the rebellion against the sultan. In January 1963 Sukarno started a policy of
konfrontasi ("confrontation") with Britain. Macmillan detested Sukarno, partly because he had been a Japanese collaborator in World War Two, and partly because of his fondness for elaborate uniforms despite never having personally fought in a war offended the World War I veteran Macmillan, who had a strong contempt for any man who had not seen combat. In his diary, Macmillan called Sukarno "a cross between Liberace and Little Lord Fauntleroy". Macmillan felt that giving in to Sukarno's demands would be "appeasement" and clashed with Kennedy over the issue. Sukarno was the leader of the most populous nation in Southeast Asia and though officially neutral in the Cold War, tended to take anti-Western positions, and Kennedy favoured accommodating him to bring him closer to the West; for example, supporting Indonesia's claim to Dutch New Guinea even through the Netherlands was a NATO ally. Macmillan feared the expenses of an all-out war with Indonesia, but also felt to give in to Sukarno would damage British prestige, writing on 5 August 1963 that Britain's position in Asia would be "untenable" if Sukarno were to triumph over Britain in the same manner he had over the Dutch in New Guinea. To help reduce the expenses of the war, Macmillan appealed to the Australian Prime Minister
Sir Robert Menzies to send troops to defend Malaysia. On 25 September 1963, Sukarno announced in a speech that Indonesia would
"ganyang Malaysia" ("gobble Malaysia raw") and on the same day a mob burned down the British embassy in Jakarta. The result was the Indonesian Confrontation, an undeclared war between Britain vs. Indonesia that began in 1963 and continued to 1966. The speedy transfer of power maintained the goodwill of the new nations, but critics contended it was premature. In justification Macmillan quoted
Lord Macaulay in 1851,
Skybolt crisis confer in 1961 Macmillan cancelled the
Blue Streak ballistic missile in April 1960 over concerns about its vulnerability to a pre-emptive attack, but continued with the development of the air-launched
Blue Steel stand-off missile, which was about to enter trials. For the replacement for Blue Steel he opted for Britain to join the American
Skybolt missile project. From the same year Macmillan permitted the
US Navy to station
Polaris submarines at
Holy Loch, Scotland, as a replacement for Thor. When Skybolt was unilaterally cancelled by US Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara, Macmillan negotiated with President Kennedy the purchase of Polaris missiles under the
Nassau agreement in December 1962.
Europe Macmillan worked with states outside the
European Communities (EC) to form the
European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which from 3 May 1960 established a free-trade area. As the EC proved to be an economic success, membership of the EC started to look more attractive compared to the EFTA. A report from Sir Frank Lee of the Treasury in April 1960 predicated that the three major power blocs in the decades to come would be those headed by the United States, the Soviet Union and the EC, and argued to avoid isolation Britain would to have decisively associate itself with one of the power blocs.
Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963) Macmillan's previous attempt to create an agreement at the May 1960 summit in Paris had collapsed due to the
1960 U-2 incident. He was a force in the negotiations leading to the signing of the 1963
Partial Test Ban Treaty by the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. He sent
Lord Hailsham to negotiate the Test Ban Treaty, a sign that he was grooming him as a potential successor. Kennedy visited Macmillan's country home,
Birch Grove, on 29–30 June 1963, for talks about the planned
Multilateral Force. They never met again, and this was to be Kennedy's last visit to the UK. He was
assassinated in November, shortly after the end of Macmillan's premiership.
End of premiership By the early 1960s, many were starting to find Macmillan's courtly and urbane Edwardian manners anachronistic, and satirical journals such as
Private Eye and the television show
That Was the Week That Was mercilessly mocked him as a doddering, clueless leader. Macmillan's handling of the
Vassall affair – in which an Admiralty clerk, John Vassall, was convicted in October 1962 of passing secrets to the Soviet Union – undermined his "Super-Mac" reputation for competence. The following month Harold Wilson was elected as the new Labour leader, and he proved to be a popular choice with the public.
Profumo affair The
Profumo affair of 1963 permanently damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government. The revelation of the affair between
John Profumo (
Secretary of State for War) and an alleged call-girl,
Christine Keeler, who was simultaneously sleeping with the Soviet naval attache Captain
Yevgeny Ivanov made it appear that Macmillan had lost control of his government and of events in general. In the ensuing Parliamentary debate he was seen as a pathetic figure, while
Nigel Birch declared, in the words of
Browning on
Wordsworth, that it would be "Never glad confident morning again!" On 17 June 1963, he survived a Parliamentary vote with a majority of 69, one fewer than had been thought necessary for his survival, and was afterwards joined in the smoking room only by his son and son-in-law, not by any Cabinet minister. However, Butler and
Reginald Maudling (who was very popular with backbench MPs at that time) declined to push for his resignation, especially after a tide of support from Conservative activists around the country. Many of the salacious revelations about the sex lives of "Establishment" figures during the Profumo affair damaged the image of "the Establishment" that Macmillan was seen as a part of, giving him the image by 1963 of a "failing representative of a decadent elite". Macmillan was succeeded by Foreign Secretary
Alec Douglas-Home in a controversial move; it was alleged that Macmillan had pulled strings and utilised the party's grandees, nicknamed "The Magic Circle", who had slanted their "soundings" of opinion among MPs and Cabinet Ministers to ensure that Butler was (once again) not chosen. He finally resigned, receiving the Queen from his hospital bed, on 18 October 1963, after nearly seven years as prime minister. He felt privately that he was being hounded from office by a backbench minority: ==Retirement, 1963–1986==