Minister of Health In
October 1951 Churchill again became prime minister. Macleod was not offered office but instead became Chairman of the backbench Health and Social Services Committee. Macleod became a member of
White's Club in 1953, and shocked members by sitting up all night to play cards. His friend Enoch Powell was jealous at Macleod's rapid promotion, but offered Macleod the use of a room at his flat when Eve Macleod was seriously ill with polio. Macleod consolidated rather than reformed the NHS, administered it well and defended it against Treasury attacks on its budget.
Suez crisis Macleod was not directly involved in the collusion with France and Israel over the
Suez Crisis, but although he was unhappy at the turn of events, he did not resign. Macleod's duties required him to discuss the Suez Crisis with union leaders. In August 1956, he spoke to
Vincent Tewson, General Secretary of the
TUC, and found him "very "weak-kneed"" and "ill-informed". On 20 August, Macleod and Eden met Tewson, Beard of the Engineers' Union and Geddes of the Postmen's Union, and agreed that the upcoming TUC Conference would back an equivocal resolution by Geddes. On 25 August, the day after Monckton's "outburst" expressing doubts at the Egypt Committee, Cabinet Secretary
Norman Brook sent a note to Eden listing Macleod as among those Cabinet members (the others being Butler, Monckton,
Derrick Heathcoat Amory, the
Earls of Selkirk and
Kilmuir, as well as Heath who, as Chief Whip, attended Cabinet but was not technically a full member) who would want to postpone military action until all other options had been exhausted or until Nasser provided them with a better pretext, whichever came first. There were three unknowns and ten hawks—a narrow Cabinet majority in favour of military action. On 11 September, at Cabinet, Eden tasked Macleod with finding out if there would be trouble from the unions in the event of military operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, Norman Brook advised Macleod to "hold his hand for the moment, as this was not the appropriate time". It is unclear if this initiative came from Brook or was in response to an inquiry from Macleod himself.
Suez: decision to invade Macleod missed the thinly-attended Cabinet on 18 October, but afterwards was sent Eden's minute that he'd told the French that every effort must be made to stop Israel attacking Jordan, whilst Eden had told Israel that Britain would
not come to Egypt's aid. It is not known whether Macleod knew of the secret
Protocol of Sèvres. On 23 October, Eden told the Cabinet that there had been secret talks with Israel in Paris. On 25 October, Eden told the Cabinet that Israel would attack Egypt after all, but did not tell them about the secret Sèvres Protocol. Cabinet minutes record that Macleod was doubtful about the use of force (as were Monckton and Heathcoat Amory) because of the lack of clear UN authority and the risk of antagonising the USA. However, they did not formally dissent from the Cabinet decision to invade if Israel attacked Egypt (the Cabinet were deceived about the extent to which such an attack had already been secretly agreed – "collusion" – by Eden and Selwyn Lloyd). On 2 November, the Cabinet agreed that even in the event of a ceasefire between Egypt and Israel, Anglo-French forces should still seize the Canal in a policing role until UN forces were able to take up the baton (Macleod and Heathcoat Amory were doubtful). By the weekend of 3–4 November, fighting between Israel and Egypt had largely ceased. At Cabinet on Sunday 4 November, the Cabinet decided to go ahead with the landings (but hand over to peacekeeping duties to the UN at some future date, an option which Macleod (and Heathcoat Amory) argued was hardly compatible with use of force). The other options had been to postpone by 24 hours in the hope that Israel and Egypt might accept an Anglo-French occupation (a view supported by Butler, Kilmuir, Heathcote Amory and an "unnamed minister", presumed to be Macleod), or postpone indefinitely on the grounds that Israeli-Egyptian hostilities had already ceased (the view of Salisbury, Monckton and Buchan-Hepburn). Only Monckton had his dissent recorded, the others agreeing to accept the decision of the majority.
William Rees-Mogg, then a Conservative candidate in the North-East, made a speech urging that Macleod be party leader.
David Astor of
The Observer, who on 4 November had attacked Eden for "crookedness" in an editorial, wrote to Macleod on 14 November, urging him as a younger minister to seize the party leadership so that collusion could be pinned on Eden and Lloyd, after
Edward Boyle had told him that he was not interested and that Monckton was not up to it. Macleod did not reply but showed the letter to Freddie Bishop, head of the Prime Minister's Private Office, and Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook for their comments; Eden, who was on the verge of a breakdown, did not regard the matter as important. On 20 November 1956 the question of collusion was raised in Cabinet, with Eden and Lloyd (who was in New York at a United Nations meeting) both absent; Shepherd believes that it was probably Macleod who raised it. The Cabinet agreed to stick to Lloyd's formula that Britain had not
incited the Israeli attack on Egypt.
1958 bus strike When Eden stepped down as prime minister in January 1957, Lord Kilmuir, formally witnessed by
Lord Salisbury, took a straw poll of the Cabinet to determine his successor; despite his closeness to Butler, Macleod, along with the overwhelming majority of his colleagues, backed
Harold Macmillan, regarding him as a stronger leader. Macleod had intended at first to be a reforming Minister of Labour – he attempted, in the teeth of resistance from the
TUC, to negotiate a Workers' Charter (a throwback to the
Industrial Charter of the late 1940s) in return for a Contract of Service. He also hoped to take a tougher line with strikes than his predecessor
Walter Monckton, whose explicit remit had been to appease the unions. The unions were beginning to become more militant, under the leadership of
Frank Cousins, boss of the
TGWU. Macleod initially accepted his own chief Industrial Commissioner's Investigation into the busmens' case. Macmillan, backed by the Cabinet, insisted on settling a separate railwaymen's strike, despite an arbitration award against them, as it was felt that they had more public sympathy than the busmen. On the bus issue, Macleod was overruled and forced to pick a fight with Frank Cousins on the pretext that they accept an independent arbitration award. Macmillan had picked a fight shrewdly, as the busmen had no allies amongst the other unions.
Ernest Bevin or
Arthur Deakin would not have allowed such a strike, but Cousins felt compelled to support it, and Opposition leader
Hugh Gaitskell criticised the government in a speech at Glasgow. Macleod had recently demanded more debates on industrial relations but in his Commons speech of 8 May now criticised the opposition for demanding one. The conference resulted in the first
Ugandan Constitution, which took effect on 9 October 1962. In
Nyasaland (later
Malawi), he pushed for the release of
Hastings Banda, contrary to the advice of the Governor and of other politicians. He had to threaten resignation in the Cabinet to get his own way, but won Macmillan round and Banda was released in April 1960 and almost immediately invited to London for talks aimed at bringing about independence. Elections were held in August 1961, and by 1962, the British and the
Central African Federation cabinets had agreed that Nyasaland should be allowed to secede from the CAF; Banda was formally recognised as prime minister on 1 February 1963. Historian
Wm. Roger Louis wrote that "Macleod was to Africa as
Mountbatten had been to India".
Vernon Bogdanor has called him the greatest of Britain's colonial secretaries apart from
Joseph Chamberlain.
Books In 1961, Macleod published a sympathetic biography of former prime minister
Neville Chamberlain, whose reputation then stood at a very low ebb because of recent memories of the
Munich Agreement. The book was largely ghostwritten by Peter Goldman, whose own promising political career would be aborted when he lost the
Orpington by-election the following year. Macleod was most interested in social policy and had most input into the parts up to 1931, including Chamberlain's time as Lord Mayor of Birmingham and as Minister of Health. It had been intended as a potboiler to earn money for his daughter's social season, and Macleod had been reluctant to read seven boxes of papers from Chamberlain's sister Hilda (Chamberlain's letters to whom are an important primary source); it added little to the portrait painted by his official biographer
Keith Feiling. Macleod used government papers in breach of the "
Fifty-year rule" then in operation.
Cabinet Secretary Sir
Norman Brook persuaded the Prime Minister to demand amendments to conceal the degree of Cabinet involvement in the
abdication of
King Edward VIII (who was still alive in 1961) and the degree to which the civil servants
Horace Wilson and
Warren Fisher had demanded that the former King "reorder his private life" afterwards. Macleod later told
Alan Watkins (in
"Brief Lives" 1982) "It was a bad book. I made a great mistake in writing it. It made me no money, and it has done me a lot of harm". Watkins conceded that the book "had been grudgingly and meanly reviewed". Macleod's party chairmanship coincided with Selwyn Lloyd's tight economic policies, and poor by-election results, most notably
Orpington in March 1962. He impressed on Macmillan the need for a major reshuffle in 1962, although he did not have in mind anything as drastic as the "
Night of the Long Knives" in which Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet. With the political scandals of 1962–63 (
Vassall,
Profumo) the Conservatives sank ever lower in the opinion polls. Macleod gave his usual excellent conference speech at Blackpool on 11 October, unlike Maudling and Butler, who damaged their leadership chances by giving poor speeches, but Home's leadership bandwagon grew despite a mediocre but rapturously received speech. Macleod thought the new prime minister should be a "moderniser", with views on the liberal wing of the party, and in the House of Commons. However,
Lord Aldington,
David Eccles,
Sir Michael Fraser and Eve Macleod all rejected this interpretation of Macleod's actions.
Ian Gilmour argues that Macleod's subsequent refusal to serve under Home makes it "inconceivable" that he had voted for him. Butler later wrote "I cannot help thinking that a man who always held all the bridge scores in his head, who seemed to know all the numbers, and played
Vingt-et-un so successfully would have been useful". Macleod's article was written as a review of a book by
Randolph Churchill, which he described as "Mr Macmillan's trailer for the screenplay of his memoirs". In his posthumously published book
The Art of Memory (April 1982) Butler wrote that "every word" of the
"Spectator" article "is true". Ian Gilmour also suggests that Dilhorne's refusal to speak out against Macleod in January 1964, when Macleod's credibility was at a low ebb, is strong evidence that Dilhorne knew his figures to be suspect. but survived a No Confidence vote by 29 votes to 7.
Peregrine Worsthorne attacked him as a social climber who had done his best to climb into the class at which he now sneered (e.g. by becoming a member of White's Club), but his biographer comments that a Conservative politician of that era had little option but to play the game by those social rules, and that Macleod had regarded himself as "commander class" since his time at Staff College during the war.
Shadow Chancellor Macleod returned to the shadow cabinet under Home following the
1964 election. His remit of opposing steel nationalisation came to naught as given his tiny majority Labour Prime Minister
Harold Wilson did not proceed with this measure. The coinage of the word "
stagflation" is attributed to him. Speaking in the House of Commons on 17 November 1965, he said: "We now have the worst of both worlds — not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of 'stagflation' situation. And history, in modern terms, is indeed being made." Macleod opposed the death penalty and supported legalisation of abortion and homosexuality; this did not help his acceptance by the more right-wing elements of his own party at the time. Macleod established good personal relations with several of his Labour opposite numbers, including both Bevan and
James Callaghan, even though he clashed with Callaghan numerous times at the
despatch box while serving as Shadow Chancellor in the 1960s (by contrast, he did not get on with Callaghan's successor as chancellor,
Roy Jenkins, considering him vain and arrogant). As Shadow Chancellor he concentrated on tax reform. Jenkins later recorded that Macleod was not "an amiable "shadow" ... no doubt he was in pain ... Perhaps he also had a premonition that time was running out for him." In 1968 Macleod defied a decision of the Shadow Cabinet by voting against the Labour Government's
Commonwealth Immigration Bill, believing it to be a breach of promises made by the Conservative Government to the Kenyan Asians. Powell's speech generated huge public support and Macleod was horrified at the open racism of many of the members of the public who wrote to him on the topic, likening them to the disgusting creatures which are revealed when one overturns a stone. During this period Macleod was noted for his attacks on Wilson. He used to refer to Wilson as "the little man" even though Wilson was actually slightly taller than him. Some of Wilson's entourage used to refer to Macleod as "the poison dwarf" but Wilson had, in the words of Macleod's biographer, a "wary respect" for him. In the late 1960s he attacked Wilson in a public speech for accusing the Conservatives of being unpatriotic. He called Wilson "a man whose vision is limited to tomorrow's headline" and, in an oft-quoted line, that whereas
President Kennedy had called himself "an idealist without illusions" Wilson was "an illusionist without ideals". On 14 May 1970, in the House of Commons just before the
General Election, when Wilson claimed that Conservative transport policies might result in an increase in children's road deaths (Labour had recently introduced the
breathalyzer), he attacked him for trying to make political capital from such a topic, and was rebuked by the Speaker for shouting abuse (the exact words are not recorded in
Hansard; according to another MP he shouted "swine!") at Wilson across the despatch box.
Chancellor of the Exchequer and death On 20 June 1970, two days after the
Conservative Party's unexpected election victory, Macleod was appointed
Chancellor of the Exchequer by the new prime minister, Heath. Despite being in pain, he made his one and only major speech on the economy as chancellor on 7 July 1970. He was discharged 11 days later. At 10.30 pm on 20 July, while in
11 Downing Street, he suffered a heart attack and died at 11.35 pm. His death was a blow to the Heath government.
Robert Carr described him as "our trumpeter … any government needs a great trumpeter." ==Oratory, personality and political views==