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How Successful Was Harold Macmillan as Conservative Party Leader?

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How successful was Harold MacMillan as Conservative party leader?
Harold MacMillan, a man who came from a middle class background studied at Eton. He became a Conservative MP in 1924, six years after serving on the front line during World War One. He held various positions in the Conservative party before becoming the leader. Such positions like: Minster for Housing and Local Government, Minister of Defence, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1957, Harold MacMillan became the leader of the Conservative party and became Prime Minister after Eden’s retirement.
Some would deem MacMillan as a saviour for the Conservative party after the Suez Crisis. Even though he was a supporter of Eden and his plans for the Suez Canal, he somehow deflected the blame from the whole party and passed it to Eden, who was former leader and Prime Minister. This didn’t affect Eden too much as he had already resigned as leader of the Conservative party and Prime Minister. If MacMillan didn’t pass the blame, the party would have struggled to keep their majority vote in parliament.
In regards to the Economy, Macmillan was lucky to be voted in during the age of affluence where 60% of the population made it into the middle class (due to the loss of working people during the World Wars). It was a time where, compared to the austerity of the war years, wage, exports and investments were all on the rise. For example wage rose by 72% which could mean the population could spend more money on their lifestyle and not just for the basics. This then lead MacMillan to say ‘Most of our people have never had it so good’. This was true at the time and was a way for MacMillan to show publicly how much of success his policies had been so far.
However, despite the boom, there were still concerns about inflation and the dilemma to maintain growth and employment. It has been argued that the key factor MacMillan the Conservatives stayed in power was that the average pay for industrial workers had risen since Churchill’s 1951 victory by over 20%. In the period of 1951 to 1964, there was uninterrupted full employment with productivity faster than any other period in the century. Total production increased by 40%, average earnings increased by 30%, car consumption increased from 2 to 8 million, whilst televisions in households saw a rise from 1 million to 13 million.
MacMillan consistently hid the balance of payments problems in stop-go economic short terms and devaluations of the Pound. The economic boom and led to the economy becoming overheated and needed cooling. This forced the Conservatives to reduce government spending and increase bank rates to help lower the demand with the aid of strict taxation. He had to deal with this carefully as it was the boom that had significantly assisted the Conservatives stay in power and provided these increases in living standards. Considering the balance of payments problems with the stop-go economics, the 2.6% GDP growth rate was less than any other developed country in the western world, except for Ireland. In 1961 and 1964, Britain faced further Balance of Payments crises.
Harold MacMillan implemented tax cuts just before the general elections and this was a huge contribution why the Conservatives were voted again back into power. This was a smart political move by MacMillan and it allowed the Conservatives to stay in power for another term.
One of Harold MacMillan’s failures was the failure to join the ECC (European Economic Community). MacMillan decided to pursue an application for membership of the ECC which split the party and subsequently vetoed by French President, Charles de Gaulle. In 1962, government unpopularity spurred MacMillan into dismissing one-third of the cabinet. This was also known as ‘the Night of the Long Knives’. This act upset many of his supporters. The following year, his handling of the Profumo affair left him looking out of touch with events. He represented an ageing and old-fashioned Conservative party. In comparison to the new Labour party which was young and more with the times.
The social aspects such as living conditions were considerably improved. The actual proportion of Britain’s population saying they were ‘very happy’ was 52% in 1957. The streets were however covered in soot and were polluted (possibly due to the industrial success) which wasn’t good for the health of the general public. But, the welfare state outweighed this problem.
Life during MacMillan’s premiership was the period for the emergence of and individualistic consumer society based on youth culture. MacMillan argued that the 1960’s represented an era of a classless society in which his party had ‘won’. During this time, Britain only lost 272 days due to strikes which show the general consensus was happy with MacMillan leadership of the Conservative party and of the Country.
There was an initial rise in consumer goods as previously mentioned. However, there were more consumer goods being made than actually being bought in Britain. Britain’s share of world trade had declined due to the post war era. This was due to other countries being starved financially from the war and couldn’t afford to export goods from other countries. But, those starved countries achieved better capital GNP (Gross National Product) than Britain because they had to literally start their economies up again, as did Britain. It ended up with Britain losing money abroad as they had a lot of investment abroad and countries couldn’t afford their products due to the failing economies.
Overall, Harold MacMillan was a fairly successful leader of the Conservative party as he improved so many social factors, but in doing this he caused inflation which led to the country becoming even deeper in debt. He may have been liked by the people due to the increase in wages, but he wasn’t liked so much within his own party due to ‘the Night of Long Knives’ axing of 1/3 of his cabinet and not sticking to the party fundamental beliefs and views.

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