Remembering Harold Macmillan`s 1960

Though frequently overshadowed by the more groundbreaking governments of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) and Clement Attlee (1945-51) and the wartime government of Winston Churchill (which needs no introduction), Harold Macmillan is often remembered as one of the most successful Prime Ministers of the 20th century. Macmillan had been a longstanding critic of appeasement in the 1930s and briefly served as Secretary of Air under Churchill during the war, Macmillan quickly rose through the ranks in the 1950s under Churchill and his successor Anthony Eden, before achieving the top job in 1957. Macmillan`s government was marked by prosperity, stability, competence and a relative peace around the world. As well as the longest continuous term in office for a Conservative between the war and the ascent of Margaret Thatcher.

Doubtless one of the most significant speeches of 20th century Britain and likely the most famous statement of a Prime Minister in the 1960s, Harold Macmillan’s celebrated “Wind of Change” speech is sometimes perceived to have signalled the end of the system of European colonialism. This assumption correctly acknowledges that the speech, made in Cape Town in February 1960, was of great importance – but also endangers the possibility of viewing decolonisation as a trickle-down process. This dubious paradigm of social change as a top-down process plagues much of the historiography of British Empire (India’s independence being one exception). The same mistakes are frequently made when discussing the abolition of slavery in the Empire, where the role of slaves and former slaves is ignored or underplayed in all but the work of CLR James , Robin Blackburn and a handful of other scholars. The same process may well be at work when analysing Macmillan’s address in Cape Town, emphasis is placed not on the work of Kwame Nkrumah or Jomo Kenyatta (neither of which are mentioned once), but on “what Governments and Parliaments in the United Kingdom have done (for the colonised) since the war” . Though Macmillan does refer to the “growth of national consciousness” , by and large his address focuses on the role of White British Parliamentarians. Thus he essentially renders the more than 55 million subjects in Africa alone (based on population data from the World Bank) as passive players in the fading colonial system.

That is not to pretend that Macmillan is guilty of imperialism only that in this all important speech his attention lingers predominantly on the interests of and the roles played by the British and the likes of the South African colonists. This is likely integral to Britain’s and Macmillan’s essentially mixed approach to apartheid, while praising African “nationalism” and calling for “fellowship” between the races, yet there is no direct substantial condemnation of apartheid. This coupled with Britain’s trade with South Africa and his government’s “vote against the U.N. resolution condemning apartheid” , paints an image either of tacit support, of indifference or of hypocrisy toward apartheid. Nonetheless the address with its references to “national consciousness” and “the wind of change” , caused considerable offence to the South African Government of Hendrik Verwoerd. Charges of hypocrisy or indifference are however suspicious, the choice of Cape Town as a venue for a speech which ultimately calls for decolonisation is enough to suggest that Macmillan did set out to shake the very foundations of apartheid – even if he refused to explicitly condemn the oppression in South Africa. Macmillan’s biographer, Alistair Horne claims that Macmillan was sick with foreboding on the morning of the speech , a sure sign that Macmillan knew the implications of what he was about to say – both in South Africa and across the wider world, articulating and accelerating a process which would not conclude until after the collapse of the nationalist Estado Novo regime in Portugal in 1974. Macmillan’s anti-colonialism may not have been brazen but it was clear-cut, when only a month later the Verwoerd government was responsible for a civilian massacre of 62 Africans, the world railed against them in condemnation and Macmillan was perceived to be a prescient figure and his speech a warning that white-minority rule of African nations was dangerous and untenable.

While the winds could refer to the previously mentioned trickling down of democracy from colonial master to colonial subjects, a new incarnation of the concept of Britain’s civilising mission in Africa, it is better understood as an African led process of the often mentioned “growth of national consciousness” . According to Dubow “The speech amounted to concession dressed up as an act of statesmanship” , that is Macmillan was seeking to appear in control of the situation, when in reality the real engines of social change were the colonised in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dubow describes an imperial situation in which Macmillan’s Britain is struggling to hold the situation together, struggling to suppress uprisings in places such as Kenya and deal with the crisis in Nyasaland, and is increasingly looking incompetent among the international community. This highlights the issue of political pragmatism for imperial powers in post war Europe, while Belgium and France fought in the 1950s to retain imperial possessions, it quickly became apparent to the Conservative Party after the Suez Crisis that the tide of anti-imperialism in Africa could not be held back. Macmillan’s concessions to anti-imperialist movements were necessary to save face and to avert prolonged wars such as that experienced by France in Indochina, Algeria and Cameroun.

Though it is worth noting allegations that Britain had attempted or succeeded in playing the role of an informal empire or one of a neocolonial power - using influence, coercion or military intervention to achieve the same aims as it had in the imperial heyday. It is without doubt that Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” speech was the quintessential moment in the British government’s abdication from its role as a formal empire. However, as outlined in previous paragraphs, the speech also embodies the idea that decolonisation was a top down process, a process of colonial benevolence. This reflects the longstanding belief in imperialism as a "civilising mission" for Britain, to many imperialists the empire`s role was to bring western civilisation to the remainder of the globe. The speech also endangers the risk of forgetting that in places such as Kenya, African nationalism was met with draconian repression including the use of concentration camps to combat alleged rebels. A tactic which has more recently been condemned as a war crime given that many civilians ended up in camps. Ultimately though Harold Macmillan’s speech was an embodiment of the wider European belief that the age of empires had passed and that the “national self-determination” invoked by President Wilson in 1918 was finally being realised in the so-called third world.

Bibliography: 1. Blackburn, Robin, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, (London: Verso, 1988) 2. Dubow, Saul, `Macmillan, Verwoerd, and the `Wind of Change` Speech`, The Historical Journal, 54, 4 (2011) 3. Horne, Alistair, Macmillan, 1957- 1986, (London, United Kingdom: Macmillan, 1988) 4. James, CLR, The Black Jacobins, (London: Penguin Books, 2001) 5. Lowrance-Floyd, Emily, Losing an Empire? Losing a Role?: The Commonwealth Vision, British Identity and African Decolonisation, 1959-1963, (Kansas: University of Kansas, 2012) 6. http://www.africanrhetoric.org/pdf/J%20%20%20Macmillan%20-%20%20the%20wind%20of%20change.pdf Macmillan, Harold, Winds of Change, [accessed 1st February 2015] 7. Ward, Stuart, `The "Wind of Change" and the British World`, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 37. Jahrg., H. 2, Dekolonisierung in Westeuropa (April -June 2011) 8. Wilson, Woodrow, President Wilson`s Address to Congress, Analyzing German and Austrian Utterances, [accessed 6th February 2015]