Word: macmillan
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...Harold Macmillan, who is more frequently likened to an Edwardian squire, last week was compared instead to Stalin, Robespierre and the Mikado's Lord High Executioner. Britain's Prime Minister earned such comments by pushing ahead with a pitiless purge in which he axed 16 ministers in four days. Though shocked by the mass firings of Macmillan's trusted lieutenants, Britons gleefully echoed Liberal M.P. Jeremy Thorpe's gibe: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his friends for his life...
...What Macmillan did not expect was a near mutinous-but short-lived-Conservative reaction. After the final round of firings, icy silence from the Conservative benches greeted Macmillan as he entered the House of Commons. By contrast, sacked Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd drew tumultuous applause from his party when he meekly took a new, third-row seat. The unkindest cut came from Tory Gilbert Longden, who dryly "congratulated" the Prime Minister on heeding Kipling's counsel...
Pink Toryism. As the shock wore off, Britons began to see the method in Mac's massacre. Weeks ago, Harold Macmillan had concluded from the Tories' disquieting series of election reverses that Britain did not want a change of party so much as a change within the party. Cobwebbed Conservative policies and lackluster leaders have succeeded in alienating a large segment of the young, middle-class voters who swept the party into office eleven years ago in response to the forward-looking policies that were dubbed "pink Toryism." To woo them back, Macmillan plucked from his front...
After this radical operation, Harold Macmillan more than ever will have to stand or fall by the success of his administration. The new Cabinet certainly improves the government's "image," but many critics feel that the new faces are mostly familiar Establishment types, and that, for instance, any practical business talent is lacking among them. The Conservative Daily Telegraph optimistically announced: "The government has a fresher and stronger look." Opposition leaders were derisive. Labor's Hugh Gaitskell called the Cabinet shake-up "a political massacre which can only be interpreted as a gigantic admission of failure." Joseph Grimond...
...Colonial Office has been put under the able administration of Duncan Sandys, who already heads Commonwealth Relations; and Lord Home continues as the Foreign Secretary. One surprise to outsiders was the survival of Iain Macleod as party chairman because he is widely blamed for the Tories' repeated defeats. Macmillan feels that this criticism is unfair, that Macleod deserves more time to show what...