Winston Churchill returned unexpectedly as Prime Minister in the General Election of October 1951. From almost the start of the 1951–5 government, the Conservative and Labour parties were preoccupied with who should succeed their leaders. Churchill was unwell, as Lord Moran’s diaries show, but hung on until the last possible minute against the heir-apparent, Anthony Eden. There was dissatisfaction with Clement Attlee, but following the death of Ernest Bevin there was no obvious MP to replace him, except possibly the brilliant but volatile Welshman, Aneurin Bevan.
The division of Germany and Berlin persisted and continued to cause tensions. In 1949 the victorious People’s Liberation Army had added China to the Communist ‘bloc’ and the Cold War spread to Asia. Stephen Spender wrote of ‘the tragedy of Europe’ as politicians planned a united revitalised continent in the form of a common market, a federal state or a defence community. Harold Macmillan describes his protégé Edward Heath’s enthusiasm for the European project. Differences of opinion on Britain’s future place in Europe become evident within both the left and right of politics.
One of Macmillan’s responsibilities in the 1951–5 government was housing: both he and Richard Crossman (in the 1960s) for Labour were enthusiastic proponents of large-scale house-building under public control and of ‘slum clearance’, policies with unforeseen and sometimes disastrous results. Both kept diaries at this period and into the 1960s.
Disentangling Britain’s African empire produced seemingly endless and insoluble problems in the 1950s, much to Macmillan’s despair as Prime Minister (only the tip of the iceberg is visible in this chapter): but for Tony Benn the anti-colonial campaigns and the Suez Canal crisis in 1956 were welcome signs of African nationalism. Closer to home, another disaster unfolded at the same time as the Suez crisis, when the forces of the Soviet Union crushed the first uprising in its European empire, in Hungary. ‘Sublime courage against hopeless odds,’ wrote Violet Bonham Carter as the tanks rolled into Budapest. Frances Partridge, last of the ‘Bloomsburys’, noted approvingly that the nuclear disarmament campaign was growing.
Future Conservative MP Gyles Brandreth, and the leader of the Fire Brigades Union, John Horner, make fleeting appearances as the ‘swinging sixties’ begin.
Sunday, 28 October 1951
Chartwell, Kent
Message from Churchill to come out to Chartwell. I expected this. On arrival at 3 pm found him in a most pleasant and rather tearful mood. He asked me to ‘build the houses for the people.’ What an assignment! I know nothing whatever about these matters, having spent 6 years now either on defence or foreign affairs. I had of course hoped to be Minister of Defence and said this frankly to Churchill. But he is determined to keep it in his own hands. I gather the reason is the frightful muddle in which defence has been allowed to fall.
I asked Churchill what was the present housing ‘set-up.’ He said he hadn’t any idea. But the boys would know. So the boys (Sir Edward Bridges, Head of the Home Civil Service and Sir Norman Brook, Cabinet Secretary) were sent for – also some whisky.
Churchill says it is a gamble – make or mar my political career. But every humble home will bless my name, if I succeed.
On the whole it seems impossible to refuse – but, oh dear, it is not my cup of tea … I really haven’t a clue how to set about the job.
Harold Macmillan
If Clem dies soon, or if Vi persuades him to retire, there’ll be a problem. Under Herbert it won’t be a happy ship, nor a Socialist ship either. Nye can hardly hope to gather support in Parliamentary party for some time … but memories and moods are short. Hugh has a long way to go.*
Winston is feeling the burden … he’s seventy seven now and I don’t believe he can stick it.
Dick Crossman and I had a row in Smoke Room on first day. I attacked him for making a speech … saying that ‘Bevanism’ would within twelve months cease to be a heresy and become policy of party. Only ‘Bevanites’ had been honest. I said what is ‘Bevanism’? All this posturising and egoising!
Hugh Dalton
Thursday, 1 November 1951
To the school gym class … The gym instructor, in his white clothes, gave instructions. Matthew, age six and a half, was in the second row and I noticed that he never heard any orders. He just guessed, or copied what the other boys were doing. ‘Hands on hips!’ roared the instructor. Mathew put his on his head. Then they had to climb up a kind of gate of six bars, passing through the gap between the top two bars, and coming down the other side … One of the boys got stuck trying to crawl between the two top bars. He waited half way through shaking and trembling. All the other boys started laughing at him, until they were stopped by the instructor.
And on the way home in the bus where I sat with Matthew, one of his little friends who was seated directly in front of us suddenly turned and said, ‘Spender, is that old white-haired gentleman with spectacles your daddy?’ ‘No’ said Matthew with perfect self-possession. When we got off the bus and were at a safe distance from his little friend I asked Matthew why he had said I was not his father. ‘Because you aren’t’, he exclaimed passionately. ‘You aren’t like what he said you were.’
Stephen Spender
Monday, 5 November–Friday, 9 November 1951
I have seen representatives of the building unions (Coppock and Fawcett*) [who] were very pleasant. I told them I knew little or nothing about the problem [of housing shortage]. They were much amused by this. ‘The last ministers knew everything. It was no good trying to talk to them. They talked at us.’ This referred to Dalton and Bevan. The union leaders support the Labour Party. But they have little affection for the political leaders. I gave Coppock and Fawcett tea in the House of Commons. F (who is a fine hearty fellow, weighing 15 to 16 stone, I should say) consumed buns at a prodigious rate …
We have that 300,000 ‘target’ (often, I fear, turned into a ‘promise’) round our necks. Timber and steel are the bottlenecks and, with the economic crisis and rearmament, will get worse.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 6 November 1951
At the Parliamentary Party meeting this morning Attlee opened the discussion on the King’s Speech, like a schoolmasterly bird snapping up the morsels. What is significant is the cheerfulness and morale of the Party, compared with its state of semi-disintegration just before the election. What a difference it makes not to be scared of losing your seat! They are even almost friendly to the Bevanites, out of sheer general sense of well-being. Personally I am inclined to regard this sort of optimism as extremely complacent. We are in opposition, without any idea of a constructive Socialist policy and it may be a great deal more difficult to unseat the Conservatives than many of my colleagues imagine.
In the King’s Speech debate itself Winston followed [Attlee] … with a supreme peace appeal.
The election has had a real result on both parties. It has made them realise that the people of this country really do want peace and I fancy Winston and Eden have a better chance than Attlee and Morrison. The latter had to lean over backwards in being pro-American for fear of being accused of appeasing Communism. Winston and Eden have to lean over backwards trying to get peace with Stalin in order to rebut the charge of war-mongering. But how far is the Old Man really prepared to go? Is he prepared to persuade Truman to give up the rearmament of Western Germany … for an agreement with the Kremlin about a unified disarmed Germany?
Richard Crossman
Friday, 16 November 1951
The meetings [in the October General Election] varied from extremely rowdy at Lewisham (on Persia) to very stolid in Yorkshire. The difference between Yorkshire and the rest of the country is quite extraordinary. It is almost a convention that when one goes to speak in support of another candidate to say something nice about the candidate, and this normally evokes enthusiastic cheers from the audience. It never failed to work everywhere until I got to Leeds where my first meeting was in West Leeds for Charlie Pannell. He is a good Member of Parliament and popular in his constituency. But my extremely nice remarks about him were apparently ignored by the audience who did not make a sound. They listened very carefully to everything I said about Persia, which was the first part of my speech, and then when I stepped back for a moment they burst into applause.
I then resumed my speech about the cost of living and they applauded at the end. On leaving the meeting I was talking to the constituency chairman about the rock-like immobility of the audience, and he said ‘Yes, you were very clever to step back at that point. They thought you had finished the speech – that’s why they clapped.’
Hugh Gaitskell
Monday, 3 December 1951
After dinner on Sunday Ben, the son of Harold Nicolson … told an interesting story about the ten days he spent at Windsor Castle as Deputy Keeper of the King’s Pictures …
Parlour games were played after dinner and the Queen chose her favourite game. The master of ceremonies took all the male guests outside and provided them with brass pokers, shovels etc. After ten minutes practice they were then made to goose step down the long drawing room past the King, the Queen and the Princesses, who found it exquisite fun seeing Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Ismay and Anthony Eden doing ‘eyes right.’
Richard Crossman
February 1952
On February 5th there began a debate [on Korea] in the House. I heard Anthony Eden make a somewhat insipid speech and then the Opposition put down a vote of censure on the PM personally. He prepared to answer it on the following day by a fighting speech revealing the dramatic fact that the Labour government had gone further in committing us to bomb China in certain circumstances than anyone supposed and that he had entered into no new commitments.
On the morning of February 6th I arrived at No 10 early and asked the Private Secretary on duty for the text of the speech. He said that there was no need to think of it further: Edward Ford had just been round from Buckingham Palace to announce that the King was dead.
When I went to the Prime Minister’s bedroom he was sitting alone with tears in his eyes, looking straight in front of him and reading neither his official papers nor the newspapers … I tried to cheer him up by saying how well he would get on with the new Queen, but all he could say was that he did not know her and that she was only a child.
John Colville
Thursday, 21 February 1952
Lord Moran’s home
This evening, when I was about to go down to dinner, the telephone rang; it was Winston’s voice. Usually the secretary calls me to the telephone before he comes.
‘Where are you Charles? I’d like to see you.’
When I got to No. 10 I found him sitting on his bed in his boiler suit. He looked at me intently as if he were interested in me and wanted to know what I was thinking – so different from his usual detached and almost absent-minded greeting.
‘I am glad you have come. I took up the telephone when I woke an hour ago and I couldn’t think of the words I wanted. Wrong words seemed to come into my head, but I was quite clear what was happening and did not say them. This went on for about three or four minutes. Then the operator asked, “Do you want the Private Office?” What does it mean Charles? Am I going to have a stroke?’ … ‘My pulse was alright,’ he said putting his finger on his radial artery. ‘Take it now, Charles … Tell me, Charles what happened? Why couldn’t I find the words I wanted?’
I explained that some of the small vessels in his head had gone into a state of spasm, contracting so that the circulation to the speech centre was diminished.
He offered to send me home in his car but I thanked him and said I would walk some of the way. I wanted to do a little hard thinking. In the past I have taken great risks when I let him carry on at Washington after the heart attack, and again at Monte Carlo, two and a half years ago, when he had a stroke.
Ought he to resign or could we do anything to patch him up for a little …?
I knew that he had set his heart on seeing the young Queen crowned before he gave up office. That it was a bad time for Anthony [Eden] to take over was clear to him; he would be held responsible for the unpopular austerity measures … I was beginning to see that it was not the moment for him to go.
Lord Moran
February 1952
During the next weeks much happened … there was trouble over the name of the Royal House …
This had all arisen because Queen Mary sent for me on February 18th to say that Prince Ernst August of Hanover had come back from Broadlands and informed her that Lord Mountbatten had said to an assembled house party of royal guests that the House of Mountbatten now reigned.
John Colville
Sunday, 2 March 1952
Birch Grove, Sussex
Church in the morning … A large congregation of boy scouts; girl guides; brownies, cubs etc. We had the hymn ‘All things bright and beautiful’, but in deference to modern political thought the third verse was omitted (viz. ‘The rich man in his castle/The poor man at his gate/ God made them high or lowly/And ordered their estate’). What rot!
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 25 March 1952
To a joint meeting of the defence and foreign affairs group [of the Labour opposition]. This meeting opened with a rambling speech by Shinwell and then there came quite a sensible discussion centring on the Russian proposal for a Four-Power conference to consider an independent, armed Germany.
This meeting showed the extraordinary situation prevailing in the parliamentary Labour Party. Seventy people were there and seventy people, in a general debate, without any preliminary preparation, cannot achieve a policy decision. The Russian Note was delivered eighteen days ago. In the sixteen days between its delivery and the publication of the Western Powers’ reply, no one, either at Transport House or in Westminster was competent to work out the Labour Party’s reaction or put forward our suggestions as to what the Three Power reply should be …
There is no machinery for making the Labour Opposition a real fighting opposition with a policy.
Richard Crossman
Thursday, 27 March 1952
This week has been curiously flat. The controversy over the sensational Bevanite split has all petered out, as all controversies do, and what is clearer than ever is that the parliamentary opposition is almost entirely leaderless and without drive or energy.
Richard Crossman
Thursday, 1 May 1952
I went yesterday to the ‘New Town’ of Basildon – in Essex. This struck me as pure Martin Chuzzlewit. It was ‘Little Eden’ again.
What a mad venture – without any of the facilities. No water; no sewerage; no river to pollute (except the Crouch, which cannot be polluted because of its oyster bed), no industry – and jolly few houses.
Harold Macmillan
Thursday, 15 May 1952
Tonight the PM and Mrs C gave a farewell dinner for the Eisenhowers at No 10, on the eve of his departure from SHAPE* to become a candidate in the Presidential Election. There were thirty two to dinner, including most of the war-time chiefs and the present Service ministers – Alexanders, Tedders, Alanbrookes, Portals, Jumbo Wilson, Attlees, etc …
When Ike left he said that if he were elected he would pay just one visit outside the USA – to the UK – in order to show our special relationship. The atmosphere could not have been more cordial – though things almost started badly with neither the PM nor Mrs C knowing that it was white tie and decorations.
John Colville
Friday, 16 May 1952
Chartwell, Kent
Alone with the PM who is low … he spoke of coalition. The country needed it he said, and it must come. He would retire in order to make it possible; he might even make the demand for it an excuse for retiring. Four-fifths of the people of this country were agreed on four-fifths of the things to be done.
John Colville
Tuesday, 20 May 1952
For nearly a fortnight I have been in Manor House Hospital, having my appendix out … I took with me an enormous load of books and, as usual, read very few of them apart from the History of the Times dealing with the years from 1912 to 1939. What struck me was the enormous power of the press in politics before 1918 and its steady decline since then. Northcliffe could really make and unmake Cabinet ministers … Of course the main influence of The Times in its day was in foreign affairs, where its leading articles were really studied as semi-official statements of British policy.
[The decline is due to] the rise to power of the Labour Party, which tends to write off nearly all newspapers as capitalist. A Labour Cabinet, for that reason, is not nearly as open to newspaper influence as a Conservative Cabinet. But the basic reason is the extension of the franchise in 1918 and the coming into being of a real thing called democratic public opinion, whereas in the old days, political decisions really were taken by an oligarchy and a newspaper proprietor operated as a member of an oligarchy with a particularly loud voice.
Richard Crossman
Wednesday, 21 May 1952
I cannot help feeling it is both wrong and foolish to denationalise transport and steel, however doctrinaire may have been the motives of the late Government in nationalising them. When the Labour Government get back they will be renationalised.
John Colville
Friday, 30 May 1952
It is difficult to see how our economic ills can be cured and at the moment nothing that is done seems to be more than a short-term palliative. The remedy for 50 million people living in an island which can maintain 30 million and no longer leads the world in industrial exports or in capital assets invested abroad is hard to find. Harold Macmillan said to me at the Turf yesterday that he thought development of the Empire into an economic unit as powerful as the USA and the USSR was the only possibility …
Mrs Churchill does not think [Winston] will last long as Prime Minister.
John Colville
Tuesday, 3 June 1952
As I read Hansard [on the debate on the introduction of commercial television] I was conscious of the long shadow of that gaunt old covenanter, Lord Reith, across its pages. I could see him as he rose in his place like another John Knox to scourge the infidel. ‘I am slow of speech,’ he began, ‘reluctant to waste your lordships’ time and my own.’ He claimed no credit at all for what had been done when he was Director General of the BBC during the first sixteen years of its existence. He tried to do as he had been taught in the Manse … Of the worth and consequence of British broadcasting, its flower and essence, he spoke with pride: today it commanded the respect and admiration of the whole world. ‘What grounds are there,’ he cried, ‘for jeopardizing that heritage and tradition?’ It was a betrayal and a surrender.
‘Need we be ashamed of moral values or of intellectual and ethical objectives? It is these that are here and now at stake.’
Those who had spoken in the debate – the men who count in the deliberations of the House – were not concerned with making debating points. They were preoccupied with the effect of television over the years upon the minds and lives of their fellow citizens, the importance, to borrow Lord Kirkwood’s words, of somehow educating our people to understand the meaning of the vital problems which come before them.
Lord Moran
Monday, 30 June 1952
To Tony’s [Crosland] flat to meet Callaghan, Jenkins and Jay.
Frank talk. I told them Germans were murderers, individuals excepted. They’d killed all my friends in First War, etc. Deutschland uber alles was their song and they meant it. You couldn’t tie them with snips of paper like the European Defence Community … The order to advance will be given in German, and we should be expected to obey.
Roy, Tony and Jim all excused themselves from dining.
I am very angry and worked up about it all. I see Europe going by default. Free economy Germany will be forging ahead; with all their gifts of efficiency displayed to the full. And we, in our mismanaged, mixed-economy, over-populated little island, shall become a second-rate power, with no influence and continuing ‘crises.’
Hugh Dalton
Saturday, 19 July–Wednesday, 23 July 1952
Westminster Hospital
I spent [the last thee days] partly sitting with Zita [Crossman] and partly on the terrace outside the Casualty Ward overlooking Horse-ferry Road, where there is a nice tree in the garden.
The two memories I have of those three days are, first, the warmth of friendship from all sorts of unexpected people, and secondly the odious problems of the Health Service.
I was a bit puzzled why, about every six hours, I was asked whether Zita should go to a private ward … When I mentioned it to [our doctor, Harris] on Sunday after Zita had died, he said to me that of course she had only been got into Westminster Hospital because he had said to [the consultant] Meadows that, if he could get her into the Casualty ward, I would agree to her being a private patient. I said, ‘But why couldn’t she have got in as a National Health patient?’ And he said, ‘I haven’t got one of my patients into the Westminster, ever.’
So much for the theory that we have removed the money element from sickness. It wasn’t the fault of anybody in the hospital. It’s just the system of having, within one building, the public wards and the private wards.
Richard Crossman
July 1952
Aren’t we All? Haymarket Theatre, London
The seats around Haymarket were lined with people held back by a concourse of policemen. The audience had to be seated half an hour before ‘the Royals’ arrived. It sat cheerfully talking. The Royal Box was decorated with hideous small, bronze and yellow chrysanthemums.
Throughout the performance the Regal Box was being surreptitiously watched by half the audience, so that the play received scant attention; but the general atmosphere was uncritical and good-natured, the display of manners and loyalty impressive. It was very interesting to note how the Royal Family seem to have acquired a communal manner of behaviour. They have developed an instinctive self-protection so that they should not bump into each other or stumble down a step. They move in slow motion with care and a fluid grace: their technique is so perfected that it appears entirely natural. No doubt but that much of this charm and grace is very special to the Queen Mother. The reigning Queen has developed independently but her charm and interested wonder is inherited from her mother’s genius.
If the Queen Mother were anyone other than she is (ridiculous supposition) would one come so readily under her spell? Would one admire quite so much those old fashioned dainty movements? The sweetly pretty smile with tongue continually moistening the lower lip? Yes – whoever she were she could not be faulted.
Cecil Beaton
Monday, 11 August 1952
Winston took Meg and me to see The Innocents, a stage version of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. He got a great welcome but embarrassed us by being unable to hear and asking questions in a loud voice … Anthony Eden and Clarissa Churchill* are engaged. Clarissa, who was at Chartwell for the weekend, is very beautiful but she is still strange and bewildering, cold if sometimes witty, arrogant at times and understanding at others. Perhaps marriage will change her and will also calm the vain and occasionally hysterical Eden.
John Colville
Monday, 18 August–Tuesday, 19 August 1952
North Devon
Arrived at Barnstaple at 6.45 and drove to Lord Fortescue’s house, where I spent the night. Lord F is Lord Lieutenant and seems very competent and sensible.
We left at 8.45 and drove to Lynton with short stops at two villages on the way, which had also been injured. The urban district consists of two separate towns – one, Lynton, on the hill; the other, Lynmouth, on the shore. The damage was to Lynmouth, and caused by the tremendous flood forcing the river out of its bed, so that what was the High Street is now the river. The immense quantity of boulders (said to be 40,000 tons) destroyed the bridges. The problems of reconstruction are very considerable; the major cost will be in roads and bridges. I met all the local councillors, the County Council authorities, the heads of the Army, Police and of the voluntary services (Red Cross, WVS etc.) at a conference in the little Town Hall after the tour of the town.
One of the problems is to look after all the people evacuated from Lynmouth (about 1,000) without altogether destroying the economic life of Lynton as well. So it was agreed not to take over the remaining hotels, but to encourage visitors …
Drove to Dulverton, stopping at one or two villages (such as Exford) on the way where a good deal of damage has been done.
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 22 August–Monday, 25 August 1952
W[inston] has persuaded Truman to join with him in sending a message, signed by them both, to Mossadeq about the Persian oil question. W himself did it and the FO oil people agreed. It is the first time since 1945 that the Americans have joined with us in taking overt joint action against a third power …
Eden, completing his honeymoon in Lisbon, is furious … the stealing by Winston of his personal thunder.
John Colville
Sunday, 31 August 1952
Birch Grove, Sussex
A week’s shooting is a wonderful rest. All thought of politics, business, family troubles and all the rest is put aside, and for some 8 hours a day everything is concentrated on the vastly exciting and infinitely serious problems of trying to kill grouse.
I shot fairly well on the whole; at some drives very badly, at others almost brilliantly … I shot the highest and fastest I have ever killed.
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 26 September–Monday, 29 September 1952
Labour Party Conference, Morecambe
When I got on the train at Euston I found Tom O’Brien and Geoffrey Bing in the first-class restaurant car and we travelled down together. Tom O’Brien, who is next year’s TUC chairman and an Irish rogue of the highest quality, entertained us to the biggest meal that I have ever had in a restaurant car. It lasted from five o’clock till a quarter to eleven and included endless rounds of drinks, two bottles of white wine, two bottles of red wine and then liqueurs – as well as all the courses the Railway had to offer. ‘Some of my delegates,’ Tom said after dinner, ‘have the insolence to challenge me on my expense account!’
I woke up [on Saturday] to a morning of sunshine, rainclouds and a superb view across the mud to the mountains of the Lake District. There is nothing whatsoever to be said for Morecambe except this view, which appeared at thirty-hour intervals for a minute or two throughout the week. It’s a minor Blackpool, dumped down on mud flats, with a four-mile long promenade, with the Grosvenor at one end, the Winter Gardens in the middle and the other big hotel at the other end, so that life was spent in going from one to the other in a blustering, driving wind. By the end of the Conference everybody had streaming colds, as well as heartache.
[On Monday, I was] in time to hear the chairman read out the obituary notice, which included Stafford Cripps and [George] Tomlinson. At this point the chairman turned to Attlee and asked him whether he wanted to say anything. Attlee doodled and shook his head. It was the first indication of the astonishing lack of leadership which he displayed throughout.
Richard Crossman
Saturday, 27 September 1952
There is a general feeling that the Tories have recovered a good deal of ground in the last few months. Certainly ministers have settled down.
The Trade Union leaders, frightened of communism and not on very good terms with their colleagues in the political wing of the party, are anxious to ‘play ball’ with us.
All the same, there is a distrust and even fear of the Tories, which is based on the suspicion and jealousy of the ‘proletariat’, now come into its own, and determined to maintain its standard of ‘panem et circenses’ at all costs.* If panem is rather scarce, circenses are all the more vital. 2/- or 3/- on the rent to keep the house from falling down will be bitterly resented and probably fought to the end. But 12/6 a week on the ‘never, never’ system to buy the television set is a necessity.
… All the inflationary wages of the people are spent on the few available luxuries or pleasures. Roughly, these are tobacco, alcohol and (for the war) books. (Now television, cinemas, dancing etc. are taking the place of books).
Perhaps the most noticeable, and painful, difference between our position now and when we were last in office (1945) is our relationship to the US. Then we were on an equal footing – a respected ally. Then it was the Churchill–Roosevelt combination (or its aftermath). Now we are treated by the Americans with a mixture of patronising pity and contempt … They are really a strange people. Perhaps the mistake we make is to continue to regard them as an Anglo-Saxon people. That blood is very much watered down now; they are a Latin-Slav mixture with a fair amount of German and Irish.
Harold Macmillan
Monday, 24 November 1952
People are prattling of the Coronation already, of whom will and will not be summoned, of their robes and places and arrangements. The Dowager Peeresses are nervous lest they are not invited. Members of Parliament too are in a ticklish position. In fact conversation has taken on a Gilbert and Sullivan quality. Coaches and robes, tiaras and decorations. Winnie Portarlington announced at luncheon that she has harness but no coach; Circe Londonderry has a coach but no horses; Mollie Buccleuch has no postillions – but five tiaras. People are obsessed by their Coronation prerogatives.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon
Thursday, 27 November 1952
Steel Bill was resumed this afternoon. [John] Freeman (a Bevanite socialist) opened with a very able speech … The debate dragged on in a desultory way till 9 pm when [Jack] Jones (Socialist) wound up in a glorious platform, tub-thumping, emotional speech, tears in his eyes – but all, or nearly all, fake emotion. The contrast between the icy precision of Freeman (scholar; intellectual; gentleman) and Jones (steel workers’ union) was very interesting. On the whole I prefer Jones. I wound up for the Government … part boisterous and racy … [part] a serious and philosophic argument – a restatement of The Middle Way and a plea for the view that Government ‘supervision’ of a great industry could be better done without ‘ownership’.
Harold Macmillan
Thursday, 1 January 1953
Queen Mary
A quiet day on board …
[Winston] said that if I lived my normal span I should assuredly see Eastern Europe free of Communism …* He lamented that owing to Eisenhower winning the presidency [in November 1952] he must cut much out of Volume VI of his War History and could not tell the story of how the United States gave away, to please Russia, vast tracts of Europe they had occupied and how suspicious they were of his pleas for caution. The British general election in July 1945 had occupied so much of his attention which should have been directed to stemming this fatal tide.
John Colville
Thursday, 8 January 1953
Washington, Farewell dinner for President Truman
After dinner Truman played the piano. Nobody would listen because they were all busy with post-mortems on a diatribe in favour of Zionism and against Egypt which Winston had delivered at dinner (to the disagreement of practically all the Americans present, though they admitted that the large Jewish vote would prevent them disagreeing publicly). However, on W’s instructions I gathered all to the piano and we had a quarter of an hour’s presidential piano playing before Truman left. He played with quite a nice touch and, as he said himself, could probably have made a living on the stage of the lesser music-halls.
The Americans, apart from Truman and Marshall, stayed till 1.00 am. I had an uneasy feeling that the PM’s remarks – about Israel, the European Defence Community, and Egypt – though made to the members of an outgoing administration, had better have been left unsaid in the presence of the three, Bradly, Bedell Smith and Matthews, who are staying on with Ike and the Republicans.
John Colville
Sunday, 11 January–Monday, 12 January 1953
It seems that in The Listener my discussion with Bertrand Russell on television is highly praised. Can’t but think of him as vainglorious, ape-like. The true destroyer of Christendom isn’t Stalin or Hitler or even the Dean of Canterbury and his like, but Liberalism.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Friday, 16 January–Saturday, 17 January 1953
Anthony Eden and his new wife Clarissa came to stay for a night … He is much less nervous and much less easily offended (or frightened) than he used to be. I think he notices that we all want him to succeed to the Throne and that no one is intriguing to supplant him.
But when will Churchill go?
Eden agreed that in the last few months – or weeks – the political situation had changed. A Socialist victory at the next general election was no longer inevitable. All this made it more important to get the change in the Premiership before any radical alteration in the atmosphere.
Harold Macmillan
Sunday, 1 February–Thursday, 5 February 1953
East coast of England
We got back late on Saturday night from a Bromley Young Conservatives ‘do.’ The wind and rain were terrific.
It was hard to make out just what was the extent of the Great Flood. But it was clear it was a terrible calamity ranging from Yorkshire to Kent …
[On 3 February] we flew first to Manly airfield and managed to get a car to take us to Mablethorpe and Sutton. The sea had burst through the sea defences (the sand dunes etc.) and flooded both these resorts and a good deal of agricultural land. About 6,000 people had been evacuated – their houses being uninhabitable. The water was not very deep (as it was low tide) but would rise again with the tide to 3 or 4 feet.
We went about in a ‘Duck’ and saw everything. The chairman, town clerk, surveyor and other officials seemed to have done well. All the people had gone to Louth, or villages in the county. From Manly we flew to Sculthorpe (now being used by the American Air Force). There was a fine array of Generals, Eagle colonels etc. and great kindness. The first car broke; so it was decided to ‘motivate alternative transportation.’ We drove to Hunstanton … and saw similar damage there. Unfortunately the loss of life was high, owing to the sea having broken through the sea wall and swept away a number of little bungalows. These were largely occupied by officers and non-commissioned officers of the American Air Force. About 26 or so were drowned …
At Hunstanton I got a telephone call (the telephone had just been repaired) about a row in the House of Commons in my absence … the Socialists are still trying to make capital out of the disaster, of course.
It is really remarkable how kindly neighbours have been. In Whit-stable about 6,000 are homeless yet only 50 are in the ‘rest centres’. All the rest have found a home in Kentish towns and villages.
Harold Macmillan
Saturday, 7 February 1953
Cincinnati, USA
I am torn by the tragedy of Europe. Everything points to it and has always pointed to it and I wonder whether we have not known about it far longer than we think … longer than my own lifetime. Just as Baudelaire in 1850 writes of the horror of the world being Americanised (which we think of as quite a recent idea) so perhaps we were born in the shadow of the decline of Europe …
The grotesque idea occurs to me that the kindness of Americans to us is like the kindness of people to invalids.
Stephen Spender
Monday, 2 March 1953
Went to the ‘press’ preview of the Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia. We have an extremely good Ministry of Housing exhibit … We show two ‘people’s houses’ (one three bedroom, one 2 bedroom). One of these is the new ‘open’ design which will I think be popular in the South and with young people. It gives them a large sitting room and dining room and ‘lounge’ all in one room, from which the stairs go up. (This is in place of the old front parlour where no one ever sat and which was reserved for the ‘corpse’.)
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 6 March 1953
Stalin’s death is officially announced by the Kremlin. All through yesterday, the strangest bulletins, with an extraordinary wealth of detail, both as to the illness and its treatment, were published to Russia and to the world. It appeared as if all the doctors were heavily insuring themselves against accusations of incompetence or treachery.
There is no indication yet of where power will now reside. Will it be a committee of public safety? Will it be an individual? Will it be Molotov, Malenkov, Beria … ?
Harold Macmillan
Saturday, 28 March 1953
Poor Queen Mary died on Tuesday night. She would have loved to see the Coronation, but I feel it is better for her to die now rather than just before or just after it.
We are all dreadfully sad about poor Vivien. She is in a mental home and has been asleep for a week. She had apparently really gone over the edge, poor darling. Larry,* wisely, has gone away to Italy. It is a tragic story and my heart aches for both of them.
Noël Coward
Monday, 30 March 1953
This evening I went to see a C.B.S. show illustrating their weekly television news programme, edited by Ed Murrow, which goes on at three o’clock on Sunday afternoons. It is really superb. As the lights went up I heard Nye behind me saying ‘Infantile, the whole thing is completely infantile.’ The conclusion from this is that Nye does not think he was a great success on a television show which he himself did last week. He is like Churchill in this way. They are both babies where their own fame is concerned. On the way home I saw Westminster Hall still open and I thought I would look in on Queen Mary’s lying-in-state. It was just midnight but there was only a very thin trickle of people going through. Indeed, this lying-in-state has been a popular flop … You really can’t have the preparations for a coronation going on and at the same time enjoy a good funeral.
Richard Crossman
Wednesday, 15 April 1953
Lunch at 10 Downing Street
The Iain Macleods were there and Mary and Christopher Soames.*
They are polling today in South Africa and we talked a little of that and other Africa problems. He [Winston] was, I thought, rather on the defensive about them and said how easy it was for people who did not live in multi-racial communities to lay down laws for those who did. I agreed but said that those Whites must come to some terms with the Blacks they had chosen to live amongst – and that Malan’s terms† were impossible and that he was sowing the seeds of doom for himself and all Europeans in South Africa.
He became very puckish and schoolboyish and said ‘Do you know why Black people don’t wish to pray with White ones? Because they don’t like their smell.’
I had no talk with Iain Macleod tho’ I should have liked to. W suddenly said how increasingly he loved animals – particularly cats and goldfish.
Violet Bonham Carter
Thursday, 21 May 1953
At Cabinet this morning the P.M. was in a mood of almost schoolboy excitement. He has been invited (with the French Prime Minister) to meet President Eisenhower. The meeting is to be in Bermuda. This is much better than Washington. The P.M. is immensely pleased at this turn of events. He announced it this afternoon to the House of Commons … but it has not saved M. [René] Mayer, the P.M. of France. He was voted out by the Assembly today.
Harold Macmillan
Wednesday, 27 May 1953
Today’s banquet for the Queen in Westminster Hall really was quite an affair. The top table ran along the platform where Charles I was tried and behind it were magnificent banks of flowers.
The food was cold and not very good – rather fat New Zealand lamb cutlets and Empire wines. The speeches were commendably brief and I’ve never heard Churchill speak better. Despite the solemnity of the occasion he made a light-hearted parliamentary oration … at one point he referred to the Americans and said that we have to be very careful these days when we talked about the American constitution, and then added ‘I will therefore content myself with the observation that no constitution was written in better English.’ Everybody was convulsed with laughter …
Afterwards the Queen came down past us and stood just beside us while we sang ‘God Save the Queen.’ She had togged herself up in a singularly sober outfit and looked, close to, a rather dull, ordinary girl. Then Churchill strolled down and three or four of us shook him by the hand and congratulated him upon his speech whereupon, as usual, he nearly burst into tears with joy.
Richard Crossman
Wednesday, 17 June 1953
[Television] fills the whole political world. There are violent opinions, for and against. The BBC and The Times newspaper (now edited by William Haley, former head of the BBC) are putting up a tremendous fight to defend their monopoly. They have got Lords Halifax, Waverley and Brand – and of course the Bishops – to form a society for their support. The alleged American ‘vulgarity’ and especially their handling of the Coronation* has been whipped up into a great cry against sponsoring.
After all the tedious economic problems which no one can understand or solve, this is one issue on which everyone can have an opinion.
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 26 June 1953
Chartwell, Kent
‘Look, my hand is clumsy,’ the PM said as I entered his room. Transferring his cigar to his left hand, he made a wavering attempt to put it to his lips.
‘It is so feeble. Hold out your hand Charles.’
And with that he tried to touch the tips of my fingers with the corresponding fingers of his own hand.
‘I’m not afraid of death but it would be very inconvenient to a lot of people. Rab is very efficient up to a point, but he is narrow and doesn’t see beyond his nose …’
When he had done I examined his left hand and arm. There was some loss of power in the left grip – and this had developed since yesterday, three days after the onset of the trouble. I do not like this, the thrombosis is obviously spreading.
Lord Moran
Saturday, 4 July 1953
This has been a most extraordinary week – full of drama.
Monday morning the Cabinet was summoned for 12 noon. Butler took the chair … He told us of the visit which he and Salisbury had paid to Chartwell on Friday, where they found the PM in poor health, but very gallant. With the greatest tact and the lightest of touches, he revealed to us (what we did not know) the nature of Churchill’s illness. ‘The speech was not very clear; the movements were not too easy.’ (In fact he had had a ‘stroke’ – the left leg and arm were paralysed, and the left side of his face.)
It was a terrible shock to us all, although revealed so discreetly. Many of us were in tears, or found it difficult to restrain them …
Lunched with Lady Pamela Berry … [who] is a devoted friend of Anthony Eden. She fears that Churchill will not be able to hold on till Eden is ready.* This (she thinks) cannot be till October. But can the PM last so long and can the truth be concealed so long? On July 2nd … at 7 pm I left by car for Chartwell for dinner.
The Churchills are using the ‘flat’ upstairs.
PM was wheeled in and, as he entered the room, he cried out, ‘I must congratulate you on a magnificent Parliamentary triumph. It was a masterpiece.’ I sat down beside his chair, and he began to talk with great animation about the debate [the previous Wednesday]. He spoke without any difficulty and without any particular slurring of words (more than his usual lisp) …
At dinner he talked so much at the beginning that he slobbered over his soup. He poured out some champagne with a steady hand and cried out ‘you see, I don’t spill precious liquor.’ The atmosphere was not oppressive … but positively gay. It was a kind of conspiracy we were all in – and it was rather fun to have such respectable people as Salisbury, Butler and co as fellow-conspirators …
There were certainly times, at and after dinner, when I thought he was putting on an act – but it was a jolly brave one, anyhow. I was, at many times in the evening, nearer to tears than he. We discussed the possibility of a dissolution; death and Dr Johnson’s fear of it; Buddhism and Christianity; Pol Roger – a wine, a woman and a horse … But he talked most of Germany and Europe.
The situation is really fascinating. Butler is, of course, playing a winning game.
Harold Macmillan
Thursday, 16 July 1953
During the last week a journalistic orgy has been taking place over poor Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend. He has been posted to Brussels and she is in South Africa with the Queen Mother. She is returning tomorrow poor child, to face the Daily Mirror poll which is to decide, in the readers’ opinion, whether she is to marry a divorced man or not! It is all so incredibly vulgar and, to me, it is inconceivable that nothing could be done to stop these tasteless, illiterate minds from smearing our Royal Family with their sanctimonious rubbish.
Larry and Vivien came to do The Apple Cart last week and supped here afterwards … no sign of there ever having been a mental breakdown.
Noël Coward
Thursday, 6 August 1953
Chequers
I drove down to Chequers through the green countryside, steeling myself inwardly. How should I find Winston? How much or little impaired?
I found Clemmie in the rose garden.
Clemmie said she felt sure he ought to retire in the autumn and begged me not to urge him to stay on if he asked my advice. She said, truly, that the Conference with the Russians, which he longed for, would not be just one Conference. It would be the start of a long struggle which might last for years.
He was just getting up and came into the big hall when we went in – dressed in his siren suit, walking with a stick but not too badly, his face quite normal – pink and no distortion.
At moments he became suddenly and unreasonably angry – like a violent child. He blazed forth against the BBC. ‘I hate the BBC. It kept me off the air for 11 years. It is run by reds –.’ Abuse of Reith followed – who could not be described as a ‘red’.
After luncheon we went out into the garden, after numerous little houris had been summoned with papers etc., and a nurse brought shoes and zipped them on. It was sunny and after a little pacing on the grass we sat down on a seat and discussed his future. It was terribly poignant for he longs to keep his hold on the levers of power – and where would he be without them? ‘Othello’s occupation gone!’
I drove back feeling an unutterable sense of tragedy – at watching this last – great – ultimately losing fight against mortality.
Violet Bonham Carter
The very success of the Housing drive brings new problems. Bricks and cement are still insufficient; we must curtail the programme. We cannot restrict New Towns; or special houses for miners; or other Govt needs. So any restriction must fall on the Local Authority schemes – and they don’t like it. I hope that if we go on with the great slum clearance and Operation Rescue scheme in the autumn, LAs will be ready to begin to switch their activities. But there must be a gap – perhaps a year – to make new plans. If we could only get enough cement we could get through. Will there ever come an end to pouring cement into the ground for American bombers?
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 21 August 1953
Walked in woods with Blake (keeper) from 11–2 … We saw a good many wild birds on the Buttocks Bank side. I fear there are very few at the top end (garden etc.). The foxes have had them all; when we are rearing it’s almost impossible to protect the wild birds from vermin. Perhaps next year we won’t rear any tame pheasants and really have a go at vermin of all kinds – human included! But I never think the human poachers (unless really organised ones like some of the Wiltshire gangs) do as much harm as animal ones.
After supper worked till rather late. There seems to be a large number of difficult Compulsory Purchase Orders.
Harold Macmillan
Wednesday, 16 September 1953
Coventry constituency
Saturday was spent in the Stratford-on-Avon constituency where Tom Locksley, a young Coventry schoolmaster, is the candidate. We motored vast distances through rural Warwickshire to meetings attended by a score of people and, in one instance, by none.
At each of the Warwickshire villages I met the handful of people who are struggling to build a party, the majority of them being schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, and one got an astonishingly vivid picture of the problems involved. The schoolmasters in particular really are the salt of the earth.
Richard Crossman
Wednesday, 23 September 1953
Scotland
Left Nairn at noon and motored to Comrie. We came by Loch Tay and Loch Earn – a really lovely drive, in beautiful weather, sun and cloud and an occasional storm. At Blair Atholl we drove up to the Castle, now – like all the houses of the grandees – abandoned to the tourists, more or less …
A pouch arrived, containing a very gloomy letter from Julian [Amery] from Strasbourg. He fears Germany more than Russia, and above all fears the European Defence Community and handing the leadership of Europe to Germany on a platter.
This balance of fears is a most difficult problem to decide … It may be that Germany is no longer the potential master of Europe and that we are right in thinking only of the Russian menace. But – if we are wrong – there will be a heavy price to pay.
Harold Macmillan
Monday, 28 September 1953
The Americans, after three years of negotiation, have come to an agreement with Franco whereby they obtain naval bases in Spain. They are also obliging the Greeks to get rid of our naval mission and to have an American one instead. Gradually they are ousting us out of all world authority. I mind this as I feel it humiliating and insidious. But I also mind it since it gives grounds for anti-American feeling, which is I am sure a dangerous and quite useless state of mind. They are decent folk in every way, but they tread on traditions in a way that hurts.
Harold Nicolson
Thursday, 1 October–Friday, 2 October 1953
Labour Party Conference, Margate
This year’s conference did not want to fight. Most delegates are sick of abuse and threats and splits. Herbert Morrison’s withdrawal from the treasurership was a fine start.
The right wing of the Party won almost every vote of importance. Land nationalisation and other more extreme proposals were all defeated by big votes. A great deal of the friction between the trade unions and the constituencies arises from differences in the feelings between ‘unpractical’ people and the unions, with their huge roles …
We can look forward to a good year in Parliament now and victory in a General Election.
David Butler, who stayed on a day further, tells me that Gaitskell made a good speech on education (‘abolish the fees in public schools’) and was attacked by Jennie Lee (‘he still wants an educated elite learning Latin verse’).*
Tony Benn
Sunday, 22 November 1953
Chatsworth, Derbyshire: family home of the Dukes of Devonshire
Drove in the afternoon over some of the High Peak country – most of the estate will alas be sold. I had a long talk this evening with Andrew about the Death Duties. To hand over four-fifths of a property is not easy when its character is so varied, ranging from shares, town property, rural estates, houses, woods, quarries and the like, to statues, pictures and books …
It takes 400 years to save and build such a property. It disappeared on a winter afternoon at Eastbourne … when my brother in law, the 10th Duke, died suddenly in the garden.†
Harold Macmillan
Bermuda
The PM is less sure about things today. It appears that when he pleaded with Ike that Russia was changed, Ike spoke of her as a whore, who might have changed her dress but who should be chased from the streets. Russia, according to Ike, was out to destroy the civilised world.
‘Of course,’ said the PM, pacing up and down the room, ‘anyone could say the Russians are evil minded and mean to destroy the free countries. Well, if we really feel like that, perhaps we ought to take action before they get as many atomic bombs as America has. I made that point to Ike who said, perhaps logically, that it ought to be considered. But,’ said Winston resuming his seat, ‘if one did not believe that such a large fraction of the world was evil it could do no harm to try and be friendly as long as we did not relax our defensive preparations.’
I asked him what the French thought about all this. The PM, shortly: ‘I take no account of them. They are harmless.’
A message came later from the French Prime Minister. He did not feel well; he had pain when he coughed and his temperature was nearly 105. I doubt whether he will take any more part in the conference.
Lord Moran
Thursday, 10 December–Saturday, 12 December 1953
Yorkshire
Left on night train for Leeds. A useful morning going round the Leeds ‘slums’ and housing estates. The special problem of the back to back houses is very acute in Leeds, as in some other Yorkshire towns. There are over 30,000 of them in Leeds – some very old and some of quite recent date …
A tour round Sheffield [on the 12th]. The architect seemed very good. Some new flats (on the hill) should be very good.
Drove from Sheffield to Bradford. Here I had a political meeting in the St George’s Hall. This was not quite (but very nearly) full. As it holds about 2,500 this was not bad for a political meeting nowadays, esp on a Saturday evening.
Harold Macmillan
I went straight from the station at King’s Cross to No 10 where I found Winston playing bezique with Clemmie …
‘I don’t think I’ve been so well, Charles, the last two days. I must go without lunch, or be content with something light about noon.’ He paced up and down the room a little unsteadily. Then he collapsed into his chair with a deep sigh.
[Then he] rose, went over to the table and opening Punch, handed it to me.
‘They have been attacking me. It isn’t really a proper cartoon. Have you seen it? Yes, there’s malice in it. The Mirror has had nothing so hostile. Look at my hands – I have beautiful hands.’
It was true. Those podgy shapeless hands peering out from a great expanse of white cuff, were not his. I was shocked by this vicious cartoon; there was something un-English in this savage attack on his failing powers. The eyes were dull and lifeless. There was no tone in the flaccid muscles; the jowl sagged. It was the expressionless mask of extreme old age.*
So it had come to this. Winston was hurt.
Lord Moran
Wednesday, 3 March 1954
It is difficult to describe how low political morale was when Parliament resumed [in January] … in four by-elections the Government proportion of the vote went up substantially and ours dropped. We couldn’t even keep the Bevanite group together. Nye failed to turn up on Tuesdays, asked for our lunch to be changed to Thursdays and then didn’t turn up on two successive Thursdays.
At this time he was also taking the view that the issue of German rearmament was not of great importance in the new atomic age. Sooner or later there would be German divisions, so why worry much?
Richard Crossman
Cabinet at 12 noon
PM gave us … the text of the Churchill–Roosevelt agreement of 1943, on [the] Atom bomb, by which we definitely retained a veto on its use. This was removed by the McMahon Act, apparently without any protest, certainly any effective or public protest, from HMG. By 1948 we had to make a new agreement, formally abandoning all that Churchill had secured in 1943.
The Daily Mirror and the Daily Herald have come out with the most violent attacks on Churchill ‘powerless to deal with the USA’ and all that.
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 21 May 1954
Yesterday, Winston admitted, was a rough day … He grinned broadly and I waited for what was to come.
‘I was determined that the (1922) Committee should agree to a free vote in the House on Members’ pay …’
He became serious.
‘It is all wrong when Members go about scratching a meal here and a meal there. Do you know Charles that a large number, perhaps as many as a hundred and twenty of the Members of the House, have less to live on than a coal-miner? Some of them, poor devils, are not sure of a square meal. When I think of the power and grandeur of their situation, I am certain that it is most dangerous to keep them in poverty; it is just asking for trouble … One of the Committee rose and proposed the motion that there should be no increase in the payment of Members until Old Age Pensions were put on a satisfactory basis. I said, “What clap-trap.” As if the two questions had anything in common.’
Montague Browne, when I saw him, put the matter rather differently. The meeting of the 1922 Committee had not gone very well … ‘You know, Lord Moran, he will play bezique, instead of mugging up whatever is coming up. Yesterday for example, he knew the Chancellor was going to the Committee, and he ought to have talked it over with him, but he gets absorbed in cards.’
Lord Moran
Cumberland
We started at 10 am with visits to Housing estates; slum clearance schemes; chemical factories; and so forth. Then we went out to Ennerdale Lake – a splendid luncheon with lake trout, chips, apple tart, cheese and beer at the charming little Anglers Hotel …
(The Whitehaven ‘fathers’ plan to destroy the charming little inn; build a large and vulgar hotel; turn the lake into a lido, and generally ‘improve’ the landscape. This will I trust be prevented by the National Park people and myself and my successors.)
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 4 June 1954
Nye Bevan, following his resignation [three years ago] … has lost much ground in the House. There is a bad split in Bevanite leadership. Crossman and Wilson both against him. He said that he would regard Wilson taking his place on the Parliamentary Committee as ‘a gross act of personal disloyalty to myself.’ Crossman said, ‘Then you think Harold is expendable?’ Bevan replied, ‘Yes and so are you.’
New Statesman the next week declared that neither Morrison nor Bevan could now ever lead the party.
I said to someone that I was charged with sitting on the fence, but ‘I’d sooner sit on the fence than lie down in the shit on either side of it.’ Tony [Crosland] when I quoted this to him, replied, ‘That is a civilian’s answer. In war you have to lie in the shit.’
Hugh Dalton
Thursday, 24 June 1954
en route to Washington
The PM always agrees that Anthony [Eden] and he agree on most things in the field of foreign affairs, though it is not often very noticeable; they don’t seem, for instance, to have much in common about Suez, or China, or their approach to the Americans. It is true that Winston has appointed Anthony as his heir – after all, someone has to follow him – but he still regards him as a young man, and he is not much influenced by his views.
Besides, when Winston’s mind is set on something he can think of little else. He has always felt that the future of the world is bound up with the union of the English-speaking races. Now, at the end of a long day, nothing else seems to matter. He is going to America – he thinks it may be his last visit to his mother’s native land – to see if anything can be done to narrow the rift about Moscow that is opening up between the two countries, and here was the Foreign Secretary bleating about what was wrong with the Americans.
Lord Moran
Tuesday, 24 August 1954
Chartwell, Kent
PM was in bed – so I had to wait 20 minutes till he had got up and put on his ‘rompers’ …
Luncheon lasted till nearly 4 pm. After a certain amount of desultory discussion about Soviet policy, EDC, NATO, Adenauer’s position, the French confusion and the like, we got to the real point. Churchill feels better; he has good reports from his doctors; he means to stay as Prime Minister just as long as he can. In favour of this plan he adduced a number of arguments. First he (and he alone in the world) might be able to steer through the complications of foreign policy and international problems. He had a unique position. He could talk to anybody, on either side of the iron curtain, either by personal message or face to face.
It would be better for Eden if he (Churchill) were to go on till the Election. Or perhaps it might be wise to let Eden become PM just before the election. That could be decided later.
Thirdly he was PM and nothing could drive him out of his office, so long as he could form and control a Govt and have the confidence of the House. This continual chatter in the lobbies and the press about his resignation was intolerable. Naturally, like any man of nearly 80, who had had two strokes, he might die at any moment. But he could not undertake to die at any particular moment!
Harold Macmillan
Chartwell, Kent
When, about four o’clock, Winston woke from an hour’s sleep he could not stop yawning.
‘The world,’ he began, ‘is in a terrible condition. The throwing out of the European Defence Community is a great score for the Russians.’
Then, waking up, his voice rose.
‘The French have behaved in an unspeakable way, execrable. No thought at all for others, ingratitude, conceit,’ he spat them out with intense distaste. ‘I cannot feel the same about them in the future.’
I asked him if he had been surprised by the majority in the French chamber against EDC.
‘No,’ he answered.
He struggled into his zip-suit with Kirkwood’s help.
He paused at the pond and rapped his stick against the stone pavement, when golden carp darted out of the shadows to gobble the maggots.
‘They are twenty years old and will see me out; probably they will see you out too.’
Lord Moran
Tuesday, 14 September 1954
Summons to luncheon with PM. Since No 10 is really shut up, we went to Buck’s Club. I must say I love the old man, altho’ he is so selfish and so difficult. But he certainly has courage and panache. The great car, flying the standard of the Warden of the Cinque Ports; the bows and smiles to the crowd; the hat, cigar, stick – superb showman.
A dozen oysters; cream soup; chicken pie, vanilla and strawberry ice. Moselle and brandy washed this down.
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 1 October 1954
The PM’s fear that America might withdraw from Europe and ‘go it alone’ was not without reason. When the Nine-Power conference met on Wednesday Mr [John Foster] Dulles spoke of a great wave of disillusionment which had swept over America after EDC had been rejected; there was a feeling, he said, that ‘the situation in Europe is pretty hopeless.’ It was in this bleak atmosphere that the delegates were asked to find some means of rearming Germany that would be accepted by a majority of the French Assembly. Round the table they sat doodling, mumbling, despairing.
Then Mr Eden rose and told the representatives of the Nine Powers that if the conference was successful Britain would undertake to keep on the Continent the forces now stationed there; that she would not withdraw them without the consent of the majority of the Brussels Treaty Powers, including West Germany and Italy, as well as France and the Low Countries.
Everyone felt that the situation had been transformed and that Mr Eden’s pledge saved the conference when it seemed bound to end in a fiasco.
It was accordingly with a light heart that I entered the PM’s bedroom this morning, as Kirkwood backed out with the breakfast tray. But somehow the PM did not seem particularly elated; indeed he seemed to take more interest in the result of the East Croydon by-election, and what the papers said about it, than in the conference.
Lord Moran
Thursday, 14 October 1954
Lake District
I spent the weekend … in a hotel with the grammar school headmasters of Lancashire and Cheshire. The purpose of this was principally to discuss the Labour Party’s proposals for education, and in particular the comprehensive school.
The headmasters began in a somewhat truculent mood and I was rather astonished to hear them say, one after another, that the Labour Party was against the grammar schools, that it had attacked them, that it was trying to destroy them etc.
Eric James [headmaster of Manchester Grammar School], in what was obviously a deliberately provocative speech, said that our policy was based on ‘ignorance, frivolity and enmity.’ He made however, some telling points, the most important of which I thought … was the fact that in some areas to start a comprehensive school, instead of the present division between secondary modern and grammar schools, would in fact lead to more not less class division. You would get a residential area on the one side, where there was a comprehensive school and all the people there would be drawn from the middle or lower middle classes. On the other hand, you would have a working class area, and equally there all of the children would come from working class parents. This would be in contrast with the present situation whereby in the grammar school itself, owing to the fact that the places were free and that entry was on merit, there was now a complete mixing up.
The other main argument was, of course, the fear that in the comprehensive school the bright, clever children would be at a disadvantage.
I think that by the end of the weekend we had begun to understand each other’s point of view better.
Hugh Gaitskell
Sunday, 26 December 1954
My own mind has been increasingly dominated by my thoughts about the effect of the H-bomb on our whole strategy and policy. How mad all this German rearmament is in view of the H-bomb and how much I sympathise with the French assembly which on Christmas Eve voted against German rearmament. I am more and more convinced that this whole idea of the West’s containment of communism is the sheerest nonsense. My observation describing us as a Byzantium which would be lucky to survive the century of totalitarian man, is much nearer the truth than I like to think.
Richard Crossman
Thursday, 20 January 1955
We had a report from Kenya. It is too early to say whether there will be any response from the Mau-Mau to the surrender offer.*
More discussions about the West Indian immigrants. A Bill is being drafted – but it’s not an easy problem. PM thinks ‘Keep England White’ a good slogan!
Harold Macmillan
Churchill asked me to go round to No 10, which I did (about 9.30) I found him in bed, with a little green budgerigar (is that the spelling?) sitting on his head! … He had the cage on the bed (from which the bird had come out) and a cigar in his hand. A whisky and soda was by his side – of this the little bird took sips, later on. Miss Portal sat by the bed – he was dictating. Really he is a unique, dear man with all his qualities and faults …
He had just got a letter from the President about the atomic and hydrogen bombs …
The bird flew about the room; perched on my shoulder and pecked (or kissed) my neck; flew to Miss Portal’s arm; back to the PM’s head, while all the time sonorous ‘Gibbonesque’ sentences were rolling out of the maestro’s mouth.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 8 March 1955
By some mischance I had to go through the sleet to Epsom, to find twenty-eight shivering Labour Party members waiting in a Co-op Hall, bewildered – utterly bewildered – and disheartened by the latest row [in the Party] because they really couldn’t understand who was standing for what and why anybody was on any side. I explained about the H-bomb and in particular about the deterrent, spelling it out for them rather brutally, and no one raised a whisper of objection. I’m afraid the real fact is that it is now the dispute itself and not the issues that people are worrying about.
Richard Crossman
Friday, 25 March 1955
When he asked me to rejoin him, in October 1951, Winston said it would probably be only for a year. He did not intend to remain long in office but wished to initiate the recovery of the country under a Conservative Government. However, although many people … predicted that Winston would make way for Anthony Eden after the Coronation he never had any intention of so doing … but, of course, in the winter of 1953–54 Eden’s ‘hungry eyes’ as Winston called them, became more beseeching and more impatient.
During the spring of 1954 … [Eden] had extracted what he thought was a promise – and what almost certainly was a half promise – that W would go at the end of the session …
Under pressure Winston next said that he would go on September 20th 1954 … But in August 1954 the Prime Minister again changed his mind. Why should he resign? He wrote to Anthony, who was on holiday in Austria, a masterly letter which went through about six drafts …
So he finally decided to go at the beginning of the 1955 Easter recess and, after he had ruminated on this for some weeks, he told A.E. and Rab Butler. He also invited the Queen to dine on April 4th 1955, on the eve of his resignation …
The ensuing days were painful. W began to form a cold hatred of Eden who, he repeatedly said, had done more to thwart him and prevent him pursuing the policy he thought right than anybody else. But he also admitted to me on several occasions that the prospect of giving up after nearly sixty years in public life, was a terrible wrench. He saw no reason why he should go: he was only doing it for Anthony. He sought to persuade his intimate friends, and himself, that he was being hounded from office.
The truth was this. He could still make a great speech, as was proved in the defence debate on March 1st. Indeed none could rival his oratory or his ability to inspire. But he was ageing month by month and was reluctant to read any papers except the newspapers or to give his mind to anything that he did not find diverting. More and more time was given to bezique and ever less to public business …
Was he the man to negotiate with the Russians and moderate the Americans? The Foreign Office thought not; the British public would, I am sure, have said yes. And I, who have been as intimate with him as anybody during these last years, simply do not know.
John Colville
Written shortly afterwards, but not dated.
On April 4th the Queen and Prince Philip dined at No 10. It was a splendid occasion. The party consisted partly of the senior Cabinet Ministers, partly of grandees like the Norfolks and partly of officials and family friends.
When they had all gone, I went up with Winston to his bedroom. He sat on his bed, still wearing his Garter, Order of Merit and knee-breeches. For several minutes he did not speak and I, imagining that he was sadly contemplating that this was his last night at Downing Street, was silent. Then suddenly he stared at me with vehemence: ‘I don’t believe Anthony can do it.’
The next evening Winston put on his top hat and frock coat, which he always wore for audiences, and went to Buckingham Palace to resign.
John Colville
Friday, 1 April 1955
[At Bob Boothby’s* house] … Gossip freely. Eden, they say, is accepted but without enthusiasm. Eden, Butler and Macmillan are ‘not a triumvirate but a trinity.’ No friendship at the top here. But no present challenge from outside the three. Physically, Eden, though he was three times cut up, has made a wonderful recovery. He can still play tennis, and his movements at the box are much freer than either of the others. Butler is very tired … and felt the loss of his wife very much. And Macmillan shuffles along like an old man. He had a gallbladder operation not long ago.
Boothby and I had remarked earlier to one another that these Wykehamists showed their hatred of one another too openly; we Etonians managed our relations, even when lethal, much more smoothly.
Hugh Dalton
Tuesday, 26 April 1955
Nye is going to spend most of the time travelling. He was perfectly amiable and as always when Elections come, quite conventionally loyal to the Party. Barbara and Ian Mikardo† are still convinced that ‘Ban the H-bomb’ is enough to win the Election on and they got some evidence for this view from an analysis which the Daily Herald made today of a questionnaire … Out of forty eight items, the H-bomb and the cost of living easily came first, but I still think that, on peace, the H-bomb and all that, it is unlikely that we shall make much impact on trying to overbid the Tories. We are far more likely to do well on practical bread-and-butter issues.
Richard Crossman
The Conservative Party increased its seats in the General Election of 26 May 1955; the Labour Party lost eighteen; and the Liberals won six, the same as in 1951. Anthony Eden was, at last, Prime Minister; Clem Attlee and Clement Davies were still leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties respectively.
June 1955
Why did we lose the election? What do we do next?
The right will blame Bevan. The Bevanites will interpret it as the price paid for the right-wing policies and leaders.
But since 1951 the Tories have had good luck with the economic climate, people are generally better off and … rationing [has] ended on everything but coal. There has been no unemployment. A family in a council house with a TV set and a car or motorcycle-combination on hire purchase had few reasons for a change of government.
Tony Benn
Friday, 3 June 1955
Poole, Dorset
Was fetched at 2 o’clock by a BBC car and driven down in pouring rain to an Any Questions programme.
We went after dinner to a wonderful modern engineering factory – brand new (not a brick in it or so we were assured) holding about 300 to 400 – all factory hands and their wives.
We had a lively programme getting the [railway workers’] strike, as I had foreseen – as the 2nd question – i.e. ‘Should workers in nationalised industries be allowed to strike? Ought they not to be like the police.’ Here we had a terrific slanging match between James Callaghan and Gerald Nabarro [Conservative MP for Kidderminster] on the merits and demerits of nationalisation – which was really out of order.
I … pointed out the obvious difference between the old heroic strike of starving work people against tyrannical and ‘skin flint’ employers (to use a favourite adjective of Callaghan’s!) and the present inter-union strikes of which the victims [are] not bosses but the public and fellow-workers …
Violet Bonham Carter
July 1955
The invitations did not suggest it was to be a ‘Goodbye to No 10’ party, although all friends knew that this, in fact, was the chief reason for forgathering. The cards informed us that ‘Sir Winston was “At Home” to celebrate the anniversary of Lady Churchill’s birthday.’
Lady Churchill was dressed in black lace with orchids at the waist, and her eyes were focused to other distances. Nevertheless she could still throw out a few mondanités and answered some stupidity of mine by saying that it was not surprising that they had made the rooms look ‘lived-in’ considering that this had been their home now for so long. It was said that Lady Churchill was suffering agonies from phlebitis; but there is still fire and dash in the consort of the old warrior.
Churchill’s doctor was among the favoured; but none of his professional allies were invited … Ghosts of former Governments abounded: reminders of Asquith in Lady Violet Bonham Carter, with Etruscan profile and scared donkey’s eyes, tonight surprisingly decolletée in bright pink satin – surprising because, with her great intelligence, and intellectual interests, she has seldom shown an interest in chiffons … Still recognizable as having been a great Edwardian beauty was old Pamela Lytton, curved and bent, but pink and white in black lace. It is said that the young Churchill admired her above others and there was a question of an engagement.
Tonight I peered at Churchill at the end of his long and glorious career. His pale eyelashes were blinking, his thin wisps of delicate white hair were combed neatly back, and I noticed the very peculiar flat end to his bulbous nose which appeared as if cut off straight with a knife. He sat hunched up, his shirt-front rose in a high big roll and his waistcoat seemed almost ‘Empire’ in cut. He sucked on the end of a cigar without pretence of smoking it. He made a few jokes that showed that the old spirit had not deserted him and our laughter was a little exaggerated with relief … Churchill, aged eighty one, looked fit – a very, very healthy baby – but he was somewhat deaf and hated being shouted at by kind friends who were gallantly doing their best to amuse him.
Cecil Beaton
Tuesday, 19 July 1955
Geneva Peace Conference
The Russians came to dinner at the PM’s villa. It was a purely Anglo-Russian affair [the USA and France were also represented at the Conference].
Khrushchev is an obscene figure; very fat, with a great paunch; eats and drinks greedily; interrupts boisterously and rudely; but did not hold the entire conversation in his hands, as he had done at the dinner with the Americans. Molotov was a bad colour; talked very little; and behaved more like a civil servant than a political chief. Marshal Zhukov was a good, soldierly and agreeable figure. He told me about his daughters – both of whom married the sons of marshals – regular Aldershot talk …
Eden conducted the whole affair brilliantly. He exerted all his charm both at and after dinner. I got certain impressions as follows: (a) they are very relaxed after the removal of the tyrant, Stalin. (They said with glee that, since 1953, they worked a normal day, instead of all night!) (b) they don’t want another Stalin – a bloody and uncertain tyrant (c) K is the boss, but not another Stalin. He controls the party and thus, in a country where there is no Parliament, he controls the Govt. (d) they are unable to accept the reunification of Germany in NATO and will fight it as long as they can … the Germans treated them horribly and they hate them, (e) they do not fear war; they don’t really believe the Americans are going to attack them, (f ) they are anxious about China …
I think they might prefer a weak nationalist or capitalist China which they could plunder, to a Communist China which they have to assist.
With all this bonhomie, it is sometimes hard to remember what ruthless and merciless men they are.
Harold Macmillan
PM gave the Cabinet an account of all we had done, said and heard at Geneva.
The last item on the agenda was an FO item – the vast and complicated problem of Arab/Israel relations – the Anglo-American plan on which we had long been working (known as Alpha) … However, the item before was the suggested road changes at Hyde Park Corner. So we never got as far as Egypt or Palestine.
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 19 August 1955
Went to the opening night of Titus Andronicus. Peter Brook had done a stupendously good production, really most impressive and extremely clever in avoiding pitfalls. Larry was wonderful although, at moments, a little funny. Vivien was frankly not very good. She looked lovely throughout regardless of ravishment and her tongue being cut out and her hands cut off. Her clothes and hair-do were impeccable and her face remained untouched by tragedy. It is a very, very silly play with some good moments.
Personally I think if Larry had turned sharply on Vivien years ago and given her a clip in the chops, he would have been spared a mint of trouble.
Noël Coward
Friday, 7 October 1955
Yesterday evening I went down to Bournemouth to get a glimpse of the Tory Conference and found George Brown* on the train … In the evening we had a tremendous dinner on the Mirror with ‘Cassandra’ [William Connor], Vicky [the cartoonist], and others …
George Brown, warmed with wine, really revealed his trade union philosophy, which culminates in the argument that ‘it’s our Party, not yours.’ When challenged by Bill as to why it belonged to George Brown and not to Dick Crossman, he said ‘Well, just think what each of us was doing before the war. I was working for the Party. And what was he doing? Writing!’ The word ‘Writing’ was said with such exquisite loathing that Cassandra intervened. ‘When he hears the word “writing” he reaches for his revolver.’ ‘That’s not far from it,’ said George Brown. ‘That’s how we feel about these intellectuals …’
Richard Crossman
Monday, 31 October 1955
Rushed home, changed and was called for by Puff [Anthony Asquith, brother of Violet] at 7.15 to go to Royal Command performance at the Odeon in Leicester Square.
The film of the evening – a very bad and slow Hitchcock about a Cat Burglar, To Catch a Thief. We went back to the Savoy for supper with a nice young man in Ranks …
We were very late and didn’t come out of supper till well after one. Puff overheard someone saying something about Princess Margaret which sounded like ‘off.’ He went back and bought two early morning editions. They had banner headlines ‘Princess Margaret decides not to marry Group Captain Townsend.’ Underneath was a most poignant statement – perfectly expressed – basing their decision on the Church’s teaching of the indissolubility of marriage and her duty to the Commonwealth. It is a historic decision – and rends one’s heart.*
Violet Bonham Carter
Wednesday, 2 November 1955
Paris – NATO meeting
At 8.30 we went to a dinner given by the Russians for the British.†
It was rather a painful affair, with the usual rather heavy jokes and bonhomie. The food (except for the caviare) was uneatable.
In the course of conversation, Molotov asked me what I was going back to England for. I said ‘a debate in the House of Commons.’ He said ‘What about?’ I said ‘On a subject where you can really help me, if you would do so, on Maclean and Burgess. Can you tell me where they are?’ He said, with real or assumed seriousness ‘That is a matter which would require investigation.’
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 2 December 1955
Throughout the past fortnight the vague speculation about Attlee’s future continued and in this morning’s press there is another rumour that he is being pressed to make up his mind before Christmas. I have seen him a good deal recently … but I have no idea what is going on in that inscrutable little head. I should guess that, during November, Hugh Gaitskell lost a little ground, mainly because our trade union MPs and some of the trade union leaders outside parliament are getting scared of the bright young men taking over the machine.
There is a strange new alignment growing up in the Party. On one side are the Socialist intellectuals, who want to prepare blueprints on the municipalisation of rented houses, National Superannuation etc., and on the other side are the trade unionists who are suspicious of this kind of Socialist planning. More and more the trade unionists feel that Nye belongs to them and will be able to express their views for them.
When Hugh Gaitskell expresses a Socialist sentiment, he sounds artificial and demagogic but I suppose he will settle down.
Richard Crossman
Thursday, 2 February 1956
The Deputy Leadership vote was announced this evening. Jim Griffiths 141, Nye Bevan 111 …
Griffiths made a perfect little short speech. He had lived all his life in the Movement. He would cooperate loyally with our new Leader [Hugh Gaitskell] etc. Bevan, who was sitting on the platform with a most ugly, controlled, angry face, when asked by Hugh whether he would like to say anything, made a contemptuous, scowling gesture of refusal, seen by all, and remained seated. (There’ll soon be more trouble, I thought …)
I feel like a Creator who rested and beheld his handiwork after much hard labour and saw that it was good … Hugh Gaitskell Leader, Jim Griffiths, wonderfully loyal Deputy and other younger people in the Shadow Cabinet of which the average age is now fifty-two – younger than that of the Tory Cabinet.
Hugh Dalton
Friday, 3 February 1956
The Afghan Minister came to see me yesterday. He is a rather small, pale, pleasant-looking man, who speaks in a soft voice. It was therefore difficult to follow what he said but broadly speaking it amounted to this: that there were a fair number of people of Afghan stock in Pakistan, occupying about half the North West frontier province. They were in a state of more or less continual dispute or revolt against the Pakistan Government, and there was great sympathy for them in Afghanistan. His country did not want to alter the frontiers which he admitted were those of British India, but they wanted to see some form of semi-independent state created – Pathoonistan. Unfortunately Pakistan would not even discuss the problem with them. The result was that they might be driven more and more to look to Russia … they had recently had a loan of 100 million dollars without any strings.
Hugh Gaitskell
Thursday, 9 February 1956
Cabinet at 4 in the PM’s room at HofC. PM looked very fit on his return [from Washington] and has obviously enjoyed himself. Selwyn Lloyd (For. Sec) looked rather exhausted.
The real success of the visit was on the atomic and hydrogen front. The President has made decisions to give us (a) information and (b) aid, which will save us millions and millions of pounds! … Foreign Sec added that he was impressed by the toughness which [John Foster] Dulles was prepared to show about Israel, even in the Presidential election year. PM said the only real difficulty was about atom tests. The Americans were absolutely convinced now (contrary to their original ideas) that if the bomb was exploded high up in the air, the ill effects were negligible. PM thought this might be a nuisance politically, but – as we have more than a year to go before our first test – an ultimate advantage …
Harold Macmillan
On Saturday I went with [my younger daughter] Cressida to the HMV place in Oxford Street to buy records, and the following amusing incident occurred:-
It was terribly crowded and we had great difficulty in getting anybody to attend to us. However, eventually I managed to get some records to try – jazz records – and we found a young girl – she can’t have been more than 17 – to shepherd us to a cubicle where one could play the records. She left me there to play [them] while Cressida went off in search of other ones. As I was listening to the jazz, more or less dancing up and down to the rhythm who should put her head in but Elaine Burton, the Labour Member of Parliament for Coventry. Slightly embarrassed at being caught dancing on my own, I welcomed her. She said, ‘I must tell you what the girl has just said to us. “Do you know, I believe the Chancellor of the Exchequer is next door.”’ This is not the first time that, so long [five years] after I held the office, people have still regarded me as Chancellor.
Hugh Gaitskell
Monday, 5 March 1956
The TUC meeting (intended to be the first of two; we are to see them again after we have seen the employers) went off in a strangely subdued atmosphere. They all behaved beautifully and were so respectable, in their dark blue suits and bowlers, that they looked like a lot of undertakers.
Harold Macmillan
Monday, 12 March 1956
I dined … on 12th March with a body called the British [Socialist] Agricultural Society. They consisted of a mixture of wealthy farmers who are, of course members of the Party, and most of whom were Bevanites, and poor small-holder type of farmers, who seemed to be a good deal further to the Right. It was nevertheless quite a pleasant occasion. They were very outspoken and almost all agreed that the present policy was out of date; that the 1947 Agriculture Act was really now finished, or at any rate not adequate as a future policy, and that we should have to start afresh. Most of them I think, did not want to have the present system of subsidies, with threats of eviction against farmers who refused to play, and wanted to have some kind of different system in which efficiency was rewarded more directly and inefficiency penalised by the more obvious consequences, i.e. financial failure.
Hugh Gaitskell
Tuesday, 13 March 1956
A long Cabinet … Cyprus; Malta; Transport Charges; and Nationalised Industries Finance; Farm Price Reviews; Aircraft for India etc. etc. The last raised a difficult point. Nehru wants us to make special efforts to supply him with Canberra bombers and the latest devices at a low price. But he also is said to be getting Russian bombers!
Then the paradox of Malta, which wants to join UK, while Cyprus wants to join Greece!
I was rather annoyed that the Farm Prices question was reopened.
But I stuck to my guns and won the support of the Cabinet on the real issue – nothing more on pigs, eggs, or milk. I agreed something on the calf subsidy … So I hope it is settled at last at £25.2m.
Harold Macmillan
Thursday, 5 April 1956
Last night … we had a very private dinner with the Trade Union leaders. There were present Tom Williamson, Frank Cousins, Jim Campbell, Bill Webber, Charlie Geddes, Harry Douglass and Ernest Jones; almost all the key people in the TUC … and Alf Robens, George Brown and myself.
It took place in a private room at the Cafe Royal. During dinner itself there were some extremely interesting conversation[s] … most of the Union leaders took the view that the new Soviet line* was certain to be reflected in the demands from the left wing in the unions for united fronts with the Communists of one kind or another.
As to wages policy the discussion was lively though rather confused … Frank Cousins, the latest arrival in the TUC but also the General Secretary or General Secretary elect of the most powerful union, the Transport Workers, was inclined to take the view that they could not make any kind of agreement or have any kind of understanding with the Government, and that there was nothing to be said for restraint of any kind. The others, on the other hand, said that in the interests of a future Labour Government, a policy of no restraint at all was dangerous even if this was carried out under the Tories … it was an extremely successful evening.
Hugh Gaitskell
Sunday, 8 April 1956
I think the alternatives are now becoming clear. Alternative A or Press Button A – a hard Budget, calculated to give a shock to everyone, and to make foreigners feel we are in earnest. The ‘Savings Package’ (£20m) to be balanced by Tobacco, and 6d on standard rate of Income tax … This would give us another £100m net for the surplus. Alternative B, or Press Button B* – the ‘Savings Package’ to be paid for by Tobacco and Bread (less another 3/- on family allowance) giving a margin of £13m for surplus. £30m on profits tax to sweeten it …
If I could really get ministers to face the full implications of Button B – real economies, with a realistic attitude to defence and some determination to trim at least the grosser extravagances of the Welfare State – it would be much better than raising still more taxation from a people who are already grossly overtaxed.
Today as a relaxation, I have read Bleak House … They say nobody reads Dickens nowadays. More’s the pity. He is a giant with all his faults and imperfections.
Harold Macmillan
Wednesday, 25 April 1956
My Labour friends told me that the dinner given by the Labour Executive to Bulganin and Khrushchev was a ghastly failure. Khrushchev made a speech saying that it was Russia alone who defeated Germany. George Brown, a Labour front-bench hearty, exclaimed, ‘May God forgive you.’* Khrushchev broke off and asked the interpreter what he had said. It was translated. Khrushchev then banged the table and said ‘What I say is true!’ George Brown is not the mild type of Socialist. He replied, ‘We lost half a million men while you were Hitler’s allies!’ Silence penible [painful silence].
And at the Speaker’s luncheon yesterday George Brown went up with an outstretched hand to apologise but Khrushchev put his hand behind his back and said sharply, ‘NIET.’
Letter to Vita Sackville-West from Harold Nicolson
Monday, 4 June 1956
[On Wednesday, 2 May] I went to the Royal Academy Banquet – always a tiresome occasion … The only interesting event which happened to me was a conversation with Sir Gerald Templer, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff; just as we were going away he came up to me and said that he wanted to tell me about his experience with Khrushchev.
He had had to look after Khrushchev at the Greenwich dinner, when the Russians had been entertained in the famous Painted Hall built in the time of William and Mary. Khrushchev had said to him, ‘I understand that you are the head of the British Army.’ Templer replied ‘Well, so I am; anyway, I try to be.’ ‘Well then,’ said Khrushchev, ‘What do you think of the prospects of thermo-nuclear warheads on guided missiles?’ Templer professed himself to be deeply shocked by this, that he said ‘We really did not come down here, to this beautiful place, to talk about that kind of thing.’ He afterwards said that he found Khrushchev quite unbearable and even added, ‘I have never wanted to kill a man with my own hands so much.’
Hugh Gaitskell
Sunday, 1 July 1956
Returning from Glyndebourne
There has been a tragic uprising in Poland at Poznan, where the World Fair is being held. Hundreds of workers marched in a peaceful procession asking for ‘Bread.’ Their wages and living standards are desperate. They were fired on by the security police and desperate fighting ensued. Some of the soldiers handed over rifles and tanks to them. There has been heavy fighting and casualties – no one knows how many. The ice is breaking – but there is blood beneath it.
Violet Bonham Carter
Saturday, 21 July 1956
The BMC* strike is due to start on Monday. Iain Macleod [Minister of Labour] assures me that he does not intend to interfere. It seems that this is the advice of the Trade Union leaders (given in private). From the broader point of view, if we are to have friction – and I don’t see how we can have the great readjustments we want without some friction – it’s best to have it in the motor industry, where stocks are good and orders are not too good.
However the loyalty of the men is very great and … cars will be declared ‘black’ and the railways and docks prevented from handling them.
Eden gives no real leadership in the House (for he is not a House of Commons man – he never enters the Smoking Room) altho’ he is popular and respected in the country as a whole.
I had a talk on the telephone with the Lord Chancellor – about the hanging Bill. It wd. be very dangerous for the Govt to try to go back on the HofCommons ‘free vote’ or seem to yield to the pressure of the Party Conference.
The Archbishop of Canterbury (who is a silly, weak, vain and muddle-headed man) wants to have degrees of premeditation [as] the test. This is quite wrong. The test should be … what exceptions are required in order to preserve the broad structure of a peaceful society. For instance Highway robbery and murder may not be so wicked – certainly not so repulsive – as a long prepared poisoning. But – in the 18th century – Highwaymen were more dangerous and troublesome to the guardians of the law and order than poisoners.
Harold Macmillan
During the past fortnight or so the King of Iraq has been here and there have been various functions: one at Buckingham Palace, another at the Iraq Embassy and a third this evening at No 10 Downing Street. The king, who is a boy of 21, brought with him the Crown Prince, his uncle, and also Nuri as-Said, the old Statesman, now aged 67 … [This evening] was a men-only affair.
At about 10.45 I was sitting next to the King talking to him in one of the apartments, with the Lord Chancellor [Lord Kilmuir] sitting near. We had been talking away for some time about this and that, when Eden came up and said ‘I want you to know – and I think the Opposition should know as well – what Nasser has done tonight. He has made a speech announcing that he is going ahead with the Aswan Dam,* that they cannot get any foreign money, but that, nevertheless, they are going ahead, and in order to finance it, they are taking over the Suez Canal Company and will collect the dues which the Company receives from ships using the Canal.’
Eden said that he understood that the Egyptian police had taken over the offices and the buildings of the Company already.
I asked him what he was going to do. He said he was getting hold of the American Ambassador immediately. He thought perhaps they ought to take it to the Security Council, and we then had a few moments conversation about the consequences, Selwyn Lloyd the Foreign Secretary standing near.
I said, ‘Supposing Nasser doesn’t take any notice?’ Whereupon Selwyn said, ‘Well I suppose in that case the old-fashioned ultimatum will be necessary.’ I said that I thought they ought to act quickly, whatever they did, and that as far as Great Britain was concerned, public opinion would almost certainly be behind them. But I also added that they must get America into line. This should not be difficult, since after all, the Americans had themselves precipitated this by their decision to withdraw all financial assistance from the Aswan Dam.
In a half-joking way, I said, since the King and Crown Prince were both standing there, ‘What do you think about it?’ The Crown Prince rather wittily replied, after a bit, ‘We had better send for our Prime Minister too – that’s the constitutional position.’ Whereupon there was general laughter.
Hugh Gaitskell
Thursday, 2 August 1956
Nasser has not, as far as I can see, violated any International treaty. What the treaties provide is that the Suez Canal should be open in time of peace and war, not who should own the Canal. It is highly inconvenient that a man like Nasser should have control of the Canal and be able to blackmail us by threats. It is also most unpleasant that his seizure may encourage other Arab countries to do the same. But we cannot persuade the Americans that the situation justifies the use of force, and I am not absolutely sure myself whether we should use or threaten it.
Harold Nicolson
Thursday, 2 August and Friday, 3 August 1956
I also had a talk with the so-called Foreign Affairs Steering Committee partly in order to smooth them down and make them feel that they had been consulted. John Hynd, Warbey, Tony Benn, as well as Denis Healey, Kenneth Younger and Alf Robens turned up. I was not much impressed with what the three first had to say. It is extraordinary how they rush to the defence of any eastern country and how completely they ignore the fact that Nasser is a dictator.
Tony Benn … although talented in many ways, a good speaker and a man of ideas, has extraordinarily poor judgement.
Now we go away I hope for a fortnight to Pembrokeshire leaving the Government to cope with the situation. Eden told me that he hoped to get the Conference [of Suez Canal users] meeting within a fortnight.
Hugh Gaitskell
Wednesday, 8 August 1956
What all this Egypt thing is going to cost, one can’t guess …
PM did a broadcast and TV at 10 pm about the Suez crisis. This could not have been better done. It was fair, moderate, convincing and firm. I’m sure it will have a splendid effect, at home and abroad – esp in US. The Liberal and Socialist press here is beginning to get pretty flabby. ‘No force, whatever happens’ and ‘Refer to United Nations’ and so on. I have no doubt that the weekend intellectuals (Economist, New Statesman, Observer etc.) will be just as bad. Curiously enough, the ‘gutter’ press (Mirror and Sketch) have been pretty good. It’s the Liberal intellectual who is always against his country.
Harold Macmillan
Thursday, 6 September 1956
TUC Conference, Brighton
Frank Cousins was very violent. He attacked me rather savagely; he attacked the Tory Government; he attacked the Tory Party, and declared that they [trade unions] would have nothing whatever to do with any form of pay restraint. It should be ‘free for all.’ … Whether it will please the TU leaders as a whole remains to be seen. I think many of them already dislike Cousins.
Harold Macmillan
Thursday, 4 October 1956
The Suez situation is beginning to slip out of our hands …
I try not to think that we have ‘missed the bus’ – if we have it is really due to the long time it has taken to get military arrangement into shape. But we must, by one means or another, win this struggle. Nasser may well try to preach Holy War in the Middle East and (even to their own loss) the mob and the demagogues may create a ruinous position for us. Without oil and without the profits from oil, neither UK nor western Europe can survive.
Harold Macmillan
Monday, 22 October 1956
The Government are in a terrible mess and they have lost confidence in Eden. The specific problems that confront them are Suez, the muddle over defence, the economic crisis and the awful bloodshed in Cyprus.*
The Labour Party on the other hand is in better shape than it has been since I have been an MP. Hugh Gaitskell has done very well as Leader despite the serious error he made at the start of the Suez crisis. Nye Bevan is Treasurer and has a real chance to make his contribution to the unity of the Party.
Tony Benn
Sunday, 28 October 1956
South Wales
To the [Bedwellty] miners’ welfare institute where there was a crowded room of serious-minded people.
I sat listening to the miners talking of the bad old days – the soup kitchens, the struggles with the police, the terrible hunt for work … it was very moving and more than history – for in the crowded, smoky club room were many men gasping for breath from silicosis or limping from some industrial injury.
Today’s news is mainly of the Hungarian crisis reaching its climax. The spontaneous rebellion against the Communist Government has virtually succeeded. The Iron Curtain has risen and people are moving freely in and out of Hungary with supplies and relief … the red white and green have reappeared to replace the hated scarlet banner of the Communist Government. Everyone in the world is breathless with hope that this may lead to a rebirth of freedom throughout the whole of Eastern Europe.
Tony Benn
Saturday, 3 November 1956
House of Commons meets at noon, for three hours and adjourns in uproar. Loud booing, and gestures at Eden, cries of ‘Resign’, ‘Go’ and ‘Get Out.’
Thus ends a tumultuous week. It began on Monday with Israel crossing into Egypt and [was] followed by swift and complete Israeli victory in Sinai, rout of Egyptian Army and capture of large quantities of arms recently supplied by Russians and Czechs.
The myth of Egypt as a military power and a ‘leader’ of the Arab world is smashed for ever. All this is wonderful! Israel will now be more secure than at any time since 1948. And of the other Arab states, none moved against Israel in spite of all their Arab Leagues and Alliances.
Hugh Dalton
Saturday, 3 November 1956
Hugh Gaitskell rang me up this morning, said he was going to broadcast tomorrow night and told me to make all the necessary arrangements … I therefore rang up Harman Grisewood, the Director of Sound Broadcasting at the BBC.
Grisewood was extremely short and sharp. He wanted to know what broadcast I meant. I explained that the Prime Minister was to broadcast tonight and that Gaitskell would want to reply tomorrow. He said this was an unwarrantable assumption as the PM was doing a ministerial broadcast. I said it would be controversial and we demanded to reply. He told me to do it through the usual channels and to make no announcement or assumption of any kind. I warned him that … we would appeal for a BBC decision late tonight. ‘That is quite impossible,’ he replied, ‘we shall all be in bed.’ I told him this was an intolerable situation and that he must make arrangements for the BBC to receive our request and give a reply that night. At this he became a little chastened and said that he would ask Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Chairman of the BBC, to stand by.
Two footnotes to the day. Fighting between Members of Parliament is now almost inevitable. I saw Ernie Popplewell [Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne West] almost come to blows with Sir John Crowder [Conservative, Finchley] … The situation has transformed Gaitskell from a ‘desiccated calculating machine’ into a man of unusual fire and passion.
Tony Benn
Sunday, 4 November 1956
The Russians have sent seven divisions into Hungary and are closing in on Budapest with 1,000 tanks. But we have no right to speak a word of criticism.
Harold Nicolson
All through the day B* and I listened to the most agonizing broadcasts from Hungary – now being crushed by Soviet forces – tanks are moving in everywhere and a massacre is going on. All youth is rising and being mowed down. Children are hurling grenades at tanks. It is an extraordinary example of sublime courage against hopeless odds. Heart-rending. One feels guilty at one’s impotence – and our folly has distracted the attention of the world from this tragedy. I cannot forgive it.
Violet Bonham Carter
Thursday, 22 November 1956
[Anthony Eden] is leaving for Jamaica without even a Private Secretary. William Clark, his PR adviser, said this was because all his staff were united by an intense loathing for the man but that is not the whole story. He has deliberately not made Rab Butler acting Prime Minister but only charged him … with ‘presiding over the Cabinet.’ As one Conservative Member put it to me, ‘You all underrate Rab. When the smoke has cleared you’ll find him there on top of a mound of corpses with his knife dripping with blood and an inscrutable smile on his face.’†
Tony Benn
Thursday, 10 January 1957
I feel – who couldn’t? – the tragic poignancy of Anthony’s exit. To be PM was his life’s aim … he will have no chance of redeeming his reputation in the eyes of the present or of posterity. It is a Greek tragedy.
Violet Bonham Carter
The forming of the whole administration took about 10 days. On the whole it has been well received …Without the help of Edward Heath (Chief Whip) who was quite admirable, we couldn’t have done it.
It has meant seeing nearly a hundred people and trying to say the right thing to each. In the circumstances many considerations had to be borne in mind – the right, centre and left of the party; the extreme ‘Suez’ group; the extreme opposition to Suez; the loyal centre – and last but not least, U and non-U (to use the jargon that Nancy Mitford has popularised) that is, Eton, Winchester etc. on the one hand; Board School and grammar school on the other.
I have read a good deal in recent weeks – some Trollope, some Henry James, three volumes of Cobbett’s Rural Rides …
Harold Macmillan
Sunday, 17 February 1957
I have just read Look Back in Anger by John Osborne and it is so full of talent and fairly well constructed but I wish I knew why the hero is so dreadfully cross and what about? I should also like to know who, where and why he and his friend run a sweet-stall and if, considering the hero’s unparalleled capacity for invective, they ever manage to sell any sweets? I expect my bewilderment is because I am very old indeed and cannot understand why the younger generation, instead of knocking at the door, should bash the fuck out of it. In this decade there is obviously less and less time for comedy as far as the intelligentsia is concerned.
Noël Coward
Thursday, 14 March 1957
10 Downing Street
I called a Cabinet for 10 am to settle the Farm Review question* … Really we have so much trouble coming to us that we must try to have some friends and preserve the firm agricultural base of the party, in the House and the country.
Minister of Labour’s industrial report was gloomy. Shipbuilding seems pretty bad; general engineering almost as hopeless; railways very bad too. Sir John Forster will only reward the railwaymen 3% which they will certainly refuse.
Harold Macmillan
Sunday, 12 May 1957
Went over to Sidney Bernstein for luncheon. He’s got just the house you’d expect – neatly converted farmhouse, very hygienic, neat American wife rather like Claire Bloom, time and labour saving devices. Bernstein looks rather benevolent and cheerful nowadays – tall, grey, a lean Ben-Gurion. His TV, he says, is now beginning to pay. Appears that he inherited music-hall from his father and that he and his brother built up present Granada business on this foundation.* Sidney is very left-wing, attends Labour Party conferences. What does he want? He doesn’t know.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Saturday, 13 July 1957
The Anglo-Scandinavian Labour Youth Rally was held in Hyde Park this afternoon. I suppose between 1,000 and 2,000 people were there.
For some reason the thing absolutely lacked zip. Great drops of rain soaked the duplicating paper on which Harold Wilson’s speech was written. It began to disintegrate as he hurried through it. The loudspeaker van was behind the platform so we could hear our own voices. It’s absolutely infuriating and completely wrecks any chance of making a good speech.
Tony Benn
Monday, 12 August 1957
AWRE, Aldermaston, Berkshire
All day at Aldermaston – the Atomic Weapons (Research) Establishment. It is a remarkable place – 6,000 people employed – £20m a year. It’s worth it if it helps to prevent wars. Sir W Penney* is a splendid character, and – as at Harwell – I was struck by the keen and buoyant atmosphere of the place … Of course the tragedy is that, in defence of the same cause, the American and British effort has to be duplicated, instead of shared.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 5 November 1957
It’s tempting to connect the present sudden storms and freak gales with the news that on Sunday the Russians launched a second satellite much bigger than the first, with a live dog inside it! This and its attendant circumstances, such as the frenzy among dog-lovers, deputations clamouring on the steps of the Russian Embassy, or the word satellite heard from Mrs Hoare’s lips, has made everything seem like a novel from H G Wells instead of the humdrum world we’ve been living in so long.
Frances Partridge
Thursday, 21 November 1957
Meeting … to consider our recommendations for future Labour Party broadcasts. It was most unsatisfactory in every way.
Nye Bevan was the cause of all the trouble and his whole attitude to TV is absolutely heart-breaking. He is frightened of it himself and completely anti-professional in his outlook. Probably the stupidest thing was his boast that he had turned down two invitations by BBC and ITA to go on the air to describe his recent visit to America. He thought that was very wise so that the public wouldn’t see too much of him.
Tony Benn
What a dark and confused picture the curtain of the New Year goes up on. A definite Russian lead in Nuclear Power – with which we may not draw level for at least three years. Eisenhower an invalid, Dulles a calamity, France still a hopeless casualty … A vacuum of leadership in Europe – meanwhile a kind of defeatism, neutralism, pacifism growing here – sometimes in the name of morality, sometimes of national independence and anti-Americanism … Last year beginning with Suez and ending with Sputnik was a bad one. I pray that this one may be better.
Violet Bonham Carter
Sunday, 19 January 1958
Tour of the Commonwealth
To go from India (especially from New Delhi) to Pakistan is like going from Hampstead or North Oxford to the Border country or the Highlands. Iskander Mirza, the robust President of Pakistan and his wife (a Persian lady) are grands seigneurs – very charming hosts, not too intellectual, and good food and wine. (Nehru’s food was uneatable. It was European, but like a bad boarding house.)
Pakistan is poor; politically unstable; in a state of religious turmoil (the mullahs have large tho’ rather uncertain power) without a ‘political class’ – without so large an Indian Civil Service tradition as India, and practising corruption on the grand scale.
The one stable element in this situation is the Army – the Navy and the Air Force are also reliable.
Harold Macmillan
Wednesday, 12 March 1958
Warmly welcomed back by Mrs Hoare and Wilde.
How little we thought about politics or the world when we were in Spain! Now – a new feature of life – American bombers cruise overhead all the time, carrying the Bomb. The people of Newbury are made deeply anxious by this activity, as we see from the local paper and also by some alarming accident that occurred at the airfield only a week ago. Nor were they reassured by the frantic haste with which the personnel scrambled over the eight-foot walls for safety, before doing anything to warn the neighbourhood. There is, it seems quite a movement of a pacifist sort afoot.
Ralph remarked that by taking a stand against the Bomb one would find oneself in the company of cranks, emotionalists and Communists – considerations which don’t affect me in the least.
Frances Partridge
Friday, 28 March–Saturday, 29 March 1958
Torrington by-election, Bideford, North Devon*
At about twenty to two a recount was formally announced by the Sheriff. The Conservatives had (quite rightly) demanded it. It was about twenty to three when he rose on the platform and announced the figures … Liberal majority 219. It was a narrow shave – but we were in. Mark had wiped out a Govt majority of 9,000 odd …
M R Bonham Carter (Liberal) 13,408
A F H Royle (Conservative) 13,189
L Lamb (Labour) 8,697
We then went down into the tumult of the crowd. Mark was carried shoulder high (and managed to retain quite an effective position), Leslie and I followed with the help of friendly policemen (all the police and postmen were on our side throughout!) Our hands were grasped and wrung as we struggled towards the Rose of Torridge – a nice Labour man almost ground my knuckles to dust saying, ‘I’m a Socialist but I’m glad you’ve won.’ (Lamb said much the same to me inside. One of the nice things about this country is that Labour recognise and remember the old Lib–Lab alliance and feel that we are nearer to them than the Tories.)
Violet Bonham Carter
Tuesday, 13 May 1958
Two MPs, Reg Sorensen and John Dugdale, have just returned from a visit to the Yemen where they were the guests of the Government and met everyone. Reg … gave his impressions of the present absolute theocratic monarchy which came from a fairytale book. Public executions, slavery, and mutilation as a punishment for theft still survive. Reg recommended that Britain face the fact that the [British] Protectorate may want to join the Yemen.*
John Dugdale attached more importance to the Russian and Chinese missions. Particularly the Russian aid of $60 million and the technicians to build the port.
Nye … began his characteristic philosophical waffling, full of phrases like ‘in the problem of succession of power we are the contemporary culprits from an evolving imperialist transmutation …’
He then launched an attack on me for my support of Arab nationalism: ‘It is a sham and an eruption of hysteria against Zionism and the West. The Arabs are incapable of running anything with Islam round their necks. We should give this stretch of desert to Nasser, even if only to prove what a failure he is.’
Tony Benn
Thursday, 29 May 1958
10 am. Meeting of ministers.
The purpose was to discuss the position on nuclear weapons and tests. Our last test (a few weeks ago) was successful. Nevertheless it is absolutely vital for us to complete this series in Sept. If all goes well, we shall need only 2 explosions; but if (as is very possible) we have a failure in the new and very special system which we want to test, we shall need 2 more.† We should complete everything by October 31st (at latest) and prob before. Can we hold on against a) the public and political pressure now, b) the extension of this pressure which is likely to follow UN report on medical effects?
Harold Macmillan
The first of our Christmas Island tests was done today – a small kiloton ‘trigger’ explosion. The megaton test is timed for Sept 8th or so. The question now arises about going on with it. In principle we can rely on the latest American understanding. In practice, it might be as well to have the knowledge which we shall get from this test.
The Greek Govt are in great difficulties, and there are gloomy telegrams from our ambassador in Athens. The Greeks, he says, will threaten – and perhaps be compelled – to leave NATO.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 2 September 1958
The trouble [Notting Hill riots] continued on an even bigger scale last night. I toured the area before breakfast and saw the debris and corrugated iron up behind the windows of the prefabs where the coloured families live. The use of petrol bombs and iron bars and razors is appalling. There is a large area where it is not safe for people to be out.
The Labour Party really must say something about it.
Tony Benn
Saturday, 18 October 1958
Bristol South East constituency
Went to Barton House – the new 14-storey skyscraper of modern flats – this morning. It was a perfect autumn day with the sky blue and a shimmer of sunshine on the whole of Bristol. We went right to the roof and visited various flats. To see the bright airy rooms with the superb view and to contrast them with the poky slum dwellings of Barton Hill below was to get all the reward one wants from politics. For this grand conception of planning is what it is all about.
Tony Benn
Friday, 6 February 1959
Read a novel No Love for Johnnie by a Labour MP called Wilfred Fienburgh – now dead (in motor accident). If he hadn’t died the other Labour MPs must have killed him. It proves what I have often said, ‘The Labour movement began as a Crusade. It has now become a racket.’ This book is reasonably well written and is a terrible picture of Labour MPs in the House, and their life and intrigues.
Harold Macmillan
Wednesday, 4 March 1959
Russian trip
We got back yesterday at about 6.15pm from our Russian journey … We left for Moscow on February 21st. The journey took about four hours (in a Comet). It was not, unfortunately, possible for me to take the diary – too risky in view of the continuous and highly skilled espionage to which we were subjected …
The consumption of food and drink is tremendous. The food (except for caviar, smoked salmon and similar pre dinner delicacies) is not good. The drink other than vodka (wh is very good) is bad – with the exception of some quite nice white wine from the Caucasus. Soviet brandy is just poison … how nice and how friendly all the people are. I spoke to many – crowds in the streets, in the factories, outside the places where we dined and outside the ‘residences’ put at our disposal. These gatherings – which grew in size as the visit proceeded and my speaking to them in this way got known – were uniformly good-mannered and attractive.
Some of the crowds were clearly anxious about Peace and War. The propaganda was terrifying. Everyone in Russia seems genuinely persuaded that the Americans, and probably British, have decided on a surprise attack – a ‘bolt from the blue.’ Everyone asks anxiously if we are going to keep the Peace. They are kept absolutely ignorant of all the provocations of Soviet policy all over the world.
Harold Macmillan
Friday, 24 April–Saturday, 25 April 1959
Visit to Lancashire
The Opposition have committed themselves – thro’ Gaitskell and H Wilson – to a bitter attack on the Cotton scheme.* This is both foolish and dishonest.
A very long day – 9 am to midnight … 6 or 7 speeches – impromptu – we covered many Lancashire towns, including Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Stockport, Manchester. D[orothy] was with me. It was really a most heartening experience. With the masses of people whom we saw – they waited in large numbers in the streets – there was scarcely a ‘boo’.
The more I think of the visit … the more pleased I am. Of course, I don’t mean that the people who were so polite and friendly will all vote Tory. But I cannot believe that such courtesy and so little bitterness are not good signs. It is very different to the mood of 1945 or even 1950.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 5 May 1959
I went to A Taste of Honey, a squalid little piece about squalid and unattractive people. It has been written by an angry young lady of nineteen [Shelagh Delaney] and is a great success.
Noël Coward
Saturday, 27 June 1959
Bristol South East constituency
To Bristol for the most dejected, depressing, inadequate, badly run, deadbeat Sale of Work that I have ever attended. If that is the Labour Party’s image then something is wrong.
Tony Benn
Friday, 7 August 1959
Lunch at the Garrick and am told that it is announced that the Queen is to have a baby in January or February. What a sentimental hold the monarchy has over the middle classes! All the solicitors, actors and publishers at the Garrick were beaming as if they had acquired some personal benefit.
Harold Nicolson
General Election day
I felt reasonably hopeful, as Ruth [Dalton] and I settled down in the flat …
From the start, the results went wrong. Billericay, containing the New Town of Basildon … Surely a Labour gain. But no, held by Tories with a 4,000 majority. True we held the two Salford seats but then came a stream of disappointments. Battersea South and Watford, both held by Tories, and a Tory gain from Labour at Acton. And so on and so on.
Hugh conceded the election about 1 a.m.
Denis Howell was out by 20 votes, after two recounts. This loss grieved me more than any other result. He was very much one of my Poodles, very shrewd (rarest of qualities in Labour Party nowadays.) Very loyal …
And Jim Callaghan was in, but by less than 1,000.
Hugh Dalton
Thursday, 8 October–Monday, 12 October 1959
Washington
We arrived at the White House at 1930.
[President Eisenhower] had just flown back from California and had brought back some specially succulent steaks which he insisted on cooking himself for dinner and which were indeed very delicious.
The President was in absolutely wonderful spirits the whole evening. After dinner there was a film, It Started with a Kiss. The President gave us all the choice of whether we went to the film or stayed and gossiped. The ladies went to the film and the men stayed and gossiped.
This was election day in the UK and every half hour the President was on the telephone getting the latest news … [he] could not conceal his pleasure when Gaitskell conceded the election … what pleased him most was being able to work once more with his old friend Harold Macmillan, and that he thought that his re-election would be a notable contribution to summit negotiations and world peace.
Ike, Al [Gruenther] and I gossiped over old times and I heard an account of the President’s visit to Europe and of Khrushchev’s visit to the US.
The President told us that he considered Khrushchev the brightest man he had ever met, with the greatest detailed knowledge of any subject, and that the displays of temper were all carefully calculated to produce effect.
I was taken to all the activities in the [Hunter Army Airfield] Base and fully briefed on all that they do. Sixty operational B47 bombers and forty-three KC 97 refuellers are always ready within twenty-four hours …
Perhaps the most terrifying aspect is that when these aircraft take off they actually carry one or two H bombs apiece. The conviction that the whole of Strategic Air Command have, that at a moment’s notice they could blot out Russia, is really quite frightening, whereas the Americans, of course, only feel safe because of it.
Louis Mountbatten
Sunday, 11 October 1959
To the Gaitskells. Hugh was tired but mellow and said he wanted a holiday, which he deserved.
He [also] said several times, ‘I’m not prepared to lose another Election for the sake of nationalisation.’ He laid great stress on the disadvantages of the name Labour, particularly on new housing estates, and said, ‘Of course, Douglas Jay is going to urge us to adopt a new one.’ I reminded him that the prune had been resuscitated without a change of name by clever selling.
He also thought we must review our relations with the trade unions.
Tony Benn
Friday, 30 October 1959
A great flurry – Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, Colonial Office. A grave dilemma is presented to us. The Moroccans have put down a resolution in United Nations Assembly calling on the French to abandon the Bomb Test (atomic we think) which they have planned to set off in the Sahara. The Nigerians, Ghana and other Africans are terribly upset. It is an emotional reaction, for it is very unlikely that the Test will do any harm – certainly no more in Africa than elsewhere. They even talk about ‘leaving the Commonwealth’ if we do not vote for the resolution.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 29 December 1959
We had Robert* to ourselves for supper last night, a perfect companion. After going over Christmas with a fine comb … we got on to psychoanalysis, both in theory and practice. It was fascinating to hear about it from someone as realistic and averse to mumbo-jumbo as he is. One thing he came up with was that the infant’s pleasure in suckling was fully sexual. But if so wouldn’t there be extreme differences in the psychological patterns of the breast-fed and bottle-fed? Robert also finds it interesting that some states of adult rage are speechless – because they refer back to the pre-speech period of infancy. I was rather struck by that.
Frances Partridge
Sunday, 24 January 1960
Port Elizabeth, South Africa
I cannot describe to you the horrors of Apartheid. I asked an Englishman how one pronounced the word and he said ‘Apart’ and then ‘hate’, and my God! Hate it is.
I was shocked when first landing at Durban to observe that all the seats along the esplanade (all of them, literally) were marked ‘For whites only’ … In the vast Post Office at Cape Town there were counters for whites and separate counters for the niggers. In fury at this, I queued up behind three niggers, but when my turn came the clerk said to me, ‘Sorry, sir, you are at the wrong desk.’
You know how I hate niggers and how Tory Vita is. But I do hate injustice more than I hate niggers … truly you have no conception how shocking it all is. The pure police state. How happy we are with our freedom and our Parliamentary questions.
Harold Nicolson to Nigel Nicolson
Spoke this morning at the Conference of American Women’s Activities in the UK attended by 300 or more wives of American Air Force personnel. It was amazing to hear them introduced as ‘Maxine Taylor, wife of General Taylor, Commander of East Anglia’ etc. etc. Here is an army that has divided the UK up into its areas and commands. We know nothing about it.
Hugh Carleton Greene, new Director-General of the BBC, spoke to the public information group … He was terribly unimaginative and cautious … It was Auntie BBC at its best and worst.
But as a public service man he wasn’t just on the make like the vulgar thrusting profit-rich ITV tycoons.
Tony Benn
Sunday, 13 March 1960
Return from visit to General and Madame de Gaulle
I felt tired from the strain of talking nothing but French (he refused to have anyone present) and trying not to fall into any major error of judgement.
He does not want political integration. He accepted the economic integration implied in the Treaty of Rome with regret. But it was signed, and he could not go back on it. But it has had a useful effect in making French industry more competitive. Politically it keeps Germany looking to the West. He does not want a united Germany; nor does he fear Germany for at least twenty five years.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 22 March 1960
Terrible news of a massacre in South Africa – 65 Africans killed and 156 wounded are the latest figures. There were also minor riots in Cape Town.* Africans demonstrated at Pass Laws … asking to be arrested, having left their passes at home. They threw stones (and fruit!) They were of course unarmed. They were shot down by the police with Sten guns.
Violet Bonham Carter
Wednesday, 23 March 1960
With the exception of the Daily Sketch and the Herald* the rest of the press seems conscious of the dangers to the Commonwealth of any foolish or rash reaction of HMG. Unfortunately the Canadians and the Indians – with somewhat different degrees of indignation – have condemned South Africa. So has the USA.
Harold Macmillan
Sunday, 27 March 1960
On Thursday I went with Binkie to see The Dumb Waiter and The Room at the Royal Court, two soi-disant plays by Mr Harold Pinter. They were completely incomprehensible and insultingly boring, although fairly well acted. It is the surrealist school of non-playwriting. Apparently they received some fine notices.
Noël Coward
Friday, 10 June 1960
This afternoon the Ford Motor Company put on a demonstration of the Levacar, a rail vehicle held above the rails by magnetic repulsion. I had fixed all this up so that Labour MPs could see it. Only one turned up. The BBC TV filmed it and the British Transport Commission sent some engineers but they were so incredibly negative and stick-in-the-mud. Of course there are tremendous difficulties and the whole idea is in its earliest stages but instead of concentrating on the development possibilities, they were chattering about the snags and difficulties and technical problems until one could have throttled them all.
Tony Benn
Sunday, 19 June 1960
The Labour row [over nuclear weapons] seems to grow in bitterness and intensity. One begins to wonder whether Gaitskell will be able to survive and ride the storm. I shd be sorry if he went, for he has ability without charm. He does not appeal to the electorate but he has a sense of patriotism and moderation. However I can’t see either Wilson or Brown as better equipped.
Harold Macmillan
June 1960
Fire Brigades Union, Rothesay
We assume that in the next decade there will be no war. Quite clearly, if that assumption proves to be false, there will not be a fire service in the sixties because there will be nothing to serve in the next decade. The second assumption is that there is no major economic recession … In this ‘affluent society’ one should not forget the large number of people who are now defined as the ‘casualties of the welfare state’. Old people, the sick, the injured, the underpaid. This so-called affluent society for Britain is basically the result of the fact that over the last few years the terms of world trade have been slightly in our favour. The terms of world trade, if they turned against Great Britain in its present precarious situation, could bring about a state of society which would hardly be called affluent, except for a number of people who, because it remains a capitalist society, would be able to safeguard themselves against the economic ills of any recession.
With rational planning of our resources, sound political action, a progressive trading policy, particularly with the swelling of the new socialist countries, full employment can be guaranteed and a rising standard of living maintained.
John Horner
This evening to the dance at the American embassy. There were 700 people there and we danced until dawn was breaking.
There were artificial trees with real fruit wired on to them … four artificial swimming pools had been created in the garden which had been filled by the London Fire Brigade. Between and around them were gigantic candelabra wired for gas; from these tremendous candles burned continuous jets of flame.
We danced round beside the Armstrong-Joneses and saw the Queen Mother and Bob Boothby gazing at each other rather balefully across the champagne bottles.
Though we enjoyed every minute of it, we felt a bit like the Roman Senators must have felt the night before the Huns and Goths arrived to sack Rome. Such splendid extravagance carries with it an inevitable taste of decadence.
Tony Benn
Wednesday, 13 July 1960
Today Hugh [Gaitskell] … gave up the ghost on [trying to remove] Clause 4. It will remain unchanged in the Party Constitution.
Of course the press will naturally and logically describe this as a great defeat and rebuff for Hugh …
But neither he (Hugh) nor I realised the massive boneheadedness in all sections of the Party … It has been a staggering and almost unbelievable experience.
Memorial service for Nye in Westminster Abbey on July 26th. Of course I shan’t go. Utterly unreal and inappropriate! He was an ‘unbeliever’ and never pretended, as so many do, to be anything [else].
Hugh Dalton
Saturday, 6 August 1960
I have just read very carefully, Waiting for Godot, and in my considered opinion it is pretentious gibberish, without any claim to importance whatsoever. I know that it received great critical acclaim and I also know that it’s silly to go on saying how stupid the critics are, but this really enrages me. It is nothing but phoney surrealism with occasional references to Christ and mankind. It has no form, no basic philosophy and absolutely no lucidity.
It’s just a waste of everybody’s time and it made me ashamed to think that such balls could be taken seriously for a moment.
To continue in this carping vein, I have also read The Charioteer by Miss Mary Renault. Oh dear, I do wish well-intentioned ladies would not write books about homosexuality.
I’m sure the poor woman meant well but I wish she’d stick to recreating the glory that was Greece and not fuck about with dear old modern homos.
Noël Coward
Thursday, 8 September 1960
Leningrad
At 12.30 we went to the Cazana Cathedral which is now run by the Academy of Sciences. It is a museum of the history of religion. Our guide, Nina, aged about 25, was an atheist theological student, writing a thesis on the reform movement in the Russian Orthodox Church. One section of the museum was on the history of the origins of Christianity and we were assured we could ask questions.
Q. Do you accept the historical fact of the man Jesus Christ living and dying, aside from his claims?
A. No. He never lived. There is no evidence of his life. He was fabricated later by others and the story of his birth, life, teaching and death is without foundation.
Q. Have you any exhibits showing the persecution of the Christians in Rome?
A. No. They were greatly exaggerated and were touched off by the incredible wealth of the Christians in Rome who offended the Emperor.
Attended a farewell dinner at the Restaurant Metropole. Everyone was so warm and friendly and they drove us to the dock and put us on board the Estonia. The wind was blowing and the rain bucketing down and we felt that winter was closing in on Leningrad and would hold it tight until the spring came to melt the ice … then warm and comfortable in our cabin, in this lovely new ship, we edged out into the sea, our Russian trip over.
Tony Benn
There are no more diary entries by Tony Benn until 1963; his father, Lord Stansgate, died in November 1960 and Benn inherited the peerage which he did not want. Benn went to America to lecture, and also became involved in a lengthy constitutional battle. This was eventually resolved by the passing of the Peerage Act 1963 which enabled hereditary peers to renounce their titles. Benn and several others did just that and he returned to the Commons after a by-election.
Friday, 30 September 1960
Kenya
At ten o’clock Patricia* and I rode to one of the African villages where four hundred children were called out of school to be introduced to us on our horses and listen to a speech by the District Commissioner.
The speech in reply by the headmaster said how happy the children were to be given this opportunity by the British to educate themselves. I had thought of asking for them to be given a half day holiday, but the District Commissioner explained that the usual form of punishment in an African school is to deprive a child of one day’s attendance at school. I then suggested we might give them an extra half day’s work on Sunday as a gesture, but he did not think that would be popular with the master!
Louis Mountbatten
Thursday, 6 October 1960
Thoughts about the Bomb have come to the fore because of the vote for Unilateralism at the Labour Conference last week. Robert [Kee] has been reporting all the political conferences. He told me on the telephone that he is now a Unilateralist, in spite of the fact that the speeches in favour were rotten and Gaitskell’s (on the other side) excellent, because he thought it showed new life and genuine feeling in the Labour Party, something also that was gaining strength.
But how unreal such huge possibilities as atomic war and occupation by Russia seem as I write them down!
Frances Partridge
Kennedy’s election to the Presidency (which was announced on Wednesday afternoon) now seems to have been an extraordinarily small majority of votes – about half a percent.
I sent him a short congratulatory letter. I have for some weeks been trying to work out a method of influencing him and working with him. With Eisenhower there was the link of memories and a long friendship. I will have to base myself now on trying to win him by ideas. I have started working on a memorandum which I might send him – giving a broad survey of the problems which face us in the world.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 6 December 1960
Dressed like lightning and went to the Atlantic European dinner for Edward Heath* – a private one to talk about the Common Market.
He spoke conversationally, sitting. He obviously wants to make a ‘go’ of it – and that as soon as possible – but thinks it important to choose the psychological moment. He thinks that Italy want us in unreservedly, that Germany is friendly and welcoming (and says that the Germans and we are working out solutions to outstanding practical difficulties). France is the obstacle … We have no cards in our economic pack to play as inducements.
I like Heath – he is unpretentious, friendly, pink, ‘bon coucheur’, but as for being in the running for PM-ship – the idea is absurd!
Violet Bonham Carter
Monday, 12 December 1960
After all our efforts the three chief African leaders (Banda, Kaunda and Nkomo) have ‘done the dirty’ on us. Without any intimation of their intention, they ‘walked out’ of the Federation Conference at the end of this afternoon’s meeting – this time, as they said in their respective Press Conferences and TV interviews ‘for good’. After talking over the situation with the two Secretaries of State, I agreed to put out a statement from HMG ‘postponing’ the territorial conferences until the situation is clearer.*
The real trouble is that Africans are vain and childish. Like children they easily get excited. Also the Press and TV do infinite harm in flattering their vanity.
Harold Macmillan
Tuesday, 17 January 1961
A difficult Cabinet at 11 am. We are to put up (on April 1st) the new Pensions Stamp (£120m). We have decided on a new Health Stamp (£48m). We accepted 2/- instead of 1/- prescription charge (£12m). We accepted the abolition of the subsidy on welfare orange juice and cod liver oil (£1.5 million). We accepted increased charges for spectacles and teeth (£2.5m). But I tried to steer them off abolishing the subsidy on welfare milk. I think this will be resented both by those who care about children’s health, etc. and by the farmers …
Harold Macmillan
Saturday, 25 February 1961
I would not have missed my Edinburgh experience for anything† and was more than ever impressed by Jo’s public performance. His personality puts that of all other political leaders in the shade. To begin with – his very rare good looks – which hit one in the eye – his combination of almost schoolboy casualness and informality about clothes etc. with real dignity. He looks the part of a young ‘great man’. Then the impact of his voice, delivery and gesture – the originality of thought and gesture, never falling into the almost inevitable trap of cliché. He has the goods and can deliver them matchlessly.
Would that he could be given by Fate a better armoury of material weapons, in the way of money and organisation – and above all a group of able followers and henchmen approaching his own stature.
Violet Bonham Carter
Thursday, 13 April 1961
On television news, Professor Bernard Lovell said that getting a man into space was the greatest achievement of human history. By comparison with what? – presumably, Christianity, Shakespeare’s plays, Chartres Cathedral, etc. Considered his observation probably the most fatuous I’d ever heard. One line of Blake is greater than getting to the moon. Believing so, I felt rather lonely, with everyone else, seemingly, taking Lovell’s view. Feat presented to the world like woman’s magazine fiction – handsome cosmonaut, suburban love, wife and two children, factory worker etc.
Malcolm Muggeridge
Saturday, 27 May 1961
Spent the day dog-alone and went by myself to the brilliant revue of the ‘Angry Young Men’ called Beyond the Fringe at the small Fortune theatre near Drury Lane. I had a good corner seat in the stalls which gave me an even greater sense of isolation. Laughing alone has always seemed to me an unnatural act – making one feel uncomfortable … But I sat and shook and writhed and shrieked and shouted with amusement for two hours by the clock. It was really brilliant … The targets were Macmillan, the Church, philosophers, and there were very good musical parodies … a terribly funny one of some pansies with plucking gestures, dressing in Sou’Westers to do a terrifically virile hearty TV advertisement for something like Lifebuoy Soap …
Violet Bonham Carter
Wednesday, 7 June 1961
Hamburg
Dropped into a teenage rock-and-roll joint. Ageless children, sexes indistinguishable, tight-trousered, stamping about, only the smell of sweat intimating animality. The band were English, from Liverpool, and recognised me. Long-haired, weird feminine sounds; bashing their instruments and emitting nerveless sounds into microphones. In conversation rather touching in a way, their faces like Renaissance carvings of saints or blessed virgins. One of them asked me ‘Is it true you’re a communist?’ No, I said; just in opposition. He nodded understandingly; in opposition himself in a way. ‘You make money out of it?’ he went on. I admitted that this was so. He, too, made money. He hoped to take back £200 to Liverpool.*
Malcolm Muggeridge
Tuesday, 11 July 1961
[Watched] Gagarin’s arrival on TV.† He has, I must say, got a most charming personality – natural, friendly, modest and always smiling and happy. He came down the steps from the aeroplane clapping the crowd which applauded him – a very nice habit.
If only his native country were like he is, we should be living in a far easier world.
Violet Bonham Carter
Friday, 25 August 1961
I suppose the newspapers will criticise us for being on holiday during the Berlin crisis, but actually this is nonsense. The situation has got considerably worse, however, during the week. The Russian and East German pressure on Berlin is growing apace. East Berliners are literally ‘sealed off’ and the crossing places are few and well guarded. There is, actually, nothing illegal in the East Germans stopping the flow of refugees and putting themselves behind a still more rigid iron curtain. It certainly is not a very good advertisement for the benefits of Communism – but it is not (I believe) a breach of any of our agreements.
Harold Macmillan
I’ve not said that while I was with the Cecils, the chief nuclear disarmament supporters including eighty-nine year old Bertie Russell, were put in jail because they refused to be bound over not to meet and ‘sit down’ in Trafalgar Square.*
Nicky, Harriet Hill and Henrietta Garnett … described their grim experience – how rough the police had been, hauling them along the ground by their arms, throwing a young man on top of them when they lay there; how an inspector had kicked [Anne]; how the police had called them ‘stupid cows’ and asked each other ‘What shall we do? Shit on them?’
How it had been almost a relief to get in the Black Maria but the journey rattling along in cells had horrified them; how no-one had given them anything to eat until they were brought up at Clerken-well Court and fined £1 each at lunchtime next day; how they were crowded into an airless cell with a lavatory in it which everyone had to use; how some were wet and shivering from being thrown in the fountains.
Frances Partridge
Saturday, 25 November–Wednesday, 29 November 1961
Visit of General de Gaulle to Birch Grove, Sussex
The house is looking lovely and the servants are reinforced by three Government ‘butlers’.
All sorts of other women, old or returned servants etc., seem to have appeared. Every room in the house is full … We have taken five rooms at the Roebuck, for his doctors etc. Blood plasma is in a special refrigerator in the Coach House. Outside the gates the press swarm. The Red Lion is selling beer in hogsheads. Police (with and without alsatian dogs) are in the garden and the woods (one alsatian happily bit the Daily Mail man in the behind). Altogether a most enjoyable show.
De Gaulle now hears nothing and listens to nothing …
The tragedy of it all is that we agree with de G on almost everything. We like the political Europe (union de patries or union d’Etats) that de G likes. We are anti-federalists; so is he. We fear a German revival and have no desire to see a reunited Germany. These are de G’s thoughts too. We agree; but his pride, his inherited hatred of England, (since Joan of Arc), his bitter memories of the last war; above all his intense ‘vanity’ for France – she must dominate – make him half welcome, half repel us, with a strange ‘love–hate’ complex. Sometimes when I am with him, I feel I have overcome it. But he goes back to his distrust and dislike, like a dog to his vomit. I still feel that he has not absolutely decided about our admission [to] the Economic Community. I am inclined to think he will be more likely to yield to pressure than persuasion.
Harold Macmillan
Thursday, 18 January 1962
Cabinet at 11. Railway wages. Then the great question of Nuclear Tests. I showed the Cabinet my latest correspondence with President Kennedy and we agreed (after much helpful discussion) a final reply. We agreed to make Christmas Island available for tests; he agrees to my new initiative to try to bring them to an end.
Harold Macmillan
March 1962
Katsina, Northern Nigeria
The Emir of Katsina is holding the Salla, which celebrates the appearance of the new moon and the breaking of the thirty days fast of Ramadan.
For all those who live under the stress of modern civilisation, with its onslaught of noise, smells, commercialism, ever-increasing speed and refinements of killing, and for all those conscious of the Damoclean sword of nuclear war, a visit to Katsina is in the nature of a return to sanity. This is something that the human mind can comprehend. Katsina has always been noted for its learning and culture, and has attracted people of all nations since 1100, when it became the centre for the caravan trade with the Mediterranean ports. Today life seems easy. There are no signs of painful poverty. Prayers are said in thankfulness for continuing peace.
Cecil Beaton
The doctors have come out with a tremendous report on the dangers of smoking – esp cigarettes. This puts us in rather a fix. For how are we to get £800m indirect revenue from any other source?
Harold Macmillan
Saturday, 7 April 1962
Pre-Budget Cabinet meeting
The increase (of tax) on clothing and furniture from 5% to 10% will be very unpopular and people will forget the many items, from motor cars to cosmetics, which come down by 5%. There is to be a Tax on Sweets – 15%, and soft drinks, which will bring in £40m.
Harold Macmillan
Monday, 9 April 1962
Hotel Berlin
Lunch didn’t end till 3.30 so our tour of West Berlin was rather mercifully confined to what we really wished to see – i.e. the Wall. At first sight it is very much lower than one had imagined – tho’ covered with barbed wire, broken glass etc. It runs for 30 miles, cutting across streets, churchyards – so that one sees pathetic withering wreaths hung on walls by people cut off from the graves of their dead.
In one street on the border line, where the houses front on the East and back on the West, we saw a green wreath tied with red ribbons lying on the pavement. I was told that this was where a woman had leapt from a 3rd storey window to her death …
Forty escapees have been shot dead by their own fellow-countrymen – the East German police. This is what shocks one most deeply. It is so easy to miss. Many of course have missed and helped – actively or passively – and some have deserted. It is impossible to telephone to the East now, even via Frankfurt, and letters and parcels are opened.
Violet Bonham Carter
Morning drenched in pouring rain – a cruel day for Laura’s fete at Kew … Newspapers announce the most dramatic and sweeping Government purge – for that is what it is. Gaitskell describes it truly as a ‘massacre.’ The chief sacrificial victim is Selwyn Lloyd! He leaves the Exchequer (with a Companion of Honour) and is succeeded by Maudling. The ‘image’ seems to me to remain the same because although seven ‘old familiar faces’ are gone the rest remain and meanwhile Super-mac’s image of unflappability and implacable loyalty to colleagues is tarnished by this ‘night of the long knives.’* It is also a curious repudiation of Cabinet responsibility. They all approved the Pay Pause policy, defended it root and branch – Mac first and foremost – and are now using poor old Celluloid [Selwyn Lloyd] as a scapegoat. I think they will find they have miscalculated and that their transformation scene will have little effect …
Violet Bonham Carter
Wednesday, 3 October 1962
The ‘one day’ Railway strike is on.†
Altho’ there is a certain lull we are in a great tangle in every part of the world. The Russians are clearly using Cuba as a counter-irritant to Berlin. The President is angry with us for not being willing to join a boycott or blockade. He is either unwilling or unable to understand that we cannot give orders to British shipping, esp ships on charter, to avoid going to Cuba without legislation. (In war of course, it’s different, but we are not at war with Cuba.)
Things in Congo are no better, and here again the Americans are angry with us for not being willing to join in boycotting Congolese copper. (We cannot help remarking that the Americans own most of the rest of the world copper supplies and the market is dull.)
Finally, we have now found out that they have lied to us over the Israel missiles and are still lying to us.*
Harold Macmillan
Wednesday, 24 October 1962
Bedales School, Hampshire
News:
1. I have got the part of Herald in Murder in the Cathedral; only 32 lines but an unprecedented achievement in the history of Bedales school plays. Becket will be played by Ben Powell (18), First Knight Robert Booth (18), First Priest Julian Langinger (18).
2. The end of the world is nigh! President Kennedy says that Russia has missile sites on Cuba and has imposed an arms blockade, there could be a nuclear war! Everyone here is taking it VERY seriously, especially Mr Gillingham and all the CND crowd. (At Bedales that’s virtually everybody!) I say that it is because we have nuclear weapons that we are safe but nobody’s listening to me! All over school people are working out where to hide in the event that the Bomb gets dropped – in cupboards, under the oak dining-room tables, etc … but I am not very worried. We have a nuclear deterrent. It will deter!
3. Went to Pefe (Petersfield). Haircut. Woolworths. Watch.
4. Sent epistle to Jackie.
Gyles Brandreth
Thursday, 1 November 1962
On Monday morning the Crisis abated with the news that Russia was prepared to withdraw the Cuban bases. Straight from the unconscious rises my death-wish, left without immediate hope of fulfilment. I see that I’m really disappointed at not being atomised, although deeply relieved that Burgo, Henrietta, Shirley Penrose, Georgie and Rose are not.
Frances Partridge