Iain Macleod and Decolonisation - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

Gresham College presents Ian McLeod and decolonization by Professor Vernon Bogdan or CBE FBA a ladies and gentlemen this is the second of six lectures called making the weather about politicians post-war politicians who none of them became prime minister but arguably had more impact on life in Britain than those who did become prime minister my first lecture was on a liar in Bevin who was the creator of the National Health Service and in my view a great advocate of democratic socialism today's talk is on Ian McLeod who was responsible for the rapid pace of British decolonization in Africa and also in my view was a great exponent of one nation Toryism and like Bevan McCloud was basically a man of government and like Bevin he also showed great political courage but in addition to that he shows a great physical courage because his life was greatly damaged by very serious illness and he was a much of his life a semi crippled Bevin and macabre of course political opponents and indeed McLeod first rose to prominence by a parliamentary attack on Bevin but as often happens in politics they respected and liked each other and were friends and they often used to go to rugby matches together and they also both shared and I think this is perhaps significant a love of poetry they were both very good at memorizing poetry and perhaps that's part of the explanation of why they were both such good speakers and I tried very hard to find a tape of Ian McLeod speaking and if I'm afraid I failed those who came last time we remember the film of Bevin short film but very revealing but McLeod who have to accept my word for it was a very fine speaker McLeod once compared himself to Edward Heath a leader of the Conservative Party late 60s Prime Minister in the seventies and he said it was a paradox as Heath was a keen musician almost a professional standard was a strong sense of rhythm and harmony but he had no sense of rhythm of words he had a tin ear whereas in MacLeod it wasn't released interested in music or painting had a very strong sense of the rhythm of words perhaps derived from his poetry and that I think he had in common with an iron Bevin but his background was very different from an iron Bevin he was brought up in much more comfortable circumstances his father and grandfather were both general practitioners and they were as name indicates of Scottish origin they came indeed from the Hebrides but McLeod's father practiced in Skipton in Yorkshire where McLeod was born now Bevin left school at 13 and was largely self-educated MacLeod was not self-educate indeed it's ugly never educated at all the famous joke about someone who said I didn't receive any education how into Eton well wasn't the Prime Minister I hasten to her but all the Archbishop of Canterbury but Bevin was sorry McLeod was educated at a an Edinburgh public school fetty's where he did no work at all but was quite keen on sport though not an outstanding sportsman but interested and then as often happened in those days and people in public schools despite doing no work he got into Cambridge where again he did no work his only interest was learning poetry only intellectual artistic and learning parish would say he had other interests I'll mention in a moment but the Pope didn't help much given that he was reading history and he lordly he didn't play any part in politics a leader at university he enjoyed himself primary and playing bridge and going to the races in Newmarket and his tutor told him one day he couldn't get a good degree by confining his activities to new markets and the bridge table and that proved to be correct because McLeod left Cambridge with a lower second class degree his only achievement at Cambridge was in in bridge and he discovered he was a top class bridge player and indeed he inaugurated an annual bridge match with Oxford and formed the Cambridge University bridge club and became they rapidly an international bridge player of great strength and this led to his first job which was with the Delarue playing card company and he met indeed he met the man who employed him through graduated Cambridge but even there MacLeod was not a sidious and he used to arrive late and sleepy and part of the reason for that was he spent his nights playing bridge and Penta for money he was a professional card player very unusual beginning for future politician you may say he arrived in the office late half asleep and pratik wasn't surprising that he wasn't very assiduous because his salary at delarue's was a 150 pounds a year but he was earning in bridge 2500 pounds he as the late nineteen thirties a very large salary indeed and two years into two Leroux he left by as we said by mutual agreement but he was in fact sacked and then I think to please his father he read for the bar began he wasn't very diligent and there's no record of him ever passing any bar exam in fact he was a Playboy except at Bridge at which he became a professional and did he made his living from it before the war and he became a rapidly part of the England bridge team and invented the system which I gather still in use today called the alcohol system named after a coal Road Hampstead and he and are the other three members of the English team invented this convention for playing bridge in the late 1940s he wrote a bridge column for The Sunday Times and John Adair bridge competition but he continued in the late nineteen for two Oh indeed he let Rockford's club one evening with his pocketful of gambling chips to address a church meeting in his constituency on the perils of gambling and in the 1950s he became a non-playing captain of the England bridge team and in 1952 he published a book which I am told is still in news in the valuable book called bridges an easy game as a rather poor haven't repute I'm not sure I agree with that view but it's said to be a very impressive book I'd like people here who read it or who who know about it indeed in 1952 shortly after becoming Minister of Health he went to White's club to play bridge and returned home at 9:00 in the morning three hundred and eighty pounds richer he would undoubtedly have been a successful international bridge player but his career took a different path primary due to the war now in the war in 1943 having served in the army since it began he was sent to Staff College at Camberley and there he said he had a revelation because he realized that he was able to compete with first-class Minds and even he was as clever as they were and that I think very much altered his attitude to life and he thought after the war he would go into politics but he had a lot of bad luck in the war firstly he was injured when in an accident a log fell on his leg which made him walk with a limp and he was in some pain but then he caught severe arthritis in his back and illness which I believe he pulled ankylosing spondylitis any medical people in the audience will know if I pronounced that correctly I guess it's an extremely painful illness and it made him in fact a semi that he was first he walk with a limp and in some pain secondly he couldn't turn his head very easily his back was in great pain much of his life on his first day as Minister of Health he had to ask for a pillow for his arthritic shoulder and he once said to a conservative conference each he had a minor affliction that I recommend to all aspiring Tory politicians and I find it very difficult to turn my head to the left he had a further stroke of or his family had a further stroke of bad luck that his wife in 1952 caught polio and she after that could only walk with sticks and sometimes needed a wheelchair now all this possibly gave him a great determination and perhaps sympathy for the underdog but of course all this is psychological speculation but he did have to fight against very great arms in his political career now as I said the war made him think he was going to go into politics and he joined the Conservatives he said I had very ill-defined views until the war and belonged to no political party he said my father wasn't very politically conscious if anything he was a liberal in his youth but became a Tory later and in 1945 MacLeod thought a hopeless feat the Western Isles in the Hebrides in Scotland safe labour seat there not a nomination MacLeod came about in a curious way his father had a holiday home in the Isle of Lewis where from where the family hailed and his father was a liberal as I've just said but he thought nevertheless that Churchill should be supported and his father called an inaugural meeting of a non-existent Conservative Association in the Western Isles two people came to the meeting dr. McLeod and Ian McLeod and dr. McLeod's elected as chairman and ian was chosen as prospective parliamentary candidate and central office was informed of that and it was a very good-natured campaign McLeod was heckled by at left-wing supporters and he rather encouraged that because it gave me a chance to reply in kind of months when the car the hecklers had broken down he gave him a lift in his car to take him along to the meeting but despite that he came bottom of the poll with just two thousand seven hundred and fifty-six votes and he said the only people who voted for him were his cousins he said but I've got a lot of cousins in the Western Isles and after that he joined the conservative research department in London with other people who were going to make their name in post-war politics particularly Edward Heath Enoch Powell and Reginald maudling and he secured the nomination for what turned out to be a safe seat in London suburbs Enfield West which he won in 1950 and held until his death and McLeod was one of the initiators of a group of conservatives called a one nation group whose motto was that Britain ought to aim for an opportunity state and as he put it young people should need have more equal opportunities of proving themselves unequal now he followed the advice given to all new MPs by Labour Prime Minister Attlee he gave two short pieces of a diocese said specialize and stay out of the bars I'm not sure he took the second part that would be shot the first certainly and he specialized in the social services which was unusual for Conservative MPs of those days most of them were interested in Foreign Affairs or defense or economics or agriculture but McLeod was interested in social services and in 1952 he published a pamphlet with Enoch Powell called the social services needs and means and the basis of this was an attack on the Labour Party they put the idea of a universal so services he said universal health care universal pensions are a waste of money and would concentrate resources on those who need it on deprivation and he said there is a fundamental disagreement between conservatives and socialists on the questions of Social Policy socialists would give the same benefits to everyone whether or not the help is needed and indeed whether or not the country's resources are adequate we believe that we must first help those in need socialists believe the state should provide an average standard we believe it should provide a minimum standard above which people should be free to rise as far as the industry thrift ability genius may take them and he said the question was sometimes asked should have means test to be applied to a social service he said the question should be the other way around what I thought any social service be provided without a means test now means testing went against as we've seen the Labour Party's view which was there should be universal services financed by redistributed taxation it also went against beverages or beverages view that the social services should be based on the insurance principle and the main objection to it which people today like Frank Field emphasized a lot is that if you have means testing you discourage thrift that it takes away the incentives of people to get out of welfare so it's a very controversial view now he wasn't just despite that he wasn't a Thatcherite in the modern sense because he although he believed in the free market he thought was blank common people art of war.the states should be used to secure full employment the state could secure full employment through regional policy and selective intervention and so on and he said he didn't go as far as Enoch Powell in in the free market he said later about Enoch Powell I'm a fellow traveler but I prefer to get out one or two stops before the Train and crashes into the at the terminus now later on Macleod wrote a pamphlet called changes our ally in which he attacked subsidized rents in the housing market so they were evil and he should bring back the market he said the lack of a market led to misery and deprivation though he accepted there were those whom the market system couldn't alleviate the sick the unemployed the poor and for those estates should help but he also stressed volunteerism the big society if you like he said voluntary efforts must provide much the greatest part of the services needed for the old and the policy was attacked by opponents as a higher rents and Morris dancing well uh MacLeod injured pawns in nineteen fifty and none of the young MPs gained advancement under Churchill who of course much older and wasn't familiar with with the newcomers but in 1952 MacLeod had a great stroke of luck during a debate on a National Health Service he was called immediately after the front benchers had spoken and immediately after and Irene Bevan had spoken and he began by saying I want to deal closely and with relish to the vulgar crude and intemperate speech to which the House of Commons was just listened and Churchill who was about to leave the chamber as the front bench had finished heard this and remained and MacLeod then said that a debate on the National Health Service without Bevin would be like he was going to say handle it without the Prince but he said handle it without the first gravedigger and Churchill then was heard asking his chief with who is that and he said MacLeod sir and Churchill said put him in the government and the Chief Whip said he's very young sir McCloud was 38 that wasn't a sensible thing to say to Churchill who'd been in the cabinet when he was 33 and the Chief Whip then said to Churchill he's too young to be eligible and Churchill replied he's too eligible to be too young and so McLeod's jumped into the position straightaway of Minister of Health though outside it wasn't in the cabinet at that time outside the cabinet he was the first of the 1950 intakes be given office and not just junior officer PPS or junior ministership administer state that Minister of Health straightaway and it was a great surprise to him he went to Downing Street thinking he's gonna be rebuked sunny or rather was appointed Minister of Health and had to look at the yellow pages to find out where it was before he came to office and he had 3/4 on the whole successful years of Minister of Health and then in 1955 he was the first generation to enter the cabinet as Minister of Labour he would have pointed to that by Anthony Eden who said it was a useful training ground for a possible future Prime Minister and he remained in that position till 1959 and he was very glad in that position to be able to announce the abolition of national service which he thought was a great intrusion on individual freedom now in 1959 the Conservatives won a third general election increasing their majority from 65 to 100 and a Harold Macmillan and it was clear that McCloud was going to be given promotion and when he went to see Macmillan Macmillan said Ian I've got the worst job of all for you and McLeod knew that meant the Colonial Office but in fact it was the job he wanted though he had never set foot in a single British colony before becoming colonial secretary now it's difficult to think back to this period when Africa was one of the very biggest issues in British politics and Harold Macmillan said at that time Africa seems to be the biggest problem looming for us here at home the process of decolonization had just begun - African colonists have become independence Sudan and the Gold Coast which became Donna they were Garland's independent in 1957 and Nigeria was promised independence for 1960 but West Africa was comparatively easy to deal with because the climatic conditions there made it unsuitable for white setters and the traders an administrator in West Africa did not regard it as a permanent home so there was no white minority population but in East and Central Africa there was a very large white minority population which was determined to resist the coming of African independence in Zambia for example which was then called Northern Rhodesia there was 72,000 White's they were 130th of the population in Zimbabwe which was then called Southern Rhodesia there were two hundred and seven thousand whites one thirteenth of the population in Kenya a smaller proportion 193rd of a popular 68,000 settlers but they they were the only ones who had the franchise and in 1948 the governor of Kenya said that the notion of Kenya becoming independent was about as likely the installation of a red Indian Republic in the United States there was in the bigge colonies a considerable discrimination on grounds of color and a future Kenyan nationalist leader Tom Moya told the following story about when he newly qualifies as sanitary inspector for the Nairobi city council a European lady came in with some bottled water which she wanted tested for purity and he said to her good morning madam and she replied is there anybody here now they've been won't be surprised they'd been a nationalist to revolt in the early 1950s by a group called Mao Mao and by the time the clouds came to the Colonial Office 90,000 Africans were in detention without trial in Kenya and shortly before the 1959 general election there was a scandal in a camp in Kenya called the hula camp in which 11 Africans died after being beaten by white overseers and as a meeting of the 1922 committee that is the concerted back-bencher committee shortly after this one concerted backbencher asked whether it was right for the Conservative Party to resume responsibility for the use of force that was reminiscent of Nazi Germany of course some of the things now that happened in Guinea are only just now coming out but he even so keen II was not I think the most difficult problem of MacLeod had to deal with the most difficult problem lay in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as it was called and that comprised Northern Rhodesia which is now Zambia Southern Rhodesia which is now Zimbabwe and Nyasaland which is now Malawi and these three countries had been made into a federation in 1953 by the British government but without consulting African opinion and the countries had different constitutional structures because Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were colonies that were run for Whitehall but Southern Rhodesia would become Rhodesia and then Zimbabwe had had internal self-government till 1923 though not complete independent and southern rhodesia was represented as Commonwealth prime ministers conferences it was a quasi independent country there were different levels of development now the mottos of Federation had been that they should be partnership between the whites and the Africans but Ian MacLeod said he was worried that the partnership sort of part they were thinking of as a partnership between the rider and the horse and in 1957 a parliamentary delegation to the Federation was critical of the caliber operated there and the great disparity in standards of education and healthcare and certainly the Africans believed the Federation was a barrier to their political advancement now the problem was that if as was likely the British government instituted majority rule in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland they would vote to leave the Federation and so the Federation would break up which is actually what happened now in 1959 there was a revolt in the Netherland by the Africans and the police overreacted and 48 Africans were shot dead in the emergency and the African nation is leader dr. Banda was detained without trial and some his associates were as well and the governor of New Zealand said they'd been a murder plot to kill the whites and the British government set up a an inquiry and a lot Devlin a High Court judge who said that all this was exaggerated he said there was talk of beating and killing Europeans but not of cold-blooded assassination or Massacre and he said we have rejected the evidence such as it is for the murder plot and he then said in a really damning criticism of the government of Nyasaland Nyasaland is no doubt only temporarily a police state where which is not safe for anyone to express approval of the policies of the Cong party that was the main African nationalist party and way it's unwise to express any but the most restrained criticism of government of policy and that was devastating and Ian McLeod said later that was decisive for him the decisive moment when he said when it became clear to me we could no longer continue with the old methods of government in Africa and that meant in extra Blair moved towards African independence and he wrote some at millon before being appointed in the close lot in spring 1959 but if he wanted to preserve a white presence in Africa this depended on the securing the goodwill of the African majority he said it follows that in each territory where the majority of the people are demanding self-government the prospects of stability and happiness for the minority groups will be determined as much by the avoidance of unreasonable delays in the transfer of power as by the specific terms of the Constitution but still it was unexpected that a third conservative election victory with an increased majority would actually speed up the process of African advancement now in February 1960 a Harold Macmillan made a tour of Africa and when he was in South Africa and Pretoria he made a famous speech which said that the most striking impression he'd gained in his tour of Africa was the strength of African national consciousness and he made a famous comment so the wind of change is blowing through the African continent this rather annoyed the retired Winston Churchill who wrote to the cabinet sector asked why the government had chosen as he put it to go and pick a quarrel with those tax meaning South Africans but Macmillan was not I think announcing a policy a new policy he was recognizing a reality something that had impressed itself upon him and McLeod said the thing that seemed me odd was that the country generally I don't just mean the cabinet or conservative part or even part of the country generally had not seen grasped what seemed so blindingly simple a few years later and that is that if you give independence to West Africa you cannot deny it in East Africa just because there is a white settler community there now McLeod acted rapidly and in Kenya he immediately lifted emergency powers and by the end of 1959 three-quarters of the detainees were released then in January he called a conference of white and black leaders in London and said there must be majority rule in Kenya and the leader of the Kenyan nationalists who have been in in detention since 1953 Jomo Kenyatta who later became president of Kenya cuz he was then released in the summer of 1961 and there was a rather typical I think it first happened in Ireland that people who rebelled against colonial rule are called terrorists and saying well you've never negotiate with them and they're imprisoned or detained without trial but they end up respected citizens of the Queen and taking tea at Buckingham Palace and Kenyatta was the first of the African leaders to whom at applied then Tanganyika which had been peaceful which is now Tanzania's Joanna Zanzibar Tanzania was promised independence in 1964 majority rule in Netherland and McCloud threatened to resign if dr. Banda was not immediately released from prison and he was and the Africans released detained were released and the result in 1960 for the first time for nearly 20 years there was no emergency legislation in any of the territories of the colonial empire and that is very significant because the only way you could have delayed African independence was through the use of emergency power that was the executive rule and detention without trial and as a constitutional conference it was accepted that nice LAN achieve its independence and it would leave the federation and doctor banda and 961 became the chief minister of Nyasaland and the first leader of independent malawi in 1966 at the main street i don't know whether it's still the case but the main street in in in Blantyre which was then the capital of Nyasaland was renamed macleod street now are similarly northern rhodesia also was given majority rule and that broke up the federation it left the intractable problem of southern rhodesia for future governments not finally resolved until 1982 Margaret Thatcher's government reached a settlement with the Rhodesian African nationalists but as say Rhodesia was not the responsibilities of colonial office but of then the Commonwealth's relations office it's a different part of the structure now when McLeod ceased to be colonial secretary 961 always took place in just two years he said that in 1945 630 million people had lived in dependent territories of the crown but by 1961 just 23 million were than those that very short period the decolonization had taken place he created 15 independent colonies between 1959 and 61 and he said you must be in no doubt but we are watching one of the great dramas of history as so many countries thrust forward through nationalism towards independence he then asked of other countries fully ready for independence of course not nor was India and the bloodshed that followed the grant of independence there was in comparably worse than anything that has happened since to any country yet the decision of the Ashley government was the only realistic one equally we could not possibly have held by force to our territories in Africa we could not with an enormous force engaged even continued to hold a small and of cycles General de Gaulle could not contain Algeria of course there were risks in moving quick but the risks of moving more slowly were far greater so that was the end of his career at that colonial office in just two years now sadly his career after the Colonial Office was an anti-climax it didn't seem so at first it seemed he was being promoted because he then moved on to the position of the leader of the House of Commons and chairman of the Conservative Party to post and this he thought was a great triumph - one - such important posts but things then start to go wrong in 1961 MacLeod did himself totally unnecessary damage because he published his only real large work on politics they odd I think a life of Neville Chamberlain and the reason was this that Chamberlain had been Minister of Health for the 1920s and the cloud so it was a predecessor of his in progressive tourism in the preface to the book he said that Chamberlain he believed that he was constantly taking up work which Chamberlain had pioneered he had been the founder and inspiration of the conservative research department where I worked from 1946 to the end of 1949 I was a Chamberlain had been Minister of Health for a long time I was concerned as Minister of Labour with the ending of national service he in the First World War had been its first director now of course he was remembered 1961 just 16 his artheon and all people didn't remember Neville Chamberlain as someone who's a good minister of health they remembered him as the progenitor of the policy of appeasement and it's not much of a defense of a politician to say that he achieved good reforms in the health service if by his policies he put the whole future of the country at risk and that of course was the view of the Tory establishment at the time they were very annoyed and the former prime minister Anthony Eden he was now Lord even thought of suing the clouds the comments that he made about Eden in the book on Chamberlain and he wrote to the cabinet secretary to say that he was very upset that this apologia third Chamberlain's policy should be published by a minister in office and he said the mere fact that mr. MacLeod is a member of the government now in office even more that he was now the chairman of the Conservative Party would cause a good many people to think that the book had some sort of official authority and he said Munich was still an issue which would divide the Conservative Party and the timing of publication in the midst of the Berlin crisis were the Russians was particularly unfortunate even said and therefore Harold Macmillan ensured that it was known the book had no official sanction it was not official now the book wasn't even primarily written by the cloud it was ghosted and it was very thought to be not very good but it did him a lot of damage and it's already rotated because I suspect that from the cloud if he'd been politically conscious in the late 30s would have been an opponent of appeasement but no but I think it probably would have been about it damage terminology with Anthony Eden who was now retired but I suspect with Harold Macmillan the prime minister who'd himself been a live powerful opponent of appeasement in 1938 and indeed and broken with his party and a famous by-election Oxford in 938 to support a Nancy appeasement candidate and would have no chat with anyone who supports the Munich Agreement old foolish from that point of view to annoy the Prime Minister who depend upon promotion I suspect it was something that Mellon would have remembered now there were further weaknesses of McLeod's position that these two roles he had of chairman of the Conservative Party and leader of the House of Commons were somehow incompatible because being leader of the House of Commons requires a consensual politician because you have to represent not just a government to the House of Commons but the House of Commons including the opposition to the government you have to get on well with the other side and this is why I think is can government for example the previous leader of the House of Commons Sir George Young was was rather effective he wasn't too partisan was liked and respected by the other side but this chairman of the Conservative Party or a cheerleader for the party and you have to be very partisan to sell your party to the country so there they incompatible and difficult roles to put together and more important than that I think a minister without a departmental base is very weak in British politics how much McLeod was chairman of the party at a time when it was getting into difficulties not always drawing tide had been in power for 10 years and coming home popular and McLeod tended to be blamed for what went wrong particularly by-election losses and there was a famous loss to the Liberals in 1962 or thing to them and these things have much less frequently they've happened since man now government often lose by election so it wasn't so much the case then and then in 1963 two goals veto of British entry to the European community and then the perfumer affair all made the party unpopular and MacLeod became the target of that and it wasn't his fault so he had responsibility but without the power to implement things he was also it has to be said very tactless as chairman of the party the rules of the conservative constituency associations said that no one should hold the same office in constituency associations for more than three consecutive years now that tenants be ignored by many people and you've got the same chair of chairman that were getting all along and the cloud wrote to all constituency chairmen urging them to replace Association and ward officers if they had held their positions for too long well as you can imagine that didn't please many veterans or their lot on their voluntary workers giving up their time voluntarily and rather proud of being a chair of this or sector of that it wasn't the tactful thing to do and the grassroots of the Conservative Party gradually turned against him now he'd already offended as you can imagine the right wing of the Conservative Party who his African policy and this is weakened him politically and when in the 1961 conservative conference he said something like 630 million people that's in 1945 lived in the dependent countries of the crown a heckler shouted out and you betrayed them all and in March 1961 there was a dramatic attack on him in the House of Lords by a great conservative elder statesman Lord Salisbury we've been a cabinet minister and of Churchill and Eaton very close to Antony even and a former leader of the House of Lords and he used McLeod's skillet bridge to attack him because he said this it is not considered immoral or even bad form to outwit one's opponents at bridge on the contrary the more you outwit them within the rules of the game the better player you are it almost seems to me that the colonial secretary when he abandoned the sphere of bridge for the sphere of politics brought his bridge techniques with him and in a famous criticism of him he said that he was too clever by half and that in the conservative part of that time was rather damning and when criticized he said I thought he was rather unscrupulous I am NOT going to withdraw that and when Lord Salisbury died in 1972 someone wrote that he embodied the definition of a gentleman as one who is never unintentionally offensive now all this meant that when Harold Macmillan resigned in 1963 McCloud who I think had seen himself as a future leader of a party and been seen by many as that and he was not considered for the leadership now at that time there was no electoral procedure to choose a new leader of the Conservative Party and the leader was chosen on the basis of informal soundings and informal soundings howlman and told the Queen led to the choice of Lord Hume who was able to renounce his title becomes Alec Douglas whom and many have suggested that the soundings were biased but McLeod refused to serve under Hume he clashed with him on African policy and Hume had said that McLeod was going too fast which is what's not solid Brazil and Hume had said at one time but in the United Kingdom it took 600 years to graduate from the qualified franchise to that of one man one vote I spent there not having an implication in that that the Africans would also have to wait for 600 years but he then went on to say today no one suggests such a lengthy apprenticeship but anyway he wasn't in sympathy with the policy and humored at one point in the clouds colonial secretary ships threatened to resign because of insufficient attention given to white setters and MacLeod was also disdainful of his views on domestic reform and he said when Hume talks about unemployment that he thinks it's to do with the lack of beaters in his state and he said it was a confession the party couldn't find a leader from the Commons it had to gatebil 14th Earl and said for the first time since Bala law the party was being led from the right and he wouldn't having do so he didn't serve and he then unexpectedly took up a new post he became editor of The Spectator magazine and the first thing he did he's some of the foreign affairs editor and asked him how much she was being paid and the Foreign Affairs had said 900 pounds a year and MacLeod said there's nothing like enough and doubled it on the spot and there was a fear that he would turn the spectator into Tory House Journal but he didn't and he gave the contributors absolute freedom to say what they wanted and the political correspondent was a left winger who often attacked eath and when he brought his articles from the cloud for vetting the cloud said oh god the moment I'd read must you really say that about Ted well if he must I suppose you must again he didn't do his prospects in the Tory party any good by publishing it in January 1965 an article on the so called Magic Circle that's where the phrase comes from which had ensured the selection of Hume he published an article the excuse for the articles a book by Randolph Churchill praising Macmillan and the way he'd handled the resignation crisis and MacLeod wrote a 4000 word review saying this book was nonsense and the whole thing was fiddled by the Magic Circle and in very damaging to the Conservative Party now this was thought to be the ultimate in disloyalty and many Conservative MPs in the House of Commons cut him completely refused to speak to him and it probably ruined whatever chance for the leadership he had a month later he wrote in a spectator in another context the Conservative Party always in time forgives those who were wronged indeed often in time they forgive those who were right but whether he was right or wrong he was never forgiven now the Conservatives were narrowly defeated in 1964 Harold Wilson won an overall majority of just three and you know in a narrow defeat anyone of a huge number of small episodes you can say well the tipping point caused that defeat and many thought the reason for it was that McCloud had refused to serve under human and had written this disloyal article and the day after the election Doug was Hume normally a mild-mannered man was found cursing in the cloud in language that he otherwise rarely used and he used to bracket McCloud with Hitler as the two men he'd met in life whom he thoroughly disliked and one leading backbencher said later on that no one since the war had done more damage to the Conservative Party than Ian MacLeod now after 1964 he came back into a shadow team but when Hume resigned the Tory leadership in 1965 he was not a candidate for the leadership there neither as you'd expect he backed Edward Heath though he was much closer to his opponent Reginald maudling but he thought he could be more decisive ISM visa and he became Shadow Chancellor from 1965 but he continued to maintain his independence of mind and voting habits and a shadow counselor he broke with a Tory whip in February 1968 to vote against labour government legislation curbing Kenyan Asian immigration and this related to what he'd done in the colonial office now when the when Keaney was given independence in order to safeguard the position of the whites it was said that any person who didn't want to live in the new Kenya could come to Britain and would be a British citizen and the Pops of this was a swage the fears of the white population in 1968 the African government turned on the Asians many of whom were prosperous business been shopkeepers I need a lot of jealousy oven I think and started discriminating in see Asian so the Asians wanted to come to Britain now this hadn't been full scene at the time and had it been a full scene you couldn't have done anything about it without enacting legislation based on color which no British government could do but nevertheless the Labour government in 1968 passed an act restricting the rights of Kenyan Asians to come to Britain and McLeod so that was quite wrong he said I gave my word about the immigrants he say I meant to give it I wish to keep it and he joined with a few more conservatives to oppose the bill Michael Heseltine incidentally of the young concerted MP drawing the cloud on that rebellion and some in the left of the Labour Party did the two we including Michael foot the bill passed but McLeod did not support it now a Shadow Chancellor he spent most of his time and looking at the reform of the taxation system and many people say that he had no real feel for macroeconomic policy for economic management but that will never be known for reason he clear about even before the election he told his later biographer that his health was not good and that he would introduce no more than two or three budgets and would then go to the House of Lords now the conservative won the 1970 election and McLeod was appointed Chancellor and made one blistering speech in the House of Commons of back to his old form in which he replied to Hamill Wilson who said we'll be watching the government to make sure it keeps its collection promises and he said look he was talking he said a walking waste paper basket of broken promises from pledges of big powerful speech after that he had an operation for a stomach Almond diverticulitis and went to hospitals kept there some days the operation was successful and he came home and seemed to be recovering when he died from a fatal heart attack a few days after leaving hospital at the age of 56 having been Chancellor for just one month now I'm clearly his greatest achievement is at the Colonial Office and he said this in an interview after he left the killing notice it has been said that after I became colonial secretary there was a deliberate speeding up of the movement toward independence I agree there was and in many of you any other policy would have led to terrible bloodshed in Africa this is the heart of the argument so we could have postponed independence but only but the rule of the gun and the risk of bloodshed as it was we devolve power too quickly but with goodwill and the unasked a conservative conscience would you have wanted the Romans to have stayed on in Britain he was sometimes criticized and people said that the independence is given because of riots and violence is that wasn't true because tannin ether the most peaceful country in East Africa moved faster to independence and the more turbulent colonies and he argued that country from old Salisbury the best way to preserve the position of the white minority in Africa was to ensure that they came to term did black majority ruled MacLeod said this Lord Salisbury said the pace in Africa is dangerously fast it would be better if we went more slowly I say the pace in Africa is dangerously fast but it might be more dangerous still if we went more slowly he said so the anxieties of the people who live there the whites are very close to me just as our Lord Salisbury in fact his brother was a white farmer in in Kenya so he did her family and I think MacLeod did more than anyone else to ensure there was a future in Africa for the white minorities no it could be argued that McLeod radicalism was a matter primarily of timing there wasn't a change in policy he said and if you look at the words if you look at speeches about bringing temperatures that were colonists towards independence you find it impossible apart from peculiarities of language to say where the speech was made by me or by Joseph Chamberlain so the objective is always the same but the policy had been speeded up in January 1959 Ian MacLeod predecessor held a conference of checkers for three governors of East African territories and they said tan journey could be independent by 1970 King in 1975 Uganda the early seventies in fact tan Janica 1961 Uganda 1962 King in 1963 MacLeod said the objective was always the same and the West had been to bring that country at the right time toward its independence but of course everything depends on how you define the words at the right time he said the change of policy that I introduced in October 1959 was on the surface merely a change of timing in reality of course it was a crude change of policy but I telescoped events rather than creating new ones the main weakness I think of what he did understandable at the time was he had too much faith as we all did in the Westminster model of government and not enough in the checks and balances that were needed in a divided society and anyone who mentioned of problems and minorities was seen as seeking to defend white supremacy but sometimes Africans who didn't support the majority party also needed protection and I've been particularly true in something the card wasn't involved with in Zimbabwe and but also true in other countries as well but even if you accept that criticism when chinking a fair one it seems to me that what he did was out that it's written that way but the great benefits his policy brought those to Britain and Africa and I think he can be called the African Mountbatten because just as Mountbatten secured Indian friendship so McLeod secured African friendship he said when he went to the colonial office he wanted to be the last colonial secretary he wasn't that the colonial office was abolished in 1967 six years after McLeod left it and one of his opponents sir Roy Wilensky the prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland which came to be disband in the sixties he said for good or ill and I think he was at the ill but he said for good or ill he was probably the most powerful hold of the office since Joseph Chamberlain arguably greater than Chamberlain could chain helped to build the Empire he helped to dismantle it and without MacLeod we might have spent the 1960s on a futile attempt to hold back the tide of African advance the sort of thing in French had earlier done in Algeria or the Portuguese to do in Africa or in Smith in Rhodesia of South Africans instead of concentrating on domestic politics we might have got bogged down in all these African problems and I think largely because of McLeod liberal policies every single African country willingly joined the Commonwealth and most of them felt goodwill for Britain that he saved Africa for the Commonwealth and the conservative conference in 1961 he quoted the Prime Minister of Nigeria who spoke of the British first as masters then as leaders finally as partners and always as friends and that sees me financially now his early death was a staggering blow to the heath government and I think as great a blow to the Conservatives as the early deaths of a huge skill and an hour in Bevin for labor industry now an Aryan Aryan Bevans Widow wrote from the clouds biographer in 1970 shortly after he died how much public life has diminished for all of us when anyone so able and dedicated dies prematurely he was a front-runner of his generation in politics on the right and like Bevin he sought to lead opinion and not follow it perhaps for that same reasons Bevin he was thought to volatile and inspire trust but he was a brilliant communicator and the head of the then BBC current affairs department said he was probably the first man in the conservative hierarchy to appreciate and understand television and anyone who looked at the history of the heath government would know that that was precisely what the heath government lacked a good communicator that Heath himself couldn't do it particularly famous February 1974 who Gavin's election he would have been the great communicator that he needed and may have made all the difference in the February 1974 election which the Conservatives lost by a whisker partly because Heath could not present his case well and was seen by the public as unsympathetic and McLeod might have kept eighth there in power we don't know but it seems to me likely that had he survived he would like an Aaron Bevin probably have changed the history of this country even more than he actually did thank you for more information please visit WWE you K

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: Iain Macleod, Colonial Secretary, Decolonisation, Decolonization, Decolonialisation, Decolonialization, British Empire, End of the British Empire, British Politics, British Political History, Political History, British Commonwealth, Commwealth, British History, Colonial History, History of Empire, Conservative Party, Conservative Politician, MP, Conservative MP, Conservative History, Vernon Bogdanor, Bogdanor, Gresham College, Gresham, Politics Lecture

Id: d90SorxStcs

Length: 55min 42sec (3342 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 10 2012