One of the great goals of the pioneering Victorian explorers of Africa was to find the source of the Nile. The origins of the grievous miscalculation by Harold Macmillan of what became known as The Night of The Long Knives on Friday 13 July 1962, when he summarily sacked seven members of his Cabinet, may appear equally obscure, but can in fact be traced back to the Wallace Murder Case in Liverpool in 1931.
At that time Selwyn Lloyd was a young lawyer on the Northern Circuit. Legal news in Liverpool in 1931 was dominated by the trial of William Wallace, who was convicted of the murder of his wife Julia. Though he was not involved in the case Lloyd was convinced from the start that Wallace was innocent and the victim of circumstantial evidence. The conviction was sensationally overturned by the court of Criminal Appeal, the first instance in British legal history where an appeal was allowed after a re-examination of the evidence. The case and its outcome made a profound effect upon Lloyd. From that time onwards he became implacably opposed to capital punishment and after the war when he was MP for the Wirral, most unusually for a Conservative of that era, became involved, particularly with the Labour MP for Nelson, Sydney Silverman, in the long campaign for its abolition.
In January 1957 when Harold Macmillan became Prime Minister after the Suez Crisis, he asked Lloyd to remain as Foreign Secretary because he believed that ‘one head on a charger is enough’. He assured Lloyd that he would at some convenient future reshuffle move him to another great office of state. At this point, Lloyd reminded him of his commitment to bring about the abolition of capital punishment and said that as a result he would never be able to accept the post of Home Secretary. Recommendation to the Queen of the prerogative of mercy in capital cases was one of the functions of the Home Secretary at that time and Lloyd said that because of his deep personal feelings on the matter he would never be able to give the correct objective advice to the Monarch in accordance with the law at the time. Macmillan accepted this point of principle. One door was thus closed for Lloyd’s future career path, with dramatic consequences at the time of the Night of the Long Knives.
In July 1960 Macmillan kept his word from January 1957 and in his reshuffle that summer he made Lloyd Chancellor of the Exchequer, promising Lloyd in addition that he would remain there until the next General Election. Lloyd’s two year Chancellorship was to founder in the end on the series of cumulative political difficulties that assailed the government in the spring of 1962, epitomised above all by the sensational reversal of the Orpington by-election in March 1962. Lloyd’s pay pause in 1961 had been unpopular, particularly among groups such as nurses and teachers who had a large measure of public support, and had been breached by the dockers when they secured an increase of 9 per cent. Lloyd’s second budget in April 1962 had also aroused controversy with its tax on sweets and confectionery (the pasty tax controversy of its day), seen as a raid on children’s pocket money.
Rab Butler, the Home Secretary, and Iain Macleod, the Chairman of the Conservative Party were convinced that Macmillan needed to bring in an expansionist Chancellor of the Exchequer in the run-up to the next General Election, due by October 1964. They were pushing at an open door. Macmillan had already come to the same conclusion, though he agonised about what to do with Selwyn Lloyd. Macmillan, Butler and Macleod had several meetings in that spring working out possible scenarios. Macmillan did not want to sack Selwyn Lloyd, as he had been the most loyal of the loyal, and had been rewarded with the tenure of Chequers. Macmillan had his own country house, Birch Grove, and, in any case, as he said, ‘Lady Dorothy didn’t like weeding other people’s gardens’. Rab Butler was about to move to the rather nebulous job of First Secretary of State (an office wound up on 18 October 1963) and the ideal scenario for Macmillan would have been to move Lloyd to the Home Office, which would have made him only the second politician after Sir John Simon to have held all three of the great offices of state. This simple change was not possible though, because of Lloyd’s stance following the 1931 Wallace case. Philip de Zulueta, one of Macmillan’s private secretaries, suggested that Lloyd should become Lord Chancellor. Kilmuir had been Lord Chancellor for five years and had already made it clear that he would be willing to go at a time suitable to Macmillan, though when the moment came unexpectedly in July he was furious. Macmillan considered the proposal but in the end felt that Lloyd was not a distinguished enough lawyer to occupy the Woolsack, perhaps ironic in the light of later developments in the office.
There was no alternative. He could hardly make Lloyd Minister of Education or Transport, although both were key positions at the time. Lloyd had to go. So that Lloyd would not thus seem the sole scapegoat for the government’s difficulties, Macmillan, in a spirit of understanding of Lloyd’s position, decided to give him companions in the lifeboat. The problem was that this produced a domino effect as one sacking led to another. At this stage Macmillan wisely planned to make this reshuffle after the summer recess. July was always a fractious time at Westminster and the autumn would mark the start of the new Parliamentary year with a new team. The timing of these plans was scuppered by Rab Butler.
On Wednesday 11 July Butler lunched at Lord Rothermere’s home Warwick House and was seated next to Walter Terry, the Political Correspondent of the Daily Mail. In an indiscretion unique even by his customary standards, Butler outlined Macmillan’s plans for the reshuffle. The next day the Daily Mail ran a headline story ‘MAC’S MASTER PLAN’. All Macmillan’s calculations as to timing were in ruins. When details became known many felt that Butler had deliberately leaked details to embarrass Macmillan. Anthony Eden, by then ennobled as Earl of Avon, told Selwyn Lloyd that this guaranteed that Butler would never succeed Macmillan as Leader of the Conservative Party. Later Lord Avon was to make a speech at Leamington in his former constituency saying that Selwyn Lloyd had been ‘harshly treated’, an unprecedented criticism at that time by a Tory Prime Minister about his successor.
Macmillan was thus ‘bounced’ into making his reshuffle at the most unpropitious time of the parliamentary year. In the next few days, thirty-nine of the one hundred and one ministerial posts were changed and fifty-two people were involved in the drama. The headlines were for the seven Cabinet Ministers dismissed: Selwyn Lloyd was replaced as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Reginald Maudling, Viscount Kilmuir as Lord Chancellor by Lord Dilhorne, David Eccles at Education by Peter Thorneycroft, John Maclay as Secretary of State for Scotland by Michael Noble, Charles Hill at Housing and Local Government by Keith Joseph, and Percy Mills as Minister without Portfolio by William Deedes.
The meeting of Macmillan and Selwyn Lloyd at Admiralty House (Downing Street was being renovated at he time) was painful on both sides. Macmillan suggested that Lloyd take a peerage and the chairmanship of Martin’s Bank, then vacant. Lloyd rejected both suggestions, saying that his loyalty must remain to his constituents in the Wirral. Macmillan was thrown by this unexpected development. Lloyd was in fact sympathetic to Macmillan ‘I was sad for him, because I thought he was damaging his own position, perhaps beyond repair.’ He decided that forgiveness was the best form of revenge and when interviewed joked that he was happy he no longer had to read The Economist!
The timetable was complicated because it was the day of the Queen’s first Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. Harold Watkinson, who was told that the Prime Minister wanted younger men in the cabinet, was actually replaced by an older man.. Even m
ore painful was that he was taken to the Palace Garden Party by ministerial car but had to find his own way home. Kilmuir said that one’s cook would have had more notice, to which Macmillan replied, ‘It’s easier to get Lord Chancellors these days than cooks.’
As the news spread, Anthony Barber, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, was on his way by train to a constituency meeting in Doncaster. On arrival, his taxi driver told him of the unfolding drama. They listened together on the taxi’s radio to the list of changes. The road outside Doncaster station has three bridges and the signal cut out under each one, yet the list was still unfolding after they emerged from under the last one. Barber, on arrival at his constituency office, had to ring London to see if he was still Economic Secretary.
The Night of the Long Knives was the moment when luck began to run out for Macmillan. His reputation for unflappability was gone for ever and the unprecedented events gave a focus for the discontent of the awkward squad on the backbenches. Lloyd was received with acclamation in the Commons the following Tuesday, Macmillan with silence. As the storm continued Macmillan knew he had made a mistake. Tim Bligh, another of his secretaries, told Selwyn Lloyd that the Prime Minister was spending much of his time working out how to bring Lloyd back. They had a strange reconciliation meeting at Admiralty House on 1 August, in which Macmillan said that he felt there was a conspiracy against him, by implication one in which Lloyd was involved. This was a grave misreading of Lloyd’s character, who would not have recognised a conspiracy if one had been placed before him. He was even embarrassed to be given as compensation the Companionship of Honour, a decoration he rightly felt should be given to figures of artistic, literary and scientific distinction, not superannuated politicians, but he was advised that he could not refuse it.
Two episodes serve as bookends to this unprecedented event. Selwyn Lloyd, to his great distress, had to leave Chequers and also his beloved black labrador dog (a sign of changed times in that this dog was called Sambo) in the devoted care of Mrs Kathleen Hill, the curator, as he had no space in London for the dog. Shortly afterwards Macmillan held a meeting of his new ministerial team at Chequers to discuss pre-election strategy. As Macmillan sat on the terrace in the cool of a July evening, expansively dilating upon the middle way ahead, other members of the entourage gradually became aware of the inquisitive presence of this black labrador dog, walking along the line of the assembled company vainly looking for his master. The tension rose as Sambo settled in front of Macmillan, looking up mournfully at the prime minister, who with studied disregard ignored the animal, knowing better than most what memories its presence evoked.
Meanwhile at Madame Tussaud’s waxworks the staff began a customary sifting of the fallen (Selwyn Lloyd himself was made from a part of Sir Roy Welensky). Those whose careers are plainly over are consigned to melted oblivion, but there is a holding cupboard for others, reputed to be one of the most accurate political barometers in London. ‘Put Mr Selwyn Lloyd’s head in a cupboard’, said Monsieur Tussaud to his staff, ‘we shall need it again.’ Nine years later it reappeared above the robes of Mr Speaker.
D.R.Thorpe is the biographer of Selwyn Lloyd and Harold Macmillan.
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