Non e finita

George Hutchinson

An uncommonly large number of former Prime Ministers are knocking about at present. I am not sure that we have ever known so many. As to 80 per cent (or fourfifths) they are, of course, Conservative: the Tories tend to change their leaders—or savage them—more frequently than Labour. As to nominal rank or status (I am not speaking of personal prestige), 40 per cent are peers—Lord Avon and Lord Home; 40 per cent are still MPs—Mr Heath and Sir Harold Wilson; while Mr Harold Macmillan, embodying the remaining 20 per cent, belongs to neither House. In this—as in many respects—he is set apart from the four others who have occupied the same exalted office.

He is, I think, a unique figure in our national life, perhaps the last of the scholar statesmen. Naturally, he regrets the prevailing lack of political culture. 'Even young academics are ill-informed except on their subject,' he was saying to me not long ago. 'Their predecessors were so much broader. Keynes was an economist by mistake: he was a humanist, a classical scholar. He wasn't like the modern economists . . . Of course we used to call it political economy. Politcal economy— Adam Smith—was about chaps, about people.'

Mr Macmillan is a nominal Tory, at heart a Whig, like the best of Conservatives. He has always been capable of great detachment. At eighty-two, and thirteen years after his retirement, he remains a fascinating influence, not only as the most distinguished of our elder statesmen but as the head of one of the few political families still in business, so to speak—a family with many ramifications, many alliances, parliamentary and otherwise.

He seldom speaks in public nowadays. 'E finita la commedia,' as he said after his resignation in the autumn of 1963. To me, he has expressed it more colloquially: 'You're either on the stage or off it. I don't want to make political pronouncements.' What could I do in the House of Lords ? I would have to make a speech from time to time, say what I thought, or else not attend—in which case there's no point in belonging to it.'

Yet he does make political speeches on occasion, however rarely, as in the referendum campaign last June, when he spoke to resounding effect for his son-in-law, Julian Amery, and the European policy of which he, and not Edward Heath, is the author. He writes abundantly: his memoirs, amounting to more than two million words in six volumes; his charming book of essays, The Past Masters, published last

autumn; a new work in preparation. On television he is generally accounted superb —a superstar among politicians, active or retired. Best of all, he pronounces in private, to the everlasting benefit and enjoyment of his friends and intimates. In short he continues to influence informed opinion, certainly within the Tory Party, much more than is commonly realised.

There is little of significance in national life that escapes his notice. He is alert to events, knowledgeable, responsive, with his wry and witty comments on the passing scene. He is not a cynic, but a sceptic. As a conversationalist he has few equals: he is both entertaining and instructive, ranging and roaming from the immediate present to the remote past, as romantic instinct takes him. At one moment you are discussing Jack Jones (or rather he is), next the intricacies of the Ottoman Empire, or Carthage, or Alexander the Great.

Mrs Thatcher has quite taken his fancy, so I judge. He is very well disposed towards her, as he was and is towards her predecessor, Mr Heath, while regretting the latter's decision to go to the country over the dispute with the miners in February 1974. For her part, Mrs Thatcher was wise enough to pay him a visit at Birch Grove House fairly early in her leadership, there to sit at his feet. It is Mr Macmillan's hope that Mr Heath may presently join her in the Shadow Cabinet, and ultimately, of course, in office.

I suspect, however, that he still foresees the eventual formation of a coalition government, a possibility that has exercised him for many months. To say this is not to suggest that he is a convinced coalitionist in principle, but simply to note that with his subtle insight he can perceive a combination of inter-acting forces tending towards a so-called national administration. That outcome may be averted but cannot be dismissed as fanciful.

In terms of domestic political history, his sympathies are unmistakably with the Whigs. To him, they are much more interesting than their Tory contemporaries. Nor does he recognise the Tories as the traditional party of wealth: that distinction he attaches to the Whigs.

'On the whole the Tories were not magnates: they were Squire Westons, 2,000-acre men. The magnates were the Whigs, who liked money, developed their estates, built the cotton industry, the Irish railway system, Barrow-in-Furness. They were all great magnates, and they spent their money buying pictures and things. That's what they were, the Bentincks and the rest : they were the great entrepreneurs.'

Another of his interests is Oxford. He has been Chancellor of the University since 1960. 'I've made Oxford a great. hobby,' he says. 'I enjoy it very much Fortunately, there are various colleges of which the Chancellor is Visitor—Hertford, St Edmund Hall, Pembroke and others. I so enjoy them all. Then there are the great functions in the summer. I don't interfere, of course—I'm only a sovereign in the modern sense. But people do seek advice: I think I can be of some help to them: What does he think of women in men s colleges? I ask. 'I don't like it.' Pause. `I think it's rather hard on the women colleges.'

Then there is the family publishing house, where Mr Macmillan normallY attends his office once a week, coming uP from Birch Grove by train—at no expense to himself, incidentally, since he travels free as one of the few surviving directors of the old railway companies (his was the Great Western). 'He still does the WI' valent of two days' work a week,' says his grandson, Alexander Macmillan. 'No major decision is made here without consulting him. He's so experienced—and he rernern" bers everything.' Mr Macmillan remains chairman of the holding company, Controlling innumerable worldwide publishing interests. He has lately been to India oil their behalf. Before that, he was in Nigeria. He is now thinking of going to the Far East in the autumn.

In London, when he is spending the night, he usually stays at the Carlton CIO' with perhaps a simple dinner (he is no great eater and is firmly addicted to cold meats) at Pratt's or the Beefsteak, a glass or two of whisky beforehand, a little port later on. At home in Sussex, he now occupies what used to be the butler's quarters in the house: a small flat—sitting room, bedroorn, bathroom. Although members of his farnilY are at hand, he has lived by himself since Lady Dorothy's sudden death in the summer of 1966.

He is looked after by Mr and Mrs Stevenson, who have spent most of their lives at Birch Grove. Mr Stevenson, wh° drives him, entered his parents' service fifty years ago as boot boy. The house itself (built by his father) has been Made over to the family, but Mr Macmillan-predictably enough—retains the librarY' His lifelong love of literature is stronglY marked in all his conversations. Not 100g ago, he was re-reading the whole of HenrY James and Turgenev. 'It's rather full reading books you haven't read for a lo.ng time,' he says. 'I come back to them With great pleasure. And of course you call, understand what you didn't understaill when you were seventeen or eighteen.' his sight, alas, is failing him. For one scr fond of reading this is true hardship.

Mr Macmillan's has surely been richest and most rewarding of politiccia' retirements—if retirement is quite the wt/r I am personally inclined to amend Ill' phrase to read : Non e finita la commedia'