PERSONAL COLUMN

Iain Macleod

J. W. M. THOMPSON

On Monday evening, a few hours before lain Macleod died, I fell into conversation with a politician about the way the Tory govern- ment was shaping. The man our attention turned to almost at once was lain Macleod. He was, we seemed to be agreeing. the most interesting man in the Cabinet and the mart with the largest power to make or break Edward Heath's administration. 'There is something volcanic about lain; said my friend. We wondered whether this smoulder- ing volcanic energy would force its way through all the restraints and inhibitions of Treasury office. We were rather hopeful that it would.

Now lain Macleod's death has swept all such speculations aside. Has there ever, I find myself wondering, been a more cruelly untimely death in the history of our poli- tics? For rain Macleod had played a central role in the remoulding of the Tory party in recent years; he had a potent share in achiev- ing the victory of 18 June; he had prepared himself with intense application for what he saw as the decisive post in' the new govern- ment; and now he is dead at fifty-six. It is indeed a tragedy.

It is not easy to define precisely 'Fain Mac- leod's place in post-war political history. It was very much bound up with the personality of the man. That word 'volcanic' gives a clue. There was always about him, even when gay and relaxed, some sense of latent fire. When I first knew him, during those now distant days of the Macmillan era, he seemed well set to reach the very top. Macmillan saw in him a possible future leader of the Tory party, and it was not a judgment from which kin Macleod cared to dissent. He had had a stormy time in office, notably as a bold Colonial Secretary executing the 'wind of change' policies in Africa_ and as a result had fallen into grave disfavour with the right wing of his party. But' he was riding out the storms and had high hopes of the future.

It was, in those circumstances, a remark- able act when he risked everything by refus- ing to serve under Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The ins and outs of that affair are still being debated. but in essence there were I think two Quite simple factors at work. One was that he had told Sir Alec that he ought not to accent the leadership: having done so, he felt that honour required him to stand aside. The other, I suspect, was that by his nature he was drawn to the brave, almost solitary stand. It was part of the deep strain of Scot- tish romanticism which he brought to his politics.

A little later, when his fortunes seemed at very low ebb, he told me gloomily that he thought his political career might well be over. He spoke of giving up politics alto- gether. How serious he was I could not` be sure: but such prognostications never sounded convincing to me. It seemed un- thinklMe that he would ever turn his back on nolitical life voluntarily. He was in love with the whole drama of it. The unexpected- ness of it all, the sudden shifts of fortune which come as trials and burdens to many men, seemed to relish. 'Harold Macmillan once made me Chancellor of the Exchequer and then changed his mind when I was actu-

ally sitting in the chair.' he once told me. He thought this extraordinary convulsion in his career an immense joke. In the same way he liked to recall how, when he was made - Minister of Health straight from the back benches in 1952, he had to go into a tele- phone box in Westminster to find out pre- cisely where his ministry's offices were.

It was when he was in the wilderness that he became editor of the SPECTATOR for a couple of years. People often ask 'what sort of editor' he was: they imagine, frequently. that he was more of a figure-head than a practising journalist. This was not in fact the case. He had a natural feeling for journalism and went about the job with wholly unpomp- ous zest. He wrote well and frequently. He would take on almost anything—a chapter of his war memoirs, a book review, numerous leading articles, and of course his 'Spectator's Notebook' which he signed 'Quoodle'. It was in the character of Quoodle that his often caustic wit and his at times boyish sense of fun were most evident. It was in his farewell Notebook, on 31 December 1965. that he wrote of his spell with the SPECTATOR as 'my attempt to prove the truth of something Lord Beaverbrook said in his last speech on his eighty-fifth birthday—that politics and jour- nalism are closely allied' Certainly they were in rain Macleod: the journalist and the poli- tician were indistinguishable.

The politician and the journalist came to- gether most memorably, and most explo- sively, in the famous article he wrote about the struggle for the Tory leadership when Mr Macmillan resigned. It was an astonish- ing piece of journalism. It also, it can fairly be said, very nearly finished him as a Tory politician. I remember its earliest beginnings. We were having dinner together and discuss- ing his new role as editor of the SPECTATOR. It was a cheerful and convivial occasion, as meals with him usually were. The subject of Randolph Churchill's new book on the Tory leadership came up. 'Why don't you review it?' I asked, without premeditation. `You can't stay silent for ever on why you left the government, and that would give you a chance to have your say.' He beamed across the table with that characteristic look sug- gesting agreeable mischief ahead. 'But I'm going to.' he said. 'Macleod Speaks!—that sort of thing. There'll be a row.'

There was indeed a row. A large part of the Tory party was outraged at this public spilling of so many embarrassing beans. Many of those who were most indignant, I suppose, never forgave him. Yet although lain met criticism everywhere, including in his own constituency, he never showed any sign of being shaken. Once again, I think, he found pleasure in playing a dangerous game on his own. And he also felt that whatever else happened. he had done his party a service: a view which many people have subsequently come to share. At any rate they changed their method of picking their leader soon afterwards, and the changes did not stop there.

Of course, in the end Iain went back and set his political career in motion once again. It was thoroughly sensible of the Tory party to agree to let bygones be bygones. for they needed lain Macleod's talents and his romantic, adventurous political spirit. On a good day, he was the finest platform speaker they had: and within himself he blended a romantic Toryism with a crusad- ing liberal zeal. It was entirely in character that, more recently, he should have been the only man from either the Labour or the Conservative front benches to vote against the mean-minded Bill which shut out the Kenya Asians. He was passionately a Tory —and yet, as one political observer said to me. sadly. on Tuesday. 'The Government looks much more right wing today than it did yesterday.'

What hC contributed to Tory politics, in fact, apart from his sheer practical talents in government and in opposition, was a par- ticular, personal view of the country and its problems. He thought policy should be both humane and libertarian. He jeered at the 'progressive' Utopia which he called 'the Nanny State'. but was always compassionate: he was the author. with Angus Maude. of that most far-sighted and enlightened of post- war Tory documents. One Nation. A middle class man, the son of a country doctor, he had no time for the class war: yet he was not unresponsive to the glamour of High Toryism. He castigated the Etonian influence upon his party but was a proud member of White's. He enjoyed complexities and did not mind apparent contradictions. His close and argumentative friendship with Randolph Churchill was revealing; it suggested both his liking for grand Tory traditions and his readiness to attack them for the general good when necessary. He was a subtle. Celtic mixture.

The iconoclast in him might have made him a great Chancellor of the Exchequer. I don't doubt that at the least he would have been a great reformer at the Treasury, for his feeling about the need for a sweeping reconstruction of the tax system was very strong. And he had brought his intelligence to bear with great diligence, overcoming that temptation to intellectual laziness which sometimes seemed present, upon the nature of Britain's economic ills. It was not his natural taste—to him, economics was `the dismal science'. But he had a vast amount of work to do, and was happily prepared to do it.

The quality fain Macleod most admired in politicians was courage, and he was a brave man himself. He needed to be—not merely because of his political vicissitudes. but because for years his life had been a struggle against pain and illness. He had been badly injured near Dunkirk in 1940, and the bowed, stiffened frame indicated the handicaps he had to overcome. Not that his disabilities ever seemed to stop him from doing anything he wished to do. He couldn't drive a car, 'but it's much better and safer to be driven,' he would say. Eve Macleod. the very model of a loyal. untiring poli- tician's wife drove him when the driver wasn't available.

He was often in great pain but was com- pletely stoical about it. I once visited him in hospital when he had been undergoing treat- ment for his arthritic condition, and the doctors' verdict had not been what he had hoped for. He talked about it in a rather depressed way for a few moments and then he cut himself short. 'Damn it. get the whisky out,' he said. and in the recesses of some medical cupboard I found a bottle and we drank from unappetising hospital glasses. Then he began to tell me some joke that had just come his way, and never spoke of his illness again.