BOOKS
Savonarola looks back
J. Enoch Powell
Harold Macmillan: A Biography Nigel Fisher (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson £12.95) igel Fisher is an engaging writer. His
narrative flows easily and steadily, without angularities or purple passages. In- deed its simplicity sometimes borders on naivete: 'It has been suggested that one of Harold Macmillan's motives in marrying Dorothy was the fact that she was the daughter of a duke. There is no truth in this story. He did not marry her for her social Position but because he was deeply in love'. One envies the ability to be so sure — and so innocent.
Not that Nigel Fisher is unconscious of Problematic aspects of the character of his subject. On the ministerial meetings bet- ween the British and the French before Suez, he can write: 'Macmillan does not Mention these meetings in his memoirs, although he was presumably aware of them', and goes on to reflect: 'it is certain that Macmillan, who always gave strong support to the Prime Minister's policy, was fully in his confidence; but collusion is not necessarily [I] reprehensible if, as in this Case, its perpetrators were acting in what they believed to be the national interest'. The same determination not to ignore adverse interpretations but to prefer the most favourable comes out in the analysis ef Macmillan's handling of his cabinets: 'He was firm, business-like and Methodical, and was usually able to ensure a rational conclusion, though the subse- quent minutes sometimes bore little relation to the arguments and on occasion even ap- peared to have been written before the Meeting took place . . . He enjoyed and was skilful at manoeuvring ministers in order to secure his objective — often a relatively unimportant one — and he loved the whole game of politics. This does not imply in- sincerity, but his idealism was tempered by realism, a good combination for any statesman'. That, I would say, is about as good a job as could have been made of it.
A great deal of the book consists of a conning narrative of the political history of the years Macmillan was in Parliament, and could be read with advantage and pleasure by anyone wanting a general sketch of the Period, written from a known viewpoint. Nigel Fisher has not gone deeply into the sources but used Macmillan's own six- volume memoirs extensively, together with Lite obvious autobiographies of contem- poraries and some, but not many, personal communications. The 'thirty-year rule', in anY case, has barely reached Macmillan's crucial years in office, and it will be a long [line before 'the grand possessors' permit access to the full text of the memoirs, which
was weeded, if not censored, for publica- tion. The result is a biography with few novelties and no surprises.
An intriguing paragraph in the Preface states that 'I had hoped to write a definitive biography of this complex and remarkable man. He preferred it to be a political biography, so some of the more personal aspects' of his life have been omitted at his request. I am content to respect his privacy'. One would like to know more of what lies behind those sentences; for a few details of 'more personal aspects' would not have turned the book into 'a definitive biography' — in any case, a surprisingly steep ambition during the subject's lifetime. What seems implicit is that there exists a considerable mass of material, which would modify the authorised version extensively.
Nigel Fisher was given glimpse enough to whet his interest, but the doors of the treasure house were promptly and firmly closed.
How dull the published memoirs are, is a recurrent plaint of the biographer, who quotes from early days in 1931 the descrip- tion of Macmillan by Tom Jones of the Cabinet Secretariat as 'quite able, but I think rather pedestrian'. I believe that was near the mark. The panache, conversa- tional and oratorical, for which Macmillan was celebrated never revealed evidence of a mind either deep, powerful or original. His ability — and it is no dispraise of a politi- cian — was in deploying rather limited resources to maximum advantage. He was, in life, as in politics, a tactician, and his superb nerve was the moral adjunct to his tactical skill: "I held the Tory Party for the weekend.
It was all I intended to do", said Macmillan later that evening. it sounded a somewhat cynical comment after the inspiring speech he had just made. In fact he had struck the right note, at the right moment: the members desperately wanted a touch of Palmerstonian language, if only to restore their pride and self-confidence'. There is another politician, of whom Nigel Fisher has also written a biography, whom those words recall. They could have been written of lain Macleod; and he would have been proud if they had been.
It was the famous meeting of the 1922 committee after the Suez debacle, where Macmillan put Butler in the shade, trotting out for the dozenth time his tired simile comparing the British and the Americans with the Greeks and the Romans respective- ly. Macmillan never used a notion once if he could use it 20 times, and it tended to become worn as well as polished with repeated rehearsal; for he economised on ideas like one who knew the reserves to be limited. He never outgrew The Middle Way of 1938, that dissenting Conservative essay in praise of the planned economy. When, 20 years later as prime minister, he said believe today, as surely as I believed twenty years ago, that the only position in politics that we Conservatives can occupy with honour is the middle ground . . . We Con- servatives must believe above all in national unity', it was revealing that he could equate `national unity' with 'occupying the middle ground', and that he never wrestled with, was never apparently troubled by, the prac- tical or intellectual problem of setting limits to the principle, once espoused, of the plan- ned state. The words 'we must believe' rather than 'we believe' are a give-away.
Unlike Nigel Fisher, who when 'young and uncommitted' was 'converted to Con- servatism' by The Middle Way, I have always been conscious that I cannot form a fair judgment of Macmillan because of the natural antipathy between the congenital high Tory and the congenital grand Whig. They are two strains of the human species (English division) who instinctively recognise one another as opponents. He put his finger on it when he once remarked that `Powell looks at me in Cabinet like Savonarola eyeing one of the more disreputable popes'. But there is another handicap besides idiosyncratic prejudice to which one is exposed in estimating the career and personality of a prime minister in one's own time.
Here is a man who in 15 years from scratch outdistanced the other runners, gained the premier place and held it during six and a half years when Britain and the Conservative Party. 'never had it so good'. It goes against the grain, it seems an insult to the onlookers, if one has to conclude it is not the severest judgment some have reached — that the only exceptional endow- ment which contributed to make this hap- pen rather than any of the might-have- beens was the talent of a superb actor- manager and the skill and cynicism of a born political tactician. That would never
do. The drama must be invested with the dignity of measured progress towards the predictable and predicted climax: the uni- que causes must be assembled which could produce the unique outcome; doubts, cavils and incredulity must be banished as would be interruptions at a successful play or a na- tional thanksgiving. That is the biography of our great men that we like to read: Nigel Fisher's readers will enjoy his Harold Mac- millan. What need is there to begrudge their pleasure?
Previous page
