'Macmillan Parliament’ Ends

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30511, 5 August 1964, Page 11

'Macmillan Parliament ’ Ends

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, August 4. A photograph of Sir Winston Churchill, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, sitting in the doorway of Chartwell Manor, his home in Kent, and refusing to go into the house until he had enjoyed the sunshine for a few minutes, epitomised the end of the working life of the 1959 Parliament last week. Politically, it was a week of mixed emotions—of nostalgia at the end of a great parliamentary career of an Englishman who has become a legend in his own lifetime; of tribute to another former prime minister who will not be returning to the Commons, Mr Harold Macmillan; and of gladness, by the Labour Party, at the prospect of its years in opposition at Westminster being ended.

“The Macmillan Parliament,” several commentators called it, a Parliament which had seen Mr Macmillan’s high hopes crumble one by one until illness forced him from the scene.

There were his hopes for a successful summit meeting in

Paris—killed by Mr Khrushchev’s anger over the “spying” by the crashed U2 aircraft; there were his hopes for Britain’s entry into the European Common Market—killed after 18 months of negotiation by General de Gaulle. There were his hopes for a great Atlantic alliance with the United States—killed not only be de Gaulle, but also by the murder of President Kennedy. There were his hopes of leading the Conservatives to a fifth successive victory in a general election —killed by his prostate operation. There was his “wind of change” speech in South Africa which fanned a gale, sweeping along several African states to independence; there was also his surgical operation on his Cabinet, when seven senior ministers were cut away from the body politic.

But there was also his tribute in the Commons last week to Sir Winston Churchill which many regarded as the finest speech during a memorable afternoon.

The limelight also played on the Labour Party, and the death of its two outstanding

leaders, Mr Hugh Gaitskell and Mr Aneurin Bevan at a time when the tide of' public opinion was beginning to turn away from the Conservatives. It shone, too, on the emergence of Mr Harold Wilson and Mr George Brown, their successors.

Other events were also highlighted: the Lonsdale and Vassal! spy cases, which ruptured relations between the Government and the national press.

This, in turn, was an undercurrent when the Profumo scandal burst with all the unpleasant complications of a carbuncle and was followed by the Rachman rent scandal. All had their influence on the hopes of Mr Macmillan. Finally there was the irony of a Conservative earl, who neither expected nor sought to become Prime Minister, being enabled to do so after a Socialist peer, Lord Stansgate, had initiated legislation allowing peers to disclaim

their titles and become eligible for the House of Com mons.

The limelight last week played on all these personalities, and also certain of the dying Parliament’s legislation: reform of the betting and licensing laws, revaluation of the rating system, control of Commonwealth immigration, reorganisation of the railways, the Soames agriculture policy, reconstruction of local government in Greater London, amalgamation of the armed services under the Ministry of Defence, and the new education, housing and road programmes. As the week ended, many saw it as the closing of an era in British history. Like Sir Winston Churchill, sitting briefly in the summer evening sunshine, they contemplated it with differing emotions. They might have wondered, too, what he thought about it all.