As this year's Conservative Party conference draws to a close, Lee David Evans looks back to the dramatic conclusion to one of its most consequential conferences - sixty years ago.
The start of the Conservative conference sixty years ago was like so many before and since. Conservative ministers, MPs, peers and activists gathered in Blackpool expecting the usual mix of speeches, debates and rallies. They were also hoping to be cheered up. 1963 had been a brutal year for prime minister Harold Macmillan and his government, with de Gaulle’s veto of the UK’s application to join the European Community and the Profumo scandal, among others, undermining confidence in the government. As they arrived on the Fylde coast, Conservatives wanted to hear that things could be turned around before the next election, due to take place within twelve months.
Yet on the first night of conference, the best made plans were upended by a major announcement from London: the prime minister had been taken into hospital, suffering from prostatic obstruction, and would need to undergo surgery. The news sent the conference rumour mill into overdrive. At every event and in every bar attendees were asking whether the prime minister could continue in office.
Speculation about Macmillan’s future came to an end when the Earl of Home arrived from the prime minister’s bedside with a message for the conference. As Home approached the microphone at the Winter Gardens, “the hall was hushed with anticipation that something ill was in the wind.”[1] The Foreign Secretary read from the prime minister’s letter:
It is now clear that, whatever might have been my previous feelings, it will not be possible for me to carry the physical burden of leading the Party at the next general election ... Nor could I hope to fulfil the tasks of Prime Minister for any extended period, and I have so informed the Queen.[2]
With those consequential words, the annual seaside jamboree took on the features of an American nominating convention. For the remainder of the conference, wannabe premiers and their backers thought of little else than how they could vie for position in the race for Number 10.
The star that burned brightest during the Blackpool conference was Viscount Hailsham (Quintin Hogg). He was a darling of the party’s grassroots, widely admired for his record as Party Chairman and the zeal with which he made the Conservative case. He had a lot of support among the membership and the party conference was the ideal time to showcase it. Hailsham decided to make his biggest problem - that he was not in the House of Commons - an opportunity and signal his willingness to disclaim his peerage. In an address to the Conservative Political Centre, the party’s education body, he announced his intention to follow in the footsteps of socialist firebrand Tony Benn and surrender his viscountcy. Hailsham recounted the audience’s reaction in his memoirs:
The effect was one of the most dramatic in my lifetime. The whole audience, and the platform, went mad, standing, cheering and waving in the full light of the national television …[3]
Dennis Walters, an instrumental figure in Hailsham’s campaign, thought the response a little less cheerful, especially among the platform party of grandees. Chief Whip Martin Redmayne looked “stony and prefectorial, clearly not best pleased”, Walters recalled, whilst most of the others were simply embarrassed by the exuberance of the moment.[4] Back in London and being kept informed of events in Lancashire, Macmillan sided with Hailsham’s critics. By the end of the conference Hailsham’s campaign for the leadership was effectively over.
Rab Butler, the deputy prime minister, was the man most widely expected to succeed Macmillan. He never wanted the announcement of the prime minister’s resignation to be made at the conference, fearing that the role of members in cheering on their candidates - “democracy by decibels”, as he would later describe it - would leave him at a disadvantage. Yet with the news out and the leadership selection underway, Butler used the conference to give the impression that he was the heir apparent.
His first move was to quite literally jump into Macmillan’s bed, taking up residence in the prime minister's suite at the Imperial Hotel.[5] Next, he sought to acquire Macmillan’s speaking slot, addressing the closing rally of the conference. Butler believed that if he didn’t speak in Macmillan’s place, his position as the natural successor would be compromised. He got his way, but to an adverse effect. Ted Heath thought Butler’s speech was “monotonous and ineffective” - it certainly did nothing to create momentum for his leadership campaign.[6] A botched speech also ended the hopes of Reginald Maudling, Chancellor of the Exchequer. His remarks were lampooned by That Was The Week That Was as “if not the dullest speech in history, it would do until the dullest was made.”[7]
With Hailsham’s campaign overheating and neither Butler or Maudling exciting the party’s grassroots, support began to grow for an alternative. Cometh the hour, cometh the Earl of Home. Home never explicitly said he was running for the leadership, instead playing the role of the reluctant peer to perfection. During an interview with Robin Day in the BBC’s improvised studio at the Imperial Hotel, Home was asked in every possible way: do you want to be prime minister? Home refused to engage, saying, “I’m not going to comment on myself or on anybody else with regard to the leadership of the Conservative Party.” Maudling, listening in as he awaited his turn for a TV grilling, remarked, “Well, Alec is obviously going to run.”[8]
As conference attendees were preparing to head back to their constituencies, the unofficial Home campaign counted some of the most powerful figures in the party among its backers, including the Lord Chancellor, Chief Whip and a majority of the 1922 Committee Executive. Even beyond the upper echelons of the party, the mood was turning in Home’s direction. Nigel Birch, so long a thorn in the side of Macmillan, told anybody who would listen: “I’m an Alec Home man. There aren’t any other possibilities.”[9] By the end of the annual conference, perhaps the most dramatic in Conservative Party history, Home was the man to beat. A week later, the momentum he acquired in Blackpool propelled him into No 10 as prime minister.
[1] Lord Home, The Way the Wind Blows (Collins, 1976), p.182.
[2] D.R. Thorpe, Alec Douglas-Home (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996), p.285.
[3] Lord Hailsham, A Sparrow’s Flight: Memoirs (Collins, 1990), p.353.
[4] D. Walters, Not Always With the Pack (Constable, 1990), p.125.
[5] D.R. Thorpe, Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan (Chatto & Windus, 1990) p.561.
[6] E. Heath, The Course of My Life (Coronet Books, 1998), p.255.
[7] D.R. Thorpe, Op cit. (2010), p.565.
[8] R. Day, Grand Inquisitor: Memoirs (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), p.220.
[9] D.R. Thorpe, Op cit. (1996), p.289.
Lee David Evans is the John Ramsden Fellow at the Mile End Institute.