Could Harold Macmillan have been a Labour prime minister? It's not as unlikely as it sounds...

In a jaw-dropping discussion, Labour's greatest prime minister, Clement Attlee, claimed that Harold Macmillan, not him, might have become Labour's post-war premier. Here's the story.

Could Harold Macmillan have been a Labour prime minister? It's not as unlikely as it sounds...

by Lee David Evans

In 1951 Clement Attlee, Labour’s recently rejected prime minister, was on the train from Cardiff to Paddington. A fellow MP, the Conservative David Llewellyn, was making the same journey. The Labour titan and junior Tory exchanged pleasantries and small talk (as much as it was possible to engage the famously curt Attlee in small talk) when Llewellyn asked a question that brought the former premier to life: 'Is Aneurin Bevan the greatest left-winger you've known?'

'Good gracious no! Far from it!’ Attlee replied. ‘By far the most radical man I've known in politics wasn't on the Labour side at all.' It was, he said, the new minister for housing in Churchill’s Conservative government, Harold Macmillan. Attlee went on, 'If it hadn't been for the war [Macmillan would] have joined the Labour Party. Approaches and talks were going on… I approved. If that had happened, d'ye know the state of play? Macmillan would have been Labour's Prime Minister - and not me.'

A stunned Llewellyn pushed back. 'But that would have been a startling change, from Tory to Labour. Far more fundamental than Churchill, Gladstone and Joe Chamberlain crossing the floor.' But Attlee was adamant: 'Take it from me, but for the war, Macmillan would have made it, a natural progression in his case. He was a real left-wing radical in his social, human and economic thinking. His experiences of the depression, the hunger, the poverty, fathers on the dole, kids not getting food, changed Macmillan completely. That's why he was moving strongly towards joining us. A great future still awaits him.' Macmillan’s subsequent stints as both Foreign Secretary and Chancellor, as well as six and a half years in Number 10, justified Attlee’s confidence.

The source for that conversation is The Abuse of Power: The War between Downing Street and The Media from Lloyd George to James Callaghan, a superb book from 1978 by James Margach, former Political Correspondent for the Sunday Times. Without wishing to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of one of the Sunday Times’ journalists, I set about looking for other accounts of possible defection, Attlee’s views on Macmillan, and the 1951 discussion Margach cites. For a long time there was little to report, until I came across a largely forgotten book: Macmillan: Portrait of a Politician by Emrys Hughes. 

Hughes was an informed and credible observer of British politics. He was Keir Hardie's son-in-law, steeped in the Labour tradition, and an MP himself, representing South Ayrshire from 1946 until his death in 1969. When Hughes penned the first long-form book on Macmillan in 1962, he reflected on the foundations of the prime minister’s ideology. In the preface, Hughes wrote: 'there is a little of a mystery how Macmillan ended by being an orthodox... Conservative’, then confirmed, 'At one time he was very interested in the Labour Party indeed and Left-wing Labour MPs thought he might be thinking of coming over.' Remarkably, Hughes even echoed Attlee’s sentiments that, 'If [Macmillan] had [defected] he might have succeeded in leading the Labour Party!'

Hughes wondered, 'What happened?… Why did he go Right and not Left and not end up in the Labour Party?' In search of an answer he cited a speech Macmillan gave to the Young Conservatives in which the future ‘Supermac’ said he was frightened off by Karl Marx. But Hughes was unconvinced by this supposed revulsion to communism and sought an answer from a fellow Labour MP (unnamed), who told him: 'It was a matter of class. [Macmillan] had got into the wrong class and couldn’t get out of it.'

It may not be the complete picture, but there is undeniably something about Macmillan’s background and lifestyle that would have inclined him against full-bodied socialism. Macmillan was from a great (and rich) publishing family and he had married the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire. Whilst not mutually exclusive, life as a Labour member would certainly have been less compatible with the social world he loved, centred on country houses - including his own - and London’s most prestigious gentlemen's clubs.

So what to make of Macmillan’s possible defection? Happily the question was put to the man himself. As Macmillan was entering the twilight of his life, the account from Margach’s book was read to him. The former premier was as wily as ever in his response. 'That's very interesting, you know, very interesting indeed. It's a revealing flash-back to much that was happening in those terrible years.' But, the interviewer naturally wanted to know, and pushed the reluctant Macmillan to answer: was it true? 'Oh well, you know what it is for a man of eighty-two... one's memory is not so good when so much was going on in the world then.'

I suspect it almost certainly was true. What Macmillan saw in his first constituency, Stockton, stayed with him for life, especially the plight of the unemployed and their families. He had a great concern for the impoverished and downtrodden. What’s more he saw the government as a crucial and active player in improving the welfare of the people, and throughout the first half of the twentieth century his interventionist views frequently jarred with the scepticism from some of his Conservative colleagues. But ultimately Macmillan found ways to express his compassionate politics as a Conservative MP, minister and prime minister, leaving a legacy within the Tory tradition that has long outlived him. We may never know how close he came to crossing the floor, nor whether the Labour Party would have tolerated a former Tory as their leader and prime minister if he had. We do know that, whatever political colours he wore, Macmillan represented an approach to politics that was, is and likely always will be, compelling to a large number of the British nation.

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