Pointing the way, 1959 - 1961 - Harold Macmillan

The fifth volume of Mr Macmillan's memoirs covers the first half of his last administration. It begins with the General Election in October 1959 when the Conservatives were returned with a much increased majority. It ends with an account of the Queen's visit to Ghana in troubled and potentially dangerous circumstances in November 1961, a week that was 'one of the most trying in my life', when 'if anything went wrong I would be the guilty man'.

The book pursues some themes that have been touched earlier. It chronicles the steps towards the détente with Russia, the patient and careful preparations for the Paris Summit of May 1960, which collapsed over the bizarre incident of the U2 spy-plane. It describes the Prime Minister's relations with the United States, modified by the accession of the new President. Mr Macmillan gives a vivid account of his first meeting with Kennedy, when he flew from Bermuda, '1,800 miles to luncheon' at Key West, and found the President in the middle of a conference with his military advisers over the crisis in Laos. It is interesting in the light of later events to find Mr Macmillan's diaries of the time showing how sceptical both he and the President were of the Pentagon's 'hawkish' plans, which the British chiefs of staff considered 'unrealistic' and 'a ruinous undertaking'. 

The great European problem of 'Sixes and Sevens' is beginning, and there are revealing glimpses of the old men of Europe: Adenauer still hanging on to power and apt to lapse into soporific lectures on communism; de Gaulle, benign and regal, but 'I fear he has decided to oppose us - yet, in a way, he wants us in Europe'. And there is a particularly entertaining account of the visit which the General insisted should be informal; as a result Mr Macmillan's own country house, Birch Grove, was stocked with a deep-freeze full of blood in case of emergencies, while police and Alsatian dogs were spoiling the week-end's shoot and persecuting hapless journalists. The perennial problem of the economy is discussed in detail, for, as the author remarks, 'the British economy, like the British weather, is apt to be variable. Nor do the professional forecasters show any more marked success in the prognostications of economic changes than they do in the science of meteorology.

The continent of Africa looms large. Mr Macmillan tells the full story of his African Tour in the spring of 1960, which culminated in his famous 'Wind of Change' speech to the South African Parliament. He provides a fascinating description of Dr Verwoerd, who as a charming host, but 'as convinced as John Knox himself that he alone could be right' and utterly impervious to argument. He explains the crisis that developed when South Africa became a Republic and had to be 'readmitted' to the Commonwealth. Despite his abhorrence of apartheid, particularly 'because it transposes what we regards as a wrong into a right' he laboured long and patiently to prevent the Union leaving the Commonwealth, and might well have succeeded had 'Dr Verwoerd shown the smallest move towards and understanding of the views of his Commonwealth colleagues or made any concession'.

Britain's part in the tragedy of the Congo is recounted, and we learn of the first rumblings in the break-up of the Central African Federation.

Mr MacMillan explains the relations of the Prime Minister and the Monarch, he gives an interesting and sympathetic picture of the Queen and her political duties, and he quotes from a large number of the lively and informative letters that he wrote to Her Majesty.