| Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (10th February 1894 - 29th December 1986) was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10th January 1957 to 18th October 1963. Nicknamed 'Supermac' and known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability, Macmillan achieved notoriety before the Second World War as a Tory radical and critic of appeasement. Rising to high office as a protegé of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, he believed in the essential decency of the post-war settlement and the necessity of a mixed economy, and in his premiership pursued corporatist policies to develop the domestic market as the engine of growth. As a One Nation Tory of the Disraelian tradition, haunted by memories of the Great Depression, he championed a Keynesian strategy of public investment to maintain demand, winning a second term in 1959 on an electioneering budget. Benefiting from favourable international conditions, he presided over an age of affluence, marked by low unemployment and high if uneven growth. In his immortal Bedford speech of July 1957 he correctly told the nation they had 'never had it so good', but warned of the dangers of inflation, summing up the fragile prosperity of the 1950s. PUBLIC DOMAIN News item. |
