Harold Macmillan’s premiership had successes; however, he also had many failures, although with hindsight, overall Macmillan’s premiership was a failure. During the time in which Macmillan was in power, the failures overshadowed the successes and led to a public hatred of the ‘establishment. One of Macmillan‘s main successes was that he had some economic success. In the late 19505 there was an increase in overseas trade bringing high levels of earnings from exports and investments. This also brought a high demand for products in Britain, leading to mass employment and a boom in production. This is shown in Source B which says “They presided over a period of limited inflation and little unemployment. However, this wasn’t seen to be such a success for long as there was eventually economic downfall in the 19605, with inflation arising from the growth in wages outstripping the rate of increase in production, Macmillan applied for the European Economic Community to try and further boost Britain both economically and politically, however, this was vetoed.
Another of Macmillan‘s successes was his introduction of a National Incomes Commission (NIC) in 1962 which was put in place to manage the economy — e.g. keeping an eye on wages and prices. This was put in place just as the economy began to go down, which shows that Macmillan acted fast to try and keep it level again, Source A references the “flagging economy”, which further backs up the point that although Macmillan had early economic success, this was overshadowed by a greater failure to keep up the economy, showing his premiership to be unsuccessful. Macmillan could be said to be successful by his mass sacking of people in the government in the hopes of modernising it and taking away the ‘establishment’ label him and his government were given. This showed he was flexible enough to attempt new initiatives and understood his party needed to change its image.
However, the media named Macmillan ‘Mac the knife’ and described the day of the surprising sacking as “Night of the Long Knives” further showing Macmillan’s premiership to be damaging instead of trying to be modernised. Source C emphasises this as “Macmillan himself finished it off, bloodily, in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in 1962 when he removed a third of his cabinet ministers without notice’, This shows Macmillan to be a ruthless and sneaky leader which helped to turn public favour against him, therefore making his premiership a failure. A failure of Macmillan’s premiership was the Profumo Affair The aftermath of the affair showed Macmillan to be too trusting of the people in his ‘establishment’ and the Conservative Party to be weak and secretive. Source C says a symbol of Macmillan’s failure was “the Profumo Affair which emphasises this as one of the main reasons of his downfall as it tuned pubic favour onto the Labour Party.
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The Labour Party used this to their advantage as they attacked the government and thus climbed to a lead in the opinion polls As it was the biggest scandal of its time and the government was seen to do little about the affair, this was an unsuccessful factor in Macmillan’s premiership. Although Harold Macmillan made some attempts to keep the economy up with tactics such as the MC and removed a third of his cabinet in an attempt to ‘modernise’ the government, his premiership was unsuccessful as he lost grip of Britain’s economy, he was shown as ruthless instead by sacking many people and his government was shown in a bad and unappealing light during the Profumo affair.
