WIND OF CHANGE AND THE FAMILY SILVER

The 3^rd February signals an interesting performance writer/speaker. Some of his remarks have had an extraordinary impact on world as well as local affairs. On the 3^rd February 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made a speech to the Parliament of South Africa, It turned out to be an historical address. He had spent a month in Africa visiting a number of British colonies, as they were at the time. The speech signalled clearly that the Conservative-controlled British Government intended to grant independence to many of these territories, which indeed happened subsequently, with most of the British possessions in Africa becoming independent nations in the 1960s. The Labour governments of 1945–51 had started a process of decolonisation but this policy had been halted by the Conservative governments from 1951 onwards.

The speech acquired its name, The Wind of Change speech, from a now-famous quotation embedded in it. Macmillan said:

The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Macmillan's Cape Town speech made it clear that Macmillan included South Africa in his comments and indicated a shift in British policy in regard to apartheid with Macmillan saying:

As a fellow member of the Commonwealth it is our earnest desire to give South Africa our support and encouragement, but I hope you won't mind my saying frankly that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible for us to do this without being false to our own deep convictions about the political destinies of free men to which in our own territories we are trying to give effect.

The occasion was in fact the second time on which Macmillan had given this speech: he was repeating an address already made in Accra, Ghana, (formerly the British colony of the Gold Coast) on 10 January 1960. This time it received press attention, at least partly because of the stony reception that greeted it. It is noteworthy that the context of the speech made such a difference. The repeat performance given just 24 days later to an inflexible silent group of white supremacist made much greater impact.

As to performance, besides restarting the policy of decolonisation, the speech marked political shifts that were to occur within the next year or so, in the Union of South Africa and the United Kingdom. The formation of the Republic of South Africa in 1961 and the country's departure from the Commonwealth of Nations were the result of a number of factors, but the change in the UK's attitude to African self-government is usually considered to have been significant.

There was an extended backlash against the speech from the right of the Conservative Party, which wished Britain to retain its imperial possessions. The speech led directly to the formation of the Conservative Monday Club pressure group.

In later life Macmillan made a couple of other comments that reverberated in the UK during the ‘reign’ of Margaret Thatcher. Of the miner’s strike he said, in the House of Lords:

It breaks my heart to see—and I cannot interfere—what is happening in our country today. This terrible strike, by the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser’s's and Hitler’s's armies and never gave in. It is pointless and we cannot afford that kind of thing. Then there is the growing division of Conservative prosperity in the south and the ailing north and Midlands. We used to have battles and rows but they were quarrels. Now there is a new kind of wicked hatred that has been brought in by different types of people.

And also as regards her monetarist policies

'First of all the Georgian silver goes. And then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go.'

Well he was a bit of a toff, but not a bad performance writer.