Abstract
Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ address has gone down in history as one of the great visionary speeches in post-war history, and perhaps the finest address of Macmillan’s career. As well as signalling a major policy change in respect of African decolonization, it declared that South Africa was now so far out of step with the trajectory of world events that Britain could no longer be counted upon to lend support to apartheid in the international arena. Macmillan’s speech demonstrated a sweeping grasp of historical circumstance. It was timely in its assessment of contemporary realities. Its staging was dramatic, and its formal construction and delivery magnificent. Yet the power of the address was vitiated by the broad realisation that Britain was a declining force in Africa. The speech amounted to concession dressed up as an act of statesmanship, an attempt to regain some sense of domestic control and direction in respect of external events that were no longer subject to Britain’s mastery.
This paper has been published in The Historical Journal, 54, 4 (2011), pp. 1087– 1114. I am grateful to the Historical Journal © Cambridge University Press for permission to republish it with only minor amendments here. Papers contributed to the conference from which this volume derives by Simon Ball, Stephen Howe, Joanna Lewis, Roger Louis and Stuart Ward, were especially illuminating for my purposes. I have also benefited from the helpful comments of Hermann Giliomee, Alex Mouton, Rob Skinner, Andrew Thompson, Richard Whiting and the anonymous reviewers for the Historical Journal.
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Notes
A. Sampson, Mandela: The Authorised Biography (London: 2000), p. 129.
Stanley Baldwin, in 1934, spoke of ‘a wind of nationalism and freedom blowing round the world’ and Nehru, in 1947, referred to ‘strong winds’ ‘blowing all over Asia’. Safire’s Political Dictionary (Oxford: 2008), p. 814.
D.R. Thorpe, Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan (London: 2010), pp. 453, 457–8; The National Archives of the UK (TNA), CAB 129/101, despatch by John Maud, 18 Feb. 1960, in ‘Prime Minister’s African Tour January–February’, p. 159.
A. Sampson, Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity (London: 1967), p. 139.
Sampson, Macmillan, p. 181; D. Goldsworthy, ‘Conservatives and decolonization: a note on the interpretation by Dan Horowitz’, African Affairs, 69 (1970), pp. 278–81 at p. 280; S.J. Ball, ‘Banquo’s ghost: Lord Salisbury, Harold Macmillan, and the high politics of decolonization, 1957–1963’, Twentieth- Century British History, 16 (2005), pp. 74–102.
R. Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the wind of change in Africa, 1957–1960’, Historical Journal, 38 (1995), pp. 455–77, at pp. 457, 471; Goldsworthy, ‘Conservatives and decolonization’, p. 279.
A. Horne, Macmillan Vol. II 1957–1986 (London: 1989), pp. 184–5.
Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the wind of change in Africa’, p. 472. See also B. Phiri, ‘The Capricorn Africa Society revisited: the impact of liberalism in Zambia’s colonial history, 1949–1963’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 24 (1991), pp. 65–83.
C. Baker, ‘Macmillan’s “wind of change” tour, 1960’, South African Historical Journal, 38 (1988), pp. 171–82, at p. 172; R. Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation 1918–1968 (Cambridge: 2006), p. 257.
C. Gurney, ‘A great cause’: the origins of the anti-apartheid movement, June 1959–March 1960’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 26 (2000), pp. 123–44, at p. 136.
Thorpe, Supermac, pp. 490–1; J.G. Giauque, Grand Designs and Visions of Unity: The Atlantic Powers and the Reorganization of Western Europe, 1955–1963 (Charlotte, NC: 2002), p. 111.
H. Macmillan, Pointing the Way 1959–1961 (London: 1972), p. 124.
D. Hunt, On the Spot: An Ambassador Remembers (London: 1975), p. 102; TNA, CAB 129/101, ‘Prime Minister’s African tour’, p. 29.
F. Myers, ‘Harold Macmillan’s “winds of change” speech: a case study in the rhetoric of policy change, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 3 (2000), pp. 555–75, at pp. 562–3.
Sampson, Macmillan, p. 185; D. Eisenberg, ‘The commonwealth conference’, Africa South, 4 (1960), p. 58.
Hunt, On the Spot, p. 112; ‘Letter from DWS Hunt (CRO) to Sir A. Clutterbuck giving his personal impressions’ of Macmillan’s Cape Town speech, 8 Feb. 1960, doc. 444, in R. Hyam and W.R. Louis (eds.), The Conservative Government and the End of Empire 1957–1964, Part II Series A Vol. 4 (London: 2000), p. 397;TNA, PREM 11/3071, D. Nokwe (ANC secretary-general) to Macmillan 25 Jan. 1960 and Peter Brown (Chair Liberal party) to Macmillan, 26 Jan. 1960.
Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire, p. 258. The senior nationalist leader Paul Sauer regarded Maud as a constant source of tension during his time as British high commissioner and found him antagonistic towards Afrikaners. See Dirk and Johanna de Villiers, Paul Sauer (Cape Town: 1977), pp. 128–9. Also W.A. Bellwood, South African Backdrop (Cape Town: 1969), p. 162. I am grateful to Alex Mouton and David Scher for these sources.
S.J. Ball, ‘Macmillan, the second world war and the empire’, in R. Aldous and S. Lee (eds.), Harold Macmillan: Aspects of a Political Life (Basingstoke: 1999), p. 174.
H. Evans, Downing Street Diary: The Macmillan Years 1957–1963 (London: 1981), p. 102. Macmillan added, ‘Of course, they would have to accept the really talented African’, leaving Evans to wonder how the demand for political rights by the ‘talented African’ would be met.
Verwoerd’s ultra-loyal private secretary, Fred Barnard, was enraged by Macmillan’s failure to supply his boss with an advance copy and regarded the speech as an insult. ‘The speech occupied nearly ten pages; ten pages of silken, smooth-tongued, cold and calculated insults of courteously phrased, remorseless condemnation of the country whose guest he was.’ F. Barnard, Thirteen Years with Verwoerd (Johannesburg: 1967), pp. 62, 63.
Brand Fourie, ‘Buitelandse sake onder Dr.Verwoerd’, in W.J. Verwoerd (ed.), Verwoerd: Só onthou ons hom (Pretoria: 2001), p. 130; also C. Boshoff, ‘Mentor’, in same volume, p. 201.
D.M. Scher, ‘1948–1966’, in B.J. Liebenberg and S.B. Spies (eds.), South Africa in the Twentieth Century (Pretoria: 1993), pp. 367–8; H. Kenney, Architect of Apartheid: H.F. Verwoerd — an Appraisal (Johannesburg: 1980), p. 179; De Villiers, Sauer, p. 128.
Contact, 20 Feb. 1960; Mary Benson, South Africa: The Struggle for a Birthright (Harmondsworth: 1966), p. 220; TNA, PREM 11/3071, circular signed by Nokwe and Nzo.
P. Worsthorne, Tricks of Memory: An Autobiography (London: 1993), p. 195. Worsthorne — life-long conservative and empire sympathiser — was appalled at the professional irresponsibility of his colleagues for failing to engage with Afrikaner journalists. He was left with ‘egg on my face’ as the only foreign reporter to have underplayed the sensational character of the speech. In a personal interview with a ‘serene’ Verwoerd the day after the speech, he was advised to inform Macmillan that the wind of change was blowing through Britain rather than Africa.
Die Burger, 4 Feb. 1960. Neither Piet Cillé, editor of Die Burger, nor Schalk Pienaar, its parliamentary correspondent, were favourably disposed to Verwoerd and both showed a considerable measure of journalistic independence. The political events of 1960 increased their doubts about the direction of Verwoerdian apartheid. See, e.g. Alex Mouton, Voorlooper: die lewe van Schalk Pienaar (Cape Town: 2002), pp. 37–9, 40–1.
P. Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries Vol. II Prime Minister and After 1957–1966 (Basingstoke: 2011), 2 Feb. 1960, p. 268.
R.B. Miller, ‘Science and society in the early career of H.F. Verwoerd’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19 (1993), pp. 634–61. The account given by Verwoerd’s son, Wilhelm, of his father’s religious persona, is ambiguous. See W.J. Verwoerd (ed.), Verwoerd só Onthou Ons Hom (Pretoria: 2001), pp. 93–4.
J.P.R. Maud, City Government: The Johannesburg Experiment (Oxford: 1938), p. 224. This wide-ranging — but not much used — text is a landmark local history. Maud tutored on the Oxford Colonial Administrative Services course from 1937 to 1939.
Kenney, Verwoerd, p. 148; A.N. Pelzer (ed.), Verwoerd Speaks: Speeches 1948–1966 (Johannesburg: 1966), pp. xx–xxi; ‘South Africa: from Sharpeville to the Congo’, p. 427.
N.M. Stultz and J. Butler, ‘The South African general election of 1961’, Political Science Quarterly, 78 (1963), pp. 107–8.
A. Hepple, Verwoerd (Harmondsworth: 1967), p. 181.
G. Berridge, Economic Power in Anglo–South African Diplomacy: Simonstown, Sharpeville and After (London: 1981), pp. 33 and ff.; pp. 104–7, pp. 137 and ff. For a contemporary statement of the potential economic pitfalls for South Africa of its loss of Commonwealth membership see, e.g. ‘The Commonwealth: a South African view’, Round Table, 50 (1960), pp. 365–70; TNA, PREM 11/3073, ‘Note for the record’ by Tim Bligh, 14 Dec. 1959.
Berridge, Economic Power, p.112; R. Hyam and P. Henshaw, The Lion and the Springbok. Britain and South Africa since the Boer War (Cambridge: 2003), p. 165.
Horne, Macmillan, 1957–1986, p. 393; Sampson, Macmillan, p. 192; Boyce Richardson, ‘The commonwealth conference’, Africa South, 5 (1961), p. 7.
Kenney, Verwoerd, p. 206; ‘South Africa departs’, Round Table, 51 (1961), pp. 237–42, at p. 238.
D. Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century (London: 2008), p. 7.
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Dubow, S. (2013). Macmillan, Verwoerd and the 1960 ‘Wind of Change’ Speech. In: Butler, L.J., Stockwell, S. (eds) The Wind of Change. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137318008_2
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