‘Never had it so good’, 1957–9

Abstract

‘Inflation’, said The Economist in 1957, ‘is like sin. Everybody is against it, but it goes on.’¹ By the time Harold Macmillan became Prime Minister in January 1957, policy-makers regarded rising prices as the central challenge to Britain’s future economic stability. Inflationary pressures had persuaded Eden’s government to reverse the expansionary policies of the early 1950s. Macmillan, as a former Chancellor, was fully aware of the dangers that lay ahead, conceding in private that ‘the country simply did not realise that we were living beyond our income, and would have to pay for it sooner or later’.² Yet this concern is not usually associated with the new incumbent at Downing Street. Rather, many have taken at face value the rhetoric of public utterances about the nation ‘never having it so good’. The late 1950s are often remembered as the era of ‘Supermac’, the great actor-manager who swiftly transformed his party’s fortunes after Suez and harnessed the tide of prosperity to sweep to inevitable victory in 1959. The reality, it will be argued here, was less straightforward. As we shall see, Tory unpopularity survived well beyond the departure of Anthony Eden, and continued well into 1958 while the economy remained in the doldrums. Macmillan took a considerable time to establish himself as a popular leader, and two years into his premiership was not sufficiently confident to face the electorate.