Iain Macleod - Political Career

Political Career

At the General Election of February 1950 he won in the parliamentary constituency of Enfield, West. Though not initially appointed to ministerial office, a brilliant Commons performance in March 1952 against Aneurin Bevan in a debate on health caught Churchill's attention, and six weeks later, on 7 May, Macleod was appointed Minister of Health. In this position, later in 1952, he famously made the announcement that British clinician Richard Doll had proved the link between smoking and lung cancer at a press conference throughout which he chain-smoked.

In the Eden and Macmillan governments he served first as Minister of Labour and National Service (1957-9) and then as Secretary of State for the Colonies (1959–61). Here he presided over considerable decolonisation, seeing Nigeria, British Somaliland, Tanganyika, Sierra Leone, Kuwait and British Cameroon become independent, and in Kenya ending the state of emergency and freeing Kenyatta. He made a tour of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1960. His work in promoting decolonisation, though it enjoyed Macmillan's personal support, was resisted by the Conservative Right; his role in negotiations over the future of Rhodesia attracted the damaging and much-remembered description of Macleod by the party grandee, the Marquess of Salisbury, as "too clever by half".

Not helping his acceptance by the more right-wing elements of his own party at the time, Macleod was against the death penalty and supported legalisation of abortion and homosexuality. Indicative of his centrist leanings, Macleod established good personal relations with several of his Labour opposite numbers, including both Aneurin Bevan and James Callaghan, even though he clashed with Callaghan numerous times at the dispatch box while serving as Shadow Chancellor in the 1960s (by contrast, he did not get on with Callaghan's successor, Roy Jenkins, after the November 1967 government reshuffle, considering him vain and arrogant).

In 1961 he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, leader of the House of Commons, and chairman of the Conservative Party organization. When Harold Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister in 1963, Macleod, despite his ability, was not considered a serious prospect for the leadership. Having lent his support to Rab Butler, and strongly opposed the successful candidacy of the Earl of Home (later Sir Alec Douglas-Home), Macleod (along with Enoch Powell) refused to serve under the latter as Prime Minister (though he did return to the shadow cabinet under Home after the 1964 election). Macleod did not contest the first ever party leadership election in 1965, but backed Edward Heath.

The coinage of the word stagflation is attributed to him. Speaking in the House of Commons on November 17, 1965, he said: "We now have the worst of both worlds—not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of 'stagflation' situation. And history, in modern terms, is indeed being made."

While out of office in the mid-1960s he served as editor of The Spectator, where he caused further controversy by publishing in early 1964 a candid account of the 1963 party leadership contest.

As Shadow Chancellor in 1967 Iain Macleod helped to found the homeless charity Crisis

On 20 June 1970, two days after the Conservative Party's election victory, Macleod was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Prime Minister Edward Heath. However, on 7 July 1970 he was rushed to hospital with appendicitis. He was discharged 11 days later but at 10.30pm on 20 July 1970, while in 11 Downing Street, Iain Macleod suffered a severe heart attack and died at 11.35pm. There seems little doubt that the long years of illness and pain had shortened his life. Cecil King (in "The Cecil King Diary 1970-1974") states that according to mutual friends, he was killed by terminal cancer which by the time of his death was affecting his spine. However, Macleod's own doctor, a Dr Forster, said there was no evidence that he was suffering from cancer at the time of his death.

Iain Macleod left behind him an outline budget which some observers found surprisingly hard-line in its proposals for control of public spending. This included the infamous abolition of free school milk, which became the first significant Ministerial act of the new Education Secretary and future Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher—she would come to be known as "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher", as a result. He also bequeathed his successors a detailed plan for tax reform, much of which was put into action.