Suez, 1956

[Lat-Literal]

Depends what one means by 'worst'.

Douglas-Home was probably the most principled and honest PM of them all but Wilson (imho the very worst PM as far as character is concerned ) made a mockery of the poor man's looks and his aristocratic background and that hit home with a 'Swinging Sixties' electorate.

Cameron is the 'worst' in my book because he was completely self-serving and thoroughly reckless irrespective of possible grave damage to the country. He was all so typical of many senior managers in UK business today, I'm afraid.

In fact even the current PM is much more of a 'manager' than a leader ... do you see anyone in any Party at present with the qualities to LEAD a strong government?

Sadly, I don't ... and at least Sir Anthony Eden LED, rightly or wrongly!

Douglas-Home is also hampered by the very short duration. We don't really have any way of knowing what he would have been had he had a few more years. I do, though, agree with your comments about him. I don't think Wilson's character was worse than that of Cameron or Blair and perhaps even Brown and Major but I know what you mean. I was told by an old type in the workplace a decade ago that "alas, they want managers today; not thinkers". I think the general public would be mightily relieved if given either. May is certainly more of a manager than a leader and, no, I don't see a leader anywhere at all. I favour the thinking of Rory Stewart and am just about prepared to give Lisa Nandy the benefit of some doubt but as I type these names there is a sinking sort of feeling which suggests that I am not really at all convinced. I could mention a hundred or more who I consider appalling. But one thing that the list might do is remind people who Eden is competing with for the "accolade" of the worst post-war Prime Minister. Arguably, he is the victim of great injustice.

[Conchis]

Admittedly, I'm far too young to remember his premiership in detail but having studied his time in office, I think Wilson was one of the best post-1951 PMs, if not THE best.

Like most Labour PMs, he effectively had two jobs: one running the country, the other (trying to) lead his party.

Sir Alec may have been a gent and a nice man but he wasn't around for long enough and there were serious doubts about his abilities. It's important to remember that he got the job (via the 'Magic Circle') because he had fewer enemies than more deserving candidates.

Funny story about Alec D-H (formerly Lord Dunglass) that I once heard:

Sometime in the late sixties, when he was no longer Tory leader, Sir Alec found himself sitting opposite a desiccated old party in a railway carriage.

Dessicated Old Party (looks up, notices Sir A.) Well, by Jove! If it isn't old Dunglass! Not seen you for years and years, old boy! How're you doing?

Sir A: Very well, thank you.

D.O.P.: Fancy you turning up like this! I seem to recall a lot was expected of you at one point. I even heard it said you might end up as Prime Minister! Well! Whatever happened to that, eh?

Sir Alec just smiled and said nothing.

[Serial_Apologist]

Probably moving this thread even further off topic, but one phenomenon of interest over the past 10 or so years has been the returning of power to the politicians, regardless of their lack of ability, leadership qualities or sense of direction. Capitalism emerged from the rise of the nation state - it was what all those struggles for national self-determination in the mid-19th century were all essentially about: creating a stable basis from which national forms could find rooting before extending their competitive remit to the rest of the world. Previous to the advent of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, politicians paid heed to the needs of business in the first instance, initially building the military, legal and financial infrastructural requirements and institutions to enable and encourage this, then, as the new technologically driven international money markets completed their drive to globalised integration, effectively ceding power to the ineluctabilities and vagaries of a system basically built on money supplies feeding the gambling principle the free market theorists and apologists succeeded in persuading everyone was the prime wealth generator, not productive industry as Adam Smith and others had posited as capitalism's gift to civilisation and the form of trickle-down. All this came to a grinding halt when that power invested in the banks and stock markets crashed. It has happened briefly from an historical pov in 1931 when government interventionism in the form of the New Deal saved capitalism in its strongholds while leaving the victim economies to the mercy of the system's final refuge, fascism. But this was never the ideal for the captains of industry and their political footstools; were it not for the stick of unemployment as a useful by-product of the periodical inevitability of recession and the guarantee of cheap labour markets and resources in the "developing world", poor returns on investment in the form of wage and other demands beyond capacity would have caused the mass destruction of industrial bases that only took place under Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s when The Lady signed off Britain's primary productive base and Reagan took government off the backs of the people, as he put it. In other words before the defeat of collective labour power at the point of production, which effectively took place with the deliberately engineered miners' strikes of the early 1980s, had been achieved. The new techological means of controlling capital flows much faster and robotising the shop floor, once promised as enabling shorter working hours and greater leisure, now did the job of bouilstering profitability back to levels only achievable by mass de-skilling and labour casualisation, both of which would create the international freedom of movement that could eventually be used to create the scapegoats necessary to justify extreme right wing divide-and-rule, now on the international scale global capital operates on. As bourgeois commentators and reporters everywhere put it, governments voluntarily became virtually powerless to determine socially ameliorative directions for capitalism except by controlling the money supply. All this was to change when business floundered under the weight of its own inner contradictions in 2007 and was forced into taking "correctives" that amounted to wresting a modicum of temporary control back from the imbalances of market trading operations in the all-important financial sectors.

[Lat-Literal]

Admittedly, I'm far too young to remember his premiership in detail but having studied his time in office, I think Wilson was one of the best post-1951 PMs, if not THE best.

Like most Labour PMs, he effectively had two jobs: one running the country, the other (trying to) lead his party.

Sir Alec may have been a gent and a nice man but he wasn't around for long enough and there were serious doubts about his abilities. It's important to remember that he got the job (via the 'Magic Circle') because he had fewer enemies than more deserving candidates.

Funny story about Alec D-H (formerly Lord Dunglass) that I once heard:

Sometime in the late sixties, when he was no longer Tory leader, Sir Alec found himself sitting opposite a desiccated old party in a railway carriage.

Dessicated Old Party (looks up, notices Sir A.) Well, by Jove! If it isn't old Dunglass! Not seen you for years and years, old boy! How're you doing?

Sir A: Very well, thank you.

D.O.P.: Fancy you turning up like this! I seem to recall a lot was expected of you at one point. I even heard it said you might end up as Prime Minister! Well! Whatever happened to that, eh?

Sir Alec just smiled and said nothing.

A good story for which thanks.

He was PM for just 363 days in 1963-64. A good quiz question is "Who was the British PM when JFK was assassinated?" It was Douglas-Home. Many British people would not know it and, in a sense, that is a further symbol of how the power had shifted even culturally to the US. Re the end of deference, that had once seemed crystal clear. By the early-mid 1960s, the British voters would not be opposed to the highly educated - Wilson had been at Oxford as was Heath and subsequently Thatcher - but they would no longer be without questions of the old school tie. In that light, Heath as an ex grammar school pupil became elected the leader of the Conservative Party just as Thatcher would be in the mid 1970s.

However, with hindsight, two things were missed. One, academic achievement probably meant very little to the electorate. Douglas-Home only achieved a third degree at Oxford and while he wasn't successful in the 1964 election no one would seriously put forward an argument that the class of his degree was in any way significant to the outcome. That point might have become more obvious had Callaghan, a man without a standard university education, won the 1979 election but he didn't win it. When it did become obvious was in 1992 when the uneducated John Major was re-elected as Prime Minister. Two, again with hindsight, the importance of social class background to voters was overstated. Just as with Churchill and Eden, the establishment Macmillan had won an election in the 1950s. Sure, it all looked different in just a few years. Policy aside, the "ordinary" social backgrounds of Wilson and Heath were sufficiently different from those in the past to suggest that by the early-mid 1960s the social order had changed. Plus, in contradiction but it also underpins the point, distinctions with class connotations were made about their style. The former was able to convince the public that he was an ordinary person much like themselves whereas questions were raised from the outset about Heath's aloofness. As it transpired, Heath became PM in 1970 although that came as some surprise. The very early editions of the newspapers on the following morning heralded a Labour victory. And that of itself, combined with the re-election of Wilson twice in 1974, the choice in 1976 of Callaghan to replace him, the arrival of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and then John Major in 1990 appeared to signal for once and for all that the old establishment no longer retained its influence.

Does the Prime Minister as one individual really matter that much in this way? Yes, I believe so in regard to perceptions. And I would suggest that the peak of this phenomenon occurred in 1992 when Major campaigned on a soap box in Brixton and flaunted his humble origins to the extent that they seemed to outdo not only those of Neil Kinnock who was then Labour leader but Ken Livingstone who until its demise had headed up the GLC following an internal party coup in 1981. Few at that time could have predicted that by 2010, the old establishment would or could be back again in the form of Prime Minister David Cameron. But if one looks at other developments in the 1950s-2000s, the evidence that there had been little change was there if people had been prepared to see it. The significant resurgence of the Liberal Party first occurred under Jo Grimond and then Jeremy Thorpe who were both at least initially popular irrespective of their schooling at Eton. In 1995-1997 and onwards, Tony Blair's social class background was not perceived in any way to be an obstacle to his popularity unlike Kinnock's Welshness in 1987-1992 and Foot's academic ways in 1983 while on the fringes Tony Benn broadened his popularity and Boris became London Mayor. The most one can say is there was possibly a decade and a half - 1978-1993? - when the notion that old establishment was truly of the past had a small element of truth about it.

You might find this interesting:

From quotes by Wilby, Roth, Hurd and another Thorpe:

"It fell to Home to maintain Commonwealth unity during the Suez Crisis in 1956, described by Dutton as "the most divisive in its history to date". Australia, New Zealand and South Africa backed the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal. Canada, Ceylon, India and Pakistan opposed it. There appeared to be a real danger that Ceylon, India and, particularly, Pakistan might leave the Commonwealth. Home was firm in his support of the invasion, but used his contacts with Jawaharlal Nehru, V. K. Krishna Menon, Nan Pandit and others to try to prevent the Commonwealth from breaking up. His relationship with Eden was supportive and relaxed; he felt able, as others did not, to warn Eden of unease about Suez both internationally and among some members of the cabinet. Eden dismissed the latter as the "weak sisters". The most prominent was Butler, whose perceived hesitancy over Suez on top of his support for appeasement of Hitler damaged his standing within the Conservative party.When the invasion was abandoned under pressure from the US in November 1956, Home worked with the dissenting members of the Commonwealth to build the organisation into "a modern multiracial Commonwealth".

[ardcarp]

As the discussion has widened out a bit, I wonder whether forumistas would care to nominate the best prime ministers we never had?

I could start off with Rab Butler, Neil Kinnock, Ming Campbell and Paddy Ashdown.

I suppose from the above, Butler and Kinnock are the ones who might realistically have made it...and what a different country we would now be if they had. Both had the extremes of their parties under control and IMO both had the political instinct to handle the House of Commons.

[Lat-Literal]

Probably moving this thread even further off topic, but one phenomenon of interest over the past 10 or so years has been the returning of power to the politicians, regardless of their lack of ability, leadership qualities or sense of direction. Capitalism emerged from the rise of the nation state - it was what all those struggles for national self-determination in the mid-19th century were all essentially about: creating a stable basis from which national forms could find rooting before extending their competitive remit to the rest of the world. Previous to the advent of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, politicians paid heed to the needs of business in the first instance, initially building the military, legal and financial infrastructural requirements and institutions to enable and encourage this, then, as the new technologically driven international money markets completed their drive to globalised integration, effectively ceding power to the ineluctabilities and vagaries of a system basically built on money supplies feeding the gambling principle the free market theorists and apologists succeeded in persuading everyone was the prime wealth generator, not productive industry as Adam Smith and others had posited as capitalism's gift to civilisation and the form of trickle-down. All this came to a grinding halt when that power invested in the banks and stock markets crashed. It has happened briefly from an historical pov in 1931 when government interventionism in the form of the New Deal saved capitalism in its strongholds while leaving the victim economies to the mercy of the system's final refuge, fascism. But this was never the ideal for the captains of industry and their political footstools; were it not for the stick of unemployment as a useful by-product of the periodical inevitability of recession and the guarantee of cheap labour markets and resources in the "developing world", poor returns on investment in the form of wage and other demands beyond capacity would have caused the mass destruction of industrial bases that only took place under Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s when The Lady signed off Britain's primary productive base and Reagan took government off the backs of the people, as he put it. In other words before the defeat of collective labour power at the point of production, which effectively took place with the deliberately engineered miners' strikes of the early 1980s, had been achieved. The new techological means of controlling capital flows much faster and robotising the shop floor, once promised as enabling shorter working hours and greater leisure, now did the job of bouilstering profitability back to levels only achievable by mass de-skilling and labour casualisation, both of which would create the international freedom of movement that could eventually be used to create the scapegoats necessary to justify extreme right wing divide-and-rule, now on the international scale global capital operates on. As bourgeois commentators and reporters everywhere put it, governments voluntarily became virtually powerless to determine socially ameliorative directions for capitalism except by controlling the money supply. All this was to change when business floundered under the weight of its own inner contradictions in 2007 and was forced into taking "correctives" that amounted to wresting a modicum of temporary control back from the imbalances of market trading operations in the all-important financial sectors.

Many thanks Serial-Apologist.

We have been here before.

I don't disagree. I might even agree with you more than I once did. In parallel, and in contrast, I probably have less idealism regarding alternative scenarios that might have occurred. My traditional line is that it all went wrong in our lifetimes because organized labour knew no boundaries when it came to money demands; that governments had encouraged it via the promotion of consumerism; that the emphasis on money in the redistribution of power facilitated conflict and subsequently clampdown; and what would have alleviated a lot of it would have been a more formal collaborative approach along the lines of what was happening in West German and Scandinavian boardrooms plus PR. In essence, I still believe it but I also have to look at the realities. I think it might have been Ferret who said that the behind-the-scenes cover-up at the time of the Suez Crisis was especially shocking because people were finally again finding their feet. I think that is right, given that the immense annoyance on post-war rationing had ended late in 1954, and I want to reiterate the point about the lowest post-war unemployment rate being achieved in the 1950s. That wasn't simply since the end of WW2 but all the way to 2017 and no doubt a long way beyond it.

Arguably, along with the NHS and similar, that access to work for nearly every male was highly significant compensation for post-war disappointment. One could say that it enabled and even encouraged any ongoing deference. But in what is always a complex society, the very success of it led to the need for greater immigration which was not welcomed by all. What emerged, I feel, was an unholy alliance of racists and those who welcomed immigration but were often appalled at the widespread discrimination against the governing forces who had brought the situation about. Simultaneously, there is much of merit in voters who were born in the decade after the war and my empathy has often been with them but from the early-mid 1960s if not before their spin on the old guard was slightly disingenuous. Building upon the earlier advent of rock n roll, the rebellion was an expression of youth that did not give full credit to the seniors for having acted in defence of fascism. Rather, they were depicted as inveterate warmongers, hence culturally inverted to an extent. I am in no doubt that it was the nuclear dimension which provided what might have been mere trendyism with some substance. At root, behind a lot of cockiness was abject fear - and anger.

Economically, the instinct was often capitalist, epitomised by the fury over Benn's decision to shut down pirate radio. I didn't realise it for decades because the social liberalism which in tandem was promoted was presented for a very long time as leftish. Of course, women's rights which were overdue did send unemployment figures up which in turn gave opponents of capitalism a new stick to wave at it. Later, there was monetarism. While I am in no doubt that those new economics of greater capitalism which emerged in the 1970s were not and never will be to my taste, I am now equally sure that much of the other side of the coin is bogus. For example, the emphasis in policy on higher education from the newly built universities in the 1960s through to the 50% target of young people being educated at university today has surely been yet another smokescreen. The real story is that plumbers and painters and builders and electricians took to the new economics and the new economics took to them. In money terms, it is often they who have two large houses, one abroad, and more luxury goods than they need while ex-miners, similar types from other depleted industries and - I feel this personally - white collar clerks try to survive on basic subsistence.

Rather like bankers who are in the boardrooms anyway, they do not see a need for deference or indeed additional political power other than perhaps when feeling a little uneasy about their grand childrens' prospects. And where the acquiring of political power continues to matter, it may or may not be accompanied by thoughts of how the system has really hurt. The train drivers, for example, are more concerned about the potential loss of money that went way above many who have a degree in the same time period, even after privatisation.

[Lat-Literal]

As the discussion has widened out a bit, I wonder whether forumistas would care to nominate the best prime ministers we never had?

I could start off with Rab Butler, Neil Kinnock, Ming Campbell and Paddy Ashdown.

I suppose from the above, Butler and Kinnock are the ones who might realistically have made it...and what a different country we would now be if they had. Both had the extremes of their parties under control and IMO both had the political instinct to handle the House of Commons.

I can understand all of those selections and would give each a B plus or a B. There are some obvious additional darlings of various factions. On a spectrum, Benn, Healey, Crosland, Jenkins, Patten, Clarke, MacLeod and Powell to which one might add rather more tentatively Livingstone, Hattersley, Williams, Heseltine, Johnson, Joseph and Farage. I'm not prepared to countenance the long forgotten John Moore who was spoken of seriously in the 1980s and is surely the best indicator of how such ideas can be so wrong. Only some of these are worthy of comment as the others speak for themselves. Heseltine rates himself highly as did Healey. Neither ever convinced me. Joseph, by his own recognition, was not cut out for the role. I would not have liked the character of MacLeod, a playboy who might well have introduced Thatcherism many years in advance. And while on paper I should expect to be full of compliments about Crosland, I didn't like him or not at least on the basis of what I have heard. Hattersley and Patten - I'm really not sure. Again, not better than B+ or B.

Clarke, I feel, is a bit overrated. At one time, I would have been very much in favour of Jenkins. Now I know more, I am nowhere near as keen. I still rather like Williams as a person and believe she has integrity but as the years have gone by the flaws have become more obvious. Benn - to my mind, that is the really, really interesting one even if I wouldn't have liked a lot of it. The "what if?" but it could easily have been a disaster. Elsewhere - ie more specifically on where I was at various times in the past - Steel was never quite my cup of tea while Thorpe rules himself out. Grimond, though, was substantial so there is a starter and I often ponder over Pardoe and especially Penhaligon although neither was an obvious leader. One A Campbell says of his friend Charles Kennedy that he wasn't a lost PM because alcohol was his achilles heel while, with hindsight, I would have not been content with his Blairite stance on EU expansion in the 2000s. But my, again tentative, choice is Kennedy with the proviso of him being Prime Minister not in that decade but throughout the 1990s.

[teamsaint]

The best PM we never had probably isn't a politician.

Just imagine, ( and I say this as a lifelong labour voter) a Kinnock dynasty in Whitehall.

[Bryn]

The best PM we never had probably isn't a politician.

Just imagine, ( and I say this as a lifelong labour voter) a Kinnock dynasty in Whitehall.

Never mind the Kinnocks here's the Benn dynasty.

[vinteuil]

As the discussion has widened out a bit, I wonder whether forumistas would care to nominate the best prime ministers we never had?
.

... o, this longing for the "Providential Man (or Woman)"

Human nature to wish for someone to save us all, I suspose.

But it ain't real.

Mme v just wishes that them as run Tesco or John Lewis could run the country. I do my usual bit of saying "well, it's all a bit more complicated than that" before retiring to a darkened room with an aspirin.

But I don't believe in a saviour. Not even in a "what if... ?" scenario.


.

[teamsaint]

... o, this longing for the "Providential Man (or Woman)"

Human nature to wish for someone to save us all, I suspose.

But it ain't real.

Mme v just wishes that them as run Tesco or John Lewis could run the country. I do my usual bit of saying "well, it's all a bit more complicated than that" before retiring to a darkened room with an aspirin.

But I don't believe in a saviour. Not even in a "what if... ?" scenario.


.

Is that human nature ? Or just what we have been taught ?

[vinteuil]

Is that human nature ? Or just what we have been taught ?

... seems pretty universal to me. Over time, and everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Heroes,_Hero-Worship,_and_The_Heroic_in_History

.

[teamsaint]

... seems pretty universal to me. Over time, and everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Heroes,_Hero-Worship,_and_The_Heroic_in_History

.

That's a lot of followers, I grant you. But Buddhists, for example look elsewhere ?

Poverty , hierarchical systems, and exploitation are pretty common too. But I'd say that it is in the interests of those who perceive themselves to benefit from those things to perpetrate the myth that they are somehow an inevitable part of the human condition.

[vinteuil]

.

... o, I'm precisely not a hero worshipper.

Sadly it seems that it's at the bottom of the hierarchy that people are most seduced by the notion - of a guru, hero, Buddha, military leader, Mao, Putin, Trump, Mussolini, Stalin, Thatcher, Napoleon, de Gaulle - who will solve all their problems...

.

[Dai Cottomy]

[QUOTE=Conchis;643930]I'm hoping those who were around at the time can help me out here....



I was around then. Here is a small poem that I wrote around the 60th anniversary of the Suez affair to mark my contribution to the decline of the British Empire.

1956

Two years of military service ended;
Peacetime, so nothing to be defended.
Then Nasser decided to take over
The Suez canal; It was just like
Taking over the White Cliffs of Dover.
So fresh in a new job the summons came;
The call-up notice, back to the Army Game.
Return to Yorkshire, weather getting parky;
Watching tanks being painted khaki;
Playing cards in the Mess, awaiting the day
Which never came; The Yanks refused to play.

.