130 Facts About Iain Macleod

Iain Norman Macleod was a British Conservative Party politician and government minister.

Iain Macleod was noted as a formidable Parliamentary debater and - later - as a platform orator.

Iain Macleod was quickly appointed Minister of Health, later serving as Minister of Labour.

Iain Macleod served an important term as Secretary of State for the Colonies under Harold Macmillan in the early 1960s, overseeing the independence of many African countries from British rule but earning the enmity of Conservative right-wingers, and the soubriquet that he was "too clever by half".

Iain Macleod was unhappy with the "emergence" of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as party leader and Prime Minister in succession to Macmillan in 1963.

Iain Macleod refused to serve in Home's government, and whilst serving as editor of The Spectator, alleged that the succession had been stitched up by Macmillan and a "magic circle" of Old Etonians.

Iain Macleod did not contest the first ever Conservative Party leadership election in 1965, but endorsed the eventual winner Edward Heath.

Iain Macleod was born at Clifford House, Skipton, Yorkshire, on 11 November 1913.

Iain Macleod's father, Dr Norman Alexander Macleod, was a well-respected general practitioner in Skipton, with a substantial poor-law practice ; the young Macleod would often accompany his father on his rounds.

Iain Macleod's parents were from the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland, belonging to the branch of the Macleods of Pabbay and Uig.

Iain Macleod grew up with strong personal and cultural ties to Scotland, as his parents bought in 1917 part of the Leverhulme estate on the Isle of Lewis, where they often used to stay for family holidays.

Iain Macleod showed no great academic talent, but did develop an enduring love of literature, especially poetry, which he read and memorised in great quantity.

Iain Macleod won the School History Prize in his final year.

In 1932, Iain Macleod went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read History.

Iain Macleod took no other part in student politics, but spent much of his time reading poetry and playing bridge, both for the University and at Crockfords and in the West End.

Iain Macleod was one of the great British bridge players.

Iain Macleod won the Gold Cup in 1937, with teammates Maurice Harrison-Gray, Skid Simon, Jack Marx and Colin Harding.

Iain Macleod was often too tired to work in the mornings after gambling for much of the night, although he tended to perk up as the day went on; he was popular with colleagues and on at least one occasion mucked in to work overtime for a last-minute order for Chinese banknotes.

Iain Macleod later wrote a book that contains a description of the Acol system of bidding: Bridge is an Easy Game, published in 1952 by Falcon Press, London.

Iain Macleod was still earning money from playing and writing newspaper columns about bridge until 1952, when his developing political career became his priority.

In September 1939, upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Iain Macleod enlisted in the British Army as a private in the Royal Fusiliers.

Iain Macleod was treated in hospital in Exeter and left with a lifelong slight limp.

At the age of 27, Iain Macleod was already considered somewhat too old to be a platoon commander.

In 1941, a drunk Iain Macleod almost killed Dawtry, as the latter had retired to bed rather than play stud poker with him.

Iain Macleod shot at his door until his revolver ran out of bullets, and then passed out after smashing down the door with a heavy piece of furniture.

Iain Macleod demanded an apology the next morning for his refusal to play, although the two men remained friends thereafter.

Iain Macleod attended Staff College, Camberley, in 1943, and graduated early in February 1944, having for the first time had to test his abilities against other able men and found something of a purpose in life.

Iain Macleod spent much of the day touring the beachhead area to check on progress, driving past enemy-held strongpoints, with Lieutenant Colonel "Bertie" Gibb.

Iain Macleod later recorded that he had "a patchwork of memories" of D-Day.

Iain Macleod could remember what he ate but not when he ate it, or that when he went to load his revolver he found his batman had instead filled his ammunition pouch with boiled sweets.

Iain Macleod continued to serve in France and the Low Countries until November 1944 when the 50th Division was, due to a highly critical shortage of manpower in the British Army at this stage of the war, ordered to return to Yorkshire, to be reconstituted as a training division.

Iain Macleod unsuccessfully contested the Western Isles constituency at the 1945 general election.

Iain Macleod came bottom of the poll, obtaining 2,756 votes out of 13,000.

Iain Macleod's father died at the start of 1947, just at the onset of the exceptionally bitter winter.

In Norway, Iain Macleod was in charge of setting prices for the country's stock of wine and spirits, much of which had been looted by the Germans from occupied France.

Iain Macleod was demobilised from the British Army in January 1946.

In 1946, after an interview with David Clarke, Iain Macleod joined the Conservative Parliamentary Secretariat, writing briefing papers for Conservative MPs on Scotland, labour and health matters.

Iain Macleod was selected as Conservative candidate for Enfield in 1946.

Forty-seven applicants were already being considered; through a bridge connection Iain Macleod arranged a meeting with the Enfield Conservative Association chairman and persuaded him to add his cv to the list.

In 1948, the Parliamentary boundaries were redrawn, and Iain Macleod was unanimously selected for the new and much more winnable Enfield, West, which he would win in February 1950 and hold comfortably throughout his career.

Iain Macleod was in joint, then sole, charge of Home Affairs.

Iain Macleod drafted the Social Services section of the Conservative policy paper The Right Road for Britain.

Together with Angus Maude Iain Macleod wrote the pamphlet One Nation in 1950, and together with Enoch Powell he wrote The Social Services: Needs and Means which appeared in January 1952.

Iain Macleod was astonished when the ascetic Powell became engaged.

Iain Macleod was not offered office but instead became Chairman of the backbench Health and Social Services Committee.

Later in 1952, Iain Macleod announced that British clinician Richard Doll had proved the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Iain Macleod did so at a press conference throughout which he chain-smoked.

Iain Macleod became a member of White's Club in 1953, and shocked members by sitting up all night to play cards.

Iain Macleod consolidated rather than reformed the NHS, administered it well and defended it against Treasury attacks on its budget.

Iain Macleod was not directly involved in the collusion with France and Israel over the Suez Crisis, but although he was unhappy at the turn of events, he did not resign.

Iain Macleod was not a member of the Egypt Committee, and still less was he party to Eden and Lloyd's secret dealings with the French and the Israelis.

Iain Macleod's duties required him to discuss the Suez Crisis with union leaders.

However, Norman Brook advised Iain Macleod to "hold his hand for the moment, as this was not the appropriate time".

Cabinet minutes record that Iain Macleod was doubtful about the use of force because of the lack of clear UN authority and the risk of antagonising the USA.

Nigel Fisher wrote that this was not so, but that Iain Macleod would have resigned if Butler had done so.

Robert Carr, junior minister at the Ministry of Labour, wrote that Iain Macleod had doubts but was not especially morally outraged, and saw no evidence that he planned to resign.

William Rees-Mogg, then a Conservative candidate in the North-East, made a speech urging that Iain Macleod be party leader.

Iain Macleod did not reply but showed the letter to Freddie Bishop, head of the Prime Minister's Private Office, and Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook for their comments; Eden, who was on the verge of a breakdown, did not regard the matter as important.

On 20 November 1956 the question of collusion was raised in Cabinet, with Eden and Lloyd both absent; Shepherd believes that it was probably Iain Macleod who raised it.

Iain Macleod hoped to take a tougher line with strikes than his predecessor Walter Monckton, whose explicit remit had been to appease the unions.

Iain Macleod initially accepted his own chief Industrial Commissioner's Investigation into the busmens' case.

Iain Macleod had acquired a national reputation as a tough figure.

Iain Macleod was on the Steering Committee to decide on political strategy in the runup to the 1959 election, at which the Macmillan government was re-elected.

Iain Macleod was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies in October 1959.

Iain Macleod had never set foot in any of Britain's colonies, but the Hola massacre in Kenya had helped focus his thinking on the inevitable end of Empire.

Iain Macleod told Peter Goldman of the Conservative Research Department that he intended to be the last Colonial Secretary, although he later wrote that he "telescoped events rather than creating new ones".

Iain Macleod saw Nigeria, British Somaliland, Tanganyika, Sierra Leone, Kuwait and British Cameroon become independent.

Iain Macleod made a tour of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1960.

Iain Macleod had to threaten resignation in the Cabinet to get his own way, but won Macmillan round and Banda was released in April 1960 and almost immediately invited to London for talks aimed at bringing about independence.

Iain Macleod described his policy over Northern Rhodesia as "incredibly devious and tortuous" but "easily the one I am most proud of".

Iain Macleod was keen to point to a colony which was able to proceed peacefully to independence.

Iain Macleod had no time to take any interest in the Pacific, South Arabia, or the Mediterranean.

Iain Macleod described his lack of interest in the Caribbean Federation as "my main area of failure".

Roger Louis wrote that "Iain Macleod was to Africa as Mountbatten had been to India".

In 1961, Iain Macleod published a sympathetic biography of former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose reputation then stood at a very low ebb because of recent memories of the Munich Agreement.

Iain Macleod was most interested in social policy and had most input into the parts up to 1931, including Chamberlain's time as Lord Mayor of Birmingham and as Minister of Health.

Iain Macleod used government papers in breach of the "Fifty-year rule" then in operation.

Iain Macleod contracted to write a second book, called The Last Rung, on leading politicians who had failed to achieve prime ministerial office despite being widely expected to do so.

Iain Macleod completed chapters on Austen Chamberlain, Lord Curzon and Lord Halifax, and planned to write a chapter about Rab Butler.

Iain Macleod replaced his old mentor Rab Butler as Leader of the House of Commons and Chairman of the Conservative Party organisation.

Iain Macleod impressed on Macmillan the need for a major reshuffle in 1962, and recommended the dismissal of Selwyn Lloyd from the Exchequer although he did not have in mind anything as drastic as the "Night of the Long Knives" in which Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet.

Iain Macleod believed that the Earl of Home had behaved with less than complete honesty.

Iain Macleod initially appeared to rule himself out and had offered to help sample Cabinet opinion, before announcing his own candidacy.

Iain Macleod did not initially take Home's candidacy seriously, and did not realise the degree to which Macmillan was promoting it.

Iain Macleod thought the new Prime Minister should be a "moderniser", with views on the liberal wing of the party, and in the House of Commons.

Iain Macleod wrote of Enoch Powell's decision not to serve "One does not expect to have many people with one in the last ditch".

Butler himself observed that "Iain Macleod was very shifty, much more so than you think".

However, Lord Aldington, David Eccles, Sir Michael Fraser and Eve Iain Macleod all rejected this interpretation of Iain Macleod's actions.

Nigel Fisher believed that Iain Macleod had "some inner sourness" in 1963, attributable only in part to his daughter's serious illness, and largely to the fact that he himself was not being considered as a candidate.

Iain Macleod wrote his own weekly column under the pseudonym of "Quoodle" and sometimes wrote signed articles complaining about what the ODNB describes as his "pet hates" such as Harold Wilson or the BBC.

Iain Macleod tolerated a range of political opinions amongst his journalists, including Alan Watkins.

On 17 January 1964 Iain Macleod published a candid account of the 1963 party leadership contest, claiming that it was a conspiracy by an Etonian "magic circle".

Iain Macleod's article was written as a review of a book by Randolph Churchill, which he described as "Mr Macmillan's trailer for the screenplay of his memoirs".

Thorpe does not accept Iain Macleod's analysis, arguing that Home was well ahead of Butler in Cabinet preferences if Dilhorne's official figures are to be believed, and criticises Iain Macleod for only taking the preferences of the Cabinet into account, not those of junior ministers and backbenchers who were polled.

Iain Macleod returned to the shadow cabinet under Home following the 1964 election.

Iain Macleod's speech opposing steel nationalisation had been trailed as his comeback to frontline politics, but in the event was a damp squib.

Iain Macleod did not contest the first ever Conservative Party leadership election in 1965, but backed Edward Heath, whom he did not particularly like but thought would be a better leader than Maudling.

Iain Macleod opposed the death penalty and supported legalisation of abortion and homosexuality; this did not help his acceptance by the more right-wing elements of his own party at the time.

Iain Macleod established good personal relations with several of his Labour opposite numbers, including both Bevan and James Callaghan, even though he clashed with Callaghan numerous times at the despatch box while serving as Shadow Chancellor in the 1960s.

Jenkins, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, wrote that he was never intimidated by him, and that Iain Macleod concentrated on opposition rather than constructive proposals.

Iain Macleod planned to abolish Selective Employment Tax and to cut personal income tax, but not to increase indirect taxes, trusting that economic growth would make up the shortfall in revenue.

Iain Macleod proposed a national lottery then opposed Jenkins when he proposed one; on another occasion he required Conservative MPs, to the irritation of some of them, to walk out of a select committee meeting in protest.

In 1968 Iain Macleod defied a decision of the Shadow Cabinet by voting against the Labour Government's Commonwealth Immigration Bill, believing it to be a breach of promises made by the Conservative Government to the Kenyan Asians.

Iain Macleod fell out with his former friend Enoch Powell over the latter's 1968 Rivers of Blood speech, after which Macleod refused to speak to Powell again.

Iain Macleod's subsequent dealings with him were, Powell said, as if he was a pariah though Iain Macleod 'knew what I said was not motivated by what is crudely called racialism, but he behaved as if he did not know'.

Powell's speech generated huge public support and Iain Macleod was horrified at the open racism of many of the members of the public who wrote to him on the topic, likening them to the disgusting creatures which are revealed when one overturns a stone.

Iain Macleod used to refer to Wilson as "the little man" even though Wilson was actually slightly taller than him.

On 20 June 1970, two days after the Conservative Party's unexpected election victory, Iain Macleod was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by the new Prime Minister, Heath.

Newspaper boss Cecil King insisted that Iain Macleod had been stricken during the 1960s by terminal cancer which had begun to affect his spine.

At the subsequent by-election, Iain Macleod was succeeded by Cecil Parkinson.

Iain Macleod relied on Peter Walker for advice; Walker described him as not "at ease on economics".

Iain Macleod planned to hold down nationalised industry prices in an attempt to control inflation.

Iain Macleod bequeathed his successors a detailed plan for tax reform, much of which was put into action.

Iain Macleod left behind him an outline budget which some observers found surprisingly hard-line in its proposals for control of public spending.

Iain Macleod's death was a blow to the Heath government.

Iain Macleod was a man of considerable intellectual brilliance and one of the finest debaters in the House of Commons.

Iain Macleod was already ill and old for his years, so would probably not have succeeded Heath as party leader, but might have prevented Thatcher from doing so.

Many Conservative politicians of generations following Iain Macleod recalled him as a highly effective speaker.

Iain Macleod was a superb negotiator with a grasp of detail.

Iain Macleod wrote that Macleod had "some quality of self-destructiveness in him".

Iain Macleod wrote that there was a "calculated coldness" about his partisan attacks.

Jenkins wrote that Iain Macleod had "a darting crossword-puzzle mind fortified by a phenomenal memory" adding that "I am not convinced that he was a particularly nice man, but he had insight and insolence".

Iain Macleod commented about Labour parliamentarians under Hugh Gaitskell that, when offered their choice of weapons, they invariably chose boomerangs.

Iain Macleod believed that his political views were a mixture of those of his Liberal father and Conservative mother.

Iain Macleod believed in equality of opportunity rather than of outcome, and wrote that his ideal was "to see that men had an equal chance to make themselves unequal".

Iain Macleod is credited with inventing the term "the nanny state".

Iain Macleod met Evelyn Hester Mason, nee Blois, in September 1939 whilst he was waiting to be called up for army service and she interviewed him for a job as an ambulance driver.

Evelyn Iain Macleod was struck down in June 1952 with meningitis and polio, but subsequently managed to walk again with the aid of sticks and worked hard to support her husband's career.

Iain Macleod's daughter Diana Heimann was a UK Independence Party candidate at Banbury in the 2005 general election.

Iain Macleod is buried in the churchyard of Gargrave Church in North Yorkshire, near his mother who had died seven weeks earlier.