Winds of Change: Britain in the Sixties

by Peter Hennessy

From the celebrated author of Never Again and Having It So Good, a wonderfully vivid new history of Britain in the early 1960s

Harold Macmillan famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to sweep away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a Third World War.

In Winds of Change we see Macmillan gradually working out his 'grand design' - how to be part of both a tight transatlantic alliance and Europe, dealing with his fellow geostrategists Kennedy and de Gaulle. The centre of the book is 1963 - the year of the Profumo Crisis, the Great Train Robbery, the satire boom, de Gaulle's veto of Britain's first application to join the EEC, the fall of Macmillan and the unexpected succession to the premiership of Alec Douglas-Home. Then, in 1964, the battle of what Hennessy calls the tweedy aristocrat and the tweedy meritocrat - Harold Wilson, who would end 13 years of Conservative rule and usher in a new era.

As in his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having It So Good, Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy. No historian knows the by-ways as well the highways of the archives so well, and no one conveys the flavour of the period so engagingly. The early sixties live again in these pages.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, British Literature

768 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

Peter Hennessy is an English historian and academic specialising in the history of government. Since 1992, he has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London.

He was born in Edmonton, the youngest child of William G. Hennessy by his marriage to Edith (Wood-Johnson) Hennessy

Hennessy attended the nearby Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, and on Sundays he went to St Mary Magdalene church, where he was an altar boy. He was educated at St Benedict's School, an independent school in Ealing, West London. When his father's job led the family to move to the Cotswolds, he attended Marling School, a grammar school in Stroud, Gloucestershire. He went on to study at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a BA in 1969 and a PhD in 1990. Hennessy was a Kennedy Memorial Scholar at Harvard University from 1971 to 1972.

Hennessy went on to work as a journalist during the 1970s and 1980s.
He went on to co-found the Institute of Contemporary British History in 1986.

From 1992 to 2000, Hennessey was professor of contemporary history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. From 1994 to 1997, he gave public lectures as Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London. From 2001, he has been Attlee professor of contemporary British history at Queen Mary.

Hennessy's analysis of post-war Britain, 'Never Again: Britain 1945–1951', won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1992 and the NCR Book Award in 1993.

Furthermore, his study of Britain in the 1950s and the rise of Harold Macmillan, 'Having It So Good: Britain in the 1950s', won the 2007 Orwell Prize for political writing

Hennessy was created a life peer on November 8, 2010.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I expected. The book has all the hallmarks of a rediscovered essay paraded in print. The author’s researched material is strong and his writing skills are obviously first rate but the book is a stodgy read. He doesn’t bring any of the events to life, preferring to rely on diary entries and biographies of the main players. These become tedious when they populate every page and given the poor decisions and choices of the political protagonists in the key world events, the absence of any constructive critique of the ‘establishment’ is conspicuous and the book would have benefited from some. However I still gained something from reading it, but I can’t help but think a wiki trail hour would have given me the same facts. I took off a star for the hefty price tag.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the latest in a series of studies by renowned British political and constitutional historian Peter Hennessy of the post-Second World War United Kingdom. Its focus is the years 1960 to 1964: the latter phase of the Harold Macmillan premiership and the one year Alec Douglas-Home administration, concluding with Harold Wilson's narrow General Election win of 1964.

The big themes are well covered, such as the withdrawal from Empire; the first attempt to join the then EEC; the Cuban Missile Crisis; industrial, social and economic change programmes; and the Profumo Affair.

Peter Hennessy writes with flair and style, although from time to time, his metaphors and similes can be rather too mannered. Aside from the good and plausible analysis that he brings to the events, Hennessy also peppers the narrative with personal insights from growing to adolescence in the period. These add life and feeling to the story,

One minor point: I noticed that the editing had gone awry in a few places where the same quotations (e.g, from Ian Mikardo, Reggie Maudling) are repeated in different contexts.

Nevertheless, this is a good and interesting piece on a fascinating period of modern British history that, especially with its clear account of Macmillan's attempt to join the EEC, is highly relevant today.

[Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I idly picked this off the "New arrivals" shelf of Ealing library, little realising that I had stumbled across such an engrossing read. I was astonished how little I knew about this period of British history - the only aspect I had even heard of was the Cuban Missile Crisis and Hennessy's telling of that dramatic weekend was sufficiently stuffed with rich details as to give me a whole new perspective on it.

Every generation considers its politicians to be pygmies compared to those that came before (Hennessy even includes a quote from the period about smaller and smaller men striding across smaller and smaller stages), but I must say I felt the diminished times we live in acutely while reading this book. Harold Macmillan's vision and oratory seem unfeasibly grand compared to that which we are treated to today, and yet he was only one of many remarkable politicians operating in the period. Harold Wilson also comes across as a truly historic figure in this telling.

Hennessy's style is extremely readable: full of verve and wit with just enough allusions to our post-Brexit period to feel modern without rubbing the reader's face in parallels. Yet parallels there certainly are - it is hard to believe just how long Britain has been agonising over it's relationship with Europe and its anaemic productivity growth in almost exactly the same language. It makes one feel both less concerned about today's woes (they have been experienced before) and more despondent (if we haven't managed to fix it for the last 60 years, why should we in the next 60?).

My only quibble with the book is that towards the end it starts to repeat itself a bit as themes and characters come back into the story again. Broadly I like the thematic rather than chronological approach that Hennessy takes but it does lead to a few moments where you read the same quote or idea as three chapters ago. Overall though, this was an informative and entertaining read.

[Adrian]

Covers the years 1960 till late 1964. It's the story of Harold MacMillan's government beginning with his attempt to join the European Economic Community. MacMillan courted De Gaulle extensively but the General balked at the real possibility allowing England in meant allowing the US in as well. MacMillan's friendship with Kennedy is well covered and so is England's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Profumo Affair, England's devolving as an imperial power and its trouble with its balance of payments are fully developed. All of these issues tore apart the Conservatives, MacMillan purged his cabinet and then left himself in late 63 paving the way for Harold Wilson's election win in October of 1964. Hennessy adds some social history (the Great Train Robbery, Beatles, Beyond the Fringe) for texture but at its core this is a book about Britain turning into a middle power.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched and fascinating deep-dive into Britain of 1959-1964. Leans heavily on the life and diary of Harold Macmillan: his “grand design” for pivoting towards the EU and revitalising Britain’s moribund productivity; the Cuba Crisis and President Kennedy; and the Profumo affair. I learnt a lot from the book, and derived a fresh perspective on our current times as we reverse our 1960s supplication to join the EU. The chapters are very long but tolerable due to how well Hennessy writes - never dull, full of interesting anecdotes and philosophical asides. However, had the editor indulged the readers with an organisation of the material into shorter bites, the book would have got the full 5 stars from me.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covers the years 1960-64 - I was born in 62 - so this describes the Britain I was born into but do not actually remember. Impeccably researched and written, combining the author’s own experience with formal written sources. For me personally there was more detail than I wanted and some chapters just went on and on (especially the one on my birth year). I generally preferred the social history (the cold winter of 62-63, new universities, hospitals, housing, Beeching railway cuts) to the political. But well worth reading / skimming the whole book. Good picture section at the end. I find it amazing that we still have the same Queen. She had already been on the throne a decade when the events of this book took place.

[Alexander Van Leadam · Rating 2 out of 5]

A readable account, with a few personal touches, but mostly about well known facts, from a mainstream perspective.

[Peter Thew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb review of Harold Macmillan's government through the 1960s using a lot of recently released papers. Top class.

[Tony Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent tour de force, compelling and wonderfully readable, littered with brilliant anecdotes and a large dose of wit.

[Rob McMinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

My daughter (who has found the history aspect of her degree a bit of a drag) summarised the problem best when she said, ‘Why is it that historians always focus on the wrong things?’ Hashtag notallhistorians of course. Mary Beard, in particular, said in her History of Rome SPQR, for example, that she wasn’t really interested in all the different Emperors. Because it didn’t matter who was emperor: day to day life for ordinary Romans remained the same. And that’s what she is interested in — and so am I.
What I wanted from Winds of Change was a social history about life in Britain in the early 1960s, the years that cover my conception and birth, and toddlerhood. And to be fair, there was the odd tantalising hint of the things that interest me: the state of the food, the general crapness of the country in those post-war decades. But what this mostly is is a book about Harold MacMillan. You’d get to the end of an epic chapter about his Grand Plan to modernise Britain and take us into the then-EEC (the original 6 countries of the EU). And then there would be another epic chapter on more or less the same topic. And then an epic chapter on the dismantling of the Empire and the creation of the Commonwealth.
By this time you’re halfway through and you’ve given up hope. Then there’s the stuff about the nuclear threat and the Cuban missile crisis, which I think has been done to death, really. As has the Profumo affair. Of course there are all the secret cabinet papers and the diaries and memoirs to go through, but really, I learned nothing about Profumo and Cuba that I hadn’t read many times before.
The chapter on 1963 holds out some promise… but not really. There’s a deal of coverage on Beeching’s decimation of the railways (for the reason that they were making a huge loss), but we learn nothing of the impact on ordinary people of there suddenly not being a railway where there used to be one. It’s all back-stage stuff, inside baseball stuff, and I’m not that interested in behind the scenes at Number 10.
It’s all a bit of a drag really. Political manoeuvrings are really not that interesting. It really was, especially in those days, a bunch of men in charcoal suits. What I wanted was more colour. That winter of ’63 – what exactly is this pink paraffin stuff, and what were peoples’ houses like, and how did they live? There’s a tantalising photograph of shoppers lining up to grab a basket at one of the first supermarkets, but I don’t remember reading much about that phenomenon. I remember as a kid when our corner shop, Farrows, ‘went mini supermarket’, but very little discussion of that. Here was a fundamental change in the way people interacted with each other. Being able to mooch around in the aisles instead of asking someone for what you wanted: massive change. Passing mention of how the coming of motorways changed retail. Maybe it all happened over too long a time.
And perhaps that’s the issue: with a tight focus on the last years of Conservative rule before the Wilson government of 1964-1970, this book lacks the broad sweep that would allow is to see how the high street started to die. But also: a tight focus on politicians and their speeches and rivalries takes us away from the day-to-day lives of people in the country. There’s a lot about Enoch Powell and his ideology and his supposed gifts, and mention of his forthcoming ‘rivers of blood’ career suicide, but nothing about what it was like to be a black or brown person living in the UK at that time. Loads about the break-up of the Empire, but nothing about the immigrant experience.
And the problem I really have with all this focus on politicians and what they say in speeches is, well, a speech is a speech. It’s (literally) all talk. What happened is what I want to know. I don’t really care what Wilson promised on the campaign trail. What I want to know is, what was it like to be alive at this time. Sure, I was alive for some of it, but I was pre-verbal, pre-reason, so I would like to know please what chipped-cup Britain, shilling-in-the-metre Britain, oh the branch line has closed Britain was really like. I want to smell the paraffin.
In the end, this was the wrong book for me, and I am the wrong reader.