The winds of change : Macmillan to Heath, 1957-1975 / John Ramsden.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ramsden, John, 1947-2009.

Series:

History of the conservative party

A history of the Conservative Party

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Conservative Party (Great Britain)--History.

Conservative Party (Great Britain).

History.

Great Britain--Politics and government--1945-.

Great Britain.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

x, 485 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Longman, 1996.

Summary:

Longman's History of the Conservative Party has established itself as the standard account of the political organisation that has provided the United Kingdom with its government for most of the past century. This final volume in the current sequence takes the Conservative Party from Harold Macmillan's accession to the premiership in 1957 through to the election of Margaret Thatcher as Party Leader in 1975. John Ramsden shows how Harold Macmillan was able to achieve the recovery of Tory popularity after the Suez crisis (which formed the climax of his recently published precursor to the present volume, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 1940-1957) through organisational and financial offensives as well as a traditionally political one. Macmillan's touch thereafter became less sure; but his drive to place his Party at the forefront of a modernised Britain, with its focus on Europe, was halted only by the unforeseen events of 1963 - De Gaulle's veto, the Profumo crisis, and a leadership battle. The circumstances of Macmillan's fall illuminate both the succession of Sir Alec Douglas-Home and the difficulties he encountered in his brief tenure of the Leadership. The Party's strategic shift in 1962/63 was the basis for Edward Heath's leadership (1965-1975) in both style and content. However, using newly available sources, John Ramsden reveals how far the commitment to Heathite politics in fact masked divisions that were present from the very outset. He shows how those divisions erupted to produce Heath's overthrow in 1975, and the election of Thatcher by a very different type of MP from those who had rallied to Macmillan in 1957. Not the least interest of this major study is thus the new light itthrows on the roots of the Thatcher phenomenon in British Conservatism. In writing the book, John Ramsden has had full access to the Party's archives - not only centrally, but also in the Areas and in about a hundred representative constituencies. He has also made extensive use of private collections such as the papers of R. A. Butler and Sir Edward Boyle.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0582275709

OCLC:

32388174