Iain Macleod

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Iain Macleod, 1970

Iain Norman Macleod (born November 11, 1913 in Skipton , Yorkshire , † July 20, 1970 in City of Westminster , London ) was a British politician and newspaper publisher .

biography

After a school education at Fettes College in Edinburgh and studies at Gonville and Caius College of the University of Cambridge he did his military service in the British Army during the Second World War in France . After the war, he became a member of the Conservative Party's secretariat , where he also worked with Enoch Powell in the party's Research Department.

His own political career began when he was elected a member of the House of Commons in the 1950 elections .

In 1952 he was appointed Minister of Health in the government of Prime Minister Winston Churchill . In April 1955 he became Minister of Labor in the cabinet of Churchill's successor as Prime Minister, Anthony Eden , and held this office in the subsequent government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan until 1959. As part of a cabinet reshuffle, he was then Secretary of State for the Colonies and was responsible in this office for the granting and implementation of the sovereignty of some colonies in Africa . In this capacity, Macleod was responsible for the illegal destruction of files in 1961 that documented past atrocities committed by colonial administrations against local residents. As part of another cabinet reshuffle, he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1961 . At the same time he served as such until 1963. Leader of the House ( Leader of the House of Commons ) and Chairman ( Chairman ) of the Conservative Party.

In 1963 he left the government and instead became editor of The Spectator magazine . In his Quoodle column, he referred to the system of state tutelage as the nanny state , thereby creating a new term.

After Edward Heath was elected chairman of the Conservative Party, he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in its shadow cabinet in 1965 . In this function, he used the new term stagflation to describe the state of a currency area in which economic stagnation and inflation come together at the end of the 1960s .

After the Conservatives won the general election on June 18, 1970 , Prime Minister Heath appointed him to his government as Chancellor of the Exchequer . As such, he was also Lord High Treasurer . He also brought external experts such as the economist Bryan Hopkin into his economic advisory team. Just a month later he suddenly and unexpectedly died in office, a setback for the new government. Successor was the previous Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Anthony Barber .

Macleod, one of the most popular Conservative politicians of the day and a gifted public speaker, was also seen as one of Heath's possible successors as Prime Minister.

He died of a heart attack. Due to a war wound when he withdrew from Dunkirk in 1940, he was struggling to keep his head straight and his back was not at all. He was constantly battling pain.

After his death, his wife Evelyn Macleod was raised to the nobility as Baroness Macleod of Borve, of Borve in the Isle of Lewis in 1971 and was a member of the House of Lords as a Life Peeress until her death in 1999 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes. In: The Guardian . April 18, 2012 (English).
  2. ↑ a b spiegel.de July 27, 1970: Died

literature

  • Una McGovern (Ed.): CHAMBERS BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. Chambers, Edinburgh 2002, ISBN 0-550-10051-2 , p. 981.
  • Robert Shepherd: Iain Macleod. A biography. Pimlico, London 1995, ISBN 0-7126-7460-8 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Macleod, Iain
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Macleod, Iain Norman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician, Member of the House of Commons and newspaper publisher
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Skipton , Yorkshire , England
DATE OF DEATH 20th July 1970
Place of death City of Westminster , London