On 5th January 1987 Horsted
Keynes saw an unprecedented scene as former villager, church member and Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan was laid to rest by the Bishop following his death at
Birch Grove 29th December 1986.
Having a serving Prime Minister in the
congregation certainly impacted St Giles and the village, as when Macmillan hosted
President Kennedy at Birch Grove in 1963. It’s said planes to and from Gatwick got
diverted when he was in residence. They certainly showed respect for his office
of Prime Minister at Horsted Keynes station, everyone waiting until he’d got
off to be met by the chauffeur. The fact he’d then give folk a lift to the
village shows he’d got respect for us too. His
Tory rival Butler saw these two sides of him as ‘the soft heart for and the
strong determination to help the underdog, and the social habit to associate
happily with the overdog’.
Macmillan’s career peaked as Britain
entered a more egalitarian era marked by the advent of television and satire
like That Was The Week That Was. The
aristocratic sound and mannerisms of Macmillan, well remembered as lesson
reader here, and his chosen successor, Lord Hume, were easy prey for the new
media whose lack of deference grew the more so after the Profumo scandal.
Thirty years after his death we have another
church going Prime Minister of similar churchmanship holding to the Catechism definition
of the Church of England as ‘the ancient church of this land, catholic and
reformed’. Tempted in his youth towards Roman Catholicism Macmillan resisted,
probably steered back by his mother’s Protestant heritage. A robust spiritual life was kindled through
his friendship with one time tutor, Ronnie later Monsignor Knox. He kept his
Lenten fast and held to Sunday obligation sometimes attending twice.
Great men and women are usually people
who have suffered. In this way their humanity appeals through the braving of
fear. Macmillan’s courage was forged in the trenches of the First World War and
a near death experience in the Second World War. The courage he possessed made
him his own man. He stood alone in cabinet when he told the aged Churchill his
days as Prime Minister needed to end. Macmillan even dared to suggest to Pope
Pius XII he would serve Christian unity by recognising the orders of Anglican
priests – to be received by silence! Nearer to home when he attended St Giles
Church Council he would allegedly stand at 9pm declaring the meeting was over
to the Rector’s chagrin! The late Dorothy
Baxter recalled him telling her off for giggling in the choir. In Macmillan’s
last years the parish priest, Fr Mark Hill Tout was called upon to minister and
converse with him. He evidenced a thoughtful Christianity true to the faith of
the church through the ages.
Macmillan had many trials, political and
domestic. His life story is one that rises above the trials and part of his
strategy was daily retreating into books and prayer. He possessed a clear sense of divine
providence working through the historical events that propelled his career. To
his Christian sensibilities we owe the appointment of two of the Church of
England’s most famous 20th century clerics, Michael Ramsey and Mervyn
Stockwood. Macmillan lamented the decline
in Christian allegiance and near the end of his life made a call to ‘restore
and strengthen the moral and spiritual as well as the material’ countering his
materialist ‘you’ve never had it so good’ association.
Harold Macmillan’s pragmatism played a signal
role in opening up the United Kingdom’s post-colonial especially in his 1960
prophecy of ‘winds of change’ blowing across Africa made in the face of Dr
Hendrik Verwoerd in the South African Parliament. His grave in our Churchyard was
made a place of pilgrimage for African nationalists. Two of his more
controversial engagements were the 1945 repatriation of Cossacks to their
execution in Russia and the 1956 Suez crisis. Like any successful politician
Macmillan had his ups and downs seizing the ‘glittering prizes offered those
who have stout hearts and sharp swords’ (F.E.Smith).
He was a great wit. Interrupted in a
speech by Khruschev banging his shoe on the table at the United Nations he
looks up and says quietly, ‘Well, I would like it translating if you would.’
Unveiling a bronze of Mrs Thatcher at the Carlton Club he makes an audible
stage whisper, ‘Now I must remember that I am unveiling a bust of Margaret
Thatcher, not Margaret Thatcher’s bust.’
The life and achievements of Harold Macmillan
and his wife Dorothy are part of our heritage at St Giles along with so many
who’ve impacted the world for good and for God.
