The Battling Tories

On Fleet Street Tuesday night, the early morning headlines were already in type: MAC WILL CARRY ON. The news, leaked to parliamentary correspondents on the eve of the Conservative Party's annual conference in seaside Blackpool, was that Harold Macmillan had told his Cabinet ministers he felt compelled to stay on as Prime Minister unless they could reach virtually unanimous agreement on his successor.

The huge black headlines that actually hit the streets Wednesday told a far different story. It was contained in the terse announcement issued at 9:26 p.m. Tuesday from 10 Downing Street: "The Prime Minister has tonight been admitted to the King Edward VII Hospital for an operation for prostatic obstruction. It is expected that this will involve his absence from official duties for some weeks, and he has asked the First Secretary, Mr. R. A. Butler, to take charge of the government while he is away."

Private Divination. The news astounded the ministers who had conferred with him that morning. Though he had taken a few sips of a cloudy medicine during the Cabinet session, the 69-year-old Prime Minister seemed in fine fettle and left no doubt that he planned to attend the conference and make the traditional leader's speech on Saturday afternoon. With the announcement of the illness, it suddenly became clear to the solid, well-tailored men and tweedy women, who had been engrossed in highly un-Toryish wrangling between Mac-must-go and Mac-must-stay factions, that Mac would go.

Just four hours after the operation (described as successful), Foreign Secretary Lord Home read a letter to the conference dictated by Macmillan: "It is now clear that, whatever might have been my previous feelings, it will not be possible for me to carry the physical burden of leading the party at the next general election. I have so informed the Queen."

Tears welled in the eyes of Maurice Macmillan, 42, the Prime Minister's son. Acting Prime Minister Butler stared emotionlessly across the auditorium. House Leader and Party Co-Chairman Iain Macleod slumped in his chair until his chin rested on his chest. Minister for Science Lord Hailsham was poker-faced. But Macmillan's announcement stripped away all pretense of a gentlemanly team decision to name his successor.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling, 46, the shrewd, amiable favorite of most Tory backbenchers, told friends he was prepared to fight for the job. Hailsham, an ebullient individualist whose jingoistic rhetoric stirs the squirearchy to rapture, told a wildly cheering We-Want-Hailsham rally: "I am now prepared to disclaim my peerage and resign as leader of the House of Lords and to accept the invitation of any constituency that is prepared to receive me."

Toward a Consensus. The portly Science Minister, who at previous conferences has landed on front pages by ringing hand bells ("for Britain") and taking dips in the frigid ocean, captured the morning headlines with his announcement. But the photographers were not disappointed. Hailsham--or Quintin McGarel Hogg, M.P., as he would like to be--captured all eyes with a robust twist at a Young Conservative dance; later he captured all lapels when his friend Randolph Churchill started distributing heroic Q (for Quintin) campaign buttons.

There was even a Home boom, though the patrician Foreign Secretary is as retiring as Hailsham is assertive, and is relatively little known to the public. The most logical candidate, on ability and experience, was the man who would fill Macmillan's shoes mean while: Rab Butler (see box).

Unlike the Labor Party, the Tories hold no formal elections to choose a leader. Instead, their party officials, senior ministers and elder statesmen go through an elaborate, private process of divination aimed at reaching what is euphemistically called "the consensus" of the party; when they have settled on a candidate who is acceptable to both Cabinet and parliamentary party and looks like a vote getter to boot, the name is presented for routine approval to the Queen. Thus Macmillan's successor will probably not be announced until after Parliament reconvenes Oct. 24 and the Prime Minister formally resigns. In all probability, Macmillan will be given an earldom.

Absurd Aberrations. Until then, the Tory Establishment will echo to some of the fiercest infighting in memory. At week's end Hailsham was the delegates' hero, and had already been offered four constituencies by their obliging members, but he irritated many parliamentary leaders by his bulldozer tactics. Moreover, there is little likelihood that Hailsham will be able to divest himself of his title and be elected for two months; at week's end the London bookies were laying 7 to 4 against his becoming Prime Minister. Maudling (6 to 1 against), who appeared doubtful that the Tories can win in any case, not unhappily began to fade as a serious contender. Lord Home (10 to 1 against) wouldn't say yes and wouldn't say no, but had weighty support among the party's elder statesmen (and, reportedly, Macmillan).

Rab Butler was favored by 40% of Tory voters questioned in a Daily Mail snap poll--second-running Hailsham got 35%--and bookies' odds were 6 to 4 that he would get the job. As Acting Prime Minister, Butler won from grudging colleagues and rivals the initial advantage of giving the windup speech in Macmillan's place. But on the whole, it was a strangely lackluster performance. Capitalizing on the test ban treaty, the one clear triumph for the government in a year of frustration, Butler pledged that Britain would press its allies to "keep up the momentum" of negotiation with the Russians, and hinted at a summit meeting.

In a swipe at Britain's unilateral dis-armers, he said: "The treaty was not achieved by agitators sitting down in the public highway, but by statesmen sitting around the conference table." And he offered some invigorating invective against the "immature nonsense of socialism," which is trying to turn Great Britain into Little England. In a fourth Conservative election victory, said Butler, his party "must reject and repudiate these absurd aberrations of the left-wing mind."

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