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IN Parliament, Harold Macmillan was known for his diffidence and trudging but erudite speeches. He had liberal leanings and authored papers recommending policies that would uplift the lives of the working class. Politics afforded him an escape from his overbearing mother;

“Part of the change in Harold was the result of his maturing out of Nellie’s influence. As a child and as a younger man, he had been anxious to propitiate he powerful, looming personality; it was always in his mind how to anticipate and thus avert her painful interference in his life.” (Richard Davenport- Hines, The Macmillans, William Heinemann Ltd., 1992)

As a Conservative backbencher, he stood behind Churchill when the party, headed by Neville Chamberlain, broke up over the question of acceding to Hitler’s demands over Czechoslovakia. Macmillan was subsequently rewarded with an appointment as Under Secretary in the Colonial Office in the Churchill war cabinet.

After a stint at the Colonial Office he was put under the Minister for Munitions to beef up the supply for the ongoing war. With this war experience he was appointed Minister Resident in the Middle East, stationed in Algiers to coordinate the war effort with the Americans. Here he was to get close not only to Churchill but also to two generals with whom he would have to grapple with over policies when he became prime minister, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle.

Such were the circumstances and conditions under which, whether by guile or serendipity, the most suitable prime minister to steer Britain over the shallows of history and into calmer waters came to be installed in Downing Street after the war.

Once in Number 10, Macmillan rapidly set about to repair the damage to Britain’s prestige, and to set everything on an even keel. Says Johnson: ‘ The skill and aplomb with which Macmillan extricated Britain from the Suez mess, got back on good terms with Ike and the Americans, and healed the divisions in his own party, were striking.’ 

 At the outset he instructed his Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brooke, to conduct an appraisal of the cost of colonialism. Cost cuttings measures were then implemented, and the viability of retaining each colony assessed on a profit and loss basis. This was a departure from the Conservative party’s focus on the commercial and economic value of the Colonies. As one writer puts it, “the traditional Tory paternalism embodied by Lord Salisbury was side-lined under Macmillan’s premiership.”

Enoch Powell accused him of abandoning conservative values:

“Though destined to lift the Conservative Part to electoral high water mark, he had no use for the conservative loyalties and affections: they interfered too much with the Whig’s true vaoction of detecting trends in events and riding them skillfully so as to preserve the privileges, property and interests of his class” (ibid. The Macmillans, p.283).

 After Suez the Foreign Office (‘decolonization was led by Whitehall, not Westminster’) urged the Colonial Office to accelerate constitutional changes in Central and East Africa where the creaking Central African Federation (CAF) was showing signs of unraveling rapidly. The White Settlers in Southern Rhodesia were feeling threatened by the African majority from the two other members of the Federation, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

In Cape Town in February, 1960, Macmillan pronounced the rites of independence:

“The wind of change is blowing through the continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.”

This ‘wind of change’ speech underpinned the policy of the Macmillan government towards decolonization for the colonies whether they were ready or not. 

Macmillan’s approach to foreign policy was to conform to work closely with the Americans to face what was seen as a threat from the Soviet Union. Unfortunately that also meant sticking to the points in the Atlantic Charter to decolonize and open up her overseas market to the Americans. Recognizing the inevitable diminution of the Sterling area, Macmillan was forced to seek entry into the European Economic Community by being nice to de Gaulle. 

Playing to the American tune meant having to support them to secure their interests in Southeast Asia. It meant keeping the Singapore base open for their use it that was required. The military base in Singapore would augment United States’ military presence in Southeast Asia, and as a quid pro quo, the U.S. would share their nuclear knowhow and weapon system with the U.K. Hence the bargain with the Tunku to have Singapore, feared by the Tunku to be controlled by leftist, admitted to the proposed federation of Malaysia. The Tunku’s price was the Borneo Territories.

The Colonial Office, staffed with experienced former colonial officers and often headed by former governors as well warned of the incompatibility of merging the two largely native populated states with the Federation of Malaya. The Constitution of the Federation 1957 had entrenched within it an article preserving the ‘special position of the Malays, and guaranteed their rights to employment and land over the other citizens of the federation, including it would transpire later, the Borneo natives. 

This forced union of the Borneo States with this federation with such slanted rights was cemented by what A.J. Stockwell calls ‘grudging promises underpinned by fragile guarantees’. 

The British colonial administrators were appalled by Malaya’s colonial designs upon the Borneo territories. 

[A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaysia, Volume 8, Series B, British Documents on The End of Empire (BDEE) (London: the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 2004), p. lvii]

“ Sir Alexander Waddell , governor of Sarawak, reported that ‘the feeling has grown that the Tunku’s object is a Greater Malaya, not Greater Malaysia’ and he warned that ‘if merger is forced by 1963 or at all prematurely, there is a real prospect of racial conflict and outright rebellion’. … 

“Sir William Goode , governor of North Borneo and Waddell insisted that the Borneo colonies were not yet ready for self-government within Malaysia which, they feared, would turn out to be an unequal partnership between the Bornean horse and the Malayan rider. 

They warned of the dangers of a shot-gun marriage when [UK Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia, Lord Selkirk recommended to Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod and Prime Minister Macmillan a ‘crash programme’ for merger.[A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaysia, Volume 8, Series B, British Documents on The End of Empire (BDEE) (London: the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 2004), p. lxx]

Regardless, it appeared that under Macmillan, the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) was given ascendancy over the Colonial Office in the cabinet policy considerations. The CO had felt that the steady development which was even then going on in the Borneo terrirories would be set back by a premature union with Malaya, it would be they felt, ‘unrealistic, and even dangerous’.

Secondary regard was given to the Borneo territories. The Colonial Office policies were seen as retrograde. On-the-ground reports were reassessed in the light of commercial and economic exigencies. Secretary of State for the Colonies Reginald Maudling (Oct 1959- Oct 1961) who was in favour of a slow transition toward independence for the Borneo territories, was replaced by the more aggressive Duncan Sandys.

Sandys, the son-in –law of Winston Churchill was, like most of his political contemporaries a graduate of Eton and Oxford. Elected Member of Parliament for Norwood at the age of 27, Sandys, was also, like Macmillan a former military man. Wounded in a car accident during the war, he walked with a limp, but maintained a stiff military bearing. He had advocated military action during the Suez crisis, and when it failed, dismissed it as just a temporary setback for British prestige and empire.

Known to be headstrong and tireless, he was the ideal man to entrust for a mission. Macmillan called him his ‘hatchet man’. Lee Kuan Yew says of Sandys: “He was a likeable, admirable man if you happened to be on the same side as he was.” 

Sandys had been to Kuala Lumpur to discuss the prospects for a merger as early as January 1961, and according to Lee, told him and the Tunku that Britain was going to join the European Common Market. 

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