Anthony Sampson (1926–2004)

This book was written in 2005 and so, it is beginning to show signs of dating but, it does perfectly illustrate the way in which Great Britain plc is not really run by anybody. An amalgam of interested parties, with financial clout, pull this way and that, in their own interest and the country meanders after them.

The more that one thinks about this, the more it strikes as the truth. No wonder nobody has been able to lead the people to the promised land offered by each political party: they show more have a small amount of power, but are by no means in control.

The danger of this book is that it can very easily lead to a fatalistic perspective: if no one has control, then no one can take control from them and fundamental change is not possible. I can't think of an argument against this perspective, but I refuse to lay back and accept the mess that we're making of our world. show less

Anthony Sampson's 1967 nearly contemporaneous account of Macmillan's life and premiership is preferred on balance to Alastair Horne's large two volume but hagiographical 1989 account. Horne had access to private papers but Sampson was a working journalist who saw Macmillan in action.

The two books are both creations of their time. Horne is writing at the high point of Tory Thatcherite hegemony and wants to see Macmillan as noble precursor. Sampson writes at a low point in Tory fortunes during show more the premiership of Harold Wilson and sees him as failure.

The truth probably sits somewhere between the two, Both books obviously share much in common because they are dealing with many of the same facts by the way of such things. For all its secret dealings, much of British politics still has to be judged by results in the democratic horse race.

Sampson passes much of the blame for the downturn in Tory fortunes in the 1960s on to Macmillan. There is a lot of merit in that argument. My assessment is that neither excess praise nor blame is due. Macmillan got things wrong but more fundamental forces were in operation.

Looking back on Macmillan from 2020, we can still probably not presume to have the definitive answer on two grounds. Few nowadays can honestly know what it was like to live then and we are always going to judge matters through the lens of where we are now.

We can start perhaps by saying that the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation was a very real issue in the post-Suez world. Macmillan's sincere attempt to leverage Britain's collapsing imperial credit in the direction of nuclear arms reduction and detente has to be in his favour.

Similarly, the withdrawal from Africa was recognition that the United Kingdom could not sustain its imperial ambitions after the fiasco over Suez (on which he was, in fact, a 'hawk'). If he was only recognising reality, he was doing so in a Party that often could not.

Where he now appears to be weak is in his excess of pessimism about the country's long term future prospects and his naive belief that somehow Britain could be central to a Western alliance of the United States, the Commonwealth and the Common Market (later to be the European Union).

The blundering over the European relationship may be regarded as the start of a fatal process of creeping and despairing integration into a European Union that the United Kingdom could never really be a part of with any security as far as its own sovereignty was concerned.

The idea that the Special Relationship could ever be anything but subservience (reaching its rather repulsive nadir in the manipulative poodledom of Tony Blair) has still not been fully understood and this too was a reflection of his patrician pessimism about our ability to be a free nation.

Attempting to be Greece to Washington's Rome and part of a European Union where the best that might be hoped for was a liberal moderation of Franco-German continentalism resulted in the degeneration of Britain's global trading position and near-abandonment of the Commonwealth.

Macmillan studied at any time after 1975 and before 2016 looks prescient. After 2016, we have to revert to Sampsonism and we might now see his euro-centric centrism as a profound wrong turning (subsequently followed by Labour) constructed out of an old man's patrician despair.

Macmillan the man is one of our more interesting Prime Ministers, perhaps closer to Disraeli than any other - genuinely concerned about the condition of the people, cunning but generally decent, oddly excitable behind his quasi-patrician calm and rather lucky until the last years in office.

Perhaps the kindest judgment is that he was the best possible bridge between the Imperial delusions of the mid-twentieth century and final acceptance that we British did not really win the war. we merely survived it and that we would have to reinvent ourselves to create something new.

He could move us on from the past but he had no positive vision for the future that might maintain some commitment to secure sovereignty. Harold Wilson in 1964 was at least a little better with his commitment to technology but turned out to be little more than a tinkerer.

We really cannot blame the past for not imagining the future accurately. Harold Wilson was still engaged in futile imperial commitments and, by 1975, making a desperate attempt to attach the nation to what we naively thought was a free market but was much, much more.

The really negative legacy of Macmillan was to create a claque for Europe in the Tory Party that had its Prime Ministers in Heath, Cameron and May, brought down Thatcher and is currently trying to bring down Johnson after only three months in office.

This claque displaced its pessimism - though it still remains pessimistic about what the United Kingdom can achieve on its own - with a strategy of selling off the country for the mess of potage that is high corporate profitability and a comfortable lifestyle for the southern middle classes.

So, perhaps we can see Macmillan not so much as a great statesman (as many saw him in the late 1950s) but as someone who helped end the Imperium in a civilised manner over the heads of the Tory Right and was then instrumental in creating the basis for our modern centrist Tory 'Left'.

If you look at matters from the point of the Tories then it could be said that, far from weakening them, he was instrumental in creating the conditions for eventual 'modernisation'. From the point of view of the nation, that 'modernisation' was, in fact, as corrupting as it was to be for Labour.

Sampson, of course, could not see the future any more than Horne (or you and I can) but the story is all there in the collection of facts and experiences he provides for us. Obviously out of date in terms of interpretation and without access to private papers, the book is still useful. show less

This brick of a biography provides a very comprehensive account of the political career of Nelson Mandela, his involvement in the ANC, and the anti-apartheid movement. Anthony Sampson is stronger cataloguing the earlier part of Mandela's career, when I believe he had more first-hand knowledge of events; I got the sense he was eliding quite a bit in his look at Mandela's political career and personal life after his release from prison. Painful passages in Mandela's life are mentioned but not show more really assessed in depth. I'm also still not sure I got much of a sense of Mandela as a person, as opposed to Mandela the politician, though I can't quite decide if that was a function of Sampson as biographer or of Mandela's own tendency towards reserve. Still, for all that Sampson was a friend of Mandela and this is an authorised work, this isn't quite a hagiography, and is a very readable account of a fascinating life. show less

I have been reading versions of this book since the 70's when the interlocking tribes of the establishment were as exotic as reading about South Sea Islands to a lad from slums and sink council estates. Over the years, I have become a participant in many of the tribes described as I get involved in developing policy and tracking individuals as they move up and around the system. I often see the human face of the key players and the support they draw thus seeing the web of influence of why a show more decision is made. On the whole I am amazed that the country manages to be run as talent, dedication, vision, are not the reasons why many individuals raise to the top, Its often, ability to network, knowing what the power holders want to know, writing and communication of breadth ( rarely depth), avoiding risk, ability to spin and talk-up and being born or married into the key establishment network. Or having the luck to be at the begining of a new network.

Sour grapes? Well I long ago when faced with the choice of changing the world or having people know that you have changed the world, I went with the first as you can get more change if you let others think that it was their idea! show less