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When his old friend and sponsor Winston Churchill returned to power in 1951, Macmillan became Minister of Housing. A major Tory electoral pledge was that they would build 300,000 houses a year; Labor said it could not be done. Macmillan did it, and did it well. He bounded around Britain in his Edwardian greatcoat and cap, inspecting new homes, wading into ankle-deep mud to view damage in the 1952 floods. He insisted on building "people's houses" within the reach of workers making only $25 or $30 a month (at a time when his brother-in-law, the new Duke of Devonshire, was appealing to the government to reduce $6,000,000 in death duties on his father's estate). After three years, Macmillan was promoted to Defense, presided over Britain's "New Look" which converted British forces to the atomic age.
When Churchill retired and Eden took over, Macmillan became Foreign Secretary, a job he did not hold long enough to distinguish himself in. A Foreign Secretary, he said, is always "poised between a cliche and an indiscretion." Among his indiscretions: returning from the summit meeting at Geneva, he bounded off the plane and declared expansively: "There ain't going to be no war"—as if the Russian assurances had settled everything.
New Lease. His transfer to the Treasury in 1955, succeeding Rab Butler, gave him a new lease on political life. Treasury officials found Macmillan quick to absorb new problems, and economists have generally approved his efforts to moderate Britain's threatening inflation. He succeeded, where Butler had not, in dramatizing the danger Britain is in, won himself a series of nicknames from opponents (deriving from Three Penny Opera), ranging from "Mac the Knife," because of his pledge to cut government expenditures by $300 million, to "Mac the Bookie," because of his introduction of "lottery" bonds. And he cheerfully indulged his taste for metaphor. Sample: "The credit squeeze is not that of a boa constrictor but of the masseur." But his greatest contribution has been his sponsorship of a common European market. From the bloody World War I fields of Flanders, where he saw so many of his friends die, Macmillan has brought a conviction that the only way Europe can find some way out of its endless strife is in a new unity. He is the most European-minded of any British politician.
With age and responsibility, Macmillan has moderated the gibes that used to make Laborites squirm, has also toned down the Edwardian mannerisms that set their egalitarian teeth on edge. His stiff collars and Edwardian suits have been replaced, his sheepdog mustache trimmed. Currently he is rated the best orator the Tories have, but now his oratory rests more on clarity than on biting sarcasm. More and more, Labor benches listen to his argument instead of bristling when he rises to speak.