(2 of 2)
Mild, diligent, diffident, Lord Home makes speeches as unexceptionable as they are unmemorable. A dogged cricketer, he was once characterized by his captain as "a useful man provided he is not put too high up in the batting order." At home in Scotland, he shoots grouse and catches butterflies, and lives in a wing of his 70 room mansion with his wife, three daughters (his only son is at Eton) and one elderly servant. The countess often serves his supper at the end of the kitchen table. "A gent'eman with no put-on," says one of his Coldstream villagers.
"My Scottish blood rises in me," said the earl gamely at the height of last week's attack, "to tell me that publicity costs nothing." Demanding censure of the government, Labor Leader Hugh Gaitskell refused to be content with the appointment of able Edward Heath as Lord Privy Seal and spokesman on foreign affairs in the House. A Macmillan protege and recognized as one of the most brilliant of the new generation of Tories, Heath, 44, has served briefly as Minister of Labor, but admittedly knows little about foreign affairs, is expected to serve chiefly as Macmillan's watchdog. Gibing at Macmillan's notorious insistence on conducting foreign policy himself, Gaitskell quoted the late Nye Sevan's sardonic wisecrack: "Why bother with the monkey when the organ grinder is here?" Yet if the government was to run a puppet show, said Gaitskell, he would prefer that it take place in the Commons, not the Lords. Retorted Macmillan with dignity: "I did not think that a mere accident of birth should debar me from the right to choose the man I wanted at my side."
Mac's Shadow. Not all of the week's political darts hit Home. Noting that Lloyd had had no training for the treasury, Beaverbrook's Daily Express said: "Mr. Lloyd has been Mr. Macmillan's Foreign Secretary shadow for so long that he's an unknown quantity." "At last Selwyn will have a department of his own," sniffed Laborite Harold Wilson.
With Lloyd as Chancellor of the Exchequer, would Macmillan, who had always made his own foreign policy, now dominate financial affairs as well? The one figure to emerge with more authority from the shuffle seemed to be Old Mac Wonder himself.
In all, Macmillan shifted ten Cabinet jobs. As his Minister of Aviation, he named able, independent-minded Peter Thorneycroft, 51, who quit as Chancellor of the Exchequer two years ago in a hassle with the Prime Minister over his "austerity" policy of curbing credit and budget expenditures. Enoch Powell, 48, who. as Financial Secretary, resigned along with Thorneycroft, also returned to the government as the new Minister of Health. Their return to office takes a little of the curse off Macmillan's Cabinet reshuffle, in which, as one irreverent wag put it. Macmillan was playing with a deck with no face cards in it.