Great Britain: Brains at the Top

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Harold Macmillan, who is more frequently likened to an Edwardian squire, last week was compared instead to Stalin, Robespierre and the Mikado's Lord High Executioner. Britain's Prime Minister earned such comments by pushing ahead with a pitiless purge in which he axed 16 ministers in four days. Though shocked by the mass firings of Macmillan's trusted lieutenants, Britons gleefully echoed Liberal M.P. Jeremy Thorpe's gibe: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his friends for his life."

What Macmillan did not expect was a near mutinous—but short-lived—Conservative reaction. After the final round of firings, icy silence from the Conservative benches greeted Macmillan as he entered the House of Commons. By contrast, sacked Chancellor of the Exchequer Selwyn Lloyd drew tumultuous applause from his party when he meekly took a new, third-row seat. The unkindest cut came from Tory Gilbert Longden, who dryly "congratulated" the Prime Minister on heeding Kipling's counsel:

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you . . .

Pink Toryism. As the shock wore off, Britons began to see the method in Mac's massacre. Weeks ago, Harold Macmillan had concluded from the Tories' disquieting series of election reverses that Britain did not want a change of party so much as a change within the party. Cobwebbed Conservative policies and lackluster leaders have succeeded in alienating a large segment of the young, middle-class voters who swept the party into office eleven years ago in response to the forward-looking policies that were dubbed "pink Toryism." To woo them back, Macmillan plucked from his front and back benches a clutch of European-minded, relatively young M.P.s (the Cabinet's average age was lowered from 55-plus to 51) who are among the brightest and ablest politicians in Britain.

As Britons studied the new faces that sprouted in place of Mac's axed heads, even critics had to admit the addition of considerable brainpower. Reginald Maudling made an impressive new Chancellor of the Exchequer (see box). Education Minister Sir Edward Boyle, 38, is a courageous, cultivated "Suez rebel" who has served with distinction in lower-echelon government posts, including the Ministry of Education, and recognizes Britain's urgent need for expanded technical education.

In charge of coping with a politically explosive housing shortage (TIME, Dec. 1), Sir Keith ("Smoky Joe") Joseph, 44, who worked his way up in the family's building business from hod carrier to director, is a fellow of All Souls, Oxford (and married to an American, Hellen Guggenheimer). Macmillan emphasized the government's aim to expand Britain's health services by bringing into his Cabinet Health Minister Enoch Powell, 49, a blunt, brilliant scholar and poet who was a full professor of Greek at 24, a wartime brigadier at 32.