The Battling Tories

On Fleet Street Tuesday night, the early morning headlines were already in type: MAC WILL CARRY ON. The news, leaked to parliamentary correspondents on the eve of the Conservative Party's annual conference in seaside Blackpool, was that Harold Macmillan had told his Cabinet ministers he felt compelled to stay on as Prime Minister unless they could reach virtually unanimous agreement on his successor.

The huge black headlines that actually hit the streets Wednesday told a far different story. It was contained in the terse announcement issued at 9:26 p.m. Tuesday from 10 Downing Street: "The Prime Minister has tonight been admitted to the King Edward VII Hospital for an operation for prostatic obstruction. It is expected that this will involve his absence from official duties for some weeks, and he has asked the First Secretary, Mr. R. A. Butler, to take charge of the government while he is away."

Private Divination. The news astounded the ministers who had conferred with him that morning. Though he had taken a few sips of a cloudy medicine during the Cabinet session, the 69-year-old Prime Minister seemed in fine fettle and left no doubt that he planned to attend the conference and make the traditional leader's speech on Saturday afternoon. With the announcement of the illness, it suddenly became clear to the solid, well-tailored men and tweedy women, who had been engrossed in highly un-Toryish wrangling between Mac-must-go and Mac-must-stay factions, that Mac would go.

Just four hours after the operation (described as successful), Foreign Secretary Lord Home read a letter to the conference dictated by Macmillan: "It is now clear that, whatever might have been my previous feelings, it will not be possible for me to carry the physical burden of leading the party at the next general election. I have so informed the Queen."

Tears welled in the eyes of Maurice Macmillan, 42, the Prime Minister's son. Acting Prime Minister Butler stared emotionlessly across the auditorium. House Leader and Party Co-Chairman Iain Macleod slumped in his chair until his chin rested on his chest. Minister for Science Lord Hailsham was poker-faced. But Macmillan's announcement stripped away all pretense of a gentlemanly team decision to name his successor.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling, 46, the shrewd, amiable favorite of most Tory backbenchers, told friends he was prepared to fight for the job. Hailsham, an ebullient individualist whose jingoistic rhetoric stirs the squirearchy to rapture, told a wildly cheering We-Want-Hailsham rally: "I am now prepared to disclaim my peerage and resign as leader of the House of Lords and to accept the invitation of any constituency that is prepared to receive me."

Toward a Consensus. The portly Science Minister, who at previous conferences has landed on front pages by ringing hand bells ("for Britain") and taking dips in the frigid ocean, captured the morning headlines with his announcement. But the photographers were not disappointed. Hailsham—or Quintin McGarel Hogg, M.P., as he would like to be—captured all eyes with a robust twist at a Young Conservative dance; later he captured all lapels when his friend Randolph Churchill started distributing heroic Q (for Quintin) campaign buttons.