Supermac (cartoon)
"Super-Mac" was a 1958 cartoon image of Harold Macmillan, which became an enduring nickname for him.
With its rather dismissive caption, "How to Try to Continue to be Top Without Actually Having Been There",
Image
The cartoon was signed "Vicky – with apologies to Stephen Potter", an acknowledgement of the full title of Potter's book of 1958, Supermanship, or, How to Continue to Stay Top without Actually Falling Apart. The figure quickly became a staple of Vicky's output, and "Supermac" (mostly spelt without a hyphen) was widely and enduringly applied as a nickname for Macmillan. Though initially an ironic coinage, it soon rebounded to Macmillan's advantage, becoming an integral part of his image.[3] D. R. Thorpe's biography of Macmillan (2010) was entitled Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan.
In a subsequent cartoon, a cinema named the "Torytz" (after "Tory") was portrayed with posters proclaiming "Supermac - He's terrific - He's stupendous ... A super-colossal-top-production in true-blue colour". The Conservative Party Chairman, Quintin Hogg, Viscount Hailsham, was dressed as a commissionaire presiding over a "house full", while astonished members of the public, queuing for seats at the outrageous price of 12 shillings and sixpence, marvelled at the image of Supermac.[4]
Heyday: late 1950s
The creation of Supermac reflected an age in which, following the austerity of the post-Second World War period and the débâcle of the Suez Crisis of 1956, Britain was enjoying increasing prosperity and a general upturn in the national mood. This feeling was widely regarded as having been typified by Macmillan's assertion in July 1957 that "most of our people have never had it so good"[5] (often cited as "you've never had it so good"), though some, particularly in retrospect, saw it as a complacent and materialistic observation, maybe unaware that Macmillan had added the warning that "what is beginning to worry some of us is ... 'Is it too good to last?'".
Unflappability
Other examples of Macmillan's apparent air of confidence and "unflappability" (a characteristic frequently attributed to him during this period,
Changing image of the 1960s
The final years of Macmillan's premiership were difficult ones, coinciding with the
"We've never had it so often"
In 1963, after the Government had withstood the Profumo affair, with its succession of allegations relating mostly to sex,[14] Macmillan resigned on grounds of ill health. Arguably the best remembered cartoon of that year (which the poet Philip Larkin famously identified as the one in which "sexual intercourse began"[15]) was Trog's in Private Eye showing Macmillan walking away with a ladder and a tin of paint from a wall on which had been emblazoned the words, "We've Never Had It So Often".[16]
The appointment of the 14th Earl of Home as Macmillan's successor served to perpetuate the "grouse moor" image, although Home responded to jibes about his background by referring to Labour Opposition leader Harold Wilson as "the fourteenth Mr Wilson".[17] In the event, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, as he became after disclaiming his peerage, lost the 1964 general election by a very small margin.
Renaissance of the 1980s: "Earl Supermac"
Macmillan lived for another 23 years. The "Supermac" image was more fondly recalled in the years immediately before his death in 1986 as, having accepted an
References
- ^ See, e.g., Dominic Sandbrook (1994) Never Had It So Good
- ^ a b See J. M. & M. J. Cohen (1995 edition) The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Quotations
- ^ Anthony Sampson (1967) Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity
- ^ Cartoon in Daily Express, reproduced in Anthony Thompson (1971) The Day Before Yesterday. Note that the typical admission price of a cinema in 1958 was, depending on the location of the seats, between one and three shillings (5p to 15p).
- ^ Speech at Bedford, 20 July 1957
- ^ See, for example, Curtis A. Amlund in Oxford, Volume XXXVIII:1 (May 1986); Sir Robin Day (1989) Grand Inquisitor; Roy Hattersley (1997) Fifty Years On
- ^ Harold Macmillan, Diary, 17 April 1956
- ^ Statement at London Airport, 7 January 1957: see Harold Macmillan (1971) Riding the Storm
- ^ Alan Thompson (1971) The Day Before Yesterday
- ^ Bernard Levin (1970) The Pendulum Years
- ^ Sampson (1967) Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity
- ^ Queen, May 1963
- ^ Alistair Horne (1989) Macmillan: Volume II 1957-1986
- ^ Lord Denning's Report (1963), Cmnd. 2152
- ^ Annus Mirabilis, 16 June 1967 (High Windows, 1974)
- ^ See Richard Ingrams (ed 1971) The Life and Times of Private Eye 1961-1971
- ^ Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Quotations (1998) 151:7
- ^ Alastair Horne (1989) Macmillan: Volume II 1957-1986