They may have led opposing parties, but Harold Macmillan and Tony Blair have much in common

WHEN the 30-year-old public school-educated Tony Blair stood as the prospective Member of Parliament for the County Durham constituency of Sedgefield, in 1983, he was initially considered by many to be an unlikely and probably unsuitable winner.

He did win, however, and proved himself to be an excellent and diligent constituency MP, rising to eventually become Prime Minister.

When, 59 years earlier, the 30year-old public school-educated Harold Macmillan had stood as the prospective Member of Parliament for the County Durham constituency of Stockton-on-Tees, in the General Election of 1924, he too had been considered by many to be an unlikely and probably unsuitable winner.

He did win, however, and also proved himself to be an excellent and diligent constituency MP, rising to become Prime Minister.

Even allowing for the fact that Blair had stood for Labour and Macmillan for the Conservatives, history, as is its habit, was to repeat itself.

MACMILLAN had originally stood for the traditionally Liberal Stockton seat in 1923 but was defeated by only 73 votes. His winning majority in 1924 was 3,215.

The Stockton area was alien territory to Macmillan, but he soon developed a genuine affection for the place and its people. His routine while in London was to spend his time from mid-afternoon in the Commons, while working each morning for the family firm.

Macmillan Publishing had been established by his grandfather, Daniel Macmillan, who had risen from humble roots on the Isle of Arran.

Harold Macmillan also managed to fit in a good deal of writing, where his business experience stood him in good stead. He made his maiden speech in Parliament on April 30, 1925, and became a backbencher who forwarded many good ideas, some of which made their way onto the statute book MAURICE Harold Macmillan was born on February 10, 1894, at 52 Cadogan Place, London, an imposing address in an elegant, well-to-do area. His parents were Maurice Crawford Macmillan, a publisher, somewhat retiring in his ways, and the much more dominating American, Helen Artie Tarleton of Spencer, Indiana.

The shy young Harold attended Mr Gladstone's school, just off London's Sloane Square until he was nine, when he moved to Summer Fields Prep School, in Summertown, on the outskirts of Oxford.

In 1906, he won a scholarship to Eton where he did not fit in terribly well, and contracted pneumonia during his first months there. He gradually developed hypochondria from which he suffered for the rest of his life and, suspected of having a fragile heart, he left Eton after three years.

He was then taught privately at home, where he worked very hard and gained a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford University.

Not a naturally-gifted speaker, he was interested in politics and was elected in 1913 as secretary and then, in 1914, as treasurer of one of the world's most famous debating societies - the Oxford Union.

Strangely, in later years Macmillan was reluctant to return to either Eton College or to Oxford University.

Much as he wanted to answer Kitchener's call to Britain's young men to join up, in 1914 he was convalescing from an appendectomy. But he was soon able to sign up to the Artists' Rifles, from which he became a 2nd lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps.

His overbearing mother then arranged a transfer for him, in 1915, to the much more prestigious Grenadier Guards. Six months later, he fought at the Battle of Loos, where he was wounded in the head and the hand, the latter very badly.

Back at the front, near Ypres, in April 1916, he was again wounded, and, in the Battle of the Somme six months later, he was very badly wounded by a bullet to the abdomen and thigh.

There was no medical assistance to hand so he sheltered for a day in a shell hole pretending, successfully, to be dead when some Germans passed by.

Having eventually been rescued under cover of darkness, he had his wounds dressed. However, the job was not done well and infection set in, resulting in repeated hospital stays and no chance of seeing further action.

Once recovered, he went to Canada to join the staff of that country's then GovernorGeneral, the 9th Duke of Devonshire - Macmillan or, rather, his mother, was very well-connected.

He fell in love with the duke's third daughter, Lady Dorothy Evelyn Cavendish, and married her at Westminster on April 21, 1920, after which he resigned his Army commission and went back to the family firm.

His position was as a junior partner and he was totally responsible for all dealings with authors Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and WB Yeats.

Macmillan did not fit easily into his wife's family circle and she let him down badly on a number of occasions, especially by embarking on a longrunning affair with another politician, Robert Boothby.

While this was causing him much heartache, in the 1929 General Election he lost his Stockton seat to the Labour candidate, Frederick Riley, although he regained it easily two years later and held it again in 1935.

He did not always toe the party line and was very much a man who did what he thought best for his country and constituency. He quickly became disillusioned with the National Government of 1931.

When he had political disagreements, he always explained his own point of view or reasons for a particular course of action, usually doing so through his writing.

By the time of the General Election of 1935, however, he campaigned as a supporter of the National Government as it had set out its stall by then. A year later, ever true to his principles of voting only for what he believed to be progressive measures, he resigned the Government whip.

In a letter of June 29, 1936, he wrote: "Although I am still in favour of a National Government in these difficult times, and shall probably be found in the great majority of cases in the Government Lobby, there are some issues that have arisen, or are likely to arise, upon which I am unable to give the Government the support which it has, perhaps, the right to expect from those receiving the Government Whip.

"It occurs to me, therefore, that it would perhaps be more satisfactory if I was no longer regarded as being among the supporters of the present Administration."

During the Second World War, he was a member of the Government and worked closely with the American General Dwight D Eisenhower but after the war, in 1945, he was soundly defeated in Stockton by George Chetwynd.

It was a constituency of which he had become very fond, and especially in his early years, had been deeply and permanently affected by the poverty, depression and squalor he had found there and which he had fought long and hard to remedy.

It was not long before he won the safe seat of Bromley, but he genuinely grieved at being unable to help directly the people of Stockton.

Macmillan seems always to have tried to be transparently honest.

He also had a very dry sense of humour which he displayed, appropriately but effectively, throughout his career.

When, at the United Nations in 1960, the Russian Nikita Khrushchev started to shout and bang his shoe noisily on the table in protest at something in Macmillan's speech, he stopped and remarked, "I'd like that translated, if I may."

One of Macmillan's simplistic but accurate answers to a searching question might well be of interest to Gordon Brown during his present troubles.

When asked what he believed had been the cause of so many governments being blown off their declared course, he replied, "Events dear boy, events".

How right he was.

Tracing history of Fox and Hounds ECHO Memories is looking for your help.

Do you know the Fox and Hounds public house in Bullamoor (sometimes called Bullamoor Five Houses) near Northallerton?

The owner, David Hawksworth, is trying to piece together the history of the pub.

It was created by knocking three houses into one, but when did that happen and what has gone on there since?

The Foggin family were its tenants or owners in the late 19th and early 20th Century but do you know who else has run the place? Any names or dates would help.

Have a look at these two photos which have been loaned to him. Do you know what sort of car this is? Do you recognise the number plate? When might this picture have been taken? Do you recognise anyone at the wedding or know when it took place?

Any information would be useful. Please contact me at the usual address, especially if you have any old photographs of the Fox and Hounds, or of Bullamoor.