Home > Alec Douglas-Home
2 Apppointment as Prime Minister
In 1963 the Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan, suddenly resigned when diagnosed with prostate cancer from which he was (wrongly) not expected to recover. At the time, the rules of Conservative Party stated that a leader was not to be selected by a vote of party members, but rather by a decision of the party's elder statesmen. Though Rab Butler, nominally the "Deputy Prime Minister" (though officially no such constitutional office then existed, with the title on its rare usages being an honorific one) was the favourite among Conservative MPs the elder statemen preferred Home, some of them indicating that they would refuse to serve in cabinet under Butler and the other potential candidate, Quintin Hogg. Outgoing Prime Minister Harold Macmillan advised Queen Elizabeth II of the opinion of the senior figures in the party. Though it was argued that he had no right to advise the Queen as to who to invite to Kiss Hands as Prime Minister, and the Queen was under no obligation to accept his advice, the Queen duly invited the Earl of Home to become Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury. Home believed it impractical to serve as Prime Minister from the Lords (it was widely believed that Lord Curzon had not been invited to become prime minister in the 1920s because of his position in the Lords). Using the Peerage Act 1963 passed earlier in the same year after the campaign of Tony Benn to renounce his peerage, Home disclaimed his Earldom and as Sir Alec Douglas-Home contested a by-election in a safe seat. Home duly won, entering the history books as the (probably) last peer to become Prime Minister and the only Prime Minister to resign the Lords to enter the Commons. In 1965, the rules of the Conservative Party were changed so that the party leader would henceforth be selected by the 1922 Committee consisting of parliamentary members of the Party.
3 Defeat and Opposition
The government had been too badly damaged to survive, however, and the general election of October, 1964, was won by the Labour Party under the new leadership of Harold Wilson, but by a much narrower margin than was expected. It was in this campaign that Home made his most famous remark. Wilson kept gibing that Home was not a man of a people as he was the 14th Earl of Home. Home's response: "As far as the 14th Earl is concerned I suppose that Mr. Wilson, when you come to think of it, is the 14th Mr. Wilson".
Home remained leader of the party until his resignation in July of the following year. In the interim he created an electoral mechanism for choosing Conservative Party leaders, a vote by MPs. The resulting leadership election was won by Edward Heath who defeated Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell. Over the course of the following six years Home was notably loyal to Heath, comparing those who questioned his position with impatient gardeners who would keep digging up a tree to gauge its progress by examining its roots. When, in 1970, Heath became prime minister, Home returned to the post of Foreign Secretary which was deemed to suit him so well.
In 1974, following the defeat of the Heath government by that of Harold Wilson, Home was restored to the House of Lords when he accepted a life peerage, and became known as Baron Home of the Hirsel ( The Hirsel being his family seat in Berwickshire) for the rest of his life. Home was the second-longest lived British Prime Minister behind Harold Macmillan. On his death, he was succeeded as Earl of Home by his son, David.
Autobiography: The Way The Wind Blows ( 1976)
1 Sir Alec Douglas-Home's Government, October 1963 - October 1964
