Wind of Change (speech)

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The "Wind of Change" speech was an address made by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to the Parliament of South Africa on 3 February 1960 in Cape Town. He had spent a month in Africa in visiting a number of British colonies.^[1] When the Labour Party was in government from 1945 to 1951, it had started a process of decolonisation, but the policy had been halted or at least slowed down by the Conservative governments since 1951.^[2] Macmillan's speech signalled that the Conservative Party, which formed the British government, would no longer impede independence for many of those territories.^[3][4]

The speech acquired its name from a quotation embedded in it:

The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.^[5]

The occasion was in fact the second time on which Macmillan had given the speech. He had first delivered it in Accra, Ghana (formerly the British colony of the Gold Coast) on 10 January 1960 but with little reaction. This time, however, it received press attention, at least partly because of the stony reception that greeted it. Macmillan's Cape Town speech also made it clear that he included South Africa in his comments, and it indicated a shift in British policy in regard to South African apartheid:

As a fellow member of the Commonwealth it is our earnest desire to give South Africa our support and encouragement, but I hope you won't mind my saying frankly that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible for us to do this without being false to our own deep convictions about the political destinies of free men to which in our own territories we are trying to give effect.^[5][6]

The speech is also commonly referred to as the "Winds of Change" speech, although "wind" was singular in the original. Macmillan himself titled the first volume of his memoirs Winds of Change (1966).^[7]