Wind of Change (speech)

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. 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. Macmillan's speech signalled that the Conservative Party, which formed the British government, would no longer impede independence for many of those territories.

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.

The occasion was actually the second time Macmillan had delivered the speech. He first gave it in Accra, Ghana (formerly the British colony of the Gold Coast) on 10 January 1960, where it drew little response. However, its delivery in Cape Town received significant press attention, partly due to the cold and uneasy reception it received in a country then governed by apartheid and white minoritarianism. The speech made clear that Macmillan’s remarks extended to South Africa itself and signalled a shift in British policy towards 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.

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).