Iain Macleod - Early Life

Early Life

Iain Macleod was born at Clifford House, Skipton, Yorkshire on 11 November 1913. His parents were from the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland. They moved to Skipton in 1907. Macleod grew up with strong personal and cultural ties to Scotland, as his parents bought in 1917 part of the Leverhulme estate on the Isle of Lewis, where they often used to stay for family holidays. Macleod's father, Dr. Norman Alexander Macleod, was a well-respected general practitioner in Skipton, with a substantial poor-law practice.

He was educated at Ermysted's Grammar School in Skipton and at Fettes College in Edinburgh. Macleod showed no great academic talent but did develop an enduring love of literature, especially poetry, which he read and memorised in great quantity. In 1932 he was admitted to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he obtained a Lower Second in History three years later.

He was one of the great British bridge players. He won the Gold Cup in 1937, with teammates Maurice Harrison-Gray (Capt), S. J. Simon, Jack Marx and Colin Harding, and authored a book, Bridge is an Easy Game which contains a description of the Acol bidding system. A bridge connection earned him a job offer with a printing company, but by the late 1930s he was living the life of a playboy off his bridge earnings; he only gave up playing seriously (and relying on his bridge earnings) in the early 1950s when his developing political career became his priority.

Macleod joined the Royal Fusiliers as a private in 1939 but was commissioned into the Duke of Wellington's Regiment and fought briefly in France in 1940, suffering a serious war wound to the thigh which, particularly when combined with a later spinal condition (ankylosing spondylitis), was to leave him with pain and a limp for the rest of his life. Following his recovery from injury (and attendance at staff college), he landed in France on D-Day as Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General (DAQMG) of the 50th (Northumbrian) Division and continued to serve in France until November 1944 when he returned to Yorkshire. He ended the war as a major.

He unsuccessfully contested the Western Isles constituency at the 1945 general election (there was no Conservative Party in the seat, so his father appointed himself Association Chairman). Macleod came bottom of the poll, obtaining 2756 votes out of 13,000.

In 1946, he joined the Conservative Parliamentary Secretariat, subsequently merged into the Conservative Research Department. Here he became close friends with Enoch Powell, but the two fell out over Powell's 1968 Rivers of Blood speech, and Macleod refused to speak to Powell again after the speech. Powell later recalled that Macleod's dealings with him were as if Powell was a pariah afterwards, and he (Powell) believed Macleod's actions were motivated by cowardice and ambition.