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. 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...

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