Macmillan’s Night of the Long Knives

One of the great goals of the pioneering Victorian explorers of Africa was to find the source of the Nile. The origins of the grievous miscalculation by Harold Macmillan of what became known as The Night of The Long Knives on Friday 13 July 1962, when he summarily sacked seven members of his Cabinet, may appear equally obscure, but can in fact be traced back to the Wallace Murder Case in Liverpool in 1931.

At that time Selwyn Lloyd was a young lawyer on the Northern Circuit. Legal news in Liverpool in 1931 was dominated by the trial of William Wallace, who was convicted of the murder of his wife Julia. Though he was not involved in the case Lloyd was convinced from the start that Wallace was innocent and the victim of circumstantial evidence. The conviction was sensationally overturned by the court of Criminal Appeal, the first instance in British legal history where an appeal was allowed after a re-examination of the evidence.