There was a political edge to the attacks on Macmillan, who represented the left-wing of the Conservative Party, the so-called "one nation conservatism". The "one nation conservatives" such as Macmillan were often disparaged as the "wets" by the so-called "drys" who represented the right-wing of the Conservative Party. In November 1984, Macmillan gave a much publicised speech in which he called the privatisation plans of the Thatcher government “selling off the family silver”, which made him into a hate figure for the "dry" Conservatives. Additionally, many people on the right-wing of the Conservative Party were passionately opposed to British membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) as the European Union (EU) was then called. Through Britain did not join the EEC until 1973, it was Macmillan who as a prime minister first applied to have Britain join the EEC in July 1961, which was ended in January 1963 when President de Gaulle of France vetoed the British application. For many people on the British right, Macmillan is viewed as something alike to a traitor because of the 1961 application to join the EEC. In 1986, the Federation of Conservative Students in their magazine published a cover story with a photo of Macmillan from 1945 with the question "Guilty of War Crimes?"Knight Robert "Transnational memory from Bleiburg to London (via Buenos Aires and Grozny)" pages 39-53 from Zeitgeschichte, Volume 38, 2010 p.48 The question was rhetorical as the article accepted Tolstoy's charges against Macmillan and sought to link his "one nation conservatism" with a policy of weakness towards the Soviet Union.”
