Prime Minister of the United Kingdom retirement from the Commons, which elevates the individual to the House of Lords. Formerly, the peerage bestowed was usually an earldom, with Churchill offered a dukedom. From the 1960s onward, life peerages were preferred, although in 1984 Harold Macmillan was created Earl of Stockton. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher accepted life peerages, although Douglas-Home had previously disclaimed his hereditary title as Earl of Home. Edward Heath did not accept a peerage of any kind and nor have any of the Prime Ministers to retire since 1990; although Heath and Major were later appointed as Knights
Harold Wilson 1970–1974 hiatus. Another associate was West German Chancellor Willy Brandt; all three were members of the Socialist International. The British "retreat from Empire" had made headway by 1964 and was to continue during Wilson's administration. Southern Rhodesia was not granted independence, principally because Wilson refused to grant independence to the white minority government headed by Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith which was not willing to extend unqualified voting rights to the native African population. Smith's defiant response was a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, on 11 November 1965. Wilson's immediate recourse was to the United Nations, and in 1965, the Security