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Harold Wilson

Image:haroldwilson.jpg
The Rt Hon. Harold Wilson

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom

First term  October 16, 1964 - June 19, 1970
Preceded by Alec Douglas-Home
Succeeded by Edward Heath
Second term  March 4, 1974 - April 5, 1976
Preceded by Edward Heath
Succeeded by James Callaghan
Date of birth March 11 1916
Place of birth Huddersfield, Yorkshire
Date of death May 24, 1995
Place of death London
Party Labour
Retirement honours: Knighthood of the Garter
Life Barony (Wilson of Rievaulx)

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, PC (March 11, 1916 - May 24, 1995) was one of the more successful Labour Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and a 1960s icon. Wilson is regarded by many as probably one of the more intellectual politicians of the century.

Contents

Birth and Early Life

Wilson was born in Huddersfield in 1916, an almost exact contemporary of his great rival, Edward Heath. He came from a political family, his father Herbert having been active in the Liberal Party and then joined the Labour Party. When Harold was eight he visited London and was photographed standing on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street.

Wilson passed the 11-plus examination and won a scholarship to attend the local grammar school. His education was disrupted in 1931 when he contracted typhoid fever after drinking contaminated milk on a Scouts' outing and took months to recover. The next year his father, working as an industrial chemist, was made redundant and moved to the Wirral to find work. Wilson did well at school and won a scholarship to study history at Jesus College, Oxford from 1934.

At Oxford Wilson was moderately active in politics as a member of the Liberal Party but was later influenced by G. D. H. Cole to join the Labour Party After his first year, he changed his degree to philosophy, politics and economics, and he graduated with an outstanding first class degree. He continued in academe, becoming one of the youngest Oxford University dons of the century.

Wilson became research assistant to William Beveridge on unemployment and the trade cycle while lecturing on economics at New College and economic history at University College. On the outbreak of World War II he volunteered for service but was classed as a specialist and moved into the Civil Service instead. Most of his war was spent as a statistician and economist for the coal industry.

In Parliament

As the war drew to an end, he began searching for a seat to fight at the impending general election. Eventually he was selected for Ormskirk, which was then held by Stephen King-Hall . Wilson accidentally agreed to be adopted as the candidate immediately rather than delay until the election was called, and was therefore compelled to resign from the Civil Service. He used the time in between to write 'A New Deal for Coal' which used his wartime experience to argue for nationalization of the coal mines on the basis of improved efficiency.

In the 1945 general election, Wilson won his seat in line with the Labour landslide. To his surprise he was immediately appointed to the Government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works. Two years later he became Secretary for Overseas Trade, in which capacity he made several trips to the Soviet Union to negotiate supplies. Opponents would later class these trips as suspicious.

On October 14, 1947, Wilson was appointed President of the Board of Trade and became the youngest member of the Cabinet in the 20th century. He took a lead in abolishing some of the wartime rationing, which he referred to as a "bonfire of controls". In the general election of 1950, his constituency was altered and he was narrowly elected for the new seat of Huyton.

Wilson was becoming known as a left-winger and joined Aneurin Bevan in resigning from the government in April 1951 in protest at the introduction of NHS medical charges in order to meet the financial demands imposed on the budget by the Korean War. After the Labour Party lost the general election later that year, he was made Chairman of Bevan's "Keep Left" group, but shortly thereafter he distanced himself from Bevan. By coincidence, it was Bevan's further resignation from the Shadow Cabinet in 1954 that put him back on the front bench.

Opposition

He soon proved a very effective Shadow Minister. One of his procedural moves caused the loss of the Government's Finance Bill in 1955, and his speeches as Shadow Chancellor from 1956 were widely praised for their clarity and wit. He coined the term "Gnomes of Zurich" to describe Swiss bankers whom he accused of pushing the pound down with speculation. In the meantime he conducted an inquiry into the Labour Party's organisation following its defeat in the 1955 general election, which made several useful recommendations for improvements. Unusually Wilson combined the job of Chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee with that of Shadow Chancellor from 1959.

Wilson was still identified with the Left, and launched an opportunistic but unsuccessful challenge to the Leader Hugh Gaitskell in 1960 after the Labour Party's 1959 defeat and Gaitskell's unpopular move to ditch Clause Four. He also challenged for the Deputy Leadership in 1962 but was defeated by George Brown . Because of these challenges he was moved to the position of Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Hugh Gaitskell died suddenly in January 1963, just as the Labour Party had begun to unite and look like it had a good chance of being elected to government. Wilson became the left candidate for the leadership, and defeated Brown. He coordinated Labour's response to the Profumo Affair, in which he made some political capital without getting the party involved in the less salubrious aspects. At the Labour Party conference later in 1963, he made a very significant speech in which he claimed "the Britain that will be forged in the white heat of (the scientific and technical) revolution will have no place for restrictive practices and outdated measures on either side of industry". This speech did much to set Wilson's reputation as a classless technocrat.

Prime Minister

In 1964, Wilson narrowly won the general election with a majority of 5 and became prime minister. This was not sufficient to last for a full term and after a short period of competent government, in March 1966 he won re-election with a landslide majority of 99. He was soon a familiar figure, known for his pipe-smoking, his Gannex raincoat, and his habit of taking holidays in the Isles of Scilly. As prime minister, his opponents accused him of deviousness, especially over the matter of devaluation of the pound in November 1967. Wilson had rejected devaluation for many years, yet in his broadcast had seemed to present it as a triumph.

During his first period of office, Wilson's government set up the Open University, which he would come to regard as his own greatest achievement.

Overseas, Wilson was troubled by crises in several of Britain's former colonies, especially Rhodesia and South Africa. Wilson gave diplomatic support but resisted pressure for military support to America in the Vietnam War. In addition to the damage done to its reputation by devaluation, Wilson's government suffered from the perception that its response to industrial relations problems was inadequate. A six-week strike of members of the National Union of Seamen, which began shortly after Wilson' re-election in 1966, did much to reinforce this perception, along with Wilson's own sense of insecurity in office. By 1969 the Labour Party was suffering serious mid-term electoral reverses. In June 1970, Wilson responded to an apparent recovery in his government's popularity by calling a general election, but, to the surprise of almost all observers, was swept from power on a tide of anti-Labour feeling. Despite the shock defeat, Wilson survived as leader of the party and returned to Downing Street in 1974, after his successor, Edward Heath, had failed to deal adequately with similar problems to those he had faced.

Wilson coined the term Selsdon Man to refer to the anti-interventionist policies of the Conservative leader Edward Heath developed at the Selsdon Park Hotel in early 1970. This phrase is the genesis of the habit of British political commentators of describing political developments by suffixing the word man (eg Censored page), comparable with the (originally American) practice of identifying scandals by suffixing the word gate. Wilson's most famous attributed quote is 'A week is a long time in politics' around the time of the devaluation of the pound - this is taken to mean that a government doing badly at the begining of a week may be doing well at the end and vice-versa. Other memorable phrases attributed to Wilson include the comment he made to attempt to reassure the British public after the 1967 devaluation of the pound: "This does not mean that the pound here in Britain -- in your pocket or purse -- is worth any less...", usually now quoted as "the pound in your pocket".

Resignation

On March 16, 1976, Wilson shocked the nation by announcing his resignation as prime minister and his intention to retire from politics altogether. He claimed that this was a step he had always planned to take when he reached the age of sixty and that he was physically and mentally exhausted. In reality he was probably aware that he was suffering from the first stages of early-onset Alzheimer's disease as both his memory and powers of concentration, which up until this point had been excellent, were now starting to fail him drastically.

Wilson's resignation honours list included many businessmen and showbusiness stars along with his political supporters, and caused lasting damage to his reputation when it was revealed that the first draft of the list had been written by Marcia Williams on lavender notepaper (it became known as the Lavender List). Some of those Wilson honoured were later revealed to have been corrupt, including Lord Kagan who went to jail for fraud and Sir Eric Miller who committed suicide while under investigation.

Six candidates stood in the first ballot to replace him: Tony Benn, James Callaghan, Anthony Crosland, Michael Foot, Denis Healey and Roy Jenkins. Jenkins was initially tipped as the favourite but only came third on the initial ballot. In the final ballot, on the evening of 5 April, Callaghan defeated Foot by 176-137 parliamentary votes and became Wilson's successor as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party.

As Wilson wished to remain an MP after leaving office he was not offered the customary peerage offered to retired prime ministers, but instead was created a Knight of the Garter. On leaving the House of Commons in 1983 he was created Lord Wilson of Rievaulx.

Death

Not long after Wilson's retirement, his mental deterioration from Alzheimer's disease began to be apparent. He rarely appeared in public after 1985 and died in 1995.

MI5 plot?

The book Spycatcher (an exposé of MI5) alleged that 30 MI5 agents had collaborated in an attempt to undermine Wilson. The author Peter Wright (a former member of MI5) later claimed that his ghostwriter had written 30 when he had meant 3. Most of Wright's claims are not widely believed.

Harold Wilson's Second Government March 1974 - April 1976

Changes

  • June 1975 - Fred Mulley succeeds Reginald Prentice as Secretary for Education and Science. Prentice becomes Secretary for Overseas Development. Tony Benn succeeds Eric Varley as Secretary for Energy. Varley succeeds Benn as Secretary for Industry.


|- |width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Stafford Cripps |width="40%" align="center"|President of the Board of Trade
1947–1951 |width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Hartley William Shawcross |- |width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Hugh Gaitskell |width="40%" align="center"|Leader of the British Labour Party
1963–1976 |width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
James Callaghan |- |width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Sir Alec Douglas-Home |width="40%" align="center"|Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1964–1970 |width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
Edward Heath |- |width="30%" align="center"|Preceded by:
Edward Heath |width="40%" align="center"|Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1974–1976 |width="30%" align="center"|Succeeded by:
James Callaghan |}

See also





Last updated: 02-07-2005 05:34:02
Last updated: 04-25-2005 03:06:01