Wilson, Harold, 1st Baron Wilson

Wilson, Harold, 1st Baron Wilson (1916–95). Prime minister. The son of an industrial chemist, Wilson won an exhibition in history to Jesus College, Oxford. In the event he read politics, philosophy, and economics, gaining a first. In 1940 he joined the war cabinet secretariat as an economist, developing a particular expertise in the area of fuel and power. Elected MP for Ormskirk in 1945, Wilson became parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Works and in 1947 entered the cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, aged only 31. He resigned from the government in 1951 along with Aneurin Bevan, but was careful to distance himself from Bevan by insisting that his specific quarrel was over excessive expenditure on rearmament. His action established his credentials—not entirely deserved—as a left-winger when Labour began to factionalize in the 1950s.

In opposition Wilson progressed steadily up the hierarchy of the National Executive Committee and shadow cabinet and was made shadow chancellor in 1956 soon after Gaitskell became party leader. He was out of sympathy with Gaitskell's efforts to ‘modernize’ the party following Labour's third successive electoral defeat in 1959 and unsuccessfully challenged him for the leadership in 1960. His action did not prevent him being made shadow foreign secretary. Wilson's opportunity came with Gaitskell's unexpected death in January 1963: in the contest for the succession he defeated George Brown and James Callaghan.

Wilson inherited a party which had recovered its electoral credibility and proceeded to add his own distinctive contribution. His position on the centre-left enabled him to unite the Labour movement in a way Gaitskell would have found difficult. His comparative youth and his call for a technological revolution struck a chord with the optimism of the 1960s. He seemed to stand for the future just as certainly as the Conservatives' Edwardian patricians, Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home, represented the past. In the circumstances, Labour's victory in the election of 1964 was less surprising than the narrowness of the overall majority of four seats.

Yet hopes that Wilson's election might mark a new beginning for Britain were largely disappointed. His first cabinet was elderly and uninspiring. Wilson himself remained wedded to many traditional attitudes, especially Britain's role as a world power and the importance of sterling as an international currency. The creation of a new Department of Economic Affairs, designed to shake off the overweening control of the Treasury, proved a failure. The electorate, however, was ready to give Labour the benefit of the doubt. A parliamentary majority in single figures was scarcely a basis for innovative government and in 1966 Labour achieved a comfortable majority at the polls.

Increasingly, however, Wilson seemed to lose any sense of direction. Politics by gesture appeared to replace long-term strategical planning. Wilson's undoubted cleverness became an end in itself. The quality of pragmatism on which he prided himself seemed to degenerate into mere opportunism. Wilson maintained party unity, but at the expense of blurring over internal differences. There was no transformation of the national economy, though Roy Jenkins, as chancellor, established a reputation for prudent administration. Britain's application to join the Common Market in 1967 came up against General de Gaulle's veto. The qualities of the government seemed to be encapsulated in Labour's attempt to reform the trade union movement. Wilson and his employment secretary, Barbara Castle, invested much of their credibility in the proposed ‘In Place of Strife’ legislation but were obliged to accept humiliating defeat.

Opinion polls none the less suggested another Labour victory in 1970 and Wilson's defeat at the hands of Edward Heath came as a considerable shock. In opposition Labour's centre of gravity moved significantly leftwards, a trend which Wilson accommodated without apparent difficulty. He returned to power in 1974 still exuding self-confidence but lacking the apparent dynamism of a decade earlier. In the eyes of many, the new government allowed too much influence to the trade union leaders under the so-called Social Contract. The most threatening issue, however, as far as the internal dynamics of the party were concerned, was membership of the EEC. Wilson had opposed Heath's action in taking Britain into the community on the somewhat spurious grounds that the terms of entry were unacceptable. In 1975, Wilson allowed the issue of continuing membership to go to a referendum with members of the cabinet openly opposing one another.

There seems little reason to doubt Wilson's assertion that he had decided to stand down early from the premiership at the time he returned to office in 1974. He had perhaps lost his enthusiasm for the game of politics. He was concerned, with some justification, at the attempts of sections of the security services to destabilize his government. Yet his resignation in 1976 was met with disbelief—a commentary, no doubt, on the reluctance of other prime ministers to hand over the reins of power. He stayed on in the Commons until 1983 without playing much of a role, perhaps because of the onset of a debilitating illness. But his reputation rapidly declined, partly because of some curious nominations in his resignation honours list—the judgement of character had never been one of his strengths. Recent attempts at rehabilitation note his excellent record in electoral terms, his capacity to keep the Labour movement relatively united, the continuing economic problems of the last two decades and the important social legislation passed by his first administration.

David Dutton

Bibliography

Pimlott, B. , Harold Wilson (1992);
Zeigler, P. , Wilson (1993).