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, taking a first in PPE. In 1940 he joined the war cabinet secretariat as an economist. 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, which 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. Wilson's opportunity came with Gaitskell's unexpected death in January 1963: in the contest for the succession he emerged victorious over George Brown and James Callaghan.

With hindsight it is clear that Wilson was the right man for the time. 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. 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. Wilson 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, and in 1966 Labour achieved a comfortable majority at the polls.

Increasingly, however, Wilson seemed to lose any sense of direction, particularly after the belated devaluation of the pound in 1967. Politics by gesture appeared to replace long‐term planning. 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.

Nevertheless, Wilson's defeat in 1970 at the hands of Edward Heath came as a considerable shock. He returned to power in 1974 still exuding self‐confidence but lacking the apparent dynamism of a decade earlier. 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. Yet his resignation in 1976 was met with disbelief. He stayed on in the Commons until 1983 without playing much of a role, perhaps because of the onset of a debilitating illness.