Gaitskell, Hugh Todd Naylor

Gaitskell, Hugh Todd Naylor (b. 9 Apr. 1906, d. 18 Jan. 1963). British Labour leader 1955–63 Born in London, and educated at Winchester and Oxford, he worked in adult education, and became a lecturer in economics at University College, London, in 1928. During World War II, he was a civil servant, in the Ministry of Economic Welfare, and was elected to Parliament for Leeds South in 1945. He was Minister of Fuel and Power in 1947–50, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1950–1. In this post, he imposed the prescription charges covering half the cost of adult spectacles and dentures, which he felt necessary in order to pay for rearmament; he was opposed by Bevan, who resigned from the Cabinet. He was by this time the most prominent figure on the right of the Labour Party, and when he succeeded Attlee as party leader in 1955, he soon confronted the left-wing ‘Bevanites’ by opposing unilateral nuclear disarmament (1960–1), and by seeking, unsuccessfully, to revise the Labour Party constitution's Clause IV (which committed the party to nationalization) at the 1959 party conference. Although of undoubted intellect and ability, he never managed to reconcile fully the left wing of the party to his leadership, which condemned to failure his campaigning in the 1959 elections and his subsequent efforts at party reform.