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Harold Wilson

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This article is about the British politician. For the Olympic silver medallist, see Harold A. Wilson.

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James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, PC (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was one of the most prominent and successful British politicians of the 20th Century. To date he is the most electorally-successful 20th Century Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom - having won four General Elections (in 1964, 1966 and two in 1974). He is also regarded by many as one of the more intellectual politicians of the era.

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 having joined the Labour Party. When Wilson was eight, he visited London and a later-to-be-famous photograph was taken of him 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 attended the sixth form at the local grammar school, Wirral Grammar School for Boys, where he became Head Boy. 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 field of study to Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and he graduated with an outstanding first class degree. He continued in academia, becoming one of the youngest Oxford University dons of the century.

Wilson was a lecturer in Economics at New College in 1937 and a lecturer in Economic History at University College from 1938 (and was a fellow of the latter college, 1938-45). For much of this time, he was a research assistant to William Beveridge on unemployment and the trade cycle.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Wilson 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. He was Director of Economics and Statistics at the Ministry of Fuel and Power, 1943-4. He was to remain passionately interested in statistics for the rest of his life. As President of the Board of Trade, he was the driving force behind the Statistics of Trade Act 1947, which is still the legal authority used to collect most economic statistics in Great Britain. As Prime Minister, he was instrumental in appointing Claus Moser as head of the Central Statistical Office. He was President of the Royal Statistical Society in 1972-1973.

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 nationalisation 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 14 October 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 Wilson back on the front bench.

Opposition

Wilson 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 Zürich" to describe Swiss bankers whom he accused of pushing the pound down by 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 unexpectedly 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. (When asked for a statement on the unfolding scandal, he reportedly said "No comment.... in glorious Technicolour!") 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 technocrat not tied to the prevailing class system.

Prime Minister

In 1964, Wilson narrowly won the general election with a majority of four seats and became Prime Minister. This was an insufficient parliamentary majority to last for a full term and, after 18 months of vigorous government (consciously modeled on the early months of President Kennedy's administration) in March 1966 he sought and won re-election with a landslide majority of 96. He became a familiar figure, recognised for his pipe-smoking, his Gannex raincoat, and his tradition of taking holidays in the Isles of Scilly.

(On 1 June 2005 files were released showing that Wilson was concerned that, while on the Isles of Scilly, he was being monitored by Russian ships disguised as trawlers. MI5 had found no evidence of this, but had told him not to use a walkie-talkie.)

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 one of the greatest achievements of his era as Prime Minister.

Overseas, Wilson was troubled by crises in several of Britain's former colonies, especially Rhodesia and South Africa. As a matter of principle, Wilson faced down the separatist white Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith who led a white minority government. Under pressure from Wilson, Smith declared Rhodesia's UDI on November 11, 1965. Wilson was applauded by most nations for taking a firm stand on the issue. Smith subsequently attacked Wilson in his memoirs blaming Wilson for delaying tactics during negotiations over Rhodesia's future and alleging duplicity. Ultimately Wilson's position led to the end of white minority rule in Rhodesia.

Wilson gave diplomatic support but resisted pressure for military support to the United States 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.

Wilson exhibited his populist touch in 1965 when he decided to have the Beatles honoured with the award the MBE. (Such awards are officially bestowed by The Queen but in actuality are always nominated by the Prime Minister of the day.) The award was enormously popular with young people and contributed to a sense that the Prime Minister was "in touch" with the younger generation. There were some protests against the award by conservatives and elderly members of the military who were earlier recipients of the award. But such protesters were in the minority. Critics claimed that Wilson decided on the award to solicit votes for the next general election (which took place less than a year later) but defenders noted that since the mimimum voting age at that time was 21 this was hardly likely to impact many of the Beatles' fans who at that time were predominantly teenagers. It did however cement Wilson's image as a modernistic leader and linked him to the burgeoning pride in the 'New Britain' typified by the Beatles.

One year later, in 1967, Wilson had a rather different interaction with a musical ensemble. He sued the pop group The Move for libel after the band's manager Tony Secunda published a promotional postcard for the single Flowers In The Rain, which featured a cartoon caricature that depicted Wilson in bed with his female assistant. (Wild gossip of the era had hinted at an improper relationship though these were never substantiated.) Wilson won the case, and all royalties from the song (composed by Move leader Roy Wood) were assigned in perpetuity to a charity of Wilson's choosing.

In 1966, Wilson was created the first Chancellor of the newly created University of Bradford, a position he held until 1985.

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 10 Downing Street in 1974, after his successor, Edward Heath, had failed to deal adequately with problems similar to those he had faced. He was elected in February 1974 in a minority Labour Government, gaining a majority in another election shortly afterwards, in October 1974. It was a manifesto pledge in the general election of February 1974 for a Labour government to re-negotiate better terms for Britain in the EEC, and then hold a referendum on whether Britain should stay in the EEC on the new terms. After the House of Commons voted in favour of retaining the Common Market on the renegotiated terms, a referendum was held on 5 June 1975. A majority were in favour of retaining the Common Market.

Wilson coined the term Selsdon Man to refer to the anti-interventionist policies of the Conservative leader Edward Heath, developed at a policy retreat held at the Selsdon Park Hotel in early 1970. This phrase, intended by Wilson to evoke the "primitive throwback" qualities of anthropological discoveries such as Piltdown Man and Swanscombe Man, was part of a British political tradition of referring to political trends by suffixing man (e.g. Essex man, Orpington man). 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 beginning 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".

In September 1971, Wilson outlined his plans to unite Ireland, in response to the worsening political situation there. He set a target of 1986 for the British withdrawal. However, on his return to power, he did not act on these plans.

In May 1974 he condemned the Unionist-controlled Ulster Workers' Strike as a "sectarian strike" which was "being done for sectarian purposes having no relation to this century but only to the seventeenth century". However he refused to pressure a reluctant British Army to face down the loyalist paramilitaries who were intimidating utility workers. In a later television speech he referred to the "loyalist" strikers and their supporters as "spongers" who expected Britain to pay for their lifestyles. The strike was eventually successful in collapsing the power-sharing Northern Ireland executive, prompting Idi Amin to telegram Wilson, offering to host a peace conference in Uganda.

It should be noted how much he was regarded as a man of the people, in contrast to the line of public-schoolboy or aristocratic conservative Prime Ministers who preceded him. Features of this protrayal included his 'Gannex' raincoat, much like a modern working man's overcoat in style, his pipe smoking (that he traded on this can be seen from the fact that in private he smoked cigars), his love of simple cooking and the overuse of the popular British relish, 'HP Sauce' - the opposite of haute cuisine - his support for the soccer team of his home town, Huddersfield, and his accent, a northern working-class Yorkshire brogue. His popularity before his first general election victory relied heavily on associating these down-to-earth attributes with the sense that the UK urgently needed to modernise, that the thirteen years of Conservative government since 1951 had been wasted years ("thirteen years of Tory mis-rule..."), epitomised by an effete upper class and scandal-mired government, although his immediate predecessor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, an aristocrat who had given up his title as Lord Home in order to sit in the House of Commons, personified many of these traits (though no scandal touched him).

On one occasion Home responded to Wilson's (accurate) jibe that he was the fourteenth Earl of Home with the riposte, "I suppose Mr. Wilson is the fourteenth Mr. Wilson".

Wilson's reputation has not yet fully recovered from the low ebb to which it was consigned after his second premiership - it being fashionable to blame him for not taking the chance to modernise the Labour Party and for being too preoccupied with party in-fighting rather than taking the country forwards. In hindsight, it can be seen that Wilson's skilful management of his party allowed the various factions to co-exist in a kind of harmony. This co-existence did not survive Wilson for long, and the factionalism that followed led to the melt-down in the Labour Party during the 1980's, the acceptance of Thatcherism as a strong corrective to excessive trade union power, an even longer period of opposition for Labour (18 years), and the need for a total reinvention at the hands of Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair during the 1980s and 1990s.

Resignation

File:Harold-Wilson-arms.png
Arms of Harold Wilson

On 16 March 1976 Wilson surprised 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. As early as the late 1960s, he had been telling intimates that he did not intend to serve more than eight or nine years as Prime Minister. But he was probably also 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.

Queen Elizabeth II came to dine at 10 Downing Street to mark his resignation, an honour she has bestowed on only one other Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

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.

Tony Benn, James Callaghan, Anthony Crosland, Michael Foot, Denis Healey and Roy Jenkins stood in the first ballot to replace him. Jenkins was initially tipped as the favourite but came third on the initial ballot. In the final ballot, on the evening of 5 April, Callaghan defeated Foot by 176 parliamentary votes to 137 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 immediately given the peerage customarily 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 Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, of Kirklees in the County of West Yorkshire.

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 of colon cancer in 1995, at the age of 79. He is buried on St Mary's, Isles of Scilly.

MI5 plot?

In 1963, Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is said to have secretly claimed that Wilson was a KGB agent. The majority of intelligence officers did not believe that Golitsyn was a genuine defector but a significant number did (most prominently James Jesus Angleton, the Deputy Director of Counter-Intelligence at the CIA) and factional strife broke out between the two groups. The book Spycatcher (an exposé of MI5) alleged that 30 MI5 agents then 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. Many of Wright's claims are controversial, and a ministerial statement has been made that an internal investigation failed to find any evidence to support the allegations. In March 1987, James Miller, a former MI5 agent, claimed that MI5 had encouraged the Ulster Workers' Council general strike in 1974 in order to destabilise Wilson's Government. See also: Walter Walker and David Stirling.

A new BBC programme The Plot Against Harold Wilson gives strong suggestions that the country came closer to military government than most would be content to think. Harold Wilson in a series of secret tapes recorded just after his shock 1976 resignation, talks of how he felt that for 8 months of his premiership he did not feel in full control and didn't "feel he knew what was going on, fully, in security". He alleged that ex-military leaders had built up private armies in anticipation of "wholesale domestic liquidation" and Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh's uncle and mentor, would be installed as interim Prime Minister. Two plots, in the late 1960s and mid 1970s were alleged by Wilson.

Main article: Harold Wilson conspiracy theories

Other conspiracy theories

Wilson's Government took punitive action against the controversial Church of Scientology in 1967, banning foreign Scientologists from entering the UK (a prohibition which remained in force until 1980). In response, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's founder, accused Wilson of being in cahoots with Soviet Russia and an international conspiracy of psychiatrists and financiers:

Our enemies are less than twelve men. They are members of the Bank of England and other higher financial circles. They own and control newspaper chains and they, oddly enough, run all the mental health groups in the world that had sprung up ...
Their apparent programme was to use mental health, which is to say psychiatric electric shock and pre-frontal lobotomy, to remove from their path any political dissenters ... These fellows have gotten nearly every government in the world to owe them considerable quantities of money through various chicaneries and they control, of course, income tax, government finance — (Harold) Wilson, for instance, the current Premier of England, is totally involved with these fellows and talks about nothing else actually. (Hubbard, Ron's Journal 67 [1]).

Hubbard fell some way short of convincing the British public of Wilson's supposed involvement in the mysterious "Tenyaka memorial" conspiracy, despite lurid denunciations published by the Church of Scientology, although Wilson's Minister of Health, Kenneth Robinson, did succeed in winning a libel lawsuit against the Church and Hubbard.

Harold Wilson's First Cabinet, October 1964 - March 1970

Initial Cabinet

Changes

  • January 1965 - Michael Stewart succeeds Patrick Gordon Walker as Foreign Secretary. Anthony Crosland succeeds Stewart as Education Secretary.
  • December 1965 - Barbara Castle succeeds Thomas Fraser as Minister of Transport. Anthony Greenwood succeeds Castle as Minister of Overseas Development. Lord Longford succeeds Greenwood as Colonial Secretary. Sir Frank Soskice succeeds Lord Longford as Lord Privy Seal. Roy Jenkins succeeds Soskice as Home Secretary.
  • April 1966 - Lord Longford succeeds Sir Frank Soskice as Lord Privy Seal. Frederick Lee succeeds Longford as Colonial Secretary. Richard Marsh succeeds Lee as Minister of Power. Douglas Houghton resigns as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His successor is not in the cabinet. Cledwyn Hughes succeeds Jim Griffiths as Welsh Secretary.
  • July 1966 - Tony Benn succeeds Frank Cousins as Minister of Technology.

After Reshuffle, August 1966

Changes

  • January 1967 - Lord Shackleton and Patrick Gordon Walker enter the cabinet as Ministers without Portfolio.
  • August 1967 - Peter Shore succeeds Michael Stewart as Secretary of State for Economic Affairs. Stewart remains First Secretary of State. George Thomson succeeds Herbert Bowden as Commonwealth Secretary. Anthony Crosland succeeds Douglas Jay as President of the Board of Trade. Patrick Gordon Walker succeeds Anthony Crosland as Education Secretary. Arthur Bottomley, Minister of Overseas Development, leaves the cabinet. His successor in that office is not in the cabinet.
  • November 1967 - Roy Jenkins succeeds James Callaghan as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Callaghan succeeds Jenkins as Home Secretary
  • January 1968 - Lord Shackleton succeeds Lord Longford as Lord Privy Seal.

After Reshuffle, April 1968

Changes

  • July 1968 - Roy Mason succeeds Ray Gunter as Minister of Power.
  • October-November 1968 - Fred Peart succeeds Richard Crossman as Lord President. Lord Shackleton succeeds Fred Peart as Lord Privy Seal. Judith Hart succeeds Shackleton as Paymaster-General. The Foreign and Commonwealth Offices are merged, with Michael Stewart as Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. Jack Diamond, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, enters the cabinet. The office of Secretary of State for Social Services is created, with Richard Crossman as Secretary. George Thomson enters the cabinet as Minister without Portfolio.
  • October 1969 - Anthony Greenwood, Minister of Housing and Local Government, leaves the cabinet. George Thomson becomes Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Anthony Crosland, becomes the Secretary of State for Local Government and Regional Planning. Roy Mason succeeds Crosland as President of the Board of Trade. His previous position of Minister of Power is abolished. Harold Lever succeeds Judith Hart as Paymaster General. Richard Marsh resigns as Minister of Transport. His successor is not in the cabinet.

Harold Wilson's Second Government March 1974 - April 1976

Changes

  • October 1974 - John Silkin although working to the Secretary of State for Environment enters the cabinet as Minister of Planning and Local Government.
  • 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.

Titles from birth to death

Template:Succession box one to oneTemplate:Succession box one to one
Preceded by President of the Board of Trade
1947–1951 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Leader of the British Labour Party
1963–1976 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1964–1970 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1974–1976 		Succeeded by

Wilson on Television

Shortly after resigning as Prime Minister Wilson was signed by David Frost to host a series of interview/chat show programmes. The pilot episode proved to be a flop as Wilson appeared to be a uncomfortable with the informality of the format. Clips from the single edition are still shown as examples of TV Hell.

Francis Wheen scripted the BBC 4 2006 drama The Lavender List, a fictional account of the Wilson Government of 1974-76. Kenneth Cranham played Wilson, Gina McKee Marcia Williams and Celia Imrie has a supporting role as Wilson's wife. The play concentrated on Wilson and Williams' relationship and her conflict with the Downing Street Press Secretary Joe Haines.

Trivia

A popular urban myth at Oxford University states that Wilson's grade in his final examination was the highest ever recorded up to that date.

See also

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Harold Wilson
Wikiquote has quotations related to Harold Wilson.

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