The Yorkshireman was prime minister for nearly eight years and won four general elections, yet his true glory days were only a few years in the mid-1960s
Many of Wilson’s concerns remain current today. He saw the need to restructure local government to reflect that these days are known as “functional economic areas”, hence Redcliffe Maud (which still holds up today), reform the civil service (the Fulton Committee) and reduce the power of the trade unions (In Place of Strife). He also kept the U.K. out of Vietnam, despite immense pressure from Lyndon Johnson. He failed to deliver more because of his decision in 1964 to maintain the existing parity of sterling. That led to three years of economic crises, which killed the National Plan and led to devaluation. His resignation honours included peerages for Joseph Kalgan, the inventor of Gannex, and John Vaizey, the father of Ed Vaizey, who subsequently took the Conservative Whip.
A complex and often contrary man: knew Whitehall intimately and understood how it worked, but was probably too deferential to its status quo; tried to break the Treasury’s grip but in truth the DEA was always as much about managing George Brown as anything else; and I think could never, justifiably or not, get people to trust him. I have a hunch that by the post-1970 era he’d come to see resolving tricky political situations as an end in themselves.
Denis Healey didn’t have a good word to say about him and Sir Alec Cairncross, the Head of the Government Economic Service from 1964 to 1969, wasn’t much taken with his approach to economics which he felt was too command and control (and that’s something in an era when command and control was quite the thing). I never forgave him for outlawing the pirate radio stations 🤷♂️
Increasingly I think the experience of total war, which was unique, deeply distorted many politicians’ and civil servants’ views of how a peacetime economy could and should run.
Mind you, Healey was rarely forthcoming with praise… “middle-class Robespierres”, “La Pasionara of privilege”, “out of his tiny Chinese mind”, “savaged by a dead sheep”, “shabby Faust”, “the great she-elephant”…
Alwyn Turner is very readable, he wrote a great book on England in the 2000s as well
I’ve read his book on the 1990s, which was great.
Many of Wilson’s concerns remain current today. He saw the need to restructure local government to reflect that these days are known as “functional economic areas”, hence Redcliffe Maud (which still holds up today), reform the civil service (the Fulton Committee) and reduce the power of the trade unions (In Place of Strife). He also kept the U.K. out of Vietnam, despite immense pressure from Lyndon Johnson. He failed to deliver more because of his decision in 1964 to maintain the existing parity of sterling. That led to three years of economic crises, which killed the National Plan and led to devaluation. His resignation honours included peerages for Joseph Kalgan, the inventor of Gannex, and John Vaizey, the father of Ed Vaizey, who subsequently took the Conservative Whip.
A complex and often contrary man: knew Whitehall intimately and understood how it worked, but was probably too deferential to its status quo; tried to break the Treasury’s grip but in truth the DEA was always as much about managing George Brown as anything else; and I think could never, justifiably or not, get people to trust him. I have a hunch that by the post-1970 era he’d come to see resolving tricky political situations as an end in themselves.
Denis Healey didn’t have a good word to say about him and Sir Alec Cairncross, the Head of the Government Economic Service from 1964 to 1969, wasn’t much taken with his approach to economics which he felt was too command and control (and that’s something in an era when command and control was quite the thing). I never forgave him for outlawing the pirate radio stations 🤷♂️
Increasingly I think the experience of total war, which was unique, deeply distorted many politicians’ and civil servants’ views of how a peacetime economy could and should run.
Mind you, Healey was rarely forthcoming with praise… “middle-class Robespierres”, “La Pasionara of privilege”, “out of his tiny Chinese mind”, “savaged by a dead sheep”, “shabby Faust”, “the great she-elephant”…