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
Weirdly my memory of Harold Wilson are from two encounters on a train when I was a child. On the second occasion he appeared to remember me (about a year later) although it may be my imagination and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up: a Prime Minister I replied. Sadly you will probably guess I didn’t achieve this. I did meet him a third time when attending ‘the Polytechnic’ in Huddersfield but he didn’t recognise me again. In my mind the greatest Labour leader, able to coral and motivate disparate individuals within his government and of course, compared to Starmer, a socialist.
I wonder if Wilson's reputation suffered in the 1980s and 90s because he was always being implicitly compared to the 'conviction politician' Thatcher and perhaps Blair in his triumphalist phase. If you compare him to our recent crop of leaders he looks rather better: he managed to keep Britain out of a toxic American-led war without wrecking the alliance (cf Blair); he held a referendum on Europe and managed to get the right result without splitting his party (cf. Cameron); he managed to keep the Labour Left in its box again without splitting the party (cf. 2015-20).
I think, partly rightly and partly wrongly, he has a reputation for being all tactics and no strategy. Hugely skilful at balancing party factions but left you with a vague feeling of “what for”? I do think he should get more credit for the Open University, which was an astonishing, visionary and lasting achievement.
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”…
Weirdly my memory of Harold Wilson are from two encounters on a train when I was a child. On the second occasion he appeared to remember me (about a year later) although it may be my imagination and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up: a Prime Minister I replied. Sadly you will probably guess I didn’t achieve this. I did meet him a third time when attending ‘the Polytechnic’ in Huddersfield but he didn’t recognise me again. In my mind the greatest Labour leader, able to coral and motivate disparate individuals within his government and of course, compared to Starmer, a socialist.
I wonder if Wilson's reputation suffered in the 1980s and 90s because he was always being implicitly compared to the 'conviction politician' Thatcher and perhaps Blair in his triumphalist phase. If you compare him to our recent crop of leaders he looks rather better: he managed to keep Britain out of a toxic American-led war without wrecking the alliance (cf Blair); he held a referendum on Europe and managed to get the right result without splitting his party (cf. Cameron); he managed to keep the Labour Left in its box again without splitting the party (cf. 2015-20).
I think, partly rightly and partly wrongly, he has a reputation for being all tactics and no strategy. Hugely skilful at balancing party factions but left you with a vague feeling of “what for”? I do think he should get more credit for the Open University, which was an astonishing, visionary and lasting achievement.
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”…