Harold Wilson: The Winner

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Roy Hattersley was minister of defence and minister of state for foreign affairs in Harold Wilson’s government Wilson led his party to victory in four general elections. That, itself, goes some way to justifying Thomas-Symonds’s claim. But much of what might be described as achievements were the result of “preventive action”. Wilson avoided civil wars in Central Africa and Northern Ireland and steadfastly resisted American pressure to send British troops to Vietnam. They are not the sort of successes that attract a place in history. Preventing, or at least postponing, a Labour party split is probably more important to Thomas-Symonds and me than it is to posterity.

Harold Wilson: The Winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds review – a

On succeeding Gaitskell, Wilson set about portraying Labour as the party of the future, crucially in his “white heat” speech to the 1963 party conference. Socialism was to be restated “in terms of the scientific revolution”. The subsequent election meant the end of 13 years of Tory rule. Immediately, the Government set about making Britain a more humane society, enacting laws on race relations and abolishing capital punishment. In February 2021, he was appointed to the Privy Council by Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and, in that capacity, signed the Accession document for King Charles III.He was born in Panteg Hospital and brought up in Blaenavon, where he attended St. Felix R.C. Primary School. He then went to St. Alban’s R.C. High School, Pontypool, at which he later served as a Governor (2007-2015). He read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating in 2001 before working as a Tutor/Lecturer in Politics at his old college (2002-2015), specialising in twentieth-century British government. Further, the Government could be proud of its record on housing, social services, health, and its help for the poorest, promoting equal pay for women and attempting to end the stigma attached to those on state benefits by recognising that the re­­cipients had rights.

Harold Wilson: The winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds Harold Wilson: The winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds

I know beyond doubt that Williams fed Wilson stories about rightwing dissidents in the parliamentary Labour party plotting his downfall. Although much of the scheming was imaginary, the antagonism was real. It could be traced to his decision in 1960 to challenge Hugh Gaitskell for the Labour leadership at the time when Gaitskell had promised to “fight and fight again to save the party we love” from the suicide of extremism. He lost, but in 1963, after Gaitskell’s death, Wilson took the leadership, and a year later led Labour to victory. For a brief period, from 1963, when he became Labour leader, to 1966, when he deflated the economy, Wilson inspired a generation, entranced by his insistence that Labour was a “moral crusade”. But disillusionment was rapid. It took 18 years in opposition, from 1979 to 1997, for Labour to recover; and whereas at the end of the 19th century a Liberal leader had proclaimed “We are all socialists now”, by the end of the 20th, Labour under Blair could regain power only by assuring voters that they were none of them socialists now. For Wilson has already been memorialised in two doorstopper volumes by his official biographer, Philip Ziegler, and by the Labour historian, Ben Pimlott. Does Thomas-Symonds have anything to add? Not much, it must be said. There are fewer “secrets” in the archives than many imagine, and this biography, though very well written, should be read as the case for the defence rather than for new discoveries.When Bevan and then Gaitskell died prematurely, Wilson was the unchallenged leadership candidate of the left in a party still dominated by the right. Conveniently, however, the right’s leading candidate was George Brown, an erratic and, it proved, unelectable trade unionist. In 1963, aged forty-six, Wilson became party leader. AS BRITAIN suffers her fifth Prime Minister in six years — all from the same party — it is more than ap­­propriate to re-evaluate the Prime Minister who won four of five General Elections, and the only Prime Minister in recent times to serve again after losing office. This new biography comes with praise from Sir Keir Starmer. It might teach him how to get to Downing Street, but it will not help him decide what to do if he gets there. Paradoxically, damage to his reputation came about because of his undying loyalty to his private and personal secretary. The index of The Winner lists 68 references to Marcia Williams, Lady Falkender, twice as many as any cabinet minister. I do not know or wish to discover the nature of the Wilson-Williams relationship, though if pressed I would guess that it was not what the prurient press hoped it to be. Yet for some reason she was allowed to behave in a way that did Wilson great damage. The final blow was the “lavender list” – Wilson’s nominees for dissolution honours. It was written on Lady Falkender’s notepaper, and included names of men Wilson barely knew. Somehow it found its way into the newspapers.