Harold Wilson died in April 1995, just as Labour was consumed by the debate about Tony Blair’s new Clause IV. Wilson would probably have approved of the substance of Blair’s revised statement. He had, after all, always been a creature of the centre, if not the right, of the party. Nonetheless, the former prime minister would most likely have counselled his successor against making the change.
Wilson had, in fact, adopted a similar position in 1960. Then, Hugh Gaitskell responded to Labour’s third successive defeat in 1959 by attempting to create a ‘new’ Labour party. Top of Gaitskell’s targets was reform of Clause IV. Roy Jenkins writes of Wilson’s response: ‘He was not literally in favour of Clause IV, but he did not think it worth arguing about.’
It was perhaps appropriate, therefore, that despite his dominating the politics of the 1960s and much of the 1970s, there was never any talk of a philosophy called ‘Wilsonism’; instead, the former prime minister lent his name to a mode of operation – ‘Wilsonian’ – suggesting extreme pragmatism and actions guided more by political expediency than principle.
However, Wilson was not without principle. Two interlinked beliefs guided his career. First, he believed almost above all else that his job as Labour’s leader was to maintain the party’s unity – no small aspiration at any time, but particularly then. Second, Wilson wanted to make Labour ‘the natural party of government’. The desire rested not on a simple craving to hold on to power for its own sake – he was, after all, one of the few British prime ministers of the past hundred years to voluntarily and, at a time of his own choosing, relinquish it – but because he believed that only by Labour retaining power could the cause of social justice be advanced.
Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski’s definition of social democracy – often cited by Denis Healey, a member of Wilson’s cabinet – perhaps best captures the essence of the former prime minister’s own politics: ‘An obstinate will to erode by inches the conditions which produce avoidable suffering, oppression, hunger, wars, racial and national hatred, insatiable greed and vindictive envy.’ Having initially judged him roughly, history has more recently come to a more measured view: that assessed by this standard, Wilson’s time in office was perhaps worthy of more praise than many were willing to give.
The rather dim view that both left and right hold of Wilson gives some credence to the notion that those who occupy the middle of the road are liable to get run over. Except, of course, that Wilson proved skilful at dodging oncoming traffic. In short, he was an accomplished player of the party game. Following his resignation from Clement Attlee’s government over its rearmament plans, Wilson carefully navigated his way through the battles between Bevanites and Gaitskellites in the 1950s. Shedding Hugh Dalton’s epithet that he was ‘Nye’s little poodle’ and then challenging Gaitskell’s leadership in 1960, Wilson was ideally placed to succeed the latter when he died suddenly in 1963.
For the next three years, Wilson demonstrated immense political acumen. As Peter Shore wrote in 1993: ‘Without doubt no leader of the opposition, before or since, has equalled in sustained brilliance and effectiveness Wilson’s campaign that started in February 1963 and which continued to its successful conclusion on polling day, October 1964.’
Wilson’s aim, suggested Jenkins, was to ‘perform the clever balancing trick of giving the Labour party a broad and modern appeal without offending the old household gods of the party, as he believed that Gaitskell had heedlessly done’.
But, like all of Labour’s most successful leaders, Wilson spoke to the country rather than simply to the party. When in 1963 he extolled a Britain ‘forged in the white heat’ of the technological revolution, Wilson helped to recapture the party’s appeal as forward-looking, hopeful and ready to meet the challenges of the 1960s. Wilson reflected the mood of one world passing and another waiting to be born. In short, the aspiring prime minister offered Britain a taste of Kennedy’s New Frontier.
This, the most successful phase of Wilson’s leadership, continued through Labour’s knife-edge win in the October 1964 general election until the party’s landslide re-election victory in June 1966. During this period, Wilson managed to sustain and build enthusiasm for the new Labour government. His political skills are generally acknowledged to have helped end the Tories’ ‘thirteen wasted years’ of government. But how did they help him cope with the four major tests that he would subsequently face – devaluation, Vietnam, trade union reform and Europe?
On becoming prime minister, Wilson was determined to defend the parity of sterling against the dollar. In part, this reflected a political calculation that, as chancellor Jim Callaghan later put it, ‘the Conservatives would have crucified us’ if Labour had devalued. However, until Wilson succumbed to the inevitable and, in November 1967, agreed to devalue, the attempts to defend the pound cost Labour dear, leaving its economic and spending plans in tatters. Wilson did, however, defend his plans for an Open University – a reflection of his belief that a key priority of government should be to expand access to education and training – and it proved to be, in the words of Jenkins, ‘one of his proudest and most personal achievements’.
In his attempts to stave off devaluation of the pound, the prime minister was heavily dependent upon America’s financial support. Given this, Wilson’s handling of Lyndon Johnson’s desire for Britain to commit ground troops to Vietnam was rather more adept. Although the left hankered after an outright condemnation of US policy in Vietnam, Wilson managed to steer a middle way between earning the wrath of the American president and embroiling Britain in a deeply unpopular, immoral foreign war.
Wilson also wanted to occupy the middle ground on trade union reform. Barbara Castle’s 1969 proposals, In Place of Strife, sought to both enshrine union rights and regulate union behaviour in order to democratise, delay and defuse activity leading to industrial action. However, the proposals were fiercely resisted and, despite Castle and Wilson’s strenuous efforts, defeated, by the PLP, the trade unions and, most prominently of all, ‘the keeper of the cloth cap’, Jim Callaghan. Given the manner of Callaghan’s undoing by the unions ten years later and Margaret Thatcher’s consequent assault on organised labour, Wilson’s opponents had secured a somewhat hollow victory for which they would later pay a heavy price.
Labour’s surprise defeat in the 1970 general election – after a period of deep unpopularity following devaluation, the party had pulled ahead in the polls – ushered in a bout of party infighting over Europe. In office, Wilson had applied to join the EEC. In opposition, however, he capitulated to the resurgent anti-European left and imposed a three-line whip against Ted Heath’s plans for entry. Wilson’s actions provoked the ire of the party’s pro-Europeans and Roy Jenkins’ resignation as deputy leader.
By the time Labour was narrowly returned to power in February 1974, however, Wilson reverted to his previous position, engaging in a largely cosmetic renegotiation of Britain’s entry terms. In the ensuing referendum, the government recommended entry, although Wilson suspended cabinet collective responsibility to allow anti-European ministers to campaign – unsuccessfully – against Britain’s continued membership. Despite the charge of inconsistency, Wilson succeeded both in avoiding a major schism within the party and in consolidating Britain’s place in Europe.
By the time of Wilson’s surprise resignation in 1976, his two spells in government were generally viewed as having failed to realise their early promise. In retrospect, however, they helped nudge forward the postwar process of making Britain a more civilised nation. In his person, the former prime minister personified the more meritocratic, less deferential country that Britain had become by the 1960s.
More concretely, Wilson’s governments helped lessen the deadweight of social conservatism that the country had also begun to shake off: abortion was legalised, theatre censorship and capital punishment abolished, divorce was made easier and homosexual behaviour decriminalised, and the rights of women and ethnic minorities were recognised. Clement Attlee’s administration left behind it the principles and institutions of the welfare state; Wilson’s bequeathed a change in attitudes. Despite assaults, the forces of conservatism have been unable to shake either.