Book: Harold Wilson by Ben Pimlott

I recently finished reading Ben Pimlott’s biography of Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, republished in early 2016 with a foreword from Peter Hennessy reflecting on Wilson’s legacy in light of Jeremy Corbyn’s ascension and the then-upcoming EU referendum. If “a week is a long time in politics”, as Wilson is often quoted as having said, then four years is even longer, and his career is still-more interesting to look to at a time when Labour has elected an aspirational figure from the middle of party in Keir Starmer.

Much as Starmer is the son of a nurse and toolmaker who worked himself into a position of prominence in law, Wilson represented a break from the background of PMs of time – a Yorkshire-born “gritty grammar school meritocrat” whose premiership was preceded by those of three Etonian Tories. With his Gannex raincoat and the confected image of his pipe, he captured the national imagination in 1964 with a call for “ability” rather than “upper-class accents” to drive Britain’s modern economy and provide opportunity for all. Unlike recent Labour leaders however, he also had the advantage of substantial experience in government. In wartime Wilson worked as a civil servant and two years after the Labour landslide of 1945, Clement Attlee appointed him to be President of the Board of Trade, aged just 31. He subsequently became a close economic advisor to Attlee when Chancellor Hugh Dalton fell ill and found himself at the centre of the decision to devalue the pound in September 1949.

Wilson’s famous 1964 “white heat” platform and a move to set up a cabinet-level Department of Economic Affairs to rival the Treasury aimed to put industrial planning and technological innovation centre-stage in his administration. In practice though, Pimlott documents how this focus was gradually sidelined by events and the real economic struggles of the 1960s and 70s – maintaining the balance of payments, the threat of further currency devaluations and, eventually, militancy in parts of the union movement. In retirement Wilson continued to cite “getting the economy right” as one of his top three achievements, but it is the second that is perhaps better remembered by the labour movement today – the creation of the Open University. Wilson took a close interest in the founding of the OU, having seized on the idea in opposition in the early 60s, and had to work to protect it in infancy from Treasury cuts and the disinterest of Education Secretary Anthony Crosland. His son Robin went on to work in the institution as a lecturer and while other aspects of Wilson’s crusade for innovation may not have endured, the OU remains with us today, a model of social equality and opportunity in the British education system.

Pimlott’s book acknowledges the other transformative legacy of the Wilson era most cited by the modern left – the progressive reforms of the time around abortion, homosexuality, divorce and corporal and capital punishment – but does not expend significant time exploring the work behind them or the politics of these issues at the time. This in part because these efforts were attributed either to Wilson’s second Home Secretary Roy Jenkins or to backbenchers encouraged by him, in contrast with Wilson’s personal attachment to the OU - Pimlott notes that whereas most Home Secretaries are unpopular and fail, “Jenkins was popular and succeeded” on the back of these seismic changes. Perhaps also notably, Wilson himself did not list these liberal reforms among his main three prize achievements.

Instead, Wilson claimed “keeping the party united without going off course” as his third achievement, a challenge the bedevils every Labour leader. In 1951 Wilson resigned Attlee’s government in solidarity with Nye Bevan over the imposition of prescription charges, but over the next 12 years gradually positioned himself as the more pragmatic (or as many detractors charged, “opportunistic”) face of the party’s left compared to the more intemperate Bevan. In 1963 when Hugh Gaitskell passed away, Wilson drew on trade union influence in the PLP to outmanoeuvre two leadership candidates from the traditional TU right – George Brown and Jim Callaghan – at a time when leaders were still elected solely by the PLP and the party’s right was strong (Wilson famously quipped he was running a “Bolshevik revolution with a tsarist shadow cabinet”).

In government, Wilson fought off frequent bouts of discord and continual leadership plotting, in part by not being afraid to promote talented figures he privately harboured suspicions about. This allowed him to create ambitious “crown princes” in the cabinet – Callaghan, Brown and Jenkins – as granting each their own power base kept all in check, lest a false move against Wilson throw the leadership to one of their rivals. Wilson and Barbara Castle’s defeated In Place of Strife reforms in 1969 damaged Wilson’s standing with his union allies and came as the grassroots hard-left tendency began to assert itself behind figures such as Tony Benn. But even after the trauma of an unexpected election defeat in 1970 deepened fractures in the party, Wilson held on to the leadership in opposition by acting as a compromise candidate between the left and the right, mistrusted by both but not loathed. Wilson later emphasised employment rights as he sought to re-forge his alliance with union leaders such as Jack Jones and focus the movement on more unifying issues, as Europe grew as a particular fissure in the Labour movement – this saw the creation of ACAS in 1975 for example.

As has often been observed in light of Brexit, Wilson’s party management skills were tested and proven in 70s over the EEC. Though they were different times and public opinion proved more movable in the 70s, he had considerably more success than David Cameron or Jeremy Corbyn with traversing the issue of Europe in country and party. Wilson was initially a Eurosceptic, in common with the Labour left at the time, but came round to the case for Common Market entry as ties with the Commonwealth diminished. His bid for Common Market entry was rebuffed by Charles De Gaulle in 1967, but much of the Labour Party continued to oppose the EEC even after Ted Heath took the country into it in 1973 – Wilson and a number of shadow cabinet allies shifted back to a sceptical position in order to keep Labour united, attacking “Tory terms” of entry as a pretext.

To navigate party opinion, Wilson eventually adopted Tony Benn’s call for an in-out referendum in Labour’s manifesto for the October 1974 election, though this was subject to a “renegotiation” that was essentially designed to “create conditions in which we could stay in”. As the campaign got underway, Wilson chastised left-wing Eurosceptics for publicly campaigning against his verdict and the party right under Jenkins for working too closely with Tory contacts. In a speech to a special conference on the party’s position, Wilson was careful to put forward a dispassionate case: “I have never been emotionally a Europe man”. Pimlott describes how “during the referendum campaign, he held himself aloof. He have statesmanlike speeches to selected audiences, advocating a ‘Yes’ vote. But he let others to the proselytising. His argument was negative – against coming out, rather than positively in favour of staying in”. This mirrors much of the Remain strategy in 2016, though it ultimately yielded a very different outcome - a 67% vote to stay in (though a friendlier press and the support of Margaret Thatcher’s opposition Conservatives helped at the time).

Though he won four elections and the party’s modern centre holds him in quiet regard for his achievements and ability, Wilson can nevertheless fall down a crack in Labour history. Not mythologised by all like Attlee, nor as divisive as Tony Blair or as universally reviled Ramsey MacDonald (whose spectre Wilson himself invoked in party circles as he attempted to forestall the eventual SDP split). I have touched on aspects of his legacy that might most leap out at us today, but Pimlott’s portrayal of Wilson’s life and other political struggles is worth reading in its own right.