Harold Wilson: The Winner

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Wilson had to walk a tightrope on the issue of Vietnam, and he did it remarkably well; in light of the relationship between Tony Blair and George W. For completeness and for reference, I would have preferred that he had added a “see also Wilson, 1986, page…” in these instances, rather than citing the MS alone. Labour seems to hate its winners – Wilson won four elections; Blair won three – but is compromise and consensus the vital winning formula? As Dennis Kavanagh puts it, ‘I fear that an exercise in reputation retrieval for Harold Wilson is still something of a losing battle’. Trade unions represented the sectional interests of their members; said members saw their unions as ‘guardians for what they regarded as limited, piecemeal objectives in a competitive labour market’ (p.

In the end, although this book may not persuade too many that Wilson’s historiographical standing ought to improve, it does provide a more detailed and context as to why Wilson’s governments are generally seen as failures. When Ian Smith issued a unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 in response to British pressure to end the apartheid regime, Wilson imposed sanctions. Inscribed by Wilson to the title page: "For Richard Dalby Harold Wilson", the recipient being the notable bibliophile of that name, and, as with many books from Dalby's library, this one comes with some bonus ephemera tucked into the rear of the book, in this case several leaflets on the subject of the 1974 referendum on Britain's future relationship with Europe, as well as a number of press cuttings. He has served in a number of frontbench roles for the Labour Party: Shadow Pensions Minister; Shadow Employment Minister; Shadow Solicitor-General; and Shadow Security Minister. 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.The Official History of Britain and the European Community, Volume III: The Tiger Unleashed, 1975-1985 (Routledge, 2018). In spite of this, Thomas-Symonds argues, Wilson worked to prevent Labour becoming an explicitly anti-Europe party, leaving the way open for a referendum on EEC membership. At the moment when the announcement was made, in 1976, I was standing to attention on the runway of Sofia’s airport, clutching a sheaf of giant gladioli and listening to the eighth or ninth verse of Bulgaria’s national anthem.

Harold Wilson had told his usual confidants that he would leave Downing Street during his 60th summer. But Wilson said the opposite in his 1971 book, and in his 1976 interviews with David Frost he stated: “I was much more worried about the 1970 election than any other I’ve ever fought … I was very worried … [In the final week of the campaign] I was almost ready to believe we would lose. Nonetheless, Wilson was more principled than he has often been portrayed, and those principles were socialist ‘in that they sought to use the power of the state to create a more just and tranquil society’ (p.

Reissued with a new foreword to mark the centenary of Harold Wilson’s birth, Ben Pimlott’s classic biography combines scholarship and observation to illuminate the life and career of one of Britain’s most controversial post-war statesmen. You must understand,’ he told his old Bevanite friends, ‘I am running a Bolshevik revolution with a Tsarist shadow cabinet. This is important in this context since Wilson represents the most paradigmatic centrist in Labour Party terms since 1945’ (p. One tends to see Pimlott being described as the most celebrated volume and Ziegler’s book as having been overshadowed by the prior appearance of Pimlott’s biography. I doubt most under forties shown a picture of him would know who he was and that’s a real shame as his influence on todays society is immense.

Second, on page 322 Thomas-Symonds draws on his 2019 interview with Joe Haines as the basis for Haines’ belief that Wilson’s mental decline flowed from the strain of writing his 1971 book.as well as Clive James’ remark in The Observer (October 21, 1979), “He was *really* terrible,” and the observation in Halliwell’s Television Companion (1987 edition, p.

Wilson concentrated on quietly accruing power within the party, identifying with the left but never totally severing links with the right. Previously a barrister and academic, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2012 and has been the Member of Parliament for Torfaen since 2015. In public, Wilson professed to smoke a pipe and drink beer; in private he smoked cigars and drank spirits, and when his popularity dropped this ‘fed the claim that he was more style than substance’ (p. Mixing anecdote and fact, Thomas-Symonds paints a vivid picture of the era that is hard to find elsewhere -- Victoria Honeyman * HISTORY TODAY * Nick Thomas-Symonds' excellent new biography puts Harold Wilson in his rightful place as a crucial figure in Labour Party history, winning four General Elections and introducing important reforms that have endured.It should also be noted, however, that the Austen Morgan biography is a full-length one, containing source notes for example, and appeared before the other two.