Harold Wilson: The Winner

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As Robert Taylor puts it in his essay on Wilson and industrial relations, Wilson wanted to convince the trade unions to ‘shoulder responsibilities in restraining the material appetites of their own members for their own long term good’ (p. Moreover, his paranoia increased over the years, particularly where the press was concerned – although on more than one occasion he was undoubtedly plotted against by his colleagues, moreoften than not he saw conspiracies that simply weren’t there. His grasp of economic policy was better than that of any other Prime Minister, and he enjoyed a high reputation among foreign leaders. Wilson’s hawkishness over the issue ‘plunged the government into a prolonged and needless crisis that turned into arguably one of the most serious in the Labour Party’s history’ (p.

James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, PC (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was one of the most prominent British politicians of the 20th century. Admittedly, Wilson is held almost solely responsible for the decisions that prejudiced the prospects of his first government and hastened its ignominious end. By some criteria, one or two of the others might be judged as having more sophisticated or literary writing (though, make no mistake, Thomas-Symonds’ account is an eloquent and highly informed one). In the original unclipped dust wrapper which is also lovely with some light chipping to the extremities and tail of the spine. It is perhaps to Wilson’s credit that he stood by Barbara Castle when her sacking would have allowed the unions to blame the crisis on her and let him off the hook.We also use them to help detect unauthorized access or activity that violate our terms of service, as well as to analyze site traffic and performance for our own site improvement efforts. He had won four general elections, despite coming to power just as the postwar settlement was beginning to collapse, nationally and internationally. Nonetheless, as Kenneth O Morgan notes, ‘economic planning, supposedly Wilson’s strength, was never properly worked out’ (p.

Paul Foot argued that Wilson was ‘always an unprincipled opportunist and the left were naive for believing otherwise’ (p. A commentary on Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, reviewing accomplishments and failures across a In this review I will be concentrating on the main themes of Wilson’s era as PM - economics, politics, and social policy - on the grounds that a) to survey and assess everything covered in this book would produce a bloated and indigestible review, and b) Wilson’s reputation will ultimately be judged on these themes: his achievement in the creating the Sports Council will not, I fear, incline many to overlook some of his failings in the spheres of economy or industrial relations.However, it is the acknowledging and accounting of experiences in my life that can only be explained by the presence and power of our unseen Lord". 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. Jeremy Nuttall notes that if we take a more long duree view, then a different picture of the Wilson era emerges: from a ‘long historical view, the most significant and distinctive feature seems less the fluctuating economic crises and policies, the desperate attempts to secure growth, stabilise the pound, or increase real wages … and more the underlying social, educational, and moral changes of the time’ (p. Failure to devalue in 1964 saw the government sacrifice in vain its ‘mandate to end the ‘stop-go’ cycles of economic management’ (p.

The quid pro quo was clearly British support for America’s commitments in Vietnam; as Rhiannon Vickers sums up, ‘the US Administration and President Johnson repeatedly demanded that Wilson commit troops to the Vietnam War, but he steadfastly refused to do so’ (p. Thomas-Symonds, who has had access to material that no other biographer has seen, has found little new evidence to explain away his reputation as a tactician, not a strategist. Bill to go through for tactical reasons; although he found homosexuality personally distasteful, he allowed the bill to reach the statue book on the grounds that he wanted the matter ‘resolved swiftly, lest it cause Labour problems near the next general election’ (p. As Jim Tomlinson points out in his piece, this narrative has ‘distorted our understanding of much of post-war British economic history and policy’ (p. Unless you’re a historian of modern Britain, you likely do not think very much about what Wilson did in these instances – but anyone who pays attention to politics knows what Tony Blair did when presented with American pressure to join a foreign war or how David Cameron’s pre-referendum renegotiation of EU membership terms ultimately panned out.Without the prime minister’s blessing, parliamentary time would never have been found to abolish capital punishment, liberalise the laws on homosexuality, divorce and abortion, or for the first positive action to promote racial equality.