Harold Wilson: The Winner

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This copy has been dated, warmly inscribed, and signed ["Dan Hulitt"] by the author on the title page, underneath which his wife, to whom the book is co-dedicated, has also signed ["Gladys F. 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. Green hardback(gilt lettering to the spine,two small nicks/tears inside the front cover) with Dj(a couple of nicks,creases and scratch on the Dj cover),both in VGC.

When he retired in 1976, ‘Wilson’s reputation was also at a low point and in the forty years since, it has not risen’ (pp. Thomas-Symonds, however, would like us to see Wilson’s Britain as a different place to Thatcher’s: a modern country, socially liberal, anti-racist and in Europe. 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. In the summer of 1965, the US provided a rescue package for the pound, which had come under pressure due to shrinking exchange reserves. Abandoning old friends is not, and the real doubts about Wilson’s instinct for loyalty began when he edged away from Aneurin Bevan, one of the authentic heroes of the Labour movement.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. His grasp of economic policy was better than that of any other Prime Minister, and he enjoyed a high reputation among foreign leaders.

p. 38: Here we come to a totally avoidable feature of many books that grates on me: unnecessarily imposing modern-day idiom on decades-ago events. To begin with, there was widespread support for Wilson’s decision at the time, ‘not least in Whitehall’ (p. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Incidentally, Wilson himself publicly claimed (Liverpool Daily Post, December 17, 1981) that he had recently drafted, and was putting the finishing touches on, the first 50,000 words of his autobiography. 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.

Jenkins had by then given up on the Labour Party and the foundations of the Social Democratic Party had been laid. The book is firmly bound in clean blue cloth, lettered in gilt to the spine, the extremities are slightly bumped and rubbed. It should be noted though, that homosexuality was still thought of as something akin to a disease; Roy Jenkins referred to it as a ‘disability’ in one of the Parliamentary debates. This challenge to historical orthodoxy makes this book an important one for scholars of British political history and indeed a broader non-academic readership.

The index of The Winner lists 68 references to Marcia Williams, Lady Falkender, twice as many as any cabinet minister. 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. He was clever and fundamentally decent and both those qualities are highlighted in this eminently readable biography. By the end of his two periods in power, both the left and right of the party were highly critical of Wilson – the former regarding him as a traitor to socialism, the latter as contributing directly to British decline. Above all, as any one on Scilly would agree, Wilson was a man of the people -- Canon Anthony Phillips * CHURCH TIMES * [Wilson] is the subject of a superb new biography by the distinguished historian and Labour frontbencher Nick Thomas-Symonds.Here are good lessons to learn from the leader who held together a party riven between right and left. An account of the functioning of the British government in the 20th century, published the year Wilson left office for the second time. Harold Wilson had told his usual confidants that he would leave Downing Street during his 60th summer. He resumed writing his “Financial Weekly” column (a column that none of the biographies mention) in 1982. As an attempt to rehabilitate Wilson, this collection might be considered a failure; but it does leave us with a more sympathetic portrait of him than some readers will have started with.

Wilson was caught between a rock and a hard place over Vietnam: failure to condemn the American action in the country alienated many back-benchers, and Wilson was plagued by anti-Vietnam demonstrations in 1967 and 1968. Wilson was born in 1916, and the book follows him from his childhood in the north of England to his academic success at Oxford, his war years as a civil servant at the National Coal Board, into parliament and up through the ranks to Downing Street. A presentation copy of the first edition of this work on the history of government in Britain by the former British Prime Minister. Fiscal policy may affect the payments balance rapidly, but even so, fiscal policy actions are sometimes put into effect well after Budget day.He was the Leader of the Labour Party from 1963 to 1976, and was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1983. His placement in a BBC poll conducted in 1999 to mark the millennium saw him placed tenth out of 19: a mid-table placing that largely sums up his reputation: by no means one of the poorer holders of the office, yet never in danger of troubling Churchill, Attlee or Lloyd-George at the top of the list. Edmund Hall, Oxford, before becoming a Lecturer in Politics at the college, specialising in twentieth-century British government. He lost, but in 1963, after Gaitskell’s death, Wilson took the leadership, and a year later led Labour to victory. It was assumed that he made the distinction in the hope of trivialising Bevan’s rebellion and capturing the leadership of the Labour left.