In the summer of 1934, Harold Wilson met Gladys Mary Baldwin, while visiting the tennis club where she was a member. Mary was the daughter of the Revd Daniel Baldwin, a Congregational minister. She had left school at sixteen and was working as a typist at Lever Brothers in Port Sunlight. (5) Wilson later claimed it was love at almost first sight. But Mary says she took much longer to make up her mind. (6)

Later that year he won a history exhibition at Jesus College. At Oxford University he came under the influence of his socialist history tutor, G. D. H. Cole. Wilson later wrote in his memoirs: "I had long held G.D.H. Cole in high regard and found this closer contact with him most congenial. He was a good-looking man, of medium height with a good head of hair, and most attractive in speech and address, except for the manner of his lectures. I had attended a number of them, which he delivered at great speed, eyes down, without a single note. His special subjects were economic organization and history, and he concentrated on these. I was left to teach economic theory, not the area I preferred. I took to spending most Tuesday and Wednesday evenings with him, helping with copy for and proofs of his articles for the New Statesman and Nation. When the work was finished, he used to pour out for each of us a glass of Irish whisky, which he preferred to Scotch. On one of these occasions he was celebrating his fiftieth birthday. He announced that he had made a resolution, to foreswear all reading of books and concentrate on writing them. He was already publishing at least one a year in addition to his other writings. For the most part they were highly topical and dated rather quickly but some, particularly those on economic history, have survived."

With the encouragement of Cole he joined the Labour Party. "It was G.D.H. Cole as much as any man who finally pointed me in the direction of the Labour Party. His social and economic theories made it intellectually respectable. My attitudes had been clarifying for some time and the catalyst was the unemployment situation. I had seen it years before in the Colne Valley, with members of my class jobless when they left school. My own father was still enduring his second painful period out of work. My religious upbringing and practical studies of economics and unemployment in which I had been engaged at Oxford combined in one single thought: unemployment was not only a severe fault of government, but it was in some way evil, and an affront to the country it afflicted." (7)

However, Wilson did not join the Oxford Labour Club because it was dominated by public school Marxists. In his memoirs Wilson recalled. "One meeting... was enough for me... What I felt I could not stomach was all those Marxist public school products rambling on about the exploited workers and the need for a socialist revolution.... I felt that the Oxford Labour Club wasn't for the likes of me... certainly I never had any common cause with the public school Marxist." (8)

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Wilson was a very hard-working student and his first academic triumph was to win the Gladstone Memorial Prize for a long essay on "The state and the railways in Great Britain 1823–63". This essay reflected his keen interest in the British Railway System. Another subject that he took a keen interest in was the American Civil War. The following year he won the George Webb Medley Senior Scholarship, which gave him £300 a year. He got a clear-cut first, and it has been claimed that he achieved the highest marks in PPE of any undergraduate of the decade. One of his tutors thought that even within his chosen subjects he lacked originality. "What he was superb at was the quick assimilation of knowledge, combined with an ability to keep it ordered in his mind and to present it lucidly in a form welcome to his examiners." (9)

In 1937 Wilson began working with William Beveridge on the theories of John Maynard Keynes. It has been claimed that the two men did not like each other and Beveridge and according to Lord Longford he regarded Wilson as "a useful machine, not as a person". Ben Pimlott, the author of Harold Wilson (1992) has argued that over the next few years, Beverage continued to rely on Wilson whenever he needed "efficient, streamlined assistance... Wilson, meanwhile, reaped the benefits of their cold alliance in Beveridge's munificent patronage." (10)

Beverage wrote about the abilities of Wilson at the time: "One of the difficulties of economics in the past has been that anybody who did really well (Wilson) has been liable at once to start teaching, and pass on just what he has been taught of necessarily theoretical work in his undergraduate course. Wilson now with me is applying his economic training to the study of concrete problems, and I am anxious that he should be able to make a success of them, as I believe he will so that he might be a still better teacher and economist two years hence." (11)

On the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the civil service, "briefly in a lowly position but rising rapidly". Wilson was head-hunted by members of the Cabinet Secretariat. (12) He was part of the secretariat of an Anglo-French committee which enabled him to meet both Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle. According to his memoirs, Churchill was impressed by the "lucidity of his memoranda". (13)

On 1st January 1940, Wilson married Mary Baldwin. At the time she expected him to return to university teaching. She later told Roy Hattersley: "I loved being the wife of a don and would have been happy to remain one all my life." (14). They rented a flat in Richmond. Mary Wilson was also a poet, whose work and personality attracted the admiration of John Betjeman. Wilson often slept in his office and Mary told friends that she was feeling isolated and lonely. "Harold was not very perceptive about female needs and emotions; his articulate, level-headed and undemonstrative parents had done little to prepare him for the temperament and desires of a hypersensitive wife confused by her own changing moods. From the beginning he did not appear to involve Mary in his political life." (15)

Wilson continued to impress his bosses and in August 1941, he was put was director of economics and statistics at the Ministry of Fuel and Power. As his biographer has pointed out he became an important figure in the need to increase the production of coal during the war: "Coal... was an absolutely major ingredient and potential bottleneck in Britain's war effort, with its flow of production from over 1000 separate companies and nearly 2000 collieries, both haphazardly measured and unsatisfactory in result. There can be no doubt that, if Wilson did not increase the output, he vastly improved the statistics and gave ministers a much clearer picture of actual and likely future production." (16) Michael Foot has claimed: "Wilson's work on coal statistics is regarded throughout the civil service as one of the most brilliant statistical achievements in civil service history." (17)

Hugh Gaitskell reported to Hugh Dalton that Wilson was "extraordinarily able... he is only twenty-six, or thereabouts, and is one of the most brilliant younger people about... he has revolutionised the coal statistics. The great thing about him is that he understands what statistics are administratively important and interesting. We must on no account surrender him either to the Army or to any other department" (18)

Harold Wilson was impressed with Winston Churchill. He later wrote: "His qualities were transcendent. First, there was the quality of indomitable courage. Never in the hour of greatest peril doubting ultimate victory, he could at once rebuke and inspire fainter hearts than his own. That inner certainty which enabled him to stand almost alone in seeing and warning of the danger, that certainty became an unshakeable rock when it was Britain and the Commonwealth who stood alone... Winston Churchill had through his power over words, but still more through his power over the hearts of men, that rare ability to call out from those who heard him the sense that they were a necessary part of something greater than themselves; the ability to make each one feel just that much greater than he had been." (19)

Wilson continued to be interested in politics and he became a member of the executive committee of the Fabian Society. In 1944 he was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Ormskirk. One newspaper reported: "At 28, Mr Wilson is looked on by socialists as a coming President Board of Trade or Chancellor of the Exchequer." (20) He now resigned his position at the Ministry of Fuel and Power to become a tutor at University College. The following year he published the book New Deal for Coal (1945). "It was a well-argued, non-doctrinaire statement of the case for nationalizing the mines. The case was presented almost entirely on the grounds of efficiency rather than of socialist fulfilment. He even suggested that the chairman of the future coal board might be paid up to £15,000 a year - then a very large salary - to ensure managerial quality. It was a good subject to have chosen, for the public ownership of the coal industry was at the centre of the Labour programme and the miners were a powerful influence within both the Labour conference and the Parliamentary Labour Party." (21)

Wilson was elected to the House of Commons in the 1945 General Election. Wilson was only 29 but the new prime minister, Clement Attlee appointed him as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power under George Tomlinson. The News Chronicle reported: "Outstanding among the really new men on the Labour benches I would put the brilliant young civil servant, Harold Wilson... He is regarded by the Whitehall high-ups as one of the discoveries of the war. Wilson it was who supplied the Minister of Fuel and Power with his facts and figures, and his statistical digest of the coal industry... was such a model of clear and concise statement that even the industrial correspondents could not find any future with it." (22) Christopher Mayhew, also elected for the first time in 1945, later commented that having a conversation with Wilson a daunting experience: "I watched his bulging cranium with anxiety as he talked, expecting the teeming brain within to burst out at any moment." (23)

"He (Wilson) had progressed in March of that year from his job as parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Works to being secretary for overseas trade within the Board of Trade, under the presidency of Sir Stafford Cripps. Wilson was very much a Cripps man at this stage, and it was the patronage of that ascetic lawyer, whose political star in 1947–50 was rising as fast as his health was declining." (24) Two years later, Wilson entered the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. He therefore became the youngest minister since William Pitt.

Wilson later recalled how Attlee successfully controlled "five headstrong horses" in his government - Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison, Hugh Dalton, Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevin: "Attlee's strength in Cabinet was due in part to his businesslike control of its proceedings and his utterly clear capacity for summing up its decisions... The Prime Minister's crispness in Cabinet reflected his greatest quality, courage.... Attlee was in full control, of himself, his Cabinet and the House. His answers in Parliament were concise and clear, with a tight little sense of humour." (25)

It has been argued that Wilson was a competent minister. "He committed no major mistakes; he made no memorable speeches. Except possibly on one issue - that of Soviet trade - he acquired no reputation for being one of the more left-wing members of the cabinet. His association with missions to Moscow began when he was secretary for overseas trade, continued when he became president... Internally Wilson's Board of Trade administration was pro-business and mildly populist." (26)

Wilson did not have a good relationship with fellow Cabinet minister, Hugh Gaitskell. Both men were seen as future leaders of the Labour Party. Gaitskell wrote in his diary: "It is a pity that Harold Wilson, whom I regard as extremely able and for that reason alone most valuable to the Government, should offend so many people by being so swollen-headed... It may, of course, be that I am regarded as a rival of his and therefore my friends are always talking to me in deprecating terms about him. But I do not think this is altogether the case. What is depressing really is... that he is such a very impersonal person. You don't feel that you could ever be close friends with him, or in fact that he would ever have any close friends." (27) Philip Ziegler, the author of Wilson (1993) has pointed out that if "Wilson had kept a similar diary he would have accused Gaitskell of being a snob, a bigot and a prig." (28)

Harold Wilson was considered a poor performer during elections. A journalist, Ernest Kay, argued: "He spoke without notes for little over half an hour. I was disappointed as I listened to him and I knew that some of my colleagues were sharing my feelings. By the time he was halfway through his speech the audience had grown to perhaps thirty: it was easy to hear the shuffling of feet and to watch the suppression of yawns. He was not a good speaker. He was dull. There was no fire in him. I thought he spoke as though he were delivering a lecture at Oxford... He ended his speech to little more than a murmur of applause - and most of this came from the platform. Soon afterwards the meeting ended - well in advance of the scheduled time." Kay spoke to him afterwards and discovered a very different man: "Harold Wilson was charming. He scintillated with wit. He was amusing. He cracked jokes. He was relaxed. Why, I found myself thinking, doesn't he put over some of this wit in his speeches?" (29)

David Watt, a political correspondent, claims that Wilson was brilliant in his handling of hecklers or any unscheduled interruption but admitted that he was a poor performer in the House of Commons: "Technically Mr Wilson is a terrible speaker... he gabbles his words half the time as if he himself were bored of them. He builds cliché on statistic on cliché in mountainous sandwiches of tedium; he has no gestures to speak of and very little variety of infection." Watt added that if he did not work from detailed notes he would lose the thread of his argument and became wordy and repetitive. (30)

In February 1950, Clement Attlee promoted Hugh Gaitskell to minister for economic affairs. When Richard Stafford Cripps resigned nine months later, Gaitskell was appointed to succeed him as chancellor of the exchequer. Herbert Morrison approved of the appointment: "I regarded him at that time as a man of considerable ability and with a praiseworthy desire to act in a sane and responsible manner." Aneurin Bevan disagreed and sent a letter commenting: "I feel bound to tell you that for my part I think the appointment of Gaitskell to be a great mistake. I should have thought myself that it was essential to find out whether the holder of this great office would commend himself to the main elements and currents of opinion in the Party. After all, the policies which he will have to propound and carry out are bound to have the most profound and important repercussions throughout the movement." (31)

As a result of the Korean War the British government came under pressure to increase defence spending. Clement Attlee eventually agreed to increase the British defence budget from £3,400 million to £4,700 million. Harold Wilson disagreed with this policy as he thought that any attempt to reach the target would be disastrous to the British economy. Aneurin Bevan (Minister of Health), John Strachey (Secretary of State for War) and John Freeman (parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Supply) agreed with Wilson but Gaitskell insisted that he would be able to find the money to pay for the increased spending on defence.

Gaitskell decided that one way of obtaining this money was by making cuts to government spending. The National Insurance Act created the structure of the Welfare State and after the passing of the National Health Service Act in 1948, people in Britain were provided with free diagnosis and treatment of illness, at home or in hospital, as well as dental and ophthalmic services. Gaitskell told his colleagues that he intended imposing charges on spectacles and on dentures supplied under the NHS. Wilson, Bevan and Freeman all threatened to resign. Attempts were made to bribe the three men. Wilson was offered a safe seat in the next election. Freeman was offered Wilson job in the Cabinet if he carried out his threat to resign. Herbert Morrison resorted to threats and told Wilson that if he resigned he "would be finished in Labour politics for twenty years." (32) Gaitskell hoped that the three men would resign. He told Hugh Dalton, "We'd be well rid of the three of them!" (33) James Callaghan told his contact at the American Embassy that even though Wilson and Bevan had threatened to resign "there was virtually no sympathy within the party" for the men. (34) Wilfrid Macartney, a long-time friend, wrote to Bevan warning him not to resign: "Don't go into the wilderness unless like Moses you can take the tribes with you, and remember he was there for forty years." (35)

Michael Foot, the author of Aneurin Bevan (1973) has argued: "On the afternoon of 10th April he (Hugh Gaitskell) presented his Budget, including the proposal to save £13 million - £30 million in a full year - by imposing charges on spectacles and on dentures supplied under the Health Service. And glancing over his shoulder at the benches behind him he had seemed to underline his resolve: having made up his mind, he said, a Chancellor 'should stick to it and not be moved by pressure of any kind, however insidious or well-intentioned'. Bevan did not take his accustomed seat on the Treasury bench, but listened to this part of the speech from behind the Speaker's chair, with Jennie Bevan by his side. A muffled cry of 'shame' from her was the only hostile demonstration Gaitskell received that afternoon." (36)

The following day, Aneurin Bevan resigned from the government. In a letter to Clement Attlee Bevan explained his actions: "In previous conversations with you, and in my statements to the Cabinet, I have explained my objections to many features in the Budget. Having endeavoured, in vain, to secure modifications of these features, I feel I must ask you to accept my resignation. The Budget, in my view, is wrongly conceived in that it fails to apportion fairly the burdens of expenditure as between different social classes. It is wrong because it is based upon a scale of military expenditure, in the coming year, which is physically unattainable, without grave extravagance in its spending. It is wrong because it envisages rising prices as a means of reducing civilian consumption, with all the consequences of industrial disturbance involved. It is wrong because it is the beginning of the destruction of those social services in which Labour has taken a special pride and which were giving to Britain the moral leadership of the world. I am sure you will agree that it is always better that policies should be carried out by those who believe in them. It would be dishonourable of me to allow my name to be associated in the carrying out of policies which are repugnant to my conscience and contrary to my expressed opinion." (37)

In a speech he made in the House of Commons Bevan explained why he had made the decision to resign. He began by examining Gaitskell's proposal to increase the government's defence spending. "The figures in the Budget for arms expenditure are based upon assumptions already invalidated. I want to make that quite clear to the House of Commons; the figures for expenditure on arms were already known to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be unrealizable... I begged over and over again that we should not put figures in the Budget on account of defence expenditure which would not be realized... I therefore say with the full solemnity of the seriousness of what I am saying that the £4,700 million arms programme is already dead. It cannot be achieved without irreparable damage to the economy of Great Britain and the world."

Bevan then went on to look at the cuts to the National Health Service: "The Chancellor of the Exchequer in this year's Budget proposes to reduce the Health expenditure by £13 million - only £13 million out of £4,000 million... If he finds it necessary to mutilate, or begin to mutilate, the Health Services for £13 million out of £4,000 million, what will he do next year? Or are you next year going to take your stand on the upper denture? The lower half apparently does not matter, but the top half is sacrosanct. Is that right?... The Chancellor of the Exchequer is putting a financial ceiling on the Health Service. With rising prices the Health Service is squeezed between that artificial figure and rising prices. What is to be squeezed out next year? Is it the upper half? When that has been squeezed out and the same principle holds good, what do you squeeze out the year after? Prescriptions? Hospital charges? Where do you stop?"

Bevan argued that this measure was undermining the Welfare State: "Friends, where are they going? Where am I going? I am where I always was. Those who live their lives in mountainous and rugged countries are always afraid of avalanches, and they know that avalanches start with the movement of a very small stone. First, the stone starts on a ridge between two valleys - one valley desolate and the other valley populous. The pebble starts, but nobody bothers about the pebble until it gains way, and soon the whole valley is overwhelmed. That is how the avalanche starts, that is the logic of the present situation, and that is the logic my right honourable friends cannot escape.... After all, the National Health Service was something of which we were all very proud, and even the Opposition were beginning to be proud of it. It only had to last a few more years to become a part of our traditions, and then the traditionalists would have claimed the credit for all of it. Why should we throw it away? In the Chancellor's Speech there was not one word of commendation for the Health Service - not one word. What is responsible for that?" (38)

Wilson's resignation speech was less passionate that the one made by Bevan. "Although a matter of principle, as I believe it to be, now severs me from my colleagues in the Cabinet, I should, at the same time, wish to express my deep sense of the privilege it has been to have had an opportunity of serving with them and in however modest a way to have played a part in the real and great achievements of the Government in these past few years. Achievements in our economic and social life I believe without parallel in our history." (39) Hugh Gaitskell commented that although Wilson's speech was more restrained "in a way it was more dangerous". (40)

Harold Wilson and John Freeman also resigned from the government. Wilson, Bevan and Freeman now joined what was known as the Keep Left Group. Other members included included Richard Crossman, Sydney Silverman, Konni Zilliacus, Barbara Castle, Jennie Lee, Tom Driberg, John Platts-Mills, Lester Hutchinson, Leslie Solley, Sydney Silverman, Geoffrey Bing, Emrys Hughes, William Warbey and Michael Foot. As one of its members, Ian Mikardo has pointed out: "The Group was radically changed, as was almost everything else in and around the Labour Party, when Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson and John Freeman resigned from the Government in 1951. Overnight we were transformed, not by ourselves but by the media, from the Keep Left Group to the Bevanites... In 1951 there were thirty-two of us, and by the following year that number had risen to forty-seven MPs and two peers." (41)

Harold Wilson argued that Gaitskell took this action as part of a battle he was having with Aneurin Bevan: "He was certainly ambitious, and had close links with the right-wing trade unions. It was not long before that ambition took the form of a determination to outmanoeuvre, indeed humiliate, Aneurin Bevan. Hugh, for his part, despised what he regarded as emotional oratory, and if he could defeat Nye in open conflict, he would be in a strong position to oust Morrison as the heir apparent to Clement Attlee. At the same time he would ensure that post-war socialism would take a less dogmatic form, totally anti-communist but unemotional." (42)

Wilson maintained that he left the government to support Bevan. However, others in the Cabinet suggested that he took this action because he thought it was the best way to become leader of the Labour Party. One member of the government, Emanuel Shinwell, claimed that Wilson was "highly ambitious" and although this was admirable in itself but was not "improved by insincere gestures of alleged idealism". (43) Herbert Morrison said that the government did not expect Wilson to resign: "His resignation left us speechless... Was the move from ardent conviction? Or was it because he felt that Bevan's resignation would in due course bring victory?" (44)

Philip Ziegler, the author of Wilson (1993) has considered the reasons for Wilson's resignation: "It is possible to construct two plausible scenarios: the first featuring Wilson as a gallant young idealist sacrificing his job and risking his future for the sake of a principle and in support of a cherished leader; the second portraying him as a cynical schemer, calculating the course of action that promised him greatest advantage in the long term and inflicting grave damage on his party in the pursuit of his individual ambitions. Anyone who believes that either of these versions presents the entire truth would be better employed designing puppets for Spitting Image than in the craft of biography. Wilson did look before he leapt; he did make calculations about his political future; but equally he did feel strongly about the burden of defence and the health charges; he did admire and feel loyalty to Aneurin Bevan, one of the few politicians admitted by Mary to the family home as a friend; above all, he was taking a serious and avoidable risk. He may not have been impulsive or idealistic but his resignation was an act of political courage, a gamble which fits ill with the image of cautious and devious time-server which has won such wide acceptance." (45)

John Freeman admitted that their resignations were part of a plan to make Aneurin Bevan leader. "Everybody understood the resignations as a tactic to make Nye leader." (46) Hugh Gaitskell recorded: "They expect that Bevan will try and organize the constituency parties against us, and there may be a decisive struggle at the Party Conference in October. We certainly cannot say that we have won the campaign... opinion may well swing over to him. He can exploit all the opposition-mindness which is so inherent in many Labour Party Members." (47)

Some people thought that Harold Wilson was in danger of losing his seat in Huyton in the 1951 General Election. However, his campaign to protect the National Health Service from government cuts was popular with the electorate and he in fact increased his majority from 1,193 in 1950 to 2,558 in 1951. The Labour Party was less successful and lost 20 seats. The Conservative Party formed the next government and Winston Churchill became the new prime minister.

On 30th October, 1951, twenty-four members of the Keep Left Group (Bevanites) met at the home of Richard Crossman to consider post-election strategy. Wilson attended the meeting and Crossman later commented: "Harold Wilson was as neat and competent as ever, and whenever an idea is put forward, remembers without fail an occasion on which he did it or set up a committee on it.... he has a good mind, is an excellent member of the group and is likeable into the bargain." (48) Jo Richardson also respected his intellectual abilities but had doubts about his personality: "He struck me as being totally sure of himself... bordering on the arrogant." (49)

The Bevanites were popular with rank and file members and in October 1952 Wilson was elected on to the National Executive of the Labour Party at the year's National Conference. Crossman, Aneurin Bevan, Barbara Castle, Tom Driberg and Ian Mikardo were also successful. They knocked off senior figures on the right of the party such as Hugh Dalton and Herbert Morrison. At the conference Wilson made a passionate speech demanding cuts in defence spending.

Hugh Gaitskell decided to attack the Keep Left Group. He told a journalist: "There is only one thing we have to do in the next few years, and that is to keep the Labour Party behind the Anglo-American alliance." (50) In a speech at Stalybridge on 5th October, Hugh Gaitskell told the audience that about a sixth of the "Constituency Party delegates appeared to be Communists or Communist inspired." He claimed that the Bevanites and the Tribune newspaper had poured out "a stream of grossly misleading propaganda and poisonous innuendoes and malicious attacks on Attlee, Morrison and the rest of us." Gaitskell then went onto argue: "It is time to end the attempt at mob rule by a group of frustrated journalists and restore the authority and leadership of the solid sound sensible majority of the movement. If we don't or can't do this we shall not persuade, and shall not deserve to persuade, our fellow citizens to entrust us once again with the Government of the Country." (51)

When Clement Attlee resigned in 1955, Hugh Gaitskell became the new leader of the Labour Party. Wilson did not think Gaitskell made a good leader of the party. In his memoirs he argued: "Hugh Gaitskell had many fine qualities, including unswerving loyalty to his close band of friends and to the principles of economics as he interpreted them, together with great personal charm. But once he came to a decision, a remarkably speedy process associated with great certainty, the Medes and the Persians had nothing on him. Whether the argument took place in the Shadow Cabinet or the National Executive, any colleague taking a different line from his was regarded not only as an apostate, but as a troublemaker or simply a person lacking in brains."

Denis Healey was another Shadow Cabinet member who disliked Gaitskell style of leadership. In his autobiography, The Time of My Life (1989), he pointed out: "I was worried by a streak of intolerance in Gaitskell's nature; he tended to believe that no one could disagree with him unless they were either knaves or fools. Rejecting Dean Rusk's advice, he would insist on arguing to a conclusion rather than to a decision. Thus he would keep meetings of the Shadow Cabinet going, long after he had obtained its consent to his proposals, because he wanted to be certain that everyone understood precisely why he was right. In the political world a leader must often be content with acquiescence; he is sometimes wise to leave education to his juniors." (52)

Gaitskell urged Britain's entry to the European Economic Community but was unable to persuade the majority of members of the Labour Party to agree to this policy. After losing the 1959 General Election Gaitskell attempted to change party policy on nationalization (Clause IV). At the party conference in November 1959 he argued: "Why was nationalization apparently a vote loser? For two reasons, I believe. First, some of the existing nationalized industries, rightly or wrongly, are unpopular. This unpopularity is overwhelmingly due to circumstances which have nothing to do with nationalization. London buses are overcrowded and slow, not because the Transport Commission is inefficient, but because of the state of London traffic which the Tory Government has neglected all these years. The backward conditions of the railways are not due to bad management but to inadequate investment in the past, which has left British Railways with a gigantic problem of modernization.... Above all, we must face the fact that nationalization will not be positively popular until all these industries are clearly seen to be performing at least as well as the best firms in the private sector. When we have achieved that goal, then we can face the country with complete confidence." (53)

Gaitskell felt very strongly about the party policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. At the party conference in Scarborough in October 1960, two unilateralist resolutions, from the transport workers and the engineers, were carried and the official policy document on defence was rejected. Gaitskell's thought these were disastrous decisions and made a passionate speech where he stressed that he would "fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love". (54)

Wilson now challenged Gaitskell for the leadership. He admitted that he agreed with Gaitskell on the issue of unilateralism but he attacked him on defence policy. Wilson was especially concerned about American bases in Britain. He was also against Britain obtaining the H-bomb. Wilson made a speech where he argued "I believe it is essential that the leader of the party states beyond all doubt that, as the policy statement intended, he accepts that there will be no British H-bomb. "(55)

Wilson was defeated by 166 votes to 81. Party members were angry at Wilson for taking on his leader and he fell from first to ninth place in the shadow Cabinet elections, with eight loyal Gaitskellites ahead of him. Gaitskell considered sacking Wilson from the post of shadow Chancellor but it was decided that this might make him a more dangerous opponent. Marcia Williams, his secretary, pointed out that for the next two years were "the worst of Wilson's political life, because he was really sent to Coventry for that period. He was avoided everywhere and treated like a leper." (56)

In July 1961 Harold Macmillan applied for entry to the European Economic Community. Gaitskell had always been in favour of joining the EEC but he now changed his position. At the party conference in Brighton in October 1962 he argued that the prospects for a federal Europe as amounting to: "The end of Britain as an independent European state. I make no apology for repeating it. It means the end of a thousand years of history". Gaitskell's Brighton speech dismayed many of his closest friends. Dora Gaitskell commented: "All the wrong people are cheering". (57)

Hugh Gaitskell became ill in December, 1962, and was taken to Middlesex Hospital, London. It was not until several weeks later that the doctors became aware he was suffering from the rare disease systemic lupus erythematosus. It can lie dormant for years, emerging from time to time in a different organ, or suddenly erupting everywhere as it did with Gaitskell. Both his heart and lungs were initially affected but then the disease attacked every critical organ at once and died on 18th January 1963. (58)

Some members of MI5 believed that Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent. Anatoli Golitsyn, a KGB officer who defected in 1961, worked for the Department of Wet Affairs. This department was responsible for organizing assassinations. He said that just before he left he knew that the KGB were planning a high-level political assassination in Europe in order to get their man into the top place." Christopher Andrew, the author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009), has pointed out that senior figures in MI5 were not convinced by these claims. (59)

Peter Wright, the principal scientific officer, who worked closely with Arthur Martin, who was responsible for Soviet Counter Espionage, found Golitsyn's testimony convincing and became convinced that Gaitskell was the victim of a KGB assassination. "I knew him (Gaitskell) personally and admired him greatly. I had met him and his family at the Blackwater Sailing Club, and I recall about a month before he died he told me that he was going to Russia. After he died his doctor got in touch with MI5 and asked to see somebody from the Service. Arthur Martin, as the head of Russian Counterespionage, went to see him. The doctor explained that he was disturbed by the manner of Gaitskell's death. He said that Gaitskell had died of a disease called lupus disseminata, which attacks the body's organs. He said that it was rare in temperate climates and that there was no evidence that Gaitskell had been anywhere recently where he could have contracted the disease." (60)

Gaitskell told his doctors that he had visited the Soviet embassy just before his illness in search of a visa for his projected trip to Moscow. Though he had gone by appointment, he had been kept waiting half an hour and had been given coffee and biscuits. James Jesus Angleton the head of the CIA's Counter-Intelligence Staff, became convinced that Golitsyn was telling the truth and he ordered his staff to search the published medical literature of the fatal disease and discovered that Soviet medical researchers had published three academic papers describing how they had produced a drug that, when administered, reproduced the fatal heart and kidney symptoms suffered by Gaitskell. Chapman Pincher has argued that "the Labour leader's death was the single most important historic factor in the party's continuing swing to the left." (61)

Pincher's account suggests that Wilson was expected to become the new leader of the Labour Party after Gaitskell's death. This was not true, the next leader was expected to be George Brown, who had defeated Wilson, by 166 votes to 81, in the previous year's deputy leader contest. Richard Marsh pointed out: "George had no doubt he would be Leader. He calculated that he would get almost all the trade unionists... He thought he would get all the younger members and all the Gaitskellites. In his own eyes, he was the modern man against the Leftists." Tony Benn wrote in his diary: "Gaitskell's death seems a disaster because it looks as if George Brown will succeed him and for a number of reasons he is totally unsuited to be Leader of the Party." At the time, Benn was a centrist and supported Wilson. (62)

Even those on the right had doubts about Brown, who had a serious drink problem. Anthony Crosland commented, "Are we going to be led by a neurotic drunk?" Douglas Jay was opposed on political grounds (Jay was anti-Common Market) and personal ones. He disliked Brown even more than he disliked Wilson. It was claimed that "Jay couldn't stand to be in the same room as Brown, he was physically nauseated by his style and manner." (63)

Richard Crossman, a supporter of Wilson, was convinced his candidate would lose. "From the day Hugh Gaitskell died, it seemed to me that we should not win if George Brown was our only opponent, getting the Establishment vote as acting Leader of the Party." Crossman's plan was to encourage a third candidate to join the contest. The man they selected was the right-winger, James Callaghan. Jay and Crosland, also approached Callaghan and he eventually agreed to stand. (64)

George Brown campaigned aggressively and this backfired. Callaghan's supporters also raised the issue of Brown's drinking and unstable behaviour. The first ballot held on the 7th February, Wilson had 115 votes, Brown 88 and Callaghan 41, who now dropped out of the contest. The second ballot result was declared on 14th February, Wilson achieved victory by winning 144 votes to Brown's 103. Tony Benn recorded in his diary that "George Brown's arm-twisting produced a strong reaction and helped to contribute to Harold's success." (65)

Harold Wilson had disapproved of the way that Gaitskell had treated left-wing members of the party and one of his first acts as leader was to restore the whip to the little band of rebels who had been expelled two years before for their attitude on unilateralism. However, he had to go slowly. He told his left-wing intimates, Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle and Michael Foot: "You must understand that I am running a Bolshevik Revolution with a Tsarist Shadow Cabinet." (66)

Wilson was only 47 years-old when he became leader. He might have looked old when he was alongside John F. Kennedy, who was a year younger, but was seen as young when compared to the 70 year-old Harold Macmillan. Wilson went to visit Kennedy in March, 1963. Wilson told one of his close friends that he hoped to "persuade them that a Labour Government would not necessarily be anti-American or very far on the Left". In a speech to the Washington Press Club he argued: "We stand firmly by NATO and the Western Alliance. We are not a neutralist party and neutralism has no part or place in our policies." (67)

Wilson had a long meeting with Kennedy where they discussed several issues including the negotiations with Charles de Gaulle on British entry to the Common Market. Wilson told Kennedy "we shouldn't do too much appeasing; we should recognise that we had some very strong cards in our own hand." Wilson was impressed by the tremendous speed of the President's mind: "One never had to explain anything, never had to go back over the previous sentence... We were both talking shorthand. Behind each point was a paragraph or a chapter that didn't need to be said." (68)

On 10th March, 1963, George Wigg, the Labour MP for Dudley, told Wilson and a group of friends, including Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle and Michael Foot that he had received information from John Lewis, the former MP for Bolton West, that John Profumo, the Minister of Defence, was having a sexual relationship with the model Christine Keeler, who was involved with Eugene Ivanov, the military attaché at the Soviet Embassy, and a man believed to be a KGB officer. That night Crossman wrote: "When we arrived at the party George outlined the story to us and we emphatically and unanimously repudiated it. We all felt that even if it was true and Profumo was having an affair with a call girl and that some Russian diplomat had been mixed up in it, the Labour Party simply should not touch it. I remember that we all advised Harold very strongly against it and in a way rather squashed George." (69)

On 17th March, Christine Keeler failed to appear as prosecution witness at the Old Bailey trial of a West Indian concerning a shooting incident in West London. Wigg told Wilson that the story was about to break and he should raise the matter in the House of Commons. Wilson liked Profumo and refused to make political capital out of his private life. Wigg later recalled: "Wilson's attitude indicated that he wanted to play it cool. He invited me to pursue the subject on my own responsibility." (70)

George Wigg got up in the House of Commons on 21st March and asked Home Secretary Henry Brooke, during a debate on the John Vassall affair: "I rightly use the Privilege of the House of Commons - that is what it is given me for - to ask the Home Secretary who is the senior member of the Government on the Treasury Bench now, to go to the Dispatch Box - he knows that the rumour to which I refer relates to Miss Christine Keeler and Miss Davies and a shooting by a West Indian - and, on behalf of the Government, categorically deny the truth of these rumours.... It is not good for a democratic State that rumours of this kind should spread and be inflated, and go on. Everyone knows what I am referring to, but up to now nobody has brought the matter into the open. I believe that the Vassall Tribunal need never have been set up had the nettle been firmly grasped much earlier on. We have lost some time and I plead with the Home Secretary to use that Dispatch Box to clear up all the mystery and speculation over this particular case." Richard Crossman then commented that Paris Match magazine intended to publish a full account of Keeler's relationship with John Profumo, the Minister of War, in the government. Barbara Castle also asked questions if Keeler's disappearance had anything to do with Profumo. (71)

The following day John Profumo issued a statement: "I understand that in the debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill last night, under the protection of parliamentary privilege, the Hon. Gentlemen the Members for Dudley (George Wigg) ... spoke of rumours connecting a Minister with a Miss Keeler and a recent trial at the Central Criminal Court. It was alleged that people in high places might have been responsible for concealing information concerning the disappearance of a witness and the perversion of justice. I understand that my name has been connected with the rumours about the disappearance of Miss Keeler. I would like to take this opportunity of making a personal statement about these matters. I last saw Miss Keeler in December 1961, and I have not seen her since. I have no idea where she is now. Any suggestion that I was in any way connected with or responsible for her absence from the trial at the Old Bailey is wholly and completely untrue. My wife and I first met Miss Keeler at a house party in July 1961, at Cliveden. Among a number of people there was Doctor Stephen Ward whom we already knew slightly, and a Mr Ivanov, who was an attaché at the Russian Embassy.... Between July and December, 1961, I met Miss Keeler on about half a dozen occasions at Doctor Ward's flat, when I called to see him and his friends. Miss Keeler and, I were on friendly terms. There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler." (72)

On 26th March, Stephen Ward sent a message to Wigg asking for him to contact him by telephone. "Ward, it appeared, had been agitated by my comment in a television programme the previous evening that the real issue involved was security. He rambled on about persons and places. I cut him short with an intimation that I was not interested in private lives, but if he wanted to talk about security I would meet him in the Central Lobby at 6 p.m." Ward then provided a statement that insisted that Profumo was lying about his relationship with Keeler." (73)

Ward discovered that in an attempt to keep him quiet he was going to be charged with several counts of living off immoral earnings. On 19th May, 1963, Stephan Ward wrote a letter to Harold Wilson, the Home Secretary Henry Brooke, the leader of the Labour Party, Harold Wilson, and his local M.P., William Wavell Wakefield. "I have placed before the Home Secretary certain facts of the relationship between Miss Keeler and Mr Profumo since it is obvious now that my efforts to conceal these facts in the interests of Mr Profumo and the Government have made it appear that I myself have something to hide - which I have not. The result has been that I have been persecuted in a variety of ways, causing damage not only to myself but to my friends and patients-a state of affairs which I propose to tolerate no longer." (74)

As a result of his earlier statement the newspapers decided not to print anything about John Profumo and Christine Keeler for fear of being sued for libel. However, George Wigg refused to let the matter drop and on 25th May, 1963, once again raised the issue of Keeler, saying this was not an attack on Profumo's private life but a matter of national security. Harold Macmillan responded by ordering an investigation into the matter. (75)

On 5th June, John Profumo resigned as War Minister. In his statement he admitted he had lied to the House of Commons about his relationship with Christine Keeler. "In my statement (on 22nd March) I said there had been no impropriety in this association. To my very deep regret I have to admit that this was not true, and that I misled you and my colleagues and the House." (76) The next day the Daily Mirror said: "What the hell is going on in this country? All power corrupts and the Tories have been in power for nearly twelve years." (77)

In the debate that took place on the Profumo scandal, Wilson had to be very careful in the way he attacked the government. He wanted to discredit Macmillan but had no wish to destroy him. He told Richard Crossman that he did not want Macmillan to resign as he feared he would be replaced by the much younger, Reginald Maudling: "Macmillan... is our most valuable asset... The one thing I am really frightened of is Maudling." Crossman agreed: "As long as he had Macmillan opposite him, old, effete, worn out, a cynical dilettante, the contrast between Harold's character and Macmillan is an overwhelming advantage to Harold and the Labour Party." (78)

It was generally agreed that Wilson's attack on Macmillan in the House of Commons was very impressive. Crossman wrote his his diary: "Harold made an absolutely magnificent speech, the best I've ever heard him make, better than I thought possible. It was really annihilating, a classical prosecution speech, with weight and self-control." (79) Merlyn Rees, a newly elected MP, recalls being "immensely impressed by the way Wilson could put the boot in on issues like this." (80)

Macmillan suffered further embarrassment when Edward Heath on 1st July, 1963, announced in the House of Commons that Kim Philby was indeed a double agent working for the Soviet authorities during his time with the foreign office and he had managed to escape to Moscow and join up with two other spies, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. "Since Mr Philby resigned from the Foreign Service in 1951, twelve years ago, he has had no access of any kind to any official information." (81) Soviet newspapers disputed this and Izvestia, the official government newspaper, claimed that Philby had been divulging British secrets, and those of her allies for thirty years. (82)

Macmillan asked Wilson not to call for a debate on this highly sensitive issue. Worried that he would resign if forced to answer questions on this issue, he agreed. That night Macmillan wrote to Wilson: "Thank you so much for the way you dealt with the Philby Questions this afternoon. I hope you will allow me to say, with all respect, that your contribution was a great help to the cause of national security. I am most grateful." (83) Wilson replied: "We shall have no doubt, a number of other exchanges on this and other security subjects, and I hope we shall be able to handle them in this way." (84)

At first Macmillan resisted attempts within his party to resign. However, he had to go into hospital on 10th October, 1963, for a minor operation and even though his doctor said it would not prevent him from continuing as prime minister, he decided to use this opportunity to leave office on medical grounds. Rab Butler was expected to become the next prime minister but his name was rejected by Macmillan, because he believed he lacked the "capacity for decision-making." (85)

Macmillan also rejected the idea that Reginald Maudling, Iain Macleod, Quintin Hogg (Lord Hailsham) or Enoch Powell, should become the next prime minister. On 18th October, MacMillan sent a message to the Queen that he was resigning and advised her to ask Home to form a new government. He immediately resigned his peerage and won a by-election at Kinross and Western Perthshire and became known as Sir Alec Douglas-Home. At first, Butler, Maudling and Hailsham refused to serve under Home, because of his lack of experience on the "home front". In the end they all changed their mind. However, two of his greatest critics, Macleod and Powell, refused to back down, arguing that the Conservatives could not win a general election led by someone with his aristocratic background. (86)

Harold Wilson, when he heard the news, he wrote to a friend that he was "almost ecstatic with pleasure". It was not that he underestimated Douglas-Home between the two men could be exploited. For example, in an interview that he gave to a newspaper, he admitted that he did his sums with matchsticks. "Nothing could encapsulate more neatly his superior claim to be the man who could tackle Britain's economic problems... Wilson was lower middle-class against aristocratic, innovator against traditionalist, statistician against self-avowed innumerate... technocrat against territorial magnate, Montagu Burton against Savile Row or scruffy tweeds, professional against amateur, the future against the past." (87)

Patrick Blackett, the distinguished physicist, had been friends with Wilson for many years. His left-wing socialist views, including his opposition to nuclear weapons, undermined his influence in the Labour Party under Clement Attlee and Hugh Gaitskell. Blackett formed a pro-socialist science group that included John Desmond Bernal, B. V. Bowden, C. P. Snow, Peter Ritchie Calder, Howard Florey, Jacob Bronowski, Dudley Maurice Newitt and Ben Lockspeiser. Blackett told Richard Crossman that he was delighted by the outcome of the leadership contest as now "scientists would have a chance in the party." (88)

Wilson decided to make science and important factor of his campaign to become the next prime-minister. At that year's annual conference at Scarborough Wilson made a speech on socialism and technology. He insisted that the growth of automation made it important that we developed a socialist society as under private enterprise it would only lead to high employment. He explained the need for more scientists and this meant an expansion in Britain's educational institutions. Wilson envisaged these scientists being deployed on industrial research, and, with the help of state funding, encouraging new public industries to revive the British economy. (89)

Harold Wilson suggested that he was the figure of the future. Under his leadership Britain would experience a second industrial revolution: "Planning on an unprecedented scale to meet automation without unemployment; a pooling of talent in which all classes could compete and prosper; a vast extension of state-sponsored research; a completely new concept of education; an alliance of science and socialism." (90) Robert McKenzie, a political scientist and BBC broadcaster, told radio listeners that "Harold Wilson had moved Labour Party forward fifty years." (91)

James Cameron wrote the next day in The Daily Herald: "Harold Wilson's startling essay into political science-fiction may well be held by experts to be the most vital speech he has ever made. Here at last was the twentieth-century." (92) John Cole, the Guardian correspondent agreed: "The Labour Party's attempt to marry socialism and science in full view of the electorate was given a superb start today by Mr Harold Wilson, who made the best platform speech of his career. The annual conference has not previously been a happy hunting-ground for Mr. Wilson, who prefers the intimacy of the Commons for his subtler shafts of scorn and wit." (93)

On a visit to the United States, Wilson told American journalists: "We have a reservoir of unused and underused talent, of skill and craftsmanship, of inventiveness, and ingenuity, of administrative ability and scientific creativeness which if mobilised will... enable us to become - not the workshop of the world; that is no longer our role - but the pilot plant, the toolroom of the world." (94)

In 1964 Wilson published The Relevance of British Socialism where he argued in favour of the mixed economy with "an expansion of common ownership substantial enough to give the community power over the commanding heights of the economy". This included the renationalisation of steel, the public ownership of water supply, the expansion of existing public industries and the development of new industries in the public sector. (95)

The Labour Party had been leading the Conservative Party in the monthly Gallup poll from August 1961. After his election as party leader, the lead increased to 15.5 per cent. However, this popularity was undermined when the chancellor, Reginald Maudling, conciliated voters by engineering a pre-election boom through his spring Budget; as a result, although industrial output stagnated and the trade gap widened, people felt more optimistic as the election approached. (96)

Tony Benn, a former television producer, and Marcia Williams, his private secretary, urged Wilson to appear on television as much as possible. Williams later told Michael Cockerell that it was very important to get Wilson on television and "people's homes and to do that you had to be like someone they would know." Wilson "had the sort of background that everyone in those days were aspiring to". By appearing on television "he was on your screen, he was in your home and you could identify with him." (97)

Tom Driberg, became Wilson's unofficial adviser on appearing on television. It was decided to present himself as the common man, in contrast to the untelegenic Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Wilson was always seen with a pipe, though he smoked cigars in private. It was even used in television interviews, as a protective device, and would light his pipe, to give himself more time if he was asked a difficult question. He also wore spectacles, but he made sure he was never photographed or filmed with them on. (98)

Mary Wilson gave an interview to Godfrey Smith, of The Sunday Times, where she presented her husband as ordinary man: "It would be a complete waste of time doing any fancy cookery for Harold, risottos for instance. Yes, it's true he prefers tinned salmon. Anyway, we wouldn't afford smoked salmon. Harold cooks a very nice breakfast. He's good with sausages and things. But I wouldn't trust him with the joint. If Harold has a fault it is that he will drown everything with H.P. sauce." This appeared to work and the polls showed that Wilson had a 20 per cent lead over Douglas-Home. (99)

Labour were favourites at the beginning of the 1964 General Election campaign but a vicious attack of Wilson by the right-wing press in the few weeks before the election saw the Conservatives edge ahead. Wilson appealed to the BBC to provide some balance. Wilson pressed for the political element of the daily programme Today's Papers to be suspended during the election period, on the ground that the papers were predominantly Tory. The BBC refused and Wilson felt this had a major impact on the final result. Several newspapers also ran stories suggesting that Wilson was having an affair with Marcia Williams. (100)

Wilson had more success when he protested to the Director-General, Hugh Greene, that the immensely popular Steptoe and Son was being screened an hour before the polls closed. He claimed that these viewers would more likely to be Labour voters. When Greene postponed the programme by an hour Wilson telephoned in gratitude: Thank you very much, Hugh. That will be worth a dozen or more seats to me." If that was the case, it won him the election because by the time they finished counting the votes, Wilson had an effective majority of five. (101)

Some Conservative Party candidates played the race-card during the election. This included Peter Griffiths, who was taking on Patrick Gordon Walker, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, in Smethwick. The constituency had the highest percentage of recent immigrants to England and during the campaign his supporters used the slogan "If you want a n***** for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour". Walker found it difficult to deal with this issue as the local Labour Club did not allow black people to become members. (102)

Griffiths himself did not coin the phrase or approve its use, but he refused to disown it. "I would not condemn any man who said that, I regard it as a manifestation of popular feeling". Griffiths reminded the electorate that Walker had opposed the introduction of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act. “How easy to support uncontrolled immigration when one lives in a garden suburb,” Griffiths sneered at his Labour rival during the general election campaign. Griffiths won the seat with a 7.2 % swing to the Conservatives and reduced Walker's vote from 20,670 in the previous election to 14,916. (103)

In the 1964 General Election the Labour Party obtained a swing of 3% to obtain victory. As Philip Ziegler pointed out: "Fewer people had voted, Labour in 1964 than in I959, even though the electorate was a larger one. A revived Liberal Party had secured some two million extra votes, some from Labour, more from the Tories. The Liberals in a sense had won the election for Harold Wilson. An overall Tory majority of almost a hundred had been overturned, to be replaced by so overall Labour majority of five." (104)

Harold Wilson was furious with the defeat of Patrick Gordon Walker and called on Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the leader of the Conservative Party, to condemn the racist campaign of Peter Griffiths as he had previously agreed that the political parties would not exploit anti-immigrant feelings during the election. Wilson later wrote: "I asked him, then and there, to get up and say whether he endorsed the successful Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths, or whether he repudiated the means by which he had entered the House. If the former, I said, then Sir Alec would have fallen a long way from the position he had taken up. If the latter, then the honourable member for Smethwick would, for the life-time of Parliament, be treated as a parliamentary leper. This created an immediate outcry and some Conservatives walked out in protest." (104)

Some members of MI5 believed that Wilson was a Soviet agent. Anatoli Golitsyn also told them that Hugh Gaitskell had been poisoned by the KGB. Peter Wright, a senior figure in MI5, explained in his biography Spycatcher: "The story started with the premature death of Hugh Gaitskell in 1963. Gaitskell was Wilson's predecessor as Leader of the Labour Party. I knew him personally and admired him greatly."

After the 1966 General Election this majority was increased to 97. Wilson now carried out his promise to modernize Britain. During that period the House of Commons passed the 1965 Race Relations Act (outlawed discrimination on the "grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins" in public places), 1965 Abolition of Death Penalty Act (replaced the penalty of death with a mandatory sentence of imprisonment for life), 1967 Sexual Offences Act (it decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men, both of whom had to have attained the age of 21), 1967 Abortion Act (it legalising abortions by registered practitioners, and regulating the free provision of such medical practices through the National Health Service), 1968 Theatres Act (abolished censorship of the stage), 1969 Divorce Reform Act (allowing couples to divorce after a separation of two years); Comprehensive Education (1966 to 1970, the proportion of children in comprehensive schools increased from about 10% to over 30%), Housing (1.3 million new homes were built between 1965 and 1970), Family Allowances (from April 1964 to April 1970, family allowances for four children increased as a percentage of male manual workers aged 21 and above from 8% to 11.3%.)

Wilson had more difficulty with the economy and in November, 1967, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, was forced to devalue the pound. In 1968 Cecil King, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, became involved with Peter Wright of MI5 in a plot to bring down the government of Wilson. Wright claimed in his memoirs, Spycatcher (1987) that "Cecil King, who was a longtime agent of ours, made it clear that he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction."

Hugh Cudlipp arranged for King to meet Lord Mountbatten, the recently retired Chief of the Defence Staff, who had been privately highly critical of the defence cuts made by the government. Solly Zuckerman, the government's scientific adviser, was also invited to attend the meeting on 8th May. According to Cecil King's account in his memoirs, Without Fear or Favour (1971), when he told Mountbatten of his plans, he replied that "there is anxiety about the government at the palace, and that the queen has had an unprecedented number of letters protesting about Wilson".

According to Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, the authors of Smear! Wilson and the Secret State (1992): "King then delivered a version of his preoccupations at the time - approaching economic collapse and ineffective government, with a Prime Minister no longer able to control events. Public order was about to break down leading to social chaos. there was a likelihood of bloodshed in the streets." At this point Zuckerman got up and said: "This is rank treachery. All this talk of machine guns at street corners is appalling." He also told Mountbatten to have nothing to do with the conspiracy to overthrow Wilson.

Two days later, King published an article in the Daily Mirror under his own name entitled "Enough is enough". It read: "Mr Wilson and his government have lost all credit and we are now threatened with the greatest financial crisis in history. It is not to be resolved by lies about our reserves but only by a fresh start under a fresh leader." Three weeks later the directors of International Publishing Corporation unanimously dismissed King.

By the end of the 1960s, with unemployment and inflation increasing, Wilson's popularity declined and the Conservative Party, led by Edward Heath, won the 1970 General Election. Heath successfully led Britain into the European Economic Community (ECC). However, many in his party was unhappy with this policy and it created deep divisions that lasted for over thirty years.

Edward Heath also came into conflict with the trade unions over his attempts to impose a prices and incomes policy. His attempts to legislate against unofficial strikes led to industrial disputes. In 1973 a miners' work-to-rule led to regular power cuts and the imposition of a three day week. Heath called a general election in 1974 on the issue of "who rules". He failed to get a majority and Wilson and the Labour Party were returned to power.

When Harold Wilson returned to power in 1974 Peter Wright once again became involved in a plot against the Labour government. It was suggested that MI5 files on Wilson should be leaked to the press. Wright was eventually persuaded by Victor Rothschild not to take part in the conspiracy. Rothschild warned him that he was likely to get a caught and if that happened he would lose his job and pension.

In 1975 Wilson decided to hold a referendum on membership of the European Economic Community. Wilson allowed his Cabinet to support both the Yes and No campaigns and this led to a bitter split in the party.

Wilson's government again had trouble with the economy. Faced with the prospect of having to get a loan from the International Monetary Fund, Wilson came under increasing attack from all sections of the Labour Party. Wilson was also suffering from the early signs of Alzheimer's Disease and in 1976 decided to resign from office and was replaced by James Callaghan.

Wilson was knighted in 1976 and was created Baron of Rievaulx in 1983. Harold Wilson died in 1995.

The Middle Ages

The Normans

The Tudors

The English Civil War

Industrial Revolution

First World War

Russian Revolution

Nazi Germany

(1) Roy Jenkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(2) Godfrey Smith, Sunday Times Colour Magazine (9th February, 1964)

(3) Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State (1992) page 3

(4) Roy Jenkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(5) Austen Morgan, Harold Wilson (1992) page 29

(6) Roy Hattersley, The Daily Mail (24th June, 2007)

(7) Harold Wilson, Memoirs: 1916-1964 (1986)

(8) Harold Wilson, Memoirs: 1916-1964 (1986) page 34

(9) Roy Jenkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(10) Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (1992) page 63

(11) William Beveridge, private papers, quoted in Austen Morgan, Harold Wilson (1992) page 55

(12) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 30

(13) Harold Wilson, Memoirs: 1916-1964 (1986) page 59

(14) Roy Hattersley, The Daily Mail (24th June, 2007)

(15) Diane Farr, Five at 10: Prime Minister Consorts (1985) page 97

(16) Roy Jenkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(17) Paul Foot, The Politics of Harold Wilson (1968) page 63

(18) Philip M. Williams, Hugh Gaitskell (1979) page 97

(19) Harold Wilson, A Prime Minister on On Prime Ministers (1977) page 241

(20) The Daily Telegraph (14th October, 1944)

(21) Roy Jenkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(22) The News Chronicle (27th July, 1945)

(23) Christopher Mayhew, Time to Explain (1987) page 86

(24) Roy Jenkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(25) Harold Wilson, A Prime Minister on On Prime Ministers (1977) page 291-295

(26) Roy Jenkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(27) Hugh Gaitskell, diary entry (February, 1950)

(28) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 81

(29) Ernest Kay, Pragmatic Premier: An intimate portrait of Harold Wilson (1967) page 15

(30) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 52

(31) Aneurin Bevan, letter to Clement Attlee (October, 1950)

(32) Bernard Donoughue, Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician (2001) page 490

(33) Hugh Dalton, diary entry (April 1951)

(34) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 84

(35) Wilfrid Macartney, letter to Aneurin Bevan (19th April, 1951)

(36) Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan (1973) page 324

(37) Aneurin Bevan, letter to Clement Attlee (22nd April, 1951)

(38) Aneurin Bevan, speech in the House of Commons (23rd April, 1951)

(39) Harold Wilson, speech in the House of Commons (24th April, 1951)

(40) Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (1992) page 169

(41) Ian Mikardo, Back Bencher (1988) page 120

(42) Harold Wilson, Memoirs: 1916-1964 (1986) page 112

(43) Emanuel Shinwell, I've Lived Through it All (1973) page 207

(44) Herbert Morrison, An Autobiography (1960) page 325

(45) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 88

(46) Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (1992) page 171

(47) Hugh Gaitskell, diary entry (4th May, 1951)

(48) Richard Crossman, The Backbench Diaries (1981) page 47

(49) Jo Richardson , interviewed by Austen Morgan (1st December, 1987)

(50) Philip M. Williams, Hugh Gaitskell (1979) page 207

(51) Hugh Gaitskell, speech in Stalybridge (5th October, 1952)

(52) Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1989) page 154

(53) Hugh Gaitskell, speech (November, 1959)

(54) Philip M. Williams, Hugh Gaitskell (1979) pages 360-371

(55) The Guardian (26th October, 1960)

(56) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) pages 127-128

(57) Hugh Gaitskell, speech at the Labour Party Conference at Brighton (3rd October, 1962)

(58) Philip M. Williams, Hugh Gaitskell (1979) page 428

(59) Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009) page 504

(60) Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987) pages 362-363

(61) Chapman Pincher, Their Trade is Treachery (1981) pages 77-78

(62) Tony Benn, diary entry (18th January, 1963)

(63) Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (1992) page 256

(64) Richard Crossman, Back-Bench Diaries (1981) page 969

(65) Tony Benn, diary entry (7th February, 1963)

(66) Richard Crossman, Back-Bench Diaries (1981) page 985

(67) Harold Wilson, Purpose in Politics (1964) page 214

(68) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 148

(69) Richard Crossman, diary entry (10th March, 1963)

(70) Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (1992) page 286

(71) Hansard (21st March, 1963)

(72) John Profumo, statement in the House of Commons (22nd March, 1963)

(73) George Wigg, Autobiography (1972) page 270

(74) Stephen Ward, letter sent to Henry Brooke, Harold Wilson and William Wavell Wakefield (19th May, 1963)

(75) Austen Morgan, Harold Wilson (1992) page 244

(76) John Profumo, statement in the House of Commons (5th June, 1963)

(77) The Daily Mirror (6th June, 1963)

(78) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 145

(79) Richard Crossman, diary entry (22nd June, 1963)

(80) Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (1992) page 296

(81) Edward Heath, statement in the House of Commons (1st July, 1963)

(82) Ben Macintyre, A Spy Among Friends (2014) page 270 (

(83) Harold Macmillan, letter to Harold Wilson (16th July, 1963)

(84) Harold Wilson, letter to Harold Macmillan (19th July, 1963)

(85) Kenneth Young, Sir Douglas-Home (1970) page 160

(86) Robert Shepherd, Iain Macleod (1994) page 334

(87) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 150

(88) Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (1992) page 274

(89) Austen Morgan, Harold Wilson (1992) page 246

(90) Harold Wilson, speech (2nd October 1963)

(91) Robert McKenzie, BBC radio broadcast (1st October, 1963)

(92) James Cameron, The Daily Herald (2nd October 1963)

(93) John Cole, The Guardian (2nd October, 1963)

(94) Harold Wilson, Purpose in Politics (1964) page 215

(95) Austen Morgan, Harold Wilson (1992) page 252

(96) Martin Pugh, Speak for Britain: A New History of the Labour Party (2010) page 327

(97) Marcia Williams, interviewed by Michael Cockerell for his documentary, Television and Number Ten: Into the Torture Chamber (12th November, 1986)

(98) Austen Morgan, Harold Wilson (1992) page 253

(99) Mary Wilson, interview with Godfrey Smith, in The Sunday Times (9th February, 1964)

(100) Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (1992) page 315

(101) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 157

(102) Martin Pugh, Speak for Britain: A New History of the Labour Party (2010) page 332

(103) Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian (15th October, 2014)

(104) Philip Ziegler, Wilson (1993) page 161

(105) Harold Wilson, The Labour Government 1964-1970 (1971) page 55

John Simkin