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. that this was not the case: in fact, the 1986 memoirs largely amounted to a printed version of a manuscript that Wilson produced in the early 1980s.

He is the author of two acclaimed political biographies: Attlee: A Life in Politics and Nye: The Political Life of Aneurin Bevan.The Official History of Britain and the European Community, Volume III: The Tiger Unleashed, 1975-1985 (Routledge, 2018). Yet the need to support the pound displaced all serious attempts to restructure the economy, while the rate of inflation quickened and strikes undermined efforts to slow the rate of pay increases. p. 179: Economic planning and incomes policy were more distinct notions than is implied here, though in practice George Brown promoted both in Wilson’s government.

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. Wilson was a new kind of politician but, in his own way, this media-savvy harbinger of modernity was also a deeply traditional man, whose actions often suggest nothing less than a spiritual mission.

Harold Wilson was a British statesman and leader of the Labour Party who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice during the 1960s and 1970s.