Harold Wilson. Peter Hennessy
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at the same time a speed-up in Demobilization. As regards the problem of Redundancy, he would like to see the Government, if necessary, placing orders for refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. He also favoured the maintenance of the guaranteed wage.6
It was not the content of this mundane message, perhaps, so much as the way in which it was argued which created a good impression. We have no record of how the group reacted to Wilson’s rather embarrassing remark that nobody among the new recruits should go straight into the Government, with one exception, ‘on sheer merit: Hugh Gaitskell’.7 Gaitskell did, however, note in his diary a few weeks later that the best contributions to the discussion had come from people he already knew, especially Durbin, Crossman and Wilson. Brown had remained diffidently silent. ‘Perhaps our slightly superior feeling’, Gaitskell observed, ‘was because we had been in the Civil Service all the war and knew rather more about the real problems of the moment.’8 Mayhew, who had not seen Wilson since 1939, remembers being greatly impressed by him on this occasion. Previously, though he had been struck by Wilson’s grasp of complex problems, he had felt able to talk the same language. Now he had a strong sense of the gap in understanding between the ex-Whitehall men and the ex-officers among the new MPs. ‘Compared with people like Wilson and Gaitskell, I felt tongue-tied and ignorant,’ he recalls.9
Gaitskell wrote after the St Ermin’s gathering: ‘I had a curious feeling most of the evening, having always regarded myself as one of the younger people in the Party, I now suddenly seemed to be one of the older.’10 On all counts, Wilson was the most threatening of those present: one of the sharpest, best informed and youngest, and also (by the time Gaitskell wrote his account in early August) the only minister. Although Gaitskell himself was not immediately available for office because of a recent heart attack, the watchful rivalry between the two men had already begun. Wilson, who thought about such things a great deal, must have been pleased at his head start.
The other two new recruits to be given posts were Hilary Marquand, also a former don and temporary civil servant, and George Lindgren, a trade unionist; both were fifteen years Wilson’s senior. ‘I am not sure that this was really good for any of them,’ Dalton wrote of the three appointments in his memoirs, with Wilson probably most in mind. ‘But there were a lot of posts to fill and not a great array of possibles among the old brigade.’11 Apart from Gaitskell (convalescing), Crossman (distrusted by Attlee) and Durbin (whom Dalton picked as his Parliamentary Private Secretary), Wilson had the best claim in terms of proven ability and experience, and his appointment, therefore, should not be seen as a casual one. Significantly, Emanuel Shinwell, the new Minister of Fuel and Power, asked for him – too late – as his PPS.12 Wilson later claimed that he never expected to be a minister for many years. In fact, that would have been surprising.
It would also have been surprising if, as the youngest member of the Government, Wilson had not rediscovered his childhood dream of one day becoming a prominent Cabinet minister – Chancellor of the Exchequer, or perhaps Foreign Secretary. ‘Harold had leadership ambitions from the day he entered Parliament,’ says Harold (now Lord) Lever, who came in at the same time.13 He was not the only one. ‘There’s no point in going into Parliament unless you have the intention of becoming Prime Minister,’ Patrick Gordon Walker, another Oxford don, wrote in his diary just before entering the House in an autumn 1945 by-election. ‘Clearly this is what I must go for. I think I’ll lie low for five years or so & get myself well in with the Party.’14 Perhaps every new MP has the same fantasy. A difference between Wilson and most of his contemporaries, however, was that he began his political career already one rung up the ladder.
Though only a parliamentary secretary, Wilson had a major job. The war had turned Works, in effect, into a Ministry of Reconstruction, charged with finding ‘homes fit for heroes’ and for bombed-out families.15 It appointed the government architect, with influence over all new public buildings, and was required to ensure that as many houses were built as possible, with a maximum of efficiency, using the best materials. The wartime and early post-war ‘pre-fabs’ had been a Works responsibility. The difficulty was a shortage of materials and skilled labour. Obtaining bricks was a particular problem, because production had been greatly reduced under concentration schemes during the war.16 The Ministry’s duties dovetailed with those of the Ministry of Health where Aneurin Bevan was Minister. Bevan set up a Housing Executive, composed of ministers in the three relevant departments: Health, Town and Country Planning (of which Lewis Silkin was head) and Works. Wilson represented Works, bringing him closely into contact with Bevan for the first time.17
In the post-194 5 period, Aneurin Bevan was at the height of his powers and of his influence over the nation’s affairs. A Welsh mining MP who had been elected to Parliament in 1929, he had emerged during the 1930s as one of the most forceful leaders of the Labour Left, with a power of oratory widely compared to that of Lloyd George, and an ability – unique among trade union MPs – to charm left-wing intellectuals and influential plutocrats (such as Lord Beaverbrook) alike. He was married to Jennie Lee, a former ILP ‘Clydesider’ MP, who lost her seat in 1931, and returned to the House fourteen years later. Jennie Lee spent the 1930s outside the Labour Party. In 1939 Nye joined her in exile, following his expulsion with Sir Stafford Cripps, for defying an NEC prohibition of the Communist-led Popular Front movement. Although, with the backing of the left-wing Welsh miners, he was soon readmitted to the Labour Party, he spent the war on the back benches, as one of the Coalition Government’s most dangerous critics.
In 1945, Attlee – who privately admired him – took the courageous step of bringing him straight into the Cabinet. As the head of a major department which provided the spearhead of Labour’s social revolution, Bevan came into his own – directing his imagination and political flair towards implementing the most important of the ‘Beveridge’ reforms, the creation of a free health service. Yet Bevan was never an easy colleague. Although at first a loyal enough member of the team, he remained a not-quite-dormant volcano, liable to erupt at any provocation. Fellow ministers were wary of his egotism, scared by him, in awe of him. Since he was also the youngest member of the Cabinet in the Commons, he was marked out early on as a possible future leader and prime minister. He was, in almost every conceivable respect, an opposite political personality to Wilson. It is no wonder that Wilson was fascinated by him.
Wilson made his maiden speech, a very boring one, in October. One of his ministerial tasks was to restore the Chamber of the House of Commons, which had been destroyed by enemy action. His meandering and apologetic address on this theme was sharply attacked by back-bench MPs including Labour ones, who were unhappy about the facilities available to Members.18 Subsequent performances were scarcely better. ‘When he came into the House, he couldn’t speak at all,’ Woodrow (now Lord) Wyatt recalls.19 Few contemporaries would disagree. In his early years as a minister, his dullness as a speaker became almost as legendary as his precocity.
Wilson had been appointed for his technical grasp, not his speaking ability. He proceeded to throw himself into the details of his brief with Beveridge-like thoroughness, embarking on a nation-wide tour of local authorities, accompanied by employers in the building industry and by trade unionists, to see the problems for himself. He had done much the same in 1937–9, studying unemployment figures in local labour exchanges; now, however, he had a retinue of officials, and the attention of the media. The publicity was good, whatever the effects. When he eventually changed jobs in 1947, he was described admiringly in the press as a ‘hustler’, who had earned praise ‘when he formed a one-man ginger group to spread the housing drive’.20
Eager beaver: Wilson as Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Works, drawn during a trade dinner in November 1945
Health was a more powerful ministry than Works. More important, Tomlinson was no match for Bevan in ministerial fights. Consequently, rivalry between the two departments soon disposed of attempts by the Ministry of Works to become a ‘giant housing corporation’.21 Wilson, who lacked any political standing, discovered that the scope for effective co-ordination of the building programme was limited. Douglas Jay, who entered Parliament at a by-election in 1946