Harold Wilson. Peter Hennessy
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the cinema at least once a week. Consequently, measures directed at films were not just of great financial importance. They also had major social and cultural effects. Wilson’s interest was a direct product of the 1947 economic crisis: measures taken, almost casually, before his arrival in an attempt to alleviate the dollar shortage had thrown the industry into turmoil.
Part of Hugh Dalton’s summer 1947 package as Chancellor of the Exchequer had been a 75 per cent levy on imported American films. The immediate result was a trade war. Hollywood refused to export any of its productions to Britain, a move which threatened to put distributors and cinema owners – heavily dependent on a steady supply of American titles – out of business. Dalton’s tax turned out to be directly counter-productive. It had been intended to save Britain £57 million of the £70 million per annum which American films had been making in Britain. Because of the Hollywood boycott, however, desperate British owners resorted to re-showing American films stock-piled in this country, which then had to be paid for, adding to the dollar drain. Consequently, as Wilson pointed out, ‘we were actually paying out not 17 but 50 million dollars for the privilege of seeing Hellzapoppin’ for the third time and Ben Hur for the twenty-third.’45
The Hollywood boycott was lifted after negotiations with Eric Johnson, Hollywood’s chief administrator, and an agreement was signed in March 1948 ending the 75 per cent levy. Yet the dollar problem remained. Wilson sought to meet it, and at the same time (as he hoped) to boost the British film industry, by announcing shortly afterwards that the quota of British-made films to be shown in this country was to be raised from 30 per cent to 45 per cent. Such an ingeniously simple move, however, had an unpredicted outcome.
Wilson’s new regulation certainly ensured that the British public saw more British films at the end of the 1940s than ever before or since, and that British films were produced in quantity. The casualty was quality. The enfeebled British industry had neither the resources, nor the incentive, adequately to meet the demand. The Rank Organization was already over-extended, and reacted to the new situation by producing poor films on low budgets and showing them in its own cinemas in order to cut losses, while elsewhere stock-piled American films were shown, and British studios fell idle. Rank promised forty-seven feature films: it soon abandoned this target. Instead, it concentrated on seeking to rival Hollywood with movie spectaculars in order to recoup cash in the American market.
Hence Wilson was forced into ignominious retreat. Just as Dalton’s 75 per cent levy had been discarded, so now was Wilson’s 45 per cent quota – reduced to 40 per cent in March 1949, and a year later to 30 per cent, the original figure. The quota, however, was not Wilson’s only initiative. Also in 1948, he set up the National Film Finance Corporation, with funds to subsidize independent producers. This was a Labour Government’s response to the dominating position of Rank: as one account puts it, ‘new-style Socialism was in collision with old-fashioned capitalism.’46
Notable successes could be claimed for the NFFC. A number of celebrated films were financed by it, including The Third Man, State Secret and Seven Days to Noon. In May 1950, Wilson boasted at the Conference of the National Association of Theatrical and Kine Employees that the Corporation ‘had undoubtedly prevented a breakdown over a wide section of the industry’. As a result of its assistance, he claimed, more than fifty films had been produced.47 But – as with other measures – there was a snag: though the Government could provide the incentive or the subsidy, it could not or would not preside over the industry’s own internal economy. Because the Government had prescribed that NFFC loans should be made through distributors, there was little control over the nature of films produced. Consequently much money was wasted, in particular by Rank’s rival, Alexander Korda (whom Wilson had first met during his visit to the United States on a civil service mission in 1943). It was against this uneasy background that the ‘Eady’ Plan emerged (so-called after the Treasury official principally involved, Sir Wilfred Eady). The Eady levy consisted of a tax on cinema tickets, which raised revenue to pay the producers, and subsidized films on application from individual companies. Wilson himself has claimed the levy as his own idea.
Opinions differ about the effectiveness of both the Corporation and the Eady levy. Some considered that the NFFC ‘saved what’s left of British films’.48 Others have suggested that the episode was a missed opportunity and have criticized the Government for failing to create a British film industry to compare in confidence and creativity with the industries of other countries. Yet even those who have taken Wilson to task admit that the Corporation (which continued to exist for four decades) was better than nothing and that the Conservatives would not have set it up.49
Whatever the impact of Harold Wilson on the film industry, however, there is no doubt that his involvement in the problems of film greatly affected Wilson. In his memoirs, he accuses Cripps of having been a ‘soft touch’ where film magnates were concerned.50 Perhaps all politicians are susceptible to the glamour of the movies, which provide a distorting image of instant fame. Harold was fascinated, not just by the problems, but also by the people of the opulent, open-hearted world of the cinema, with its transitory stars and clever impresarios. ‘He accepted more social engagements from the film world than from elsewhere,’ his former principal private secretary recalls.51
‘I hear … Mr Harold Wilson … has bought himself a little black book – and is busy scribbling the names of film stars in it,’ the Daily Express film critic sniped in May 1950. Wilson replied that he had seen only seven films (five British, two American) in the preceding year.52 His taste was predictably catholic. ‘Speaking now as an ordinary cinema goer …’, he told the House in June 1948, ‘I should like to see more films which genuinely show our way of life.’ He was tired of ‘some of the gangster, sadistic and psychological films of which we seem to have so many, of diseased minds, schizophrenia, amnesia and diseases which occupy so much of our screen time … I should like the screen writers to go up to the North of England, Scotland, Wales and the rest of the country, and to all the parts of London which are not so frequently portrayed in our films.’53 Most British directors ignored his advice. Wilson, however, was not discouraged from maintaining a friendly contact with film people in the years after he had left the Board of Trade.
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Harold, and Herbert, savoured the historical associations of the Board of Trade: both Lloyd George and Churchill had been President early in their careers. Yet – as we have already seen – Wilson was essentially a departmental minister, in contrast to his illustrious predecessors, rather than a political personality. His ministerial speeches notoriously emptied the House. Those who endured his performances found them technical, repetitive, excessively detailed, over-prepared and lacking in humour.54 Very gradually, this began to change. It was as though, having established himself administratively, he was beginning to discover himself in other ways. ‘It was a developing period, before Wilson became a real politician,’ considers Sir Max Brown. ‘It was a time of learning and adapting. He tended to concentrate on subjects where he could do his own thing – he didn’t want to cross Cabinet colleagues. At first, he was feeling his way, as he got into a stronger position. By 1949 he was much more involved in central political issues.’55 He was also beginning to approach all issues in a more political way. This development did not please all observers. The Financial Times (which found much about the Labour Government to dislike) accused him of ‘shallow smartness’.56 Raymond Streat, who had privately applauded him in 1947 for not coming from a political stable, began to chide him a few months later for behaving too politically. Streat told the young President ‘that I thought he sometimes overdid the line of scoring off the Opposition. I felt it gained him little in the country at large.’ Wilson replied simply that ‘the Party liked it.’57
A tendency to make what the Opposition regarded as cheap points began to cause ripples of irritation on the Tory benches. Cairncross recalls meeting Oliver Lyttelton just after Wilson had made a speech which had ridiculed the other side without taking seriously any of its criticisms. ‘Clever young puppy’, Lyttelton remarked with contempt.58 Some opponents were even more disdainful. When the journalist and diplomat Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart remarked to Anthony Eden in August 1948 that the President of the Board of Trade ‘did not seem