Harold Wilson. Peter Hennessy
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to make Nye leader,’ says Freeman.70 ‘People of course are now beginning to look to the future,’ 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-mindedness which is so inherent in many Labour Party Members …’71 The attempt to swing opinion began at once. In May, Wilson addressed a rally at the Theatre Royal in Huddersfield. As he appeared on the stage, the crowd stood up and sang ‘The Red Flag’. ‘This Party of ours, this Movement of ours’, he began, speaking a new kind of language, ‘is based on principles and ideals, and if any one of us when once we feel a principle is at stake … were to cling to office and deny it, then the days of this Party and Labour Movement are over … This Movement of ours is bigger than any individual or group of individuals. It is a Movement which has always allowed freedom of scope, of principles and of conscience.’72 Here was an approach to party discipline that was to have a profound importance in years to come.
Released from government responsibility, Wilson’s style, rhetoric and message were rapidly evolving. He started ‘talking Left’ with a vengeance: urging that money should be spent on poor countries, not on arms, that there should be no pandering to the Americans, and asking whether ‘the underfed coolie’ could be blamed for snatching at Communism.73 On 14 July, the Left published a pamphlet called One Way Only. Its contents were scarcely revolutionary, but because of its authors – who included the three resigners – it deeply embarrassed the Government, and sold 100,000 copies. The pamphlet stressed the world shortage of raw materials (Wilson’s own theme) and the need to restrain prices and spend more on social services. It called for a scaling down of the defence programme, and the need to restrain US foreign policy – especially over the rearming of Germany.74
During the summer and early autumn of 1951, the Government behaved more and more as if it were under siege. The breach in the Party widened, but the great uprising of Labour MPs which Bevan had hoped for, never happened. The Korean War stabilized, and the threat of an American-led invasion of the Chinese mainland receded. There was no new legislation of significance. Wilson busied himself with his Meyer duties, and with a request from the railway trade unions to examine the financial structure of the British Transport Commission.75
On 19 September, Attlee told the Cabinet of his decision to ask for a dissolution. Two days later, the Left published a second pamphlet, Going Our Way. ‘Relations with the Bevanites continue to be very bad,’ Gaitskell had noted the previous month. ‘They are apparently becoming more and more intransigent and extreme. They hope to capture the Party Conference and have, I am told, been forming themselves into a kind of Shadow Government. They no doubt have a considerable following in the constituency parties.’ Gaitskell believed that one factor influencing Attlee in favour of an early election was the hope that it would concentrate the minds of Conference delegates, and smooth over the Party row.76 The tactic was only partially successful. Though Conference in Scarborough was surprisingly united, with Bevan on his best behaviour, the Left made progress in the annual election to the constituency parties’ section of the NEC, indicating a continuing shift in rank-and-file opinion.
In the election campaign, Wilson was fighting for his political life. Defensively, he played down the split in the Party, and denounced what he called ‘the vile whispering campaign’ that he was a Communist or had Communist sympathies.77 Such a campaign, if there was one, appeared to do him little harm. Nationally there was a small but decisive movement towards the Tories, leaving Labour still marginally ahead in the popular vote yet behind in seats. In Huyton, Wilson bucked the trend, and increased his majority – the start of an upward progress (mainly a result of demographic changes due to rehousing policies) that continued to defy national swings, and eventually turned the seat into a Labour stronghold.
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister for the second time, and Labour went into Opposition. For Wilson, however, the outcome was much better than he had reason to hope. If Labour had won, he would have been out in the cold. If it had lost badly, he would have been beaten in Huyton, and would have joined the queue of ex-ministers looking for a seat. As it turned out, he was still in Parliament, everybody in the former Government was an ex-minister, and the resigners were splendidly placed to mount their challenge. His prominence was assured.
After eleven almost unbroken years in government, Labour had forgotten the psychology of Opposition. As soon as ministers handed in the seals of office and Conservatives took their place, it remembered. Habits of restraint and deference were abandoned and ancient practices were resumed. The split that had opened in April widened and the Party broke into warring factions. It was not just a matter of policy, or even of rival ambitions. Beneath the overt causes of the dispute lay deep differences of culture and mood, which made dialogue between the two sides impossible. Even more than in the 1930s, Labour Right and Left became separate nations, defined by custom, mode of speech, even dress. The Right was responsible and respectable, the Left – at any rate the intellectual Left – was modish and bohemian. Never has the Labour Party been more tribal than in the 1950s.1
At first the conditions suited Wilson perfectly. Other ex-ministers, deprived of official back-up and their ministerial income, took time to readjust, the older ones drifting into effective retirement. Wilson, well cushioned by his Montague Meyer retainer, had already adjusted to loss of office. Before his resignation, he had been regarded as an orthodox minister, and had received relatively little attention in the press, partly because there had been little to say about him. Now the stage was set for him to be an unorthodox and increasingly celebrated back-bencher. ‘In our age of telegraphs and telephones’, Anton Chekhov once wrote, ‘abuse is the sister of advertisement.’2 It was a principle which Wilson did not forget in his new campaign to become well known.
Tribal warfare was spiced by an issue seldom mentioned at public gatherings. Attlee was sixty-eight, and could not remain Party Leader indefinitely. Morrison, still regarded as the heir apparent, was only five years younger. If Morrison took over when Attlee eventually retired, the succession would not be satisfactorily resolved, for Morrison, too, would soon be due for retirement. Looking beyond Morrison, there was no clear favourite on the Right. Gaitskell seemed too junior, Shawcross too exclusively legal, Alf Robens too inexperienced.3 The Left, however, could offer a powerful contender: Bevan. Hopes and fears surrounding this possibility lay behind every Labour policy discussion of the next four years.
Wilson was one of those who, for the time being, pinned his hopes on Bevan’s succession. Relations between the two were friendly, though seldom close. As Richard Crossman observed, they had nothing in common.4 ‘Nye and Harold were diametrically opposite in every regard,’ says Mikardo. ‘Consequently, they could learn from each other. Nye admired Harold’s agility, sure-footedness, cleverness. Harold admired Nye’s ability to get through to the heart of the problem.’5 Where Bevan took a broad view, Wilson was fascinated by detail. Peter Shore (then a Transport House researcher) recalls Wilson in the early 1950s as ‘a walking encyclopedia on industry’, energetic, diligent, ever searching for new information.6 Bevan, by contrast, was indolent, volcanic, visionary. ‘Nye was loved but also hated,’ recalls a close Wilson supporter. ‘He was a great, scary figure. When he spoke it was a magnificent, theatrical experience. He could move you to tears, laughter, anything. He frightened the Right.’7 Wilson frightened nobody.
The origins of the ‘Bevanite’ movement in the 1950s lay in the inter-war ILP and Socialist League. After the war, there had been no organized parliamentary Left until 1947, when Michael Foot, Ian Mikardo and Richard Crossman wrote a policy statement, Keep Left, which became the starting point of the Keep Left Group. But until the resignations, the Group had been small, and patronized by MPs with little influence. Now it was transformed. Others joined, and by 1952 membership had increased to forty-seven MPs and two peers,