Harold Wilson. Peter Hennessy
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it for granted that Harold couldn’t possibly distance himself openly from Nye by taking that place’, recalls Mikardo, ‘particularly as he had strongly supported Nye on the issue of policy in South-East Asia which had led to the resignation.’51 Bevan also took it for granted, declaring that he would regard Wilson accepting his place as ‘a gross act of personal disloyalty to myself’.52 Wilson, however, no longer accepted Bevan’s authority and was angry – understandably so – at being asked to make a decision of such painful self-abrogation, when Bevan had not bothered to seek his opinion first. With Crossman’s backing, he decided to accept the Shadow Cabinet place with a show of reluctance, giving as his public excuse the need to preserve Party unity.53 At first, Bevan seemed half-persuaded to bless such a plan, then – finding a phalanx of core ‘principled’ Bevanites angrily hostile to Wilson – reverted to his earlier pose of growling resentment.
Wilson saw Attlee and elaborated his position. The Party Leader listened impassively to the explanation, then responded with a single word: ‘Quite.’54 Wilson’s letter to the secretary of the PLP, prepared with the help of Crossman and George Wigg, Bevanite MP for Dudley, and released to the press, was intended to make things better. Its transparently disingenuous contents, however, had the opposite effect:
As you will realize the situation created by the new Standing Order places me in an extremely difficult position.
I am in entire agreement, as the party knows, with Aneurin Bevan on the policy issues involved – on the dangers not only of Mr Dulles’s policies in South-East Asia, but also on German rearmament.
Obviously, therefore, it is extremely difficult to accept co-option to a vacancy caused by his resignation.
Nevertheless, what matters in the last resort is the unity and strength of the party. I have given a great deal of anxious thought to this question over the past 10 days, and have not lacked advice.
My conclusion is that in the party’s interests it is impossible for me to refuse co-option.55
‘It was so shabby,’ says Mikardo. ‘Wilson agreed with Nye on the issue, but didn’t mind using Nye’s misfortune for his own advantage.’56 One Bevanite MP, A. J. Irvine, publicly cancelled an engagement in Huyton, to emphasize his disapproval. What was odd about the letter was that Wilson should have imagined that anybody would be taken in by it. The logic of the argument was, of course, impeccable. Yet even the most naïve and trusting newspaper reader did not imagine that the main concern of a politician when accepting a leg up the political ladder was the unity of the party, or that the ‘great deal of anxious thought’ had been purely altruistic. The letter reeked of humbug. It was an example of precisely the tortuousness of which Wilson was accused, even more frequently than he deserved. Yet it was a key strategic move. Wigg (who backed Wilson on this issue, and became a loyal and well-rewarded supporter) later wrote that the decision to accept Bevan’s place marked Wilson’s ‘first long stride towards No. 10 Downing Street’.57 By quarrelling with the hard-core Bevanites, Wilson achieved the objective of making himself more acceptable to the PLP majority. ‘Old MPs, who for the past three years have battled against Bevanism, were presenting Mr Wilson as The Man Who Changed His Mind,’ wrote the Daily Mail’s political correspondent. ‘They believe he will work smoothly with Mr Attlee and the Party whips.’58 Even the Economist discussed the new phenomenon of Centre-Left ‘Wilsonism’. (‘But what is a Wilsonite?’, ruminated Dalton. ‘He’s a clever little chap, with a sure political touch. But not magnetic.’)59 The manner of the decision, however, contributed to the sense that every position taken, even every speech or remark, by Harold Wilson was part of a chess game, and that nothing he did should ever be taken at its face value.
Crossman, who saw Wilson as a grandmaster, approved. His diary contains a remarkably prophetic passage, which describes his own discussion with Bevan, in which he protested that Wilson had every right to accept:
Nye said, ‘of course he has got the right but he will kill himself if he agrees to go on the Committee.’ I then said that, in my view, it was now far more likely that Harold Wilson would succeed to the premiership than that Nye would. He was just the type of man who would succeed Attlee. To which Nye replied, ‘If he’s that kind of man, I don’t want anything to do with him.’ I then said, ‘Don’t be silly. You’ve always known that he’s that sort of man and the events of the last three days have made no difference to that.’60
The remark is interesting, not only because it shows that Wilson was already being discussed as a future contender for the Leadership; but also because it marks a staging-post in Crossman’s own, fast developing and vitally important attitude to Wilson. Hitherto, despite Wilson’s Cabinet experience, Crossman had been seen as a more powerful force on the parliamentary Left. Hereafter, Crossman increasingly saw Wilson as the Left’s best hope among the younger leaders, and hence a horse to be backed. Meanwhile Bevan, by resigning, had done himself serious damage, and the possibility that he might become Leader – which the Right feared, and the Left longed for – receded. ‘I judge that [the] Bevan boom is well past its peak,’ Dalton noted that summer. ‘… He’s quarrelled with Crossman and Wilson. New Statesman announced the other day that neither Morrison nor Bevan can now ever lead the Party. And Wilson is trying to edge his way along on his own.’61
The edging was difficult at first because of the disgust felt by the ‘principled’ Bevanites (some of whom, however, were almost as angry with Bevan for resigning as with Wilson for not backing him). They always held it against him. ‘It made me realize’, says Mikardo, one of Wilson’s harshest critics, ‘the true extent of Harold’s ambition. Nye had ambitions, it was one part of his life – but there were other parts. Harold was ambitious and nothing else, obsessively ambitious.’62
Bevan, meanwhile, nursed his bitterness and wounded pride. Relations with Wilson were never fully restored. At first, Bevan was inclined to boycott the regular Bevanite lunches at Crossman’s house in Vincent Square. ‘Dick’s folly and Harold’s ambition have created a disastrous situation,’ John Freeman wrote to him, trying to win him round to the need for discussion.63 Wilson tried to make amends by delivering what Crossman called ‘the most left-wing speech of his career’,64 denouncing Western policy in Indo-China, where the French were fighting a rearguard action against Communist insurgents. To a May Day rally in Manchester, Wilson stressed three things:
First, not a man and not a gun must be sent from this country in support of French imperialism in Indo-China; secondly, we must not in this country join, form, or in any way encourage the formation of an anti-Communist alliance in Asia, and thirdly, the road to peace in Asia is the road of Nehru and not of Dulles.65
Words, however, came easily. To the Left, it was deeds that counted. When asked on television by Malcolm Muggeridge whether he was still a Bevanite, Wilson could only wriggle. ‘The question’, he replied, ‘is not quite as simple as it sounds. Certainly I have not changed any of my ideas about politics.’66 In Parliament and on the Shadow Cabinet Wilson became a lonely figure, regarded by the Left as a traitor and the Right as a blackleg. They voted for him, acknowledging his abilities and value to the Party. The Left continued to prefer him to Gaitskell and Morrison, and the Right continued to prefer him to Bevan. In November 1954, he was re-elected to the Parliamentary Committee in twelfth place; in June 1955 he climbed to fifth. Thereafter, except in 1960, he was never out of the top three. But they did not like him.
*
In June Wilson made a second Meyer-financed trip to Russia. The press speculated that ‘the globe-trotting of this super commercial traveller’ was intended to prepare the ground for his eventual succession to the Party Leadership, or at least Labour’s foreign portfolio. During the visit, Wilson had a meeting with Malenkov – it was pointed out that he was the first leading British politician to do so since the new General Secretary had succeeded Stalin. ‘Anyone visiting Moscow at the present time comes away with the firm conviction that this Soviet nation does not want war,’ Wilson declared on his return. ‘We are so dominated by the fears and attitudes of the Cold War and the growth of Great Power blocs that we have not yet fully realized