Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

This article is about the British politician.  For
the Olympic silver medallist, see Harold A.
Wilson.

The Right Honourable James Harold Wilson, Baron
Wilson of Rievaulx, Order of the Garter|KG, Order
of the British Empire|OBE, Royal Society|FRS,
Privy Council|PC (11 March 1916 – 24 May
1995) was one of the most successful Labour Party
(UK)|Labour Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom|Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and
a 1960s icon. Wilson is regarded by many as one of
the more intellectual politicians of the century.

==Birth and Early Life==
Wilson was born in Huddersfield in 1916, an almost
exact contemporary of his great rival, Edward
Heath. He came from a political family, his father
Herbert having been active in the Liberal Party
(UK)|Liberal Party and then having joined the
Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party. When Wilson was
eight, he visited London and a later-to-be-famous
photograph was taken of him standing on the
doorstep of 10 Downing Street.

Wilson passed the Eleven plus|11-plus examination
and won a scholarship to attend the local grammar
school. His education was disrupted in 1931 when
he contracted typhoid fever after drinking
contaminated milk on a Scouting|Scouts' outing and
took months to recover. The next year his father,
working as an industrial chemist, was made
redundant and moved to the Wirral to find work.
Wilson attended the sixth form at the local
grammar school, Wirral Grammar School for Boys,
where he became Head Boy. Wilson did well at
school and won a scholarship to study History at
Jesus College, Oxford from 1934.

At Oxford, Wilson was moderately active in
politics as a member of the Liberal Party
(UK)|Liberal Party but was later influenced by G.
D. H. Cole to join the Labour Party (UK)|Labour
Party. After his first year, he changed his field
of study to Philosophy, Politics and Economics,
and he graduated with an outstanding first class
degree. He continued in academia, becoming one of
the youngest Oxford University dons of the
century.

Wilson was a lecturer in Economics at New College,
Oxford|New College in 1937 and a lecturer in
Economic History at University College,
Oxford|University College from 1938 (and was a
fellow of the latter college, 1938-1945|45).  For
much of this time, he was a research assistant to
William Beveridge on unemployment and the trade
cycle.

On the outbreak of the World War II|Second World
War, Wilson volunteered for service but was
classed as a specialist and moved into the Civil
Service instead. Most of his War was spent as a
statistician and economist for the coal industry. 
He was Director of Economics and Statistics at the
Ministry of Fuel and Power, 1943-1944|4.  He was
to remain passionately interested in statistics
for the rest of his life.  As President of the
Board of Trade, he was the driving force behind
the Statistics of Trade Act 1947, which is still
the legal authority used to collect most economic
statistics in Great Britain.  As Prime Minister,
he was instrumental in appointing Claus Moser as
head of the Central Statistical Office.  He was
President of the Royal Statistical Society in
1972-1973|3.

==In Parliament==

As the War drew to an end, he began searching for
a seat to fight at the impending general election.
Eventually he was selected for Ormskirk, which was
then held by Stephen King-Hall. Wilson
accidentally agreed to be adopted as the candidate
immediately rather than delay until the election
was called, and was therefore compelled to resign
from the Civil Service. He used the time in
between to write A New Deal for Coal which used
his wartime experience to argue for
nationalization|nationalisation of the coal mines
on the basis of improved efficiency.

In the 1945 general election, Wilson won his seat
in line with the Labour landslide. To his surprise
he was immediately appointed to the government as
Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works.
Two years later he became Secretary for Overseas
Trade, in which capacity he made several trips to
the Soviet Union to negotiate supplies. Opponents
would later class these trips as suspicious.

On 14 October 1947 Wilson was appointed President
of the Board of Trade and became the youngest
member of the Cabinet in the 20th century. He took
a lead in abolishing some of the wartime
rationing, which he referred to as a "bonfire of
controls". In the general election of 1950, his
constituency was altered and he was narrowly
elected for the new seat of Huyton.

Wilson was becoming known as a left-wing
politics|left-winger and joined Aneurin Bevan in
resigning from the government in April 1951 in
protest at the introduction of National Health
Service|NHS medical charges in order to meet the
financial demands imposed on the budget by the
Korean War. After the Labour Party lost the
general election later that year, he was made
chairman of Bevan's "Keep Left" group, but shortly
thereafter he distanced himself from Bevan. By
coincidence, it was Bevan's further resignation
from the Shadow Cabinet in 1954 that put Wilson
back on the front bench.

==Opposition==

Wilson soon proved a very effective Shadow
Minister. One of his procedural moves caused the
loss of the Government's Finance Bill in 1955, and
his speeches as Shadow Chancellor from 1956 were
widely praised for their clarity and wit. He
coined the term "Gnomes of Zurich" to describe
Swiss bankers whom he accused of pushing the pound
down by speculation. In the meantime, he conducted
an inquiry into the Labour Party's organisation
following its defeat in the 1955 general election,
which made several useful recommendations for
improvements. Unusually, Wilson combined the job
of Chairman of the House of Commons Public
Accounts Committee with that of Shadow Chancellor
from 1959.

Wilson was still identified with the Left, and
launched an opportunistic but unsuccessful
challenge to the leader Hugh Gaitskell in 1960
after the Labour Party's 1959 defeat and
Gaitskell's unpopular move to ditch Clause Four.
He also challenged for the deputy leadership in
1962 but was defeated by George Brown, Baron
George-Brown|George Brown. Because of these
challenges, he was moved to the position of Shadow
Foreign Secretary.

Hugh Gaitskell died unexpectedly in January 1963,
just as the Labour Party had begun to unite and
look like it had a good chance of being elected to
government. Wilson became the left candidate for
the leadership, and defeated Brown. He coordinated
Labour's response to the Profumo Affair, in which
he made some political capital without getting the
party involved in the less salubrious aspects. At
the Labour Party conference later in 1963, he made
a very significant speech in which he claimed "the
Britain that will be forged in the white heat of
the scientific and technical revolution will have
no place for restrictive practices and outdated
measures on either side of industry". This speech
did much to set Wilson's reputation as a classless
technocrat.

==Prime Minister==
In 1964, Wilson narrowly won the general election
with a majority of five and became Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom|Prime Minister. This was not
sufficient to last for a full term and, after a
short period of competent government, in March
1966 he won re-election with a landslide majority
of 99. He was soon a familiar figure, known for
his Smoking pipe|pipe-smoking, his Gannex
raincoat, and his habit of taking holidays in the
Isles of Scilly.  On 1 June 2005 files were
released showing that Wilson was concerned that,
while on the Isles of Scilly, he was being
monitored by Russian ships disguised as trawlers.
MI5 found no evidence of this, but told him not to
use a walkie-talkie.

As Prime Minister, his opponents accused him of
deviousness, especially over the matter of
devaluation of the Pound Sterling|pound in
November 1967. Wilson had rejected devaluation for
many years, yet in his broadcast had seemed to
present it as a triumph.

During his first period of office, Wilson's
government set up the Open University, which he
would come to regard as his own greatest
achievement.

Overseas, Wilson was troubled by crises in several
of Britain's former colonies, especially Rhodesia
and South Africa.  Wilson gave diplomatic support
but resisted pressure for military support to the
United States in the Vietnam War. In addition to
the damage done to its reputation by devaluation,
Wilson's Government suffered from the perception
that its response to industrial relations problems
was inadequate. A six-week strike of members of
the National Union of Seamen, which began shortly
after Wilson' re-election in 1966, did much to
reinforce this perception, along with Wilson's own
sense of insecurity in office. 

In 1967, Wilson sued pop group The Move for libel
after the band's manager published a promotional
postcard for the single Flowers In The Rain, which
featured a cartoon caricature that depicted Wilson
in bed with his reputed mistress. Wilson won the
case and all royalties from the song (composed by
Roy Wood), were assigned to a charity of Wilson's
choosing. Remarkably, this arrangement remains in
place a decade after Wilson's death. 

By 1969 the Labour Party was suffering serious
mid-term electoral reverses.  In June 1970, Wilson
responded to an apparent recovery in his
government's popularity by calling a general
election, but, to the surprise of almost all
observers, was swept from power on a tide of
anti-Labour feeling.  Despite the shock defeat,
Wilson survived as leader of the party and
returned to 10 Downing Street in 1974, after his
successor, Edward Heath, had failed to deal
adequately with problems similar to those he had
faced. He was elected in United Kingdom general
election, February 1974|February 1974 in a
minority Labour Government, gaining a majority in
another election shortly afterwards United Kingdom
general election, October 1974|October 1974. It
was a manifesto pledge in the general election of
February 1974 for a Labour government to
re-negotiate better terms for Britain in the EEC,
and then hold a referendum on whether Britain
should stay in the EEC on the new terms. After the
House of Commons voted in favour of retaining the
Common Market on the renegotiated terms, a United
Kingdom referendum, 1975|referendum was held on 5
June 1975. A majority were in favour of retaining
the Common Market.

Wilson coined the term Selsdon man  to refer to
the anti-interventionist policies of the
Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative leader Edward
Heath developed at the Selsdon Park Hotel in early
1970. This phrase, intended by Wilson to evoke the
"primitive throwback" qualities of anthropological
discoveries such as Piltdown Man and Homo
erectus|Swanscombe Man, was part of a British
political tradition of referring to political
trends by suffixing man (e.g. Essex man, Orpington
(UK Parliament constituency)|Orpington man).
Wilson's most famous attributed quote is 'A week
is a long time in politics' around the time of the
devaluation of the pound – this is taken to
mean that a government doing badly at the
beginning of a week may be doing well at the end
and vice-versa. Other memorable phrases attributed
to Wilson include the comment he made to attempt
to reassure the British public after the 1967
devaluation of the pound: "This does not mean that
the pound here in Britain — in your pocket
or purse — is worth any less...", usually
now quoted as "the pound in your pocket". 

In May 1974 he condemned the Unionists
(Ireland)|unionist-controlled Ulster Workers'
Strike as a "Sectarianism|sectarian strike" which
was "being done for sectarian purposes having no
relation to this century but only to the
seventeenth century". However he refused to
pressure a reluctant British Army to face down the
loyalist paramilitaries who were intimidating
utility workers. In a later television speech he
referred to the "loyalist" strikers and their
supporters as "spongers" who expected Britain to
pay for their lifestyles. The strike was
eventually successful in collapsing the
power-sharing Northern Ireland executive,
prompting Idi Amin to telegram Wilson, offering to
host a peace conference in Uganda.

In September 1971, Wilson outlined his plans to
unite Ireland, in response to the worsening The
Troubles|political situation there. He set a
target of 1986 for the British withdrawal.
However, on his return to power, he did not act on
these plans.

==Resignation==

On 16 March  1976, Wilson shocked the nation by
announcing his resignation as Prime Minister and
his intention to retire from politics altogether.
He claimed that this was a step he had always
planned to take when he reached the age of sixty
and that he was physically and mentally exhausted.
As early as the late 1960s, he had been telling
intimates that he did not intend to serve more
than eight or nine years as Prime Minister. But he
was probably also aware that he was suffering from
the first stages of early-onset Alzheimer's
disease as both his memory and powers of
concentration, which up until this point had been
excellent, were now starting to fail him
drastically.

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom|Queen Elizabeth
II came to dine at 10 Downing Street to mark his
resignation, an honour she has bestowed on only
one other Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Wilson's resignation honours list included many
businessmen and showbusiness stars along with his
political supporters, and caused lasting damage to
his reputation when it was revealed that the first
draft of the list had been written by Marcia
Williams on lavender notepaper (it became known as
the lavender list). Some of those Wilson honoured
were later revealed to have been corrupt,
including Joseph Kagan, Baron Kagan|Lord Kagan,
who went to jail for fraud, and Sir Eric Miller,
who committed suicide while under investigation.

Tony Benn, James Callaghan, Anthony Crosland,
Michael Foot, Denis Healey and Roy Jenkins stood
in the first ballot to replace him. Jenkins was
initially tipped as the favourite but came third
on the initial ballot. In the final ballot, on the
evening of 5 April, Callaghan defeated Foot by 176
parliamentary votes to 137 and became Wilson's
successor as Prime Minister and Leader of the
Labour Party.

As Wilson wished to remain an MP after leaving
office, he was not immediately given the peerage
customarily offered to retired Prime Ministers,
but instead was created a Order of the
Garter|Knight of the Garter.  On leaving the House
of Commons in 1983 he was created Baron Wilson of
Rievaulx, of Kirklees in the County of West
Yorkshire.

==Death==
Not long after Lord Wilson of Rievaulx's
retirement, his mental deterioration from
Alzheimer's disease began to be apparent. He
rarely appeared in public after 1985 and died of
colon cancer in 1995, at the age of 79. He is
buried on St Mary's, Isles of Scilly|St Mary's,
Isles of Scilly.

==MI5 plot?==
In 1963, Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is said
to have secretly claimed that Wilson was a KGB
agent. The majority of intelligence officers did
not believe that Golitsyn was a genuine defector
but a significant number did (most prominently
James Jesus Angleton, the Deputy Director of
Counter-intelligence|Counter-Intelligence at the
Central Intelligence Agency|CIA) and factional
strife broke out between the two groups. The book
Spycatcher (an exposé of MI5) alleged that 30 MI5
agents then collaborated in an attempt to
undermine Wilson. The author Peter Wright (a
former member of MI5) later claimed that his
ghostwriter had written 30 when he had meant 3.
Many of Wright's claims are controversial, and a
ministerial statement has been made that an
internal investigation failed to find any evidence
to support the allegations. In March 1987, James
Miller, a former MI5 agent, claimed that MI5 had
encouraged the Ulster Worker's Council general
strike in 1974 in order to destabilise Wilson's
Government.

Main article: Harold Wilson conspiracy theories

==Other conspiracy theories==

Wilson's Government took punitive action against
the controversial Church of Scientology in 1967,
banning foreign Scientologists from entering the
UK (a prohibition which remained in force until
1980). In response, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's
founder, accused Wilson of being in cahoots with
Soviet Russia and an international conspiracy of
psychiatrists and financiers:

:Our enemies are less than twelve men. They are
members of the Bank of England and other higher
financial circles. They own and control newspaper
chains and they, oddly enough, run all the mental
health groups in the world that had sprung up ... 

:Their apparent programme was to use mental
health, which is to say psychiatric electric shock
and pre-frontal lobotomy, to remove from their
path any political dissenters ... These fellows
have gotten nearly every government in the world
to owe them considerable quantities of money
through various chicaneries and they control, of
course, income tax, government finance —
(Harold) Wilson, for instance, the current Premier
of England, is totally involved with these fellows
and talks about nothing else actually. (Hubbard,
Ron's Journal 67
http://www.solitarytrees.net/cowen/misc/psywar.htm
).

Hubbard fell some way short of convincing the
British public of Wilson's supposed involvement in
the mysterious "Tenyaka memorial" conspiracy,
despite lurid denunciations published by the
Church of Scientology, although Wilson's Minister
of Health, Kenneth Robinson, did succeed in
winning a libel lawsuit against the Church and
Hubbard.

==Harold Wilson's First Cabinet 1964-1970==
*Harold Wilson - Prime Minister
*Gerald Gardiner, Baron Gardiner|Lord Gardiner -
Lord Chancellor
*Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford|Lord
Longford (1964-1965) - Lord Privy Seal
*Frank Soskice (1965-1966)
*Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford|Earl of
Longford (1966-1968)
*Edward Shackleton, Baron Shackleton|Lord
Shackleton (1968)
*Fred Peart, Baron Peart|Fred Peart (1968)
*Edward Shackleton, Baron Shackleton|Lord
Shackleton (1968-1970)
*George Brown, Baron George-Brown|George Brown
(1964-1966) - First Secretary of State
*Michael Stewart (1966-1968)
*Barbara Castle (1968-1970)
*Herbert Bowden (1964-1966) - Lord President of
the Council
*Richard Crossman (1966-1968)
*Fred Peart, Baron Peart|Fred Peart (1968-1970)   
   
*James Callaghan (1964-1967) - Chancellor of the
Exchequer
*Roy Jenkins (1967-1970)
*Jack Diamond (1968-1970) - Chief Secretary to the
Treasury
*George Brown, Baron George-Brown|George Brown
(1964-1966) - Secretary of State for Economic
Affairs
*Michael Stewart (1966-1967)
*Peter Shore (1967-1969)
*Patrick Gordon Walker (1964-1965) - Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs
*Michael Stewart (1965-1966)
*George Brown, Baron George-Brown|George Brown
(1966-1968)
*Michael Stewart (1968-1970) - Secretary of State
for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
*Frank Soskice (1964-1965) - Secretary of State
for the Home Department
*Roy Jenkins (1965-1967)
*James Callaghan (1967-1970)
*Fred Peart, Baron Peart|Fred Peart (1964-1968) -
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
*Cledwyn Hughes (1968-1970)
*Anthony Greenwood (1964-1965) - Secretary of
State for the Colonies
*Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford|Earl of
Longford (1965-1966)
*Frederick Lee (1966-1967)
*Arthur Bottomley (1964-1966) - Secretary of State
for Commonwealth Affairs 
*Herbert Bowden (1966-1967)
*George Morgan Thompson (1967-1968)
*Denis Healey  (1964-1970) - Secretary of State
for Defence
*Michael Stewart (1964-1965) - Secretary of State
for Education and Science
*Anthony Crosland (1965-1967)
*Patrick Gordon Walker (1967-1968)
*Edward Short (1968-1970)
*Richard Crossman (1968-1970) - Secretary of State
for Health and Social Security
*Richard Crossman (1964-1966) - Minister of
Housing and Local Government
*Anthony Greenwood (1966-1969)
*Barbara Castle (1964-1965) - Minister for
Overseas Development
*Anthony Greenwood (1965-1966)
*Arthur Bottomley (1966-1967)
*Ray Gunter (1964-1968) - Minister of Labour
*Barbara Castle (1968-1970) - Secretary of State
for Employment
*Douglas Houghton (1964-1966) - Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster
*George Morgan Thompson (1969-1970)
*Anthony Crosland (1969-1970) - Secretary of State
for Local Government and Regional Planning
*Edward Shackleton, Baron Shackleton|Lord
Shackleton (1968) - Paymaster-General
*Judith Hart (1968-1969)
*Harold Lever (1969-1970)
*Douglas Houghton (1966-1967) - Minister without
Portfolio
*Patrick Gordon Walker (1967)
*George Morgan Thompson (1968-1969)
*Peter Shore (1969-1970)
*Frederick Lee (1964-1966) - Minister of Power
*Richard Marsh, Baron Marsh|Richard Marsh
(1966-1968)
*Ray Gunter (1968)
*Roy Mason (1968-1969)
*William Ross (Scottish politician)|William Ross 
(1964-1970) - Secretary of State for Scotland
*Frank Cousins  (1964-1966) - Secretary of State
for Technology
*Tony Benn (1966-1970)
*Douglas Jay (1964-1967) - President of the Board
of Trade
*Anthony Crosland (1967-1969)
*Roy Mason (1969-1970)
*Thomas Fraser (1964-1965) - Minister of Transport
*Barbara Castle (1965-1968)
*Richard Marsh, Baron Marsh|Richard Marsh
(1968-1969)
*Jim Griffiths (1964-1966) - Secretary of State
for Wales
*Cledwyn Hughes (1966-1968)
*George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy|George
Thomas (1968-1970)

==Harold Wilson's Second Government March 1974 -
April 1976==
*Harold Wilson - Prime Minister
*Elwyn Jones|Lord Elwyn-Jones - Lord Chancellor
*Edward Short - Lord President of the Council
*Lord Shepherd - Lord Privy Seal
*Denis Healey - Chancellor of the Exchequer
*James Callaghan - Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs|Foreign Secretary
*Roy Jenkins - Secretary of State for the Home
Department|Home Secretary
*Fred Peart - Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food
*Roy Mason - Secretary of State for Defence
*Reginald Prentice - Secretary of State for
Education and Science
*Michael Foot - Secretary of State for Employment
*Eric Varley - Secretary of State for Energy
*Anthony Crosland - Secretary of State for the
Environment
*Barbara Castle - Secretary of State for Health
and Social Security
*Tony Benn - Secretary of State for Industry
*Harold Lever - Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster
*Merlyn Rees - Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland
*Shirley Williams - Secretary of State for Prices
and Consumer Protection
*Peter Shore - Secretary of State for Trade
*John Morris - Secretary of State for Wales
*Robert Mellish - Chief Whip

===Changes===
*October 1974 - John Silkin although working to
the Secretary of State for Environment enters the
cabinet as Minister of Planning and Local
Government.
*June 1975 - Fred Mulley succeeds Reginald
Prentice as Secretary for Education and Science. 
Prentice becomes Secretary for Overseas
Development.  Tony Benn succeeds Eric Varley as
Secretary for Energy.  Varley succeeds Benn as
Secretary for Industry.

==Titles from birth to death==

*Harold Wilson, Esq (11 March 1916-26 July 1945)
*Harold Wilson, Esq, MP (26 July 1945-1947)
*The Right Honourable Harold Wilson, MP (1947-6
December 1969)
*The Right Honourable Harold Wilson, FRS, MP (6
December 1969-?)
*The Right Honourable Harold Wilson, OBE, FRS, MP
(?-23 April 1976)
*The Right Honourable Sir Harold Wilson, KG, OBE,
FRS, MP (23 April 1976-9 June 1983)
*The Right Honourable Sir Harold Wilson, KG, OBE,
FRS (9 June-16 September 1983)
*The Right Honourable The Lord Wilson of Rievaulx,
KG, PC, OBE, FRS (16 September 1983-24 May 1995)

start box
succession box | title=President of the Board of
Trade | before=Stafford Cripps | after=Hartley
William Shawcross | years=1947–1951
succession box | title=Labour Party (UK)|Leader of
the British Labour Party | before=Hugh Gaitskell |
after=James Callaghan | years=1963–1976
succession box | title=Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom|Prime Minister | before=Alec
Douglas-Home|Sir Alec Douglas-Home | after=Edward
Heath | years=1964–1970
succession box | title=Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom|Prime Minister | before=Edward
Heath | after=James Callaghan |
years=1974–1976
end box

==See also==
*UK topics

	Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

This article is about the British politician.  For
the Olympic silver medallist, see Harold A.
Wilson.

The Right Honourable James Harold Wilson, Baron
Wilson of Rievaulx, Order of the Garter|KG, Order
of the British Empire|OBE, Royal Society|FRS,
Privy Council|PC (11 March 1916 – 24 May
1995) was one of the most successful Labour Party
(UK)|Labour Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom|Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and
a 1960s icon. Wilson is regarded by many as one of
the more intellectual politicians of the century.

==Birth and Early Life==
Wilson was born in Huddersfield in 1916, an almost
exact contemporary of his great rival, Edward
Heath. He came from a political family, his father
Herbert having been active in the Liberal Party
(UK)|Liberal Party and then having joined the
Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party. When Wilson was
eight, he visited London and a later-to-be-famous
photograph was taken of him standing on the
doorstep of 10 Downing Street.

Wilson passed the Eleven plus|11-plus examination
and won a scholarship to attend the local grammar
school. His education was disrupted in 1931 when
he contracted typhoid fever after drinking
contaminated milk on a Scouting|Scouts' outing and
took months to recover. The next year his father,
working as an industrial chemist, was made
redundant and moved to the Wirral to find work.
Wilson attended the sixth form at the local
grammar school, Wirral Grammar School for Boys,
where he became Head Boy. Wilson did well at
school and won a scholarship to study History at
Jesus College, Oxford from 1934.

At Oxford, Wilson was moderately active in
politics as a member of the Liberal Party
(UK)|Liberal Party but was later influenced by G.
D. H. Cole to join the Labour Party (UK)|Labour
Party. After his first year, he changed his field
of study to Philosophy, Politics and Economics,
and he graduated with an outstanding first class
degree. He continued in academia, becoming one of
the youngest Oxford University dons of the
century.

Wilson was a lecturer in Economics at New College,
Oxford|New College in 1937 and a lecturer in
Economic History at University College,
Oxford|University College from 1938 (and was a
fellow of the latter college, 1938-1945|45).  For
much of this time, he was a research assistant to
William Beveridge on unemployment and the trade
cycle.

On the outbreak of the World War II|Second World
War, Wilson volunteered for service but was
classed as a specialist and moved into the Civil
Service instead. Most of his War was spent as a
statistician and economist for the coal industry. 
He was Director of Economics and Statistics at the
Ministry of Fuel and Power, 1943-1944|4.  He was
to remain passionately interested in statistics
for the rest of his life.  As President of the
Board of Trade, he was the driving force behind
the Statistics of Trade Act 1947, which is still
the legal authority used to collect most economic
statistics in Great Britain.  As Prime Minister,
he was instrumental in appointing Claus Moser as
head of the Central Statistical Office.  He was
President of the Royal Statistical Society in
1972-1973|3.

==In Parliament==

As the War drew to an end, he began searching for
a seat to fight at the impending general election.
Eventually he was selected for Ormskirk, which was
then held by Stephen King-Hall. Wilson
accidentally agreed to be adopted as the candidate
immediately rather than delay until the election
was called, and was therefore compelled to resign
from the Civil Service. He used the time in
between to write A New Deal for Coal which used
his wartime experience to argue for
nationalization|nationalisation of the coal mines
on the basis of improved efficiency.

In the 1945 general election, Wilson won his seat
in line with the Labour landslide. To his surprise
he was immediately appointed to the government as
Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works.
Two years later he became Secretary for Overseas
Trade, in which capacity he made several trips to
the Soviet Union to negotiate supplies. Opponents
would later class these trips as suspicious.

On 14 October 1947 Wilson was appointed President
of the Board of Trade and became the youngest
member of the Cabinet in the 20th century. He took
a lead in abolishing some of the wartime
rationing, which he referred to as a "bonfire of
controls". In the general election of 1950, his
constituency was altered and he was narrowly
elected for the new seat of Huyton.

Wilson was becoming known as a left-wing
politics|left-winger and joined Aneurin Bevan in
resigning from the government in April 1951 in
protest at the introduction of National Health
Service|NHS medical charges in order to meet the
financial demands imposed on the budget by the
Korean War. After the Labour Party lost the
general election later that year, he was made
chairman of Bevan's "Keep Left" group, but shortly
thereafter he distanced himself from Bevan. By
coincidence, it was Bevan's further resignation
from the Shadow Cabinet in 1954 that put Wilson
back on the front bench.

==Opposition==

Wilson soon proved a very effective Shadow
Minister. One of his procedural moves caused the
loss of the Government's Finance Bill in 1955, and
his speeches as Shadow Chancellor from 1956 were
widely praised for their clarity and wit. He
coined the term "Gnomes of Zurich" to describe
Swiss bankers whom he accused of pushing the pound
down by speculation. In the meantime, he conducted
an inquiry into the Labour Party's organisation
following its defeat in the 1955 general election,
which made several useful recommendations for
improvements. Unusually, Wilson combined the job
of Chairman of the House of Commons Public
Accounts Committee with that of Shadow Chancellor
from 1959.

Wilson was still identified with the Left, and
launched an opportunistic but unsuccessful
challenge to the leader Hugh Gaitskell in 1960
after the Labour Party's 1959 defeat and
Gaitskell's unpopular move to ditch Clause Four.
He also challenged for the deputy leadership in
1962 but was defeated by George Brown, Baron
George-Brown|George Brown. Because of these
challenges, he was moved to the position of Shadow
Foreign Secretary.

Hugh Gaitskell died unexpectedly in January 1963,
just as the Labour Party had begun to unite and
look like it had a good chance of being elected to
government. Wilson became the left candidate for
the leadership, and defeated Brown. He coordinated
Labour's response to the Profumo Affair, in which
he made some political capital without getting the
party involved in the less salubrious aspects. At
the Labour Party conference later in 1963, he made
a very significant speech in which he claimed "the
Britain that will be forged in the white heat of
the scientific and technical revolution will have
no place for restrictive practices and outdated
measures on either side of industry". This speech
did much to set Wilson's reputation as a classless
technocrat.

==Prime Minister==
In 1964, Wilson narrowly won the general election
with a majority of five and became Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom|Prime Minister. This was not
sufficient to last for a full term and, after a
short period of competent government, in March
1966 he won re-election with a landslide majority
of 99. He was soon a familiar figure, known for
his Smoking pipe|pipe-smoking, his Gannex
raincoat, and his habit of taking holidays in the
Isles of Scilly.  On 1 June 2005 files were
released showing that Wilson was concerned that,
while on the Isles of Scilly, he was being
monitored by Russian ships disguised as trawlers.
MI5 found no evidence of this, but told him not to
use a walkie-talkie.

As Prime Minister, his opponents accused him of
deviousness, especially over the matter of
devaluation of the Pound Sterling|pound in
November 1967. Wilson had rejected devaluation for
many years, yet in his broadcast had seemed to
present it as a triumph.

During his first period of office, Wilson's
government set up the Open University, which he
would come to regard as his own greatest
achievement.

Overseas, Wilson was troubled by crises in several
of Britain's former colonies, especially Rhodesia
and South Africa.  Wilson gave diplomatic support
but resisted pressure for military support to the
United States in the Vietnam War. In addition to
the damage done to its reputation by devaluation,
Wilson's Government suffered from the perception
that its response to industrial relations problems
was inadequate. A six-week strike of members of
the National Union of Seamen, which began shortly
after Wilson' re-election in 1966, did much to
reinforce this perception, along with Wilson's own
sense of insecurity in office. 

In 1967, Wilson sued pop group The Move for libel
after the band's manager published a promotional
postcard for the single Flowers In The Rain, which
featured a cartoon caricature that depicted Wilson
in bed with his reputed mistress. Wilson won the
case and all royalties from the song (composed by
Roy Wood), were assigned to a charity of Wilson's
choosing. Remarkably, this arrangement remains in
place a decade after Wilson's death. 

By 1969 the Labour Party was suffering serious
mid-term electoral reverses.  In June 1970, Wilson
responded to an apparent recovery in his
government's popularity by calling a general
election, but, to the surprise of almost all
observers, was swept from power on a tide of
anti-Labour feeling.  Despite the shock defeat,
Wilson survived as leader of the party and
returned to 10 Downing Street in 1974, after his
successor, Edward Heath, had failed to deal
adequately with problems similar to those he had
faced. He was elected in United Kingdom general
election, February 1974|February 1974 in a
minority Labour Government, gaining a majority in
another election shortly afterwards United Kingdom
general election, October 1974|October 1974. It
was a manifesto pledge in the general election of
February 1974 for a Labour government to
re-negotiate better terms for Britain in the EEC,
and then hold a referendum on whether Britain
should stay in the EEC on the new terms. After the
House of Commons voted in favour of retaining the
Common Market on the renegotiated terms, a United
Kingdom referendum, 1975|referendum was held on 5
June 1975. A majority were in favour of retaining
the Common Market.

Wilson coined the term Selsdon man  to refer to
the anti-interventionist policies of the
Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative leader Edward
Heath developed at the Selsdon Park Hotel in early
1970. This phrase, intended by Wilson to evoke the
"primitive throwback" qualities of anthropological
discoveries such as Piltdown Man and Homo
erectus|Swanscombe Man, was part of a British
political tradition of referring to political
trends by suffixing man (e.g. Essex man, Orpington
(UK Parliament constituency)|Orpington man).
Wilson's most famous attributed quote is 'A week
is a long time in politics' around the time of the
devaluation of the pound – this is taken to
mean that a government doing badly at the
beginning of a week may be doing well at the end
and vice-versa. Other memorable phrases attributed
to Wilson include the comment he made to attempt
to reassure the British public after the 1967
devaluation of the pound: "This does not mean that
the pound here in Britain — in your pocket
or purse — is worth any less...", usually
now quoted as "the pound in your pocket". 

In May 1974 he condemned the Unionists
(Ireland)|unionist-controlled Ulster Workers'
Strike as a "Sectarianism|sectarian strike" which
was "being done for sectarian purposes having no
relation to this century but only to the
seventeenth century". However he refused to
pressure a reluctant British Army to face down the
loyalist paramilitaries who were intimidating
utility workers. In a later television speech he
referred to the "loyalist" strikers and their
supporters as "spongers" who expected Britain to
pay for their lifestyles. The strike was
eventually successful in collapsing the
power-sharing Northern Ireland executive,
prompting Idi Amin to telegram Wilson, offering to
host a peace conference in Uganda.

In September 1971, Wilson outlined his plans to
unite Ireland, in response to the worsening The
Troubles|political situation there. He set a
target of 1986 for the British withdrawal.
However, on his return to power, he did not act on
these plans.

==Resignation==

On 16 March  1976, Wilson shocked the nation by
announcing his resignation as Prime Minister and
his intention to retire from politics altogether.
He claimed that this was a step he had always
planned to take when he reached the age of sixty
and that he was physically and mentally exhausted.
As early as the late 1960s, he had been telling
intimates that he did not intend to serve more
than eight or nine years as Prime Minister. But he
was probably also aware that he was suffering from
the first stages of early-onset Alzheimer's
disease as both his memory and powers of
concentration, which up until this point had been
excellent, were now starting to fail him
drastically.

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom|Queen Elizabeth
II came to dine at 10 Downing Street to mark his
resignation, an honour she has bestowed on only
one other Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Wilson's resignation honours list included many
businessmen and showbusiness stars along with his
political supporters, and caused lasting damage to
his reputation when it was revealed that the first
draft of the list had been written by Marcia
Williams on lavender notepaper (it became known as
the lavender list). Some of those Wilson honoured
were later revealed to have been corrupt,
including Joseph Kagan, Baron Kagan|Lord Kagan,
who went to jail for fraud, and Sir Eric Miller,
who committed suicide while under investigation.

Tony Benn, James Callaghan, Anthony Crosland,
Michael Foot, Denis Healey and Roy Jenkins stood
in the first ballot to replace him. Jenkins was
initially tipped as the favourite but came third
on the initial ballot. In the final ballot, on the
evening of 5 April, Callaghan defeated Foot by 176
parliamentary votes to 137 and became Wilson's
successor as Prime Minister and Leader of the
Labour Party.

As Wilson wished to remain an MP after leaving
office, he was not immediately given the peerage
customarily offered to retired Prime Ministers,
but instead was created a Order of the
Garter|Knight of the Garter.  On leaving the House
of Commons in 1983 he was created Baron Wilson of
Rievaulx, of Kirklees in the County of West
Yorkshire.

==Death==
Not long after Lord Wilson of Rievaulx's
retirement, his mental deterioration from
Alzheimer's disease began to be apparent. He
rarely appeared in public after 1985 and died of
colon cancer in 1995, at the age of 79. He is
buried on St Mary's, Isles of Scilly|St Mary's,
Isles of Scilly.

==MI5 plot?==
In 1963, Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is said
to have secretly claimed that Wilson was a KGB
agent. The majority of intelligence officers did
not believe that Golitsyn was a genuine defector
but a significant number did (most prominently
James Jesus Angleton, the Deputy Director of
Counter-intelligence|Counter-Intelligence at the
Central Intelligence Agency|CIA) and factional
strife broke out between the two groups. The book
Spycatcher (an exposé of MI5) alleged that 30 MI5
agents then collaborated in an attempt to
undermine Wilson. The author Peter Wright (a
former member of MI5) later claimed that his
ghostwriter had written 30 when he had meant 3.
Many of Wright's claims are controversial, and a
ministerial statement has been made that an
internal investigation failed to find any evidence
to support the allegations. In March 1987, James
Miller, a former MI5 agent, claimed that MI5 had
encouraged the Ulster Worker's Council general
strike in 1974 in order to destabilise Wilson's
Government.

Main article: Harold Wilson conspiracy theories

==Other conspiracy theories==

Wilson's Government took punitive action against
the controversial Church of Scientology in 1967,
banning foreign Scientologists from entering the
UK (a prohibition which remained in force until
1980). In response, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's
founder, accused Wilson of being in cahoots with
Soviet Russia and an international conspiracy of
psychiatrists and financiers:

:Our enemies are less than twelve men. They are
members of the Bank of England and other higher
financial circles. They own and control newspaper
chains and they, oddly enough, run all the mental
health groups in the world that had sprung up ... 

:Their apparent programme was to use mental
health, which is to say psychiatric electric shock
and pre-frontal lobotomy, to remove from their
path any political dissenters ... These fellows
have gotten nearly every government in the world
to owe them considerable quantities of money
through various chicaneries and they control, of
course, income tax, government finance —
(Harold) Wilson, for instance, the current Premier
of England, is totally involved with these fellows
and talks about nothing else actually. (Hubbard,
Ron's Journal 67
http://www.solitarytrees.net/cowen/misc/psywar.htm
).

Hubbard fell some way short of convincing the
British public of Wilson's supposed involvement in
the mysterious "Tenyaka memorial" conspiracy,
despite lurid denunciations published by the
Church of Scientology, although Wilson's Minister
of Health, Kenneth Robinson, did succeed in
winning a libel lawsuit against the Church and
Hubbard.

==Harold Wilson's First Cabinet 1964-1970==
*Harold Wilson - Prime Minister
*Gerald Gardiner, Baron Gardiner|Lord Gardiner -
Lord Chancellor
*Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford|Lord
Longford (1964-1965) - Lord Privy Seal
*Frank Soskice (1965-1966)
*Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford|Earl of
Longford (1966-1968)
*Edward Shackleton, Baron Shackleton|Lord
Shackleton (1968)
*Fred Peart, Baron Peart|Fred Peart (1968)
*Edward Shackleton, Baron Shackleton|Lord
Shackleton (1968-1970)
*George Brown, Baron George-Brown|George Brown
(1964-1966) - First Secretary of State
*Michael Stewart (1966-1968)
*Barbara Castle (1968-1970)
*Herbert Bowden (1964-1966) - Lord President of
the Council
*Richard Crossman (1966-1968)
*Fred Peart, Baron Peart|Fred Peart (1968-1970)   
   
*James Callaghan (1964-1967) - Chancellor of the
Exchequer
*Roy Jenkins (1967-1970)
*Jack Diamond (1968-1970) - Chief Secretary to the
Treasury
*George Brown, Baron George-Brown|George Brown
(1964-1966) - Secretary of State for Economic
Affairs
*Michael Stewart (1966-1967)
*Peter Shore (1967-1969)
*Patrick Gordon Walker (1964-1965) - Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs
*Michael Stewart (1965-1966)
*George Brown, Baron George-Brown|George Brown
(1966-1968)
*Michael Stewart (1968-1970) - Secretary of State
for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
*Frank Soskice (1964-1965) - Secretary of State
for the Home Department
*Roy Jenkins (1965-1967)
*James Callaghan (1967-1970)
*Fred Peart, Baron Peart|Fred Peart (1964-1968) -
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
*Cledwyn Hughes (1968-1970)
*Anthony Greenwood (1964-1965) - Secretary of
State for the Colonies
*Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford|Earl of
Longford (1965-1966)
*Frederick Lee (1966-1967)
*Arthur Bottomley (1964-1966) - Secretary of State
for Commonwealth Affairs 
*Herbert Bowden (1966-1967)
*George Morgan Thompson (1967-1968)
*Denis Healey  (1964-1970) - Secretary of State
for Defence
*Michael Stewart (1964-1965) - Secretary of State
for Education and Science
*Anthony Crosland (1965-1967)
*Patrick Gordon Walker (1967-1968)
*Edward Short (1968-1970)
*Richard Crossman (1968-1970) - Secretary of State
for Health and Social Security
*Richard Crossman (1964-1966) - Minister of
Housing and Local Government
*Anthony Greenwood (1966-1969)
*Barbara Castle (1964-1965) - Minister for
Overseas Development
*Anthony Greenwood (1965-1966)
*Arthur Bottomley (1966-1967)
*Ray Gunter (1964-1968) - Minister of Labour
*Barbara Castle (1968-1970) - Secretary of State
for Employment
*Douglas Houghton (1964-1966) - Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster
*George Morgan Thompson (1969-1970)
*Anthony Crosland (1969-1970) - Secretary of State
for Local Government and Regional Planning
*Edward Shackleton, Baron Shackleton|Lord
Shackleton (1968) - Paymaster-General
*Judith Hart (1968-1969)
*Harold Lever (1969-1970)
*Douglas Houghton (1966-1967) - Minister without
Portfolio
*Patrick Gordon Walker (1967)
*George Morgan Thompson (1968-1969)
*Peter Shore (1969-1970)
*Frederick Lee (1964-1966) - Minister of Power
*Richard Marsh, Baron Marsh|Richard Marsh
(1966-1968)
*Ray Gunter (1968)
*Roy Mason (1968-1969)
*William Ross (Scottish politician)|William Ross 
(1964-1970) - Secretary of State for Scotland
*Frank Cousins  (1964-1966) - Secretary of State
for Technology
*Tony Benn (1966-1970)
*Douglas Jay (1964-1967) - President of the Board
of Trade
*Anthony Crosland (1967-1969)
*Roy Mason (1969-1970)
*Thomas Fraser (1964-1965) - Minister of Transport
*Barbara Castle (1965-1968)
*Richard Marsh, Baron Marsh|Richard Marsh
(1968-1969)
*Jim Griffiths (1964-1966) - Secretary of State
for Wales
*Cledwyn Hughes (1966-1968)
*George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy|George
Thomas (1968-1970)

==Harold Wilson's Second Government March 1974 -
April 1976==
*Harold Wilson - Prime Minister
*Elwyn Jones|Lord Elwyn-Jones - Lord Chancellor
*Edward Short - Lord President of the Council
*Lord Shepherd - Lord Privy Seal
*Denis Healey - Chancellor of the Exchequer
*James Callaghan - Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs|Foreign Secretary
*Roy Jenkins - Secretary of State for the Home
Department|Home Secretary
*Fred Peart - Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food
*Roy Mason - Secretary of State for Defence
*Reginald Prentice - Secretary of State for
Education and Science
*Michael Foot - Secretary of State for Employment
*Eric Varley - Secretary of State for Energy
*Anthony Crosland - Secretary of State for the
Environment
*Barbara Castle - Secretary of State for Health
and Social Security
*Tony Benn - Secretary of State for Industry
*Harold Lever - Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster
*Merlyn Rees - Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland
*Shirley Williams - Secretary of State for Prices
and Consumer Protection
*Peter Shore - Secretary of State for Trade
*John Morris - Secretary of State for Wales
*Robert Mellish - Chief Whip

===Changes===
*October 1974 - John Silkin although working to
the Secretary of State for Environment enters the
cabinet as Minister of Planning and Local
Government.
*June 1975 - Fred Mulley succeeds Reginald
Prentice as Secretary for Education and Science. 
Prentice becomes Secretary for Overseas
Development.  Tony Benn succeeds Eric Varley as
Secretary for Energy.  Varley succeeds Benn as
Secretary for Industry.

==Titles from birth to death==

*Harold Wilson, Esq (11 March 1916-26 July 1945)
*Harold Wilson, Esq, MP (26 July 1945-1947)
*The Right Honourable Harold Wilson, MP (1947-6
December 1969)
*The Right Honourable Harold Wilson, FRS, MP (6
December 1969-?)
*The Right Honourable Harold Wilson, OBE, FRS, MP
(?-23 April 1976)
*The Right Honourable Sir Harold Wilson, KG, OBE,
FRS, MP (23 April 1976-9 June 1983)
*The Right Honourable Sir Harold Wilson, KG, OBE,
FRS (9 June-16 September 1983)
*The Right Honourable The Lord Wilson of Rievaulx,
KG, PC, OBE, FRS (16 September 1983-24 May 1995)

start box
succession box | title=President of the Board of
Trade | before=Stafford Cripps | after=Hartley
William Shawcross | years=1947–1951
succession box | title=Labour Party (UK)|Leader of
the British Labour Party | before=Hugh Gaitskell |
after=James Callaghan | years=1963–1976
succession box | title=Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom|Prime Minister | before=Alec
Douglas-Home|Sir Alec Douglas-Home | after=Edward
Heath | years=1964–1970
succession box | title=Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom|Prime Minister | before=Edward
Heath | after=James Callaghan |
years=1974–1976
end box

==See also==
*UK topics