4. Harold Wilson
“Since Harold Wilson’s stock has plummeted so sharply for
so long, one can only suppose that it will someday register an upward
movement. It is likely, indeed probable,
that historians will take a more charitable and compassionate view of his
career and achievements than do commentators who delight in trampling on a man
when he is down.”
Kenneth O Morgan, quoted in Reappraising Harold Wilson, Andrew Crines and Kevin
Hickson, Fabian Society 7 March 2016
“Wilson’s first administration was one of the great
reforming governments in British history. Without the prime minister’s
blessing, parliamentary time would never have been found to abolish capital
punishment, liberalise the laws on homosexuality, divorce and abortion, or for
the first positive action to promote racial equality. We should think of Wilson
as the architect of social reform.”
Roy Hattersley, Harold Wilson: The Winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds review – a
second look at the victorious Labour leader, The Guardian 10 October 2022
“This is government of the people, it is government for all
the people.”
Harold Wilson, Labour Party Conference speech 28 September 1965, quoted in The
Times 29 September 1965
Cards on the table, my favourite Prime Minister.
What made
Harold Wilson’s two tenures as Prime Minister great, is that they fundamentally
liberalised Britain for the better, against great opposition, in such a way that we
take many of his achievements for granted nowadays. That it shouldn’t be
against the law to be gay, that we lack a death penalty, that there are laws
against sexual and racial discrimination, all of these seem key parts of
British society. Yet, even as he delivered one of the most progressive
governments on record, Harold Wilson was sniped by his own colleagues
who claimed he wasn’t left wing enough, by the press who wrote Chinese whispers
about his true allegiances, and by a group of vested interests who even
threatened a coup.
So many achievements under Wilson it’s hard to know where to begin. The right to education for disabled children, Mobility Allowance, the legal right to have guide dogs for the blind and the requirement of disability access to major buildings is a starting point. Disability rights were strongly championed by this government, backed by deaf Stoke MP Jack Ashley, the future father-in-law of Andrew Marr. (Alf Morris later went on record that the Disabled Persons Act became law because Wilson put his full weight behind it.) Decolonisation continued a pace with the independence of Singapore, Botswana, Lesotho, Kenya, Barbados, Malawi, Mauritius, Guyana, Tanzania, Tonga, and Gambia. Mauritius, in particularly, was a great success story as an independent country, being one of the most democratic, progressive societies in the world today. (Although more on that story in a moment.)
Dumping at sea was banned. The Brighton Marina created. River
pollution clean-up intensified. The first British gun control laws were
introduced, with a ban on home ownership of rocket launchers, and rifles and
fully automatics were also banned from sale to the public. The flood warning
system was put in place, and, after the horrific events of Aberfan, when a mine
slurry mountain collapsed on a school, killing over a 140 people, including 116
children, mine and quarry tip safety regulation was brought in with the
Quarries Act.
There were pensions guaranteed to the widows of teachers who
died while working, protections to dock workers employment, redundancy pay and
protections from eviction. There was an increase in the Polytechnique's and
comprehensive schools. A vast increase in teachers trained. Education was paid
for by the increasing of taxes in 1975, and in a curious twist, Wilson
introduced tax breaks but for the poorest earners rather than the rich. Sorry
about your luck, Mr Harrison.
There was the Caravan Sites Act, which was fairly unique
among British legislation for providing space for travellers to live rather
than evict them on some prejudicial NIMBYism. In theory. However, it is worth
noting that while this introduced land for travellers to live on, it also
penalised them if they were on land not officially reserved for them. Councils,
to quote one source, would largely ignore the land providing message, banning
traditional “atchin tans”, knowing that any appeals would be tossed out by the
British court system. The tragic fact is that, despite these flaws, this is the
only law to provide “occasional carrots” for travelling minorities, and that
recent bills removed the few positives and beefed up all the negatives.
The Welsh language was officially protected. Breathalysers
were introduced. The Peregrine Falcon was officially a protected species and
rescued from extinction. Also protected were bats, the large blue butterfly,
and the natterjack toad.
Economics.
This torpedoed one of Wilson’s dreams, as he
wanted to reverse what he considered Hugh Gaitskell’s biggest folly and abolish
prescription charges. This he managed in 1965, making prescriptions free, but
the economic climate of the 1960s battered against most of his policies, and
this one had to be abandoned in 1968. We discussed the economic situation under
Jim Callaghan, but to reiterate, the British economy had been in various
degrees of struggle since World War Two, and under Clement Attlee, had aimed to
deal with the pound through devaluation. The lasting damage this caused the
Labour brand meant that it was the one decision Harold Wilson did not want to
take to deal with the looming economic issue. His government raised taxes, and
went for deflation and wage controls first. Then in 1967, the Six Day War
exacerbated all economic woes. The government went to the Americans for a
bailout. Wilson was told by the Johnson Administration that they would help
shore up the pound IF Wilson committed to British involvement in the Vietnam
War. Wilson refused, keeping Britain out of that war, and the Americans refused
to help the British economy. He was forced to announce devaluation of the pound
and did an infamous TV explanation about this not effecting the pound in your
pocket. (Yes, just the price of everything else!) Even as the economy rebounded
in the late 1960s, devaluation stuck to Wilson.
(Sixty years on, we can at least say thank goodness he kept
us out of the Vietnam War. We’ve seen what happens to bad wars when the British
join in, they get long, bloody and muddy. Wilson’s decisions probably led
directly to the war ending in the 1970s, instead of becoming an earlier version
of the never-ending Afghanistan conflict.)
Wilson would state in his memoirs that he felt the public
and the markets would not side with Labour if they devalued in 1964, as critics
suggested he should have done, and that they had to earn the credit with the
markets before doing such a thing. Liz Truss has recently tried to prove
Wilson’s suspicions about these matters correct.
Seat belts usage was made a requirement of British driving. In
an attempt to boost regional development and discourage centralisation, government
departments were moved away from London, with in particular the Inland Revenue
offices moving to Bootle in Merseyside, and the Royal Mint moving to Rhondda in
Wales. Both of those are common trick questions on Pointless,
incidentally. The Wilson government abolished
corporal punishment in prisons, while the Countryside Act protected common land
and village greens. He was the Village Green preservation society…
“(Open University students show) their willingness and
ability to absorb new ideas and to meet new intellectual challenges in the
course of each day’s study. In other words, I think we have created something
here going far beyond the ordinary standards of the old established
universities.”
Harold Wilson, Open Forum 24 (1979), One of Wilson’s greatest achievements,
Open University Digital Archive
Wilson called his finest creation that of the Open University.
Wilson had long been an advocate for the idea, backed by Jennie Lee and Michael
Young (Toby’s dad!). The concept of the Open University was to extend
university education, to allow adults who previously were unable to go to
university to study chosen subjects in their free time through an open
admissions policy. Wilson’s idea was that technological advances meant studying
could be done remotely by TV. This was considerably opposed, even in Cabinet,
but Wilson was committed 100% and it was his backing which proved crucial. Today,
the Open University has over 200, 000 students, who otherwise would have no
university education, and has inspired a number of open universities throughout
the world.
“The OU, for all its achievements as one of Europe’s leading
higher educational institutions, with more 170,00 students, is a Cinderella of
our higher educational system. One of the more inspiring afternoons in my life
was witnessing and speaking at an OU graduation ceremony. Up to the stage came
mature men and women who had studied, against the odds, to win themselves the
degree that circumstances had denied them when they were young. The uninhibited
cheers, the Mexican waves and the tears were not the stuff of your common or
garden graduation. One woman, partially disabled, had worked 15 years for her
degree; another was so intensely moved that she needed assistance to collect
her degree. You don’t often find so much good and heart on offer anywhere – and
I inwardly congratulated the greatly undervalued Harold Wilson, who had the
vision to found the institution despite widespread scepticism.”
Will Hutton, The Open University gave millions of Britons a second chance, Now
it needs one itself, The Guardian 14 April 2018
The foundation of the Girobank also revolutionised banking, as
the first British bank to offer telephone banking, interest rates on your
current account, and allowed easy access to money. As it was frequently used by
the working poor, it became demonised by the press who linked it to welfare payments.
In 2003, it merged in the Alliance and Leicester bank. (Alliance was a victim
of the 2008 crash and was bought out by Santander.) Despite this, many of its
revolutionary ideas are now widespread in European banking.
The 1964 Travel Concessions Act brought in OAP travel
concessions. The Wilson government cancelled British Rail debts and bailed out
British Leyland. After 100 years, abortion rights were re-enshrined in law.
Divorce law was reformed so that couples could get divorced without needing to
prove blame on the part of one of the parties, and after five years if only one
half wanted a divorce.
In 1737, Robert Walpole made it law that all plays performed
in Britain needed to be checked by the Lord Chamberlain, and any bits the
government didn’t like would be censored out. This interference continued until
1968, when the Wilson government brought in the Theatres Act, aided by Laurence
Olivier, Kenneth Tynan and a few public court causes over obscenity.
Adopted children were also given the same legal protections
enjoyed by children living with their birth parents, and child benefit was
introduced. There was Urban renewal, raised benefits and pensions and the Doctors
Charter. The introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 meant that women were no
longer allowed, by law, to be given disfavourable income next to a man doing
the same job. There was also the Sex Discrimination Act and the Race Discrimination
Act, both which aimed to cut down on prejudice and persecution. Workers
protections gave easier access to unemployed workers gaining benefits and
beefed up the Health and Safety legislation.
This is not to claim the Wilson years were a perfect utopia
of civil rights progress. While sorting out Mauritius independence in 1965, the
British annexed the Chagos Archipelago to create a naval base for the
Americans, against the wishes of the Mauritian people who lived there. This is
still the case, even though the UN have ruled, repeatedly, that the Brits
illegally occupy this bit of Mauritius. In Place of Strife, an attempt to curb
union unrest, failed to pass Cabinet approval, and the end result was 40 years
of monetarism. Many of the proposals within (such as balloting for a strike,
and settlements in industrial disputes) are now commonplace.
Southern Rhodesia remained an unsolved issue throughout that tenure, as Wilson was unwilling to give Ian Smith independence, and Smith in return unilaterally declared it, leading to international sanctions. Wilson was attacked for not declaring war on Rhodesia, believing that the British would not stomach war against British ex-pats. (He was almost certainly correct.) Diplomatic talks between the two men were deconstructed by Wilson’s hatred of Smith, whom he viewed as a racist who wanted an apartheid state. Harold Wilson abhorred racists. When his friend Patrick Gordon Walker lost election in 1964, against someone who ran a racist dog whistling campaign, Wilson denounced the Tory winner as a parliamentary leper!
Wilson’s insistent stance
led to international support, though Smith continued to get aid from
South Africa. In 1972, Heath’s government worked on a Royal Commission deal in
the country but bearing in mind Wilson’s efforts to avoid legalising
apartheid, rejected the end deal after it was turned down by the black
majority. Eventually in 1980, the Lancaster House Agreement created the
framework for modern Zimbabwe. And yes, we know the rise and fall of Robert Mugabe was linked to Wilson’s actions in the 60s. But yet, so was a block on
the spread of official apartheid. There is a scenario where Rhodesia got its
independence in the 60s and therefore South Africa had an important ally, with
trade links to the UK. Racism is an evil. Harold Wilson was right to
fundamentally oppose it, even if it slowed diplomatic results.
An attempt to join the EEC in 1967 was vetoed by Charles de
Gaulle, who, yes, still hadn’t forgiven. The UK had to wait for the great
Frenchman to die before they got into that club. Two decades of battling to get
into the club, for those keeping score at home. When Wilson returned to
government in 1975, the country was in the EEC (via Ted Heath) and the Labour
Cabinet were deeply divided on remaining. Wilson’s solution was a referendum on
membership, and Cabinet members being allowed to pick sides freely. This
resulted in an overwhelming referendum result in favour of remaining in this
European union. (And yes, David Cameron did the exact same thing in 2016.)
“Harold Wilson never hesitated to tackle problems and he saw
them very clearly. He saw the problem of sterling in the late 1960s. He saw the
problem of Rhodesia and tried to resolve it. He not only kept us out of
Vietnam, but he saw the problems there and tried to bring peace. He saw the
problems of joining the European Community. My greatest regret was that we were
never able to come to an agreement about that key policy issue.”
Ted Heath, House of Commons 23 May 1995
The fissures in the Labour party’s tectonic plates, however,
took a much longer time to sort out, and the disagreements which started here,
which had been marshalled into a single whole by Wilson, were to cause the
party to split in opposition soon after. When you have so many strong
personalities, you need a viable ringleader to keep everything in its orbit,
and when Harold Wilson had to retire (he developed early on-set dementia soon
after his retirement in 1976), this opened up a vacuum that arguably wasn’t
filled until Tony Blair appeared on the scene over a decade later.
(This is not a slur on the late, great John Smith, but that poor man did die before he could lead Labour back into government.)
In Northern Ireland, Wilson sent in the troops, at the request
of the local government, and in the 1970s, he had this proposal to deal with
the Troubles:
“Mr. Wilson proposed that a commission, formed from all
parties in Britain, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, be set up to frame
a new constitution for a united Ireland to come into force 15 years after ratification
by all three Parliaments. The former British Prime Minister made it clear that
violence by the Irish Republican Army, the illegal group that seeks to unite
Ireland, would first have to end and that British troops would remain in
Northern Ireland until completion of the constitutional talks.”
Faulkner Rejects Wilson Plan for United Ireland, New York Times 27 November
1971 (page 2)
Roughly the Good Friday Agreement there, although Wilson’s
idea focused more heavily on reunification, which has, of writing in 2022, not
happened. Calling the Unionist side in Northern Ireland spongers in a TV
address after a highly publicised strike most likely didn’t help!
Other achievements by the Wilson Labour governments: The
Food Safety Act, consumer credit, financial assistance to Housing Associations,
meals on wheels for the elderly, rent reform, slum clearances*, the Trade
Descriptions Act, and the Countryside Commission.
*Yes, the slums needed to go. The issue came from local
decisions to get rid of the perfectly good stock and the amenities at the same
time, so they could build their rat infested tower blocks, which have now been
demolished and replaced by tenements and amenities once more!
The two greatest achievements of the Wilson government came
through private members bills. This allows critics to claim they weren’t so
much achievements of Wilson, while at the same time allowing Tony Blair and
Margaret Thatcher to take the credit for every achievement under their watch.
The abolition of the death penalty began through Sydney
Silverman’s bill, though the public groundwork against capital punishment had gained
momentum in the 1950s. There had been several famous causes of miscarriage of
justice. Derek Bentley was executed on a court's interpretation of the phrase
“let him have it”, when he didn’t even shoot anyone himself, and may have been
surrendering. Timothy Evans was wrongfully convicted of the murders of
notorious serial killer John Christie and hanged. When Christie was unmasked,
they couldn’t unkill Evans. And most famous of all, Ruth Ellis was hanged for
killing her abusive partner. Terry Deary in one of his Horrible Histories
quipped that the public were fine when dodgy characters like Christie were
executed but couldn’t stomach pretty blondes like Ruth Ellis being killed. And, well, he has a point.
There had been a 5-year moratorium planned before, which was
ended by the Second World War happening. Attlee tried to get abolition through
parliament but was defeated by the Lords.
So, when Sydney Silverman proposed the abolition, it passed
through the Commons, though less than half of the MPs voted on it. In 1965, the
death penalty was suspended, and in 1969, it was removed all together. (Apart
from treason and piracy, yes, but can you name any treasonous pirates executed
in the UK between 1965 and 1998, when the ECHR removed it from the statures?)
And the other great achievement of the Wilson government,
came through Leo Abse’s private bill. The legalisation of homosexuality. It had
some improvements needed – the legal age of consent was not equal to
heterosexuals, and Scotland and Northern Ireland dithered on legalisation until
the 1980s. But despite that, through
large parts of the UK, it was no longer a criminal offence to be gay. Yes, we began to teach people that
they had an inalienable right to be gay.
Because they do.
“Undoubtedly, as has been said, Harold Wilson will be
remembered in future centuries for the Open university, which he fought through
against great opposition. As the Prime Minister said, the Open university
provided opportunities for people who would never have had access to higher
education, including pensioners. I had fierce arguments with Harold Wilson, but
when I look back, they were family rows in a spirit of great friendship, and I
look back on him with enormous affection because all my ministerial offices,
except for the last one, I owe to him.”
Tony Benn, 23 May 1995
A few years ago, when Denis Healey died, I wrote a glowing
obituary for the Labour man. It stands equally as an epitaph for Harold Wilson.
Unfashionable as it is, I feel history will look back on
that tenure as the equal of Gladstone, Peel, Attlee or Asquith. Its greatest
achievement was to take things which were controversial then, but which we now
take for granted. Why shouldn’t gay relationships be legal? Why shouldn’t it be
illegal to discriminate on sexual or racial grounds? Why should we execute
criminals? Why must art be censored for morality or political reasons? The Wilson governments stood as a large progressive scythe cutting
through British life, despite the anguished shrieks from conservatives. And
now? We take these things as self-evident. The views of the Wilson government
are now the fabric of modern British society.
That is a legacy which lasts far longer than a term of
office.
3. Benjamin Disraeli
“A man who is never beaten. Every reverse, every defeat is
to him only an admonition to wait and catch his opportunity of retrieving his
position.”
William Gladstone, letter to Malcolm MacColl, 11 August 1877
“I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.”
Disraeli
Disraeli pushed through the Reform Act on self-interested
grounds, believing that, if he gave the working class the vote, they would vote
Tory to thank him. Instead, they voted in public favourite Gladstone. It has
been argued, fairly, that Benjamin Disraeli’s achievements came from a
political interest rather than a genuine interest in his fellow humans.
However, Abraham Lincoln’s finest achievements came from the starting point of
being a politician, not a humanitarian, and nobody sane is downplaying his
achievements.
Disraeli also set up the fall of one of his future
successors, by buying the Suez Canal. Events like that helped make him the
favourite of Queen Victoria, who made her stance on the long-standing
Disraeli/Gladstone feud by also hating William.
Disraeli ended public executions. He legalised peaceful
picketing and gave workers the right to sue employers. The 1878 Factories Act aimed
to give a wider control over all the earlier bits of factory legislation, and
legislated for mealtimes and shifts, banned children under the age of ten from
working, and made it law for kids to attend school until the age of fourteen. Children,
young adults and women were made protected persons in factory employment,
meaning they were no longer allowed to clean moving machinery. This backed up
protections set out in the Education Act (1876), which set out laws on school
attendance, and also set out bursaries (public guardians) who could support
parents who could not afford the school fees. This was to be done without any
financial or social harm to the parents and did not take away the parent’s
right to choose their child’s school. The law also funded the education of
children whose parents were unavailable, through death or “habit”. It also
provided parliamentary grants to schools to improve their quality of education.
The Food and Drugs Act (1875) also banned the adulteration
of food, prohibiting the sale of food and drink which had been things added to
them to improve the aesthetic look which could harm the eater. (If you are
confused, just think of Bart and the anti-freeze in the wine!) It also banned
selling drugs or food under false labelling, and appointed analysts to check food
to make sure it was safe for public consumption. Loans were given to cities so
they would build houses for the working classes, and the Public Health Act
repaired and created new safe sewers, and regulated the control of the water
supply, to cut down on the cholera which scourged Victorian England. It also
brought in Chief Medical Officers and sanitation inspection, as well as street
lighting!
Under Disraeli, there was also the Zulu War and the Second
Anglo-Afghan War, which killed thousands of people and now better known for all
the great war films made about them. There was also the Congress of Berlin,
which sought to organise the Balkans, by stripping down the power of the
Ottoman Empire, which had lost the Russo-Turkish War. Large parts of the Ottoman
Empire were split up, with some (Romania) becoming independent, and others
(Cyprus) becoming part of the British Empire. Otton von Bismarck had hoped it
would stabilise peace in the area, but it made Turkey angry, annoyed the
Russians who had wanted to win a whole bunch of land (history, so unique, eh?)
and created a bunch of borders which would set off a powder keg over thirty
years later, starting the First World War. (Though as European diplomacy was a
bunch of treaties between enemies who didn’t trust each other at this point, it
may have delayed the big war too.)
However, it is for doubling the franchise through the 1867
Reform Act that Benjamin Disraeli is best known. Disraeli thought it would
revive Conservatism by unleashed the small c conservative majority. They were a
minority government. In fact, the first election after the reforms saw a Liberal
majority of 120! There was also the irony that, having taken down the Liberal
government by attacking Gladstone’s reform ideas as too progressive, a series
of debates between the two rivals ended up in Disraeli’s reform act being more
liberal than the one he’d opposed!
But even with the accident of election, Disraeli did grow
the Conservative vote by half a million, and won his own majority in 1874. With
a safe parliament, he then continued to steer through reforms, and it is that
which places him in the top four.
2. Clement Attlee
“One has to pinch oneself to recall that until little more
than 100 years ago unemployment and old age often meant hunger, malnutrition
and destitution. Destitution meant the workhouse and the dreaded means test.
Death by starvation was not unknown in the early years of the 20th century. In
the 1890s, when Attlee was growing up, only one child in 270 went into
secondary education. In the pit villages of Yorkshire, the infant mortality
rate was 250 in every thousand – and this in what was then the richest and most
powerful country in the world. Add to that the destruction and misery wreaked
by the first world war and it’s evident what propelled Attlee into politics.”
Chris Mullin, Citizen Clem review – the unparalleled achievement of Labour
under Attlee, The Guardian 1 September 2016
“Never for one moment in those years of unprecedented
economic difficulty did he lose the vision which had launched him into national
politics—the vision of a social revolution. Fainter hearts than his would have
used the nation's economic difficulties as a reason for postponing social
advance. He felt, on the contrary, that the greater the economic difficulties,
the greater the need for social justice.”
Harold Wilson, House of Commons 23 October 1967 (HC Deb 23 October 1967 vol 751
cc1355-67)
How do you succinctly sum up a man whom many in Britain still
reference in revered tones?
Attlee's stewardship led to the creation of the modern
Welfare State, fulfilling Beveridge’s idea that the state should provide a
support structure and safety net “from cradle to grave”.
To get that far, he had to unite a most dysfunctional family.
The history of the Labour party is that of people from
various wings of the political spectrum, who are sometimes united enough by a
common cause to form a government.
This brings us to an old family friend. As he died in 1946,
and time travel has not yet been invented, I never met him, of course. And if time
travel was invented, you know I’d be YouTube uploading Fury from the Deep
faster than you could say Grandfather Paradox. It’s named that clearly because
my grandfather loved Fury from the Deep.
Anyhow, that’s not just a diversion, it’s the wrong half of the
family tree.
When he wasn’t being a close friend of the Collins family,
Jimmy Maxton was one of the most socialist politicians of his generation. If he
is known today, he is known for being the leader of the 1930s schism from the Labour party,
the Independent Labour Party. He’s known in my
family for his help when my Great Uncle Richard was jailed during World War Two
for being a conscientious objector. As an MP, one letter asking for help to his
friend Winston Churchill (you may have heard of him, he was a big deal at the
time) and Richard was out of jail. Maxton had been a conscientious objector
himself thirty years earlier.
Maxton’s great political views (other than a lifelong hatred
of Ramsay MacDonald) were in the need for universal education, a universal
health service, globalised trade to help the working classes, and a welfare
state. Sound familiar? He was pushing for such proposals since the start of the
20th Century. He wasn’t alone in these views. But there was a World
War, a Spanish Flu, a Depression, another World War, always something in the
way. And the voices for these progressive societal changes weren’t united.
And when Clement Attlee came into power, he had to balance
the Labour party stance of being both anti-appeasement and anti-rearmament.
(There is a reason most praise of Attlee starts in the 1940s!) During the World
War (Chamberlain ignored the rearmament denialism, you might have heard about
this) Attlee was Deputy Prime Minister, focused on home affairs.
Attlee’s Labour party took advantage of these positions of
power, in the same way the Liberal Democrats of 2010 didn’t. One of his
ministers, Arthur Greenwood, used their role to announce a committee which
would look into the UK’s social security. This was to be led by William
Beveridge, a liberal reformer who had worked with Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith
several decades earlier and had helped save many academics from the Nazis.
This Committee led to the publication of the Beveridge Report, which recommended
that the public got a square deal in life and that we should create some form
of National Health Service. It was the most popular political report since the
one detailing the future plans of Lady Godiva.
Attlee and Labour linked themselves to the Beveridge Report
like this writer to a Friday night cheeseburger, and the public responded by
voting Labour into power in 1945 in one of the biggest landslides in UK
political history. Even Harold MacMillan
lost his seat! If that was now, his career would be over and we’d never have
had it so good years later, we’d have Rab Butler defaulting his way to power.
(Some historians think Rab Butler is a great lost leader. I think if you have
three chances to take power, but fail to do so, you are not cut out to be a
leader.)
The Labour fringes responded to the landslide by plotting to
remove Attlee. As you know from history, this was a flop, and Attlee made their
designated replacement, Herbert Morrison, the deputy leader. He also made him
Leader of the House of Commons, which is the tiresome thankless role you give
to a nuisance you want to punish but keep in the Cabinet. Morrison wanted Attlee’s
job, and Attlee’s response was to hang onto it until both men were too old to
be leader.
By late 1945, Clement Attlee had seen off the plot and was
Labour Prime Minister. He had a mandate from the people, and had the Labour
movement as united as it had been in over twenty years. Even Jimmy Maxton
supported his old friend, seeing Britain on the verge of achieving many of his
dearly held principles, though sadly he died before seeing any of them
achieved.
You know the big three achievement of Attlee. The NHS, the
welfare state, and universal education. We’ll get to those in a moment.
But first, here’s a quick rundown on some of his government’s
other great achievements.
The creation of New Towns. A vast increase in house building,
with added rent subsidies for the working classes. Farmer subsidies, and the
abolition of that weird civil service marriage bar. The creation of the Ministry
of Education, and the Arts Council of Britain. The opening up of the borders
and the influx of what we know call the Windrush generation to Britain. The
independence of Burma (now Myanmar) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
Critics of Attlee’s government point to a lack of preparation
for the winter of 1947, the coldest on record until 2010, when there had to be
fuel rationing. (Hopefully this doesn’t turn out to be a timely reminder!) The
evacuation of Palestine, forced by various incidents against British soldiers
and nationals, lead to the current border issues in that part of the world
which remain unfixed to this day. (Although it feels like would be easier to
get the DUP to support Irish nationalism than to get both sides to agree to a
deal.) A rush to join in the Korean War nearly killed Granda Bob. There’s also
the independence and partition of India and Pakistan which, to be blunt, we
buggered up badly, to the cost of millions of lives. The British history in
India is so rubbish it’s a stunner they remain our allies to this day, frankly.
There’s also the Anglo-American loan, by which the Americans
bailed out the British economy with a near $4 billion dollar loan, to be paid
back at low interest rates. It was finally paid off in 2006. The British
economy was destroyed by the Second World War. We sent John Maynard Keynes, the
most famous economist of his generation, to the US with a begging bowl. Of his
generation? How many famous historical economists can folk still name today?
Keynes, Freidman, Adam Smith, maybe JK Galbraith? We’re not talking cast of
Eastenders here for a Pointless round. Anyhow, Keynes went to the US Congress,
and found them uneasy to help. A dying man, Keynes had to convince the sceptics
that the Brits hadn’t just elected a Communist government, and that it was in America’s
best interests to save the British economy. He agreed a loan, and came home to
Britain, where days later he died from a heart attack. His fixed interest rate
deal actually helped the UK in decades to come, when international interest
rates went nuts. The terms of the deal meant Attlee had to cut many of his
plans for government, and spending cuts were made to afford the payments.
But once you’ve been convinced to help an old ally out once,
you might as well do it again, and so in 1948, the Americans brought into
action their Marshall Plan, which gave grants to rebuild war torn Europe, and
improve the economies of Britain, France, Germany and others. (And also to
prevent the USSR taking over the damaged post-war countries.) The US then
pumped 3.2 billion more dollars into the UK economy between 1948 and 1951.
There was also widespread nationalisation of industry.
The big three then, in reverse order of popular acclamation.
Every child was, for the first time, given the right to free
secondary education. The school leaving age was raised to 15.
The Beveridge Report brought in the idea of “cradle to grave”
welfare. Now, it would be unfair not to hark back to the Liberal Reforms of the
1900s, and the work of Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith and Lloyd George in setting
the skeleton on which a full welfare state could be achieved. Indeed, Beveridge
was, as we mentioned, an advisor to that government. The Report marked want, idleness,
disease, ignorance and squalor as the five Great Evils of society. Ignorance meant
the school reforms.
The others were targeted with a number of social reforms. Wage
increases across the board. Family Allowances. The expansion of pensions, sick
pay and child benefit, and crucially, the exemption of those from taxation.
National insurance and social security became universal, open to everyone who
had need of support. The legal right to minimum work hours and holiday time was
introduced, as were several industrial health and safety rules, as well as a
five-day week brought in under the Miner’s Charter. The structures of welfare,
protecting the vulnerable from birth to death, became entrenched in law, and
remain there to this day.
And then there was the National Health Service. The idea that,
if you were sick, you could get universal health care. It took the fighting
skills of Nye Bevan, and the pragmatic skills of Nye Bevan to get the deal
done. (He dealt with opposition in the medical world by bribery.) In 1948, the
NHS was open for business. Immediately many working class people got their dentures. The concept of universal health care, that you don’t need to be able
to afford health care when your health declines, has been a cornerstone of
British society ever since. Even the most right wing of British governments
since have to declare the NHS is safe with them. It has been decried as a secular
religion by critics, but you can see why. All of us will be gravely ill at one
point in our lives. And the more bills posted on social media by Americans for everyday
treatment, the more of a “religion” universal health care theory will be!
Attlee championed one of the very few governments in world
history to actively improve the lives of every single citizen. And he did it,
despite leading Labour, a party so full of disagreeing big dogs that it ever
getting into power is a miracle in itself. Attlee managed it by overseeing long
Cabinet meetings, where everyone got to talk themselves out, then announcing that
they had agreed to some compromise on the matter. A critic called him a modest
man with much to be modest about. But that modest man changed Britain,
immeasurably for the better, and better than a million more charismatic leaders
could.
“Perhaps he was not cast in the mould of Winston Churchill
or Lloyd George. He had no oratorical pretensions. He had no magnetic
personality. But there resided in him practical qualities which I venture to
say—with the highest respect to other Prime 1366Ministers—were unmatched by
many of his predecessors. Clem Attlee's political intelligence was nurtured
among the poverty, misery and squalor of the East End of London. His intrusion
before the First World War into the arena of social well-being was based
exclusively on his desire to succour the poor, and to mitigate the harsh
severity of their existence.”
Manny Shinwell, 23 October 1967
As an old, retired man in the 1960s, he kept his progressive causes
close to his heart, and pushed for the legalisation of homosexuality. Harold Wilson
took the ball from Attlee and achieved many great things, but without Clement,
he wouldn’t have had the groundwork to achieve them.
1. William Ewart Gladstone
“All over the world, I will back the masses against the
classes.”
Gladstone, Liverpool speech June 1886
“If they can point out any statesman who can add dignity and
grandeur to the stature of Gladstone, let them produce him!”
John Bright, 22 April 1867
“That unprincipled maniac Gladstone…”
Benjamin Disraeli, Letter to Lord Derby 1878
William Gladstone was a man loved by the public but hated by
the monarch. A man who was so known as a genuine man of the people, that his
excuse for spending time with call girls (he claimed to be trying to convert them to his religious faith) was accepted on face value. A man whose life went from starting off as a
young rotten borough candidate, intended to vote in preservation of the slave trade, to
becomint the great humanitarian leader of his century. He took the reforms of
Grey, Peel, and Russell, and ran with them, creating the framework of modern
Britain. He was foiled in one of his greatest dreams (Irish home rule) and that
would create issues from then on, but, by every measurable device, William
Gladstone was a great man, and our greatest Prime Minister.
“My uncle Jimmy Bulloch was forgiving and just in reference
to the Union forces and could discuss all phases of the Civil War with entire fairness
and generosity. But in English politics he promptly became a Tory of the most
ultra-conservative school. Lincoln and Grant, he could admire, but he would not
listen to anything in favour of Mr. Gladstone. The only occasions on which I
ever shook his faith in me were when I would venture meekly to suggest that
some of the manifestly preposterous falsehoods about Mr. Gladstone could not be
true. My uncle was one of the best men I have ever known, and when I have sometimes
been tempted to wonder how good people can believe of me the unjust and
impossible things they do believe, I have consoled myself by thinking of Uncle Jimmy
Bulloch's perfectly sincere conviction that Gladstone was a man of quite
exceptional and nameless infamy in both public and private life.”
Theodore Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, 1913, published by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
Now, let’s focus on the elephant in the room first. Gladstone
did come from a family of slave owners. His father owned a sugar plantation. He
was given a Tory seat in 1832 to defend the family interests, and his maiden
speech was a defence of the slave trade. Slaves were the family business, they
were his dad’s business, and he was his father’s son. He was a young man in his
early 20s, and his education had been that of the British imperialist, with the
ideas that the slaves, before being freed, needed educated first!
In his 30s, he moved from his father's sphere of influence.
They disagreed on sugar tax, to the point where the older Gladstone wrote in
the Times slating his own son. His own views became increasingly progressive on
universal civil liberties, to the point where, as Chancellor in the 1860s, he
went against his own Prime Minister to public state his siding with the
American abolitionists and distaste in the Confederacy’s refusal to end American
slavery. When Palmerstone wanted to enter the US Civil War on the Confederacys
side, it was Gladstone who blocked it. He became in old age the
great anti-imperialist voice in Victorian Britain. He reminds me of a US
Senator, Robert Byrd, who went into politics to block the civil rights act, and
died, an old man in Democratic politics, an early and firm supporter of Barack
Obama. People can be horrible, horrible people but grow into something far greater than
they once were.
As Gladstone himself stated (cited in Morley’s Life of W.E.
Gladstone), “I was brought up to distrust and dislike liberty. I learned to
believe in it. That is the key to all my changes.”
There is no doubt that young Gladstone was a slave trade
apologist. There is also no doubt that older Gladstone became one of the
loudest anti-slavery voices in the Western political sphere, and a champion for what we now know as
basic human rights.
Your mileage may vary on which of these is the more
important legacy, and to what extent he merely shifted the ground for better, less blinkered people to succeed him in these aims but as a humanist, my belief is always that humans can
improve themselves. Otherwise, what’s the point?
“'... I am as fast bound to Ireland as Ulysses was to his
mast': so Gladstone wrote near the close of his long career to the Marquess of
Ripon, one of the few liberal peers of high rank and great wealth who remained
faithful to him when the party split over home rule in 1886.' The remark, and
the type of politician to whom it was addressed, are both significant.
Gladstone's obsession, as many writers have termed it, with the Irish question
came increasingly to dominate his political life during its latter, and much
more important, half.”
Gladstone and Ireland, E.D. Steele, Irish Historical Studies, vol 17 no 65
(March 1970), pp 58-88, Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd
We should also note that one of Gladstone’s biggest desires,
Home Rule for Ireland, was continual defeated in his lifetime. His attempts,
later in life, to push for devolved parliament in Ireland, likewise also failed.
He did manage to push the Land Act through, taking powers away from the Irish
landlords and fixing rent rates. This was seen as an attempt to kill Irish
nationalism by taking one of the key issues away, and as we all know, that
clearly worked very well.
The great reformer had pushed for the Reform Act, which was denounced
by Disraeli then immediately nicked. The 1872 reforms introduced the right to the
secret ballot, by which voters didn’t need to publicly declare who they had
voted for, and so were less likely to blackmailed by their employers or
landlords. He also legalised Trade Unions once more. In crime and punishment,
he abolished flogging, and brought in the High Court and Court of Appeal. The
University Tests Act allowed Catholics, non-Christians and non-religious folk
to become Professors and so on at Oxford and Cambridge. A mere 60 years after
Percy Shelley had been expelled from Oxford for promoting his pamphlet, The
Necessity of Atheism!
The Education Act protected the right to education for all
children up to the age of 12. It also financed the restoration of school
buildings and used public money to build many more. Which is why so many
British school buildings date from the 1870s. In that decade, the number of
schools in the UK expanded by four thousand. In his late 80s, in his final run
as Prime Minister, Gladstone brought in legal protections for blind and deaf
children having a right to an education too.
In the army, he ended the practice that you could become an
office by paying for the distinction. This and the rest of the Caldwell Reforms
were enacted in full. Bars on sectors of society joining the civil service
ended. Local government was likewise reformed.
“Perhaps what emerges most forcefully… is just how much
conscience the Victorian state had and at the same time how adaptable it could
be. The best example is that of Gladstone… Derek Schreuder's excellent essay on
this figure shows the extent to which Gladstone evolved from an idealist to a
pragmatist and the extent therefore to which Gladstonian "liberalism"
was "more a method than an ideology." But it was not easy; he finds
that Gladstone's effort to "draw conscience into the public life of the
Victorian state has about it the qualities of a heroic epic."
Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century, G.B. Tennyson, Studies in English Literature
1500-1900, vol 20 no 4, Nineteenth Century (Autumn 1980), pp 713-748 (The book
in question is Conscience of the Victorian State, edited by Peter Marsh)
The Third Reform Act in 1884 increased suffrage to male homeowners who paid rent, and also banned the concept of voting once and voting often.
(ie one person, one vote!) The increased electorate in Scotland this produced
helped bring about the Crofters Act, banning future Highland clearances!
Gladstone’s life spun nearly the entire 19th
Century, and his changing philosophy was the guiding light that changed Britain.
He was the most Victorian Prime Minister of them all, a man at equal points behind
the times, of the times, and far ahead of the times. This internal complication
of man remains the best metaphor for Britain as a country we’ve yet produced. You
don’t have the modern progressive movement without the Attlee and Wilson
reforms, you don’t have their movement without the Liberal reforms, and you don’t
have any of this without William Ewart Gladstone. He is the genesis point for
modern Britain, and if his political descendants are more liberal, more caring, better people, with views on
nationalism less complicated, then they are still achieving this in the shadow
of their patriarch. You might prefer Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee or David Tennant
as Doctor Who, but if William Hartnell hadn’t done such a great job, none of
them would have stood a chance. You might prefer some of the great reformers
and humanitarians of the past century. I’m on record as a big fan of Harold Wilson’s
achievements. But we get none of this, without the starting work of Gladstone,
a man who pushed to improve the greater lot of his fellow man and proved
himself willing to disagree with his own father and a powerful monarch, if he
felt it was in the common interest.
Incidentally, if you still have trouble with Gladstone’s earlier views on slavery, I understand fully. He had issues with his earlier views on slavery too, and I find it grimly amusing that, as we continue to struggle with the after-effects of colonialism, and the reparations debate continues, that we can look back to Gladstone’s views on slavery towards the latter half of his life, and his own proposal for dealing with the legacy of slavery.
He suggested reparations!
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