Harold Wilson

Andrew Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sheerman]

I fear my hon. Friend has stolen most of my thunder there, but I absolutely agree with him.

To set the scene, this very much neglected man was a great Prime Minister. People might remember the celebrations of Denis Healey’s life only two or three weeks ago. Denis Healey lived a vigorous life to a great old age and, in a sense, could look after and defend his record. He did that brilliantly right to the end of his life. I also knew Denis very well, as did some of my colleagues. Harold was cruelly struck down by a wicked onset of illness in his late 50s, when he was in his prime. He had to retire at the age of 60, stunning the political world and most people, who could not quite understand what was going on. He was a very ill man, and the nature of his illness was kept quiet out of respect for his wife, Mary, and his sons, Robin and Giles.

This is our opportunity, because 11 March 2016 will be the centenary of Harold Wilson’s birth. My colleague from the other side of the Pennines, my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), is in his place. We share Harold Wilson between Yorkshire and Lancashire, because Harold was never a Yorkshire Member of Parliament. He was the Member for Parliament for Ormskirk, originally, and then for Huyton.

We have a unique opportunity next year to celebrate Harold Wilson’s life. A small committee of Members want to ensure that all parliamentarians are aware of that date and that we honour his memory in a significant way, not only through lectures or great events. Mr Nuttall, you might remember my campaign three years ago for there to be a proper statue of Harold Wilson in the precincts of Westminster. It failed, because the Speaker’s Art Fund turned us down. Let us do it again, because it is quite wrong that in the Members’ Lobby there is just a small head and shoulders of Harold Wilson. It is about time we honoured him with a full statue.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I applaud and will support the work he is doing to commemorate this important centenary. Harold Wilson actually inspired my own lifelong devotion to the Labour party when I heard him speak at Reading town hall in the 1964 general election campaign. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the many remarkable things about Harold Wilson was his combination of high intellect and political skill with the common touch and the ability to inspire the trust of working people?

[Mr Sheerman]

My right hon. Friend, like me, was very much influenced by hearing Harold on the stump when we were young men. He had great repartee. I will come to that in a moment, but first I must remind everyone what a brilliant young boy Harold was.

Harold’s father was a works chemist and his mother was a schoolteacher. He went to Royds Hall school. In fact, he had a severe illness when he was a child, which affected his education but did not prevent him from going on to be a brilliant young scholar at Oxford. He started off doing a history degree and switched to philosophy, politics and economics. He became the youngest Oxford don at the age of 21—what a remarkable career. In his first year at university, he was recruited into the Labour party by G. D. H. Cole, one of the great founders of the labour movement. Later on, as a brilliant young academic, Harold, like much of that generation, gets involved in the war effort and becomes a key civil servant in it. He worked in a number of Ministries, including as a researcher for William Beveridge, the founder of the welfare state in so many ways. Harold was working on unemployment and the trade cycle, and worked at the Ministry of Fuel and Power.

When I first joined the House, I tried to look up Harold’s maiden speech, but he never made one; he was a Minister on the day he was elected. He was the youngest Cabinet Minister of the 20th century when he became President of the Board of Trade—what a remarkable man. Then, of course, when Hugh Gaitskell died, which was a great tragedy because he was a relatively young man, Harold Wilson, from the left of the Labour party, became the leader of the Labour party.

In that very year, 1963, he makes the “white heat of technology” speech to the Scarborough Labour party conference that transforms how people think about the future of our country’s economy. He tells us how unskilled and semi-skilled jobs are going to go, and that the future of our country is in science and technology. He talks about understanding how the future is going to dramatically change and how we must prepare Britain to be a modern country. He says, “Why are only 5% of people going to university? Why shouldn’t it be 10%? Why is the country run by a few people who went to public school and posh universities? Why can’t everyone have the chance to go to university? Why don’t we have more scientists, people who know about stuff and good managers to run our country?” That reminds me of some of the arguments we are having today in the House.