Wilson in the Corridor
From Mr John Cole Sir: Christopher Fildes modestly recalls his own rejection by Richard Fry, City editor of the Manchester Guardian (City and Subur- ban, 7 October), and mentions Fry's earlier refusal to employ Harold Wilson. Events, Fry later thought, confirmed his judgment that Wilson was `an astute politician but a child when it came to finance'.
According to Philip Ziegler's authorised life, Wilson did a probationary week in the more elevated role of leader writer, not in the squalor of the tiny Fleet Street office that Richard Fry and I both inhabited before London printing, but in the holy of holies, `the Corridor' in Cross Street, Manchester. He found the atmosphere like that of a Trappist monastery and decided instead to accept William Beveridge's invitation to stay on at Oxford as his research assistant.
Harold Wilson certainly believed he could have had a job on the Guardian in the Forties, and half-regretted that he had not become a journalist. He often said to me, with an envious twinkle, that if he had only taken that offer he might have been doing my job — though whether as Labour corre- spondent, news editor or deputy editor, I'm not sure; Harold tended to be repetitive. I suspected he believed that he would have done it much better than me but was too polite to say so. I like to think I mur- mured back, 'Being prime minister is not a bad job'; but 'old men forget', and it may have been `Shadow chancellor is not bad.' That was the post he held when I arrived in London, and the same Richard Fry kindly advised me to cultivate him as a useful con- tact for a young Labour correspondent. John Cole
Claygate, Surrey
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