Leadership the Wilson way
John Mackintosh
Harold Wilson has always had an interest in historical comparisons. When he showed new backbenchers round No. 10 after the 1966 general election, he took them into the Cabinet room and commented on the Pictures, ending opposite the one of Robert Walpole—`that's the one I have to beat'. But what will the historians have to say of his lengthy period as Prime Minister?
Much will depend on the events of the next few years. If Britain's decline is arrested, if the economy stops sinking in Comparison with the economies of the other major European nations, then the thirteen years when Mr Wilson led the Labour Party may be treated as a skilful, if painful adjustment from the status of a world Power and industrial front runner to that of a reasonably successful second level state. On the other hand, if inflation goes up again as world commodity prices rise, if the arrangement with the unions breaks down and this country moves into hyperinflation and then into economic collapse, Mr Wilson may be seen as the man who let the flood waters build up and fled just before the dam burst.
Similarly, his record as a Labour Party leader may be viewed differently depending on the subsequent history of the Party. If the Party finds the gap between the social democrats and those who want a publicly owned and controlled economy gets too Wide and if the Party splits, then Mr Wilson may be hailed as the only man who was able to hold this coalition together, but even in this case, much will depend on how the Party fares after any split. If the left wing find (as seems probable) that they have very little electoral support when they stand on their own and if a largely social democratic party goes on to win several general elections, then it will be said that Mr Wilson's constant appeasement of the left was unnecessary. But if the Labour Party never wins power again, his achievement of keeping the Party together and of winning four out of five general elections may well be given great credit.
Is then any assessment impossible or unfairly premature? It may be unreasonable to attempt any overall judgment but some points can be made. The first is that Mr Wilson's concept of politics and of leadership was, in a very fundamental sense, conservative. He did not see the role of a political leader as being, in part at least, that' of diagnosing the problems of the country and of educating his Party and the voters about the solutions. Mr Wilson tended to take existing political forces as something to be got round or over or reconciled but not as something he could operate on and modify over a period.
Consider his reaction to the endemic difficulties of the decade when he was in the best position of anyone to lead and to put, his ideas across. Probably the single most puzzling and unsatisfactory aspect of the British economy was the low propensity to invest. One would have expected a Prime Minister dedicated to growth (so that there could be more redistribution of wealth) to work away at this. If one approach failed, he could then try another because this was and is a crucial weakness. Yet Mr Wilson tried a National Plan, then reconstruction through 'little Neddies', then tax stimuli, then an interventionist National Enterprise Board and finally a mild, helpful National Enterprise Board. But these were not part of a systematic search for a solution; each was tried because of the need to seem active, to have something to say to the next conference or at the next election.
A second example is industrial relations. No one can suggest that Britain does not face particular difficulties with some 550 unions and many practices inherited from an earlier industrial period. Mr Wilson took this on board in the late 1960s and set out, with Mrs Castle, to change the law on industrial relations. His attempt met with such opposition in the TUC and then in his own Cabinet that he had to give way, but that was in 1969. He had plenty of time to return to the subject in speeches, to educate his Party and to evolve an approach which would once again face up to these problems. Instead, he behaved as if the problem had disappeared. When the Conservatives set up their Industrial Relations Act and then their incomes policy, he could have attacked parts of these policies while retaining other aspects on which he could build when back in office, but instead he condemned them root and branch. He did not even say that while the means were wrong (in his view), there was a genuine problem to be solved. As a result, when back in office, there was no machinery to monitor the £6 pay policy, and the aspects of industrial relations which he had condemned in 1969 were still in evidence buttressed by the assumption over the intervening five years that nothing was wrong.
The same attitudes were evident in his management of the Labour Party's annual conferences.
Mr Wilson's approach to Party Conferences took the forces in the Party and the attitudes as something received—not as something he could mould. So the only task was to get over the week with as few political setbacks as possible and then return to the business of governing. This attitude is conservative in the sense that it sees political leadership as a reconciliation of forces rather than the radical view that if the tendencies in a society or party are not entirely satisfactory, then they can and should be changed.
From this deeply-held attitude spring Mr Wilson's strengths and weaknesses. It is clear that his great skill is as a party manager. It is a great achievement to have held the Labour Party together not merely because of the breadth of opinion within the Party but because this was done at a time of decline. Although Labour have been in power for eight of the last twelve years, the percentage of the electorate voting for the Party has steadily declined, the membership has fallen, the Party's ideology has become more vague and confused and there is little of the old idealism and confidence. Yet Mr Wilson was able to hold the Party together through electoral defeat in 1970, the terrible conflict over the Common Market, the apparent ascendancy of the left and then their steady decline and humiliation last week. Mr Wilson has adapted the constitution by bringing in referenda and by abandoning, for a while, the doctrine of collective responsibility all in the interests of holding the Labour Party together, and this must be rated his greatest achievement.
On the other hand, this same attitude explains why, after all these years of office, the Wilson administrations have made no major impact on British society.
The one major and lasting change of the Wilson period is British membership of the European Community and this was almost lost because he was prepared to subordinate the objective for the unity of the Party. Even then, if Mr Wilson had had the longterm need for British entry at the back of his mind in 1972 and 1973, he could have done his manoeuvres over 'Tory terms' and over the referendum in a manner which would have made the ultimate campaign for entry much easier. As it was, the project was saved more by the instinctive reaction of the British public against the style and other views of the anti-marketeers rather than by Mr Wilson's leadership.
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