| Review of: | The Wilson Governments, 1964-70: A Reappraisal edited by Glenn O'Hara, Helen Parr |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Matthew Grant |
| Reviewed in: | The Political Quarterly |
| Date accepted online: | 02/11/2007 |
| Published in print: | Volume 78, Issue 1, Pages 182-196 |
Book Reviews: Revisiting Harold Wilson
Labour came to power in October 1964 promising 'modernisation'-of the economy, of politics, culture and of society itself. The notion had dominated the last years of the Conservative government and Labour's ability to position itself as the party of modernity helps explains its narrow electoral triumph. Harold Wilson, Labour's personification of the new spirit of the modern, in many ways became trapped by his own rhetoric; as 'modernity', especially the economic variety, became elusive, the government seemed to crumble. The failure to increase economic growth to unprecedented high levels can be seen as the Rosetta stone of this government: All other policies were designed either to facilitate this or they were to be funded by the bounty it realised. Tax reform, investment grants, indicative planning and entry into Europe were all designed to boost the economy. Reform of the machinery of government, of the Civil Service and of industrial relations-even of the arts and leisure sector-were likewise intended to 'modernise' Britain. An expanded welfare state, with education to sixteen for all and wider participation in tertiary education, not to mention a fairer and more comprehensive system of benefits, would result from the increase in prosperity.
The importance of this pursuit of modernity is at the very core of this new 'reappraisal' of the 1960s Labour governments, and the analysis of the 'failure' of this programme is where it seeks to make its mark. It is argued that the common view of Wilson as a tactical genius but a strategic naïf is misplaced, and that in many cases the policy strategy was sound, only to be let down by tactical failures. Overall, the editors suggest that 'rather than being a "failure" or a "success", Wilson was simply ahead of his time'. And certainly in terms of tackling 'themes which were to dominate British politics', or indeed had been dominating them since the war, such as industrial relations and economic stagnation, the intent of the government was laudable.
The collection is intended to be non-ideological in approach, seeking to 'establish why the government acted the way it did' using newly available material, and the overall conclusion seems to be that the Labour governments of the 1960s were well meaning and intelligent reformists and pursuers of modernity, and that the 'failure' of the overarching modernisation programme can be put down to the combined external factors acting against the government. This conclusion is enunciated by numerous chapters on a wide variety of subjects dealing with the governments' economic policies (and their ancillaries) and their foreign and commonwealth policies (although perhaps three chapters on this-compared to one on social policy-might be considered excessive).
Perhaps the key chapters are those written by the co-editors. Glenn O'Hara, writing on the governments' economic record, argues that Wilson's economic policy was far from being the lamentable failure subsequent commentators have painted it. He rightly stresses the 'menacing' international outlook in 1964 and corrects the view, widely held, that devaluation in 1964 could have avoided saved the deflationary retrenchment of 1966-8-whereas in fact it would only have brought it forward and could possibly have exacerbated its effects. The international context and the 'tactical' failure to recognise that the governments' macroeconomic manipulations could never work in time explain the failure of Wilson to meet his ambitious economic aims of alleviating pressure on sterling and funding his wider modernisation programme. Overall, O'Hara's judgement is that 'the prime minister and his government were trying to juggle too many balls at the same time, and some of them simply fell to the floor'. Helen Parr, in a lucid and penetrative reappraisal of Wilson's foreign policy up until Britain's second EEC application, reveals Wilson as a leader with a wide and shifting strategic vision. Rather than being a solely tactical consideration, Wilson's EEC application was borne out of a new understanding of the necessity of membership if Britain was to maintain her desired world role. His failure in the foreign policy sphere-like that in the economic one-was again essentially tactical. His overestimation of his ability to negotiate British entry and his inability to suciently sell the idea of Europe to a sceptical domestic audience explain Wilson's European failure.
Most of the rest of the book matches this pattern. Richard Tyler's excellent anatomy of the
Overall then, this interesting collection contains uniformly well-researched contributions which, on the whole, succeed in their attempt to provide some historical distance between the Wilson governments and their ideological detractors, re-contextualising the administrations' record within the very complex and difficult situation in which they found themselves. One could gripe about the focus of the essays, and this reviewer certainly wonders whether two chapters on commonwealth policy really adds anything to the volume: surely a chapter on, say, education or town planning would have widened the scope of the collection and allowed more concrete conclusions to be drawn. Another reviewer might be more amenable to the rather tenuous and overbearing attempts to link and compare the Wilson government with the current Labour government. And although linking how the record of these years has been perceived and used by the Labour party ever since could have provided a fascinating concluding chapter, a run through of the commonalities and continuities linking the two governments neither enlightens us about the Wilson years nor informs us about the Blair era. In a collection that sets its stall out to dispassionately analyse the Wilson years via the archival record, linking that analysis with the political record of the current government strikes a jarring note. But this should not detract from the fact that the volume contains a series of fine pieces of historical reconstruction, which add to a growing weight of revisionist opinion about the Wilson years. The promise of modernity was unfulfilled and may well have been impossible to fulfil, but it was not betrayed.