JAMES HAROLD WILSON (UNITED KINGDOM)

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06790969
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: March 8, 2023
• Document Release Date: September 4, 2019
• Case Number: F-2018-02307
• Publication Date: January 15, 1968

Approved for Release: 2019/07/31 C06790969
UNITED KINGDOM
Prime Minister and First Lord
of the Treasury
James Harold WILSON
Harold Wilson became the youngest British Prime Minister
in this century when the Labor Party, after 13 years in
Opposition, won a narrow victory in the October 1964 general
election. During his first year in office he met a series
of financial and political crises with courage, confidence,
patience, and imperturbability. Having established himself
as a national leader, whom the country at large no longer
regarded as a partisan Labor Prime Minister, Wilson and
his party were returned to power with a substantial majority
in the general elections of March 1966. Recently, however,
a combination of political and economic setbacks at home and
abroad have seriously reduced the morale and prestige of his
government.
Elected party leader in February 1963, following the death of Hugh Gaitskell,
Wilson successfully united Labor's diverse elements within a few months. Never
a doctrinaire socialist, but rather a pragmatist, keenly aware of the realities
and uses of power, Wilson, as Prime Minister, has shown the same managerial skill
in his government appointments, placing moderates in key Cabinet posts, and
assigning "leftists" to neutral positions. The juxtaposition has enabled him,
with decreasing effectiveness, to keep control of his government and party, in-
cluding those Laborites who object to his general support of US actions in Viet
Nam, his "East of Suez" defense policy, his efforts to obtain British entry into
the Common Market, and to the essentially conservative measures he has had to
adopt on the domestic front because of Britain's economic problems. Although
Wilson emerged from Labor's Annual Party Conference in October far less battered
than most observers had expected, recent events have resulted in a new low in
Labor's popularity as well as serious doubts regarding Wilson's effectiveness
as the party's leader. A series of fall strikes, increasingly severe by-election
defeats, unfavorable trade statistics that led to the recent devaluation of the
pound sterling, Britain's latest rebuff in seeking Common Market membership and
a growing opposition and independence among leading cabinet members resulting
from handling of the recent South African arms embargo issue
have all combined to create a "crisis of confidence" in his leadership. 'Wilson
has never been a party figure to inspire affection, warmth or spontaneous loyalty
in the manner of Gaitskell, Attlee or Aneurin Bevan. His popularity during his
first year or so in office arose from public faith in him as a shrewd, tough
manager of events and men, and no one seemed very much concerned about his
reputation for deviousness or other personal shortcomings, so long as he seemed
to be successful. "Today, however,following his party's recent setbacks, Wilson's
worth as an electoral asset is for the first time in doubt. Although he still
possesses a brilliant mind, a phenomenal memory and a debating skill and caustic
wit which no Conservative can match, in terms of political leadership and
popularity, Wilson has fallen behind Tory leader Edward Heath.
Approved for Release: 2019/07/31 C06790969
Approved for Release: 2019/07/31 C06790969
James Harold WILSON (Cont'd.)
The son of an industrial chemist, Harold Wilson was born on 11 March 1916 in
Yorleghire. He won scholarships to secondary schools and to Jesus College, Oxford,
and taught economics at his university until World War II when he was drafted
into the Civil Service. He resigned to contest the 1945 election, and won the
Ormskirk seat for Labor (he now represents Huyton, Lancashire). In the Attlee
Labor Government he held several junior ministerial posts, and in 1947 entered
the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade when he was only 31. In Opposition
he served as his party's chief spokesman on financial affairs and later on foreign
affairs before he became leader. Raised as a Congregationalist, the Prime Minister
is a man of simple tastes and habits. He shuns social life, and apparently has
no close political "cronies." Apart from his family and politics, reading and
golf are his chief interests. A short, stocky man, he smokes a pipe constantly,
enjoys plain food, and drinks moderately (lager, bourbon whiskey). Wilson married
Mary Baldwin, the daughter of a Congregationalist minister, in 1940. They have
two sons
15 January 1968
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Approved for Release: 2019/07/31 C06790969