Shadow boxing - Wilson style!

Jan 14 2009 by Andrew Baldwin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

The new release of a DVD featuring interviews with Harold Wilson demonstrate this great son of Huddersfield’s insight, intelligence and love of the Commons and its traditions. ANDREW BALDWIN reports

‘Exchanging a sort of rapier stuff across the floor of the House’

‘He was a true House of Commons man. He loved and respected its traditions’

WHEN Harold Macmillan was told by one Labour party supporter that as a boy Harold Wilson had gone to school without any boots, Macmillan answered:

“If Harold Wilson ever went to school without any boots, it was merely because he was too big for them.”

It was a cracker of an insult – but what did Wilson think of him?

The two men knew each other for years as rivals on the opposite sides of the floor of the Commons.

Huddersfield-born Wilson had been shadow to Macmillan when the Tory was chancellor in Anthony Eden’s government of 1955-1957.

Their clashes during debates became the stuff which filled the benches of the Commons.

But, according to Wilson, there was never any malice in it.

“We were, not at one another’s throats, but exchanging a sort of rapier stuff across the floor of the House. The House used to enjoy it,” Wilson remembered.

“We said what we thought and we tried to get the other fellow down. He tried to get me down and often did, but in the old phrase it was strife without malice.”

It was almost like a tennis match with both of them up at the net, said Wilson.

Macmillan eventually succeeded Eden as Prime Minister in the fallout after the Suez affair.

“He was one of the greatest Parliamentarians of the century. When they took him away and made him Prime Minister, I was heartbroken,” Wilson admitted.

But his verdict is that Macmillan’s move to No 10 produced a very great Prime Minister.

“He was one of the most hard working,” Wilson said.

He recalled his association with “Supermac” for the TV series A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers, made soon after his second spell as prime minister in 1977.

Thirty years on, the programmes are being released on DVD and demonstrate this great son of Huddersfield’s insight, intelligence and love of the Commons and its traditions.

It was Sir Edward Heath who said on Wilson’s death in 1995: “He was a true House of Commons man. He knew, loved, enjoyed and respected its traditions.

“Throughout his life, he spent a great deal of time here, not only in the chamber, but in the smoking room, the tea room and the library, talking to his colleagues and to all who enjoyed talking to him, regardless of party. In that, he showed a touch which earned him great respect and admiration.”

On the DVDs Wilson examined the lives of Pitt the Younger, Peel, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Baldwin, MacDonald, Chamberlain, Churchill, Attlee and Macmillan.

Wilson’s easy-going manner and memorable voice make him well-suited to the role of narrator.

But the programme’s real insights come from his interviews with David Frost, filmed in Parliamentary offices, on the Commons terrace – or, in the Churchill episode, in the cabinet war rooms underneath Whitehall.

Wilson’s anecdotes about the likes of Macmillan, Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill – who seems to have done a surprising amount of “bursting into tears” – make the series worth watching.

The episodes are bolstered by archive footage, photographs and trips around the country, bringing the figures of the past to life very effectively.

“Ireland killed him,” Wilson says of Lloyd George, who divided the country into north and south – leaving “a problem for a future generation to settle”.

Wilson led his party at a time when it was divided into factions which were often at war with each other.

Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister in 1924, had much the same trouble, having to balance a “medley of idealists, revolutionaries, dissident Liberals, hot gospellers, rebels and Marxists”.

Asked by Frost if it had been the same for him, Wilson replied with almost a sheepish smile: “We got most of that.”

He then adds that he didn’t regret the differences within the party.

“It’s a very broad church. I’ve been proud to lead it. I’ve had my little difficulties.”

A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers is released by Network Distributing, £19.99.