To win a single general election is no mean feat, to win three as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair is something else, but to win four as Harold did is a simply stupendous achievement, and is more than any postwar British leader of any party.

Despite this, history has not always been kind to him.

During his lifetime he was derided as a ‘Yorkshire Walter Mitty’ and he was sometimes seen as merely a ‘fixer’ who kept his party together.

Harold would not have been particularly perturbed by this.

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After all as Tony Blair himself is reputed to have said: “if you want gratitude in politics, buy yourself a dog.”

I was a mere boy at the time of his resignation in 1976 but veteran Kirklees councillor Peter McBride was not.

Asked what he thought were Harold’s greatest achievements he says: “He said it was the creation of the Open University, indeed, a mighty achievement but perhaps most important was to his decision to keep Britain out of the Vietnam War despite enormous pressure by Lyndon Johnson especially given that Britain was very dependent on the Americans to stop runs on sterling.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson

“Probably the only Prime Minister who was not a pawn of the Americans. Johnson never forgave him.” Apart from the oft-quoted creation of the Open University there were countless other concrete achievements.

Keeping as fractious a party as the Labour Party together was just one especially when one considers the huge power the union barons carried in those days, a Cabinet full of some of the most high-powered intellects this country has ever seen and a series of economic and industrial woes that would have stretched any Prime Minister’s capacity.

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There were also major changes to the education system with a move to comprehensive schools, the advent of new technology and the encouragement of hoe ownership with 1.3 million new homes built between 1965 and 1970. In addition the 1966 Doctors Charter radically improved pay scales for doctors and was the start of modern GP surgeries. There was a big investment in our roads too with £225 million spent in 1967/68 and the M62 being built.

Far-sighted road safety measures saw the light of day with the introduction of seatbelts while changes to the tax system helped people on low and middle incomes.

He was at the helm when the referendum was held on Britain’s admission to the European Economic Community while his Home Secretary Roy Jenkins pushed through all manner of progressive legislation including the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality and the right of women to abortion.

Roy Jenkins, Labour Home Secretary

Millions of couples had cause to be grateful to him for safe and efficient contraception on the NHS removing the monthly fear of unwanted pregnancy. Higher education was massively expanded giving thousands of students generous maintenance grants.

At the time his act of public recognition in granting the OBE to the Beatles in 1965 may have won widespread ridicule at the time as an act of shameless popularity seeking but today it appears anything but.

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And in retiring from public life as he did out of a clear blue sky in 1976 he left an enjoyable conspiracy harvest which still provides rich pickings to this day.

Two months after resigning in a quite extraordinary twist he invited two leading investigative journalists, Barry Penrose and Roger Courtior, to join him for the scoop of a lifetime.

He told the astonished hacks that he had been the victim of a plot by dissident elements in M15 to get rid not only him but his government too.

They published a book, The Pencourt Affair the following year and this was followed up a decade later by the best-known investigative journalist of his generation David Leigh in his book The Wilson Plot.

Such a thing is unimaginable today but the Communist smears have never quite gone away particularly given the public’s and press’s incredulity at him resigning as he did.

On the back benches his voice was rarely heard and he retired from the Commons in 1983. Three years earlier he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer and then began suffering from he onset of Alzheimer’s Dsiease.

Twelve years later on May 24, 1995, he died. As a boy he had almost died thanks to drinking contaminated milk. His life had hung in the balance for six weeks and six of the other 12 people who had drunk it died. After recovering in Meltham Isolation Hospital he returned home. Grandfather Wilson said to his son: “Herbert, that lad’s been spared for something.” Prophetic words indeed.