Harold Wilson

EARLY LIFE 

Harold Wilson was born at 4 Warneford Road, Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on March 11, 1916.

Harold Wilson

Harold's father James Herbert Wilson was a works chemist who had been active in the Liberal Party.

Herbert Wilson was Winston Churchill's deputy election agent in his 1908 by-election before then joining the Labour Party.

His mother Ethel (née Seddon) was a schoolteacher before her marriage.

Wilson studied Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1934. He graduated in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) with a first class Bachelor of Arts degree.

EARLY CAREER 

Wilson became one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21. He was a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937, and a research fellow at University College.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Wilson was classed as a specialist and moved into the Civil Service. Most of his War was spent as a statistician and economist for the coal industry.

Wilson first began working in British politics in 1945 when he began representing Ormskirk in Parliament.

In 1947, then Prime Minister Clement Attlee made Wilson President of the Board of Trade. Aged 31, he had become the youngest member of the UK Cabinet in the 20th century.

He was President of the Board of Trade until 1951 when he resigned because of social service cuts.

In opposition to the then-Conservative government, Wilson served as Shadow Chancellor (1955–1961) and Shadow Foreign Secretary (1961–1963)

After the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell passed away suddenly in 1963, Wilson fought and won a leadership contest against George Brown and James Callaghan.

Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn secretly claimed in 1963 that Wilson was a KGB agent.

Wilson was worried that Labour voters would stay at home to watch the popular BBC comedy Steptoe And Son, about rag-and-bone men, instead of voting in the 1964 General Election. He persuaded the BBC to reschedule the show and won by four seats.

Harold Wilson 1963

PRIME MINISTER 

He was Prime Minister between 1964 and 1970 (increasing his majority in 1966). Following elections, Wilson formed a minority government in February 1974 and achieved a majority of three in October 1974.

Wilson won more elections than any other 20th century Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (in 1964, 1966, February and October 1974) — but only once with a clear majority (1966).

His premiership was dominated by the issue of UK admission to EEC membership, the social contract, and economic difficulties.

Wilson's Labour government supported backbench MPs in liberalising laws on abortion, divorce and homosexuality.

Wilson with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House in 1966

On October 11, 1967, Harold Wilson received an apology from pop group The Move after he sued them for printing a postcard with a caricature of him in the nude. It was to promote their new record, "Flowers In The Rain," which went on to be the first single played on BBC Radio 1.

In early 1968, Harold Wilson's government launched the "I'm Backing Britain" campaign to rally enthusiasm and boost their economy. The title of The Beatles "Back In The U.S.S.R" was a punt at Wilson's slogan.

Wilson was hit in the eye with a stink bomb hurled by a schoolboy in 1969. He quipped: "With an arm like that he ought to be in the English cricket eleven."

By the 1970s Wilson's dependence on brandy was becoming increasingly evident. He was prone to rambling in cabinet meetings and sometimes forget to sum up.

After being returned to office in 1974, Wilson became aware that his powers of debate and concentration were failing, and he resigned in March 1976. Shortly afterwards Alzheimer’s disease was diagnosed.

Queen Elizabeth II came to dine at 10 Downing Street to mark Wilson's resignation, an honour she has bestowed on only one other Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. An unadventurous meal of beef, roast potatoes, ice cream, cheese and biscuits was served.

Wilson was knighted in 1976 and became a peer in 1983.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Mary Baldwin was a shorthand typist when she first met civil service employee Harold Wilson. They married on January 1, 1940, in the chapel of Mansfield College, Oxford.

They had two sons, Robin and Giles (named after Giles Alington); Robin became a professor of Mathematics, and Giles became a teacher.

Mary became a published poet when her volume Selected Poems was published in 1970.

The only prime ministerial spouse to become a centenarian, Mary Wilson died at the age of 102 years, 145 days on June 6, 2018.

Harold and Mary Wilson eschewed continental holidays, returning every summer to their holiday home on the Isles of Scilly.

Harold Wilson was born into a Congregationalist family but attended the local Baptist chapel because there was no Congregationalist establishment to hand. As Prime Minister, Wilson was an infrequent church attender, but undoubtedly believed in God and in the Christian faith.

He had a seal point Siamese cat called Nemo that used to accompany him and Mary on holiday.

Harold Wilson’s favorite food was a Cornish pasty with or without brown sauce.

Wilson's famous pipe was a prop to make him seem more approachable and working-class. In private he smoked cigars.

Harold Wilson in 1986. By Allan Warren 

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

On leaving the House of Commons after the 1983 general election, Wilson was granted a life peerage as Baron Wilson of Rievaulx.

Wilson was not especially active in the House of Lords.  His last speech was in a debate on marine pilotage in 1986, but he continued regularly attending the House of Lords until just over a year before his death.

Wilson's mental deterioration from Alzheimer's disease became increasingly apparent, and he rarely appeared in public after 1987.

He died of colon cancer and Alzheimer's Disease on May 24, 1995, at the age of 79.

When her husband passed away, Mary Wilson wrote a poem which included the lines: "My love you have stumbled slowly. On the quiet way to death. And you lie where the wind blows strongly. With a salty spray on its breath."

He was buried at St Mary's Old Church, St. Mary's, Isles of Scilly, on June 6, 1995. Wilson's epitaph is "Tempus Imperator Rerum" ("Time Commands All Things").

Sources Daily Mail, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce