Of course, social reforms are always a double-edged sword; the legislation that Wilson’s governments passed in the 1960s ‘liberated millions of people from repressive prejudice and puritan intolerance’, but have also been decried as unleashing ‘an era of licentious behaviour and moral depravity’ (p.

One of the key turning points (or lack thereof) in the Wilson era was the decision not to devalue the pound upon reaching office in 1964. Failure to devalue in 1964 saw the government sacrifice in vain its ‘mandate to end the ‘stop-go’ cycles of economic management’ (p.Nevertheless, the Labour Party won a slender majority at the 1964 election and Wilson became prime minister. A first edition of this illustrated commentary on prime ministers by Harold Wilson, signed by the author.

Wilson’s hawkishness over the issue ‘plunged the government into a prolonged and needless crisis that turned into arguably one of the most serious in the Labour Party’s history’ (p. Let me give two examples of cases in which Morgan made points on the basis of his sources that Thomas-Symonds himself determined were important points on the basis of his own investigation. Head and heel of spine and corners of boards lightly bumped, mild bow to rear board, page edges foxed, top edge dusty, small spot on frontispiece also offset to title page. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Turning to industrial policy; when Wilson launched the 1964 general election campaign at the annual meeting of the TUC, he invited the trade unions to participate in a ‘great adventure’; he wanted to ‘harness the goodwill and participation of the trade unions in what he saw as his social-democratic project’ (p.While Wilson was a socialist, he was also a centrist, and sought to balance the ‘left and right tendencies. Wilson had to walk a tightrope on the issue of Vietnam, and he did it remarkably well; in light of the relationship between Tony Blair and George W. The Road to Recovery: Fabian Society lectures given in the autumn of 1947 by Douglas Jay, Geoffrey Bing, H. p. 88: The statement that Wilson continued to teach at Oxford University on weekends until late 1947 is a striking one, but I think a source needs to be provided.

This books aims to describe how the parliamentary system of Britain works and identifying the essential differences of other presidential systems such as that of the United Sates. Reissued with a new foreword to mark the centenary of Harold Wilson’s birth, Ben Pimlott's classic biography combines scholarship and observation to illuminate the life and career of one of Britain's most controversial post-war statesmen.Nick Thomas-Symonds was first elected as the Labour MP for his home constituency of Torfaen in May 2015, and was re-elected in June 2017 and again in December 2019. A prime minister is invariably held responsible for catastrophes that – in the fashionable phrase – occur “on his or her watch”. Mixing anecdote and fact, Thomas-Symonds paints a vivid picture of the era that is hard to find elsewhere -- Victoria Honeyman * HISTORY TODAY * Nick Thomas-Symonds' excellent new biography puts Harold Wilson in his rightful place as a crucial figure in Labour Party history, winning four General Elections and introducing important reforms that have endured. p. 429: The quoted remark by Wilson in response to a 1988 letter that he received was apparently a note to his staff (see Ziegler, p. Thomas-Symonds, much more than the other books, confronts explicitly the question of whether Wilson should have just floated the pound in the mid-1960s.