Harold Wilson: The Winner

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Wilson avoided civil wars in Central Africa and Northern Ireland and steadfastly resisted American pressure to send British troops to Vietnam.

Harold Wilson: The winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds Harold Wilson: The winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds

Rt Hon Nick Thomas-Symonds MP was elected as the Labour MP for Torfaen in May 2015 and was re-elected in June 2017, and in December 2019. He has served on the Labour frontbench in a number of roles; Shadow Pensions Minister; Shadow Employment Minister; Shadow Solicitor-General; Shadow Security Minister; Shadow Welsh Office Minister; Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade. Nick Thomas-Symonds has previously written two very good biographies of Labour titans – Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan; now he has turned his attention to Harold Wilson.On arriving at Downing Street in 1964, he promised a new Britain based on the “white heat” of the technological revolution. Yet he has never been admitted to Labour’s pantheon of heroes, since he delivered neither socialism nor economic success. Although also a grammar-school boy, too, Heath totally lacked Wilson’s common touch, epitomised by the award of the MBE to the Beatles.

Nick Thomas-Symonds For Torfaen About - Nick Thomas-Symonds For Torfaen

If you want to know what a man thinks, Napoleon said, look at what the world was like when he was 20. Shortly after his election, Nick was named the Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions from September 2015 until June 2016. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.Critics then and now have painted him as an opportunistic political calculator, even as a Soviet secret agent. In April 1951 he joined Bevan in resigning, a move that astonished his Cabinet colleagues and hastened the end of Attlee’s government. Nick lives in Abersychan with his wife Rebecca, his daughters Matilda and Florence, his son William, and their dog, Pippa. Nowhere was Wilson’s political acumen more evident than in the face of a divided Labour Party masterminding the campaign that led to a resounding “Yes” — something for which, the author argues, Wilson has never been given the credit that he de­­serves. Among these were further regulations on racial discrim­­ination, abolition of corporal pun­ishment in prisons, legalising abortion and same-sex relations, reforming divorce laws, and the creation of the Open University.