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“... potential converts. But the cries of disappointment and betrayal, the denunciations of the media, Harold Wilson and the IMF, and the assumption that the answerability of Parliamentary representatives of the Left to a party executive dominated by constituency and trade-union militants is truly ‘democratic’, are not likely to persuade anyone not ...”

“... at the time, and I am in no doubt that it was disaffected Fleet Street proprietors who helped make Harold Wilson electable in the mid-Sixties. If Mr Major doesn’t watch out, their successors could easily do the same for John Smith in the mid Nineties. Why, the proprietor of the Sun and the News of the World may already be rummaging through his attic ...”

“... that country from offering great potential opportunities to British exporters,’ he wrote to Harold Wilson. ‘If there is going to be a deal with Indonesia, as I hope one day there may be, I think we ought to take an active part and try to secure a slice of the cake ourselves.’ Not a word of this was discussed by broadcasters or journalists, most ...”

“... who served alongside us. The United States was, at the time, preoccupied with Vietnam, to which Harold Wilson declined to commit British troops. The Borneo campaign was won largely by our domination of the immediate area of the border with Indonesia. There were a series of operations across the border to attack Indonesian military bases and ...”

“... and (it seems these days) perpetual government, a feat achieved by neither Clement Attlee nor Harold Wilson and not even attempted by the Party’s only other postwar premier, James Callaghan. Blair has skilfully contrived his views to appeal to that section of voters which determines the outcome of British general elections; the apparent ...”

“... admiring letters to the Australian Labor prime minister, Ben Chifley. In 1970 the Sun supported Harold Wilson and in 1972 Murdoch’s papers, notably the Australian (a national daily he had founded in 1964), supported Gough Whitlam. There is, though, a psychological and temperamental unity, a commitment to a ‘radicalism’ that forms a thread between ...”

“... and finally Brownism took over the peculiarly intense passion of the disoriented heartland. As Harold Wilson had put it decades earlier, Britain simply has to be Great or it is ‘nothing’. Margaret Thatcher took up the same refrain, using an anti-Marxism that would mature into the later 20th century’s neoliberalism. Harvie provides a lively ...”

“... and moved in for the kill as their old middlebrow bête noire found itself middle-aged and broke. Harold Wilson and Spike Milligan joined forces to save it, but the D’Oyly Carte Company sank in 1982, scuppered by the Arts Council. The hope and expectation clearly was that the whole show would vanish with it. HMS Pinafore would go down with the last of ...”

“... villagers, to 10 Downing Street. A life-long member of the Labour Party, Gould presented Harold Wilson with a wreath made of ivy picked from the ruins of the cottage in which he had been born. He also gave him a letter, reminding him of Churchill’s pledge and pleading the Englishman’s right to go home. If Tyneham was not to be released, then ...”

“... that he did not want three simultaneous books about himself. Haines, former press secretary to Sir Harold Wilson, was leader-writer of the Daily Mirror when Maxwell bought it and confidently expected the sack, especially after he had publicly voiced scorn for his new master. Attitudes are quick to be struck and unstruck in Fleet Street. Somehow Haines ...”

“... major trade-union leader of recent times was under regular surveillance by MI 5 ... Yet both Wilson and Heath forbade any interrogation.’ Pincher does not exaggerate the importance of the pre-war Cambridge connection, with one exception. That is John Cairncross, a non-smart Cambridge man of Scottish working-class background, who though detected in 1951 ...”

“... contribution to the purification of the language has been persuasively discussed by Edmund Wilson: he inspired in others a similar ‘lucidity, precision and terseness’, a better rhetoric, a ‘language of responsibility’. Wilson’s discussion occurs in his study of the literature of the American Civil ...”

“... were failures, that Labour never managed to become ‘the natural party of government’ as Harold Wilson wished, and that this was reflected in its failure ever to get elected for two full terms. Traumatised by four successive defeats, Blair wanted above all to make Labour electable and then to secure those two full terms. This would demonstrate ...”

“... a declared belief in Christianity, including Keir Hardie, Arthur Henderson, George Lansbury and Harold Wilson, and any Christian who has advocated a social role for Christianity – a rubric which would not exclude most modern Popes. If Bryant’s history had been less provincial it might have situated the ‘left turn’ in Christianity in a wider ...”

“... had Zionist leanings, and liked the company of the powerful: the same could be said of Sir Harold Wilson. The second criticism seems to me to be made by people who have either not read the book itself, but only what has been said about it, or who have read it superficially. The account the author gives of the anti-semitism of which he himself was ...”