Harold Wilson

Biography

Harold Wilson was born in Huddersfield in 1916 to a politically active lower-middle-class family. He won a place at Jesus College, Oxford, in 1934 and took a first in philosophy, politics and economics. He stayed on as an academic, lecturing in economic history at New College and working at University College as a research assistant to William Beveridge. During the Second World War he served as a civil servant, becoming Director of Economics and Statistics at the Ministry of Fuel and Power.

Elected MP for Ormskirk in 1945, and later for Huyton, he joined the Attlee government and in 1947 entered the cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. In opposition he was shadow chancellor and then shadow foreign secretary, and after Hugh Gaitskell's death in 1963 he won the Labour leadership.

Wilson won the 1964 election narrowly and increased his majority in 1966. His government devalued sterling in 1967 and oversaw major social reforms, including the end of capital punishment and theatre censorship, partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, easier divorce and race-relations laws. It refused independence to white-minority Rhodesia and in 1969 sent troops to Northern Ireland.

Defeated in 1970, he returned to power after the February 1974 election and won a small majority that October. He held the 1975 referendum that confirmed Britain's membership of the European Communities, then resigned unexpectedly in April 1976; his resignation honours, the so-called Lavender List, damaged his reputation. He left the Commons in 1983 for the House of Lords as Lord Wilson of Rievaulx and died in 1995.