Yet there was one other element. Throughout the discussions, Wilson (by Gaitskell’s account) took the same line as the Treasury, which was also assumed to be that of the Chancellor. After the Wykehamists had expressed their distrust of Wilson for ‘currying favour with the Treasury’, Hugh Dalton – in his housemasterly role, though his actual post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was less important than that of the President of the Board of Trade – summoned Wilson, who made some significant and revealing remarks. ‘He said Cripps must have a Minister of State, to go to conferences, etc. for him,’ Dalton noted afterwards. ‘But this shouldn’t be Jay who has a few sound ideas (e.g. Development Areas) buzzing in his head to the exclusion of all else.’
The suggestion that the over-worked and exhausted Chancellor should be relieved of some of his burden was obviously a sensible one. But why was Wilson so concerned that the obvious person to help out, who was already Economic Secretary at the Treasury, should not be asked to do so? On 12 September – the day Bevin and Cripps were agreeing the new rate of sterling in Washington – Jay told Dalton once again about his own suspicions of Wilson, returning to the ‘currying favour’ charge. Gaitskell, Jay said, had made the running over devaluation. Wilson, on the other hand, was not to be trusted. ‘He trims and wavers, and is thinking more of what senior ministers – and even senior officials – are thinking of him than of what is right.’
Wilson’s fear that Jay might be promoted to Minister of State, and Jay’s fear that Wilson was out to win favour in high places, partly reflected their disagreement over the timing of devaluation, coupled with Jay’s own feeling (which Gaitskell did not seem to share to the same extent) that Wilson had let the side down. But there was also another reason: a growing realization that, after suffering the humiliation of a forced devaluation, Cripps would not retain his post for much longer.
It was now clear that the Chancellor was seriously unwell. Although he did not spare himself up until his visit to the Zurich clinic, there was no disguising his pallor, his insomnia or how much more easily he became tired. Although the length of his remaining tenure could not yet be predicted, there was speculation about the future. ‘Cripps, Jay thinks, is ill,’ Dalton noted on 12 September; ‘not much improved by his time in Zurich. He is said still not to be sleeping and, Jay thinks, if he can’t recover in a few weeks after his return from Washington, he will have to give up.’ The ex-Chancellor added (and a number of thoughts must have been in both men’s minds): ‘This would, indeed, be a bad blow – who could take his place, or even part of it?’ In the short run, there were two possibilities, if Cripps did not make a complete recovery and carry on as before. Either there would have to be a powerful deputy at the Treasury, taking over some of the Chancellor’s functions (as Wilson had suggested), who would then be a strong candidate for the succession when Cripps eventually gave up; or Cripps might resign, sooner rather than later. The existence of these alternatives helps to explain the nervousness of all three young, ambitious, and politically inexperienced ministers during the devaluation crisis.
When Dalton saw Wilson in July, he told him: ‘You three young economists must work together.’42 It was not surprising that they found it hard to do so. Each had some claim to consideration as a potential Chancellor, depending on the timing of Cripps’s retirement. Wilson – not just in his own mind – had the most obvious claim. He was the only Cabinet minister, and had been in the Government the longest; he was in charge of a major economic department, which Cripps himself had previously headed. He was also known to be regarded with favour by the Chancellor. Early in September, one newspaper which discussed the question of the succession had concluded that ‘the clear favourite is Mr Harold Wilson, thirty-three-year-old President of the Board of Trade.’ A key qualification, the same paper said, was his loyalty to Cripps: ‘The two men are quite inseparable.’43 Though there were non-economist ministers also likely to be considered if the Chancellorship fell vacant, the chance of a progression to the most important economic post, one he had coveted since a child, seemed not only real but imminent – the logical next step in his astonishing ascent since he had been selected as candidate in Ormskirk, five summers before.
Gaitskell and Jay, however, were also contenders. The least likely of the three, at this stage, was the Minister of Fuel and Power. Though he was highly regarded, Gaitskell was neither a Treasury nor a Cabinet minister. The ambit of his department was narrower than that of the Board of Trade, providing few of the same opportunities for participating in the international negotiations on which economic policy increasingly depended. Jay, on the other hand, looked like a serious rival. The Economic Secretary was not just the only Treasury minister of the three; he was also a protégé of the Prime Minister, for whom he had worked before entering Parliament in 1946. We may guess that Wilson’s acute anxiety lest Jay be upgraded within the Treasury stemmed, partly at least, from a fear that this would turn him into the heir apparent.
Whether or not Wilson was suspicious of Jay’s ambition, Jay was certainly suspicious of Wilson’s. Cairncross attributes the lateness of Wilson’s conversion to devaluation to his belief, shared with Cripps, in controls as the alternative. Jay is more cynical. ‘Cripps’s health was failing and it was becoming clear that he could not go on,’ he says. ‘The real decision about the succession was expected to be taken by Bridges, who was thought to be anti-devaluation.’44 According to Jay, this was the reason why, as soon as the pro-devaluation decision had been taken in London, Wilson tried to make himself the hero of the hour by volunteering to go to Zurich and talk Cripps round.45 What were Wilson’s real intentions? Jay believes they were to tighten his own alliance with Cripps, or at any rate ingratiate himself: it was because Attlee saw through this ruse that he insisted on a clear message coming from himself, without Wilson taking part in the drafting, ‘I was deeply disillusioned,’ says Jay. ‘So were Gaitskell, Attlee and Morrison.’ After the meeting at which Wilson offered his personal postal service, Jay walked across Palace Yard in a group that included Morrison, I wouldn’t trust that so-and-so’, he heard the Lord President say, referring to Wilson, ‘as far as I can throw a halfpenny.’ Jay remembers thinking at the time: ‘not the next Chancellor’.46
Perhaps he thought it with satisfaction: the recollection may indicate better what was in Jay’s mind, than what was in Wilson’s. Nevertheless, it is clear from Gaitskell’s account of a conversation with Wilson which took place immediately after the President’s return from Zurich, that the Chancellor did not accept the devaluation message meekly, that Wilson was, indeed, much more than a postman, and that the Chancellor had by no means given up his fight to preserve the parity. Wilson reported that Cripps was, in any case, opposed to devaluation taking place before the Washington Conference, and ‘could not therefore agree to any of our proposals but wished to discuss the matter on his return to England’.47 Cripps went on fighting to the end: in his reply to the Prime Minister, he pressed for the latest of the three suggested dates – 8 September, the date eventually agreed. Even after he got back to London before Washington, however, he continued to hold out against any change in the parity.48 ‘Jay wonders what [Wilson] said to Cripps and Bevin when he took messages to them on the Continent,’ Dalton noted in his diary.49 Whatever he said, it is unlikely that it made much difference to the Chancellor’s view, which had been unwavering throughout. Nevertheless, Jay’s anxiety is understandable.
In fact, it was not Wilson, or Jay, who emerged best out of the devaluation debate, but the ‘young economist’ who started in third place: the Minister of Fuel and Power. Three days before the devaluation announcement, Robert Hall recorded a conversation with Oliver Franks, Roger Makin and Edwin Plowden, three powerful officials. The collective view which emerged was ‘that H. Wilson is no good, ought if possible to be shifted from the Board of Trade, and certainly ought not to succeed SC. If any young one is to do it, it is to be Gaitskell.’50
Unlike Wilson, Gaitskell had impressed ministers and civil servants alike during the crisis. He had taken a strong and reasoned line on the need for devaluation. Though persuasive in his campaigning, he had steered