His interest in colonial development was certainly more than casual or debating. At Oxford, it had been one of his main political concerns. Now, with more time at his disposal than when he was in office, he returned to it seriously and – as he usually did when taking up a subject – wrote a paper. The initiative had come in 1951 from the left-wing publisher Victor Gollancz, chairing a body called the Association for World Peace whose committee members included a number of Bevanites and left-wing experts. In February 1952 Wilson completed a report called ‘The Problem of World Poverty’, which Gollancz published as a pamphlet in May, under the title War on Want.23 This called for an International Development Agency, and the devotion of 10 per cent of the arms budget and 2 per cent of national income to the relief of world poverty. As in the domestic field, Wilson argued that world problems required ‘something other than the free price mechanism’, if disaster was to be averted.24 The report was widely discussed, and provided the starting-point – as well as the name – for a pressure group.25
This was the time when, as Mikardo says, Wilson was ‘establishing himself as a Leftist’.26 During the spring and summer of 1952 he had an immediate reason for doing so: the first post-election poll for Labour’s National Executive. The Party’s NEC was a body of fluctuating significance. When Labour was in government, it had comparatively little, except as the guardian of the Party Constitution, and the disciplinarian of wayward MPs. When the Party was in Opposition, however, it had a much bigger role – defining policy, speaking for the whole Party between annual Conferences, and sometimes overshadowing the parliamentary leadership (whose membership, however, overlapped with it). The Executive’s own membership was elected in several sections – composed of trade unionists, women members and so on. One had a special symbolism: this was the seven-member constituencies’ section, chosen exclusively by the delegates to Conference from local parties. The annual poll for this section was taken as a political barometer, not only of the popularity of individuals, but also of the relative strength at grass-roots level of the factions.
Since the creation of the section in 1937, the Party establishment’s hold on it had steadily weakened, as one by one conservative figures had given way to radical stars of the Left. Following the 1951 election defeat, there was every reason to suppose that this process would continue, and that Bevanites would capture some of the remaining old-guard seats. Consequently, the Left approached the 1952 Party Conference at Morecambe with some excitement, hoping for an upset in favour of its own standard-bearers. Richard Crossman was one Bevanite standard-bearer, and Wilson was another.
The contest was important for the Bevanites, and important for Wilson, holding out the prospect of a position which would make up for his current weakness in the PLP. Treating the election like an exam, he played to the prejudices of his left-wing examiners among the rank and file. ‘We can’t guarantee full employment unless we take steps to secure a greater degree of social ownership,’ he told a rally in June.27 At an International Socialist Youth Congress in July, he called for the recognition of the Chinese Communist Government.28 On 5 September he published a Tribune pamphlet called In Place of Dollars, nicely timed to anticipate the NEC ballot – stressing his own distance from the policies of the Labour Government of which he had been a member.29
His efforts paid off. At Morecambe in October, Crossman and Wilson trounced Morrison and Dalton, two old war-horses who had been on the Executive since the 1920s. It was the biggest upset at Conference for a generation, and neither of the two ousted leaders ever recovered. ‘Nye’s little dog has bitten Dalton where it hurts,’ was Wilson’s exultant comment.30 It also sharpened his teeth. The Executive seat gave him an independent standing, regardless of the Tea Room, placing him inside the Vatican-like conclave of Transport House decision-taking, hitherto the private preserve of Herbert Morrison. From now on, he was a leader in his own right, and a force to be reckoned with.
Yet there was a negative side. More than the resignations in 1951, the Morecambe vote defined the Party’s civil war. In addition, it turned the hostility of the Right towards the rebels into anger and fear. Not for the last time, a revolutionary mood in the constituencies brought a hardening of attitudes in the PLP. In the summer there had been some talk of a four-man Bevanite slate, composed of Bevan, Wilson, Freeman and Crossman, for the Parliamentary Committee (the Shadow Cabinet) gaining official approval, in return for a promise to disband the Bevanites.31 Morecambe, however, pushed the establishment angrily back into its trench. At the beginning of October, Gaitskell vigorously attacked the Left for its factionalism: Wilson retaliated by expressing shock at the former Chancellor’s ‘intemperate outburst’.32 No deal was struck. In the PLP poll for the Committee in November, Gaitskell came third. Bevan was also elected, in twelfth place; Wilson was not elected. For the moment, Wilson had to make do with a role as a rank-and-file rather than a parliamentary leader. Until April 1951, he had been important in the Government, and nothing in the Movement. At the end of 1952, he had a standing in the Movement, but was cold-shouldered by his former colleagues, and by most MPs.
At the beginning of 1953, Wilson visited North America. He was shocked by what he encountered: a nation paralysed by the McCarthy witch-hunt. There were implications at home, and for himself. He had no sympathy for Communism, then or ever – despite what a few individuals in the so-called intelligence community had already begun secretly to believe. But he had a great deal of interest in the Soviet Union, partly because of his experiences as a negotiator at the Board of Trade, and more immediately because of the requirements of his employer, Montague Meyer. The company’s involvement in East–West trade was already considerable, and soon increased with the slight easing of Anglo–Soviet relations, following the death of Stalin. Thereafter, Wilson – always representing his firm though sometimes taking on commissions for other companies – travelled frequently to Russia, extracting from these business trips some political points as well. To the Left, he was able to present himself as a man in touch with the ieaders of the socialist bloc; to the public, he could appear as an international statesman above party, who performed on a world stage. Both roles added to the suspicions of the Labour Right, and of those within the security services who were predisposed to consider anybody who visited the Soviet Union as half-way there politically.
Wilson’s first trip to Russia since 1947 took place in May 1953. Before setting out, he undertook to write a series of articles for Reynolds’ News, which billed him as ‘the first leading British Socialist to visit Russia since the death of Stalin’, and as the man who had carried through ‘some of the biggest trade deals ever concluded between Britain and the Soviets’.33 His unusual journey was presented as a modern version of Marco Polo’s travels, with a socialist slant. Stopping en route in East Berlin, he met a Chinese Communist trade mission, and then flew on via Prague to the Soviet capital. In Moscow he stayed in the National Hotel, and was put up in Room 101 which – as the British Embassy later discovered – was wired for vision as well as sound, indicating that the Russians considered that he had ‘visual potential’.34 After lunching with the British ambassador and a meeting with his old negotiating comrade, Mikoyan, the Soviet deputy prime minister and Trade minister, he had an hour-long ‘personal’ audience with Molotov, a key figure in the reigning oligarchy, thereby up-staging the British Government which had been actively seeking talks with the new leadership.35 Returning via Budapest, he put in a well-publicized word for a British businessman, Edgar Saunders, imprisoned by the Hungarian regime since 1949 on charges of espionage.
Back in London, Wilson irritated his opponents, both in the Labour and Conservative Parties, by adopting the role of the discreet and judicious super-diplomat. Asked whether his conversations with Soviet leaders had any relation to the British Prime Minister’s proposal for a Big Power Conference, he answered mysteriously that a reply to Sir Winston Churchill was to be expected.36 He revealed, however, that when he mentioned the Conference, Molotov had said: ‘Most interesting’.37