Such was the parliamentary interest in Russia that fifty MPs attended a briefing session he gave in the House of Commons. Crossman suspected that most of his friend’s knowledge came from British journalists and diplomats, but ‘he did a magnificent job of blowing out his information so that he could tell us everything that was happening in Russia.’39 Soon, Wilson was developing a man-of-the-world line which went down well on platforms, especially left-wing ones. ‘We have got to learn to live with this new Soviet Union,’ he was wont to say, speaking with the authority of a hardened explorer. ‘Since I have been there I have learnt that it will be much easier now than under Stalin’s one-man government.’40 All in all, he had capitalized brilliantly on an extremely short and, politically speaking, unproductive visit.
There was also another theme: Wilson the softener of stony Bolshevik hearts. ‘Recently in Reynolds’ News’, he reminded his readers in August, ‘I wrote of my appeal to Mr Molotov and Mr Mikoyan to join with us in the war on want. In the past few days the Russians have announced that they are prepared to contribute money and technicians to this war. Let the nations take heart from this and convert the present “phoney war” on want into a total war.’41 This was a prelude to the publication, on 10 August, of The War on World Poverty, a book built round Wilson’s report, commissioned by Gollancz. It extended his ambitious (critics felt utopian) argument for an International Development Authority, with funds, staff and power, and the objective of raising support for underdeveloped areas by 2 per cent per head each year, which would require a contribution by advanced countries of 3 per cent of their national income. It also proposed a popularly elected World Assembly, to which the Development Authority (as a ‘world public corporation’) would be responsible.42 Nothing much came of these proposals, which their author played down in later years. Wilson’s interest in overseas development, however, survived into his periods of office in the 1960s and 1970s, when he included a minister responsible for aid in the Cabinet, embodying (as he put it in a 1967 tribute to Gollancz), ‘the ideals which had inspired us all under Victor’s leadership’.43
Wilson’s seriously left-wing phase was brief. As early as the autumn of 1952, he was being presented in the press as a potential bridge-builder who, though seen as a Bevanite, ‘might use his influence to iron-out the difference between the wings’.44 After Morecambe, a note of sobriety re-entered his utterances; and by the end of 1953 he had unmistakably begun a careful crab-walk back towards the centre of Labour’s political spectrum. The reason was simple. The Bevanite challenge had failed, and Wilson saw no virtue, therefore, in continuing his political isolation.
The failure was in Parliament, not in the constituencies. At the 1953 Party Conference in Margate, the Left did even better than at Morecambe, and Wilson’s own NEC vote increased by 50 per cent. Conference, however, was swiftly followed by a contest for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. Bevan challenged Morrison for the second time in two years and for the second time was soundly beaten. ‘Should [Bevan] go on leading a group which seems to repel everybody else from supporting him?’ asked Crossman.45 Wilson felt the same dilemma, though more acutely. Bevan was an emotional, even a sentimental, left-winger. Wilson was a practical one. Association with the Bevanites had been appropriate in the wake of the resignations, and it had given him a valuable credential, which he had cashed at successive Conferences. Now that he was securely on the NEC it was no longer so useful and set rigid limits to his possible support in the PLP. At the same time, he was becoming exasperated by the behaviour of some of the wilder people who were currently his allies.
He retained, forever, his tribal markings. His resignation, his Chairmanship of the Group, his Brains Trust appearances, his election to the NEC in Bevanite colours, above all the permanent hostility felt towards him by the Right, continued to identify him. Nevertheless, a crack began to appear within the Bevanite Group between those Mikardo calls ‘the principled’ and those he calls ‘the pragmatists’. Wilson and Crossman were pragmatists. Cynics believed that the aim of the pragmatists was to distance themselves just far enough from the Party establishment to hold the continuing support of the Left, but not far enough to lay themselves open to the charge of publicly rejecting official policy. ‘Wilson knew he had committed himself by his resignation to a very long game,’ reckons John Freeman. ‘He also knew that he had now better get himself into good standing. That is why he moved away from the hardline Bevanites.’46
It was the issue of German rearmament that decisively separated Wilson from the ‘principled’ Left, some of whom never forgave him. The question was whether, and how, the newly established Federal Republic should contribute to Nato’s defences. This, in turn, was linked to the wider question of Britain’s role within the Alliance and its relationship with the Soviet bloc. For the Labour Party, the whole subject was a minefield, causing more bitterness than any other controversy until it was superseded by the problem of nuclear weapons.
In February 1954 the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, presented to Parliament proposals for the early setting up of a European Defence Community, in the interests of Western security. Herbert Morrison, for the Opposition, gave general support, expressing Labour’s approval of government policy towards the rearmament question, despite the misgivings of many MPs. At first, Wilson seemed to voice the concerns of the minority. ‘Wilson caused a lot of resentment by attacking Attlee over German rearmament,’ recalls Douglas Jay. ‘When, later, it was suggested that Gaitskell should ask him back on to the front bench, the steady old trade union types said: “Why the hell?”’47 At a PLP meeting on 23 February, Wilson made a skilful, carefully worded statement against the Party position. ‘It was a quiet, inoffensive speech without any edge to it, such as I could never possibly deliver,’ wrote Crossman.48
At this stage, Wilson and Bevan seemed to be at one, opposing the Morrison line, yet – unlike others on the Left – refusing to regard the issue as one of fundamental importance. Over the next few weeks, however, Bevan’s attitude hardened. The rearmament question also became linked to a critique of Anglo–American policy in the Far East. In April, following the British Government’s signature of the EDC agreement in Paris, Bevan reacted explosively, over German rearmament and, more particularly, over the failure of the Labour leadership to repudiate Eden’s acceptance of proposals by the US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, for a ‘united front’ against Communist aggression in the Far East, which Bevan saw as ‘tantamount to the diplomatic and military encirclement of republican China’.49 The row reached its climax when Attlee stated the Shadow Cabinet position at Question Time in the House. Acting on impulse, Bevan advanced to the dispatch box and openly disassociated himself from the Party Leader’s statement. Next day, without consulting his ‘Bevanite’ friends, he resigned from the Shadow Cabinet.
The Right responded to this outrage with satisfaction: Bevan had damaged himself far more than those he intended to attack. ‘Now, as Attlee said, our own outside left has shot through his own goal’, Patrick Gordon Walker, a Morrisonite, wrote to a supporter. ‘The truth is that Nye was furious because Clem told him off about his behaviour in the House, when he barged his way to the dispatch box and openly contradicted what Clem had just said … Nye got into a temper and resigned in a sulk.’50 The question was how the Left was going to react to the emotional behaviour of its leader. The answer hinged on the reaction of the exceedingly non-impulsive Harold Wilson.
Wilson’s position on American foreign policy, as on German rearmament, had been little different from that of Bevan, if less vehemently expressed. In 1951, Bevan and Wilson had resigned at the same time, though placing different emphases on the reasons for their resignations. On this occasion, there was even less light between them. Nevertheless, Bevan’s abrupt departure from the Shadow Cabinet presented Wilson with an uncomfortable dilemma, because Wilson had been runner-up (placed thirteenth, for twelve places) in the Parliamentary Committee election at the start of the session, and so – by Party rules – automatically took the vacant place, provided he was prepared to accept it. Not to do so would amount to resigning with Bevan (1951 over again) which would make him appear a doctrinaire Bevanite and ‘Nye’s little dog’ once more, two kinds of reputation he was keen to avoid. But to accept would be treated as treachery and opportunism, especially by