Walking Back to Happiness

By Liam Baker

Harold Wilson was launched into the spotlight as the darling of Labour's modern left in the leadership election of 1960, challenging Gaitskell and making himself the de facto leader of the Labour Left. His was the promise of a modernising party, committed to shaping Britain into a progressive and technocratic nation, and this promise would be put to the test when he became Prime Minister in 1964. Sadly, it was a test he did not pass and the failures of his government set Britain upon a path of industrial stagnation, social democratic malaise, and the ultimate dominance of the right in British politics.

But, what if Wilson never entered the 1960 leadership contest? What if the original candidate of the left in 1960 took Wilson's place in British history? In Walking Back To Happiness, Liam Baker imagines a Britain without the false promises of Harold Wilson and the stagnation of Labour's technocracy. Instead, Wilson is replaced by someone far more radical in his politics and far more telegenic as a personality. In this timeline, the received wisdom of British politics – where radical means unelectable and democratic socialism is doomed to fail – is turned on its head as the Labour Left becomes the party establishment and Britain's small-c conservatism is shaken by continuous social upheaval.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386312017

Book preview

Walking Back To Happiness

Liam Baker

First published by Sea Lion Press in 2016

This is a work of fiction. While ‘real-world’ characters may appear, the nature of the divergent story means any depictions herein are fictionalised and in no way an indication of real events. Above all, characterisations have been developed with the primary aim of telling a compelling story.

Chapter One

In the aftermath of Scarborough, the Labour Party was in disarray. The nature of internal party debate had changed within a matter of months, from the question of unilateral nuclear disarmament to the possibility of a left-wing leadership challenge to Hugh Gaitskell. Conference had passed motions in favour of unilateralism, much to the chagrin of the right-wing Gaitskellites with their multilateralist stance, and Gaitskell ignored conference’s decisions without fear. Policy was out of the hands of conference delegates, he believed, and their decisions could not force his hand. Instead, he stayed on the multilateralist course in the hope that somebody would challenge him, lose to him, and thus vindicate his leadership. Of course, a challenger would emerge.

The Labour Left was nominally led by a group of highly influential MPs: Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle, Anthony Greenwood and Harold Wilson. Each one was independent of the other, but they were united in their opposition to Gaitskell. Losing in 1959 had not endeared him to some of Labour’s most passionate representatives, and so the leader’s office could not inevitably carry on unscathed whilst Labour remained seated on the Opposition benches. And so, Barbara Castle called together her left-wing allies on the NEC to a meeting in London to discuss who should be the one to throw down the gauntlet and challenge Gaitskell to a leadership contest. Harold Wilson, the young Shadow Chancellor, was the first man to whom the left-wingers turned. But, when confronted with the prospect of taking on Gaitskell in a quixotic leadership challenge, Harold was obviously very unwilling to stand and sat looking more and more miserable. Utterly without optimism for the endeavour, Wilson made it very clear he would not take up the left-wing’s banner. Instead, it was to be Anthony Greenwood.

Tony Greenwood, MP for Rossendale, took his colleagues by surprise in announcing that he would resign from the Shadow Cabinet as a sign of no confidence in Gaitskell’s leadership. He made it clear that the fight on his hands concerned the unity and confidence of the Labour Party, rather than the controversial issue of unilateralism. Castle, as the only major female member of their group, also tried to put herself forward, but found herself shot down. Crossman described the possibility of her mounting a leadership challenge as a farce, and it took Greenwood many hours to soothe her feeling of indignation. Wilson’s inner turmoil over whether to run or not was no more than a sideshow to the campaign forming around Greenwood, masterminded by Richard Crossman. Whilst Greenwood stood with the caveat of retaining the option to stand down in favour of someone with greater, unifying appeal, a week passed without an intervention by Harold Wilson. The enigmatic Yorkshireman was pushed aside by his erstwhile comrades and their hopes were placed upon an altogether more handsome head.

On the 3rd November 1960, the vote was taken by the Parliamentary Labour Party to decide the future of Labour’s leadership. However, few thought of it in such terms. In the event, the candidature of Anthony Greenwood garnered 76 votes to Gaitskell’s 171. Nobody expected Greenwood to win, but that was never the purpose of the leadership challenge in the first place. Over one third of Labour MPs disagreed with Gaitskell’s leadership and that would be the foundation of another, emboldened challenge in the future. Wilson had lost his credibility in the eyes of the Left and had become, in the words of Barbara Castle, a prisoner of the Right. This was his single chance, but indecisiveness and melancholy had doomed Wilson’s chance to reclaim his stature on the Left of the party. He could do little more than sulk, alone and wracked with regret, over the lost chance of his own leadership challenge. Of course, few considered the possibility of him winning or coming even close to the number of parliamentarians Greenwood could persuade to support a left-wing challenge.

Gaitskell was unshaken, even emboldened, and felt that he had a mandate from his parliamentary colleagues to carry forward his plan for Labour as he saw fit. A multilateralist defence policy would be the premier part of his reforming agenda and, at the 1961 Blackpool conference, Gaitskell had the previous year’s unilateralist ruling overturned by 2.5-to-1. To the country, Labour looked united around Gaitskell. Internally, however, the old ideological rifts remained in place.

It would take two years for the old battle between Left and Right to be played out in public once again, but then Labour would be on the rise in the polls and on the verge of retaking Number 10 for the first time in over a decade.

Chapter Two

Over the course of 1962, Macmillan’s government sustained blow after blow. It was starting to look like the end of his personal popularity and the beginning of the steep decline of the Conservative Party.

In March, the Orpington by-election was spectacularly lost by the Conservatives to the Liberal candidate, Eric Lubbock. Peter Goldman, the Conservative candidate, had been predicted to win the by-election with a sizeable majority. However, on the 14th March, the constituents of Orpington opted to give Goldman and his party a bloody nose by throwing their support towards the young Lubbock. Whilst the personal issue of refusing to live within Orpington plagued Goldman’s campaign, it was discerned that his close relationship with the Exchequer and his high position in the Conservative Research Department were the main reasons he was rejected so clearly by the electorate of Orpington. The Conservative Party had become toxic and things could only get worse. In July of that same year, the knives came out for seven ministers in Macmillan’s cabinet. Dubbed the Night of the Long Knives in the press, Macmillan replaced an entire third of his cabinet with new ministers who were more amenable to his policies and his vision for the country. Selwyn Lloyd, the vastly unpopular Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the most high-profile sacking of the lot and was the one that caused Macmillan the most grief. Pay pauses and restrictive measures on growth had transformed the image of Lloyd into that of an austerity Chancellor, an image totally at odds with the Conservative Party’s belief in ever-growing affluence, and so he clashed with Macmillan on policies that he believed would increase inflation further and amount to nothing more than election gimmicks. In his place, Reginald Maudling was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd’s replacement was soon buried under a mountain of memos urging him to go for the big stuff – the national plan, the new approach, the expand or die.

By the end of the year, the Conservative Party had dipped far below Gaitskell’s Labour in the polls. But, it wouldn’t be Gaitskell’s Labour Party for much longer.

On the 18th January 1963, Hugh Gaitskell died of lupus erythematosus. His death was a sudden blow to Labour’s confidence and unity, with many fearing that the party would turn in on itself once again like it did during the wilderness years of the 1950s. The left-right divisions were sure to rear their ugly heads and, in the February leadership election, they did.

George Brown took over as a temporary leader to stand in whilst the position of Leader of the Labour Party stood vacant. For Brown, however, this was to serve as his great chance to win the leadership and keep it out of the hands of left-wingers like Greenwood and Castle. He announced he would run for the leadership towards the end of January and was soon joined by Anthony Greenwood, the former challenger of 1960. Greenwood had spent the three years since his leadership challenge campaigning on social reforms and nuclear disarmament, endearing himself to the party faithful and shoring up his position on the Left. No other left-wing challenger was forthcoming, least of all Harold Wilson, and the centre-ground was there for the taking. Greenwood seized upon a message of unity, similar to the one he espoused in his leadership challenge in November 1960, whereas George Brown’s pitch to the Parliamentary Labour Party concerned the fears of the Gaitskellites about an unreconstructed Bevanite taking the party to the unelectable left. James Callaghan, another right-winger and Shadow Chancellor since November 1961, considered running for the leadership himself but was dissuaded from splitting the right-wing vote. Anthony Crosland, an ally of Callaghan, wrote in his diaries that the leadership election had come to a choice between a spiv and a drunk.

Based upon ideology alone, the contest should have fallen in Brown’s favour. This time, however, the personalities of the two candidates could not have been further apart. Greenwood exuded confidence and charisma, which Brown clearly lacked. On television, Greenwood was a consummate performer who wasn’t afraid of the likes of Robin Day: he revelled in his own unflappability. He appeared clean-cut and straightforward, even when his flattery was so obviously insincere. In all this and more, he was poles apart from George Brown. Brown was neither a consummate performer on television nor a charmer in person. His style could be abrasive, even leading him into a physical altercation with Nikolai Bulganin (Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers) in 1956, and his frequent drunkenness only exacerbated the issue. There was a certain irony to the situation, as Anthony’s father, Arthur Greenwood, had stood for the leadership in 1935 and found that his loss was partly down to his own unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

On the 7th February 1963, the ballots were cast and a clear winner emerged after a single round of voting. 246 Labour MPs cast their votes, with