Does anyone still talk about Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister who died 30 years ago today? Though the Labour party often seems keen to forget a leader who won – almost uniquely – four out of five elections, he was, perhaps more than anyone, the prime minister who ushered in the modern age.
When he stood in the general election of 1964, he was widely billed as a moderniser. Up against Tory Alec Douglas-Home – the grouse-shooting Old Etonian Earl, who described the old age pension as ‘donations’ to the elderly and had used matchsticks to understand economics – Wilson seemed like the dawning of a new age. Words like ‘thrusting,’ ‘dynamic,’ ‘purposeful’ and ‘scientific’ were thrown about him, and he promised a ‘New Britain’ ‘forged in the white heat’ of a technological revolution.
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