Hugh Gaitskell: Biography from Answers.com

(b. Kensington, London, 9 Apr. 1906; d. 18 Jan. 1963) British; Chancellor of the Exchequer 1950 – 1, leader of the Labour Party 1955 – 63 Gaitskell was the son of a senior civil servant in India. From a well-to-do family, he was educated at Winchester and Oxford. His studies at Oxford and his experience of the General Strike (1926) converted him to socialism.

Leaving Oxford he was briefly an extra-mural tutor with the Workers' Educational Association in Nottingham and in 1928 became a university lecturer in economics in London, remaining in post until the outbreak of war. During the war he was a civil servant and worked for a time for the leading Labour politician, Hugh Dalton.

Gaitskell acquired a good reputation as an administrator and never lost the air of a civil servant. Socialism for him was about taking practical, pragmatic measures to improve living conditions, particularly for the poor. In 1945 he won Leeds South for Labour and held the seat until his death.

After holding a number of junior posts in the 1945 government he became Minister of State for Economic Affairs in February 1950. He had shown authority in arguing the case for devaluation in 1949 and administrative skill at the Ministry of Supply, coping with the coal shortage during a bitterly cold winter. He succeeded the ailing Sir Stafford Cripps as Chancellor of the Exchequer in October 1950. His 1951 budget proposed to finance a massive rearmament programme (subsequently reduced by the incoming Conservative government), a course which upset many on the left and made Aneurin Bevan a long-standing opponent, because it involved the imposition of prescription charges on the health service which the latter had created.

The Labour Party began its thirteen years in opposition after losing the 1951 election. The early 1950s were taken up with divisions over German rearmament (Gaitskell supported it, Bevan opposed it) and a struggle for the succession to the ageing Clement Attlee. There was also division between them over support for the American alliance against the USSR. In a symbolic contest for the party treasurer in 1954 Gaitskell, backed by the bulk of the trade unions, defeated Bevan. When Attlee retired Gaitskell was elected as his successor in December 1955 by a clear margin over Herbert Morrison and Bevan. He had been an MP for just over ten years.

Gaitskell, like Attlee, was an upper-middle-class, public school, Oxbridge-educated leader. He was backed by the Labour right and the trade unions against Bevan, the working-class hero of the left and the constituency parties. Eventually, there was an uneasy relationship between the two.

Gaitskell's conduct of the Labour campaign in the 1959 general election increased his stature. But the party lost its third successive general election and he was blamed by some for making an unwise pledge that a Labour government would finance its spending programmes without increasing income tax. After defeat Gaitskell proposed to amend Clause 4 of the party constitution, the clause that committed Labour to public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. This move was bitterly opposed throughout much of the party. Gaitskell's own proposal which involved the party pledging to promote social justice, planning, and equality was accepted, but Clause 4 remained. It was a defeat. To the left Clause 4 was the symbol of socialism.

Gaitskell was immediately faced with a new row over defence. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament made progress in the party and the party conference in 1961 carried a unilateralist policy platform. Gaiskell, in a passionate speech, pledged himself to "fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love" and began a long battle to reverse the decision. This was achieved at the next party conference in 1962. At the same conference Gaitskell made clear his opposition to Britain's membership of the European Community on the terms then offered, warning that a federal Europe would mean "the end of a thousand years of history". This helped mend his fences with traditional opponents on the left. By the time of his sudden death in early 1963 Gaitskell was in command of his party and was widely seen as the next Prime Minister.

Gaitskell was a rationalist in politics — famously dismissed by Bevan as a desiccated calculating machine. He was also highly principled and unwilling to compromise on what he regarded as key policies. His efforts to lead the Labour Party to the centre ground led the Economist to refer to "Butskellism", a term for the perceived similarities in economic policies between himself and the Conservative R. A. Butler. Gaitskell took an instrumental view of public ownership. He thought that the mixed economy was now able to deliver full employment and the welfare state. Socialists should be interested in promoting a better quality of life and greater equality. Within the Labour Party he attracted a number of followers, so-called Gaitskellites, including Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland.

The British politician Hugh Gaitskell (1906-1963) was chancellor of the exchequer from 1950 to 1951. He was leader of the Labour Party from 1955 to 1963.

Hugh Todd-Naylor Gaitskell was born in London on April 9, 1906, the son of Arthur Gaitskell, an Indian civil servant. He had a middle-class upbringing which included periods of time spent in Burma. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he received first class honors in "Modern Greats" (politics, philosophy, and economics) in 1927.

For the next ten years Gaitskell pursued a career in teaching. He lectured to Nottingham miners for a year (1927-1928) on behalf of the Workers' Educational Association, his first extended contact with working-class life. Then he taught economics and politics at University College, London, rising to the position of reader in political economy in 1938. In 1937 he married Dora Frost, with whom he had two daughters.

Gaitskell's interest in socialism was stimulated initially during his student days at Oxford, where he came under the influence of G. D. H. Cole, the socialist philosopher and historian. His first political act was to assist the workers in Oxford during the nine days' general strike of 1926. In 1935 he ran unsuccessfully as Labour Party candidate for a parliamentary seat at Chatham. He began to make speeches and to participate in party activities. He advocated collective security against fascism and took a moderate socialist line on economic questions, arguing in favor of social equality and against revolution.

During World War II Gaitskell joined the civil service on a temporary basis. He served in several important ministries and worked closely with the Labour politician Hugh Dalton. In the general election of 1945 he won the seat in Parliament for Leeds South, which he held for the remainder of his life. In the postwar government of Clement Attlee he was appointed to the positions of minister of fuel and power (1947-1950), minister of state for economic affairs (1950), and chancellor of the exchequer (1950-1951). As chancellor he introduced charges into the hitherto free National Health Service.

In 1951 the Conservative Party was returned to power, and Gaitskell never again held governmental office. Yet his political influence continued to grow, based as it was on a reputation for integrity and commitment to principle. In 1955, upon the resignation of Attlee, Gaitskell won the leadership of the Labour Party with a decisive victory over Herbert Morrison and Aneurin Bevan, a leader of the party's more radical wing.

Gaitskell steered the Labour Party in a moderate direction from 1955 until his death in 1963. He vigorously opposed the invasion of the Suez Canal by Britain, France, and Israel in 1956. He also tried to modify the party's commitment to the nationalization of industry, as embodied in clause four of its constitution. After losing the general election of October 1959 decisively to Harold Macmillan and the Conservatives, Gaitskell came under attack and the Labour Party began to divide into factions. At its annual conference at Scarborough a resolution was carried by the more radical faction led by Bevan endorsing unilateral nuclear disarmament. Gaitskell, a strong supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, made the most famous speech of his career on this occasion, vowing to "fight and fight and fight again to save the Party we love." The following year, at Blackpool, the party reversed the disarmament resolution by an overwhelming majority and re-established Gaitskell's authority as leader. It also gave him support on the clause four issue. In 1962 he used this authority to affirm the party's opposition to joining the European Common Market on the terms then being offered.

While at the peak of his influence Gaitskell became ill with a viral infection and died suddenly on January 18, 1963. His reputation as a political leader remained high. As both a conciliator and a vigorous fighter for his beliefs, he led the Labour Party in a moderate direction. He invariably argued his case with intellectual distinction. It is generally conceded, even by his political opponents, that he would have been an effective, perhaps an outstanding, prime minister.

Further Reading

The best biography of Gaitskell is Philip M. Williams, Hugh Gaitskell: A Political Biography (1979, abridged and with new material, 1982). This should be read in conjunction with The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945-1956, edited by Philip M. Williams (1983). Hugh Gaitskell, 1906-1963, edited by W.T. Rodgers, contains interesting essays by people who knew him well at various times of his life. Carl Brand, The British Labour Party: A Short History (rev. ed., 1974) is a good introduction to the postwar history of the party. Two studies of the divisions within the Labour Party are Leslie Hunter, The Road to Brighton Pier (1959) and Stephen Haseler, The Gaitskellites: Revisionism in the Labour Party, 1951-64 (1969), the latter written from a pro-Gaitskell perspective. Biographies of Labour politicians which contain useful material about Gaitskell are Ben Pimlott, Hugh Dalton (1985); Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan, 2 vols. (1962, 1973); and Kenneth Harris, Attlee (1982).

Additional Sources

Williams, Philip Maynard, Hugh Gaitskell, Oxford Oxfordshire; New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Gaitskell, Hugh (1906-63). As Labour party leader, Gaitskell exercised a more enduring impact on British politics than might be supposed from his brief ministerial career. After Winchester and Oxford, Gaitskell spent eleven years as an academic before taking up a wartime civil service post at the Ministry of Economic Warfare.

Elected to Parliament in 1945, Gaitskell was among the most impressive of Labour's new intake. Conspicuous success at the Ministry of Fuel and Power ensured rapid promotion and he became minister of state at the Treasury after the 1950 general election. Gaitskell was fortunate in the timing of his ministerial ascent. Many of the leading figures in the cabinet had been continuously in office for a decade. Gaitskell, by contrast, seemed to be the coming man of Labour politics. When illness forced the resignation of Stafford Cripps in October 1950, the 44-year-old Gaitskell was an obvious successor as chancellor.

His only budget in 1951 proved to be controversial. His decision to introduce limited Health Service charges prompted the resignations of Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson, and John Freeman. Attlee finally retired from the leadership in December 1955 and Gaitskell easily defeated Bevan and Herbert Morrison for the succession. His first years as leader were relatively uneventful. He even succeeded in effecting a reconciliation with Bevan. Gaitskell performed effectively in Parliament over the Suez crisis. With the Conservatives badly shaken by Suez, Labour approached the election of 1959 with confidence.

The result—a third successive Conservative victory and a substantially increased majority—was a considerable personal blow. Gaitskell determined to modernize the party to accommodate the aspirations of middle-class voters. To traditionalists, however, this meant diluting the socialist content of the party's ideology. Such opposition led to Gaitskell's defeat in 1960 over his attempt to remove clause 4 (the common ownership of the means of production) from the party's constitution. But he restored his authority a year later, resisting the left's attempts to commit Labour to unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Gaitskell died suddenly in 1963, having done much to re-establish Labour as a credible party of government—an achievement which benefited Harold Wilson in October 1964.

(gāt'skəl) , 1906–63, British statesman. Educated at Oxford, he taught economics at the Univ. of London. During World War II he was a civil servant in the new ministry of economic warfare (1940–42) and in the Board of Trade (1942–45). He entered Parliament as a Labour member in 1945 and served as minister of fuel and power (1947–50) and chancellor of the exchequer (1950–51). In 1955 he succeeded Clement Attlee as leader of the Labour party. After Labour's defeat in the 1959 general election, Gaitskell supported some moderation of party policies. At the party conference of 1960 the left wing of the party defeated him on the issue of unilateral nuclear disarmament, which he opposed, but he had recovered his authority in the party by the time of his premature death.

Bibliography

See his diaries (1983); biography by P. Williams (1982).

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