PERHAPS one of the worst crimes of Tony Blair is that he has made many people look back fondly on Harold Wilson. Because Blair is so reactionary, the recently deceased Wilson appears, by comparison, to have been a defender of working class interests. Yet the differences between Blair and Wilson are much more apparent than real.
Wilson, it is true, was opposed by some capitalist interests. Colonels Stirling and Walker talked of setting up private armies, even organising a coup. Peter Wright's revelations in Spycatcher demonstrate how members of MIS conspired against Wilson. But these were all relatively minor sectors of the capitalist state. The most important sections of the capitalist class by no means saw Wilson as a threat to their interests.
As Prime Minister Harold Wilson was certainly prepared to sanction significant amounts of government intervention - Blair clearly is Wilson created the National Enterprise Board, the National Board on Prices and Incomes, various off-shoots of the National Economic Development Council, and other organs of class collaboration which appeared to give a voice to the unions. Such bodies are anathema to Blair.
Curb unions
However, all Wilson's efforts at state intervention had a single aim - defending capitalism. From the very beginning he pledged not just to regenerate British (capitalist) industry, but also to cut the power of the unions (which was always described as ending 'restrictive practices').
In the 1960s and early 1970s the ruling class were quite content to use state intervention to safeguard capitalism - hence Wilson's interventionist measures, up to and including nationalisation.
In the 1990s the capitalist class (at least in Britain) have no interest in interventionism -hence Blair's commitment to the logic of the market.
In other words, Wilson and Blair reflect not differences within the working class but differences within ruling class strategy. When the ruling class sanctions state intervention Labour leaders are interventionist - when capitalism opposes interventionism so does the leader of the Labour Party. Any independent working class strategy was as much absent under Harold Wilson's leadership as it will be under a Blair Of course there were a number of important reforms under Wilson. The Equal Pay Act, Sex Discrimination Act, Race Relations Act, liberalisation of abortion laws, and the liberalisation of laws against homosexuality were - for all their weaknesses - important gains. Capital punishment was abolished.
But their introduction owed little to any 'progressive' policies on Harold Wilson's part. Such reforms were introduced because women fought for Equal Pay and an end to discrimination. Black people fought back against racist oppression. Gay men refused to continue to be criminalised.
Reforms were even being proposed by Liberals like David Steel. And, in the social and political climate of the 1960s and early 1970s, such moves were genuinely popular. A Labour government that had refused to back such measures would soon have found itself facing even greater levels of hostility than confronted Wilson.
Despite making some concessions on these social issues Wilson also adopted a tougher approach on other issues, particularly immigration. Under Wilson immigration laws became even more explicitly racist.
Wilson remained deeply committed to defending capitalist economic interests. In 1966, when confronted with a strike by members of the National Union of Seamen (sic) Wilson denounced 'a small group of politically motivated men' (one of whom was a certain John Prescott!) and organised a massive witchhunt against the strikers. Three years later, following strikes in the engineering industry, Wilson introduced his 'In Place of Strife' anti-union proposals.
Wage controls
Massive working class opposition forced Wilson to withdraw his proposals. By then his government had lost sufficient support to allow a Tory victory in the 1970 election. But Wilson remained committed to taming the unions. Reelected in a new economic crisis in 1974. his government began by upholding Tory wage controls before imposing its own, more draconian wage cuts under the guise of the Social Contract - or 'Social Contrick' as it was known at the time - which attempted to integrate trade union leaders in policing the working class.
After 1976, when Denis Healey had done his Every picture tells a story: Wilson got on famously with US warmonger Lyndon Johnson deal with the IMF, the mask was dropped, and the pretence of co-operation was replaced by naked wage controls.
Of course Blair's approach to the unions is different. He makes no pretence of sitting down to 'beer and sandwiches' (not even chablis and caviar) with union leaders. But, again, the difference is more apparent than real. Wilson had no choice: the unions remained strong and able to mobilise active opposition. Even Heath had eventually to recognise that.
Capitalism in the 1960s and early 1970s was willing to integrate the union leaders. By the 1980s it was no longer prepared to do so. Thatcher took on and defeated the miners (aided by the passivity of the rest of the union leadership).
The union leaders were rapidly marginalised. They were no longer able to gain a hearing in Downing Street. In fact the only place they were able to make their voice heard, however feebly, was in Brussels - hence their new-found enthusiasm for the European Union.
Blair is hostile to the unions because that is what capitalism demands. If capitalism felt it necessary to incorporate the union leaders, as it did in the 1960s, Blair would no doubt adopt policies similar to Wilson.
Whilst. Wilson aimed to make Britain safe for capitalism, he certainly didn't confine himself to purely British affairs. Indeed, Wilson's foreign policy was as reactionary as that of the post war Labour government had been, under the direction of Cold Warrior Ernest Bevin.
Probably no government in the world was so enthusiastic about United States imperialism's brutal war against the people of Vietnam. Despite the opposition of the Daily Mirror, despite the opposition of the Labour Party itself, despite massive demonstrations, Wilson's government slavishly supported the American war effort.
Nor did Wilson protest about the American invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965.
Wilson's craven support was not some aberration. Labour governments have always backed American imperialism. 'Atlanticism' and 'the special relationship' were developed by the 1945 Labour government, leading to Labour sending troops to support the imperialist war in Korea.
The only time the Labour Party openly opposed British imperialist intervention was in 1956 - over the Suez crisis - when the USA was also opposed to the British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt.
If Blair looks today towards the European Union it is not that he has differences with Wilson's approach. Wilson was "Atlanticist' because the dominant sections of capital were. Today, the dominant sections of capital look to Europe, so Blair follows suit.
Vietnam
Wilson was not only an enthusiastic supporter of American imperialism's war against the people of Vietnam. He was involved in his own colonial war, in Aden, until Britain was finally forced to withdraw in 1967 and recognise the independence of South Yemen.
Withdrawal from Aden was quickly followed by intervention in Nigeria on the side of the military government against the Biafra independence movement. Britain not only sent arms, tanks and mortars, but British officers also took part both directly and indirectly in the Wilson was also capable of the most cynical realpolitik. In 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. Wilson (and the Americans) were aware of the invasion fully one week before it took place. Wilson (and the Americans) cynically suppressed this information, and failed to inform Czech Prime Minister Dubcek about the imminent invasion. Subsequent protests about 'Soviet aggression' The most enduring 'achievement' of the Wilson government is the continued presence of British troops in the North of Ireland. Wilson's decision to send troops to Belfast and Derry in August 1969 was not motivated by a concern that Nationalists might be murdered by Loyalists but a fear that the Nationalist people might defeat the armed Loyalist thugs of the In Derry especially, a victory for the Nationalists was a real possibility. British troops went there to prevent the defeat of the R.U.C. and to re-impose imperialist order. Nearly 26 years later they are still carrying out the same role.
Tony Blair is, of course, a disaster for working people. But let's not get sentimental for Wilson just because Blair is so awful. Attacks on trade union rights, witchhunts of strikers, support for imperialist wars, ever more racist immigration laws - and sixteen years of misery under Thatcherism - are the grim legacy of the Though Blair is now not even offering reforms, there was no golden age of reformism: instead of making us soft and sentimental, Wilson's death should remind us of the urgency of rebuilding a principled socialist current in the labour movement, to ensure Blair does not
Hull dockers proudly showing their new Blue Union cards SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 84, May 27 1995, Page 13 Shaping up for a fight? TGWU officials meet Hull dockers