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Thus, on Wilson's assurance that "there wasn't really anything more to be said," the party that hopes to govern Britain quashed discussion of such internationally momentous issues as its proposal for gradual disengagement in Central Europe, Britain's future relations with the Common Market, Wilson's avowed intent to "denegotiate" the Nassau Agreement giving it U.S. Polaris submarine secrets, and other pressing questions that might lead to vote-losing disputation. Delegates could not even question Wilson's aim to substitute "natural" ties with the U.S. for the cherished "special relationship" based on nuclear sharing. Save for a few scattered catcalls, Laborites accepted the ban without question. Asked if Gaitskell would have resorted to such tactics, Wilson replied: "No—but he would have lost the election."
Youngest Prime Minister? "The Labor Party," Wilson likes to explain, "is like a vehicle. If you drive at great speed, all the people in it are either so exhilarated or so sick that you have no problems. But when you stop, they all get out and start to argue about which way to go."
In his nine months at the wheel, Wilson has driven himself at breakneck speed and plainly relishes his role. He has had conferences with many European socialist leaders, and on visits to Moscow and Washington to discuss his policies has been flattered by his hosts' respectful assumption that he has already taken office. Cracks an acquaintance: "Harold's having his honeymoon before the marriage."
The courtship started 39 years ago, when eight-year-old Harold Wilson was photographed in a proprietorial pose outside 10 Downing Street; at 16, he announced his intention of some day living there. If he makes it inside next year, he will be the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Rosebery who held office from 1894-1895, and only the third to come from Labor's ranks (the others: Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee) in the party's 63 years. Wilson's proudest boast, however, will be that he is the first "classless" Prime Minister in Britain's history. A North Country chemist's son, he went to grammar school and Oxford on scholarships, and resembles thousands of other lowlier Britons who have taken the same escape route out of the suffocating class structure. "Those of us who had educational advantages," he says slyly in a homespun Yorkshire burr, "should not look down on Mr. Macmillan and others who had no choice but to go to Eton."
Wilson's lifelong hero has been William Ewart Gladstone, the great Victorian Liberal who awakened Britain's conscience to the miseries of the new industrial working class. Wilson shares Gladstone's erudition and eloquence, and at times betrays the moral certitude that prompted a Victorian wag's complaint about Gladstone: "I don't mind his having all the aces up his sleeve, but I do object to his acting as if God put them there."