(6 of 9)
Bash, Bash, Bash. Wilson's Olympianire and searing tongue have made him the most feared Labor orator in Parliament since Nye Bevan. Wilson has described the Tory government as "that effete Venetian oligarchy," likened Macmillan's relations with Kennedy to those of "a seedy uncle at the receiving end of some well-chosen homilies from his wealthy, forward-looking nephew."
On the Christine Keeler cult: "The worship of the golden calf."* On rumors that the Tories were trying to force Macmillan to retire before the election: "If they succeed, they plan a massive campaign of destalinization and demacmillanization that will make the achievement of Nikita Khrushchev look like the efforts of a well-intentioned amateur."
One of Wilson's most valuable assets is a fantastic photographic memory that reaches back for years. "Ah, yes," he will exclaim, "I remember making that point in the House on June 17, 1963. You'll find it in Hansard, page 51." On the other hand, he confesses, he can "never remember a face."
Wilson solicits his colleagues' views, delegates responsibilities more freely than Gaitskell, and is sparing of reprimands. "For every mistake," he says philosophically, "we'll pull off two or three victories. If only we keep bashing, bashing, bashing away, the government will feel the effect."
Critics & Colleagues. Most of the key posts in a Wilson government would be held by talented, fiercely local Laborites who came to the fore under Gaits kell and now hold posts in Wilson's Shadow Cabinet while waiting to take office.
> Deputy Leader Brown, 49, is Home Secretary in the Shadow Cabinet. A truck driver's son, he is an influential, impetuous, passionately anti-Communist union leader, for five years was the party's able defense expert.
> Defense Expert Denis Healey, 46, a Yorkshireman, is an outspoken champion of the U.S. who argues that Britain's nuclear deterrent is a "fatal error" because its cost has forced the government to "rat" on its NATO ground force commitments.
> Shadow Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker, 56, is a writer and former Oxford history don who, apart from Wilson, is the only top Laborite to have held a Cabinet post (Commonwealth Relations Secretary) in the Attlee government. Labor's foreign policy favors seating Red China in the U.N. and making Nationalist China a U.N. trusteeship—a solution that is not acceptable to Peking or Formosa or Washington.
> Board of Trade President will be Douglas Jay, 56, another Gaitskellite, who believes that the party should de-emphasize its socialism. With the sustained economic growth envisaged by Labor, he argues, business will benefit from higher levels of savings, profits and wages.
> Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan, 51, is a wartime Royal Navy lieutenant who has proved a tough-minded administrator and was credited with persuading the big unions to go along with Wilson's wage restraint policy.