Author Description

Hugh Gaitskell's life was one of paradox. Born into a family of soldiers and empire builders, the rallied to the working-class cause in the General Strike. He was unobtrusive and made little mark at school, yet he was to enjoy a successful academic career and to develop into a highly controversial politician. He is still the only Labour front bencher to be elected leader (and potential prime minister) by a comfortable majority -- and the only one subsequently challenged for re-election. He led the Party to its worst post-war defeat, but when he died he was on the threshold of Downing Street. His aloof public image was utterly unlike his warm private personality. No politician could have been less of a dessicated calculating machine. Accused of elitism, he believed more than other public men that the voters would respond both to serious argument and to idealistic appeal. But, though a worshipper of reason, temperament led him to seek drastic solutions; he loathed trimming, and sometimes showed a reckless gambler's streak when his feelings were aroused -- for his political weaknesses sprang always from too much emotionalism rather than too little. Philip Williams's life of Gaitskell is based on a large collection of private papers, supplemented by those of other politicians, and on extensive interviewing of friends, colleagues and rivals. It is a political biography, setting him in the context of his times. Before 1951 his career throws a flood of light on the working of British government during the war and Labour's post-war reconstruction. Afterwards it illustrates the operations and traditions of the Labour Party in opposition, both in the forgotten periods of internal unity and under the strains of bitter fraternal conflict. The book provides ample material for a history of the Party i those years, and for assessing the outlook and activities of contemporary leaders such as Attlee and Morrison, Cripps and Bevan, and throws new light on t