"I was worried by a streak of intolerance in Gaitskell's nature; he tended to believe that no one could disagree with him unless they were either knaves or fools. Rejecting Dean Rusk's advice, he would insist on arguing to a conclusion rather than to a decision. ... Gaitskell took my views on foreign policy seriously. I think I helped to form his position on Suez, the Common Market, Russia, and the atomic bomb. Most of his Godkin lecture on disengagement was written by me. If he had become Prime Minister I would probably have become his Foreign Secretary, after Harold Wilson had held the job for a year or two; and he told close friends that he thought I would be the best person to succeed him as Party leader. Nevertheless, I have always doubted whether the fierce puritanism of his intellectual convictions would have enabled him to run a Labour Government for long, without imposing intolerable strains on so anarchic a Labour movement."
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Anti-apartheid activistsMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomActivists from EnglandLabour Party (UK) politiciansUniversity College London faculty
Original Language: English
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Sources
Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1990), p. 154
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hugh_Gaitskell
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Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell (9 April 1906 – 18 January 1963) was a British politician and leader of the Labour Party from 1955 until his death.
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