Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Gaitskell (9 April 1906 – 18 January 1963) was the Chancellor of the Exchequer 1950-51 and Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party 1955-1963.
In 1933, as the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship, he spent a year studying in Vienna.[1]
From 1940 to 1942, Gaitskell was Principal Private Secretary to Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton.[2]
Covert US support
For much of the 1950s, Labour was divided between right-wing 'Gaitskellites' and left-wing 'Bevanites.' Ramsay and Dorril state that Gaitskell received US support for his attempt to expel Aneurin Bevan from the party in 1955.
- "Gaitskell held a series of meetings at the Russell Hotel, where he planned the expulsion campaign with Sam Watson, the leader of the Durham miners. Also in attendance was the Labour attaché at the American Embassy in London, Joe Godson. One of the most important post-war events in the Labour Party's internal affairs was overseen by an American spook." [3]
Tom Easton wrote in Lobster that Godson, as US labour attaché in London in the 1950s, "had played a close supporting role in Gaitskell's battle with the Left", and that Godson's son Roy Godson later married the daughter of Gaitskell's "principal union ally in the same battle", Sam Watson.[4] Reviewing Brian Brivati's biography of Gaitskell, Easton noted that Philip Williams's edition of Gaitskell's diaries gave Godson a pen portrait and recorded, in a footnote on the 1955 attempt to expel Aneurin Bevan, Gaitskell's apparent concern that Godson was becoming too deeply involved in the party's internal affairs; he added that Brivati does not mention the footnote and describes the plotting at the Russell Hotel without Godson.[5] According to Hugh Wilford, even allies such as Arthur Deakin and Gaitskell himself began to entertain doubts about Godson's role in the Labour Party.[6] See Joseph Godson for further detail.
Gaitskell was a regular guest at conferences of the CIA-sponsored Congress for Cultural Freedom, and its magazine Encounter was a major outlet for Gaitskellite intellectuals. [7]
Affiliations
- Special Operations Executive
- Friends of Socialist Commentary - Treasurer
- Bilderberg Group
Notes
- ↑ Gaitskell Papers.
- ↑ Who's Who. 2007. A & C Black
- ↑ Smear: Wilson and the Secret State, Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Fourth Estate, 1991, p 14.
- ↑ Tom Easton, Who were they travelling with? SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party, Lobster, issue 31, June 1996, accessed 5 November 2026.
- ↑ Tom Easton, Hugh Gaitskell (review of Brian Brivati, Hugh Gaitskell, London: Richard Cohen), Lobster, issue 32, December 1996, accessed 5 November 2026.
- ↑ Hugh Wilford, The CIA, The British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune?, Frank Cass, London 2003, p.180.
- ↑ Smear: Wilson and the Secret State, Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Fourth Estate, 1991, p 16.