Talk:Denis Healey

WW2
Healey took part in the landings at Anzio in World War II. I have his book so I can give a few details.

Can anyone provide a London Gazette date for the award of a Military Cross? I can find no evidence for this. Debretts does not list an MC for him. His MBE was awarded for WWII. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.115.94 (talk) 10:23, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Bilderberg
Why is there nothing about Bilderberg here? I see no reason for not mentioning his involvement. Makes me wonder if the conspiracy nuts have a point.


 * I've added a short section on Bilderberg. (82.40.177.159 03:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC))

The link in the note was working a second ago but now it's not. Here's another one if anyone more capable wants to edit. Thanks.

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:vK-Q3P3unwoJ:www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4149485,00.html+jon+ronson+founder+member+denis+healey&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk

".

Hmmm.. It's not there now! --Rebroad (talk) 20:16, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Still alive?
Is he still alive? I thought I'd seen his obituary last year, but it might have been someone else... Graham 23:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, certainly. In fact he appeared on Sunday AM with his wife earlier this year. I'm sure we can trust Wikipedia to be up to date on a famous person like Denis Healey. --86.31.26.55 18:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Wife
Healey and his wife are one of the more celebrated couples in British politics, but I can't find any mention of her in the article. David Colver 17:25, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

International Monetary Fund application and crisis
Neither this nor the article on James Callaghan has any coverage worth noting about the application for a loan from the IMF and the ensuing crisis of public confidence. I could not find a separate article, either. I may have missed it, but if I haven't, does anyone feel qualified to start one? 80.189.136.67 14:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Infobox
Please do not continue to add Shadow Foreign Secretary to the top of the infobox, Healey has had held several more prominent roles that should be listed here. Catchpole 08:12, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Confusing passage
The article states that "Though a supporter and friend of Hugh Gaitskell, when Gaitskell died in 1963, Healey voted for Callaghan in the first ballot and Harold Wilson in the second". Why "though"? Gaitskell, Callaghan and Wilson were all more or less from the moderate wing of the Labour party. Why would it be some sort of bizarre contradiction for a Gaitskellite to vote for Wilson or Callaghan after Gaitskell's death? And it's not as if Gaitskell would care at that point, being, as was stated above, dead. Ken Burch 06:40 26 May 2008(UTC)

Wilson was seen as the "left" candidate in 1963 - Brown was the right wing candidate. Healey might have been expected to vote for Brown but had doubts about his drinking and lack of emotional stability. Exile (talk) 21:12, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Middle name
Is there any citation for Healey being named in honour of Churchill (middle name is Winston)? At the time of his birth (1917), it is quite remarkable that an engineer would choose to name his son after a politician yet to excel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.144.33 (talk) 16:15, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A quick google found this comment in Hansard from Gerard Kaufman. I'll add the ref to the article. Qwfp (talk) 18:31, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Churchill was already one of the most famous politicians in Europe. When Healey was born his father was working at the Woolwich Arsenal as a gun inspector and Churchill was Minister of Munitions, so not in the least remarkable. DuncanHill (talk) 10:44, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Desert Island Discs
healey is the guest on desert island discs which will be radio 4 at 9am on friday and 115am on sunday.

i dunno if i can quote it as rs cos bbc broadcasts are only available in the uk biut if i can do anything to correct the article i certainly will. lord healey fascinating man. SimonTrew (talk) 05:13, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Bad photograph
Surely it must be possible to get a better photograph of a man who spent decades on the front pages of various papers? One to show off his magnificent eyebrows.

Like (for example) this one

Jalanb (talk) 04:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If you can find one that is appropriately licensed then we can use it. Cannot be a fair use image as the person is still alive. Keith D (talk) 13:53, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've found a new image on flickr which appears to be freely licsensed. Admittedly, the quality isn't great, but at least it shows his face and not the side of his head. Peter (talk) 15:11, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

1940
Healey might have left the Communist Party in 1940. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was still in force at that time, 1940. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.134.88 (talk) 13:29, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
 * See Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.134.88 (talk) 13:53, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Clarify, please?
I may be a complete knacker-noodle, but i cannot make sense of this portion of a sentence in the second paragraph of the second section: ...Healey commented that to most ordinary seamen they were just floating slums and too vulnerable, given that the a/s bow and arrow in the RN nuclear hunter killers was a the 20 knot, MK 20 Bider torpedo.... I assume that RN means Royal Navy, though the abbreviation is not clarified elsewhere to mine eyes, but i cannot fathom what a/s means, nor what the purpose/meaning of bow and arrow is with regard to a naval context. Could this be slightly rewritten? Since it's not referenced directly, i presume that it's not a direct quotation, so we ought to be able to clarify it. Cheers, LindsayHello 09:00, 16 April 2014 (UTC) edited 10:05, 22 May 2014 (UTC) to previous formatting
 * Thank you I have modified the syntax and citation and achieved some clarification of the article. I have taken the liberty of editing your talk response- to avoid confusion RFM. A very critical point in Healey's term as MOD was the UK Govt and MOD did not believe nuclear war of either unlimited or limited type could occur without MAD. The superpowers the US and USSR did from the JFK/Robert MacNamara period. The US planned and considered the option and that of 3 months conventional and broken back war. The US/Royal Navy Posiedon  C3 is not a MAD missile but a counterforce or countervalue warfighting system with each missile carrying  10-14 MIRV of about 30 kilton for use  against military targets or cities. see (1) Deterence (Post War).Submarines of WW2. The Silent Service. History Channel.4/ DVD (2011); (2) DVD 'Fog of War' in which McNamara states the cold war was always hot and 3/4 times we were 5minutes from WW3. To Healey the War Plan was unworldy and would never happen be implemented. Edward Hampshire study of naval policy during the Healey period of Royal Navy Carrier phase out and reorientation from East of Suez to the North Atlantic is an interesting study of conflict between the officer class and MOD and the British Political Class. Inserted RFM 15.5.14 Ak?NZ 1.50pm
 * Thank you. I have taken the liberty of replacing my text as i wrote it ~ for future reference it's probably best not to change what someone else has written on the talk page, though thank you for noting you had done so ~ and adding an indentation to yours to clarify/separate what you wrote from what i did.  As for the article, to my mind that paragraph still reads extremely clumsily, and i may have a swipe at changing it, just to smooth the flow and make it clearer what is meant. Cheers, LindsayHello 07:31, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

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Father head of a trade school
"His father was an engineer who worked his way up from humble origins, studying at night school and eventually becoming head of a trade school." What trade school? I ask because trade school redirects to here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocational_school and the UK isn't mentioned as having trade schools! 31.49.9.154 (talk) 19:49, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It was Keighley Technical School. Our article Technical School is about an American thing, the article about technical schools is at Secondary technical school. DuncanHill (talk) 15:32, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Defence Secretary
The 'Defence Secretary' section is bloody awful and consists of an argumentative and often fallacious list of things that Healey cancelled or supposedly cancelled. The cancellation of TSR2 was actually recommended by the RAF because the aircraft was not fit for purpose and would swallow the whole RAF procurement budget. Healey preferred the US F-111 as a replacement, but the American development budget got out of control and Cabinet decided on the F-4K and F-4M Phantoms instead. (Healey would always point out that these things ended up costing three times the price of a standard F-4J Phantom because of the re-engineering for Rolls-Royce Spey engines.) All the same, the Phantoms served the RAF and Royal Navy well. It's simply not true, and is not claimed by the cited sources, that the Wilson government made any move to scrap HMS Ark Royal. In fact they paid for a lengthy refit to enable the Ark to carry Phantoms and S2 Buccaneers well into the 1970s. The Wilson government, which spent 6% of GDP on defence compared to 2% now, also gave the RAF the F6 Lightning, the Hercules, the Nimrod, the Harrier and the S2 Buccaneer (which turned out to be capable of most of the missions planned for the TSR2), re-roled the Victors as tankers and the Vulcans as low-level nuclear strike aircraft with the WE177 bomb, and even inaugurated the development programmes for the Jaguar and the Tornado. For the Navy, the government built new Leander-class frigates, the most useful ships the Navy ever had, and expensively upgraded the existing ones. They also brought the Resolution-class Polaris submarines into service and ordered the Churchill-class nuclear hunter-killers, the definitive naval-superiority weapons, one of which, HMS Conqueror, became the only hunter-killer in history to sink an enemy ship. For the Army, the government brought in the Chieftain main battle tank and ordered the superb (and very long-lived) Scorpion reconnaissance tank from Alvis. The article's suggestion that the Wilson government did not pull its weight on defence is frankly ludicrous. Khamba Tendal (talk) 17:57, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Son - Tim Healey
The article describes Denis's son as the broadcaster, writer and record producer. I think that's the wrong Tim Healey. Here's the website for the right one: https://www.timhealey.co.uk/ and here's the website for the wrong one: https://beat.com.au/tim-healey/ .Thomas Peardew (talk) 14:24, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

..... or perhaps not. They both seem to be broadcasters, writers and record producers.... Thomas Peardew (talk) 14:59, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Our Tim Healey isn't notably a record producer, probably best just to call him a broadcaster and writer. DuncanHill (talk) 15:42, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Now edited.Thomas Peardew (talk) 16:13, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Healey in 1944
According to the article "He became secretary of the international department of the Labour Party in 1944, becoming a foreign policy adviser to Labour leaders and establishing contacts with socialists across Europe." How could he have done all that in 1944 when he was still busy fighting in Italy? Chuntuk (talk) 08:38, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Well spotted. I have checked the source and it says "The International Department was finally wrested from the dead hand of William Gillies in 1944, and he was succeeded, the following year, by the former Communist and war veteran, Major Denis Healey", so our article should say 1945 and I have amended it accordingly. Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 11:54, 23 May 2024 (UTC)