Talk:Hugh Gaitskell

Non-neutral suppression of family background
I am going to add a POV tag to the Early Life section. Articles about Labour politicians from working class backgrounds routinely go into detail about the humble occupations and allegedly desperate lives of the subject's parents, but in this case, the parents are not even mentioned. Why? Presumably because, as Gaitskell's educational history suggests, they were upper middle class, and therefore non-people from a socialist perspective. This politically biased suppression of facts is not in line with wikipedia's neutrality policy. Choalbaton (talk) 17:35, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, geez. Just add something about them. Far more productive than adding some lame POV notice. You can surely pick up a biography about him from somewhere to get the details. Less of the pompous whining about politically biased blah, blah, blah would be appreciated too. -- Derek Ross | Talk'' 05:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I added some info on his early life, and have to say that Choalbaton is right. Biographies of Labour politicians are often biased that way. Atchom 01:12, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, but you fixed it the right way. Choalbaton didn't. Thanks. -- Derek Ross | Talk'' 18:15, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Suez
Gaitskell's true opinion on the Suez affair remains a matter of debate, as both Eden and Macmillan said he had agreed to support military intervention on 26th July 1956 when news of the canal's seizure reached London. Whether this is true, and whether Gaitskell changed his mind in the following days and weeks, cannot be proved either way. (92.7.25.225 (talk) 15:21, 28 November 2012 (UTC))

"Apparent" Opposition to EEC entry
Gaitskell's "thousand years for history" speech is well known. (Rab Butler's retort "For them, a thousand years of history books; for us the future" is alas less well-remembered). The article talks of his "apparent" opposition. Is it the case that his position was actually a bit more nuanced and he was actually reserving his position until he saw if the negotiations resulted in something he could support? If so, it should perhaps be spelled out. I don't have a Gaitskell biog to hand to check the small print of his position.Paulturtle (talk) 00:07, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

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Why unpopular?
Gaitskell made himself very unpopular by abolishing the basic petrol ration for private motorists...
 * Unpopular with which groups? Valetude (talk) 10:52, 2 September 2017 (UTC)


 * With middle class motoring lobbyists (fewer people owned cars in 1947, obviously). Having just checked the Philip Williams biog, there seems to be a bit more to the story than the brief phrase in ODNB would suggest. Will fix when I get a sec.Paulturtle (talk) 03:31, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

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He Died From a Sudden Flare Up of Lupus?
A "flare up"?

As though he'd already had it, and it had gone away, and it suddenly flared up on him, again?

I've read that he'd had tea and crumpets at the Soviet Consulate a week earlier, and that it was determined that the Soviets had already tested hydralazine, a drug that produces Lupus-like symptoms, as an assassination agent.

It is interesting to note that Gaitskell had been kicking Communists out of the labor unions, and that he was replaced by the more Kremlin-sympathetic Harold Wilson.

And that KGB true-defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, who defected to the U.S. in December of 1961, told CIA shortly after his arrival that he had heard that an "opposition leader" in Northern Europe was going to be assassinated by the KGB.

You can read about most of these things on page 500 of Mark Reibling's 1994 book, "Wedge". https://archive.org/stream/WedgeFromPearlHarborTo911HowTheSecretWarBetweenTheFBIAndCIAHasEndangeredNationalSecurity/Wedge%20-%20From%20Pearl%20Harbor%20to%209%3A11%20-%20How%20the%20Secret%20War%20between%20the%20FBI%20and%20CIA%20Has%20Endangered%20National%20Security_djvu.txt

By the way, two of your three links to the Gaitskell-Lupus angle are "dead" for all intents and purposes, and the other one doesn't really shed any light on how Gaitskell may have caught Lupus, or how it might have "flared up" on him.

Was Kisevalter Nash? (talk) 05:54, 15 April 2021 (UTC)


 * It is not correct to say that he had "been kicking Communists out of the labor (sic) unions" - in fact I doubt he had the power to dictate union membership. The unions remained very powerful in this era, but although communist views were not uncommon among shop stewards, hardly any senior leaders were communists. This sort of thing is usually regarded as unsubstantiated conspiratorial nonsense.Paulturtle (talk) 20:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC)