Letter from London Alabama, Here We Come

In his first speech as Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Wilson memorably insulted a new member, Alderman Griffith of Smethwick, by expressing the hope that he would be treated as a “Parliamentary leper.” Griffith had unforgivably defeated Patrick Gordon Walker, the new Foreign Secretary. Worse, he had defeated him by bringing up the subject of colored immigration. Gordon Walker, who lost his cabinet post when voters rejected him a second time in the Leyton by-election, had led the Labor attack on the Immigration Bill when it was first introduced. He passionately declared that the Bill would bring the Commonwealth down in ruins and the Labor Party voted solidly against it on the ground that it was a thinly disguised exercise in racial discrimination.

‘The Wilson Venom’

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Colm Brogan

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In his first speech as Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Wilson memorably insulted a new member, Alderman Griffith of Smethwick, by expressing the hope that he would be treated as a “Parliamentary leper.” Griffith had unforgivably defeated Patrick Gordon Walker, the new Foreign Secretary. Worse, he had defeated him by bringing up the subject of colored immigration. Gordon Walker, who lost his cabinet post when voters rejected him a second time in the Leyton by-election, had led the Labor attack on the Immigration Bill when it was first introduced. He passionately declared that the Bill would bring the Commonwealth down in ruins and the Labor Party voted solidly against it on the ground that it was a thinly disguised exercise in racial discrimination.

‘The Wilson Venom’