Historians have uncovered a letter in which the grieving widow of the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell accused the Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan of “trying to score an unworthy political point” on the day of her husband’s memorial service.

Just two weeks after the untimely death of Gaitskell in 1963, his wife Dora wrote that she was “most deeply hurt” by claims the Conservative leader had made during a debate in parliament.

She started by paying him thanks for a kind tribute to her husband on television that had moved her family.

But in a letter, dated 55 years ago on Thursday, that academics say would have seriously damaged Macmillan politically if it had emerged at the time, Gaitskell went on: “Therefore, I am the more deeply shocked when during the defence debate yesterday you quoted from a speech of his in 1960, trying to make out that Hugh was in favour of our own independent nuclear deterrent today. You know as well as I do that he was against this …

“You also know that he has never been partisan about defence – always regarding it as a non-party national issue – always putting the country before any party considerations.”

She claimed that her husband, who died at the age of 56, had fought many important battles on the issue and even helped Macmillan over it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harold Macmillan. Photograph: PA/PA Archive/PA Photos

“Therefore you will understand my feeling when on the very day that the country paid Hugh such a wonderful tribute you should try to score such an unworthy political point.”

Macmillan appears to have scrawled a rebuttal in red ink on the letter, claiming: “I did not.”

The document has emerged as part of an online Twitter history project, @HaroldsRise, led by academics at the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University of London. Run by Prof Philip Cowley and Matthew Bailey, it charts Harold Wilson’s ascendancy to the Labour leadership following Gaitskell’s death.

The letter itself was discovered by Dr Nigel Fletcher, of King’s College London, in a file from the National Archives during research for his PhD thesis on the history of the opposition in the UK.



“This letter is extraordinary for the real anger it shows on the part of Mrs Gaitskell, reflecting both how important she considered her husband’s stance on the nuclear issue to have been, and how deeply unwise it was for the prime minister to drag a dead opponent into a political debate on the day of his memorial,” said Fletcher. “Had this been made public at the time it would have been deeply damaging to Macmillan.”

Although the letter did not emerge at the time, Macmillan’s speech in parliament did cause anger among Labour MPs.

A letter in the Guardian dated 1 February 1963 described a “tremendous outburst of indignation in the Commons” after the Tory prime minister quoted from a Gaitskell speech three years earlier suggesting he favoured Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

Harold Wilson, who was to replace Gaitskell as Labour leader, interrupted Macmillan to point out that the speech he was quoting from had set out the arguments both for and against the deterrent.

“This choice of a quotation is very repugnant to some of us,” he said, to shouts of “withdraw!” and “cheap”.

The actual speech, delivered three years earlier, had indeed seen Gaitskell put forward both sides of the argument.

“That, I think, is the case for our having our own independent nuclear weapon, but I would not, of course, deny for one moment that there is also a powerful case against. These are matters of balance on which, frankly, I find it impossible to say that it is absolutely clear one way or the other. We have to weigh them up,” he said.