Harold Wilson, Britain's youngest prime minister this century and the last leader of the Labor Party to win a general election, died in his sleep on Wednesday after a long illness. He was 79.
Wilson, a consummate political tactician, guided his divided party to four election victories in the 1960s and 1970s in a record unmatched in recent times even by Margaret Thatcher.His wife Mary said the former prime minister, who retired suddenly in 1976 after 13 years leading Labor, died peacefully around midnight. He had been fighting cancer for 15 years.
Tributes poured in from political friends and foes and the day's main parliamentary business was canceled out of respect for a man at the heart of British life for four decades.
"He was the most successful leader that Labor has ever had, winning four elections out of five, although on each occasion he came to office at a time of great economic difficulty," said James Callaghan, who succeeded Wilson in 1976.
Present Prime Minister John Major said he was saddened by Wilson's death. "He served his country and the Labor Party diligently and loyally," Major said.
Despite his unsurpassed electoral record, Wilson's legacy as prime minister is mixed. Many regard him as a good manager and supreme political "fixer" rather than a great statesman.
"I think he will stand in history as not one of the greatest of prime ministers but as a very good member of the second group who certainly had his impact on British politics," Roy Jenkins, an ex-Labour minister who later broke away from the party, said.
The need for a firm hand to weld Labor's disparate coalition of social democrats, trade unionists and hard-line leftists into a winning political machine after 13 years in opposition earned Wilson the reputation as a wily plotter.
Barbara Castle, a former cabinet colleague, said his hard-nosed approach had a noble purpose. "He told me more than once, `I've always seen it as my duty to hold this party together and nothing will shift me from that,' " Castle said.
"I think most people knew that because he was such a likable person. The idea he was a schemer for power with no principle just didn't ring true for those of us who knew him," she told BBC radio.
Others remembered Wilson, a plump, scholarly pipe-smoker who never lost the broad accent of his native Yorkshire, for his courtesy and wit.
"His huge abilities and his humor won him respect and affection. His victories brought him the gratitude and admiration of the Labor movement," former Labour leader Neil Kinnock said.
Present leader Tony Blair, who was too young to vote when Wilson first became prime minister in 1964, said his death "brings to an end a life of extraordinary service both to the country and to the Labour Party. He was a very warm man and a very decent man, utterly lacking in pomposity."
Born in March 1916, James Harold Wilson was elected to parliament in 1945 and at 31 became the youngest cabinet minister since the 18th century.