Leaving Oxford he was briefly an extra-mural tutor with the Workers' Educational Association in Nottingham and in 1928 became a university lecturer in economics in London, remaining in post until the outbreak of war. During the war he was a civil servant and worked for a time for the leading Labour politician, Hugh Dalton.
Gaitskell acquired a good reputation as an administrator and never lost the air of a civil servant. Socialism for him was about taking practical, pragmatic measures to improve living conditions, particularly for the poor. In 1945 he won Leeds South for Labour and held the seat until his death.
After holding a number of junior posts in the 1945 government he became Minister of State for Economic Affairs in February 1950. He had shown authority in arguing the case for devaluation in 1949 and administrative skill at the Ministry of Supply, coping with the coal shortage during a bitterly cold winter. He succeeded the ailing Sir Stafford Cripps as Chancellor of the Exchequer in October 1950. His 1951 budget proposed to finance a massive rearmament programme (subsequently reduced by the incoming Conservative government), a course which upset many on the left and made Aneurin Bevan a long-standing opponent, because it involved the imposition of prescription charges on the health service which the latter had created.
The Labour Party began its thirteen years in opposition after losing the 1951 election. The early 1950s were taken up with divisions over German rearmament (Gaitskell supported it, Bevan opposed it) and a struggle for the succession to the ageing Clement Attlee. There was also division between them over support for the American alliance against the USSR. In a symbolic contest for the party treasurer in 1954 Gaitskell, backed by the bulk of the trade unions, defeated Bevan. When Attlee retired Gaitskell was elected as his successor in December 1955 by a clear margin over Herbert Morrison and Bevan. He had been an MP for just over ten years.
Gaitskell, like Attlee, was an upper-middle-class, public school, Oxbridge-educated leader. He was backed by the Labour right and the trade unions against Bevan, the working-class hero of the left and the constituency parties. Eventually, there was an uneasy relationship between the two.
Gaitskell's conduct of the Labour campaign in the 1959 general election increased his stature. But the party lost its third successive general election and he was blamed by some for making an unwise pledge that a Labour government would finance its spending programmes without increasing income tax. After defeat Gaitskell proposed to amend Clause 4 of the party constitution, the clause that committed Labour to public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. This move was bitterly opposed throughout much of the party. Gaitskell's own proposal which involved the party pledging to promote social justice, planning, and equality was accepted, but Clause 4 remained. It was a defeat. To the left Clause 4 was the symbol of socialism.
Gaitskell was immediately faced with a new row over defence. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament made progress in the party and the party conference in 1961 carried a unilateralist policy platform. Gaiskell, in a passionate speech, pledged himself to ‘fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love’ and began a long battle to reverse the decision. This was achieved at the next party conference in 1962. At the same conference Gaitskell made clear his opposition to Britain's membership of the European Community on the terms then offered, warning that a federal Europe would mean ‘the end of a thousand years of history’. This helped mend his fences with traditional opponents on the left. By the time of his sudden death in early 1963 Gaitskell was in command of his party and was widely seen as the next Prime Minister.
Gaitskell was a rationalist in politics—famously dismissed by Bevan as a desiccated calculating machine. He was also highly principled and unwilling to compromise on what he regarded as key policies. His efforts to lead the Labour Party to the centre ground led the Economist to refer to ‘Butskellism’, a term for the perceived similarities in economic policies between himself and the Conservative R. A. Butler. Gaitskell took an instrumental view of public ownership. He thought that the mixed economy was now able to deliver full employment and the welfare state. Socialists should be interested in promoting a better quality of life and greater equality. Within the Labour Party he attracted a number of followers, so-called Gaitskellites, including Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland.
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