Editing Hugh Gaitskell (section)

=== Gaitskellites and after ===
Gaitskell was adored by followers like [[Roy Jenkins]], who thought him a beacon of hope, decency and integrity, especially as Wilson's government came more and more to seem one of shabby compromises. Left-wingers like [[Barbara Castle]] loathed him for his intransigence. Many, including [[Tony Benn]] – a Labour centrist at the time – simply thought him a divisive figure and initially welcomed Wilson as a fresh start who could unite the party. In the event Wilson's closest allies as Prime Minister – Crossman and Castle – were former Bevanites.<ref name="Campbell 2010, p241-2">Campbell 2010, p241-2</ref>

However, many of the Gaitskellites held leading positions in [[Harold Wilson]]'s Cabinet of 1964–70. Many of them – e.g. [[Roy Jenkins]] and [[Bill Rodgers, Baron Rodgers of Quarry Bank|Bill Rodgers]] but not [[Anthony Crosland]] or [[Douglas Jay]] – became supporters of British membership of the EEC, an issue on which Labour was split in the 1970s and which helped to precipitate the SDP split of 1981.<ref name="Matthew 2004, p.293" />

John Campbell writes that "the echoes of the Gaitskell-Bevan rivalry continued to divide the party right up to the 1980s".<ref>Campbell 2010, p196</ref> [[Neil Kinnock]] (Labour Leader 1983–92) grew up in [[South Wales]] and was brought up as an admirer of Bevan, but although he disliked the comparison his battle with the hard-left [[Militant tendency]] in the mid-1980s had echoes of Gaitskellism; [[John Smith (Labour Party leader)|John Smith]] (Labour Leader 1992–4) had been a Gaitskellite as a young man in the early 1960s; [[Tony Blair]]'s first act as leader in 1994 was finally to abolish Clause IV – for this and other acts he was supported by the elderly [[Roy Jenkins]], who had become a Liberal Democrat by then. Like Gaitskell before him, Blair was often seen by many of his enemies in the Labour Party as a public-school educated, middle-class interloper.<ref name="Campbell 2010, p241-2" />

[[Tony Benn]] contrasted Gaitskell's stand on the [[Suez Crisis]] to that of the former British Prime Minister [[Tony Blair]] on [[Iraq War|the war in Iraq]]. [[Margaret Thatcher]] compared Blair with Gaitskell in a different manner, warning her party when Blair came to power that he was the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/thatcher-praises-formidable-blair-1621354.html|title=Thatcher praises 'formidable' Blair|website=[[Independent.co.uk]]|date=22 October 2011}}</ref>