Today's ALP leaders can learn much from Labour leaders of the past

As Chancellor, Gaitskell had been described as having "a will like a dividing spear". He certainly never confused pragmatism with weakness. Yet in Opposition he was able to unite a party that in Attlee's final years had grown increasingly divided, including over Gaitskell's own role. His reconciliation with Bevan and the Left from 1957 was based firstly on recognising their legitimate differences of opinion and resolving to deal with them honestly, and secondly on that irreplaceable commodity for political comrades, mutual respect.

In truth, Gaitskell was a man of achievements and failures; of successes and mistakes.

His attempt to revise his Party's constitution and socialist objective, a forerunner to Tony Blair's attack on Clause 4, failed as much because of his own tactical errors as the inherent conservatism of the movement. It led to a challenge to his leadership from Harold Wilson, and reopened the wounds that had been closed by the reconciliation with Bevan. It was a tribute to Gaitskell and his ability to learn and to change that he was able again to reconcile with his colleagues, and bring Labor to the brink of victory.

When Gaitskell suddenly died after a short illness (now generally thought to have been Lupus) in the winter of 1963 Harold Wilson was the inheritor of his political estate.

The painful lesson of Gaitskell's career is that what matters in politics is government. You can't do anything for your country from opposition. Gaitskell, who might have been a great Prime Minister, died short of his potential for Britain and social democrats internationally.

Yet there is consoling lesson of Gaitskell's career, and of the party that he made ready for Government in the 1960s: that the struggles of labour parties in opposition are not unique, are not new - and, ultimately, are not insurmountable.