Philip Maynard Williams

Philip Maynard Williams, FBA (17 March 1920 – 16 November 1984) was a British political analyst.

He was educated at the Stationers' Company's School in Hornsey and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he was awarded a first in modern history in 1940. In 1946 he was appointed a lecturer at Trinity and became a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford in 1950. From 1953 until 1958 he was a Fellow and Tutor at Jesus College, Oxford, after which he was reappointed Fellow of Nuffield. He was also Dean of Nuffield from 1968 until 1972. Williams' thesis was that "the difficulties of French government" were attributable "to historical and social, rather than to constitutional or temperamental factors".

The 62 signatories to the statement included Janet Vaughan, A. J. Ayer, J. A. G. Griffith, H. L. A. Hart, Stuart Hampshire and William A. Robson. Williams' biography of Gaitskell eventually appeared in 1979 and, according to The Times, "it was acknowledged as a masterly political biography". Henry Pelling claimed that it was "the fullest account ever published of the Bevanite split in 1951, of the struggle for unilateral nuclear disarmament, and of Labour's initial reactions to the proposal to enter the European Common Market".

In 1981 he signed the Limehouse Declaration and joined the Social Democratic Party.

Works Politics in Post-War France: Parties and the Constitution in the Fourth Republic (London: Longmans, 1954; 2nd edn. 1961). De Gaulle's Republic (London: Longmans, 1962). Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (New York: Archon Books, 1964). The French Parliament: Politics in the Fifth Republic (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1968). Hugh Gaitskell (London: Jonathan Cape, 1979).