He was a member of the Scottish National Party for a short time in his teens, but shortly after the formation of the "West Highland Free Press", which was launched in April 1972, joined the Labour Party and was soon invited to stand as its candidate in Ross and Cromarty which he contested in October 1974. He stood in two other Highlands and Islands constituencies - Inverness-shire and the Western Isles - in 1979 and 1983 respectively. An opponent of devolution, which he believed would work to the disadvantage of Scotland's more peripheral areas, in 1978 he was chairman of the "Labour Vote No Campaign", which called for a "no" vote in the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum on whether to have a Scottish Assembly. Wilson was part of a group known as the "Highland Luxemburgists" (that included Margaret Hope MacPherson and Allan Campbell McLean), who attempted each year at the party conference to pass a resolution to bring the crofts back into common ownership. However, the Labour Party leadership ignored the resolution and supported right of crofters to purchase their land.