Harold Wilson conspiracy theories

Since the mid-1970s, a variety of conspiracy theories have emerged centering on British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. These range from Wilson having been a Soviet agent, to Wilson being the victim of counter-espionage plots by members of the civil service.

Background

Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is said to have told Alec MacDonald, who set up safe houses where Golitsyn could live, that Wilson was a KGB operative and that former Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell had been assassinated by the KGB in order to have the pro-US Gaitskell replaced as party leader by Harold Wilson.^[1] David Leigh, however, claims that Golitsyn was guessing.^{[citation needed]} Christopher Andrew, the official historian for Britain's MI5^[2], has described Golitsyn as an "unreliable conspiracy theorist".^[3]

Former MI5 officer Peter Wright claimed in his memoirs Spycatcher that he had been told that Wilson was a Soviet agent. Wright states that after Wilson was elected Prime Minister in 1964 the CIA's head of the Counterintelligence Division, James Angleton, had told him that he had heard from a source (whom he did not name, but who was probably Golitsyn) that Wilson was a Soviet agent. Angleton said he would give further information if MI5 would guarantee to keep the allegations from 'political circles'.^[4] The management of MI5, according to Wright, refused to accept Angleton's restrictions on the use of his information and so Angleton did not tell them anything more.

According to Wright by the end of the 1960s MI5 had received information that the Labour Party had 'almost certainly' been penetrated by the Soviets. Two Czechoslovakian defectors, 'Frolik' and 'August', had fled to the West and named a list of Labour MPs and trade unionists as Soviet agents.^[4]

MI5 repeatedly investigated Wilson over the course of several years before conclusively deciding that he had no relationship with the KGB. Wilson claimed he was a staunch anti-communist.^{[citation needed]}

The 1968 plot

In his 1976 memoir Walking on Water, Hugh Cudlipp recounts a meeting he arranged at the request of Cecil King, the head of the International Publishing Corporation, between King and Lord Mountbatten of Burma. The meeting took place on May 8, 1968. Attending were Mountbatten, King, Cudlipp, and Sir Solly Zuckerman, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the British government.

According to Cudlipp:

"[Cecil] awaited the arrival of Sir Solly and then at once expounded his views on the gravity of the national situation, the urgency for action, and then embarked upon a shopping list of the Prime Minister's shortcomings...He explained that in the crisis he foresaw as being just around the corner, the Government would disintegrate, there would be bloodshed in the streets and the armed forces would be involved. The people would be looking to somebody like Lord Mountbatten as the titular head of a new administration, somebody renowned as a leader of men, who would be capable, backed by the best brains and administrators in the land, to restore public confidence. He ended with a question to Mountbatten- would he agree to be the titular head of a new administration in such circumstances?"^[5]

Mountbatten asked for the opinion of Zuckerman, who stated that the plan amounted to treason and left the room. Mountbatten expressed the same opinion, and King and Cudlipp left.^[6] On 30 May 1968 King was dismissed as the head of the International Publishing Corporation.

In addition to Mountbatten's refusal to participate in King's mooted plot, there is no evidence of any other conspirators. Cudlipp himself appears to see the meeting as an example of extreme egotism on King's part.^[6]

Alleged 1974 military coup plot

On the BBC television programme The Plot Against Harold Wilson, broadcast on March 16, 2006 on BBC2, it was claimed there were threats of a coup d'état against the Wilson government, which was corroborated by leading figures of the time on both the left and the right . Wilson told two BBC journalists, Roger Courtiour and Barrie Penrose, that he feared he was being undermined by MI5. The first time was in the late 1960s after the Wilson Government devalued the pound sterling but the threat faded after Conservative leader Edward Heath won the election of 1970. However after a coal miners strike Heath decided to hold an election to renew his mandate to govern in February 1974 but lost narrowly to Wilson. There was again talk of a military coup, with rumours of Lord Mountbatten as head of an interregnal administration after Wilson had been deposed. In 1974 the Army occupied Heathrow Airport  on the grounds of training for possible IRA terrorist action there, however Baroness Falkender (a senior aide and close friend of Wilson) asserted that it was ordered as a practice-run for a military takeover or as a show of strength as the government itself was not informed of such an exercise based around a key point in the nation's infrastructure.^[7]

The Peter Wright allegations and Clockwork Orange

Peter Wright claimed that he was confronted by two of his MI5 colleagues and that they said to him: "Wilson's a bloody menace and it's about time the public knew the truth", and "We'll have him out, this time we'll have him out".^[8] Wright alleged that there was a plan to leak damaging information about Wilson and that this had been approved by 'up to thirty officers'.^[8] As the 1974 election approached, the plan went, MI5 would leak selective details of the intelligence about Labour leaders, especially Wilson, to 'sympathetic' journalists. According to Wright MI5 would use their contacts in the press and the trade unions to spread around the idea that Wilson was considered a security risk. The matter was to be raised in Parliament for 'maximum effect'.^[8] However Wright declined to let them see the files on Wilson and the plan was never carried out but Wright does claim it was a 'carbon copy' of the Zinoviev Letter which had helped destabilise the first Labour Government in 1924.

On March 22, 1987 former MI5 officer James Miller claimed that the Ulster Workers Council Strike of 1974 had been promoted by MI5 in order to help destabilise Wilson's government.^[9]

In July 1987, Labour MP, Ken Livingstone used his maiden speech to raise the allegations of a former Army press officer, Colin Wallace, that the Army press office in Northern Ireland had been used in the 1970s as part of a smear campaign, codenamed Clockwork Orange against Harold Wilson and other British and Irish politicians.

The public position of MI5 was established with the publication in 2009 of Defence of the Realm, the first authorised history of MI5, by Christopher Andrew, in which it is reported that, while MI5 kept a file on Wilson from 1945, when he became an MP – because communist civil servants claimed that he had similar political sympathies – there was no bugging of his home or office, and no conspiracy against him.^[10] However in 2010 newspaper reports made detailed allegations that the bugging of 10 Downing Street had been omitted from the history for "wider public interest reasons". In 1963 on Harold Macmillan's orders following the Profumo Affair MI5 bugged the cabinet room, the waiting room, and the prime minister’s study until the bugs were removed in 1977 on Jim Callaghan's orders. From the records it is unclear if Harold Wilson or Edward Heath knew of the bugging, and no recorded conversations were retained by MI5 so possibly the bugs were never activated.^[11] Professor Andrew had previously recorded in the preface of the history that "One significant excision as a result of these requirements (in the chapter on The Wilson Plot) is, I believe, hard to justify" giving credence to these new allegations.^[12]

In popular culture

The novel and television series A Very British Coup were based on the allegations, using fictional characters.

In episode 2.4 of the British television series Life on Mars, characters discuss the possibility of a coup as a result of a Wilson victory in 1974.

In Charles Stross's short piece "The Golden Age of Spying" (included in the novel The Jennifer Morgue), Ernst Stavro Blofeld states that his opposition to the British government was based on the fact that Wilson and Callaghan were communist agents.

The novella "Project Heracles" by Stephen Baxter (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January/February 2012, pp. 120-146) is based on the premise that the coup takes place.

See also

• Wilson Doctrine, a ban on the tapping of MPs' and Peers' telephones

References

• Leigh, David (1988). The Wilson Plot: How the Spycatchers and Their American Allies Tried to Overthrow the British Government. Pantheon Books. ISBN 9780394572413. 
• Wright, Peter (1987). Spycatcher. William Heinemann. ISBN 0855610980. 

Notes

1. ^ Leigh, p. 80.
2. ^ War and Intelligence Conference
3. ^ Christopher Andrew, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games By Tennent H Bagley Reviewed by Christopher Andrew, The Sunday Times, June 24, 2007
4. ^ ^{a b} Wright, p. 364.
5. ^ Cudlipp, Hugh (1976). Walking on Water. The Bodley Head. p. 326. 
6. ^ ^{a b} Cudlipp, pp.326-327.
7. ^ Wheeler, Brian (9 March 2006). "Wilson 'plot': The secret tapes". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4789060.stm. 
8. ^ ^{a b c} Peter Wright, Spycatcher (William Heinemann, 1987), Ibid, p. 369.
9. ^ "Chronology of the Conflict 1987". Cain.ulst.ac.uk. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch87.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-25. 
10. ^ MI5 kept file on former PM Wilson, BBC News, 3 October 2009
11. ^ Brendan Bourne (18 April 2010). "Allegations No.10 was bugged by MI5 ‘removed’ from official history". The Sunday Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7101127.ece. Retrieved 2010-04-20. 
12. ^ Jason Lewis and Tom Harper (18 April 2010). "Revealed: How MI5 bugged 10 Downing Street, the Cabinet and at least five Prime Ministers for 15 YEARS". Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266837/Revealed-How-MI5-bugged-10-Downing-Street-Cabinet-Prime-Ministers-15-YEARS.html. Retrieved 2010-04-20. 

External links

• MI5's official response to the claims