Harold Wilson conspiracy theories

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

1 Background
2 The 1968 Plot
3 A Military Coup In 1974?
4 Operation Clockwork Orange
5 See also
6 Notes
7 External links

[edit] Background

Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is said to have told Alec MacDonald, who set up safe houses where Golitsyn could live, that former Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell had been assassinated by the KGB in order to have the pro-American Gaitskell replaced as party leader by Harold Wilson. ^[1] David Leigh, however, claims that Golitsyn was guessing.

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) that Wilson was a Soviet agent. Angleton said he would give further information if MI5 would guarantee to keep the allegations from 'political circles'.^[2] 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. ^[3]

[edit] The 1968 Plot

In his 1976 memoir Walking On The 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. 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 one expounded his views on the gravity of the national situation, the urgency for action, and them embarked upon a shopping list of the Prime Minister's shortcomings...He explained that in the crisis he forsaw as being just around the corner the Government would disintegrate, there would be bloodshed in the streets, 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 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?" ^[7]

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^[8]. On 30 May 1968 King was dismissed as the head of the International Publishing Corporation.

It should be noted that 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^[9].

[edit] A Military Coup In 1974?

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. Wilson told two BBC journalists, Roger Courtiour and Barrie Penrose, that he feared he was being undermined by the 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 (an intimate friend of Wilson) claimed that it was ordered as a practice-run for a military takeover.

[edit] Operation Clockwork Orange

Peter Wright has 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". ^[4] Wright alleged that there was a plan to leak damaging information about Wilson and that this had been approved by 'up to thirty officers'. ^[5] 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'. ^[6] 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 [1].

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 against Harold Wilson and other British and Irish politicians.