Joe Haines

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This article is about the journalist. For the speedway rider see Joe Haines (speedway rider)

Joseph Thomas William Haines (born 29 January 1928 in Rotherhithe, London) is a British journalist and former press secretary to Labour leader and Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1969-76).

In common with other figures in what would now be called "spin doctoring", Haines was sparing with the truth. In 1974 Wilson had a health scare over a racing heart complaint, but "I told the press, who believed me when I said that Harold had the flu," Haines recalled in 2004. "We had an economic crisis and we had a majority of three",^[1] he explained.

In Glimmers of Twilight (2003),^[2] Haines claims that Wilson's doctor Joseph Stone offered to murder Marcia Falkender, the head of Wilson's political office, after she attempted to blackmail Wilson over an affair they had twenty years earlier. The BBC, in an out-of-court settlement with Falkender, paid her £75,000 after these claims were repeated in The Lavender List, a drama documentary written by Francis Wheen and broadcast in 2006. Although Haines himself has not been sued, as a libel action involving him as the source it is generally accepted that the BBC settled because the original claimant would not stand behind the story. Roy Hattersley later referred to Glimmers of Twilight as a "book of tall tales".^[3]

Haines turned down a peerage from Wilson in the 1976 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours in part, he claimed, because he did not wish to be awarded one in a list also consisting of Joe Kagan and Eric Miller, already under suspicion of criminal activity at the time.^[4] Although, given his later career with Robert Maxwell scepticism has been expressed over this explanation.

Later, he was an assistant editor, columnist and chief leader writer at the Daily Mirror. In 1988 the authorised biography by Haines of Robert Maxwell was published. The Mirror's then owner commissioned the work to pre-empt a biography by investigative journalist Tom Bower, which Maxwell unsuccessfully attempted to have withdrawn. Haines' biography was generally considered to be encomium and was treated with a mixture of ridicule and extreme criticism by the media at the time of its release - The Times referred to it as "notorious". According to Tom Bower, Haines' biography was so flattering Maxwell would give out copies instead of business cards. A report in 2001^[5] by the Trade and Industry Department inspectors into the collapse of Maxwell's business empire found that Haines "had accepted the position [with Maxwell] and ought to have discharged the responsibilities that went with the position. He therefore bears a limited measure of responsibility"^[6] for the debacle.

Haines' columns in the Daily Mirror were often provocative; but his prejudicial article about the lifestyle of Freddie Mercury, published days after the singer's death from AIDS,^[7] garnered criticism from the pop star's fanbase.