Joseph Thomas William Haines (born 29 January 1928, Rotherhithe, London) is a British journalist and former press secretary to Labour leader and Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1969-76).
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] The allegations relating to Stone were repeated in the BBC's documentary The Secret World of Whitehall (2011).[4]
Not long after Wilson's resignation as Prime Minister, Haines published a book The Politics of Power about his experience of Britsh political life. Attention mainly concentrated on two chapters about Marcia Williams and her influence, which was meat and drink to the right wing press - most of whom were unable to accept a non-Conservative Prime Minister and particularly one who "retired undefeated" as Wilson had done. Haines claimed that Ms Williams' troublesome presence had been the real cause of Wilson's resignation. What he wrote in the book denied Wilson's statement at the time of his resignatiion that when he came back to power in 1974, he had told the Queen that he would not continue after he had reached the age of 60. Had that statement been untrue, the Queen would have known it and it seems unlikely, therefore, that knowing that, she would have attended a dinner hosted by Wilson at 10 Downing Street to mark the end of his premiership - even less likely that she would have made him a personal gift of a Garter knighthood. Wilson actually knew that he had Altzheimer's Disease when he returned to power - as confirmed by his doctors - and wanted to exit while he was still capable of carrying out the job of Prime Ministers. Haines' antipathy towards Marcia Williams seems, in view of the ludicrous accusations that he made in later years, to have become an obsession. Some comentators (e.g. Brian Sedgemore) considered that The Politics of Power was an interesting account, but the chapters about Marcia Williams were the weakest in the book.
In a 2010 interview, Haines claimed that in the aftermath of the February 1974 UK general election, Harold Wilson had planned to discredit Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe by exposing Thorpe's relationship with Norman Scott in the event of the Conservative government reaching an agreement with the Liberals that would have permitted it to remain in power.[5]
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.[6]
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[7] 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"[8] 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,[9] received criticism from the pop star's fans.
