Adrian Lee: Wilson walks – it’s fifty years ago that a Labour Prime Minister resigned

Adrian Lee is a solicitor-advocate in London, specialising in criminal defence, and was twice a Conservative parliamentary candidate.

“I see myself as the big black spider in the corner of the room. Sometimes I speak when I’m asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally when we meet, I might tell you to go to Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.”

Harold Wilson in conversation with BBC journalists, Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour, 1976.

On the morning 16^th March 1976, Harold Wilson announced to his Cabinet that he was resigning as Prime Minister. Wilson, physically looking like a man in his mid-seventies, had just turned 60 years old only five days earlier. The physical and mental decline of Harold Wilson, even by the standards of the time, was striking. In comparison, Sir Keir Starmer today is three and a half years older than Wilson at the time of his resignation. Tony Benn described the announcement as follows:

“I went to Cabinet at 11. Harold said, “Before we come to business I want to make a statement.” Then he read us eight pages, in which he said that he had irrevocably decided that he was going to resign…People were stunned but, in a curious way, without emotion. Harold is not a man who arouses affection…Nobody knew it was coming [but] there was still a remarkable lack of reaction. Jim Callaghan, who found it hard to conceal his excitement, said “Harold, we shall never be able to thank you for your services to the Movement.” I left Downing Street about 1. By then there was a huge crowd of people, hundreds of television cameras.”

Roy Jenkins noted bitterly in his diary: “Callaghan had been informed beforehand, but I had not, which was a clear indication of the way that Wilson’s preference had shifted.”

Later that day, Wilson appeared at a gloriously smoky press conference to confirm his decision and later still gave interviews for the evening news bulletins. He maintained that there was nothing unusual about his actions and that he had decided two years before in February 1974 that he would resign about this time. He reminded the public that in total, considering the Labour governments of 1964 to 1970 and periods out of office, he had spent eight years as Prime Minister and five years as Leader of the Opposition. It was time to let someone else have a go. All of this seemed fair enough, and yet there seemed to be one piece of the jigsaw puzzle missing.

The three-seat parliamentary majority that Wilson’s Labour Party received in the October 1974 General Election left the fate of Britain’s government hanging by a thread. With strong commitments to significantly expand the welfare state, Wilson and his Chancellor Denis Healey raised the top rate of income tax to an eye-watering 83 per cent in Labour’s first year back in government. Inflation peaked at 26 per cent in 1975, but still the revolution continued as the government had confidence in the “social contract” that they had negotiated with the Trades Union Congress to facilitate a voluntary incomes policy. In other words, the unions would attempt to restrain their members from advancing pay claims outside the limits set by government.

In social policy, the government established a Health and Safety Commission and a separate Health and Safety Executive to regulate the workplace. Meanwhile, Tony Benn, Secretary of State for Industry, was busy creating a new quango: the National Enterprise Boad (N.E.B), the aim of which was to pump taxpayer’s money into private companies in exchange for the state taking part of the equity. Benn made no secret of the fact that he viewed the expansion of the state into the realms of private business in the most positive light.

Wilson’s government was also determined to increase comprehensivisation across the secondary school sector, effectively ending grammar schools, and to bring into existence two new Acts of Parliament tackling racial and sexual discrimination. The latter would establish yet another highly expensive quango: the Equal Opportunities Commission. Whilst all this was going on, disquiet started being expressed by all social classes. Unemployment rose to over one million in April 1975, and those with investments started fretting about their savings. Wilson also suffered his first ministerial resignation when the formidable Joan Lestor M.P. resigned as Under Secretary of State for Education and Science on 9^th March 1976 over proposed budgetary cuts.

In private, Wilson had been becoming increasingly paranoid regarding Security Services. He was convinced that British intelligence was working to undermine him and wished to remove him from office. Joe Haines, Wilson’s press secretary, recalled in his memoirs that on one occasion, Wilson lifted up a painting on the wall at No. 10 Downing Street and pointed to some electrical wires poking out of the wall. Wilson informed Haines that this was proof of MI5’s bugging. It transpired that the wires had nothing to do with a listening device, but were instead the remnant of a light that had once hung over the picture. Haines commented:

“He gradually began to suspect everybody. He suspected MI5, he feared a military coup, he thought the Soviets or anybody else might be spying on him and it got worse and worse I’m afraid.”

At one point, Wilson organised a visit to the U.K. by C.I.A. Director, and future U.S. President, George H.W. Bush, just to ask him if his agency was engaged in trying to replace him. Bush recalled many years later that during their meeting “He (Wilson) did nothing but complain about being spied upon.” How on earth had Wilson become obsessed with this subject? To understand this, one must go back a few decades.

Between 1947 and 1951 Harold Wilson had served as Overseas Trade Minister in Attlee’s government. During this time, Wilson made three official visits to the Soviet Union with the aim of selling Rolls-Royce jet aircraft engines to the Soviets in exchange for Russian timber. This plan was controversial with the British defence establishment and became a concern of the Americans during the Korean War. It was claimed that Soviet jet fighters shot down in that conflict showed that their engines had copied and modified the British design. During the 1950’s, when Labour was in Opposition, Wilson continued to visit the U.S.S.R. to further Anglo-Soviet trade. He was the first British politician to travel to that country following Stalin’s death and was a paid consultant to a company importing Soviet timber. Wilson even played cricket with Soviet officials on the banks of the Moskva River. In 1956, Wilson was granted a private audience with Nikita Khrushchev and later declared that “the West must not underestimate this man.” Later that same year, Wilson refused to condemn the brutal suppression of the Hungarian Uprising.

Files later discovered in the Soviet archives imply that Wilson was at some stage approached by the K.G.B. with the aim of recruitment, but that he ran a mile when approached. The K.G.B. file states that “The development did not come to fruition.” Unfortunately, Wilson had already come to the attention of MI5, who had opened a file on him under the pseudonym “Norman John Worthington”.

In 1961, a K.G.B. officer, Anatoliy Golitsyn, defected to the West. Golitsyn told his Western handlers that the K.G.B. planned to assassinate a leading pro-Western Social Democrat politician and replace him with a Soviet stooge. All eyes initially focused upon West Germany, and then on the 18^th January 1963, British Labour Leader Hugh Gaitskell suddenly died at the age of 56. He had only shown the first signs of illness in mid-December 1962 and his cause of death was initially unknown. Porton Down eventually established that he had died of Lupus, a rare autoimmune disease. A few days before falling ill, Gaitskell visited the Soviet Embassy in London where he had been kept waiting for a visa for a forthcoming trip. He told colleagues that he been given several cups of coffee by Soviet Officials whilst he waited to be seen. Rumours started circulating that his successor, Wilson, was helped to power by the Soviets.

One of the chief protagonists of this theory was MI5 agent Peter Wright (later notorious for his memoir “Spycatcher”). With Britain in the doldrums in the mid-70s, the rumours circulated widely. Wilson’s paranoia was further fed by the emergence of two proto-paramilitary organisations in 1974: Unison, led by former Deputy Chief of Staff of N.A.T.O. General Sir Walter Walker and G.B.75, led by S.A.S. founder David Stirling. Both Walker and Stirling said that their organisations would only assist the civil authorities if order broke down in the U.K., but Wilson perceived this as a challenge to his authority and a sign of a possible military coup.

To this day, those on the Far Left are convinced that Wilson was ousted from 10 Downing Street by an establishment campaign of smears and threats. However, Joe Haines disagreed. He stated that Wilson was tired and sick of being in government and, when he returned to power in 1974, only ever intended to rule for another two years. Haines pointed out that Wilson was relatively poor and that he relished the chance of making money in the media in his latter years. He had signed a lucrative I.T.V. contract for a television series, A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers, and had started working on the text of the accompanying book.

It is likely that Wilson retired suddenly for practical reasons. He may also have feared the onset of the Alzheimer’s that finally killed him in 1995. However, the paranoid Harold Wilson was on display a few months after his resignation when he met with B.B.C. Reporters Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour in his Lord North Street home. He encouraged them to investigate the establishment plot to topple his government. The quote at the beginning of this article about “…the big black spider in the corner of the room” reveal the depths of his conspiracist beliefs.