Harold Wilson conspiracy theories

Since the mid-1970s, a variety of conspiracy theories have emerged regarding British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who served as the prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976. These range from Wilson having been a Soviet agent (a claim which MI5 investigated and found to be false), to Wilson being the victim of treasonous plots by conservative-leaning elements in MI5 and the British military (e.g., the Clockwork Orange plot), claims which Wilson himself made.

Background

Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is said to have told a British intelligence officer that Wilson was a KGB operative and that former Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell had been assassinated by the KGB to have the pro-US Gaitskell replaced as party leader by Wilson.Leigh, p. 80. However, Christopher Andrew, the official historian for Britain's MI5,War and Intelligence Conference
has described Golitsyn as an "unreliable conspiracy theorist". Christopher Andrew
Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games By Tennent H Bagley Reviewed by Christopher Andrew
''The Sunday Times'', 24 June 2007

In his memoir '' Spycatcher'' (1987), former MI5 officer Peter Wright stated that the head of the CIA's Counterintelligence Division, James Angleton, told him that Wilson was a Soviet agent when Wilson became Prime Minister after the 1964 general election. Wright said that Angleton referred to this assertion coming from a source (whom he did not name but who was probably Golitsyn). Golitsyn's words had been frequently taken heed of by Angleton, who had grown suspicious of the loyalty of many political figures, such as Henry Kissinger. According to Wright, Angleton offered to provide further information on the condition that MI5 guarantee to keep the allegations from "political circles",Wright, p. 364. but the management of MI5 declined to accept restrictions on the use of the information and Angleton told them nothing more.

According to Wright, at the end of the 1960s MI5 received information from two Czechoslovak defectors, Josef Frolík and František August, who had fled to the West, alleging the Labour Party had "almost certainly" been penetrated by the Soviets. The two gave a list of Labour MPs and trade unionists as Soviet agents.

MI5 maintained a file on Wilson, under the name of Henry Worthington, repeatedly investigating him over the course of several decades, before officially concluding that Wilson had had no relationship with the KGB; nor did it ever find evidence of Soviet penetration of the Labour Party.Michael Evans, "Wilson cleared of KGB threat in MI5 inquiry", ''The Times'', 4 May 1987.

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 (IPC), between King and Lord Mountbatten of Burma, then- Prince Charles' great uncle and mentor. The meeting took place on 8 May 1968. Attending were Mountbatten, King, Cudlipp, and Sir Solly Zuckerman, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the British government.

According to Cudlipp:

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.Cudlipp, pp.326–327. King subsequently decided to override the editorial independence of the ''Daily Mirror'' when he instructed the paper to publish a front-page article he had written that called for Wilson to be removed through some sort of extra-parliamentary action. The board of the IPC met and demanded his resignation for this breach of procedure and the damage to the interests of IPC as a public company. He refused, so was dismissed by the board on 30 May 1968.

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.

A later memoir by Harold Evans, who was editor of ''The Sunday Times'' in 1968, said that ''The Times'' had egged on King's plans for a coup:

William Rees-Mogg called for a coalition in an 8 December 1968 ''Times'' editorial entitled "The Danger to Britain", a day before King visited the ''Times'' office.'' Private Eye'', 20 December 1968.

A BBC programme ''The Plot Against Harold Wilson'', broadcast in 2006, reported that, in tapes recorded soon after his resignation, Wilson stated that for eight months of his premiership he did not "feel he knew what was going on, fully, in security". Wilson alleged two plots, in the late 1960s and mid-1970s respectively. He said that plans had been hatched to install Louis Mountbatten as interim prime minister. He also claimed that ex-military leaders had been building up private armies in anticipation of "wholesale domestic liquidation". On a separate track, elements within MI5 had also, the BBC programme reported, spread black propaganda that Wilson and Marcia Williams (Wilson's private secretary) were Soviet agents, and that Wilson was an IRA sympathiser, apparently with the intention of helping the Conservatives win the February 1974 election.

Alleged 1974 military coup plot

On the BBC
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