The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies

of his being a red-under-the-bed in itself, since this had been the time and place that the KGB had recruited a host of spies. But what really alarmed MI5 was Wilson’s post-Second World War role as a junior trade minister, when he became the cheerleader for more commerce with the USSR. A 1947 visit to Moscow by Comrade Harold was rumoured to have entrapped him in a “honey pot”, after which he was most definitely the KGB’s man. Then there was Gaitskell’s curious demise; his doctor is said to have approached MI5 with concerns about the responsible disease, lupus disseminata, which was hardly known in the UK. Gaitskell had just come back from the USSR. Information filtered through to MI5 from Russian defector Anatoli Golitsin that the KGB’s Assassination Department 13 had killed a European leader and installed their man in his place. According to Peter Wright, former deputy director of MI5, in his autobiography Spycatcher, the strange death of Gaitskell added to Golitsin’s rumour equalled a certainty that Wilson was a Moscow mole. The context and the timing was right too; the ruling Conservative Party was imploding in the aftermath of the Profumo affair, and Labour was a shoo-in for winning the General Election.

Was Wilsonski a double-agent, even the Fifth Man in the spy ring that included Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt? Certainly sections of MI5 believed so and put him under surveillance. More, as detailed in Wright’s Spycatcher tome, they then set about conspiring to remove Wilson from Downing Street, steadily dripping snippets of “black propaganda” to the press, in particular the satirical/investigative magazine Private Eye, about Wilson’s “Communism” and his supposed dalliance with his secretary Marcia Williams. According to Colin Wallace, an intelligence officer with the British Army’s Information Policy Unit in Northern Ireland, he was asked to cooperate in this smearing campaign against Wilson, known to MI5 insiders as “Clockwork Orange”. (When Wallace refused to cooperate with the “unconstitutional” Clockwork Orange plot, he was framed for manslaughter, a case highlighted by journalist Paul Foot in Who Framed Colin Wallace?) MI5 was additionally alleged to have worked with the Conservative Party to bring about Wilson’s downfall. Wilson himself became border-edge paranoid about the “dark forces” gathering against him; later, on his retirement, he would accuse Lord Mountbatten, Admiral of the Fleet and Prince Philip’s uncle, of having plotted a coup d’etat in 1968.

Wilson’s delusional character—it was said of him that he made Walter Mitty look unimaginative—make some of his claims of “subversion from the right” difficult to take seriously, while Wright’s Spycatcher is more colourful than reliable (by the author’s own admission). An official government report MI5: The Security Service found that “no such plot [against Wilson] had ever existed”. But they would say that, wouldn’t they?

There is small doubt that some in MI5, with a little judicious outsourcing to Army and Conservative Party allies, sought by illegal means to bring down the elected prime minister of Britain. What is harder to determine is whether Wilson himself was actually a Soviet stooge. Golitsin’s accusation holds no water; the defector had been briefing the CIA/MI5 for a decade before discovering, ooops!, he had forgotten to mention the biggest secret of all, Britain’s PM is Moscow’s man. More likely, given he was paid for information, he felt the need to invent some good material. The claim of Oleg Lyalin, a KGB defector, is marginally damning: Joseph Kagan, Wilson’s friend and financier, regularly met agents from the Czech secret service. Most troubling of all is Wilson’s resignation. Forty years after the event, no one has ever put forward a convincing reason why Wilson suddenly quit as PM just after starting his fourth term in office. And at the relatively sprightly age of 60.

“Tiredness” was the official stated reason. Meanwhile, the rumour mill energetically cranked out the word that Wilsonski had been obliged to step down because of incriminating evidence against him.

Harold Wilson is that rare thing in conspiracy theory, an alleged conspirator, an alleged conspiratee. Predator and victim.

Further Reading

Paul Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace?, 1990

Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson, 1992

Peter Wright, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, 1987

Other titles by Jon E. Lewis

The Mammoth Book of Antarctic Journeys

The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

The Mammoth Book of Native Americans

The Mammoth Book of How It Happened

The Mammoth Book of On the Edge

The Mammoth Book of Pirates

The Mammoth Book of True War Stories

The Mammoth Book of Wild Journeys

London: The Autobiography

Rome: The Autobiography

World War II: The Autobiography

Survivor: The Autobiography

SAS: The Autobiography

Spitfire: The Autobiography

Copyright

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