Wilson: The Authorised Life of Lord Wilson of Rievaulx
Philip Zeigler
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
As might be expected of an establishment man like Zeigler, he has some difficulty with the evidence of plotting against the Wilson governments. On p. 567 in a footnote to the brief discussion of the ‘plots’, Zeigler comments that Smear! and David Leigh’s The Wilson Plot ‘though perforce making bricks with a sometimes exiguous amount of straw, both books amass a great deal of interesting and relevant material and deserve to be taken seriously.’
This is something he conspicuously hasn’t done, including not a line from either book that I can see.
What he does tell us:
- Wilson ‘was…. predisposed to scent sabotage or conspiracy where none existed.’ (p. 475)
- Wilson ‘was not mad but lived on the fringes of a Kafka-esque world where madness was endemic’. (p. 478)
- ‘that something nasty was going on seems probable if not certain’ (p. 476).
- ‘Callaghan ordered a full investigation’ (p. 477) Did he? Into what?
- ‘After his resignation Wilson received letters from people in prison complaining that they had been hired to jobs of which he was the target and had never received their due.’ (p. 478)
- Oddly, Zeigler picks on the episode of the International Credit Bank of Geneva for detailed consideration only to conclude, clumsily, that ‘an aborted plot to frame the Prime Minister is not the most unlikely’ (p. 479)
- Wilson’s approach to Penrose and Courtiour is ‘the most eccentric of these actions’ (p. 500), and he accepts Wilson’s (fictitious) version of his contacts with them.
Altogether a most incompetent and evasive piece of work.
The House of Lords debate on the Intelligence Services Bill, 9 December, 1993
Lord (Roy) Jenkins of Hillhead: ‘I experienced in the Security Service what I can best describe as an inherent lack of frankness, an ingrowing mono-culture, and a confidence-destroying tendency to engage in the most devasting internal feuds……[it] consumed far more of my time as a Minister with its own internal squabbles than any useful [political intelligence] information which it ever provided.’ (col. 1034)
Before he was allowed to see all the telephone tapping warrants he had to ‘go on strike’. (col. 1035)
Lord Callaghan: ‘Nearly 20 years ago a tiny handful of officers chose the wrong side of the line. By so doing they damaged the service and democracy. Through ill-discipline and internal factional disputes one or two bad eggs were “out of control”. In due time that had an impact. It was a great misfortune that those who were concerned at the time were not absolutely candid with Ministers when asked about such matters. Of course, the serious breach of responsibility was corrected by the service itself, and those concerned have since been out of it.’ (col. 1039)
Lord Merlyn Rees: ‘I found it astonishing that when I was a Cabinet Minister and again when I was on the Falklands inquiry that on matters like security — not party political matters — information was not passed from one government to another and from one minister to another. One of the failures of the government at the time of the Falklands episode was that information of actions taken by my noble friend Lord Callaghan with regard to the Argentine were not passed on until it was far too late….’ (col 1052)
‘It was a member of the CIA, a man called Angleton, who did great harm in this country under the “dirty tricks” campaign.’ (col 1053)
Rinka RIP
Curious piece in the Daily Telegraph, 26 November, 1993, reporting that Andrew Newton, now known as Hann Redwin, one of the people at the centre of the Jeremy Thorpe scandal in the 1970s, and who subsequently claimed to have been working for MI5, was involved in a climbing accident in the Alps.
Colin Wallace
The Observer (12 December, 1993) reported that a proposed BBC drama-documentary, based on the Paul Foot book about Colin Wallace, had been scrapped. (The Observer had Wallace as ‘former MI5 officer’, but we’ll let that pass.) Instrumental in kyboshing the piece — on which a lot of money had already been spent — were BBC journalists John Ware and Peter Taylor, described in the Observer as ‘known to have reservations about Wallace’s claims of an alleged MI5 cover-up of child abuse at the Kincora boys’ home in Belfast and details of the intelligence operation, Clockwork Orange’.
As the anonymous correspondent in Private Eye (31 December), presumably Paul Foot, pointed out, Ware had already taken part in the rubbishing of Wallace, and Taylor in the rubbishing of John Stalker. Both men have also been given fairly astonishing access to sections of the British security and intelligence services to make TV programmes. Recently, Taylor has fronted a series of programmes (and written a book) which seem to me to do little more than rehash the new MI5 rationale for continuing its budget.
I wrote to Will Wyatt, the Managing Director of Network Television, the man who pulled the plug on the programme, suggesting that Taylor and Ware were too close to the British state. Mr Wyatt replied that ‘the only thing they are too close to is the truth’. The Wallace programme will probably now be done on Channel 4.
Coincidentally, a week before the Observer piece announcing the programme’s demise, John Ware had a piece in the Guardian’s media section (6 December, 1993) in which he said, inter alia: ‘The obstacles to investigative journalism in Northern Ireland are made worse by a marriage of cultures between the civil servants in the Northern Ireland office, the indigenous apparatchiks of the vast security and intelligence machine, and the Unionist establishment.’
John Ware, I have been reliably informed, is now the primary BBC gate-keeper on Northern Ireland. To get it on the air you have to get it past Ware.
Comment? I wouldn’t dare.
Enemies of Democracy?
‘The debate within the Labour right on how to handle the “left-wing problem” was often heated, indeed acrimonious… Many discussions took place “across the floor”. They normally came to nothing, Yet, in early December 1976, a realignment looked to be on the cards. Callaghan’s majority in the House of Commons had disappeared and consequently a very small number of Labour MPs could effectively bring down the government. For some years past the arguments for a realignment had been taken seriously by a section of the Conservative Party who had been close to MacMillan. Since 1973, Reg Prentice had taken a lone path, one which would eventually take him out of the Labour Party and into the Conservative fold. In the meantime, in league with Roy Jenkins, he had sought ways of bringing down the Callaghan government.
‘His advocacy had struck a chord with some Conservatives, amongst them Robert Carr, Nicholas Scott and Patrick Cormack. These, and others, were beginning to meet, together with Labour MPs, on an increasingly regular, though informal, basis. A meeting finally took place in Julian Amery’s house — Amery himself, Patrick Cormack, Maurice MacMillan, Reg Prentice, John Mackintosh and Brain Walden — to argue through the case for bringing down the Callaghan government.’
From The Battle for Britain, Stephen Haseler, I B Tauris, London 1989, pp. 5960.
Haseler had access to Reg Prentice’s diaries