[…] not mean that they went unnoticed at the time or that political leaders did not attempt to alter the economic and political outlook of the UK. Harold Wilson certainly appears to have arrived at very similar views on a number of topics. George Brown may have; some of his advisors at the Department of […]
[…] Labour did not devalue sterling. Instead it negotiated a massive rescue package, worth $3 billion, from the central banks of the Group of 10. Prime Minister Harold Wilson ruled that the subject of devaluation was not to be mentioned in Cabinet. Further crises in 1965 and 1966 were ridden by more external assistance in […]
One neglected aspect of the plotting against Harold Wilson and the Labour Governments of the 1970s was the fact that it took place while the social democrat governments of Australia, New Zealand and West Germany — and possibly Canada — were also being subjected to destabilisation campaigns, with the some of the same characters […]
[…] over in a couple of pages — private armies, rumours of coups and Heathrow manoeuvres, are all missing. And so on. There is a chapter on the ‘Wilson plots’ material — the Wright, Wallace story. There is a choice here. Either: it is splendid that an important, main-line political biographer like Pimlott includes such […]
[…] and drabs began to leak out of Australia about a book by a former MI5 officer called Peter Wright in which he apparently mentioned plotting against the Wilson government; and my telephone began to ring. Lots of journalists wanted me to explain the story. And no wonder, looking back on it. The Wallace narrative […]
[…] sounds very much like an anxiety specific to MI5.(They have to do the work.) The focal point of much of this anti-Labour activity is, of course, Harold Wilson. Wilson “can be shown” to be under Soviet control through Dick Vaygauskas. (Note the use of “can be shown” rather than “is”: it crops up again, […]
[…] Jeremy Thorpe who – knowing full well that I was responsible for setting up the whole Norman Scott homosexual scandal – quickly handed it to Premier Harold Wilson. Within ten days ‘HJ’, head of BOSS, had a copy of it. Later I sent Peter Hain a copy of his memo. He’s still wondering how […]
[…] of Goldsmith. Wright said that during the meeting Goldsmith stated that a large number of ‘significant UK business figures’ wanted the expected return to office of Harold Wilson stopped and steps taken to reduce the power of UK trade unions. It is unclear if anything flowed from this discussion. In any event Wilson took […]
[…] to the preeminent position of the BBC, at a time when the BBC was often accused of left-wing bias. The coup plot came to nothing when the Wilson government’s own scientific advisor, Sir Solly Zuckerman, was invited to join the group and managed to persuade a non-too-bright Lord Mountbatten that to participate in such […]
[…] government as Meta Ramsay is now thought to provide the Blair administration. Having later to settle for a knighthood, left Ayer with a life-long detestation of Harold Wilson. This whole Camden Town social group felt, though they could not rationally argue the case, that Wilson was somehow illegitimate as Prime Minister, even though he […]
