[…] counterparts, the Soviet Union, not the West, collapsed. The conclusion is obvious: intelligence can have played little or no role The episode also involved Prime Minister Harold Wilson acting as go-between – another example of Wilson trying to be a ‘good boy’ where the spooks were concerned. 2 MI5 had it in for Mountbatten […]
[PDF file]: […] Even after he had given up his Oman command, Smiley kept in touch with the Sultan, for example, writing to him in January 1969, complaining about the Wilson Labour government. He looked forward to ‘getting rid of Wilson and his gang who have done so much harm to our country by forcing on us […]
[PDF file]: […] the security services had systematically destroyed some of their records which would not be retained to be examined by future historians in the long distance future. The Wilson committee in 1981 came across two egregious examples of this namely in relation to SOE and PWE records which in one case had been accidentally and […]
[PDF file]: Ten Years Hard Labour Chris Williamson Lola Books, 2022, £19.00 ISBN 978-3-944203-48-5 John Booth This is a revealing and powerful book by a Labour MP who vocally supported the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and paid the price by losing his career. It’s an angry book because he says that this loyalty was not reciprocated when […]
[PDF file]: […] and that in 1977 the file was acquired – impounded might be appropriate – by MI5.2 In this period MI5 contained a faction which believed that Harold Wilson was, or might be, a Soviet agent, and that the Labour Party was influenced, if not controlled by, the KGB. This faction had allies within the […]
[PDF file]: The Mandelson legacy John Booth The day after Lord Mandelson was removed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer from his top diplomatic post in Washington DC I received this message from an old journo pal: ‘Just seen that “Petie” Mandelson has been sacked as US ambassador. A nation mourns. . .’ One from a former Labour […]
[PDF file]: […] noone has even re-examined Thatcher’s rise to power, the 1974-79 period, since Stephen Dorril and I wrote Lobster 11 and the expansion of that material in Smear! Wilson and the Secret State; and they were published in 1986 and 1991, before the Internet. What could be done these days with Google and Nexis-Lexis? A […]
[PDF file]: […] within the UK at the behest of the US and their local supporters? Have there been others? The general election of 1970 that resulted in a surprise Wilson defeat inevitably comes to mind. The US – and many within the UK’s intelligence and military – wanted Wilson out in 1970. The election that year […]
[…] and that in 1977 that file was acquired – impounded might be appropriate – by MI5.2 In this period MI5 contained a faction which believed that Harold Wilson was, or might be, a Soviet agent, and that the Labour Party was influenced, if not controlled by, the KGB. This faction had allies within the […]
[PDF file]: […] journals abroad, including Britain’s moderate-left Encounter – the list goes on. The CIA has been widely suspected of further plots, against Australia’s Gough Whitlam and Britain’s Harold Wilson, for example; which couldn’t easily be dismissed as paranoid when all these other things were going on, and look even more plausible today. In the Wilson […]
