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Abstract
This article examines the debates which have taken place again recently concerning the long-standing idea of a plot in the 1970s against the elected Labour government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Two television programmes in 2006 and Christopher Andrew’s 2009 official history of the UK Security Service (MI5) discussed the plot. Andrew’s history dismissed the possibility of a conspiracy out of hand. This article critiques this approach and also discusses the continuing power of ideas of right wing plotting against Wilson. The plots remain an interesting and unresolved debate in contemporary intelligence history.
Notes
1 Christopher Andrew and David Dilks, The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century (London: Macmillan, 1984).
2 Searches conducted on August 24, 2013.
3 Francis Wheen, Strange Days Indeed (London: Fourth Estate, 2009).
4 One of the founders, Stephen Dorril took up a post at a UK university and produced a remarkably detailed history of MI6 from its formation up until the 1990s.
5 Tony Benn, Conflict of Interest. Diaries 1977–80 (London: Arrow, 1991). Benn was Minister of Energy in the Labour government 1974–1979. See also Tony Benn, “The Case for Dismantling the Secret State,” New Left Review 190 (1991), 127–30.
6 For conspiratorial views, see Sean McPhilemy, The Committee: Political Assassination in Northern Ireland (Boulder: Roberts Rinehart, 1998); Justin O’Brien, Killing Finucane: Murder in Defence of the Realm (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2005); Brendan O’Neill, “Pat Finucane Wasn’t the Only Victim of State Terror,” Spiked, December 13, 2012, http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/13168 (accessed September 29, 2013).
7 For a critique of McPhilemy but one which also in effect applies to much conspiracy theorising over Northern Ireland, see Steve Bruce, “Loyalist Assassination and Police Collusion in Northern Ireland: An Extended Critique of Sean McPhilemy’s The Committee,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 23, no. 1 (2000): 61–80.
8 Paul Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace? (London: Macmillan, 1989); Jon Moran, From Northern Ireland to Afghanistan. British Military Intelligence Operations, Ethics and Human Rights (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
9 After Dark was an open-ended discussion programme which regularly dealt with security, official secrets and intelligence during its run on Channel 4 from 1989 to 1991; the six part BBC series Secret Society provoked a public debate when one of its programmes on the UK’s Zircon spy satellite project led to a raid by police Special Branch on the BBC and journalist Duncan Campbell’s home and the seizure of the programme. World in Action was an ITV investigative reporting series which ran from the 1960s to the 1980s and regularly featured security, intelligence and other issues. Its broadcast ‘The Spy Who Never Was’ (1984) first aired Peter Wright’s allegations about a plot against Harold Wilson’s government. Another ITV documentary series, This Week, made ‘Death on the Rock’ (1989) examining the SAS shooting dead three IRA paramilitaries who were planning to blow up a British military band on Gibraltar a programme that was particularly controversial for challenging the security agencies’ version of events.
10 Chris Mullin’s novel A Very British Coup was published in 1982; Edge of Darkness, a nuclear conspiracy thriller was broadcast on BBC in 1985; and the film Defence of the Realm, a conspiracy thriller concerning US nuclear weapons on British soil and directed by David Drury was released in 1987; Hidden Agenda, a conspiracy thriller centred on Northern Ireland was directed by Ken Loach and released in 1991.
11 Rob Evans, “The Past Porton Down Can’t Hide,” Guardian, May 6, 2004.
12 For relatively differing views on this, see Christopher Moran, Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) which argues the state has struggled to keep secrets in the post-war period and Heather Brooke, The Silent State (London: Windmill, 2011), who argues that the British state remains a remarkably secretive organisation, especially when viewed comparatively.
13 Spooks was a BBC spy series based around MI5 and ran from 2002 to 2011. It was even quoted by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller then head of MI5 in a speech emphasising that the almost superhuman abilities of Spooks’ MI5 agents were not a guide to real life. BBC, “MI5 Tracking ‘30 UK Terror Plots,” BBC News, November 10, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6134516.stm (accessed September 25, 2013); Strikeback was a drama broadcast on Sky based around the exploits of UK special forces and intelligence team hunting terrorists.
14 David Peace, 1974 (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000); 1977 (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2001); 1980 (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2001); 1983 (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2002); GB84 (London: Faber and Faber, 2005).
15 Iraq War logs, http://wikileaks.org/irq/; Secret US Embassy Cables, http://wikileaks.org/cablegate.html (accessed October 14, 2013). James Vincent, “Encryption Protocols Compromised by NSA and GCHQ, According to Leaked Edward Snowden Documents,” Independent, September 6, 2013.
16 Brian Crozier was a right wing journalist with links to politicians and the security services. Retired Major Alexander Greenwood was a supporter of the private organisations being established by the right. Jonathan Freedland, “Enough of this Cover-up: The Wilson Plot Was our Watergate,” Guardian, March 15, 2006. Freedland called for an inquiry into the plot.
17 “The State: A Warning to the Labour Movement,” http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/pamphlets/state/ (accessed August 15, 2013).
18 “How Close did Britain Come to a Coup d’état in 1974?” (2006), http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t346792/ (accessed August 8, 2013).
19 http://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/the-cold-war/the-wilson-plot.html (accessed August 16, 2013).
20 Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm. The Authorised History of MI5 (London: Penguin, 2009).
21 Ibid., 627–8.
22 Ibid., 630.
23 Ibid., 631–2.
24 “Wilson’s World,” BBC Parliament, broadcast August 27, 2013.
25 http://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/the-cold-war/the-wilson-plot.html (accessed August 10, 2013).
26 Brian Wheeler, “Wilson ‘plot’: the Secret Tapes,” BBC News, March 9, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4789060.stm (accessed August 10, 2013).
27 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, 639.
28 Ibid., 635.
29 Peter Wright, Spycatcher (New York: Viking, 1987).
30 Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 642.
31 Ibid.
32 Reproduced on the Security Service website http://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/mi5-history/the-cold-war/the-wilson-plot.html (accessed August 15, 2013).
33 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, 632–3.
34 Further, “Wilson’s mental and physical decline was accompanied by, and may partly explain, his increasing tendency (long present in more muted form) to conspiracy theory.” Ibid., 637.
35 Francis Wheen, Strange Days Indeed (London: Fourth Estate, 2009), 301–3; Stephen Dorril, “So was Wilson Right to Be ‘paranoid’ about Being Spied On?” Daily Mail, April 18, 2010. See also Bernard Donoughue’s diary entry for February 5, 1976: ‘HW [Harold Wilson] has revealed a knowledge of some affairs which could only come from some sort of bugging, since I had discussed it with only one discreet person, either in my room or on the phone. Kissin had earlier warned me that my room – which was once George Wigg’s – was bugged. I had dismissed that, and tried to resist the kind of paranoia which surrounds HW and Marcia. But the evidence is growing. The Cabinet Office is of course the centre of intelligence activities.’ Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), 656–7.
36 Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Harpers, November 1964, http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/7/ (accessed November 23, 2013).
37 Mark Phythian, The Labour Party, War and International Relations (London: Routledge, 2007), 79–80.
38 Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest. Diaries 1977–80 (London: Arrow, 1991), 273, entry for February 1, 1978. Indeed, Benn’s own telephones were being tapped in the 1970s. Jad Adams, Tony Benn. A Biography (London: Biteback, 2011), 348.
39 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, 634.
40 Jason Lewis and Tom Harper, “Revealed: How MI5 Bugged 10 Downing Street, the Cabinet and at least five Prime Ministers for 15 YEARS,” Daily Mail, April 18, 2010.
41 Ibid.
42 Brian Wheeler, “Wilson: The Secret Tapes,” BBC News, March 9, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4789060.stm (accessed August 10, 2013).
43 “Obituary of General Sir Walter Walker,” Daily Telegraph, August 13, 2001.
44 Alwyn Turner, Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (London: Aurum, 2009), 128. See also Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay “Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of Thatcher. Covert Operations in British Politics 1974–78,” Lobster 11 (1986), http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue11.php (accessed August 5, 2013)
45 Quoted in Wheen, Strange Days Indeed (London: Fourth Estate, 2009), 256–7.
46 Richard Norton-Taylor, “Obituary: Brian Crozier,” Guardian, August 9, 2012.
47 David Leigh, The Wilson Plot (London: Heinemann, 1988), 274; Wheen, Strange Days Indeed, 264.
48 Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Harpers, November 1964, http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/7/ (accessed November 23, 2013).
49 Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, “Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of Thatcher. Covert Operations in British Politics 1974–78,” Lobster 11 (1986), http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue11.php (accessed August 5, 2013); Leigh, The Wilson Plot, 221–4; Dominic Sandbrook, Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974–1979 (London: Penguin, 2013).
50 “Obituary of General Sir Walter Walker,” Daily Telegraph, August 13, 2001.
51 Dorril and Ramsay, “Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of Thatcher. Covert Operations in British Politics 1974–78.”
52 Paul Routledge, Public Servant, Secret Agent. The Elusive Life and Violent Death of Airey Neave (London: Fourth Estate, 2002), 270.
53 Routledge, Public Servant, Secret Agent, 273.
54 Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace?
55 Mr. Archie Hamilton, The House of Commons, January 15, 1990, Cols. 108–110. See also Paul Foot, “The Final vindication,” Guardian, October 2, 2002.
56 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, 632.
57 Mangold, Cold Warrior, 85–6.
58 Lord Hunt, quoted in “The Plot Against Harold Wilson,” BBC 2, broadcast in 2006.
59 Mangold, Cold Warrior, 75; see also Pimlott, Harold Wilson, 705.
60 Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (London: Harper Collins, 1993), 703
61 Leigh, The Wilson Plot, 215–17 and Mangold, Cold Warrior, 280.
62 Mangold, Cold Warrior, 307.
63 Leigh, The Wilson Plot, esp. chaps. 9 and 10.
64 David Leigh, Review of “The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5” by Christopher Andrew, Guardian, October 10, 2009.
65 Leigh, The Wilson Plot, 250, citing journalists Barrie Penrose and Chapman Pincher on the MI5 confrontation; Richard Norton-Taylor Antony Cavendish obituary Guardian, January 23, 2013; Gordon Corera, MI6 (London: Phoenix, 2011), 213–14. Corera’s, the most recent book on MI6 up to the contemporary period, does not comment on Wilson’s behaviour as paranoid.
66 Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 633.
67 Stephen Dorril, MI6. A History of Special Operations (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), 743–4. This was also part of a conflict at the time between MI5 and MI6 over who had the lead role in Northern Ireland.
68 Pimlott, Harold Wilson, 703–4.
69 Sandbrook, Seasons in the Sun, 67–75.
70 Jad Adams, Tony Benn. A Biography (London: Biteback, 2011), 349.
71 Pimlott, Harold Wilson, 715.
72 Ibid., 721–3.
73 Wheen, Strange Days Indeed, 255.
74 Obituary General Sir Walter Walker, Daily Telegraph, August 13, 2001.
75 Quoted on ‘Wilson’s World’, BBC Parliament, broadcast August 27, 2013.
76 Bernard Porter, “Other People’s Mail” (Review of Christopher Andrew, “The Defence of the Realm”), London Review of Books 31, no. 2 (2009).
77 Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman, Rinkagate. The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Thorpe (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 283–5. David Leigh also argues that Wilson became lost in conspiracy theories. The Wilson Plot, 235. After 1976 Wilson himself then stayed silent about his views on the intelligence services, producing a famously short one page ‘chapter’ on security in his The Governance of Britain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1976), 167–8.
78 Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 662–3.
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Notes on contributors
Jon Moran
Jon Moran is Reader in Security, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester. His most recent publication is From Northern Ireland to Afghanistan: British Military Intelligence Operations, Ethics and Human Rights.