Harold Wilson plot: MI5 treason 1968 coup plot 1976 Wilson resignation, Penrose Courtieur BBC (2006)

Wilson 'plot': The secret tapes
By Brian Wheeler
BBC News political reporter
Harold Wilson's belief that he was the victim of a secret service plot to discredit him is well documented.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4789060.stm
But new revelations in BBC drama documentary The Plot Against Harold Wilson, to be broadcast next Thursday, suggest the Labour prime minister was also convinced he was the target of plans to stage a military coup - and that the Royal Family backed it.
The story sounds barely credible - a sign, perhaps, that Wilson was suffering from paranoia - but it is backed up by corroborating interviews with other senior figures from the time.
The then BBC journalist Barrie Penrose has outlined some of the detail of the new evidence in an article in this week's Radio Times.
He stresses the need to bear in mind the backdrop to the alleged plots, telling the magazine: "Our establishment, from the intelligence services down to parts of Fleet Street, were paranoid about the threat of communism. So paranoid it seems, they were prepared to believe a prime minister of Britain was an active Soviet spy."

Harold Wilson plot, Treason & Conspiracy by MI5, 1968 Coup, 1976 Resignation
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Published on Jul 23, 2012

Yes two top BBC journalists Penrose and Courtieur were steered out into the long grass by the powers that be.

In 1975 Britain's last honest Prime Minister, Harold Wilson was bugged, burgled bullied and hounded out of office by fascist, even Nazi, elements within MI5, the army and establishment who smeared him as a Russian KGB agent. As for books on this subject the best in order are as follows:
'The Pencourt File' by Barrie Penrose & Roger Courtiour (1978)
'Smear!: Wilson and the Secret State' by Stephen Dorril & Robin Ramsey (1992)

'The Wilson Plot: How the Spycatchers and Their American Allies Tried to Overthrow the British Government' (1988) by David Leigh

In his 1976 memoir Walking on Water, Hugh Cudlipp recounts a meeting he arranged at the request of Cecil King, the head of the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), between King and Lord Mountbatten of Burma. The meeting took place on May 8, 1968. Attending were Mountbatten, King, Cudlipp, and Sir Solly Zuckerman, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the British government.

According to Cudlipp:

"[Cecil] awaited the arrival of Sir Solly and then at once expounded his views on the gravity of the national situation, the urgency for action, and then embarked upon a shopping list of the Prime Minister's shortcomings...He explained that in the crisis he foresaw as being just around the corner, the Government would disintegrate, there would be bloodshed in the streets and the armed forces would be involved. The people would be looking to somebody like Lord Mountbatten as the titular head of a new administration, somebody renowned as a leader of men, who would be capable, backed by the best brains and administrators in the land, to restore public confidence. He ended with a question to Mountbatten- would he agree to be the titular head of a new administration in such circumstances?"

Mountbatten asked for the opinion of Zuckerman, who stated that the plan amounted to treason and left the room. Mountbatten expressed the same opinion, and King and Cudlipp left. On 30 May 1968 King was dismissed as the head of the International Publishing Corporation.

In addition to Mountbatten's refusal to participate in King's mooted plot, there is no evidence of any other conspirators. Cudlipp himself appears to see the meeting as an example of extreme egotism on King's part.
A BBC programme The Plot Against Harold Wilson, broadcast in 2006, reported that, in tapes recorded soon after his resignation on health grounds, Wilson stated that for eight months of his premiership he didn't "feel he knew what was going on, fully, in security". Wilson alleged two plots, in the late 1960s and mid 1970s respectively. He said that plans had been hatched to install Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles's great uncle and mentor, as interim Prime Minister (see also Other conspiracy theories, below). He also claimed that ex-military leaders had been building up private armies in anticipation of "wholesale domestic liquidation". On a separate track, elements within MI5 had also, the BBC programme reported, spread "black propaganda" that Wilson and Williams were Soviet agents, and that Wilson was an IRA sympathiser, apparently with the intention of helping the Conservatives win the 1974 election.