Did MI6 & S. Africans force out Harold Wilson in 1976? Stephen Dorril, Smear Wilson the Secret State

Deputy DG of MI6 - George Kennedy-Young
Smear!: Wilson and the Secret State

https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2025/02/20/not-the-bcfm-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling-228/

Stephen Dorril, Robin Ramsay, Stephen Dorrill

This book is a revisionist biography of Harold Wilson. The authors assert that, although Wilson was previously perceived as a villain and egotist, unexamined subtext now shows that his behaviour was intelligible and intelligent and that he was one of the cleverest men of his generation. "Smear!" is also in part a parapolitical history of Britain in the '60s and '70s. It claims that the so-called "Wilson plot" of the mid-'70s was merely the climax of continuous clandestine struggles between the Labour Party - and Wilson in particular - and the British secret state and its allies in the Conservative party. Evidence is offered with the intention of showing that MI5 and MI6's plotting was far more extensive than anyone realized. Wilson is resurrected as a genuine radical who attempted to take on the British State - and lost.

evidence put together here exposing how MI5 over many years leaked and attacked the reputation of Labour leader Harold Wilson and other Labour figures. It is a dismaying story, which also exposes what the authors call the secret state or permanent government, of which the security services are part. Other aspects include Special Branch, the Cabinet Office, senior civil servants ('Permanent Secretaries Club'), right-wing Tory MPs, the media, think tanks.

Wilson emerges as a fine PM in view of the fact that he passed some badly needed social legislation, while dragging his warring party through four successful elections in the face of constant leaks and smears, and media hostility. Rumours were started that he was under the control of the KGB, that he had an affair with his adviser, that he was corrupt and more.

The conclusion after reading this is that any Labour government hoping to enact progressive change faces implacable opposition from entrenched interests. I think of the abuse and campaign of vilification that Wilson encountered, followed by Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn.

Anyone who votes Conservative will no doubt say they were all miserable failures who were not up to governing. But going all the way back to the Zinoviev letter in 1924, forged by MI6 to bring down the first Labour government, there have been institutionalised attempts to delegitimise any Labour challenge to the status quo.

Wilson even faced a plot in the 70s to take over his government. He came through it all with some successes, but retired exhausted licking his wounds.