The Peter Wright Allegations and Clockwork Orange
Peter Wright claimed that he was confronted by two of his MI5 colleagues and that they said to him: "Wilson's a bloody menace and it's about time the public knew the truth", and "We'll have him out, this time we'll have him out". Wright alleged that there was a plan to leak damaging information about Wilson and that this had been approved by 'up to thirty officers'. As the 1974 election approached, the plan went, MI5 would leak selective details of the intelligence about Labour leaders, especially Wilson, to 'sympathetic' journalists. According to Wright MI5 would use their contacts in the press and the trade unions to spread around the idea that Wilson was considered a security risk. The matter was to be raised in Parliament for 'maximum effect'. However Wright declined to let them see the files on Wilson and the plan was never carried out but Wright does claim it was a 'carbon copy' of the Zinoviev Letter which had helped destabilise the first Labour Government in 1924.
On March 22, 1987 former MI5 officer James Miller claimed that the Ulster Workers Council Strike of 1974 had been promoted by MI5 in order to help destabilise Wilson's government.
In July 1987, Labour MP, Ken Livingstone used his maiden speech to raise the allegations of a former Army press officer, Colin Wallace, that the Army press office in Northern Ireland had been used in the 1970s as part of a smear campaign, codenamed Clockwork Orange against Harold Wilson and other British and Irish politicians.
The public position of MI5 was established with the publication in 2009 of Defence of the Realm, the first authorised history of MI5, by Christopher Andrew, in which it is reported that, while MI5 kept a file on Wilson from 1945, when he became an MP – because communist civil servants claimed that he had similar political sympathies – there was no bugging of his home or office, and no conspiracy against him. However in 2010 newspaper reports made detailed allegations that the bugging of 10 Downing Street had been omitted from the history for "wider public interest reasons". In 1963 on Harold Macmillan's orders following the Profumo Affair MI5 bugged the cabinet room, the waiting room, and the prime minister’s study until the bugs were removed in 1977 on Jim Callaghan's orders. From the records it is unclear if Harold Wilson or Edward Heath knew of the bugging, and no recorded conversations were retained by MI5 so possibly the bugs were never activated. Professor Andrew had previously recorded in the preface of the history that "One significant excision as a result of these requirements (in the chapter on The Wilson Plot) is, I believe, hard to justify" giving credence to these new allegations.
Read more about this topic: Harold Wilson Conspiracy Theories
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