James Bolam plays Harold Wilson in the BBC2 drama ‘The Plot Against Harold Wilson’ Chris Mullin Harold Wilson Frank Chapple

Things to make you go coup!

Is there more than a grain of truth in Chris Mullin's story of political plot and treachery? asks Illtyd Harrington

A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin
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ON page 137 of Edna Healey’s smug autobiography she recalls phone calls from her friend Anne the wife of Cecil King. Now she claims she realises that it was part of the plot to replace Harold Wilson as Prime Minister.
Unaware of all this, according to her, was her overworked husband Dennis Healey in the Ministry of Defence.
King, the owner of the Daily Mirror actually set up a lunch with Solly Zuckerman the government’s chief scientific advisor and Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten to suggest a military coup. Major General Walker, the founder of the SAS was an eager if unstable supporter. Solly Zuckerman left immediately.
Wilson’s unexpected re-election for the fourth time in 1974 and his equally dramatic exit in 1976 have become the stuff of speculation, intrigue, backstage melodrama and treachery.
Chris Mullin draws many parallels from this period for this absorbing political novel. In 1988 Channel 4 made a fascinating three-part programme of it, the late lamented Ray McAnally in the lead as Harry Perkins – a sea-green incorruptible steel worker from Sheffield, who becomes the unlikely left-wing Labour Prime Minister. His government programme pledges an end to the UK nuclear deterrent and an uncompromising range of far-reaching reforms.
The deep-seated Establishment realises that Perkins means what he says whereas the US government thunders away by having their British position challenged by an elected government.
Mullin, who once edited the left-wing weekly Tribune and later became a Labour MP, served in Blair’s second government so he knows the corridors and dark corners of power. His descriptive accuracy makes for an intriguing intimacy. Writing in 1982 he was well-placed to monitor and translate the reality of the mid-1970s into his semi-fictional tale with disturbing effect.
Then late Merlyn Rees Home Secretary in Callaghan’s government (1976-1979) often mentioned to me that MI5 and MI6 were out of control. After all he should have known because he shared responsibility with the Prime Minister for the security services.
So Mullin’ description of the top civil servants, head of the armed forces and the spooks is not without accuracy.
Cathy Massiter, the whistleblower from MI5, named the spy on the council of CND the late Harry Newton and believe it or not there was one hidden away in the BBC vetting appointments. If he stamped them with an upturned Christmas tree they were considered a risk.
Reg Smith, the odious leader of the power workers, is obviously based on Frank Chapple, an ex-communist ennobled in due course by a grateful Margaret Thatcher and the oily Chancellor of the Exchequer Lawrence Wainwright could have been the self-modelled patrician Roy Jenkins, who made no secrets of what he believed to be his right, the tenancy of Number 10.
Harry Perkins’ eventual tragedy has the ring of truth. His enforced confinement in the Royal Free Hospital and his rustication to the shadows of Chequers – there are similarities to Wilson’s case here.
There are two leading Tory MPs who were vicious opponents of CND from a campaign base which seemed to be suspiciously well-funded.
The CND spy Harry Newton actually came to my house for dinner in 1979 with Howard Brenton the playwright.
I was unable to form an opinion of Newton.
Finally, on the main staircase of Number 10 are the painted portraits and photographs of all the Prime Ministers since Robert Walpole in 1714.
One day in 1975 Harold Wilson took time off to show them to me. At the end of my guided tour he said mysteriously: “Time to go before the tanks come rumbling down Whitehall to cart us off.”
His alter ego Harry Perkins was dispatched with more sophistication, a salutary story wrapped up in a gripping plot.