Harold Wilson did have a mistress in Downing Street as suspected – just not the one everybody assumed it was.
Westminster gossip had always linked his name to Marcia Williams, his bossy, tempestuous but influential political secretary, and it is confirmed that he did have a fling with her many years before he became Prime Minister.
But it was press officer Janet Hewlett-Davies with whom Wilson had an affair as PM in the 1970s
He confessed to close aides that he had never been happier during the relationship, despite his long marriage to quiet lady poet Mary, who hated living at No10.
Janet was the woman who brought “sunshine at the sunset” of Wilson’s life, in the words of Lord Donoughue, the political adviser who this week broke a 50-year silence to disclose the truth.
Rishi Sunak must be a leader, not just a manager
He said: “Towards the end [of his time as PM], because he had a lot of time on his hands, he used to take me for walks around No10 to have a little gossip.
“On one such walk, he in a very Wilsonian way, because he wasn’t a very direct person, he said he was very pleased I was a friend of Janet. And I replied by saying I thought Janet was a lovely and terrific person.
Marcia Williams aka Baroness Falkender, Harold Wilson's former right-hand woman (PA)
The personal and political secretary to the Labour prime minister (PA)“And I then added in the Wilsonian way, which I had learned from him, and I’m very pleased your relationship is so close and so good.” The Labour leader’s press secretary, Joe Haines, joined with him with revelations of clandestine sightings of the pair, insisting: “She was Harold Wilson’s mistress.”
Not all historians agree. Linda McDougall, biographer of Marcia Williams, rejects the story of a romance as “a desperate plea for attention from a couple of fast-fading stars of the Wilson era”.
And some wonder why Donoughue, 89, and Haines, 96, have waited so long to expose their boss’s guilty secret.
The passionate melodrama is set in a time of turmoil in government and the Labour Party. In the shadow of a crippling miners’ strike, Wilson narrowly won a “who rules?” election called by Tory premier Edward Heath in February 1974.
He took his own “kitchen cabinet” into Downing Street, a cabal of advisers and confidants, including Marcia.
Baroness Falkender with former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. (PA)Mary, his wife of more than 30 years, always expressed her dislike of Downing Street life, calling it “living over the shop”.
But running at first a minority administration, and then after a second election in November a government with a majority of three, Wilson was beset by crises of all sorts, from without and within.
He looked to Marcia Williams, his “manager and political wife” for support and guidance, which was always forthcoming – whether he wanted it or not.
Rishi Sunak vows the 'fightback starts here' despite Labour's massive poll lead
In the midst of this domestic drama, Wilson was faced with mounting pressures.
The Provisional IRA moved its murderous bombing campaign to mainland Britain, targeting the Palace of Westminster and pubs in Guildford and Woolwich.
A strike by hard-line Unionists ended power-sharing in Northern Ireland and Wilson was, with some justification, in fear of subversive activity by rogue elements in the security services. To cap it all the Germans won the World Cup, again in 1974.But life goes on, and the Prime Minister occasionally entertained journalists – including this one – for drinks in No10.
None of us had a clue that wily Wilson, as the media loved to portray him, and as he rather liked to be seen, was sleeping with his deputy press secretary.
Long after the press office had finished work late one night in late 1974, Joe Haines spotted “by pure chance” Mrs Hewlett-Davies, 22 years his boss’s junior, climbing the stairs to Harold’s room.
Queen Elizabeth II with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (Getty Images)It didn’t take an ace reporter to work out what was going on, and when challenged “she told me why”, he said.
Pipe-smoking (for the photographers), short, stout, silver-haired Harold was an unlikely lothario.
But he had long been in thrall to Marcia, regarding her as an equal partner in their political enterprise to make Britain democratic socialist again.
At some point, early in their working relationship in 1956, Wilson and Marcia did have sex “six times, and it wasn’t satisfactory” she is said to have later told his wife, because she was annoyed Wilson had taken Mary out for her birthday.
That intimacy tailed off, but her influence did not. Meanwhile Marcia found love in the arms of a political journalist, with whom she had two children. Until this week, the evidence for Wilson’s affair with Mrs Hewlett-Davies, then in her mid-thirties, was scant.
She had previously been described as “very close” and offering an emotional haven for Harold in Downing Street – incidentally making Marcia jealous and Mary suspicious. But the Haines-Donoughue disclosures paint a picture of bedroom-hopping both in No10 and Chequers, and probably on prime ministerial visits abroad.
At a Paris summit, Haines told The Times: “Nixon passed and said jovially to Wilson ‘Harold, is this the blonde that you’re in trouble with?’
“‘No’ replied Wilson. ‘This is another one.’”
Wilson, by Paul Routledge (Haus)
Lady Falkender drew up Harold Wilson's resignation honours list (Mirrorpix)Haines continued: “The astonishing thing is that nobody else but me knew of the affair. It was certainly a love-match on her side, and the joy which Wilson exhibited to me suggested that it was for him too.”
There were further trysts after Wilson’s early retirement in 1976, at a grace-and-favour flat in Oxford provided by then-Daily Mirror-owner Robert Maxwell, for whom she later worked as head of public relations. The two advisers, Haines and Donoughue, have kept the secret until now because “we thought it would be used damagingly against them at that time,” and wanted to wait until everyone who would be affected by the scandal had died.
And the main actors in this drama have indeed passed away, leaving only the minor players to tell the story.
Harold, by then Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, succumbed to dementia in 1995.
Marcia Williams, ennobled by Wilson as Lady Falkender, died in 2019 in a private nursing home “battered, broken by illness and virtually penniless” says her biographer. Mrs Hewlett-Davies died last October aged 85.
Lady Wilson, the first British prime minister’s spouse to become a centenarian, died in 2018 at the age of 102.
Joe Haines, who worked for the Maxwell Mirror, describes Mrs Hewlett-Davies as “astute, intelligent and trustworthy”, who died nursing a secret.
He added: “Every tabloid in Britain would have paid £50,000 for the story.
“She would have been insulted by the thought. She never sought to gain from her secret life.
“I am only telling it now because I am the last person alive to be told of the affair by its two participants, and because I think her importance to Wilson’s morale during his last months should be realised by historians.”
In terms of political importance, historians will rank Wilson’s No10 lover well below her romantic rival Marcia.
Unlike Marcia, Mrs Hewlett-Davies was virtually unknown outside the Labour political nexus and the Whitehall ministries where she ran communications departments after the Downing Street years.
But after the affair revelations this week, as Haines remarks, she has a guaranteed place in political history.
He adds: “Though he was borne down by weariness with politics and the onset of the dementia which would eventually kill him, she undoubtedly increased his morale in the last two years or so before he retired.”
It’s just a pity she could not have told the story herself.
- Wilson, by Mirror columnist Paul Routledge, is published by Haus
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
