ANOTHER VOICE
Time to dig up dead horses and kick a blind man or two
AUBERON WAUGH
I see myself as the big fat spider in the corner of the room. Sometimes I speak when I'm asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.
But for all thpir attention to Harold Wilson while he was asleep, and all their diligent kicking of blind men in the Char- ing Cross Road, all they came up with was the evidence later used against Jeremy Thorpe at his trial on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder Norman Scott, the homosexual male model whose dog had been shot on Exmoor in mysterious circumstances. The trial took place at the Old Bailey from 8 May to 2 June 1979, and produced no reasons for the Prime Minis- ter's having resigned three years earlier, despite Pencourt's claim, in the book, that `this tiny incident of the shot dog was the key to why an established Prime Minister resigned when he did'.
At that time, as I remember it, the Penrose theory was that Wilson resigned on 6 March 1976 — or rather announced his resignation on that day — in order to take attention away from the Exeter trial of Andrew Gino Newton, accused of shooting Norman Scott's dog, and also to take heat off the Snowdon divorce, also announced that day. The theory was that Scott was going to use court privilege to blurt out his allegations against Thorpe and claim the acquaintance of the Snowdons (something which, so far as I know, he never did). If Wilson announced his long- planned resignation the same day, the theory went, nobody would notice Scott's outburst in an Exeter court, and people would be less interested in the Snowdon divorce. For this patriotic act of timing, it was hinted, Wilson had been awarded the Garter.
I was never entirely convinced by this theory. Wilson seemed to me to be a bigger fish than either Thorpe or the Snowdons. Now, at last, it seems that we are being allowed to discuss an alternative theory, the one which, in fact, I have been discus- sing publicly for the last 12 years: that Wilson resigned because he was warned by the Security Service (MI5) about evidence suggesting that he was a possible security risk.
Whether the threat was merely to pub- lish the evidence, or to prosecute for some technical infringement of the Official Sec- rets Act's notorious Section Two, one could only guess. Indeed, the whole sub- ject belonged and still belongs to the higher realms of speculation, but for one who has been plugging away at it these last 12 years, it is good to see it revived.
The theory that Wilson had received a warning from the Security Service was supported by his strange briefing to Pen- rose and Courtiour, which seemed to indicate a certain resentment against the service, and a feeling of having suffered injustice at its hands. The new theory, inspired by Anthony Cavendish's memoirs, is only slightly different.
By this account, Wilson, while still Prime Minister, took his complaints about MI5 to Maurice Oldfield, then head of the Foreign Office's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who told Wilson it was nothing to do with him. Perhaps Sir Maurice was also given the big fat spider treatment, and told to kick blind men in the street — some- thing which would never have appealed to a man of his sensitive nature. That sort of thing is always left to MI5. Then, according to Cavendish, Oldfield, looking into the matter, found material in his own depart- ment which might indeed have given rise to doubts about Wilson's security rating. Old- field took it either to the Prime Minister himself, or, more probably, to the Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan, with results previously noted.
This would explain why Wilson always avoided Oldfield in the street and at parties, and it would also explain why he still felt free to pursue his grievance against MI5, whose bugging and burgling activities against him had been peripheral to the real reason for his resignation, which related to incidents 20 years earlier.
Wilson undoubtedly feels aggrieved by what happened in 1976, but the fact that he has kept quiet about it, as have Callaghan, Lady Falkender and anyone else who might have known what was going on, suggests that a deal was struck between all concerned. If there was anything against Wilson, it cannot have been very serious or very conclusive, or I feel sure Mrs Thatch- er would have told us about it. On the other hand, it cannot have been totally flippant and inconclusive, or we would have heard about it from Wilson, Cal- laghan, Lady Falkender and others. I wonder what it was.
In theory, perhaps, Mrs Thatcher would know nothing about it anyway, since it would have been locked away in the papers of a previous administration, but this did not prevent her from finding out about MI5's deal with Blunt and ratting on it. There has been a tendency to connect the Wilson story with the mysterious Gaitskell papers of 1957, which should have been published under the 30-year rule but have now been locked away for a further 45 years, apparently to protect family feel- ings.
They refer to an episode when Gaitskell, as leader of the Opposition, discovered some information relating to national security which he took to the Prime Minis- ter, Macmillan. The generally accepted interpretation of this is that they concerned some Labour politician, but I do not see why any Labour politician should be pro- tected for a further 45 years. A more likely explanation is that they referred to the late Lord Mountbatten, about whom many people harboured odd suspicions at one time or another.
My own, preferred explanation is that they referred to Harold Macmillan himself. Gaitskell, as a Wykehamist and a gentle- man, decided to confront the old boy. Macmillan promised the fullest enquiry, while quietly planning to have the papers locked away for 75 years, and Gaitskell himself even more quietly murdered four years later.
People may ask what is my purpose in digging up all these dead horses. My purpose is merely to demonstrate, as Wil- son demonstrated with his tales of big fat spiders and kicking blind men, that anyone who takes secrecy seriously is in danger of losing his marbles.
Previous page
