Wilson and Wigg
Sir: Regarding Chapman Pincher's article Mid Wilson frame Wigg?', 14 November), you may care to let your readers have some facts.
I am Lord Wigg's executor. There are no diaries at the LSE or elsewhere. Wigg did not keep a diary. There are no papers 'full
LETTERS
of betrayal and intrigue'. Wigg did not probe 'the sexual peccadilloes of politi- cians' or anyone else. There are voluminous papers which are of historical interest to serious people. They needed to be cata- logued and have had to wait their turn. This work is nearly completed.
Mr Pincher's statement that Wigg told him that he had been 'framed by the police at Wilson's behest' is astonishing. I was a close friend of Wigg's for the last 23 years of his life; I gave the oration at his memorial service; I was junior counsel in the case and I do no violence to my lifelong duty of confi- dentiality in stating that neither I nor any of his friends I have consulted ever heard him make such an allegation. Lord Goodman was Wigg's friend and solicitor. He was also Harold Wilson's friend and solicitor. Each was at Wigg's memorial service.
In his article 'Follow that colonel!' (21 November), Joe Haines — whose biogra- phy of Robert Maxwell has excited factual criticism — tells your readers that 'in the summer of 1974, word reached Wilson that he [Wigg] had written an autobiography and that part of it was devoted to an excori- ating criticism of Lady Falkender, as Mar- cia Williams had just become'. Mr Haines goes on to relate what his employer, Harold Wilson, to whom he owed a duty of confi- dence, then did and draws the conclusion that Wilson's actions put a stop to such crit- icism. But Wigg's autobiography, George Wigg, was published by Michael Joseph in the spring of 1972 and was serialised shortly before that in the Sunday Times.
Mr Haines, who has himself — rightly or wrongly — been a stern critic of Lady Falk- ender (I always enjoyed exchanges of views with her), absurdly refers to Lords Wake- ham, Wyatt and Wigg as 'failed politicians'. Haines himself, of course, had a distin- guished career as a member of the Tun- bridge Wells Urban District Council in a particularly good year for Labour. De gustibus non est disputandum, as they say in Tunbridge Wells.
Roy Roebuck
12 Brooksby Street, London Ni
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