[A-List] FW: On Harold Wilson

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Below is a letter I've drafted today and sent to the Guardian.

18 months ago Mark Jones wrote to PEN-L that the Guardian "is owned and
operated by MI5". On the evidence of this particular travesty I would
heartily agree. For those who missed the original article it can be
found at

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2002-September/020849.html

Why should this emerge now? If I were a conspiracy theorist I might
surmise that the testimony of Colin Wallace at the Saville Inquiry into
the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972 might have something to do with it.
According to the press notice issued by the inquiry team Wallace was due
to give testimony on 18 and 19 September (i.e., almost two weeks ago),
and, according to a Guardian report of 26 September, also testified on
25 September. However the reportage of Wallace's testimony has related
strictly to the Bloody Sunday massacre itself, and not Wallace's own
role in Northern Ireland. The only publication to my knowledge which has
highlighted Wallace's role has been Private Eye, in which Paul Foot has
reminded readers of the extraordinary lengths to which the British state
went to prevent Wallace from revealing the intelligence services' role
in undermining Harold Wilson, and indeed Edward Heath. The last issue of
Private Eye went to press too early for Foot to have included anything
on Wallace's testimony, but we can expect something in the next issue,
due out next week. Does this mean that today's garbage peddled by the
serious journalists of the Guardian is merely the state apparatus
getting its retaliation in first?

For more on Wallace, see

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2002-September/020442.html

-----

Dear Sir

Given the amount of evidence that has emerged of security service
skullduggery and plotting against Harold Wilson it is, frankly,
astonishing that even now Michael White should regale us with the same
tired litany of smears against the former Prime Minister, and with such
apparent relish ("Wilson and Falkender claims resurface", 30 September).
Even more incredible is the assertion that Joe Haines, the source of the
latest fantastic fabrications against his former employer, is "hard to
dismiss". Are we to anticipate a re-appraisal of Haines' hagiography of
Robert Maxwell in the pages of the Guardian?

Perhaps Mr White should consult the work of his colleague, David Leigh,
whose 1988 book "The Wilson Plot: The Intelligence Services and the
Discrediting of a Prime Minister 1945-1976" details extensively the
reasons why "the Wilson regime was famous for its paranoia and its
Walter Mitty moments". Leigh's book explains also that in 1977 Andrew
Roth was forced to withdraw his unauthorised biography of Wilson,
subtitled "Yorkshire Walter Mitty", and pay Wilson damages, having made
similarly scurrilous allegations against Wilson just as Wilson was
making his own serious charges against MI5. However, since the Guardian
seems to have reached its own accommodation with MI5 in its recent
serialising of Stella Rimington's banal "memoir", maybe we are better
advised to look elsewhere for an analysis of British politics that would
rank as far more serious in its implications than the sensationalist
credulity served up by your political editor.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Keaney