Lord Louis Mountbatten's very British coup

Overview
Ever since the mid-1970s, a variety of conspiracy theories have emerged regarding British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976, winning four general elections. These range from Wilson having been a Soviet agent (a claim which MI5 investigated and found to be false), to Wilson being the victim of treasonous plots by conservative-leaning elements in MI5, claims which Wilson himself made.

Those making the allegations
Peter Wright, in his book Spycatcher, claimed that in 1967 Mountbatten attended a private meeting with press baron and MI5 agent Cecil King, and the Government's chief scientific adviser, Solly Zuckerman. King and Peter Wright were members of a group of 30 MI5 officers who wanted to stage a coup against the then crisis-stricken Labour Government of Harold Wilson, and King allegedly used the meeting to urge Mountbatten to become the leader of a government of national salvation. Solly Zuckerman pointed out that it was treason, and the idea came to nothing because of Mountbatten's reluctance to act.

In 2006, the BBC documentary The Plot Against Harold Wilson alleged that there had been another plot involving Mountbatten to oust Wilson during his second term in office (1974–76). The period was characterised by high inflation, increasing unemployment and widespread industrial unrest. The alleged plot revolved around right-wing former military figures who were supposedly building private armies to counter the perceived threat from trade unions and the Soviet Union. They believed that the Labour Party, which was (and still is) partly funded by affiliated trade unions, was unable and unwilling to counter these developments and that Wilson was either a Soviet agent or at the very least a Communist sympathiser – claims Wilson strongly denied. The documentary alleged that a coup was planned to overthrow Wilson and replace him with Mountbatten using the private armies and sympathisers in the military and MI5.

The first official history of MI5, The Defence of the Realm published in 2009, tacitly confirmed that there was a plot against Wilson and that MI5 did have a file on him. Yet it also made clear that the plot was in no way official and that any activity centred on a small group of discontented officers. This much had already been confirmed by former cabinet secretary Lord Hunt, who concluded in a secret inquiry conducted in 1996 that "there is absolutely no doubt at all that a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5...a lot of them like Peter Wright who were rightwing, malicious and had serious personal grudges – gave vent to these and spread damaging malicious stories about that Labour government."

Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is said to have told Alec MacDonald, who set up safe houses where Golitsyn could live, that Wilson was a KGB operative and that former Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell had been assassinated by the KGB to have the pro-US Gaitskell replaced as party leader by Wilson. Guardian journalist David Leigh, however, claims that Golitsyn was guessing. Christopher Andrew, the official historian for Britain's MI5, has described Golitsyn as an "unreliable conspiracy theorist".

In his controversial memoir Spycatcher (1987), former MI5 officer Peter Wright stated that the head of the CIA's Counterintelligence Division, James Angleton, told him that Wilson was a Soviet agent when Wilson was elected Prime Minister in 1964. Wright said that Angleton said he had heard this from a source (whom he did not name but who was probably Golitsyn). According to Wright, Angleton offered to provide further information on the condition that MI5 guarantee to keep the allegations from "political circles", but the management of MI5 declined to accept restrictions on the use of the information and Angleton told them nothing more.

At the end of the 1960s, Wright wrote, MI5 received information from two Czechoslovakian defectors, Josef Frolík and František August, who had fled to the West, alleging the Labour Party had "almost certainly" been penetrated by the Soviets. The two named a list of Labour MPs and trade unionists as Soviet agents.

MI5 maintained a file on Wilson, repeatedly investigating him over the course of several decades before officially concluding that Wilson had had no relationship with the KGB; nor had it ever found evidence of Soviet penetration of the Labour Party. Wilson claimed he was a staunch anti-Communist.

Background


Once the Cuban Missile Crisis was over, the 1960's were generally a good and happy era of fun and productivity; but leftist\anti-war riots, CND marches, urban moral decline and a growing number of strikes marred the end of the decade. Things were to become very difficult in the mid to late 1970s since industrial unrest of all kinds was common (especially in the power stations and car factories), inflation was rife, London was descending in to all sorts of chaos, the economy faced a "wholesale domestic liquidation" according to Whitehall experts and the USSR was beginning to undermine the UK via the trades unions, Labour Party's Loony left and CND.

The Bicester Military Railway (BMR) was built in 1941 within the Bicester Central Ordnance Depot and was used extensively in the Second World War.

The British Prime Minister Harold Wilson visited the BMR in mid-1965 prior to a government spending review. On his orders it was spared from the railway cutbacks that were left over from Lord Beeching's railway review of the early 1960s.

In the summer of 1967, the CIA, the FBI, MI5, MI6, the Australian SIS and New Zealand SIS met in secret in Melbourne, Australia. Mr Golitsin adressed the asembled ignaoryies about his anti-Wilson allegations and Mr Wright presented his doubiose information which he claimed raised the question of the loyalty of Willi Brandt. MI5 was then viseted by James Angleton, then the CIA`s chief of counterintelligence, who claimed he had confirmation from another source, who he claimed could not named, backing up the claims that Harold Wilson actaly was a Soviet agent.

Lord King gave a speech to a group of officers at Sandhurst Amy Officer Collage, in which he urged them to overthrow Harold Wilson in a army coup in 1974, but they refused his offer, beveling he was either mad and\or high on drugs.

MI5 maintained a file on Wilson, repeatedly investigating him over the course of several decades before officially concluding that Wilson had had no relationship with the KGB; nor had it ever found evidence of Soviet penetration of the Labour Party. Wilson claimed he was a staunch anti-Communist.

The plan
There would be a coup (mooted from 1965 to 1979) lead by Lord Mountbatten, his Scots cronies, the SAS and the Army leadership. The army, SAS, MI5, parts of MI6, parts of the RAF and a smattering of Royal Navy elements would then put down the police and anti-coup factions in the armed forces. As it unfolded the Earl of Cromartie and Lord Cecil King would go on TV to announce who they had appointed as the new 'Government of National Unity and Salvation'.

Once power was secure 5,000 people in various positions would be purged. The were mostly-
 * 40 mostly Labour MPs,
 * Several intellectuals,
 * Several hundred journalists and media employees,
 * Unsipathetic academics and clerics
 * The full-time members and main activists of the Communist party and the Socialist Workers Party
 * The directing elements of the 30 or 40 bodies affecting concern and compassion for youth, age, civil liberties, social research and minority grievances.

The plotters thought they could easily intern them on a "lesser ‘Gaelic Archipelago'" off the West Highlands, reportedly code for the Shetland Islands. An army intelligence officer once said that the security services had also convened coup related meetings to determine the location of a possible internment camp for radicals in the Shetland Islands.

A operation codenamed "Clockwork Orange" was tasked with making a false dosser to pseudo-expose Harold Wilson as a Soviet spy. The Ministry of Defense press officer, Collin Wallace, was more than coincidentally imprisoned for manslaughter at the same time as he made cliames he knew about such coup plots.

The Daily Mirror newspaper would publish any damaging anti-Wilson leaks and smear that MI5 wanted aired.

The British government later banned the publication of Peter Wright memoirs in 1986. This was in case it reignited the growing national concern over the rumoured coup plot.

Labour's preparedness
Labour's defense minister and Foreign Office minister of the 1970s, Lord Chalfont, feared that the military was unreliable and that "fairly senior people" were planning a coup.

The Police, the Sandhurst trained Officer Corps, the Royal Military Police (the Red Caps), most of MI6, the CID, a smattering of RAF elements and the Territorial Army (TA) were known to be on the government's side, while the bulk of the navy, along with the entire SBS and all the submariners wanted to stay neutral. The Parachute Regiment (the Parras), Royal Marines, part of the RAF and the Commandos were yet to decide what to do, but would have likely gone neutral to.

Lord King gave a speech to a group of officers at Sandhurst Amy Officer Collage, in which he urged them to overthrow Harold Wilson in a army coup, but they refused, beveling he was either mad and\or high on drugs.

Supreme leaders

 * 1) Lord Louis Mountbatten (de jure)
 * 2) Lord Cecil King (de facto)

The Junta

 * 1) The Earl of Cromartie (the brains behind the coup)
 * 2) "A group of Scottish aristocrats with SAS connections"
 * 3) Solly Zuckerman (left at an early stage due to not wanting to commit tresen).
 * 4) Peter Wright (left at an early stage due to not wanting to commit tresen).

Other affiliates and collaborators

 * 1) Brian Crozier (intelligence gathering)
 * 2) George Young

Alleged cohorts

 * 1) James Goldmith
 * 2) Ross McWhirter
 * 3) Airey Neave
 * 4) Lord Lucan
 * 5) David Stirling
 * 6) John Aspinall
 * 7) "Senior MI5 figures"

The coups's hit list
Once power was secure 5,000 people in various positions would be purged. The were mostly-
 * 40 mostly Labour MPs,
 * Several intellectuals,
 * Several hundred journalists and media employees,
 * Unsipathetic academics and clerics
 * The full-time members and main activists of the Communist party and the Socialist Workers Party
 * The directing elements of the 30 or 40 bodies affecting concern and compassion for youth, age, civil liberties, social research and minority grievances.

It was largely yet to be drawn up on a name by name basis, but 4 names were known- Ultimatly Harold Wilson was to be exicuted as soon as the could find him.
 * Tony Ben MP
 * NUM shop steward Arthur Scargil
 * GLC counilor Ken Livingsone
 * Lambeth councilor Ted Knight

Related issues


Michael Foot (KGB spy code-named ‘Comrade Boot’) had some early ties with the Soviets, but he had cut them long ago. This later became a conduit for the communist spy\agent smear plot of the 1990s, which cost Rupert Murdoch a libel action, as was nearly the down fall of the Times under its editor, David Leppard.

MI5 was also behind smears that Ted Heath was gay and going to kinky Wiltshire night clubs during his premiership. Tory MP Captain Henry Kerby was also accused of spreading the rumor that the Tory Prime Minister was gay and had had an affair with a Swedish diplomat.

Lord King lost his job at the The Mirror newspapers due to his increasingly unstable mentality.

Gough Whitlam was sacked as Australian PM in 1975 by the then governor General. It was known as "The Dismissal".

Willy Brandt resigned as West German chancellor in 1974, after Günter Guillaume, one of his closest aides, was exposed as an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret service in the "Guillaume Affair".

The scandal led to the discovery of multiple abuses of power by the Richard Nixon administration, articles of impeachment, and the resignation of Nixon as President of the United States on August 9, 1974. The scandal also resulted in the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 25 being found guilty and incarcerated, many of whom were Nixon's top administration officials.

Robert Muldoon Following the loss of the East Coast Bays by-election, Muldoon faced an abortive attempt in October–November 1980 to oust him as leader. In an event known as the "Colonels' Coup" after its originators—Jim Bolger, Jim McLay and Derek Quigley—it took place to replace Muldoon with his more economically liberal deputy, Brian Talboys. Muldoon, who was overseas at the time saw the plotters off with relative ease, especially since Talboys himself was a reluctant draftee. No other serious challenge to Muldoon's leadership occurred in his years as Prime Minister until after the 1984 election.

Also see

 * 1) Politically Communist and/or Socialist
 * 2) "London's Burning" (the political epithet, not the UK TV show)
 * 3) London's political 'Loony Left'
 * 4) A political diorama
 * 5) What is a coup d'état?
 * 6) General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte
 * 7) Operation Condor