Agent Lavender: The Flight of Harold Wilson

by Tom Black

  Brimley was quite wrong, but with a life sentence becoming inevitable, pessimism did not seem to be an unfair position to be in.

  Pacing himself, he looked back through the hallway towards the stairs, his eyes resting on a small stone panel that looked odd if you stared for long enough. Harold Wilson responded.

  The internal machinations of the Labour Party tended to focus the mind even more than briefings on the latest funding crisis in the National Health Service, which had probably explained why Barbara Castle had arrived at the Leader of the Opposition’s office only half an hour after the Queen’s Speech had been unceremoniously cancelled.

  The Shadow Secretary of State for Social Security noted how crises tended to bring out the best and the worst qualities in senior politicians. Since Wilson had flown the nest, Roy Jenkins had grown both more radical and more pompous. On the one hand, he had been calling for the full support of the National Government’s security legislation more forcefully than half the Tory Party, whilst also shooting off memoranda about the every subject under the sun regarding the future of the Labour Party. She had never regarded Roy with particular fondness, but nor did she treat him with the same disdain as most of the left did. That said, he was still a lazy oaf.

  “We need to talk about the future of the party, Barbara,” Roy said from the drinks cabinet before she had even closed the door behind her. It was still early, but she accepted the Dubonnet. She had little alternative, given how it was practically forced into her hands.

  “If you are standing for the Shadow Cabinet, and I hope you are, by the way,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “I hope you will be able to accept the Home Office.”

  Jenkins trailed off, aware of the withering look that Barbara was giving him.

  “So,” Castle said, “you’re trying to get me on side before Tony wins the Deputy Leadership and begins gunning for you?”

  Roy sat back, realising how tense his spine felt. The Cabinet (Shadow Cabinet, he reminded himself yet again) had rallied around him last week without too much fuss, but that was a long time ago now. The Times had editorialised on Wednesday that he was not up to the task of keeping the ship steady after all – especially after he had made that silly off-the-cuff remark about rethinking Clause IV. That had almost toppled Hugh back in the wilderness years, and now it was widely credited with being the trigger for Benn’s spontaneous challenge to Ted Short for the Deputy Leadership. Roy still had not quite fathomed why he had even thought of saying it.

  Still, it was not as though he had wanted any of this. Returning as Home Secretary was supposed to have just been something to do until the next European Commissioner was due to be appointed. Now, despite everything, he had ended up as Deckchair Re-Arranger in Chief. There was no precedent for any of this, he thought to himself, no glory in winding up the party, no wish to take the position that he had long since ceased to covet when it seemed to amount to taking an old dog behind the barn one last time.

  “Roy?”

  Jenkins swallowed, aware that he’d perhaps played his hand rather too soon.

  “I can work with Tony,” he said unconvincingly, “but I do fear for the party if he makes a bid for the leadership itself. Do you think he is personally ambitious?”

  “I think he doesn’t think he is personally ambitious, Roy,” Castle replied, “just that he is the sort of person who tends to have a point of view that is pretty much entirely in line with what the activists want.”

  “And you think that’s a coincidence?”

  “No comment.”

  “It’s obvious that he sees this crisis as an excuse to rebuild the machinery around himself.”

  “Whereas you, Roy, are entirely motivated by altruism?”

  “I am motivated by a desire to save the party” he said, feeling his voice rise, “who tried to make us see sense on Europe? Who made us the party of social reform? Who has opposed every extreme dogma that has conspired to drive us apart? A lot of us have played our part, Barbara, but it certainly hasn’t been Michael or Tony.”

  “We are still a socialist party,” Barbara said pointedly.

  “And if we keep talking about ‘coups’ and ‘dictatorship’ and ‘conspiracy’ then our continued existence as an entity will be measured in a matter of weeks. You’ve seen the polls.”

  Barbara Castle had seen the polls; they predicted wipe-out pretty much everywhere – although Blackburn seemed like it would be saved, just, but there was still something wrong about the new Leader’s argument.

  “So we just roll over and accept everything the Conservatives want us to do, Roy? I mean – what’s the point of us if we do do that?”

  “It will show that we are a serious organisation that recognises the real risks of an international backlash against—”

  “You don’t think that we have somewhat missed our chance with that already?” she interjected.

  “I think we missed it in 1963, to be perfectly honest.”

  Roy finished speaking as one of the young press officers rushed in.

  “My apologies,” the messenger said as he turned on the radio, “but you probably will want to listen to this.”

  He was right.

  John Timson had grown rather accustomed to standing outside Downing Street over the past week. He had been plucked from Today to front the rolling television coverage within hours of Wilson’s abscondment, something about the Director-General wanting a “respected face” as the voice of the Corporation – a phrase that Timson had interpreted as “Tory”. Although he considered this a little unfair, it had certainly allowed him to become the anchor of BBC respectability, although his name had still graced General Walker’s list of suspected Soviet Agents that had been published by the Telegraph the previous day. Then again, he had smirked, so had Bruce Forsyth’s.

  Shivering in his overcoat, he still thought it had been rather selfish to have had such a long-term period of constitutional wrangling in the middle of November. The press pack had been asked by the Ministry of Information to assemble over an hour ago pending an “important announcement” from the Prime Minister. There had been a respected amount of jostling for position between Auntie and ITN, but after about forty minutes, even the most protective hacks had started to share their thermos flasks.

  Timson was still clutching his cup of the best coffee that the BBC could afford when the door opened. Mrs Thatcher breezed out, clutching a single, crumpled piece of paper.

  “Good evening,” she began, without waiting for the cameras to focus on her, nor allowing a single boom mike to come into position, “I apologise for keeping you all waiting at this cold hour, but after discussions with the Cabinet and parliamentary colleagues, I have decided that the current domestic and international crisis requires leadership that has not been forthcoming from the fractious state of affairs within the present House of Commons...”

  “She cannot be calling a general election now,” Jenkins cried out, “we will be massacred!”

  “The time for her to do this was a week ago,” Castle said, “this just looks like desperation.”

  “...following the violence over the weekend that has served only to undermine international confidence in the United Kingdom yet further,” she continued, “and has also made it abundantly clear that the country demands strong leadership. That is a leadership that – I have been told – cannot be provided by the present Cabinet.”

  The two colleagues looked at one another, having done the mental gymnastics required.

  “I have therefore decided, after consultation with Her Majesty, the Leader of the Liberal Party and numerous constitutional experts...”

  “No, no, no...” Castle murmured – as if trying to conjure an incantation to prevent the words that they now realised were about to come.

  “...that the Earl Mountbatten is the only figure of suitable international standing to lead this nation out of the depths of ignominy that we presently find ourselves in...”

  “And what will that mean?
” Castle yelled out, “what will that mean at the end of your Thousand Year Reich?”

  Jenkins did not even bother to shush her.

  “I have not been asked, nor would I accept even if the position was offered!” Enoch Powell thundered, slamming the receiver back on the stand for the sixth time in as many minutes.

  Sheepishly informing Pam that he would not break the telephone, the Member for South Down decided that it would probably be for the best for him to ensconce himself in the Palace of Westminster, assuming that it had not fallen into the Thames by the time he got there.

  Despite being offered a sizable office in the Cabinet Building, Lord Mountbatten had always preferred to work from the House of Lords Library, although that preference had rapidly become untenable as soon as he had become Secretary of State. Now, it seemed as though any sort of personal freedom would be taken out of his grasp.

  Less than two hours ago, the government’s chief spokesman had been on the verge of resigning. Being associated with any administration that had allowed his cousin to be unceremoniously toppled (literally, but not metaphorically) had driven him to breaking point – although he had managed to calm himself to a manageable level by the time he had had his initial discussion with Mrs Thatcher.

  Still – he had the Duke of Wellington’s maxim ringing in his ears as the telephone did likewise. Her Majesty had kept him far longer than he had expected, but he reasoned that this has probably been for the best. Such a downright illegal action had grave circumstances for the entire country, so it was probably for the best to make it seem as though they had thought about it before giving an unelected peer and member of the Royal Family the same position that was usually associated with checking the powers of unelected peers and members of the Royal Family.

  “You realise that you are probably going to force your abdication because of this?” he had informed her almost immediately after she came on the line.

  “Yes,” she had replied, “but daddy thought much the same thing back in ’36.”

  “That was still a matter that politicians decided,” he had argued, “this comes far closer to making the monarchy synonymous with the decisions that have had half the country up in arms on the streets.”

  “It is a risk I am willing to take, Dickie.”

  “I...”

  “...will either save us or abolish us.”

  With that, the conversation had ended, a knock had come at the door and a car had been waiting for him in New Palace Yard.

  “Du Cann informs me that the ’22 have not received your letter of resignation yet.”

  “Why would I send them one?”

  Sighing, Margaret Thatcher’s Private Secretary threw his pen on the table. Grumbling under his breath, Fergus Montgomery packed his suitcase – which, for all its owner’s wishes, was any colour but red – and left the office.

  Once again, Mrs Thatcher found herself alone. She smiled humourlessly to herself about that. At any point during the previous week, she would have given anything for a moment of quiet reflection by herself, but reality rarely met the expectations of hope. She sat, brooding to herself, wondering if she had made the right decision after all.

  Despite all such malarkey, she had assumed that her quiet but defiant words outside Downing Street would have been enough to cement some sort of role in Mountbatten’s government. After all, she was still technically leader of the largest party in the Commons (although seeing how even the reddest Labour MPs had returned from house arrest to swell Labour’s ranks, even that probably wouldn’t be the case for much longer) and held a decent amount of support amongst the 1922 Committee, however strongly the Cabinet may have felt she was incompetent.

  Yet, even that hope had been snatched away from her in the space of half an hour. First a lofty phone call from the new First Lord of the Treasury, who had explained with patrician charm that ‘given the circumstances’, it wasn’t the right time for her to take a public facing cabinet role, but he would be grateful of her counsel on an informal basis. The speed with which he had forgotten that her recommendation to the Queen was the very reason he had the job in the first place was astounding. And it was nothing less than a deliberate snub for them to have recalled Ted. Making him Home Secretary had seemed like a concerted effort by the whole mob, Mountbatten included, to find the most effective way of humiliating her.

  And now, Du Cann apparently ‘querying the whereabouts’ of her resignation letter. That she hadn’t agreed to send. Was she supposed to treat her own cabinet’s abject rejection of her authority at Prime Minister as a vote of no confidence in her leadership of the Party, too? Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she sighed. Of course she was.

  Not that it mattered, they were all frit. Frit and failures. With the exception of Mountbatten himself (his coldness aside, he was still the right choice), there wasn’t an ounce of talent in any of them. While Fascist mobs were clashing on the streets with Communist strikers, the new Employment Secretary was probably going to still find the time to get through two Brandy Alexanders before breakfast. The whole lot of them were welcome to keep their blessed Party. With a swift movement, she grabbed a sheet of headed paper and the pen Fergus had left on her desk. By the time she finished writing ‘effective immediately’, she just felt glad the whole thing was over.

  Throwing herself from her chair, the former Prime Minister decided that she probably needed to attend the emergency statement from the House of Lords. If nothing else, she reasoned that she was probably owed a peerage at some point and decided that it would be best for her to get used to the walk.

  There was something about the House of Lords Chamber that Louis Mountbatten had always found unpleasant, but he had never been able to fathom what it was. As he waited for Viscount (he had never quite felt able to refer to him as a mere Life Peer) Hailsham to finish announcing the emergency briefing, he realised what it was.

  The décor.

  Whereas even the most uncompromising of reformers had been content to see the gilt and glasswork as something gaudy but harmless – like Liberace’s wardrobe – Mountbatten saw it as something far more damaging. It represented a barrier between the government and its people. The Commons chamber, with anarchic ceremony and too few seats, was bad enough, but it at least carried some pretence of accountability. Here, sat beside people dressed like the chorus from The Pirates of Penzance, there was none.

  He sat forward, clasping his hands as the Lord Bishop of Ely gave the prayers. In a few minutes, if all went to plan, Mountbatten would be informally ‘lent’ the support of a Commons majority thanks to a symbolic vote, and legislation would be put in place that would allow him to speak – but not vote – in the Commons chamber. The farce was compounded by the fact that the nation’s MPs were filing into the House of Lords because, of course, they were allowed to enter it, but Lords were not allowed to make the opposite journey.

  Of course, he knew that the constitution was fundamentally to blame, but that was not what people would be seeing in the Sunday newspapers. No, they would note the total detachment of the Upper House from the rioting on the streets. His own statement – which was still little more than a few notes that had been hurriedly scribbled in the back of the car as it had whizzed back from the Palace – needed to break down the detached reverence with which the damn place conducted itself.

  Lord Mountbatten rose, noting how full the Chamber looked. Despite himself, he permitted himself a slight smirk as he saw that even the Honourable Member for Bolsover had come along, although Skinner was doing his best to look as though he had been forced to attend. Placing both hands at the despatch box, Lord Mountbatten spoke.

  “My Lords and Members, I stand before you this evening at a time of extraordinary crisis for the United Kingdom and for our allies at home and abroad.”

  Incredibly, that still sounded like an understatement.

  Chapter twelve

  Monday 10th November 1975 – 7:30pm

  “I’m only sorry I couldn’t b
e of more help, Mr White.”

  “It’s Wright,” snapped Wright as he walked to the door. Brimley breathed a sigh of relief as the man turned his back. Wright, however, stopped as he reached the door frame. He stared at Brimley with a quizzical look, his eyes roaming over the fifty-nine year old’s face. He took a step toward him.

  “Lovely part of the world, this, isn’t it, Mr Brimley? You’re very fortunate to live in an ancient little cottage like this,” he began, suddenly speaking very quietly, “Many of these date back to before the Civil War, don’t they?”

  Brimley stared straight back at him.

  “I prefer to call it the English Revolution.”

  “I bet you do. But this one is particularly fine. I’m no expert, not by any stretch of the imagination, but,” he said, with a pause as he walked toward the fireplace, “this one seems to have Tudor hallmarks. Am I correct?”

  His words were now barely more than a whisper as he turned to face Brimley again.

  One of the former Prime Ministers not being sought by Scotland Yard ambled back towards the Commons Chamber, his head still spinning from the rapidity with which his career had changed yet again. It had been – what? – eight months since that woman had come along and surprised everyone, not least herself, in removing him. Yet, just as suddenly, she was yesterday’s headlines, Willie was leader (somehow) and he himself had ended up back at the Cabinet table. It was not as though any of it had been especially fair, but then again, nor had his deposition. All things considered, Ted Heath was having a marvellous day.

  “You carry yourself with the air of a man who has just refused an overdraft, Mr Heath.”

  Heath looked up, having barely noticed the figure that had marched into step beside him.

  “And you likewise, my Lord President of the Council,” he responded, “which I find even more surprising given that this is the first time your party have been allowed within a snifter of power since the War.”