Agent Lavender: The Flight of Harold Wilson

by Tom Black

  “On that matter, Mr Speaker,” he said, “I am grateful for your granting of a personal statement.”

  There was a pause, as if the Saviour of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and All Her Territories Beyond The Seven Seas once again regretted his decision.

  “When I was asked by Her Majesty to form a government – which was only fourteen months ago, but may as well have been fourteen years – I did so on the assumption that it was a call to duty, the last of a long list of which I have done to serve the country that I love. I am under no illusions that I am a man of the Naval Service first and foremost – and my tastes and speech are always somewhat saltier than may be expected.”

  Enoch Powell muttered ‘Brigadier Powell’ under his breath, unable to contain a small smile. The First Lord continued.

  “However, I make no apology for the way in which this administration has resolved herself. When I was appointed First Lord of the Treasury, our national star could hardly have fallen further. A traitor on the run, rioting in the streets and the threat of nuclear Armageddon all rose in front of us, like a grim hydra of discord. All members of this Chamber understood this, although,” he said, eyes twinkling in the direction of Heffer and the erstwhile ISP, “I gather it took some a little while longer to come around than others. Together, our resolve has reaffirmed Britain’s position on the world stage, and with the Public Order and Industrial Relations Acts, our towns and cities are more peaceful than they have been for many years. The nation is healing, but whichever party forms the next government must be aware of the tremendous task that still lies ahead.”

  On the other side of the Chamber, Roy Jenkins was sweating.

  “When Her Majesty celebrates her Silver Jubilee later this year, it will be with a new government. After the business of the House is concluded next Thursday afternoon, it is my intention to go to the Palace and formally tender my resignation as First Lord of the Treasury, at which time I shall also request Her Majesty to call for a dissolution of Parliament pending a General Election on Thursday, 24th February. During the wash-up, I strongly urge this House to conclude discussions into the security arrangements into the start of Mr Wilson’s trial, as well as the provisions currently laid before you with regard to the ‘Prime Ministerial (Confirmation Vote) Bill’ proposed by my Right Honourable Friend, the Member for Westmorland.”

  Maurice Macmillan, the new Leader of the House, smiled resolutely.

  “It is to this matter that I have recourse to your assistance and advice. I take great satisfaction in leaving this most glorious of institutions in somewhat better mood than it was when I first entered it and it is with every satisfaction that I look forward to leaving a position that I never desired, but have – if nothing else – done my best to restore to respectability.”

  Alone in the silence that followed, Eric Heffer gave a single, solitary giggle.

  Chapter thirty-three

  Saturday 10th January 1977 – 11:55am (Eastern Standard Time)

  Gerald Ford was not an avid reader of Rolling Stone magazine. It had been brought to his attention at the end of 1972, when a young staffer had suggested he read an article on the Muskie campaign by a young hothead named Hunter S. Thompson. Apparently, it was very funny indeed. Ford had not had the time to read it in the end, but had been surprised when another copy of Rolling Stone had been in his pile of documents today. It had been folded open to a page entitled ‘Fear and Loathing in the United Kingdom’, and the President had soon found himself unable to stop reading. He continued.

  ‘and paranoia about the ‘ministry for information’ means this whole damn article is being read down the phone to some poor kid in the New York office. A mess of undersea copper wiring is carrying my words and punctuation across the Atlantic. As it does so, I can hear the local cops outside waging full-scale war on the ‘special constables’ they’ve been instructed to ‘relieve from duty’. After the collapse of the junta in Downing Street (see article dated November 30) a number of changes took place in this faked-up hellhole. The Admiralissimo still sits atop his throne, but there have been rumours of mass sackings in the civil service, and the nazis in black and blue (the ‘special constables’) have been stood down. I was with Hitch last night, and three joints in he comes out with ‘you know, this is all going to be undone when that nazi Powell takes over’. An election is coming, or so say the prevailing winds, and I don’t know if I have it in me to be around when it does. I thought the jungle was bad, but when you’ve seen a British cop (the kind of cop you’re used to seeing on postcards) kicking out the teeth of a kid in body armour as the kid shouts some shit about ‘reds, traitors and niggers’, you just want to get as far away as fucking possible from any country that even pretends to be a democracy. That sonovabitch Amis told me—’

  Ford declined to turn the page, though he would be returning to this article. Today was to be a real fact-finding day. Prior to arranging this summit (via Howard’s visit), Gerald was finally going to get a handle on this situation in England. Mr Thompson’s insights were certainly colourful, but they did offer a sense of what was really going on over there. The British Ambassador was a less useful source. Christopher Soames had been appointed more to shore up the British position in Washington rather than for any inherent political nuance; but he did at least have a good quantity of anecdotes about his father-in-law, which seemed to be enough for the majority of diplomatic functions. What the President really needed now, however, was an understanding of quite how Mr Wilson had pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. He’d only met him briefly himself, and hadn’t dealt much with Britain when it was still in a state of normalcy. Luckily, he knew someone who had.

  “He’s here, Mr President,” came the voice of his secretary as she poked her head into the Oval.

  “Thank you,” said Ford, taking off his reading glasses, “send him in.”

  “Thank you for the invitation, Mr President,” his guest said as he entered the room.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr President. How have you been?”

  There was something deeply disconcerting about the sight of Richard Nixon on the other side of the Oval Office desk.

  “I’ve been just fine,” he said quickly. Ford moved around from behind the desk – his desk. In Dick’s presence, it didn’t feel that way, oddly enough.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Ford as the two men shook hands. There followed an awkward silence. Ford eventually broke it.

  “Have you... have you been keeping busy?”

  “Why, yes, actually. I’ve been getting a lot of reading done. California is wonderful, too. Bracing. Hot.”

  “And Pat? Is she well? I was sorry to hear—”

  “Pat’s good, thank you. Getting better every day.”

  Another pause. This time, Nixon spoke.

  “Betty?”

  “Oh, Betty’s dandy.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Unable to avoid noticing that Nixon’s top lip was sweating, Ford decided to skip the rest of the small talk.

  “Mr President, I asked you here today to take your counsel.”

  “I thought it might be that. I suppose I can’t do you much more harm politically now, eh?”

  Ford had no idea if he ought to laugh along with Nixon. He decided not to, but hedged his bets with an awkward smile.

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “No need to apologise for it, Jerry,” said Nixon with a renewed energy, “it’s smart – damn smart. Meeting me now is too late to hurt you in the election – congratulations again – and nor will it poison your next term, which meeting after the inauguration would.”

  Tricky Dicky offering Beltway insights as if nothing had changed since 1974 was almost enough to break Ford’s highly-practised Presidential demeanour. It was time to talk turkey.

  “You met Harold Wilson a few times, didn’t you?”

  Nixon blinked.

  “Is that what this is about? On top of everything else, they thin
k I’m a Commie spy as well?”

  “No, no,” chuckled Ford, relieved to see that Nixon was smiling, “I’m just trying to get a feel for what he was – is – like.”

  “He was a smooth operator. Good with the cameras. Could kiss a baby at ten paces. But you know all that.”

  Ford nodded as Nixon continued.

  “In private, he was quite different. He had a brain the size of a planet, and he wasn’t afraid to show it off. I went ten rounds with him over NATO Command one time, I think by the end we were both sweating like pigs. You know he once showed up Hank’s knowledge of the Yemen so much that Hank had to leave the room to recover?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Well, it happened. How is Hank, by the way?”

  “He’s great. Doing a fine job.”

  “Until you replace him with Percy, of course.”

  Ford’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t invited Nixon to the White House to take shots at his cabinet picks.

  “Henry and I both felt it was time for him to move on. It’s a changed world, Dick.”

  Nixon grumbled silently, now pacing around the room.

  “If I had to replace Hank, I’d have gone with Bush, frankly.”

  “I thought that originally, but the CIA blew their credibility by not finding out about Wilson – I’d rather leave George in Virginia, he is still a new brush after-all.”

  Nixon, apparently ignoring his successor, had now stopped beside the desk.

  “You know, I used to have ‘Earthrise’ here. The Earth, seen from the Moon.”

  “That’s right, Mr President,” said Ford, once again feeling like the Vice President.

  “Wilson picked it up when he came here. ‘Remarkable,’ he said. ‘What will we do next?’ I remember thinking, ‘We? Hold on a second, Limey...’ But now of course I realise he was being far, far more devious than I thought.”

  Ford took a mental note, and reached for some notepaper to make some physical ones.

  “So there was nothing that really gave him away?”

  “Nothing at all. He came off as a slimeball, a blue-collar Jack Kennedy, but a man who loved his country all the same. But he was a Commie all along! Every step of the way! Every nod, every handshake, every grin! Behind it all, there was a burning hatred of everything we’d built, everything we respected, everything we thought we were defending!”

  Nixon unclenched his shaking fist, and gave a sigh as he stopped pacing. He turned to face Ford, cocking his head to one side.

  “But when you look at us… what we do to those who get too many ideas above their station...” Nixon gestured toward himself, “we’re fighting this Cold War as the land of opportunity, but whether you’re some poor negro kid in the South or a self-made man trying to impress the East Coast aristocrats that really run this country…”

  Nixon trailed off. As he continued, Ford recalled some very late nights in August 1974.

  “And I can’t even imagine how much worse it is in England. Don’t get me wrong, Jerry. Harold Wilson’s a traitor, a Communist and a piece of shit. But by God, I can’t deny there’s a part of me that admires what he was able to do.”

  Nixon’s upper lip looked like a swimming pool. Ford, stunned, stared at the former President for more than a minute before interjecting.

  “Wh-what he was able to do? The... deception?”

  “Sure. And the rest!” Nixon cried, his voice noticeably louder, “leaving us out to dry in ’Nam – who knows what would have happened if we’d had Limey support? And I’m sure he was getting up to no good even when he wasn’t Prime Minister. I wouldn’t be surprised if that bastard was stood on the grassy knoll!”

  Ford had instinctively backed away from the now almost hyperventilating Nixon, and was now pressed against the front of his desk. Delicately, he took a step forward.

  “Uh… well… thank you, Mr President,” he began, “that’s certainly enlightening.”

  “Any time, Jerry. You know where I am.”

  “That’s kind, Mr President—”

  “No, I mean it,” Nixon said with a frightening stare, “I owe you.”

  Ford mentally agreed, and was simultaneously relieved they no longer recorded White House conversations. Nixon shook his hand and headed towards the door.

  “Oh, Jerry, one more thing.”

  “Fire away, Mr President.”

  “A couple of British guys want to do some interviews with me. They don’t sound very high-profile. Do you think I should do it?”

  Ford thought for a moment. He pictured Richard Nixon informing a television studio that part of him admired Harold Wilson.

  “Probably not a very good idea,” he said as calmly as he could, “if there’s one thing our polling showed us during the election, it’s that the Brits are a little bit tainted over here.”

  Nixon nodded.

  “You’re right. I’ll tell ‘em thanks, but no thanks. It was good to see you, Jerry.”

  “Likewise, Mr President.”

  The 37th President of the United States smiled.

  “Well, I’ll let you get on, Mr President,” said Nixon, stopping as he spotted something on the table, “Rolling Stone, huh? Have you been reading that Thompson fellow?”

  “Yes. He’s certainly... forthright.”

  “Smart guy. He and I talked football once. I think I impressed him.”

  As the former President nodded a farewell and walked out of the room, hands in his pockets, Ford shook his head in disbelief. Richard Nixon was still full of surprises.

  Britain, unlike some of her European colleagues, did not have a concept of a ‘Prime Minister-designate’. That being said, Airey Neave mused to himself, if one were to call a spade a spade, Edward Heath was most definitely a gardening implement highly suited to breaking ground.

  Neave was also well aware that Heath would like nothing more than to strike him over the head with a spade. Without the advantage of surprise, Airey was confident that he would come off better in such an altercation. While it remained unlikely, there was no love lost between the two men. In retrospect, Heath telling him his career was ‘over’ after his heart attack in the sixties had been the true trigger of it all, but Airey had given as good as he’d got over the years since. This was one of the few occasions since Margaret’s leadership challenge that he and Heath had managed to be alone in the same room. Wilson really had changed everything. And now, irony of ironies, it looked like the lasting change would be the propulsion of his greatest rival back into power.

  But power suited him, Neave had to admit. The Grocer was talking with natural ease of what he was fond of calling ‘the lie of the land’. Heath’s Christmas holiday – to Australia, no less, where he spent ten days at sea – had done him some good. His skin looked more tanned than leathery these days. The tortured soul of 1973, ripped apart by late nights and Nixonian paranoia, was now a distant memory. Every so often, however, Neave detected the slightest hint of a twitch in Heath’s eyes – and while the bags under them were less noticeable than during the Three-Day-Week, they were still there nonetheless. Heath seemed to be holding up alright. But Neave could not shake the feeling he might fall apart at the seams if he encountered more than a slight wobble in his path back into Number 10.

  But that did not seem to matter to the man on the Clapham Omnibus. Polling companies were predicting a solid Conservative majority in the now-expected election, though they freely admitted to anyone that would listen that their models had been unprepared for the unmasking of a Soviet agent in Number 10, the ensuing quasi-autocracy and the emergence of not one, not two, but three new political parties with parliamentary representation. The BLP were unlikely to do much other than lose seats on election night, though they would of course create some fascinating three-way splits between themselves, Labour and Reform. Before they’d come back into the Labour tent, the ISP might have done the same, but only in parts of the North that would return a Labour MP if Wilson had in fact turned out to be Genghis Khan in disguise. En
och Powell’s long-rumoured expansion of the UUP into some kind of mainland party, however, might seriously damage Heath’s hopes of a majority – even if Powell’s own approaches to Airey had been politely rebuffed. Some of the more hysterical voices on Fleet Street were declaring it ‘all but inevitable’ that the man behind Rivers of Blood would be in Downing Street by Christmas.

  If Heath believed them, he didn’t seem to be showing it.

  “...which brings me to the reason I asked to see you today.”

  Neave came back to reality. Heath was holding his gaze expectantly.

  “Well,” said Neave, as coolly as he could, “what reason is that?”

  Heath smiled thinly.

  “You will be aware of the vacancy at the top of MI5.”

  Officially, Airey was aware of no such thing. However, the sudden disappearance of Hanley from the corridors of power – where he had too often been seen in recent months – had made Airey aware that Sir Michael Hanley was no longer ‘Permanent Secretary for Judicial Affairs’ at the FCO. And of course, the official briefings Airey had been party to while briefly serving at the MoD had made him well aware that Hanley had never actually been any such thing.

  “I have heard rumblings.”

  “The acting DG is doing a perfectly competent job, but a permanent promotion from within is not favoured by the First Lord or myself. Sir Michael Hanley was a man of experience within the Service.”

  Heath allowed that implication to hang in the air. Neave, while less influential than he had once been, still had friends in useful places. He was once again glad that he had declined Michael Bentine’s invitation to ‘dinner with some friends’ all those months ago. He now had a pretty good idea of what he would have been asked to be a part of. As he maintained Heath’s gaze, Airey said nothing.

  “How do you think your career is going, Airey?”

  Airey Neave became the second man this week to silently curse Edward Heath.

  “Rather well, I would say,” he lied.