The committed football enthusiast and working-class Labour leader who swore to modernise the UK, ending a 13-year tyranny of the Tories, is not the present leader, Keir Starmer, rather this depicts Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister from the 60s and 70s.
Westminster has been recently abuzz with newly disclosed information revealing that Harold Wilson, posthumously, had a hush-hush romantic relationship with his deputy press secretary, Janet Hewlett-Davies, who was significantly younger than him, during his last few years at 10 Downing Street. Shockingly, this affair took place while he was believed to be in a content marriage. Few close to him believe this unbeknownst liaison dawned a personal glimmer of contentment in his life before he ultimately relinquished his premiership in 1976, exhausted.
The romantic engagement was a secret kept under wraps for fifty years only by Wilson’s two closest companions: His earlier press secretary, Joe Haines, who would later become Hewlett-Davies’s boss, and Bernard Donoughue, a Labour affiliate who was his strategic adviser.
Donoughue confirmed an old speculation related to Wilson’s life on BBC’s Today radio programme, mentioning that Wilson had a covert intimate relationship with his tough political adviser, Marcia Williams, before he began his tenure at Downing Street. It was said that Williams had exerted significant pressure on Wilson during his prime ministry. Wilson consistently refuted such amorous whispers revolving around him and Williams, even clinching a defamation lawsuit against a magazine for portraying him as sharing a bed with her in a sketch.
Notably, no one raised suspicions about Wilson’s discreet affair with the now late Hewlett-Davies, which was only disclosed to public knowledge last Wednesday by Haines in an interview with the Times newspaper. Eager for Wilson’s historical chronicles to portray a complete and accurate image, Haines recalled a late-night scene from 1974 where he found Hewlett-Davies discreetly ascending a staircase that led to the prime minister’s room. She conceded to Haines that she was having an intimate relationship with Wilson, the prime minister who was notably the first to deploy British forces to Northern Ireland, marking the onset of the Troubles.
Haines disclosed that former Prime Minister Wilson’s extramarital affair with Hewlett-Davies bolstered his spirits in the couple of years leading up to his retirement. It was reported that Wilson, who may have been in the beginning phases of dementia, was fatigued and distrustful of the intelligence agencies during his last two years in office. Haines emphasised the importance of Hewlett-Davies to the last Wilson administration, revealing that she was Wilson’s secret lover. Her secret, known only to Wilson and Haines, never emerged from the notoriously porous Downing Street.
In a conversation with the Today programme, Donoughue revealed that Wilson indirectly confessed his affair with Hewlett-Davies during a walk around Number 10, shortly before his departure from office. Having served as a Junior Agriculture Minister under Tony Blair’s inaugural government, Donoughue recounted acknowledging Wilson’s closeness to Hewlett-Davies in a manner he learned from Wilson. According to Donoughue, Wilson referred to her as a wonderful person and claimed to have never been happier.
In a sensational development, Donoughue corroborated an old gossip that suggested Wilson’s doctor, Joe Stone, once proposed to him and Haines that Stone could eliminate the abusive Williams to alleviate Wilson’s burden. Stone contended that such an action would be in the nation’s interest as he regarded Wilson as a significant figure. However, both Haines and Donoughue disagreed, stressing the professional obligations of a doctor.
Donoughue also claimed that Wilson was romantically involved with Williams, later known as Baroness Falkender, who exploited their affair to manipulate the prime minister in an unpleasant manner.
Wilson, who is esteemed as one of Britain’s remarkable Labour prime ministers, passed away in 1995 at 79, battling cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. His wife, Mary Wilson, who was notably a poet, succumbed to death in 2018 when she was 102. Also married, Hewlett-Davies, who was involved romantically with Wilson, departed this life in the previous year’s October.
Referencing the relationship between Wilson and Davies, Donoughue claimed, “It was like a bit of sunshine during the twilight years.” He continued, “She seemingly brought him ultimate joy, a state I’d never observed in him before.”