IanFantom
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Joined: 31 Jan 2007
Posts: 296
Location: Halifax, West Yorkshire
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 Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 11:41 am Post subject: BBC Wilson whopper |
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In BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning Anthony Howard said that some people believe that Harold Wilson resigned because of a conspiracy by MI6, and that there was not a shred of evidence for that.
But hang on - was it not the BBC that investigated a plot by 30 members of MI5 who ran a disinformation campaign against him, resulting in his resignation? Was it not the BBC that broadcast a 'The Wilson Plot' on 16 March 2006?
Whatever has happened to the BBC in the mean time?
Listen again at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7721000/7721288.stm
| Quote: | 0850
Why did Harold Wilson resign as prime minister in March 1976? New research suggests the former prime minister may have been suffering from the early effects of Alzheimer's. Neurologist Dr Peter Garrard, who is carrying out the research, and political commentator Anthony Howard, discuss whether a diagnosis could ever be confirmed.
Wilson 'had Alzheimer's when PM'
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See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7720200.stm
| Quote: |
Wilson 'had Alzheimer's when PM'
Harold Wilson
Wilson's resignation was a surprise
An analysis of former Prime Minister Harold Wilson's speech patterns suggests he may have had early Alzheimer's disease in office.
A University of Southampton expert examined Wilson's changing use of language while at the dispatch box.
The findings point to a possible decline in his mental function during his final months in office.
Researcher Dr Peter Garrard suggests this may have contributed to Wilson's decision to resign in April 1976.
That such a politician, despite his hectic schedule and renowned intellect, could develop Alzheimer's suggests that no-one is immune from the disease
Rebecca Wood
Alzheimer's Research Trust
The motives behind Wilson's resignation, which came as a surprise to most people, have long been a source of controversy.
Dr Garrard, an expert in neurology, has previously demonstrated the presence of Alzheimer-like linguistic changes in the later writings of the distinguished novelist Dame Iris Murdoch.
He analysed vocabulary trends in transcripts of Wilson's performance in the spontaneous cut and thrust of Prime Minister's question time throughout his two terms of office (1964-70, 1974-76).
Dr Garrard said: "Language is known to be vulnerable to the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease, and the findings of the earlier Iris Murdoch project confirmed that linguistic changes can appear even before the symptoms are recognised by either the patient or their closest associates.
"If such changes are apparent during the effortful and relatively controlled process of creative writing, then the cognitive demands of spontaneous speech production make it even more likely for them to be detectable in spoken output."
Digital format
The study, published online in the Journal of Neurolinguistics, converted Hansard transcripts to digital format using optical character recognition software.
This allowed Dr Garrard to use markers to compare Wilson's speech patterns, and the number of times he used certain words, with those of his parliamentary colleagues.
The analysis was based on techniques developed by literary scholars for quantifying the stylistic similarities and differences between authors, genres, and literary eras.
The findings showed that the content of Wilson's speeches was identifiably different from those of other members of the House throughout his career as prime minister.
However, the difference was smaller during the months leading up to his resignation - a sign that he was losing his distinctive voice.
Dr Garrard said that could be a sign of the earliest stages of Alzheimer's.
However, he admitted that other factors may explain the change - for instance, loss of motivation for the job.
Other politicians
Rebecca Wood, of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "That such a politician, despite his hectic schedule and renowned intellect, could develop Alzheimer's suggests that no-one is immune from the disease.
"Margaret Thatcher developed dementia after leaving office, and many presidential historians believe Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's was already present during his second term.
"Both figures have had an enormous impact on public awareness of a condition that is too often swept under the carpet."
Dr Garrard has secured funding to collect and examine a large database of spoken and written language samples as part of a project to investigate the impact of ageing on memory.
Professor Clive Ballard, of the Alzheimer's Society, said: 'Linguistic techniques could be useful for assessing communications problems in people with dementia.
"For instance, examining a person's diary could give valuable insight into how a person's communication skills have changed over time and help with diagnosis."
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See also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4789060.stm
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Wilson 'plot': The secret tapes
By Brian Wheeler
BBC News political reporter
Harold Wilson's belief that he was the victim of a secret service plot to discredit him is well documented.
Harold Wilson
Wilson believed MI5 were plotting against him
But new revelations in BBC drama documentary The Plot Against Harold Wilson, to be broadcast next Thursday, suggest the Labour prime minister was also convinced he was the target of plans to stage a military coup - and that the Royal Family backed it.
The story sounds barely credible - a sign, perhaps, that Wilson was suffering from paranoia - but it is backed up by corroborating interviews with other senior figures from the time.
The then BBC journalist Barrie Penrose has outlined some of the detail of the new evidence in an article in this week's Radio Times.
He stresses the need to bear in mind the backdrop to the alleged plots, telling the magazine: "Our establishment, from the intelligence services down to parts of Fleet Street, were paranoid about the threat of communism. So paranoid it seems, they were prepared to believe a prime minister of Britain was an active Soviet spy."
At a time of continuing Cold War tensions, industrial unrest was rife, the country had suffered power cuts and a three day working week and in 1975 the government was being warned privately that the economy faced "wholesale domestic liquidation" unless it could tame inflation.
While some on the hard left believed revolution was imminent, former military figures angry at the extent of union control were building private armies, in preparation for the coming conflict.
Fears
And it is these mercenaries, the programme says, that Wilson feared would be used to stage a coup against him - and that the British army might not come to his aid.
Strike during 1974 three day week
Industrial unrest was at its height in the early 1970s
In his book Spycatcher, Peter Wright tells of a plot to force Wilson's resignation by MI5 agents convinced he was a Communist spy. Wright's account is often dismissed as an exaggeration, but the drama documentary claims fresh evidence of plots.
The meetings with Wilson the programme is based on were secretly recorded in 1976 by journalists Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour, weeks after his shock departure from Number 10.
"Wilson spoke darkly of two military coups which he said had been planned to overthrow his government in the late 1960s and in the mid 1970s," Penrose writes.
"Both were said to involve high-ranking elements in the British army, eager to see the back of Labour governments.
"Both involved a member of the Royal Family - Prince Louis Mountbatten."
Lord Mountbatten would be installed as an interim prime minister following the military coup, Wilson believed.
Secret recordings
Baroness Falkender, Wilson's political secretary, also told the two journalists about her belief military coups had been planned and that she and Wilson would be arrested with the rest of the Labour cabinet, Penrose writes in the Radio Times.
Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man standing on the corner
Harold Wilson
"Unbeknown to Wilson, Courtiour and I secretly recorded many of our meetings with him, almost always conducted at his Georgian house at 5 Lord North Street, close to the House of Commons," Penrose says.
"The cumbersome machine was smuggled into his study in a briefcase carried by Courtiour. Over a period of nine months we accumulated hours of tape recordings. Those tapes have, since then, remained untouched in the loft of my Kent home and at Courtiour's London home."
Wilson told the journalists they "should investigate the forces that are threatening democratic countries like Britain".
They were also startled to be told at their first meeting with him: "Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere."
The pair were never asked to go to Charing Cross Road but Wilson went on to tell them about his distrust of a group of MI5 officers, who he said were trying to smear him by planting stories in the press about him being an adulterer and a Communist spy.
In one of the secretly recorded tapes Wilson says: "I am not certain that for the last eight months when I was prime minister I knew what was happening, fully, in security."
New witnesses interviewed for the programme talk about these military coups and Mountbatten's role in them. Penrose says they confirm such plotting "wasn't in the fevered imagination of an embittered ex-PM".
Penrose concludes his Radio Times article: "You may ask, at the end of the programme, how much of it can be believed. My view now, as it was then, is that Wilson was right in his fears.... in answer to the question 'how close did we come to a military government' I can only say - closer than we'd ever be content to think."
The Plot Against Harold Wilson is on BBC Two at 2100GMT on Thursday 16 March 2006. |
Feedback: There's a form on the Wilson Plot link, but none on the Today Programme link. You can contact the Today programme at http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_3970000/newsid_3974100/ 3974173.stm
Regards,
Ian. |
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IanFantom
Validated Poster
Joined: 31 Jan 2007
Posts: 296
Location: Halifax, West Yorkshire
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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You might find this recent article on the Wilson Affair and other strange goings at the time of interest. I've just translated it from an international Esperanto magazine which is published in Kaliningrad.
| Quote: | Ondo de Esperanto, July 2008, pp16-18
Translated by Ian Fantom, 2008-11-13
Was it Moscow or London?
by Ian Fantom
Zamenhof Day [December 15] last year marked the twentieth anniversary of the death of Ivo Lapenna, and also almost precisely a third of a century since his dramatic resignation as President of the Universal Esperanto Association. He had been complaining of a defamation campaign against him, and eventually, in an article in the revue Esperanto, that the origin of that campaign had been Moscow, with the purpose of taking over the association as a front organisation. Immediately, the word went around, “Lapenna is paranoid”; and that’s how it remained for a third of a century.
I myself was amongst those who thought that Lapenna was overreacting, but overreacting to what? His reactions were to me compatible with his personality and his origin: a Croat living in London. In complete contast, a typically British attitude was taken by another Esperantist living in London, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. He was an Esperantist in that he spoke in support of Esperanto, having learned the language as a scout. Several years after his resignation as Prime Minister he joined the Esperanto Parliamentary Group. What had been a mystery to us, though, had been his silence on Esperanto during his premership.
Wilson, too, was complaining of undermining tricks and a defamation campaign, but the public knew nothing of this. He himself attributed the campaign to the security service MI5. Publicly he declared, “If my opponents stop telling lies about me, I’ll stop telling the truth about them”. Nevertheless, the word went around that Wilson was paranoid, and so it remained for thirty years.
MI5, or “Military Intelligence, branch 5”, as it is known in Britain, is the internal security service. The external equivalent, MI6, became notorious in 2003 because of the falsification on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which gave Britain and the US a pretext to launch a war against the country. On the other branches in the series, if they exist, the public knows nothing. They are part of the military, which is loyal to the monarchy, as distinct to the police, which is civilian, and reports to parliament.
In the year 2006 there was broadcast on the British television a programme ‘The Wilson Plot’ [1]. After his resignation, Wilson asked two journalists to research the tricks, and they covertly recorded the interviews with Wilson [2]. Two years later they published a book on the affair [3], but only thirty years later new information was made public from the government archives. The television programme contained many interviews with the researchers, and with the players from the episode. It was indeed true that MI5 tried to “fix” him, in the words of the retired deputy head of MI5, and it was reported that the head of MI5 himself had appologised to Wilson for the affair.
So what could have been behind the affair? It was reported, that the contact in MI5 from the US CIA, James Jesus Angleton, was putting it about that Wilson was a Soviet spy. Wilson had visited Moscow too often, he argued, and his predecessor as leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskill, had died suddenly following a visit to Moscow, where he had drunk a cup of tea. It seems that no-one believes the story any longer , and it’s not clear whether Angleton himself believed it. Angleton was active in the CIA in the period of McCarthyism, when many were persecuted because of supposed Communist tendencies.
The reason for the undermining campaign more probably relates to a struggle for power: Wilson stated that he simply could not govern the country as Prime Minister. In other words, the power remained with the “men in grey suites”, as the civil servants in Whitehall call the mysterious people who seem to influence affairs. Esperanto may be not a cause of the undermining but possibly one indication of the independent mind of the Prime Minister.
Some time later came the resignation of a third high-profile Esperantist. This was the Chairman of the Esperanto Parliamentary Group, Lord Davies of Leek. The Esperanto Parliamentary Group was set up in 1972; I had accepted in that year responsibility in the British Esperanto Association for Press and Public Relations, and right away I set up a working group to deal with various aspects of promotion. One sphere of activity was one in which I had no experience, and so I asked around whether anyone had any ideas on how to approach members of Parliament. Shortly afterwards, my future wife, Helen, told me that by a strange co-incidence someone had appeared at the London Esperanto Club with ideas, and that he had already been running parliamentary activity for the British humanists. “OK, let’s talk”, I said.
Together, we set up an activity under the name ‘Esperanto Lobby’, and organised the writing of letters to parliamentary candidates by British Esperantists. The result was a spectacular success. Following the general election of 1974 we even gained more members of parliament for the Esperanto Parliamentary Group than the newly elected Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had in his own party. Esperanto so gained a relatively high and positive profile en the British press for decades to come.
The co-ordinator of the Parliamentary Group, Ron Coverson, called four of us to a special meeting: the President and Vice-President of the British Esperanto Association, the co-ordinator of the Trades Union and Co-operative Esperanto Group, which basically consisted of left-of-centre members of the parliamentary group, and myself. Without saying anything, Coverson switched on a tape recorder, and we listened to a rather long conversation between Coverson and Lord Davies. The conversation started off fairly relaxed, with the normal greetings, but bit by bit it emerged that there was something fundamentally wrong. Lord Davies recounted how he had gone into the Houses of Parliament, and, as normal, greeted his colleagues, but some of them congratulated him on a letter which had appeared in The Guardian. He politely thanked them, but immediately went to the library, to find out what it was about. There was indeed a very credible letter in the paper about the Esperanto Parliamentary Group under his name. He himself, though, had not written it.
He also reported on other strange happenings, such as, for example, a couple who had arranged an appointment with him, apparently just to pass the time of day. I accepted the responsibility of investigating the letter in the paper, but on the request of Coverson, we all promised to keep the matter secret, in order not to embarrass Lord Davies. My conclusion was that the trick was of a professional level and that there was indeed some surveillance. The latest number of MPs in the group had only just been counted by Coverson himself. The information was not secret, but we simply hadn’t had time to deal with it and send it on at that stage. I myself hadn’t by then read the memo. Nevertheless, the correct number appeared in the published letter. I interviewed everyone except Coverson himself, who was beyond suspicion; why, I thought, would anyone work so well with us to set something up, only to pull the rug from under our feet at a later stage. The idea wouldn’t make sense.
Nevertheless, some time later, Coverson started to say, privately, “Esperanto’s a crazy idea, isn’t it?” I simply replied that it wasn’t, but I did wonder why he dedicated so much time and energy to it. The only explanation that I could think of was that he wanted to become known amongst MPs. But that wouldn’t explain his wish to go into the Executive Committee of the association. He understood Esperanto, but spoke it poorly, and didn’t show much inclination to improve.
Some time later, I learned that he had registered the name ‘Esperanto Lobby’ as a business name for himself, effectively taking the activity outside the association. I complained about that in the BEA Council, and found out that the employed Company Secretary had himself signed the cheque. I insisted on an explanation. Coverson chose that moment to announce the reason for the resignation of Lord Davies, and immediately there was an explosion of anger amongst some in the Council. The registration of ‘Esperanto Lobby’ as a business name was forgotten. Some time later I left the Executive Committee and the Council on the grounds that I would not be able to fulfill my role in such a political atmosphere. I did not think that a non-Esperantist should be on the Executive Committee, and whilst my sincere colleagues though I was oversensitive, I thought they were naïve.
Even so, the idea that the surveillance in the Davies affair could be an intervention by authorities of the state would have been unthinkable at that time. I knew practically nothing about MI5. This secret service was a matter of my parents’ generation; from the time I was born there had been no major war. Naziism was beaten in 1945, and now we lived in a liberal democracy. Our secret services would not do such things amongst citizens. The great threat in society was coming from the “enemy within”, as they called the Soviet infiltrators who had taken over left-wing trade unions and political parties. Only during the past two years I found that on the whole that was untrue. The Soviet threat of the “enemy within” was largely exaggerated by MI5 [4,5].
With regards to the Communist Party of Great Britain, KGB was cautious, because their agents knew that it had been seriously penetrated by MI5 [4]. In the ninetees the party was almost completely in the hands of MI5; the MI5 agents knew more about what was happening than the communists themselves.
The presumption by Ivo Lapenna in 1974 that the defamation campaign was coming from Moscow had its origin in a letter which had come into his hands, written by a Mr Svistak, in which he appeared to give instructions to Czechoslovak delegates to vote for candidates other than Lapenna for the Executive Committee of the Universal Esperanto Association. In such a situation it would have been very credible that Moscow would not have wanted Lapenna to have stayed as President of UEA. On the other hand, from an East European point of view, it would have been perfectly normal for delegates to have received voting instructions, and the omission of Lapenna’s name would not necessarily have meant that they would have been part of a big plot.
But where was the influence really coming from in the voting against Lapenna in the Communist countries? A Communist activist and Esperantist in London, Bill Keable, said to me in 1974, “If there was a Communist plot, I'd have known about it”. When I told my wife of that, she said, “But Ian, perhaps he did know about it”. I was amazed that I hadn’t seen such an obvious thing, but my own thought had been, “You, mate, would have known nothing about it!” I had no reason to doubt Bill Keable’s sincerity, but my present information is that he opposed Lapenna because he thought him anti-Communist, because of a professional article in English. Whether that idea was his own idea, or whether someone in the Communist Party (or MI5) had suggested that to him, I do not know. However, my information is that that was the argument he put to [Esperanto] representatives of the Communist parties. It appears then, that the path to Moscow, which had been discovered by Lapenna, reached Prague, and suddently turned back in the direction of London.
To falsify things in preparation for an dirty trick is relatively easy to do; but to falsify things to retrospectively cover up over decades would certainly be a different matter. After the event, one can look at what the result of the trick really was, and ask oneself: could that result have been the real objective? In the Universal Congress of Esperanto in 1971 there was a debate between Ivo Lapenna, for UEA, and a representative from the British Council, MacMillan, with simultaneous interpretation between English and Esperanto. The speech by MacMillan was at first quite easy to understand, but as it proceeded the language used became more and more obscure, so that in the end, even I, as an English speaker, could no longer follow it. I presumed that his purpose would have been to demonstrate the superiority of English. In the event, he seemed to have demonstrated just the opposite. The end result was that eventually the interpretation collapsed, and was taken over by John Wells, a linguist, and President of the Local Congress Committee. His interpretation was incredibly lightening-fast. To explain this in his words: “In the middle of the English language talk by MacMillan, the other interpreter started to faulter, and soon had to give up his task. I jumped in to save the situation, restoring fluent and effective communication, to the great applause of the audience. The following day came the elections for the Executive Committee of UEA, and I suppose my success in those elections owed something to that interpretative show”. [6]
During the whole of the Lapenna Affair, I attempted to understand the vigour of the author of provocative articles in The British Esperantist, Dermod Quirke. The rest of his pages, ‘Aliflanke’ [On the other hand], seemed to me as a young person, excellent satire, but it was as if he had a mission to bring about the fall of Lapenna. Years later he acknowledged that he had indeed tried to provoke Lapenna [7]. Also, I had been wondering where he was getting his information from on the dictatorialness of Lapenna in the Executive Committee of UEA, but there was never any concrete example. Was Quirke inventing the thing, I wondered. Could he possibly have a friend in the Executive? Now I know that he had a friend in the Executive Committee of UEA, although that in itself proves nothing.
Although Lapenna had a strong character, he always seemed to me democratic in his approach. He opposed the idea of a Universal Congress in London for 1971, because that was an election year, and he didn’t want to have a furore on home ground. Nevertheless it happened. It seemed to me strange that the London Esperanto Club should have insisted precisely on that year against the wishes of the President of UEA. Later, it seemed to me strange that for the Universal Esperanto Congress in 1973 they chose precisely the country in which the President of UEA could not take part, if indeed that was the case. Lapenna told me that he could visit Yugoslavia as a private citizen, but that he asked [Yugoslavian Esperantist] Marinko Givoje to do some discrete research on the situation if he were to come as President of UEA. Later he told me that Givoje had reported back that preferably he should not go, so he didn’t go. Even at that time I was puzzled; exactly where had the message come from?
Again, in the words of Wells: “In 1973 the Universal Congress was held in Belgrade. Prof Lapenna, being a political refugee who had taken refuge from the Tito regime, couldn’t personally take part in the congress. Our Executive meeting took place without the president. We clearly perceived the feeling of the UEA [representative] Committee, which no longer wished to accept the behaviour of the president. Privately we warned him, that with such behaviour he risked not being reelected in the following years’ Universal Congress in Hamburg. Our warning fell on deaf ears”. [6]
I now know several people who have suffered in similar situations, and it appears that it is perfectly normal to insist on talking about the issue whilst others don’t want to hear. The complaints against Lapenna had continuously changed: in the fifties it was that he was a Communist; in the Universal Congress of 1971 it was about a scandal in the UEA HQ, which had not been foreseeable even one year earlier; later it was his dictatorialness, and finally his behaviour, in that he wanted to get the issue discussed. After his resignation the complaint was that he was paranoid. That, in my view, is indeed a sign that there was a defamation campaign.
In conclusion, this study will be useful if a similar situation in the movement becomes apparent; then we will be able to recognise the symptoms more easily. If it’s a matter of taking over an organisation as a front organisation that would be done quietly and for immediate use. If, however, it’s a matter of penetrating an organisation with the purpose of dismantling it, you’d have to be thinking in terms of decades rather than years. That’s how it was in the Communist Party of Great Britain, which still in the nineties had forty MI5 agents [4,5]. The main job for an agent is to gain credibility, often over a period of many years, during which one apparently takes part positively in the activities. Perhaps one would initiate something that would have happened anyway, and everyone is thankful. Only afterwards does one pull the rug from under the feet of people. In the mean time one can provoke quarreling between bona fide members. Penetration by MI5 has been reported in even tiny organisations which pose no threat to national security. Could that include Esperanto?
Taking over of the Communist Party was, they reported, easy, because the Communists were not security conscious. It was also easy to provoke the Communists into quarreling.
Are the Esperantists conscious of security? Certainly not – at least not in Western Europe. Our Esperanto movement is incredibly open and accepting of absolutely anyone, even to the point of accepting into Esperanto committees people who declare themselves not to be Esperantists. Taking over and dismantling the Esperanto movement would certainly be dead easy for any half-witted group of twenty people who simply wanted to promote their careers with no regard to the social consequences.
Inserts:
1. [Photo of Harold Wilson] Caption: Harold Wilson (1916-1995), one of the few Western politicians (Prime Minister of Britain, 1964-1970, 1974-1976) who knew and supported Esperanto, was defamed by MI5 as a Soviet spy.
2. [Photo of MI5 building] Caption: Many strange events, which for decades appeared incomprehensible , or which were all too easily attributed to Moscow, were carefully planned in the HQ of MI5 in London.
3. [Photo of Annie Machon and David Shayler] Caption: Annie Machon and David Shayler left the service of MI5, and revealed amongst other things, about illegal interventions in the Communist Party of Britain.
4. [Photo of Ivo Lapenna] Caption: Did Ivo Lapenna really know who initiated the campaign against him?
References:
1. The Plot Against Harold Wilson, BBC Tv, BBC Television, BBC2, 2006-03-16 21:00
2. Wilson “plot”: The secret tapes, Brian Wheeler, news.bbc.co.uk, 2006-04-09
3. Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour, The Pencourt files. Harpur & Row, 1978
4. Mark Hollingworth and Nick Fielding. Defending the Realm: Inside MI5 and The War on Terrorism. Andre Deutch Ltd, 2003 (paperback, third revision)
5. Annie Machon. Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5 and the David Shayler Affair. The Book Guild Ltd, 2005.
6. John Wells, Personaj rememoroj pri Ivo Lapenna [Personal memories of Ivo Lapenna]. Eseoj Memore al Ivo Lapenna. www. kehlet.com, 2001, pp306-309.
7. Universala Esperanto-Asocvio en la periodo 1970-1980 [Universal Esperanto Association in the period 1970- 1980]. Kalktout, 2002
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