The Plot Against Harold Wilson - a Review

I didn't think I'd start watching this BBC2 TV program, never mind end up being hypnotised by it. Imagine the plot to the Day of the Jackal carried out against Harold Wilson using the characters from All the Presidents Men.

Despite it's imaginative self-importance, there were several interesting nuggets tucked away, the main one being that Lord Mountbatten (who ended up as mush due to the INLA) was a Coup plotter in 1970s London against Harold Wilson.

To me, this seemed like a crisp-white shirt put on Peter Wright's Spycatcher. The program, with it's junior level spooks providing the "evidence" lacks the gravitas that Death of Yugoslavia had when it exposed it's conspiracy and which Peter Taylor's Irish Trilogy of Documentaries had in theirs. The biggest face they had was David Owen, failed Polician and failed Balkans negotiator.

Despite this, it was watchable, and exposed how close this country came to a Coup. Coming from the BBC this is surprising, but welcome. It didn't, and admittedly couldn't, go into what may have happened AFTER the alledged coup took place. Instead, and lamentably, it gave William Waldegrave the chance to crow about Democracy. How, exactly, one is supposed to draw a victory for democracy out of "Cold War Airstrip One," Private Armies plotting coups and communist infested trade unions is, to me, slightly exaggerating the pyrric victory.

But, anyway, to digress. Imagine Mountbatten DID lead his Coup and form an Interregnum Junta after toppling Labour. My own view is that Scotland was already on the brink as it was in the 1970s. Ireland was in flames anyway and Wales, well, they were slightly ahead of the Scots in the game.

Since the documentary COULDN'T make the point, I think I will. This documentary showed a number of interesting things, partly how close the Union came to it's final constitutional crisis. Neither the Scots nor the Welsh would have, or, presently, will not, accept an enforced junta.

It also shows the shape of things to come, if you really want to be THAT cynical. How WILL the ruling classes react when Scottish Independence is only a stones throw away? We know what they HAVE done, Willie Macrae's Grave marks that little example. But on a country wide level, out of the gutter of spooks and discarded guns, what does the ruling class itself do when it's ha'penny tricks don't work anymore? To me, you could see it in the tales of the coup plotters...

Bit of a paranoid / conspiracy theory'd blog tonight...