In addition to Mountbatten's refusal to participate in King's mooted plot, there is no evidence of any other conspirators. For more information about how we hold your personal data, please see our privacy policy. There were concerns about cuts in the armed forces, a belief that public spending needed to be reduced to help keep interest rates under control, and there were worries about the amount of power wielded by trade unions. Lord Mountbatten Did Get Asked to Lead a Coup, Just Like in 'The Crown'. What he was hoping for was a massive resurgence of the British spirit.”. However Baroness Falkender (a senior aide and close friend of Harold Wilson) asserted that the operation was ordered as a practice run for a military takeover or as a show of strength, as the government itself was not informed of such an exercise based around a key point in the nation's transport infrastructure, The first official history of MI5, The Defence of the Realm published in 2009, tacitly confirmed that there was a plot against Wilson and that MI5 did have a file on him. It's Just a new year's thought. Sign in to manage your newsletter preferences. By entering your details, you are agreeing to Radio Times privacy policy. How much of the drama is true? All this talk of machine guns at street corners is appalling. Essentially, in 1968, a newspaper editor and Bank of England director, Cecil King, attempted to persuade Lord Mountbatten to lead a coup d’état against Wilson’s Labour government. "There were concerns about cuts in the armed forces, a belief that public spending needed to be reduced, and tougher laws needed against the trade unions," he said. Cudlipp himself appears to see the meeting as an example of extreme egotism on King's part. William Heinemann. Willi Brandt resigned as West German chancellor in 1974, after Günter Guillaume, one of his closest aides, was exposed as an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret service in the "Guillaume Affair". Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1. Wright alleged that there was a plan to leak damaging information about Wilson and that this had been approved by 'up to thirty officers'. The Wilson Doctrine was a ban on the tapping of MPs' and Peers' telephones. In 1854, he ...read more, On August 27, 1967, Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, was found dead of an accidental drug overdose. For months during 1968, media tycoon and Bank of England director Cecil King publicly advocated the formation of a coalition government. In Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, historian Alex von Tunzelmann cites a source from Buckingham Palace, who reportedly said, "It was not Solly Zuckerman who talked Mountbatten out of staging a coup and making himself president of Britain. Zuckerman later wrote in his memoirs: “The one job that he felt that he could have done was that of prime minister, but that office had been closed down to him because of his royal connections. This much had already been confirmed by former cabinet secretary Lord Hunt, who concluded in a secret inquiry conducted in 1996 that "there is absolutely no doubt at all that a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5...a lot of them like Peter Wright who were rightwing, malicious and had serious personal grudges – gave vent to these and spread damaging malicious stories about that Labour government.". On the BBC television programme The Plot Against Harold Wilson, broadcast on 16 March 2006 on BBC2, it was claimed there were threats of a coup d'état against the Wilson government, which was corroborated by leading figures of the time on both the left and the right. He wanted to return to the navy, but other ideas had been mooted, such as his becoming the governor-general of Australia. In 1947, he was appointed the last viceroy of India, and he conducted the negotiations that led to independence for India and Pakistan later that year. Author- Vivienne (Florence Mellish Entwistle) (Active 1940, died 1982)- http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk. The real story, however, is much less black-and-white. The USA was known to hate him for being too left wing. Here's what we know about an alleged plot to overthrow a democratically-elected government. She added ‘Mountbatten had a map on the wall of his office showing how it could be done. The IRA immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it detonated the bomb by remote control from the coast. The Bicester Military Railway (BMR) was built in 1941 within the Bicester Central Ordnance Depot and was used extensively in the Second World War. The real story, however, is much less black-and-white. On a separate track, elements within MI5 had also, the BBC programme reported, spread "black propaganda" that Wilson and Marcia Williams (Wilson's private secretary) were Soviet agents, and that Wilson was an IRA sympathiser, apparently with the intention of helping the Conservatives win the 1974 election. ), Still, "he did suggest people who could be involved in this government of international unity," Lownie added. The Queen’s “rebel sister”: 8 facts about Princess Margaret, Prince Charles and Camilla: a history of their romance, “No match for reality”: the missing history in The Crown series three, ‘Royal Family’: the fly-on-the-wall documentary the Palace doesn’t want you to see, Charles, The Prince of Wales’s 1969 investiture at Caernarfon Castle, 50 years on, Death under the black mountain: surviving the 1966 Aberfan disaster, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip: 8 milestones in their marriage. Members and a leader of Movimento Politico Ordine Nuovo participated in several terrorist attacks. MI5 maintained a file on Wilson, repeatedly investigating him over the course of several decades before officially concluding that Wilson had had no relationship with the KGB; nor had it ever found evidence of Soviet penetration of the Labour Party. In July 1977, Zuckerman ran into Harold Wilson, who had unexpectedly resigned the previous year, at the queen’s jubilee party at Buckingham Palace. The alleged plot revolved around right-wing former military figures who were supposedly building private armies to counter the perceived threat from trade unions and the Soviet Union. Cudlipp himself appears to see the meeting as an example of extreme egotism on King's part. No other serious challenge to Muldoon's leadership occurred in his years as Prime Minister until after the 1984 election. Political suggestions ranged from a former Labour chief whip, Lord Aylestone, and Barbara Castle to Roy Jenkins, Jim Callaghan, Reginald Maudling and, Alec Douglas-Home for the Foreign Office – “The people trust him,” said Mountbatten, “perhaps alone of the politicians.”, Mountbatten’s political ambitions were hardly new. Andrew Lownie, author of a new book on the Mountbattens, explores the truth of the suggested coup attempt…. ;-). Want to know even more about the real events from history that inspired the drama? There seems to be a problem, please try again. The ...read more, On August 27, 2007, Michael Vick, a star quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, formally pleads guilty before a Richmond, Virginia, judge to a federal felony charge related to running a dogfighting ring. The Crown's Mountbatten warms quickly to the proposal—particularly to the idea of installing himself in 10 Downing Street. Scotland was most likely to resist across the Labour voting industrial regions in and about Glasgow, Paisley, Linlithgow, E. Kilbide and Dunfrmline. He said that plans had been hatched to install Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles's great uncle and mentor, as interim Prime Minister.