Harold Wilson had secret affair in No 10 – and this one wasn’t with his secretary
Harold Wilson, the former Labour prime minister, confessed to an extramarital affair with a woman 22 years his junior while in Downing Street, his closest surviving aide has revealed.
Joe Haines, who was Wilson’s long-serving press secretary, said that his own deputy, Janet Hewlett-Davies, was Wilson’s lover.
Throughout his life, Wilson endured speculation that he had an affair with his political secretary, Marcia Williams, later Baroness Falkender, with whom he was incredibly close.
However, Mr Haines told The Times that Hewlett-Davies – who was in her 30s at the time – was the real “love match” among Wilson’s staff, a secret that both she and Wilson took to the grave.
Mr Haines has claimed Wilson told him: “She has given me a new lease of life.”
Mr Haines said that the pair were lovers during Wilson’s second term in No 10, from 1974 until his unexpected resignation in 1976.
Wilson also said that his mistress made him “happier than I have ever been”, a comment that stands in stark contrast to the official reason Wilson gave for his resignation: that he was physically and mentally exhausted.
The revelation may force historians to look again at his second term.
Hewlett-Davies died in October last year, aged 85, and Mr Haines, 96, said that he decided to break his silence to set the record straight.
In the article, he said that the affair “increased [Wilson’s] morale in the last two years or so before he retired”.
He added: “More than anyone could know, she was of significance to the last Wilson administration: she was Harold Wilson’s mistress. She died nursing a secret which never leaked from Downing Street, the most notorious leaky building in Britain.”
Hewlett-Davies, who like Wilson was married, confessed to the affair after Mr Haines saw her heading up the staircase to the prime minister’s room late one evening in 1974.
He said: “I said nothing to her that night, but next morning asked what she was doing there. She told me she was waiting for Wilson, and then told me why. I, too, kept the story secret in all that I have written about my time at Downing Street.”
The affair was still going on in 1976, when Mr Haines allowed Hewlett-Davies to take his room at Chequers, which had a door connecting with Wilson’s bedroom.
He wrote: “And what did he do? He left his slippers under her bed.”
By then, Wilson had also told him about the affair, not reluctantly but “gleefully”, telling him: “She has given me a new lease of life.”
Bernard Donoghue, the head of Wilson’s policy research unit, was the only other person who knew.
Now Lord Donoghue, the Labour peer told The Times that Wilson said Hewlett-Davies “was making him happier than he had ever been”.
Mr Haines added: “The astonishing thing is that no one else, but me, knew of Janet’s affair with Wilson, for which she never sought any kind of benefit. It was certainly a love match on her side, and the joy which Wilson exhibited to me suggested that it was for him too.”
After leaving Downing Street, Hewlett-Davies worked as head of public relations for Robert Maxwell, who was the proprietor of the Daily Mirror at the time.
She remained a frequent visitor to Wilson’s home in Oxford when he retired, Mr Haines has claimed.
