PROLOGUE
1972Alex MitchellLabour Party Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
During the crisis-ridden years of the Wilson government there were repeated rumours that plans were afoot to install a National Government or some form of 'businessman's government.
The gossip reached excitable proportions the smoke rooms of the House of Commons, but little publicity ever fell on the substance of these rumours. It can now be understood why the capitalist Press everything to suppress them. The stories were correct enough. But they were deeply embarrassing because at least major newspaper proprietor was a key man at these secret discussions.
Cecil Harmsworth King was then chairman of the International Publishing Corporation (IC), the largest news. paper publishing empire in the world. Apart from controlling dozens of other periodicals, King owned two major London daily newspapers, 'Daily Mirror and the "Sun', two Sunday newspapers, 'Sunday Mirror and the 'People, and two Scottish papers, the Daily Record' and the Sunday He was obsessed by power. To groom himself for high office King took directorships with the Bank of England and the National Coal Board; he figured that places on these powerful agencies were springboard to a top place in some Cabinet or other.
King began in 1964 as the most thunderous advocate of the Wilson government. His papers backed Labour's 'white hot, technological revolution' to the hilt. In the foreword to his diary, the newspaper tycoon says: We did everything for Wilson and the Labour Party we could think d'ay even drove about London in my office Rolls with a red flag on the bonnet saying "Vote Labour"? With his own notorious arrogance, King records in his diary: 'On settling into 10 Downing Street Mr Wilson asked me to lunch and told me I was his first luncheon guest. 'He thanked me for winning formed will be in haste to created, after which there 'Won't serious efforts have Concern about Jenkins as to enter politics and has suggested himself to Ted Heath will not be a success, and thinks his best way to power is ALAND 'Cromer to lunch. He is obviously contemptuous of the