Murdering Marcia: Harold Wilson and the plot to kill his secretary

Formidable and controversial, Marcia Williams held the ear of Harold Wilson and made sure the Labour Party didn’t break at the seams. So why did three men plot to kill her? Sean Smith investigates

Marcia would call Wilson a ‘silly little boy’ (Getty/PA/The Independent)

In the spring of 1975, three Downing Street officials wandered across the main square in Bonn, mulling over a plan to murder the British prime minister’s closest friend and confidante, Marcia Williams. Harold Wilson’s formidable and controversial secretary had helped him dominate British politics for 20 years. To the consternation of his critics, Wilson had ennobled her as Baroness Falkender the previous year but now the distinguished trio saw her as a toxic liability who threatened to destroy his health, premiership and legacy.

Ever since Wilson’s recently hushed up heart scare, his personal physician and concerned friend Joseph Stone, had become obsessed by a disturbing notion: murdering Marcia might just be “in the national interest”. Dr Stone was flanked by Joe Haines, Wilson’s bruiser of a press secretary, and Bernard Donoughue, the head of the Downing Street policy unit. When Stone had first sounded them out by suggesting “it may be desirable to dispose of her. We’ve got to get this woman off his back,” and, “Perhaps, we should put her down,” he had been deadly serious.

In Bonn, Stone again outlined how he could safely dispense with Marcia without arousing suspicion. As Lady Falkender’s doctor, he proposed to slip her a lethal quantity of her prescribed tranquilliser and then write up the death certificate as an accidental overdose. In Dr Stone, the trio may have had the means and opportunity of ridding Wilson of this “bothersome” woman, but it’s only by tracing the couple’s emotional co-dependency back over two decades that you can begin to understand the motive.