PM Wilson ‘had affair with an aide’
LABOUR prime minister Harold Wilson had a secret affair with a political aide 22 years his junior, one of his former assistants claimed last night.
Ex-press secretary Joe Haines, 96, said the premier was involved with Janet Hewlett-Davies, who was in her 30s at the time.
Mr Haines claims he was told of the “love match” by both his boss and Ms Hewlett-Davies before Wilson resigned in 1976.
He said the affair “increased his morale in the last two years or so before he retired”. Wilson is said to have told him: “She has given me a new lease of life.”
Mr Haines said: “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.”
Both Wilson and Ms Hewlett Davies were married. Mr Haines said he caught her ascending the staircase to the PM’s room in Downing Street late one evening in 1974, and claimed she confessed.
He added: “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.”
Mr Haines said two years later he gave up his usual room at Chequers for Ms Hewlett-Davies, at Wilson’s request.
He added: “I agreed. And what did he do? He left his slippers under her bed.”
Pipe-smoking Wilson was married to Mary, Lady Wilson of Rievaulx, from 1940 until his death. She died in 2018, aged 102.
Ms Hewlett-Davies died aged 85 in October last year.
It had been repeatedly claimed, incorrectly, that Wilson, who died in 1995 aged 79, had conducted an affair with his political secretary, Marcia Williams, later known as Baroness Falkender.