Truth, lies AND THE Lavender List
EXCLUSIVE SEEN FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, THE MOST NOTORIOUS HONOURS LIST IN POLITICAL HISTORY Here it is, proof at last that Harold Wilson’s feared fixer Marcia Falkender DID write – on ‘lilac’ paper in her own hand – the toxic names that destroyed his rep
HIDDEN well away from public gaze in the darkness of a Central London vault sits a scruffy padded envelope labelled: ‘Lady Marcia Falkender… various documents of no intrinsic value.’
It is an unremarkable package. Yet, for all the modesty of the label, it contains the most notorious resignation honours list in this country’s history.
Today, The Mail on Sunday publishes the original handwritten draft of Harold Wilson’s 1976 ‘Lavender List’ for the first time – along with an excoriating interview with Baroness Falkender, the woman who for decades has been accused of scandalously hijacking the honours system and using the list to reward her friends in return for political favours.
These included a peerage for crooked industrialist Joseph Kagan; a knighthood for property developer and fraudster Sir Eric Miller, who later committed suicide; and a knighthood for Right-wing financier James Goldsmith.
For all Lady Falkender’s vehement denials, the Lavender List – so called because of the colour of the paper on which it was supposedly written – triggered a scandal that permanently tarnished Wilson’s reputation and helped bring the post-war era to a shuddering close.
Marcia Williams, or Lady Falkender as she became in 1974, was Wilson’s political secretary, the most powerful woman in the Government. Now, after a silence of more than 20 years, she is speaking out, determined, she says, to rescue her legacy and that of Wilson from years of smear and innuendo. In an exclusive interview, she: Admits she wrote the list in shambolic circumstances from pieces of paper in Wilson’s pocket;
Reveals it is written on ‘lilac’ Downing Street stock paper, not private purple notepaper, as had been alleged;
Says Wilson alone was responsible for the names put forward;
Denies sleeping with the Prime Minister or, as had been claimed, blackmailing him to increase her influence;
Blames a sexist smear campaign by Wilson’s associates for destroying her reputation;
Claims the Labour Party has abandoned her, treating her as no more than ‘a bit of dirt in the road’.
Lady Falkender says the document, which she has kept since 1976, is the final draft of a list which was completed on Wilson’s final day in office. The result of months of Downing Street discussion, it comprises eight sheets of A5 paper. Scrawled casually in blue ballpoint pen, the names appear under the headings ‘Peerages’, ‘Ks’ (for Knights Bachelor), ‘CBE’, ‘OBE’, ‘BEM’ (British Empire Medal), ‘CH’ (Companions of Honour) and ‘Privy Councillors’. Wilson’s amendments are scribbled in red ink.
When it was formally approved by the honours scrutiny committee, the finished list contained 41 names – matching many of those on the list we reveal today, including television impresario Sir Lew Grade and Wilson’s publisher, Sir George Weidenfeld, who were both ennobled. The only notable omission is that of Sir James Goldsmith. His name, which was to become one of the most controversial when the final version was made public, does not appear in this list.
There were several amendments before the list went to the honours committee.
The list symbolises not only the abrupt, scandal-tainted end of the premiership of Wilson, the man who dominated the political landscape of the 1960s and 70s by winning four General Elections, but also the death throes of the liberal consensus. By the 1970s, the commitment to nationalisation and government regulation was crumbling, with strikes, rising inflation and economic turmoil blighting the governments of Sir Edward Heath, Wilson and his successor, James Callaghan.
Wilson’s sudden decision to resign in 1976, just two years after winning his fourth Election, provoked intense speculation, with rumoured motives ranging from impending scandal to suggestions of incipient Alzheimer’s. The Lavender List appeared to be confirm there was something shabby and disreputable about the Government. For Lady Falkender, however, it has cast a long personal shadow.
Wilson’s former press secretary Joe Haines, the man who came up with the Lavender List soubriquet, has long stated that she was its true author, claiming she had used it to reward those who had performed personal favours.
Haines has also claimed that the reason Wilson allowed her to draft the list – and to exert a fearsome hold over him during his time in office – was that the two had conducted an affair and she had threatened to go public.
Meanwhile, the diaries of Lord Donoughue, Wilson’s policy adviser,