Harold Wilson Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916– 24 May 1995) was a British Labour politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976. Entering Parliament in 1945, Wilson was appointed a parliamentary secretary in the Attlee ministry and rose quickly through the ministerial ranks; he became Secretary for Overseas Trade in 1947 and was elevated to Cabinet shortly thereafter as President of the Board of Trade. In opposition to the next Conservative government, he served as Shadow Chancellor (19551961) and Shadow Foreign Secretary (19611963). Hugh Gaitskell,
Harold Wilson conspiracy theories Army press officer, Colin Wallace, that the Army press office in Northern Ireland had been used in the 1970s as part of a smear campaign, codenamed Clockwork Orange, against Harold Wilson and other British and Irish politicians. In "Defence of the Realm" (2009), the first authorised history of MI5, by Christopher Andrew, it was shown that MI5 kept a file on Wilson from 1945, when he became an MP – because communist civil servants claimed that he had similar political sympathies. However, "Defence of the Realm" claims that there was no conspiracy against Wilson, and repeats the Callaghan government claim