Anne de Courcy

Love and loathing at Harold Wilson’s No. 10

Even her enemies considered Marcia Williams the prime minister’s ‘political wife’, and the real force in the Labour party from the mid-1960s to Wilson’s resignation

Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams in July 1975 [Alamy]

If Marcia Williams is thought of at all today, it is in terms of hysterical outbursts, a mysterious hold over the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson and, above all, the ‘Lavender List’ – Wilson’s 1976 Resignation Honours List in which Marcia is believed to have played a significant part. Linda McDougall, the widow of the Labour MP Austin Mitchell, gives an infinitely more nuanced and sympathetic picture of this extraordinary woman.

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