Formidable lady who ruled roost at No 10

LADY Falkender, formerly Marcia Williams – one of the most influential and bizarre political figures of the Harold Wilson era – enjoyed a stormy power partnership with the Labour prime minister, writes Chris Moncrieff.

It was one of the most famous and mysterious relationships in modern political history.

The uncanny influence she exercised over Wilson – and over his decisions – frightened many MPs and was widely resented in Whitehall.

Often, it appeared from the outside, Wilson would submit meekly to her demands. Occasionally – to the horror of his more conventional aides – she would shout and scream at him, treating him like a small boy.

One press office official said at the time: “Marcia yelling at Harold was the only kind of discussion we ever heard them have.”

However, as she daily gained more influence and power at 10 Downing Street, so she was more and more exhilarated by the pace of life at the centre and relished her skirmishes and victories over those jealous of her astonishing position.

A sensational claim that the pair had an affair was made in a book, published in 2002, by Joe Haines, who was the then prime minister’s press secretary.

Haines reported that, in 1972, Marcia summoned Wilson’s wife Mary and bluntly told her of the alleged fling.

She is reported to have told the astonished Mrs Wilson: “I have only one thing to say to you. I went to bed with your husband six times in 1956 and it was not satisfactory.”

But the story became even more bizarre than that. There was, Haines recorded, growing unease among the prime minister’s closest advisers as she repeatedly told her colleagues that it would take just one telephone call to end Wilson’s career.

The concern reached a peak in 1975 when Marcia was considering testifying in a libel action against the London Evening Standard newspaper

Haines recalled a conversation with Dr Joe Stone, Wilson’s personal doctor, in which the medic revealed that he had prescribed tranquillisers for Marcia and could engineer her death.

Haines reported: “Joe was devoted to Wilson but loathed Marcia. He discussed the proposition of ‘disposing of her’ to take her weight off the prime pinister. He told me he could make it look like natural causes and sign the death certificate. I told him there was no way in which I could go down that road.”

There was no suggestion that Wilson himself was made aware of the idea.

Marcia consistently denied having had a sexual relationship with Wilson and rejected the notion of a murder plot as “outrageous” and completely out of character for the doctor.

She made many enemies in Downing Street and Whitehall, but those who crossed her, and had flaming rows with her, invariably came off worse, even if they had won the argument.

This was largely because Wilson always took her side in every dispute, whether she was in the right or the wrong. She was a daunting woman and you trifled with her at your peril.

During Wilson’s years at the head of the Labour Party, both in and out of power, Marcia plainly had more influence over him – often, even total control – than any other individual, even than any fellow Cabinet minister

ne of the memorable highlights of her incredible career was Wilson’s celebrated and controversial resignation honours list which included, among other unlikely names, his publisher, Sir George Weidenfeld, his raincoat manufacturer, Sir Joseph Kagan, and a property tycoon, Sir Max Rayne – a bizarre list for an outgoing Labour premier.

The subsequent discovery of some of the names written on lavendercoloured notepaper – hence the socalled Lavender List – in Marcia’s handwriting, led to the suspicion, but no more, that she was responsible for the list.

Another strange feature of her life was a long-lasting affair with the late Walter Terry, one-time political editor of the Daily Mail.

Terry was Wilson’s favourite political reporter and was a leading member of the so-called White Commonwealth which the prime minister set up, involving a few. handpicked lobby journalists.

The liaison between Marcia and Terry produced two sons. It was the only time she was in love. Once she said: “I do have lovely romantic dreams about how life might have been. I envy couples.

“But unless your partner is the right one, the one you want ... It would have been very nice to have married him, but it wasn’t possible.”

The so-called Duchess of Downing Street was born in March 1932, and educated at Northampton High School and Queen Mary College, University of London.

Her marriage to George Williams foundered after five years; he wanted to live and work in America and she did not.

She was private and political secretary to Wilson over a period spanning from 1956 to 1983.

Once in Downing Street, she turned the waiting room outside the Cabinet Room into her own office, and exercised control over those who had access to Wilson.

Unsurprisingly, relations between Marcia and Wilson’s wife Mary were tense and occasionally stormy. But that slowly developed into a wary, respectful and even affectionate arrangement.

Marcia played a big part in the Wilson family life. Mary, who bore an intense dislike to political life, finally recognised that Marcia had staked her claim on territory that she herself had no wish to occupy.

Equally, Marcia came to appreciate that Mary was the solid foundation on which Wilson’s life was built. In a distant sort of way, therefore, they complemented one another.

Like Wilson, Marcia had no interests other than politics. And she once said of him: “He loved women. He did not necessarily want to sleep with them. But he loved their company, believed in them. He let you tease him and check him.”

Sometimes, when they were alone, he called her “little minister”. There was a closeness between them that gave her an access and an influence which often infuriated other ministers.

Even so, that did not stop her fighting him, especially over Rhodesia. One of her critics once said: “She used to screech at Harold during Cabinet meetings mercilessly. She went on like a mechanical drill until your nerves couldn’t stand it any more.”

And one commentator said that her powerful campaign against concessions to the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia checked any temptation Wilson may have felt to backslide.

Sometimes she would even tap him on the knee and say: “Harold, listen to me...”

She wrote once: “I think he knows I have considerable affection for him, even while I despair sometimes over his ideological limitations and am ready to resign, if necessary, if his tactical subtleties ever betray my beliefs. He knows, too, that I will always be honest with him.”

In her memoirs, Downing Street In Perspective, Lady Falkender describes how the Labour leadership laughed in derision the day Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Tory Party in 1975.

She wrote: “They were all laughing, joking and slapping each other on the shoulders with remarks to the effect that all was now well. How could, they were asking, the Tories possibly win with a woman at the head?”

Only the prescient Wilson and Peter Shore provided the cautionary and dissenting voices.

Marcia became a life peeress in 1974, commenting later: “My peerage has been a great problem to me because I have never known how to handle it. But now I know myself pretty well.

“And I think if the press has got me wrong there is nothing I can do to put it right.”