Joe Haines dead aged 97: Press secretary to former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson dies as supporters pay tribute_Nhy
Joe Haines, press secretary to former prime minister Harold Wilson, has died aged 97, a Labour spokesman said.
The ‘lifelong Labour supporter’ died at his home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, on Wednesday, the party confirmed.
He served two spells as press secretary to the then-Labour prime minister Mr Wilson in the late 1960s and mid 1970s.
Mr Haines worked for newspapers in Parliament from 1964 before becoming deputy press secretary and then chief press secretary to Mr Wilson in 1969.
He also served in a similar position while Mr Wilson was leader of the opposition, and then returned as press secretary as well as being given an expanded role during his second spell in office from 1974.
The former press aide, who joined the Labour party as a teenager when Clement Attlee was Prime Minister, was known to be one of Mr Wilson’s ‘most trusted advisors’.
A spokesperson for the Labour party described Mr Haines as being ‘fiercely proud of his working class background’ and a ‘successful journalist and commentator’ before and after his time in politics.
‘It is with great sadness that we announce that Joe Haines, who served as press secretary to Harold Wilson, died today at his home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent,’ the spokesperson said.
Joe Haines (pictured), press secretary to former prime minister Harold Wilson, has died aged 97, a Labour spokesman said.
Former prime minister Mr Wilson and his former press secretary, Mr Haines (left)
‘Joe, who was 97, had two spells as press secretary to the former Labour prime minister in the late 60s and mid-70s, becoming one of his most trusted advisors.’
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair‘s former press secretary, also paid tribute to him as a ‘superb tabloid writer’ with a ‘great mind’ and ‘acute political judgement’.
Last year, Mr Haines hit the headlines after he revealed that Mr Wilson had an extramarital affair during his second term as Prime Minister.
The father-of-two always denied the speculation and even successfully sued over the suggestions on one occasion, with many believing if he had it would have been with his political secretary Marcia Williams.
However, Mr Haines revealed that it was not Ms Williams, who later became Baroness Falkender, who Mr Wilson had his affair with, but another less known member of his office.
He claimed that Mr Wilson admitted to him in private that he had cheated on his wife with Janet Hewlett-Davies, who was Mr Haines’s deputy.
The Labour statement added: ‘The son of a Rotherhithe docker, who died when Joe was two, he was raised by his mother, a hospital cleaner. He left school at 11 and started his newspaper career as a copyboy at the Glasgow Bulletin at the age of 14.
‘But it was as a political correspondent that he came into his own. He was covering politics for The Sun pre-Rupert Murdoch when Wilson asked him to be his press secretary.
‘A fast and brilliant writer with an acerbic tongue, he won a reputation for toughness and loyalty in equal measure.
‘After Wilson left office, Joe wrote a controversial best-seller about his time in politics, The Politics of Power. He later joined the Daily Mirror, rising to become Group Political Editor, assistant editor and a non-executive director under Robert Maxwell, whose authorised biography he authored’
Mr Haines rose to become Group Political Editor, assistant editor and a non-executive director at the Daily Mirror under Robert Maxwell (pictured)
Mr Haines offered advice privately to the Labour Party and leaders during his retirement, the spokesperson said.
‘He was pre-deceased by his wife Rene, and they had no children. Though Joe had been struggling with physical illness for some time, requiring three trips to hospital for dialysis every week, and had also lost his sight, he remained mentally alert to the end.
‘He spent Christmas and New Year on a cruise of the Iberian peninsula and recently held a 97th birthday party – he was born January 29 1928 – and insisted on dying at home, where he was looked after by carers.’
Mr Campbell added that he saw Mr Haines just a few weeks ago with the pair discussing ‘all things politics’.
Posting on X (formerly Twitter) he wrote: ‘Joe was a huge support to me both when I was a journalist under his direction at the Mirror, and when I was in Number 10, doing for Tony Blair the job he did in two separate periods for Harold Wilson.
‘He was a superb tabloid writer, and had a great mind, with acute political judgement. He could be grouchy but he had a great heart too.
‘I saw him a few weeks ago and though his sight was virtually gone he was still sharp, giving me his views on all things political, as well as talking about the cruise he took over Christmas.
‘He said that when he died he wanted it to be at the home he shared for so long with Rene before she died and I am pleased that his last wish was granted, with the help of wonderful carers and Nick, who looked after the garden and ended up looking after Joe as well. RIP Joe.’
Alastair Campbell (left), Tony Blair’s (right) former press secretary, also paid tribute to him as a ‘superb tabloid writer’ with a ‘great mind’ and ‘acute political judgement’
Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds has also paid tribute describing Mr Haines as ‘one of the great characters of 20th-century Labour governments’.
He said: ‘I interviewed Joe Haines many times for my biography of Wilson. With deep knowledge and a razor-sharp political brain, Joe served Harold with distinction and a fierce loyalty.
‘One of the great characters of twentieth-century Labour Governments, he will be greatly missed. RIP Joe.’
Despite his long-standing Labour support, Mr Haines said he quite the party in 2019 as he launched a ferocious attack on Jeremy Corbyn.
He claimed the then-Labour leader was fighting a phoney war on poverty and being ‘antisemitic, anti-American and anti-business’.
Speaking at the time, he said: ‘The thought that I might be complicit in putting him [Corbyn] in Downing Street is repulsive, which is why I have not renewed my membership of the party.’
In a letter to The Times Mr Haines wrote: ‘Some of Corbyn’s supporters romanticise about fighting a new class war and prattle about poverty. They don’t know what they are talking about.
‘I grew up in a gas-lit, bug-ridden slum with a widowed mother receiving 18 shillings [90p] a week to bring up three young children and pay the rent. That was real poverty and it doesn’t exist today.’
Mr Haines broke his 50-year silence on Mr Wilson’s affair last April as revealed that Ms Hewlett-Davies admitted to him she had the affair with the former prime minister before his resignation in 1976.
Harold Wilson pictured with his wife Mary at No10 Downing Street in 1967 during his second stint as prime minister
Mr Haines claimed that Mr Wilson admitted to having an affair with Janet Hewlett-Davies, who worked in his press team
He told The Times: ‘The astonishing thing is that no one else, but me, knew of Janet’s affair with Wilson, for which she neither sought any kind of benefit whatsoever.
‘It was certainly a love match on her side, and the joy which Wilson exhibited to me suggested that it was for him too.’
Like Mr Wilson, Ms Hewlett-Davies was married at the time of their relationship – and was 22 years younger than him.
She died aged 85 in 2023, after a career in Whitehall communications and later working as Robert Maxwell’s PR chief.
She is said to have admitted the affair to Mr Haines after he spotted her climbing the stairs to the PM’s room in No 10 late one evening in 1974, at the start of his second term in office and when she was his assistant press secretary.
‘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.’
Then on a visit to his constituency, Mr Wilson also ‘gleefully’ told his press secretary about Ms Hewlett-Davies, saying: ‘She has given me a new lease of life.’
And in 1976, Mr Wilson is said to have asked Mr Haines to give up his usual room at the Chequers country retreat for her.
Harold Wilson pictured giving a speech at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton in October 1969
Harold Wilson pictured with his political adviser Baroness Falkender. The pair consistently denied rumours they had had an affair
‘I agreed. And what did he do? He left his slippers under her bed,’ he wrote.
He said the affair had ‘increased (Mr Wilson’s) morale in the last two years or so before he retired’, adding that Ms Hewlett-Davies had ‘died nursing a secret which never leaked from Downing Street, the most notorious leaky building in Britain’.
During his tenure of office, MrHaines admitted ‘planting’ one or two stories but fiercely denied this had been a case of news management for political advantage.
‘I might have withheld information, but I never denied a true story,’ he said.
Mr Haines also took a principled stand against the honours system, refusing one himself.
In particular, he objected to Mr Wilson’s showbusiness-heavy resignation honours list in 1976, warning of the effect this was likely to have on Labour Party opinion.
He was offered a knighthood – the normal ‘reward’ for retiring Downing Street press secretaries – in this list. But he rejected it with this comment: ‘I can’t sing, I can’t dance, and I can’t do impressions.’
Mr Haines lost his job in 1976 when Mr Wilson resigned. Relations between the two towards the end of Wilson’s premiership had become ‘frosty’, and Haines returned to his former job as political writer for the Daily Mirror.
He was born on January 29, 1928. His father was a docker who died when he was two, and he was raised by his mother, a hospital cleaner.
He was educated at elementary schools in Rotherhithe, south-east London.
He left school at 11 and started his newspaper career as a copyboy at the Glasgow Bulletin at the age of 14.
He worked in Parliament for the paper from 1954 until 1960 and became political correspondent for the Scottish Daily Mail from 1960 to 1964, and the Sun from 1964 to 1968.
After serving as Mr Wilson’s press secretary during his two spells in office, Mr Haines held a series of executive positions in the Daily Mirror, the Scottish Daily Record and Mirror Group Newspapers.
During his long retirement, Mr Haines regularly contributed articles to magazines and newspapers, not only about current issues – on which he expressed trenchant views – but often opening up new and hitherto unknown aspects of Mr Wilson’s premiership.
