Conspiracy and contemporary history : revisiting MI5 and the Wilson plot[s]

This article examines the debates which have taken place again recently concerning the long-standing idea of a plot in the 1970s against the elected Labour government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Two television programmes in 2006 and Christopher Andrew’s 2009 official history of the UK Security Service (MI5) discussed the plot. Andrew’s history dismissed the possibility of a conspiracy out of hand. This article critiques this approach and also discusses the continuing power of ideas of right wing plotting against Wilson. The plots remain an interesting and unresolved debate in contemporary intelligence history.