Harold's Glass House

During the recent electoral campaign, Harold Wilson's Laborites got considerable political mileage from the charge that Tories had allowed land speculators to amass huge fortunes. Last week stories in two pro-Tory newspapers, the Daily Express and the tabloid Daily Mail, suggested that close associates of Wilson were speculators themselves. The papers also recounted various incidents in which the associates reportedly linked the new Prime Minister's name last year to a series of transactions that were to earn them a $1,860,000 profit on 95 acres of land that they had bought between 1967 and 1973 for $440,000. Scotland Yard began an investigation into the forgery of one letter written on Wilson's private stationery with what was purportedly his own signature.

Both newspapers carefully noted that Wilson himself was not implicated and that there was nothing illegal about land speculation. But the embarrassment to Wilson was acute. The prospect that there might be further hints of scandal has shaken Labor hopes that Wilson might call an early election while his new government still enjoyed a measure of initial public good will.

The Prime Minister, who has long had an ingrained suspicion that the Tory press is out to get him, promptly issued writs of intent to sue both the Express and the Mail for libel. During a stormy debate in Parliament, he made an emotional defense of the land transaction referred to by the papers, even though his lawyers had earlier insisted he had no knowledge of it.

One reason for Wilson's visceral response may be that the alleged organizers of the transaction are a pair of high-powered, hard-to-approach Wilson associates whose closeness to the Prime Minister had inspired resentment even before they made the headlines. One of them is Mining Consultant Anthony Field, a golfing partner and a close confidant of Wilson's. The other is Field's sister, Marcia Williams, the Prime Minister's longtime private secretary. Her behind-the-scenes influence is something of a political legend in Britain. A story once circulated among Members of Parliament that a visitor to No. 10 Downing Street had been told, "Mrs. Williams is busy, but you can see the Prime Minister if you wish."

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