Joe Haines, press aide to Harold Wilson, dies aged 97

Joe Haines, political journalist and press secretary to former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, has died aged 97, A Labour spokesman has confirmed.

Haines joined Wilson's Downing Street operation in 1969 during his first term in office and went on to become part of the Labour leader's "kitchen cabinet" of close political advisers.

He stayed by Wilson's side after Labour's surprise ejection from power in 1970 and was granted an expanded role in his second spell in office from 1974.

He became an ally of Bernard, now Lord, Donoughue, who set up and ran Wilson's policy unit and would go on to become a close friend.

But he had a turbulent relationship with another key Wilson aide, his political secretary Baroness Falkender, formerly Marcia Williams, whom he denounced in his later writings and blamed for Wilson's political demise in 1976.

Haines hit the headlines last year aged 96, when he claimed Wilson had an affair with his deputy press secretary Janet Hewlett-Davies.

There were persistent rumours that Wilson, who was married, had an affair with Baroness Falkender. He repeatedly denied the claims.

However, this was the first time a romantic relationship with Ms Hewlett-Davies had ever been suggested.

Lord Donoughue said Haines had told him about the affair during Wilson's premiership and the pair had kept the secret for nearly 50 years.

But they decided to reveal the details to ensure the "full story" of Wilson's premiership was told after Ms Hewlett-Davies died in 2023.

Born in 1928, Haines grew up in what he later called the "bug-ridden, gas-lit slum" of pre-war Rotherhithe, south-east London.

His father died when he was young and he was brought up in poverty by his mother, an upbringing he said drew him to join the Labour Party during his teenage years.

His career in journalism began at The Bulletin, a Glasgow-based mid-morning title, where he rose up the ranks to become its political correspondent.

When it ceased publication in 1960 he became political correspondent at The Scottish Daily Mail.

From there he joined new title The Sun, then a left-leaning broadsheet, in the years before it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch.

It was from here that he was recruited by Wilson to work in Downing Street, becoming the then-prime minister's deputy press secretary and then press secretary in 1969, in what would be the final year of his first spell in power.

After Downing Street, Haines returned to a career in journalism, becoming political editor, leader writer, assistant editor and director at The Daily Mirror.

He continued to write opinion pieces into his eighties and nineties, bemoaning the stature of modern-day politicians and the lack of working-class voices in politics.