Haines worked closely with Labour PM for two spells in 1960s and 70s and was also a respected political journalist. Joe Haines, the former press secretary to Harold Wilson, has died aged 97, the Labour party has said. The party said Haines, a lifelong Labour supporter, died on Wednesday at his home in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Haines served as press secretary to the Labour prime minister for two periods in the late 1960s and mid-70s, after working as a political journalist for the Sun before it was owned by Rupert Murdoch. He was also a political editor of the Daily Mirror and wrote a biography of its then owner, Robert Maxwell.
Last year, Haines claimed Wilson had confessed to an affair with his deputy press secretary, Janet Hewlett-Davies, during his final year in Downing Street. Revealing the secret he had kept for half a century, Haines said in an interview with the Times that he was told of the “love match” by Wilson and Hewlett-Davies, who was 22 years Wilson’s junior. A Labour spokesperson said: “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.
“Joe, who was 97, had two spells as press secretary to the former Labour prime minister in the late 1960s and mid-1970s, becoming one of his most trusted advisers.”. He was described as “fiercely proud of his working-class background” and also worked as a journalist and commentator before and after his time in politics. The 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 bestseller 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.”.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister who has written a biography of Wilson, said he had interviewed Haines many times. “With deep knowledge and a razor-sharp political brain, Joe served Harold with distinction and a fierce loyalty. One of the great characters of 20th-century Labour governments, he will be greatly missed.”. A Labour spokesperson said Haines offered advice privately to the party and its leaders during his retirement.
“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,” the spokesperson said. “He spent Christmas and new year on a cruise of the Iberian peninsula and recently held a 97th birthday party – he was born 29 January 1928 – and insisted on dying at home, where he was looked after by carers.”.
