David Cameron's excellent speech in MK

[Stoo82]

"In his book "Spycatcher", the former Security Service officer Peter Wright claimed that up to 30 members of the Service had plotted to undermine the former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. This allegation was exhaustively investigated and it was concluded, as stated publicly by Ministers, that no such plot had ever existed. Wright himself finally admitted in an interview with BBC1's "Panorama" programme in 1988 that his account had been unreliable."

Not sure if its the same thing?

Ive typed "BBC 1976 Military Coup in the UK" - and there is a refernece to a BBC documentry. It was just a question. I cannot find it on Youtube.

I have quoted this from another forum...

Last week the Sunday Times produced a different sort of shocker, and the featured players were no less stunning: the late Earl Mountbatten of Burma, cousin of Queen Elizabeth and onetime Admiral of the Fleet; and Cecil King, now 80, former chairman of the International Publishing Corporation, Britain's largest press empire. The Sunday Times revived the story of a 1968 meeting between the two, first told by Lord Hugh Cudlipp, who was then deputy chairman of I.P.C. According to Cudlipp's 1976 autobiography, King had sought the assistance of Lord Mountbatten to mount a military coup against the faltering Labor government of then Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

According to the Sunday Times 's story, another former M15 head, Sir Martin Furnival Jones, had conducted a security investigation of this alleged plot and found that the conspirators were "civil servants and military" and "a pretty loony crew."

The paper then quoted Lady Falkender, who as Marcia Williams was Wilson's private secretary, as calling Mountbatten a 'prime mover" in the plot.

The idea of the imperious King as a coup maker sounded farfetched, but there was no dispute that a meeting had taken place. King had appeared at Mountbatten's Belgravia flat accompanied by Cudlipp. Sir Solly Zuckerman, a friend of Mountbatten's, was also present when King suggested that Mountbatten head a new government after the fall of Wilson. Snapped Zuckerman: "This is treachery. I will have nothing to do with it." Then he stormed out of the room.

Retired and living in Dublin, King insisted last week that it was he who had been summoned by Mountbatten, who introduced the idea of countering the Wilson government and quizzed King about how it could be done. Said King: "I told him the time might come when he had a role to play." King last week denied, however, that a coup was ever discussed.

Mountbatten, of course, is dead, killed by the I.R.A. in August 1979. Wilson labeled the allegation of Mountbatten's involvement in a plot "an unwarranted slur."

Indeed, in an exclusive interview with TIME'S Frank Melville in 1978, Mountbatten had given a version of the encounter that tallied with the account in Cudlipp's book. Said Mountbatten: "Cecil King came to see me, at his own request, and said would I take over the country, to which my retort was to kick him out. I asked Mr. King to leave, and he left with Cudlipp 20 seconds after Zuckerman.

King was a man filled with folie de grandeur, saying 'I can fix it.' I said, 'This is rank treason. Out.' " As it happened, King himself soon became the victim of a coup of sorts. Two days after the Mountbatten meeting, he personally penned a vitriolic anti-Wilson editorial in the Daily Mirror, an I.P.C. paper. The company's board of directors was so incensed that King was fired and Cudlipp installed as chairman.

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

Anyone scheming a military coup has no respect for the British electorate.

 

[drew]

[/QUOTE]
Its no Myth, the Labour government was nearly overthrown by the military...[/QUOTE]

Just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons, in the mid 70s, which social class would have made up the top brass of the military and also the bosses of the security services like MI5 and MI6? Probably those that had most to lose from socialism.

 

[Gwylan]

To partly back up Bushy's point, it's almost certainly true that in 1979, there were probably a lot more voters 'attached' to particular parties, whereas nowadays, there are far more floating voters.

Except that in 1983, just four years later, the Labour share of the vote fell to just 28%. So, Bushy's point that there was a hard core of 37% who'd vote Lab in any circumstances is just not true.

I agree that there is a hard core even now who'd vote Lab or Tory whatever happens - my guess is about 20 percent and I agree that the percentage would have been higher about 30 years ago but I don't think that just under 40% would vote on tribal grounds in the circumstances of utter financial ruin.