Joe Haines: The former press secretary who kept making headlines until the end

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 both Wilson and Hewlett-Davies, who was some 22 years Wilson’s junior.

He said the affair had “increased (Wilson’s) morale in the last two years or so before he retired”, adding that Ms Hewlett-Davies had “died nursing a secret which never leaked from Downing Street, the most notorious leaky building in Britain”.

As Wilson’s press secretary, Haines was a sharp, acerbic but always straightforward figure.

More than once it was his moderating influence that prevented Wilson from embarking on some of his madcap ideas.

Before Wilson head-hunted him as his press secretary, Haines was a distinguished political journalist and he was thus the ideal person to deal with Westminster’s army of often fractious lobby correspondents.

Relations between reporters and Haines were not always of the sweetest. And at one point Haines closed down the “secret briefing” system for lobby correspondents. In interviews afterwards, he said bluntly: “My job was to serve the prime minister and not the press.”

But this decision had its downside. Sometimes it was found that information that the government wanted disclosed was not getting out.

As a result, a group of favoured lobby correspondents, known ironically as “the White Commonwealth”, were invited into Downing Street from time to time, for an unofficial and highly confidential briefing.

His hostility towards “Tory” Fleet Street as an institution became so paranoid that he acquired the unflattering sobriquet of Anti Press Officer.

During his tenure of office, Haines admitted “planting” one or two stories but fiercely denied this had been a case of news management for political advantage.

“I might have withheld information, but I never denied a true story,” he said.

Haines also took a principled stand against the honours system, refusing one himself.

In particular, he strenuously objected to Wilson’s showbusiness-heavy resignation honours list in 1976, warning of the effect this was likely to have on Labour Party opinion.

He was offered a knighthood – the normal “reward” for retiring Downing Street press secretaries – in this list. But he rejected it with this acid comment: “I can’t sing, I can’t dance, and I can’t do i mpressions.”

Throughout his time at 10 Downing Street, Haines was one of the very few people – Lady Falkender, then Marcia Williams, was another – who dared to tell Wilson the things he did not want to hear.

Haines also took the view, as he recounted in his book, The Politics of Power, that Marcia Williams played too influential a role in Downing Street.

“For too long Lady Falkender counted for too much,” he wrote.

A sign of the coldness between Haines and Lady Falkender was the fact that although he made copious references to her in his book, she barely mentioned him in hers.

Virtually all she said was: “His style was rougher and more direct than Trevor’s” – a reference to his predecessor Sir Trevor Lloyd-Hughes.

Haines lost his job in 1976 when Wilson resigned. Relations between the two towards the end of Wilson’s premiership had become “frosty”, and Haines returned to his former job as political writer for the Daily Mirror.

He also came under criticism for writing the official biography of Robert Maxwell.

When, years later, he was asked whether he had revised his views of Maxwell, Haines replied: “I couldn’t have the same bloody view as I did before, could I?”

Joseph Thomas William Haines was born on January 29 1928. His father was a docker who died when he was two, and he was raised by his mother, a hospital cleaner. He was educated at elementary schools in Rotherhithe, south-east London.

He left school at 11 and started his newspaper career as a copy boy at the Glasgow Bulletin at the age of 14.

He worked in Parliament for the paper from 1954 until 1960 and became political correspondent for the Scottish Daily Mail from 1960 to 1964, and the Sun from 1964 to 1968.

He was appointed deputy press secretary to the prime minister in January 1969, but by the following June he was chief press secretary, a post he held until Wilson lost office in 1970. But he returned to the job from 1974 to 1976, after serving Wilson in a similar capacity when he was leader of the opposition during the intervening years.

After Wilson’s resignation, Haines held a series of executive positions in the Daily Mirror, the Scottish Daily Record and Mirror Group Newspapers.

During his long retirement, Haines regularly contributed articles to magazines and newspapers, not only about current issues – on which he expressed trenchant views – but often opening up new and hitherto unknown aspects of Wilson’s premiership.

His wife Rene predeceased him. They had no children.