Official documents show that former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson agreed to sell his archive of private papers to help pay for his care.
Documents released by the National Archives and identified by the BBC Lord Wilson initially planned to sell the collection to McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, for £212,500 – approximately £700,000 in today’s value.
Wilson, who served as Labour prime minister twice, from 1964-70 and again from 1974-76, had Alzheimer’s disease and, according to a document, “required continuing care, the costs of which are high and will increase”. He died in 1995.
The proposal to sell the papers abroad caused concern among senior officials in Margaret Thatcher’s government.
In early January 1990, Cabinet Secretary Sir Robin Butler wrote that Wilson’s former secretary, Lady Falkender, was “orchestrating a proposal” to set up an archive for the former prime minister’s papers in Canada.
Part of the proceeds would go to Lord and Lady Wilson, who were “not well off at the moment”, Butler told his predecessor, Lord Armstrong.
McMaster University wanted the archive to also include documents from Wilson’s time at Number 10.
Butler thought it would lead to “public unrest” if the papers were allowed to leave the country, while Andrew Turnbull, Thatcher’s chief private secretary, said he was not happy with the “politics/morals” of such an idea.
“Although these are formally the private papers of Lord Wilson,” he wrote in March 1990, “they are part of our history and, it will be said, are not really his to ‘sell’.”
The Cabinet was told that there were no legal obstacles to the sale, but by July 1991 an alternative solution had been reached.
The Wilson Archive’s trustees had found anonymous donors who would fund the Bodleian Library in Oxford to purchase the papers, with the money going to the trust set up for the Wilsons’ benefit. The papers would then remain in the UK and in a secure location.