Joseph Thomas WilliamHAINESIt is with great sadness that we announce that Joe Haines, who served as press secretary to Harold Wilson, died on 19 February 2025 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 60s and mid-70s, becoming one of his most trusted advisors.
A lifelong Labour supporter, who was fiercely proud of his working class background, he was a successful journalist and commentator either side of his time in politics and government.
The son of a Rotherhithe docker, who died when Joe was 2, 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 pre-Murdoch Sun when Wilson asked him to be his press secretary.
A 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 best-seller 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.
In retirement, Joe continued to take a close interest in Labour politics, offering advice privately and publicly to the party and its leaders.
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. He 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.
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