Joe Haines, press aide to Harold Wilson, dies at 97

Joe Haines, who was the press secretary to Harold Wilson, has died aged 97, the Labour party has said.

- Rowena Mason

Haines, a lifelong Labour supporter, died yesterday at his home in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the party said. He 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.