MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Queen 'talked Lord Mountbatten out of 1968 plot to overthrow Labour government

Lord Mountbatten, great uncle of Prince Charles

In an advance of a book to be launched this week, “The Mountbattens”, Lives & Loves”, author Andrew Lownie reveals how the Queen, in 1968, talked Lord Mountbatten out of leading a plot to overthrow the Labor government, then headed by Harold Wilson.

Lord Mountbatten, Prince Charles' great uncle and mentor, came close to leading a group of industrialists, generals and tycoons in the coup to replace then Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

The plot was designed to replace the government with a coalition to unify the country in what Lord Mountbatten regarded as a time of national crisis.

It came at a time of increased trade union militancy, growing social unrest and economic decline.

With demonstrations in central London against the Vietnam war and an increasing number of worker strikes, sections of the elite began to believe society was disintegrating.

The thwarted coup is detailed in a new biography of Lord Mountbatten by British historian Andrew Lownie.

On May 8, Lord Mountbatten hosted a meeting with plotters at his Belgravia home, to discuss what to do about the Wilson government.

Lord Mountbatten - who had previously been described as 'a prime mover in the plan' - had a change of heart.

According to Lownie's book, Mountbatten said the Queen was 'desperately worried over the whole situation' and described the coup as 'rank treachery'.

The book, which is due to be published on Thursday, comes ahead of the 40th anniversary of Mountbatten's death in 1979.

Lord Mountbatten was killed when the IRA blew up his yacht at his summer home, Classiebawn Castle, in Mullaghmore, a small seaside village in County Sligo, Ireland