Joe Haines 1928 – 2025: Labour supporter, Millwall fan and Bermondsey boy

Joe Haines, the former press secretary to Harold Wilson, died on February 19.

Aged 97, Mr Haines passed away at his home in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, leaving behind his legacy as a lifelong Labour supporter, Millwall FC fan and Bermondsey boy.

An acclaimed career saw Mr Haines serve two spells as press secretary to the Labour prime minister, first in the late 1960s and then again in the mid-70s.

Outside of politics he worked as a journalist for the Sun, a political editor of the Daily Mirror and a “regular but reluctant” adviser to the papers then owner Robert Maxwell. 

Born in a damp, gas-lit, two-bedroom “slum” in Rotherhithe, Mr Haines came from a long line of dockers which trailed through his family tree from father to grandfather, cousin to uncle.

He became fatherless aged two and was brought up by his mother Elizabeth, a cleaner at St Olave’s Hospital.

His older sister Emma had a permanent job at Crosse & Blackwell in Bermondsey’s Crimscott Street.

Regular schooling ended for Mr Haines aged 11, when the Second World War broke out and within three years he had begun his newspaper career as a copyboy at the Glasgow Bulletin.

He was promoted as a political correspondent, then moved to the Scottish Daily Mail in 1960, and the Daily Herald in 1964.

Mr Haines was a devout Labour supporter, having joined up to the party as a teenager.

At the time, all of his Rotherhithe friends except one voted Labour, and “even he voted for it in the local elections”.

In 1969 Harold Wilson offered him the post of deputy press secretary in Downing Street, a position he thrived in, and he was promoted to press secretary within months.

During his time as the aide for number 10, Mr Haines observed the chaos of power first hand, categorised it into what the public should and should not know, and demonstrated a deep devotion to his prime minister.

In 2019, Mr Haines published Kick ‘Em Back: Wilson Maxwell and Me, which revealed inside information on Downing Street and Robert Maxwell, including sex, scandals and sordid affairs, but also a nostalgic reminiscence of Rotherhithe.

The paperback’s title comes from advice given to him as a boy by his mother. 

At the age of five or six, he came down the stairs of their home crying. Meeting his mother at the doorstep, he called out, “Harold Shaw kicked me”.

She placed her hands on his shoulders, and said: “Go and kick ’im back” – which he did.

He said this moment set in action “an unforgiving” and “unbiblical precept” that he followed for much of his life.

Perhaps this is why he didn’t much mind Millwall’s “no-one likes us, we don’t care” approach to life.

In Kick ‘Em Back, Mr Haines wrote that he never stopped trying to escape the poverty which was Rotherhithe, but adds that Rotherhithe never left him. 

He was proud of his roots and “never lost or softened his accent”, wrote former spokesman for Tony Blair Alastair Campbell, in The Daily Mirror.

Describing Rotherhithe in 2019, Mr Haines said: “The material gains have been immense, the community ones are less obvious.”

In a drastic, but perhaps unsurprising twist of fate, Mr Haines turned his back on his life-long political party that same year.

In a scathing article published for the Daily Mail, the former press secretary described Jeremy Corbyn’s influence on Labour as “evil” and claimed that poverty “has all but been eliminated” from the streets of London.

Mr Haines knew what he liked, and what he did not like. He made many friends throughout his career but he did not mind making enemies.

Ultimately, his life was underpinned by his unwavering belief that a boy from Rotherhithe was just as entitled to life’s opportunities as anyone else.

Joe Haines married his teenage sweetheart, Irene Lambert, from Abbeyfield Road at St Mary’s Church, in Bermondsey in 1955. She died in 2022.

Pictured top: Joe Haines with Harold Wilson in 1977 (Picture: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo)