Harold Wilson was a Labour Party politician who became Prime Minister. He was very much in favour of science and technology. In October 1963 he made a speech to that effect at a Scarborough conference of his party.
However, Wilson's position seemed untenable after the failures of the Wenley Moor nuclear research facility in October 1969 (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians) and the Inferno Project in February 1970 (DW: Inferno) were publicized by James Stevens in his "Bad Science" series of articles.
Wilson called an election for June 1970, which he lost, and Edward Heath took over as Prime Minister. Political observers speculated that the publication of the book version of "Bad Science" had coincided not-so-incidentally with the election. (MA: Who Killed Kennedy)
Behind the scenes
Who Killed Kennedy reinterpreted Wilson's real world political failure in the light of events in the Doctor Who Universe.