A major security scare surrounded a visit to Bradford by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, secret MI5 reports have revealed.

Government documents released under the 30-year secrecy rule show the visit in 1968 to Bradford University was given high-level security.

There were fears thousands of student demonstrators from London protesting about the war in Vietnam would converge on Bradford led by a communist gangster known as 'Danny the Red' who had been active in violent protests in Paris that year. Mr Wilson came to confer degrees on students at the university in his role as chancellor.

He was expected to give an honorary degree to the rector of the Sorbonne, Jean Roche, who the previous month had called riot police into the Paris university, but Roche's visit was called off.

A squad of police from Scotland Yard in London and special branch officers were joined by local police to set up a tight security cordon.

In the event, only 20 demonstrators from the Revolutionary Socialist Students' Federation arrived to make their protests, closely observed by security men. Mr Wilson ignored safety advice, going over to talk to them and was given a copy of the Socialist newspaper Black Dwarf.

Only a week after Mr Wilson's trip to Bradford, elaborate precautions were taken at Durham Miners' Gala after a threat to shoot him.

The year was one of widespread unrest with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy while there were rising Cold War tensions following the Soviet-led crushing of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. Enoch Powell made his Rivers of Blood speech and Saddam Hussein seized power in Iraq.

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