John Lennon and Yoko Ono: PM's 'War is Over' Christmas card on show

A Christmas card sent by John Lennon and Yoko Ono to Harold Wilson declaring "War is Over!" has gone on show.

The card, part of the couple's 1969 peace campaign, was rescued from what was then labelled the prime minister's "nutty filing" cabinet by Beatles fan and secretary Ruth Ferenczy.

Her daughter Alex Rowe, from Manchester, said it had been marked "no", meaning no reply would be sent.

Loaning it to Liverpool Beatles Museum, she said it was time it was shared.

The card, which was signed by the couple with the message "with love to the Wilsons from the Lennons", was sent a few months after Lennon and Ono held their two famous bed-in protests for peace.

Ms Rowe said it arrived at 10 Downing Street in December 1969 and was put in a pile for "strange post".

"There was a thing called the 'nutty filing', so any strange post that came to No 10 was put in the 'nutty filing'," she said.

"My mum was filing one day and came across this card, so she said to her boss: 'Look at this, the Prime Minister doesn't want it, can I keep it?' and the boss said yes she could.

"Apparently Harold Wilson would write in green pen and if he was going to respond to mail, he would write yes or no.

"There's a little green 'no' on this card, which means he didn't want to respond."

'Wind-up'

She said her mother, who was now 81 and living in Spain, took the card home where "it's just been sitting on a shelf all my life".

"It's literally gone from No 10 into our possession and... it's been round the world because we lived abroad," she said.

"One day we were looking at it, at home in Manchester, and just said: 'Why have we not shared this? Somebody else needs to see it'."

The card was unveiled at the museum by Tony Bramwell, who ran the group's label Apple Records for a time.

He said the War is Over! campaign had seen him organising for the slogan to be put on billboards across the world and sending out "thousands" of cards "to everybody in the address book".

He said the one to the prime minister, who was also the MP for Huyton on Merseyside, would have been sent as a "wind-up" by Lennon, but with a genuine desire for "world peace" by Ono.

"Anything aimed at Harold Wilson was a dig," he said.

"John had just sent back his MBE in protest."

He added that the prime minister had previously met the Beatles and posed with them for pictures, but he was not surprised the politician had chosen not to respond to the card.

"He would probably say no even if he was offered a box of Beatles records," he said.

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