Having tried to piece together a coalition and failed, Heath had to return, most ignominiously, to his old job, as leader of the opposition. It was not easy for him or for any of his colleagues.
Patrick Jenkin recalls traumatic days for the Conservative Party:
‘In the weeks following the election, there was a deep pessimism, not only in the party, but also right across the country. People began to ask “Is Britain governable?” The combination of poor economic performance, trade union militancy and the failure to reach agreement on a coalition, were all factors in this atmosphere of gloom.
‘Heath emerged from the February election with all the confidence of his earlier years knocked out of him. Though some of his speeches in the House attacking the Labour Government provided some reminder of his undoubted skill as a Parliamentary debater, they won little praise from his back benches. He was still determined to advance his view that there must be a better way of conducting politics than the adversarial techniques of the past. He refused to consider standing down himself even if that might advance the cause of coalition; and he sought to portray himself as the champion of the case for a Government committed to the national interest. He was also determined to safeguard his great achievement of taking Britain into Europe, fearing that manoeuvring by Wilson might put that at risk.
‘The Party was in a pretty unhappy state and its MPs realised it was in no fit state to fight another immediate election. They were understandably eager to attack the new, minority Labour Government in the House, but they were reluctant to go so far as to defeat it in the division lobbies, just in case they brought it down and forced another poll. Ted’s own position was grievously weakened now and I understand that over 100 Conservative MPs told the whips privately that he should stand down in short order, as his credibility was gone. With no overt challenge to his authority emerging, however, his own confidence did begin to revive and, by the summer, with an autumn election inevitable, he became, in effect, impossible to dislodge. Perhaps that explains why his aloofness, both from his supporters in the House and also from party members in the constituencies, appeared to intensify.’
To the crucial economic brief, the job in which he had once set out his own claim for the party leadership, Heath appointed Margaret Thatcher, initially as No. 2 to Robert Carr. I once asked him why. Those cool, blue eyes fixed me in a passionless gaze and he explained simply, ‘because she was the best person for the job’. This is corroborated by Tony Barber:
‘I told Ted about Margaret’s experience at the Tax Bar and suggested that she might be a match for Healey. So she joined the opposition team and, sure enough, she was very soon scoring points off the Chancellor. Her success did not go unnoticed. It has been said that this was a mistake on Ted’s part because it gave Margaret a chance to shine. But this is to misjudge Ted’s motive, which was simply to strengthen the opposition Treasury team. Nevertheless, it is a fact that, by a stroke of good fortune – being given that opportunity by Ted – she considerably enhanced her chances of success when the chips were down and she stood against him for the Leadership.’1
Wilson was seventeen seats short of a majority, so there was never any doubt another election would come soon. Heath somehow persuaded himself that if he was indeed to return and be the saviour of the nation, with public opinion so divided and support for the larger parties at so low an ebb, it might be better (and, presumably, more plausible in terms of electoral arithmetic) to take up the reins not of a majority Conservative Government, but of a Government of National Unity. Perhaps he was merely trying to be realistic, but the effect on the already shattered morale of the party faithful was baneful. With the trumpet sounding so uncertain a note, the Tory troops were understandably loathe to prepare themselves unto battle. During this period, Stephen Sherbourne had his first encounters with Heath:
‘I was working in the Conservative Research Department and, every Tuesday and Thursday, I briefed him ahead of Prime Minister’s Questions and I also attended Shadow Cabinet meetings. He appeared weary: with the job, which had no power; with his MPs who were restless; and with his shadow ministers, some of whom were on manoeuvres against him. Did he still want to be Prime Minister? I believe so. Partly as a matter of pride; partly because he was disdainful of what he perceived as Harold Wilson’s superficial style; and partly because I suspect he believed that somehow he could meet the economic and international challenges.’
Just as ‘election fever’ signally failed to race through a weary and dispirited nation, Heath was hit by a brutal personal blow when he gave permission for Christopher Chadd, his young godson and the son of his wartime CO George Chadd, to sail on the third Morning Cloud boat in early September 1974, not in a race, but with a temporary crew who were moving the boat between harbours. Owen Parker, Heath’s invaluable right-hand man during so much of his competitive sailing, tells the tale:
‘They were unlucky enough to be caught by a freak wave, and the boat dropped off the top of it onto her side, losing two men overboard in the process. Unfortunately one of their harness lines broke and, in returning to look for Nigel Cumming who was in the water, they were struck by another rogue sea which washed overboard Mr Heath’s godson, Christopher Chadd, as he was in the main hatch just making his way on deck. This time the boat . . . started to break up . . . Nigel and Christopher were not recovered and the survivors had to take to the life raft; they were eventually washed ashore in an exhausted condition.’2
Heath was a tough and resilient person – good qualities in both a wartime military officer and also a peacetime politician – but this was one of the handful of events in his life that would haunt him for the remainder of his days. George Chadd told him not to blame himself for the awful loss of his son, but I know Heath never totally forgave himself. He had little time to grieve, as Harold Wilson requested the dissolution of Parliament just a matter of days later. Patrick Jenkin takes up the tale again:
‘When another election was called for 10 October 1974, the omens for the Conservatives were unpromising. Doubts about the leadership were perhaps the greatest concern, but other factors were in play too. The very mixed reception given to the various efforts to reform the party organisation had undermined morale in Central Office. The clear conflict between the Heathite policy of seeking a “National Coalition Government” and the case increasingly put forward by MPs for a distinctive Conservative approach was confusing the public. There was also a gap opening up on economic policy, with growing support both inside and outside the party for a really radical change in economic policies based on monetarism – the control of the money supply as the weapon to fight inflation – instead of the attempted control of prices and incomes. All this sent very mixed messages to the electorate.
‘Unsurprisingly, the campaign was a dispiriting affair. Although great efforts were made to ensure that other senior Shadow Spokesmen were given prominent roles, the media concentrated their coverage of the Conservative campaign almost exclusively on the leader himself. Indeed, Heath seemed to be quoted on national TV and radio more than all other senior Conservatives combined. Unfortunately, if the message remained muddled and obscure to the public – “a rather woolly and nebulous programme” was the verdict of one commentator – it was hardly likely that Heath’s main campaign speeches would provide the inspiration that could win an election.
‘And so it proved: Labour was re-elected with a majority of three seats over all other parties combined – and a clear margin of 48 over the Conservatives. Harold Wilson had won three out of the four elections he fought as Labour Leader; Ted Heath had lost three out of the four he had fought as Conservative Leader. Doorstep canvassing had reinforced the all-too clear message from the opinion polls: Ted Heath was significantly less popular than his Party.’
Heath had lost again – clearly this time – and his position as leader was under critical threat. Loyal whips set up dinners at which he could ‘get to know’ his back-bench colleagues. Ken Clarke described one such event, when he rounded up MPs from the Midlands. One of them was Ivan Lawrence, newly elected as MP for Burton. At the end of an excruciatingly stiff and uncomfortable occasion, with Heath at his most baleful and morose, Lawrence said to Ken: ‘Until this evening I had not exchanged a single word with the party leader. After tonight I have still not exchanged a single word with the party leader.’ Even the bombing of his house in Wilton Street by Irish terrorists just before Christmas 1974 – in many ways an appropriate cap to a ghastly year, though, fortunately, he was out of the house at the time – did not win Heath significant sympathy. Many of those who had previously been loyal now believed the name of Heath was unbreakably associated with defeat. He was also, despite the plots against him and the numerous other contenders for the unenviable title, determined to cling onto his long-held role of being his own worst enemy. Furthermore, although no one had resigned from his Cabinet, a total of 160 Tory MPs (around half the then total) had voted against the Heath Government – 100 of them more than once, and twelve of them more than fifty times. Heath did not want a leadership contest, but he was forced to recognise he had no choice: there must be one. Julian Critchley summed up his predicament very eloquently:
‘Heath had made many enemies in the ten years of his leadership: he had led the party, despite being “Selsdon Man”, from left of centre; and he had conspicuously failed to practise the political arts. His parsimony when it came to handing out the twice-yearly honours to clapped-out MPs was bitterly resented by those who sought consolation of a sort. He was also reluctant to flatter the simple. Most important of all, he had led the party to defeat in three of the four elections it had fought under his leadership. Shocked by February 1974, and humiliated by October, many Tory MPs were only too ready to use the electoral machinery . . . to rid themselves of a man they saw as a political albatross.’3
Simon Hoggart suggests another, additional and subtler reason for Heath’s fatal inability to rally his troops at his time of greatest need:
‘Take the annual party for Tory MPs. Under Ted Heath this was thrown at some inconvenient time of year. Wives who wanted to come – that is, almost all of them – had to make a special trip down to London. Heath was often late in arriving, sometimes by three-quarters of an hour. Frequently he looked bored and could hardly be bothered to chat to anyone. This was a fatal mistake. Most men will put up with any amount of rudeness to themselves, but will never forget or forgive a snub to their wives.’4
Michael Heseltine recalls:
‘By the time of the second election of 1974, which he lost, and the leadership challenge, I was shadow secretary of state for trade and industry. It was at this point that I began to know he had to go. I sat at the oblong table alongside Keith Joseph, opposite Ted. Keith would raise issues that seemed to me, as a new arrival at this top table, to be perfectly reasonable, about possible policy options and things that had gone wrong. Keith was the nicest man in British politics – courteous, softly spoken and intelligent – but Ted would turn on him, treating him abysmally, appallingly. I remember sitting there, thinking: “This man cannot heal the divisions in the party ever again. He cannot do it. He doesn’t even try to listen.” He had neither the instinct nor the willingness to reach out to those he knows have a different viewpoint to his. All he had to do was to say: “Yes, Keith, why don’t you put together a team of solid policy makers and look at this, that or the other.” That was all he had to do.
‘That was why people like me thought he’d had his time. We had a career to make and he could never lead us back to power. I think Ted had reasonable regard for me, because he used to ring me up as time went on and Margaret was in power, to find out what was going on. I told him what I could. I don’t suppose he ever knew I didn’t vote for him.’
Speculation about Heath’s future became ubiquitous. He was the story now; and his poll ratings were not good. Amongst Tory voters he had a 51 per cent approval rating; amongst Labour supporters, Wilson was running at 86 per cent. Labour led in the polls by 48 per cent to 34 per cent. Nonetheless, a clear majority of Conservatives in the country wanted Heath to carry on. Not so the 1922 Committee, whose members were not concealing their desire for an early contest as they busily agreed new rules for leadership elections. Eventually, on 14 November, Heath agreed that a leadership contest be held, with the date for the first ballot later set for 4 February 1975.
Willie Whitelaw was the bookies’ favourite to succeed Heath as leader, but he would not stand out of loyalty to Heath. For a time, Keith Joseph seemed to be the likely challenger from within the shadow cabinet, but an ill-judged speech that had a whiff of eugenics about it put him firmly out of the running. It was left to Margaret Thatcher to make that challenge. She had supported Heath for the leadership in 1965 and he promoted her so enthusiastically that she even appeared, as the third of a triumvirate with Peter Walker and Tony Barber, on the cover of Andrew Roth’s 1972 study Heath and the Heathmen. Indeed, for a time she was laughingly referred to by political journalists as “Mrs Heath” – but now she had run out of patience with him. Hugh Fraser and Heath were the only other declared candidates. Fraser was a quixotic candidate at best, but he promoted himself as ‘anti-establishment’ and set out an astute critique of Heath and the effects of his leadership: ‘What was a national party has lost the support of the great industrial centres, much of Scotland and all of Ulster. Our position is now worse than in 1945. Mr Heath is a man of character and ability, but he is no political leader. He is very efficient, but believes he can only lead if he is surrounded by like minds. The result is a total domination of the party by one man, a domination that reduced our party to its present state.’5
Heath sought to distinguish himself from his right-wing challengers: ‘It is my belief and has been for all my political life that the death of the ideal of one nation would be a disaster for Britain.’ Of the leadership election process itself, he asserted: ‘I am determined to see the procedure through – I’ve been a fighter all my life and I shall go on fighting.’6 He simply did not accept there was a case for replacing him, rejecting the suggestion that his electoral record meant he was a failure as leader: ‘I don’t think that’s a very sensible or rational approach.’7 It was becoming painfully clear that many Tory MPs disagreed with him.
Patrick Jenkin recalls Heath’s reaction to Mrs Thatcher’s decision to run:
‘Once Margaret had decided to run, she had the unenviable task of informing the incumbent of her decision. When she called on Heath to tell him this, the interview lasted for two minutes: he neither stood up nor invited her to sit, and all he said was: “If you must! You’ll lose!”*
‘The campaign was dominated by those who represented the “Anyone but Heath!” view. Many of those who supported Margaret in the first round did so in order to ensure a second ballot, in which someone more acceptable (Willie Whitelaw, in many of their minds) might stand. Hugh Fraser . . . was not expected to get more than a handful of votes, and he didn’t. All the polls showed Heath winning; all the press supported Heath; and most constituency chairmen supported him. Even though almost all of us felt depressed at the thought of Ted carrying on and thought he was now irrecoverably an electoral liability, not for nothing was it always said that “loyalty is the secret weapon of the Conservative Party”. The result of the first ballot was therefore a real shock.’
Kenneth Baker (now Lord Baker of Dorking) was Heath’s second PPS, alongside Sir Timothy Kitson. He was with Heath in the Leader of the Opposition’s room in the House of Commons when the results of the first ballot came in:
‘Ted was sitting on the sofa at the window. He looked crestfallen as it became clear that he had been beaten in the first round. Although Margaret had not received the necessary overall majority on the first ballot, she had won 130 votes to Ted’s 119. Ted decided to withdraw straight away, and with calm dignity he drew up in his own hand his resignation statement. As I left Ted’s office I passed Reggie Maudling uncharacteristically rushing down the corridor and muttering, “The Party’s taken leave of its senses. This is a black day.” Ted was shattered. He had never believed the Party would turn on him in this way.’8
William Waldegrave has a slightly different, rather more apocalyptic, recollection:
‘Tim Kitson brought the result of the leadership ballot into the big Commons office where some of us had gathered, and handed Heath the piece of paper showing that Thatcher had won the first round. There are two versions of what Heath said next: Kenneth Baker’s, “So we got it all wrong then”; and mine, “It has all gone wrong, then.” The version I remember is subtly but importantly different from Baker’s. His means “we”, and indeed “you – the staff”, have messed up the election. Mine means that he was still thinking with the clarity that made him nearly great: that everything he had inherited, from Churchill, Macmillan, Butler and the other architects of post-war British Conservatism, was about to end. I know that he was so stubborn, and so ungracious and sour in defeat because he understood that the contest was not a matter of personalities, nor even of superficial policy differences. He realised that his defeat meant that a sea change was coming over the British right. It would be the end of the attempt to maintain the social contract and a reversion to far freer economics in which the government would not regard full employment as a possible – or even legitimate – object of policy. And it would begin the inexorable rise of anti-Europeanism in the party, which had the potential to undo what Heath regarded as his greatest achievement.’9
George Hutchinson blamed Heath’s coterie for his humiliation: ‘Mr Heath’s advisers . . . displayed poor judgment and false instincts. With their loud, aggressive, pushing behaviour they were insensitive to the feelings of many Conservative MPs. Their methods were counter-productive, not least the astounding decision to advertise for support.’10 A ‘former close friend’ (what a chilling description) told one newspaper that: ‘Ted Heath lost yesterday because he ignored the little things in life which encourage and build up . . . After 1970, he spoke to me five times in 44 months as Prime Minister. He could have chatted in the Smoking Room but didn’t bother . . . Too many of us can tell the same story about him. Ted Heath believed it irrelevant to try to show human feelings.’11
Some years later, Tory MP Nigel Fisher, who had supported Mrs Thatcher’s campaign and would write a more than serviceable biography of Harold Macmillan – reflected upon what Heath had endured:
‘If the result was a triumph for Margaret Thatcher, it was a tragedy for Ted Heath. No one could have worked with greater dedication for his party and for the country; yet it had all ended in the personal humiliation of rejection by those he had sought so steadfastly to serve . . . Without a wife or children to turn to in times of trouble, Ted Heath must sometimes be a lonely man, and even those of us who, like myself, had contributed to his downfall could scarcely bear to think of his bitter disappointment. Like most of my colleagues, I wrote him a letter of genuine sympathy and soon received a magnanimous and generous reply in his own hand.’12
The morning after she was elected leader, Mrs Thatcher came to see Heath at his home, at her request. No one knows for sure exactly what transpired, but there are two basic versions. The Thatcher camp said this:
‘[Mrs Thatcher] went to see Edward Heath at his house in Wilton Street to ascertain whether he would be willing to join her Shadow Cabinet and if so in what capacity. Until she knew his answer, she could not begin to fill the other positions. She came quickly to the point: “I have said publicly that I would ask you to join the shadow cabinet. Will you do so?” Heath at once declined and added that he intended to spend a period on the back benches. Mrs Thatcher then suggested that he might be willing to take charge of the Conservative Party’s European referendum campaign from an official position. Again he refused.’13
In his memoirs, Heath wrote that:
‘Tim Kitson was approached by Mrs Thatcher’s PPS, who asked whether the leader could come to see me at my home at Wilton Street. It was suggested to Tim that she was going to offer me a job in the Shadow Cabinet. I received this message and, after careful consideration, I instructed Tim to take a message back saying that I had decided that I did not wish to join the Shadow Cabinet for the time being. I was therefore somewhat surprised when Mrs Thatcher arrived at Wilton Street at 10.30 the following morning.
‘Mrs Thatcher was obviously and understandably flustered, but I congratulated her again on her victory in the second ballot. After these preliminaries, she said there was one point on which she would value my advice. How should she handle the press, particularly at the weekly press conference held in the lobby of the House of Commons, each Thursday? This press conference was used mainly to find out the attitude of the Opposition on the parliamentary business for the coming week. I told her that handling the press was an individual matter. We all had our own ways of dealing with them, and I suggested that she should develop her existing techniques. She thanked me, rose and said goodbye. It took only a few minutes.
‘At the front door, where Tim Kitson was waiting to let her out, Mrs Thatcher asked to stay for a while longer, lest the press outside should conclude that the meeting had been a disaster. Tim took her upstairs as he was concerned that, if he took her to the downstairs dining room, they would be seen by the large number of press photographers who were waiting outside. Ten minutes later, he said goodbye to her as well. At no time during the meeting did she invite me to become a member of the Shadow Cabinet or to play any part on her front bench. This is confirmed by Tim Kitson who, standing in the hall, heard every word that passed between us, through the open door of my study.’
The two accounts may seem mutually inconsistent at first reading, but I am not sure they are: here was another example of the poor communications that had always characterised the relationship between Heath and Mrs Thatcher (and most other people too).
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Harold Wilson paid a generous tribute to his vanquished adversary:
‘While it has not escaped the notice of the House and the country over the years that the right hon. Gentleman and I have had our differences, and that neither of us has been diffident in expressing them, those differences have been political, representing a deep divergence of political philosophies. They have not been personal.
‘He has made a most notable contribution to the work of the House and has done so much to make it a more workable institution. Increasingly, there will be time to appreciate what he has done for the processes and machinery of Government, and in many and indeed fundamental areas of policy. Those are matters which history as much as his contemporaries will be called upon to judge. But, Sir, in the House of Commons setting, in this Chamber and in the conduct of business behind your Chair, whether on Privy Counsellor terms or otherwise, he has been ever considerate and understanding, and always concerned to serve the best interest of this House and its Members.’14
Heath had lost so much in the course of just one year. Even his home was still boarded up after the IRA bomb attack (‘The house sums up Ted,’ said one friend – ‘battered but not demolished’) and he had lost his £8,000 per year salary as leader. He issued a brief statement – ‘I offer my warmest congratulations to Mrs Thatcher on her election as leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons and wish her every success’ – then went to Spain to nurse his wounds and grievances. Upon his return he immediately embarked upon plans to buy a new Morning Cloud, using the insurance money from its predecessor. He also celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as an MP.
The press could still sense blood in the political waters and constantly goaded Heath on the subject of Mrs Thatcher. One interviewer15 grew desperate and asked him: ‘You must like her hairstyle?’ This was too much for Heath, who snapped: ‘I don’t believe in frivolity like that. I think politics is a serious business.’ Didn’t he feel betrayed, or even let down, persisted the journalist? ‘They were all entitled to do what they did,’ responded Heath, bleakly. ‘They have their own ambitions, and it’s a perfectly honourable thing to have ambition.’ Was it honourable to have ambitions and at the same time betray loyalty? ‘Well this is a very difficult question, which each individual has to decide for himself . . . or herself.’
In April 1975, Heath went to Germany with the LSO and André Previn. He conducted in Bonn and also attended a Königswinter event, at which he addressed some remarks to Federal President Scheel: ‘Since the last conference you have ceased to be the leader of your party. You have become instead President of the Federal Republic. This is a very welcome way of dealing with such an event. Unfortunately it applies only to those leading parties under Republican constitutions!’ At a Cricket Society lunch during the same period, Heath was the principal speaker. During the course of his speech, he made reference to overlooking a cricket ground on which women were playing. ‘I have absolutely no objection to women playing cricket,’ he told his audience. ‘I just wish they’d left it at that!’ An old friend of mine was the first person to laugh; and she was ‘rewarded with a glint of a smile’. Wilf Weeks recalls another comment Heath made: ‘Soon after he returned from his travels there was a meeting at Wilton Street to discuss the coming months and the party conference. It involved Stephen Sherbourne and Michael Young among others. The leadership election came up and to my surprise I heard [Heath] say that everything was going fine “until that woman threw her knickers in the ring”.’
Heath was quickly energised as Harold Wilson sought desperately to resolve rifts in Labour over Europe by calling the first ever national referendum. Notionally the vote was on some very minor renegotiations that he had quickly completed with the EEC, but, in reality, it was about UK membership. The Conservative Party was overwhelmingly in favour of EEC membership, sharing Heath’s vision of renewed British leadership in Europe. Its new leader Margaret Thatcher quickly resolved that she would allow Heath to be the leading Conservative figure in the campaign. She certainly had other matters that demanded her attention, as a new leader who was taking time to settle into the role. It also suited her purposes to allow Heath to restore his public dignity. There was no indication that she felt lukewarm about our membership – and photographs still circulate of her wearing an extraordinary jumper during the campaign, featuring the flags of the then nine EEC member states – but perhaps she already sensed that the EEC, with its founding document the Treaty of Rome calling for ‘ever closer union’, might one day head into uncharted waters that would be not to her taste. She passed on the referendum baton at the campaign launch on 16 April 1975 with an extraordinary show of warmth and deference:
‘It is especially appropriate that we should open the Conservative campaign to keep Britain in Europe under your Chairmanship. Because you have done more than anyone else for the Conservative cause in Europe, and to see that Britain’s place is in Europe.
‘Naturally, it’s with some temerity that the pupil speaks before the master, because you know more about it than any of the rest of us. I think there are four main reasons for Britain staying in the community. First, the community gives us peace and security in a free society. The peace and security denied to the past two generations. Second, the community gives us access to secure sources of food supply. And this is vital to us, a country which has to import half of what we need. Third, the community does more trade and gives more aid than any other group in the world, and fourth, the community gives us the opportunity to represent the Commonwealth in Europe. A Commonwealth which wants us to stay in, and has said so, and the community wants us to stay in and has shown it to be so.’16
Heath campaigned with renewed energy and vigour in the referendum campaign. He was a changed man and everyone noticed. He wanted to win the referendum – and he was determined to win big.
It was not only a question of the national interest: it was a matter of national honour. ‘We gave our word,’ he professed. ‘We made a promise. We entered a commitment. And we signed a treaty. If one treaty is broken there is no reason why anyone should expect another one to be kept.’ At a rally in Trafalgar Square on 4 May, he said this: ‘It is those who talk loudest about international brotherhood – those on the far Left – who are most frightened about the big world. For people like Peter Shore, international brotherhood stops at Margate. Just look at those who want us to pull out of Europe, to become an isolated off-shore island . . . They all look so miserable! Who in their right minds would go on a desert island with them?’ Debating with Michael Foot later in the campaign, he radiated scorn: ‘I don’t believe that sovereignty is something which you hoard up like a miser, and cover up in sacking and put in the cellar.’ In May he addressed the Washington Press Club and earned a standing ovation with a speech about his hopes for Britain: ‘It is my profound conviction that we will pull ourselves out of our current malaise. If you want to put that into simple journalistic prose, you can say “I’m Backing Britain”.’ He nearly missed the engagement when his flight was cancelled. He was told there was a cargo plane flying out, but the only passengers allowed were grooms. ‘Then find me a horse,’ he responded. They made him an honorary steward for the flight – and he travelled on the flight deck.
In his final appeal to the voters, Heath emphasised the political nature of European unity:
‘Why was the Common Market formed in the first place? Quite simply, in order to stop a third European war this century. The wars of 1914 and 1939 were both triggered off in our own continent of Europe. On each occasion the old arch-enemies, France and Germany, were at each other’s throats. Each time, Britain tried to steer clear of what was happening. But each time we found ourselves sucked in. The price we paid was immeasurable . . . The reality in the modern world is that no country, however powerful, can hope to be entirely independent – not even the US . . . We live in an interdependent world . . . Inside the European Community we can influence the development of Europe and so increase the effective sovereignty of Britain . . . If only we had had that increased sovereignty and influence in 1914 or 1931! Not one anti-European has so far been able to demolish this argument. Instead, they are shamelessly playing upon people’s fears about food prices and jobs.’17
The day after the vote, as the results came in, Heath was in the ITN studio in London. There had been a landslide for Europe. At 4.30 pm he dashed off, changed his clothes and flew by helicopter from Battersea to Cowes. By 6.30 pm he was on board a racing boat. For six exhilarating weeks, Heath had toured up and down the land, speaking with an unfamiliar passion and eloquence; he had played a leading role in persuading Britain to embrace his European vision; and he had done much to restore his reputation amongst the British people. This may explain his state of mind afterwards, when he evidently persuaded himself that his political rehabilitation had been so comprehensive and profound that an offer of high office – perhaps, once again, the highest office of all – was now a possibility again.
His political secretary was now Stephen Sherbourne:
‘I had started working for EH weeks before and it was a real joy to work with him in that campaign. It was a whirlwind six weeks. We criss-crossed the country, speeches delivered to every kind of audience, appearances on television and radio, articles appearing everywhere – and it would not have been possible without his trust in the people who worked with him (he knew how to delegate) and his unfailing good humour.
‘He never lost his cool though although there were many occasions when he would have had good reason. Such as returning from Scotland in a tiny propeller plane, which could only take three passengers (EH, a secretary and me), when the secretary tapped the pilot on the shoulder to ask if he could possibly land somewhere, anywhere, so she could “pay a visit” and when, by the way, I was having to make use of the sick bag. Throughout the whole flight, EH sat stoically, just occasionally turning round to look at us quizzically, raising his eyebrows which was his way of saying both “I understand” and “for goodness’ sake, get a grip”.
‘After the campaign had been fought and won, EH’s reputation had risen considerably. People suddenly saw a more human and less wooden figure. The question was how would he exploit this?’
Heath now became a curious, idiosyncratic amalgam of bestselling author, international statesman, jobbing speech-maker – and back-bench Member of Parliament. For much of Heath’s life, people speculated about how he could afford to live so lavishly. Part of the answer lay in the insight that he wasn’t really ‘lavish’ at all. He could be very generous, but he also had a ‘generous’ sense of his own worth. His staff were always being exhorted to drive up speaking fees and, anyway, as a former Prime Minister, he received generous parliamentary and personal allowances; and, once he had a car and driver provided for him, plus around-the-clock protection, his travel cost him nothing. Each iteration of Morning Cloud was sold off (except in the case of No. 3, where insurance money had the same effect) to fund the building of its successor. He also made considerable money out of his books, both in the 1970s and also when his memoirs at last came out.
Perhaps the most significant development for him after he left office, however, was his association with the leading international accountancy firm Arthur Andersen. Until the mid-1970s, Arthur Andersen was overseen only by a board of people – partners and employees – from the firm itself. Then a decision was taken to set up a new body, consisting of eminent and independent persons from around the world, to perform a task akin to that of a non-executive board – looking carefully at the books, visiting offices, ensuring everything was ethical and efficient. Heath became one of the first recruits to the new ‘Public Review Board’. According to Ian Hay Davison, who recruited him, ‘an invitation to join the Public Review Board was accepted: £75,000 a year* plus free first class air travel anywhere in the world whenever he wanted it for him and one or two staff’. Hay Davison also said that Heath was much the most conscientious of its members, reading his papers with immense care and insight; and always making thoughtful and telling contributions to meetings.
Heath became a familiar face at Arthur Andersen offices across the globe. This was by far the most significant outside interest he ever took on and, despite the growing scepticism of some of the British partners in the firm, especially as he became a much more isolated figure domestically when Thatcherism was at its apogee, globally the firm valued his services highly and it was only at the very end of his life, when he was no longer able to travel, that the association ended. I travelled with him on Arthur Andersen business in the 1990s and found it refreshing to discover how highly respected, almost revered, he could be elsewhere in the world.
As Ian Hay Davison explains, the early Arthur Andersen events proved to be a useful testing ground for a new technique Heath began to develop for his speech-making, of speaking without notes:
‘His first task was to address the partners meeting in September 1975 at the Hilton in New York. He gave a brilliant, one-hour “tour d’horizon” of world foreign affairs without a pause and ending precisely on time. Asked afterwards for the text for circulation to the firm we found that there were no notes: his entire speech was extempore. The same was true of many other long talks he gave to AA meetings: he memorised everything. I retired from the firm in 1983, but Ted stayed on until at least 2000, unwilling to give up the perks of what was in fact the only permanent employment he accepted in his retirement. The firm would ring and ask me how to get him to go, but I said that was then their problem.’
Heath began to establish the beginnings of his own, independent political position, whilst also dictating the first of his books – Sailing: A Course in My Life. In one article during the summer, he called for ‘an accommodation’ with the trade unions, in light of their ‘capacity to wield immense power, indeed excessive power, across the community’. The political response required, he argued, was ‘neither total resistance . . . nor total concession . . . treating trade unions like so many other bodies, as responsible participants within the democratic process rather than as rogue elements outside.’18 He was beginning to isolate himself from Mrs Thatcher and her team.
Heath spent September 1975 touring the US and the Far East, delivering a series of lectures and playing the world statesman, musing on the dangers to liberal societies of international terrorism – and ‘having to decide if, and how, restrictions on some freedom can be justified to preserve the greater freedom . . . There can be no relaxation, by the countries of the free world, in the defence of our liberties.’19 When in Beijing in September, he received a ‘surprise summons’ to see Chairman Mao for an hour of talks – a remarkable honour, cutting across established protocol, which dictated that the failing dictator would see only heads of state, prime ministers or party leaders, for twenty minutes or less. Harold Wilson received no such invitation, apparently because the Chinese regime believed he and Labour were too ‘Moscow-orientated’. In a Gallup poll, a majority of Tories (56 per cent) believed Heath was an asset to the party – the highest rating anyone achieved (Mrs Thatcher had 51 per cent).
Heath attended the party conference in October 1975 in Blackpool and shook hands with Mrs Thatcher on the platform, his appearance prompting a standing ovation from delegates. As soon as he left, however, he was caught up in a tangle of accusations and denials, when it was reported he had made disobliging remarks about Mrs Thatcher and Keith Joseph during his overnight stay at the seaside – calling them ‘traitors’ and ‘maniacs’. He even considered returning to the conference from Weymouth, where he was attending the centenary dinner of the Royal Dorset Yacht Club, in order to clear the matter up. The situation was not helped when the contents of an hour-long telephone conversation about this, between him and his private secretary Stephen Sherbourne, were leaked to the press. A statement was issued: ‘There is not a word of truth in this allegation. I am sick and tired, as no doubt Mrs Thatcher is, of those who are peddling such malicious accusations in an attempt to create dissension within the Conservative Party.’ ‘He’s not sulking,’ said Lord Hailsham. ‘He just doesn’t realise he’s no longer leader.’20
Late on the night of Saturday 8 November, Heath returned home from a dinner in Lymington to discover that a bomb had been concealed by Irish Republicans under a parked car outside his home. Fortunately for him, it had been spotted and defused. Just hours later he attended the Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph on Whitehall. It was rapidly decided that Heath should now receive around-the-clock police protection, which he retained for the rest of his life. Undaunted, he undertook a major, three-week book-signing tour to promote his book on sailing, right across the country. A month before publication, the initial print run of 40,000 copies had already sold out, half of them in the US. On 4 December at Harrods, he would sign over 1,000 copies at a single sitting, as he also did in Glasgow. On 10 December, a packed literary lunch was hosted by Foyle’s in his honour, chaired by Lord Mountbatten and attended by numerous sailing luminaries. ‘You don’t know how much a gathering of this distinction can mean to a struggling young writer like myself – I shall go away fortified and encouraged.’21 At a press gallery lunch shortly before Christmas, Heath used humour to fend off questions about Mrs Thatcher and the shadow cabinet: ‘It seems to me strange, when so many people want to be in the shadow cabinet and can’t be, that the one chap who doesn’t want to be in it should be thought a criminal.’22
Heath had always taken great care, however busy he was with other responsibilities, conscientiously to nurse Bexley, never forgetting that he had snatched it from Labour by only 133 votes in 1950. Now he had been relieved by ungrateful parliamentary colleagues of his front-bench responsibilities, not unreasonably, his constituents hoped to see rather more of him; and his agent Jeffery Speed had some very carefully devised plans for ensuring Heath really ‘worked his patch’:
‘Ted Heath, so far as I could tell, had never offered surgeries to his constituents, on the basis that most problems related to the local council, and if they needed to approach their MP they should write to him at the House of Commons, where he and his staff would deal with their concerns. As soon as his status reverted to backbencher, I mounted my campaign to persuade him to hold monthly advice bureaux by getting agreement from the council group leader that a rota of borough councillors would be established, to hold their own surgeries monthly and concurrently. Ted agreed to a trial period, provided the duty councillor would head off the nutters, and those with problems solely relating to the council.
‘This worked well, and he quickly took to the whole experience, particularly as I arranged for surgeries to be followed by supper at a local restaurant or pub, with me and the Association Chairman. On the most memorable occasion I had arranged for dinner at the local up-market Chinese restaurant, for Ted plus the chairman and me and our wives, with his driver and protection officer dining at the next table. Ted greatly enjoyed acting as our host serving us with Sweet and Sour Lobster, a huge steamed sea bass, which he dissected with his chopsticks, and an array of luxurious classic communal dishes. The owner having said that he would accept no payment, Ted gave him a copy of his latest book Sailing – A Course in my Life, which I happened to have in my car, duly autographed and personalised.
‘That book on sailing, and those on music and travels which followed, were the cause of many signing sessions, and I started to feel more like a literary agent, than a political one. He often went on signing tours by train (though I was not asked to accompany him outside our immediate area) and this gave rise to one cartoon in the Daily Telegraph showing a man at Bexley station asking for a RailRover ticket “because I need to see my MP!”’
Heath’s attendance in Parliament was now somewhat intermittent, to put it kindly, but he did like to show his face on big occasions, for instance on 12 January 1976, when he attended a statement about the security situation in Northern Ireland and warned that ‘it was possible for the previous Administration to deal with the situation in Londonderry only by the use of overwhelming forces’. Wilson, to everyone’s surprise, reacted not with hostility but with warm praise for the ‘experience, wisdom and knowledge’ of his erstwhile opponent. In the same week, Heath won praise from the New Statesman, whose political correspondent wrote that ‘now he is a statesman rather than a politician, he dips into the store of his experience, and hands out advice in such a way that one quite forgets what things were like when he was at the helm of state . . . I would certainly buy a used car from this man.’ When Mrs Thatcher reshuffled her front bench in mid-January, there was no room on it either for Heath or for Peter Walker, though Douglas Hurd did become a junior spokesman on foreign affairs.
As 1976 progressed, Heath’s diary was so busy that even his beloved conducting sometimes had to take second place – in a short space of time, he turned down an invitation to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and also an invitation from the former US Ambassador in London, Walter Annenberg, to conduct in Philadelphia. Much of Heath’s travelling in this period was connected to his books and it was reported in May 1976 that Sailing had sold 88,000 copies, at £5.50 each. In the autumn his second book, Music: A Joy for Life, would be published. The initial print run was 94,500 copies, of which Heath would duly sign an estimated 12,500 copies. In 1976 he recorded a twelve-part LBC series on sailing, to promote the book. At Easter 1976, Heath went to Spain, opening a golf tournament at El Paraiso in a Good Friday downpour. He then enjoyed a cruise, spent an evening at a flamenco show and presented the Heath Trophy at a yachting regatta. The climax was a grand gala and banquet at which he was named ‘Tourist of the Year’. His original itinerary included a bullfight – and a leading Spanish toreador was flown in – but Heath declined, instead visiting a sherry bodega at Jerez. He had formal audiences with the King and senior ministers – and reported back to both the Conservative and Labour party leaderships. On his return Heath said it was time to ‘forget the memories and passions aroused by the Spanish Civil War and the memories of the Franco regime’. He also dubbed Gibraltar an ‘anachronism’ – and called upon Spain to open the border.
The journalist and commentator Ian Waller of the Daily Telegraph accompanied Heath on that Spanish trip and his analysis makes for interesting reading:
‘I saw a totally different person from the distant, often arrogant and sometimes gratuitously offensive man I have known at Westminster for the past 20 years. He was relaxed, amusing and at times engagingly frank about the political world of Westminster. Also about some of those he met. After being harangued by a much bejewelled and rather vulgar English lady about her tax problems, that had forced her to emigrate to the Costa del Sol, he turned to me and said: “That’s the sort of Tory I can do without.” I happened to be with him as he was about to leave for the airport, on the way back to the Queen’s birthday party at Windsor. I have always regarded Mr Heath as the model of efficiency, a highly organised man. But it was so like my own departures – a lost passport – where are the Traveller’s Cheques? The way a man, particularly a bachelor, gets on with the young is no bad yardstick, and it was fascinating to see him with the Kitson children, affectionate without being patronising and clearly enjoying their company as much as they did his.’23
In May 1976, Heath’s friend, adviser and confidant Michael Wolff died. In the weeks and months after, Heath showed particular consideration to Wolff’s widow Rosemary, who told one journalist: ‘Mr Heath is just one of the kindest and most generous hearted people I have ever known. He has been tremendously kind to me.’ At one public function he brought her with him and publicly embraced her.
On 9 June 1976, mysterious reports appeared to the effect that Heath would be willing to serve under Mrs Thatcher in government (though not in a shadow role). He issued an immediate denial: ‘There has been no change in the situation. I don’t see how there could be any stories involving me because nothing has happened.’ He did, however, cut short a trip to Singapore in order to support a censure motion against the Labour Government, which was lost by nineteen votes. He didn’t speak and, according to one report, a ‘Senior Conservative’ commented after the debate: ‘Ted just stared straight ahead like a man in his own world . . . Margaret could have done with all the support she could get today and a “hear, hear” or some other gesture from Ted would have helped.’24
Efforts continued to bring Heath back into the fold. His former PPS Tim Kitson used a speech to send a thinly coded message to both Heath and the leadership: ‘I, like all of you here, want to see the Conservative Party fighting the next election using all its talents.’25 The Sunday Telegraph commented on 13 June: ‘What . . . can be said with absolute confidence is that Mr Heath will never do to Mrs Thatcher what Mr Powell did to him: that is to say, give comfort to Labour in a general election. So presumably, when that moment comes, his innate loyalty to the Party, and concern for the country, will lead him to find ways of fighting hard on the Right side.’ That same month, in a BBC interview with Robin Day, Heath said, ‘It is . . . right when a new leader has been elected, then there should be an opportunity for the leader to do what she wanted and in her own way, and I thought I was able to play a much better part by sitting in the corner seat below the gangway.’ Day was quoted in the Daily Telegraph, saying: ‘The relationship between Mrs Thatcher and Mr Heath is as cold and distant as at any time since she ousted him as Conservative leader, and the general view in the party ranks is that Mr Heath is still sulking.’ Heath responded tersely: ‘That’s absolute nonsense.’26
In July 1976, in the week of his sixtieth birthday, Heath tacked further away from the party leadership. He was increasingly uneasy with the party’s drift towards liberal free-market economics, remaining wedded to concepts of social partnership and the effectiveness of an incomes policy:
‘I fully and unequivocally support the agreement which the Government have reached with the trade unions. I do not believe that we should hedge about it. I do not view it as being in any way unconstitutional. It is a formalisation of what has been going on for many years in the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s office in the Treasury before every Budget . . . We ought to recognise that to have an incomes policy which is, in the circumstances, quite a tough one, especially when we are on the upturn of the trade cycle, is a remarkable achievement.’
On 8 July, in an interview on BBC radio, Heath attacked Keith Joseph’s penchant for contracting out policy-making to think tanks – ‘I have no time for private armies of that kind’. On 9 July – Heath’s birthday itself – journalist Gordon Greig asked:
‘Won’t the bitterness ever end? . . . For all the wishful thinking, a real reconciliation is just not on before the next Election – and may be superfluous after it. For Heath to accept a Shadow Cabinet place now would simply be to admit he was wrong. And to him the memory of his last General Election defeat is almost as fresh and deeply wounding as the outcome of the leadership contest . . . What is happening now is not a question of the Tory Party being too small for Mrs Thatcher and Mr Heath. A Tory Party without Ted Heath would be too small. There must be toleration, if not concern, for his uncomfortable situation.’27
The following day a senior party member was quoted thus: ‘I have warned Ted that he is risking his own future by his behaviour. He must not do what Enoch Powell did and lose his political base. There is still a large fund of goodwill for him in the party, but he is increasingly alienating people.’28 There was an undated letter to Heath from Douglas Hurd at around this time, which provides a flavour of the frustration and angst Heath was generating amongst his well-wishers by his grumpy and surly behaviour:
‘This is a bit of a cri de coeur! I very much hope you will be able when you speak this week to mention appreciatively what Geoffrey Howe is doing to sort out the differences in the Party on monetary and incomes policy, e.g. his immense speech to the Bow Group and his Daily Telegraph article . . . GH is groping (manfully, I think) for a set of general proposals which would repair bridges within the Party – and be roughly what a sensible Conservative Govt wd have to do . . .We simply can’t afford to drift on, with you and the present leadership apparently at odds. No one who has ears can doubt the strength of your friends in the country and therefore of your influence in the election . . . But an election which we lose, apparently because of disunity, would be a disaster for you, Mrs T and all of us . . . I think you have quite enjoyed being a volcano on the edge of the plain, watching the tribesmen scurry about when you erupt – but I wonder if that period shouldn’t come to a close!’29
In a major interview during that long, hot summer, Heath was in no mood for modesty, false or otherwise:
‘I am not taking part in . . . the daily dog fight of party politics, but I am trying to deal with the really big issues . . . I can look back on the four years in which I was Prime Minister, in which I took Britain into the Community, and I believe that was a very great achievement. I think the historians looking back will say that it was the outstanding achievement of British politics, certainly in this century and probably for longer and I think also we had other achievements to our credit. We are going through a period now in which some people have lost their nerve and decry everything which was done during those four years, and others have allowed the myths to accumulate as to what is supposed to have happened . . . But we can resume our course, and our job is to persuade the rest of the country that it is the most meaningful course for them to take.’30
At the party conference in October 1976, Heath decided to speak. He had a seat on the platform, but he chose to speak from the rostrum below it. He was very nervous, so Rosemary Wolff attended with him. His presence dominated the conference for two days and he deliberately left before the last day. For once, he was on best behaviour. In a notable speech – the only one in which he endorsed his successor by name, albeit by using a wince-inducing multiple negative – he publicly accepted the policies set out by the leadership in its document ‘The Right Approach’. The Daily Telegraph on 7 October claimed that his speech ‘marked a welcome end to a divisive and unhappy period in Tory politics’ – even though he spoke ‘with a noticeable fall in his voice, which emphasised that the words were hard to say’. ‘I have no doubt we would not flinch in future in taking difficult decisions which are in the national interest,’ Heath told delegates. ‘I have complete confidence they will be taken by Margaret Thatcher and her colleagues on the platform.’ Heath won three ovations – two before his speech and one after. Mrs Thatcher reciprocated by referring to him in her speech: ‘As Ted Heath said with such force on Wednesday, Britain is at the end of the road. As we all know, he is a man who never sold the truth to serve the hour. I am indeed grateful for what he said. Let us all have his courage.’
Veteran Tory columnist Ronald Butt made this comment: ‘What matters now is to remember that the revolution that ousted Mr Heath was not just about personality: it was about policy, and that battle is over.’ Then his old nemesis Harold Wilson stirred things up by saying that Heath ‘had a lot more in him than he showed as leader of his party . . . But I don’t think the Tories treated Ted right. We are seeing now the real Edward Heath . . . I think Mr Heath would still regard himself as combat worthy.’31
Despite all his misgivings and his sense of having been badly mistreated, Heath still enjoyed campaigning actively and the rune-readers sensed his commitment to the party was growing stronger. After the Tories spectacularly gained both the Walsall North and Workington constituencies at simultaneous by-elections on 4 November, he commented: ‘I know after speaking to a great election meeting at Walsall that our people, racked with anxiety, will back the measures necessary to save our future. Let us Conservatives now rally the nation. We can beat this crisis.’
Mere weeks later, however, Heath was rebelling over devolution, telling the House of Commons on 16 December 1976:
‘I do not think that in these circumstances anybody would expect me to vote against the Government’s Bill. People know my history. I may be inflexible and very obstinate. On the other hand, it may be that I sustain my beliefs. My beliefs at the moment are that this devolution, to which I have been committed for a decade, is necessary and urgent. My purpose remains to keep the Union of Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. I believe that the best way of maintaining this Union is to have devolution.’32
It had been a busy year for Heath, and he chose to end it with a thirteen-day Caribbean cruise in the company of his old friend and frequent ‘concert buddy’ Moura Lympany – and the English Chamber Orchestra. The Daily Express on 22 December cheekily speculated: ‘Miss Lympany, 60, whose two previous marriages were dissolved, would surely like nothing better than to become the first Mrs Ted Heath.’
Early in 1977, when tributes were paid to his old boss Anthony Eden in the House of Lords, Heath was the only MP to come and listen, but his parliamentary attendance was nonetheless the subject of adverse comment: in 1976/77 Heath voted in 46 out of 234 divisions – a proportion of 19.6 per cent, compared with 36.1 per cent in 1975/76. There was speculation that he might become a Knight of the Garter, joining Harold Wilson and, possibly, replacing Eden – but he was not yet ready to play the elder statesman. In fact, he remained busy throughout this period. By the end of 1977, for example, he had undertaken seventy-eight party speeches, thirty-six non-party speeches, ten major speeches abroad and ninety-four TV/radio/press interviews; and 1978 would be no less busy. He was scathing about Harold Wilson’s virtual disappearance from politics since stepping down as Prime Minister: ‘We were never similar characters. I don’t recall one speech he’s given about policy for the future since he left office. He always seems to be talking about the past.’ Wilson was out of politics, he said, ‘but I am still very much in it’.33 And when he was asked about his future intentions during these years, Heath merely responded that, ‘people will just have to keep on speculating’.
Much of the speculation was driven by his evident lack of commitment to the party leadership. In March 1978, during a debate in the House, a Tribunite Labour MP taunted Mrs Thatcher with a cry of, ‘She’s not doing very well is she?’ According to witnesses, Heath lifted his head and gave a huge wink to the Labour benches. Then in mid-June it was reported that Heath had had dinner with the party chairman, Lord Thorneycroft, and discussed a heavy itinerary for the general election campaign that was widely expected to take place in the autumn. He would apparently be receiving full support from Central Office, including itinerary planning and visits to locations running into double figures, moving one ‘associate’ of his to comment, ‘it would be bloody ridiculous for Ted to rush up and down the country calling for a Tory government and then refuse to serve in the Government once it was formed’.34
There was much talk about Heath becoming one of the first phalanx of directly elected British Members of the European Parliament, who were to be elected in 1979. Heath’s view was that this was another method of ‘trying to get rid of me’, but many of his friends as well as his detractors thought this might be an appropriate outlet for his talents and energies, as Richard Simmonds explains:
‘After he ceased to be Party Leader, Ted turned down a number of jobs, saying that he wanted to remain in the House of Commons. When it was announced that there were to be direct elections to the European Parliament, many friends thought that this would be ideal for Ted and Europe. A number of continental former Chancellors and Prime Ministers, Willy Brandt and Michel Debré (who twice said “Non” to British Membership of the then EEC) amongst them, had already announced their candidature. Douglas Hurd and others suggested this to Ted and got a negative grunt. In the end, I was asked to go and see him. We talked for half an hour, and he then asked me, “But why do you want me to go to the European Parliament?” In exasperation, having previously detailed my case at some length, I replied, “Because I want someone to carry my bags for me.” This startled Ted, and he grinned and said, “I will ponder the matter and write to you.” A week later I received a long hand-written letter, thanking me and others for their interest, and saying that he had thought long and hard, and it was the Commons for him. It was Europe’s loss.’
On 5 July 1978, Heath made what was termed at the time a ‘truce’ speech, at the Penistone by-election, where he said the following:
‘May I add a personal word? I can tell all of you here tonight that during this election campaign I shall fight just as hard as I have ever done for the return of a Conservative Government . . . I shall do so because I believe it to be in the best interests of Britain . . . I shall continue to play my part and . . . the change of leadership makes no difference to my determination to install a Conservative government once again in office. I wish Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues every success. Together we must fight hard to gain the victory we all want.’
The sighs of relief at Central Office were probably audible even in Yorkshire. Mrs Thatcher responded in gushing phrases: ‘I welcome the warm terms in which Ted Heath has pledged his support. It will give added strength to the Conservative cause in the battles ahead. We shall all be working together for a decisive Conservative victory.’35 By some counts, this was the sixth occasion on which the Heath–Mrs Thatcher rift had supposedly been repaired. It later transpired there had been several drafts of Heath’s proposed comments and this section had, in fact, been toned down. Furthermore, Mrs Thatcher had the ‘Penistone Proclamation’ checked against delivery before her response was issued.
A few days later, Mrs Thatcher was asked about Heath when she was campaigning in Moss Side.36 She had offered Heath jobs in Europe, she said, but he had refused: ‘He is Mr Europe. He took us into Europe. Obviously, I always ask him if he is interested when appointments arise. That’s the position. If you make too much of this, you’ll do it wrongly. It is a matter of courtesy, no more than that – of clearing these things with him . . . I have no idea of the kind of job he might accept.’ Of his words at Penistone, she said: ‘It was a very, very warm statement from a reserved person. My colleagues in the House were, I think, as pleased as I was.’ Did she have Heath’s full support? ‘Oh I do indeed. Ted is a very reserved person and therefore he delivered his speech in a very reserved way. But for him it was wonderful . . . I think the press have overplayed the differences between us. Now that there is this tremendous speech they are wondering why they have overplayed the differences.’ Nine days after that, she said: ‘I hope Mr Heath will fight a good, ebullient fight on behalf of the Conservative cause. He knows that as party leader I will form my Cabinet afterwards. I think he would like it that way. It leaves him freer.’37
The peace did not last long. On 11 October, in a television interview on ITN, Heath backed the Labour Government’s proposed 5 per cent pay limit, just twenty-four hours after Mrs Thatcher had denounced it:
‘I am sure the Prime Minister is right to say that this is the best judgement we can make about what the country can stand. I believe the British people think this as well. They have a deep-seated fear of another wage explosion . . . They have a deep-seated fear that our parliamentary democracy – the Government, the Cabinet and MPs – are going to be overruled again by one section . . . I am giving my own views, which are based on my own experience.’38
In his speech to the party conference the same week, he adhered to this view. If the Government’s pay policy were to break down, he said, ‘there is nothing here for gloating, nothing for joy – we should grieve for our country’. On 19 October, in a speech to Chelsea Conservatives, he explained his position in greater detail and explained why he did not see it as ‘heresy’: ‘No government, no Prime Minister, no Chancellor, wishes to become involved in the complexities and intricacies of pay. They don’t do it because they want to; they do it because they have to . . . The debate should not acquire the characteristics of a religious war – we are not having to choose between two different philosophies, each of which claims a monopoly of knowledge and certainty.’
Ten days later, Heath and Wilf Weeks travelled together to Yorkshire, to meet some old friends:
‘One of the TV channels asked EH to take part in a discussion and documentary about the miners’ strike which involved a visit to a colliery and miners’ social club. The mood was amazingly friendly and the miners and EH got on like old friends. At some stage in the proceedings a swanky car arrived to ferry EH from the club to the top of one of the mine shafts. EH refused to be filmed riding in such a posh car and so a Cortina was produced and Heath, and EH else, was happy. One of the miners’ officials told EH: “If we have to choose between you and Maggie, we’ll have you.”’
The NUM man was not alone in this view. On 10 November, an NOP poll suggested that, were Heath to replace Mrs Thatcher, the Tory lead would rise from 3 to 14 per cent. Asked who would make the best Tory Prime Minister, 55 per cent of those supported Heath, against 33 per cent for Mrs Thatcher. Her satisfaction rating was minus 13 per cent. Heath cannot have been upset by this. In autumn 1978, Jim Callaghan funked the chance to hold an election that he might, just, have won. Consequently, against all odds and expectation, the Labour Government had survived into 1979, which would have to be election year. On 1 March, Labour lost two more seats to the Tories in by-elections and, on 28 March, by 311 votes to 310, a motion of no confidence was passed in the Callaghan Government.
Simon Hoggart recorded Heath’s reaction to this historic event:
‘Jim Callaghan had announced the election, and the Conservatives seemed the almost certain winners. In the Conservative whips’ office, the first bottles of champagne were being unpopped. Ted Heath walked slowly away from the Lobby, a look of resigned gloom on his face, like Sidney Carton with toothache. A Tory whip rushed up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Ted, come for a drink with us!” Heath slowly shook his head and walked on. “Just this once, this one time,” pleaded the whip, but Heath did not break step, moving slowly through the sounds of revelry, alone towards his office. In the manner of a Buckingham Palace spokesman apologising for Princess Anne, one of Heath’s assistants later told me that he had not realised at the time that Mrs Thatcher would be present at the piss-up. I wonder. He was certainly as glum as I have ever seen him.’39
Election Day would be Thursday 3 May. As Heath campaigned vigorously for the return of a Conservative Government, there was renewed (and predictable) speculation about what role he might play in it. ‘Whenever I have been asked to serve my country, I have done so,’ he told reporters. During the campaign Heath was the target of considerable vituperation from Labour, who evidently thought they could exploit the gap between him and Mrs Thatcher. Denis Healey described Heath as ‘The Bourbon of Bexley’* and Jim Callaghan issued a mischievous warning to Mrs Thatcher about the lurking danger of Heath: ‘He has an unforgiving nature. She will have to watch out. He regards himself as the natural leader of the Tory party in exile and who knows? One day soon he may be . . . one slip be her . . .’ [mimics a throat slash] ‘and what a happy band of brothers and sisters they will be . . . he cannot find anything good to say about his leader. It would stick in his throat. So what does he do? He abuses me.’40 Heath warned in response that the UK faced a risk of becoming the ‘ageing comic of the world’. He campaigned hard and certainly stayed loyal in public: ‘We can settle for more of the same or we can opt for a new start. It is this start which Britain needs and it is a Conservative Government that will give Britain fresh hope.’ On 1 May he broke off campaigning to pay generous tribute at a memorial service for Reggie Maudling. He must have sensed an era was ending for him too. Heath was represented at the daily meetings of Mrs Thatcher’s campaign team by Michael Young, who sensed at once that she had developed a certain contempt and even dislike for her predecessor, after four years of his sniping. It was via Young that she first sounded out Heath about the possibility of him becoming ambassador to Washington, in the event of a Conservative victory. Even before she won the election, she was planning to get him out of the way.
When Mrs Thatcher did lead the Tories back to power, Heath struggled to find anything positive to say about her. On election night he merely said he was ‘delighted by the results, especially my own . . . I almost doubled my majority with a swing of 7 per cent . . . I am very happy about that . . . About my own future I have one aim, and that is to serve the party.’ It didn’t take long for that to change. Heath wrote a note of congratulation to Mrs Thatcher at once and went to stay with Charles and Sara Morrison in Wiltshire. On the Friday evening, the new Prime Minister sent him a short, hand-written and not unfriendly letter informing him that she had ‘thought long and deeply about post of Foreign Secretary and have decided to offer it to Peter Carrington, who, as I am sure you will agree, will do the job superbly’. Heath let it be known that he would carry on as a backbencher. Peter Thorneycroft was unsympathetic: ‘So Ted didn’t get that job, but, you know, cabinet office is not a reward for long service in the parties . . . We all have different roles to play and I am sure Ted Heath will find a new role for himself.’41 Heath later told the BBC’s John Cole that he had reconciled himself to never serving as a minister under Mrs Thatcher when, on a flight from Geneva to Paris, he had read an interview in which she had asserted there would be no room in a government she led for anyone who disagreed with ‘the central thrust of policy’.
Talking to Jean Rook days after the election, Heath sought to sound phlegmatic:
‘I didn’t think Mrs Thatcher would want me in her Cabinet . . . [I am] not bitter and not sad – in politics you have to learn to live with things. I wanted my party to win, to succeed. So I went on a nationwide tour to help, as was only right . . . But I don’t know how anyone can accuse me of sulking . . . “Heath is sulking in his tent” – that’s a typical, nasty press remark . . . In the last 4 years I’ve spoken at nearly 400 meetings and been all over radio and telly . . . I went up and down the country before the election and made 70 speeches and I think I did a lot to win the marginals . . . if that’s supposed to be “sulking” I just don’t know what they’re talking about . . . If I’m wasted, that’s for you to say, not I . . . I shall sit on the back bench, look after my constituency and make major speeches . . . You ask if I’m still ambitious. I am for my dream of a country that isn’t torn apart, one that’ll catch up with the world instead of lagging behind it as we have been doing.’42
So far as Mrs Thatcher was concerned, Heath had this to say: ‘I want her to succeed for the party’s sake and the country.’ Did he like her, though, or dislike her, what did he make of her? ‘No comment and dot, dot, dot . . .’ Jean Rook noted that Heath had ‘a removed, glacial quality that gains him admiration, but lost him his leadership’ and asked about whether he planned to write some candid memoirs. He responded: ‘I shall write the whole story and it will be the whole truth. I shall tell everything.’ At the end of the interview, Jean Rook, who greatly admired Mrs Thatcher but always had a soft spot for Heath as well, could not contain her frustration any longer. ‘I can’t see why two great talents can’t get together for the good of us all,’ she told Heath. ‘And if the rift’s not your fault, if I were in your shoes, I’d be sitting here, tearing my hair and my nails with fury and frustration at being done out of a good job I know I could do.’ Heath responded coolly: ‘You’re a very human person aren’t you? I wouldn’t think of carrying on like that. But I’m well known, aren’t I, for being cold and inhuman?’43
Over the weekend of 12–13 May, Heath was sailing again, clearing his head and escaping from politics. There was another blow to come, which was, by any standards, poorly judged by Mrs Thatcher. Michael Jopling was the new Government chief whip and, on Monday 14 May, he suddenly found he had some fire-fighting to do:
‘When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, one of the first things she did was to send a letter to Ted Heath offering the appointment of Ambassador in Washington. He responded rather gruffly to say he was not interested and was seriously miffed that she had signed the letter “Margaret Thatcher” and not “Margaret”. She was totally mortified that, in the hectic days of arriving at Number 10 Downing Street, she had unwittingly and abruptly contravened the conventions of Parliamentary courtesies. So she wrote another letter to apologise and instructed me, as the new Chief Whip, to deliver it in person. Indeed she made me watch her, as she signed it “Margaret”. So, as a former Whip in his Government and a successor to Ted as Chief Whip, I went round to his home in Wilton Street to deliver it. I thought I might at least be offered a drink, but all I got was a grunt.’
Heath responded tersely: ‘Dear Margaret, thank you for your note. As I have said, I do wish to stay in the Commons. I am sure you will be able to find somebody to do the job well. Yours, Ted.’ He must have been incandescent with fury. He had already been sounded out more than once about this post, before the election; and each time he had made it clear he was just not interested. The Daily Telegraph applauded both his decision to carry on as an MP and also his general grumpiness: ‘We do not always agree with Mr Heath’s pronouncements. But long may he continue to annoy, inspire and goad his countrymen from below the gangway in the House of Commons.’44 Heath now threw himself into the campaign for the first direct elections to the European Parliament. Speaking at Burnham, near Slough, on 17 May he said: ‘No one in my generation can fail to draw the contrast of forty years ago. In 1939 we were sliding into a conflict that tore Europe apart. Now we are about to elect a Parliament that will represent our community of interests.’ He was not included at the press launch of the Tories’ Euro campaign, but Central Office did issue his speeches in full.
It seems almost incredible now, but sentiment within the Conservative Party – amongst paid staff and volunteers alike – was genuinely very, very positive about the EEC at that time and this was a positive campaign. In fact, Heath felt secure enough about that to make one of his few recorded criticisms of the EEC, when he said on 28 May: ‘The budgetary contribution of Britain and some other countries is beginning to appear unfair, and a permanent form of adjustment must be found to rectify this.’ Mrs Thatcher made one major appearance during the campaign – at a European Youth Rally on 2 June – at which she spoke warmly of the benefits of the free movement of labour and described herself and her colleagues as ‘wholehearted supporters of the Community and as resolute champions of the European ideal . . . Only if we pool our resources and share in each other’s strength will free Europe survive. Only if we speak together can we expect the world to heed the voice of Europe. The new directly elected European Parliament will be one expression of that voice.’
That summer, not for the first or last time, Heath nearly died, in a disastrous Fastnet Race. Heath was, again, captain of the British Admiral’s Cup team for the Fastnet; 316 boats started at Cowes, of which only 128 finished at Plymouth. No fewer than twenty-three had sunk or been abandoned and 165 were forced to retire – a total of 136 crewmen were rescued but fifteen died. Morning Cloud was ‘picked up by a roaring wave and knocked down on her side’ passing the Fastnet rock at 2.15 am, but righted herself. Just. After that lucky escape, Heath soon had another one when, as the first Western politician to visit Tibet in twenty-five years, the Russian-built plane on which he was travelling crash-landed, and two of its tyres burst.
For the triumphant party conference in October 1979, Heath had the perfect alibi: he was working in Brussels on the Brandt report. The preparation, publication and promotion of the report would keep him busy for much of the next few years. Peter Luff ran Heath’s private office during this period. His memories of this period shed some light on the man – as opposed to the politician:
‘Much has been written about his shortcomings (and there were quite a few including abruptness, intolerance of fools, a total disregard for punctuality and a reluctance to pursue tasks that did not interest him), but behind this formidable and often difficult man was, perhaps too cunningly concealed, a human being of real charm.
‘One note, sent to him by the office secretaries, reminded him that it was my birthday. It came back with two words written on it: “Congratulate him”. To those that did not know EH that may seem a little curt, but it was typical of his dry sense of humour. Once you understood his humour, you gained a deeper appreciation of this sincere, witty and really rather shy man.
‘Imagining he would enjoy it, for a birthday celebration in July 1981, we took him to see the satirical farce Anyone for Denis* and then on to supper at my home. His thank you letter read, “Thank you for your splendid birthday present in taking me to that ghastly play about M and D and for your most enjoyable hospitality thereafter . . . it marked a memorable occasion in the life of the office from which I hope you will all soon recover.”
‘It actually was a ghastly play, but watching him during the performance and talking to him afterwards it was clear he just didn’t like the office of Prime Minister being mocked and that he disapproved of the nature of the personal attacks on Margaret Thatcher. I felt he respected her at all times – he often reminded people that was why he had put her in his cabinet in the first place. Initially his dislike appeared to be reserved for those around her who briefed against him. Latterly it became more personal, on both sides. It was significant, though, that Lady Thatcher attended his funeral. The joke was that she had gone to make sure he really was dead, but as I looked at her that day, I sensed she was there because she still felt something for the man who had first made her a minister.
‘His shyness was the key to understanding him. He was relaxed talking to audiences of hundreds but so often awkward in private conversation. What he relished in those private moments was people who stood up to him, but he did not seem to realise how intimidating and rude he could appear. This meant that many simply deferred to him or were reduced to the kind of inanities that clearly bored him. It was a lesson I really only learned when my young fiancée, Julia, was talking to him at a social occasion and he was being difficult. To my amazement she said, “Oh for Heaven’s sake, Ted, don’t be so pompous!” Well, she may have said “Mr Heath”, but it was still equally courageous. He stared at her, paused, said “Oh”, paused again, said “Oh!” two, or three more times, and then the shoulders started to heave in that characteristic and very physical laugh of his, so beloved of the impressionists of the time. He was delighted, and so was I – delighted and relieved.
‘Another surprise was, in 1981, the diagnosis of hypothyroidism. His incessant tendency to fall asleep in public was dismissed by his friends as “That’s Ted!”, but I was not convinced. I bullied and cajoled his doctor, Brian Warren, into referring EH to a specialist. My conviction that he was ill was quickly confirmed and he cancelled all engagements and retreated for a period of convalescence to the Imperial Hotel in Torquay. His very private personality meant he would not disclose the nature of the illness, leading to much, perfectly understandable, speculation. Happily it was wrong and his condition was far from terminal. I greatly enjoyed my trips to Torquay to keep him up-to-date with events in the office and his constituency, since he was so relaxed and happy. One key to his happiness was his discovery of the joys of televised snooker and I soon learnt not to disturb him while a game was in progress . . . This was not the most likely passion for EH, but it was not the only surprise. I had to ensure he could attend a Rod Stewart concert and to get him tickets for the new West End production of “Oklahoma”. He explained that this energetic, lively musical had burst into London just after the war with its young cast of singers and dancers and that it had reminded the wartime generation of the joy of living. So to the great opera composers that he loved and admired – Mozart and Wagner – add the names of Rodgers, as in Hammerstein.’
Almost unbelievably, Heath began 1980 by criticising the EEC again, this time for its lack of urgency. He was readily drawn into the controversy over whether British athletes should boycott the forthcoming Olympic Games in Moscow, in light of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the House of Commons, he developed a theme that was by now dear to his heart – that the Western powers needed to stop and reflect before engaging in ‘gun-boat diplomacy’ – because other nations and cultures do not think as we do, nor should they be expected to:
‘The West has had no clear strategy of any sort whatever for the past six years, and from that springs the greatest danger to the world. That is what we are discussing today – the danger of a third world war because we stumble into it by mistake or by misjudgement. That is the real danger that we face today.
‘We have long thought that people in the Muslim world wanted the Western way of life, that if they did not want it they ought to want it, and that in any case they were jolly well going to get it. What has now been shown in Iran, and is being shown elsewhere in the Muslim world, is that none of those things is true. There is a younger generation which does not want the Western way of life and which wants to go back to what it believes to be a simpler, older, authoritative – sometimes we would say authoritarian – way of life, according to the Muslim religion. I remember going into Tehran during last summer . . . There were 5 million cars, there were luxury hotels, the women were all liberated, and there were discotheques, alcohol and pornography – all the best that we could give them. How could they want to change that? But the fact is that they did, and we have to recognise it. We have to accept these facts in making a relationship with the Muslim world, otherwise we have no means of looking after our security and that of the developing world.
‘The Olympic Games are a matter for natural differences of opinion. I happen to be one of those who take part in sport. I am proud that I have captained two national teams in international sport. I believe that we should keep politics out of sport. I fully accept that other people do not, but that does not alter my view. Nor do I think that having the Olympic Games in Moscow is only a question of prestige for Moscow. It is a question of prestige wherever the Games go . . . The question that I ask myself is this: “If the Soviet Union is as determined on aggression as is said, will abandoning the Olympic Games really stop it?” I find it difficult to believe that it will. But if individuals, teams or nations do not want to take part, it is fully up to them to take their decision.’45
Returning early from a conference in Europe to address a Young Conservatives’ conference on 13 April 1980, Heath was critical of Mrs Thatcher’s first threat to withhold contributions to the EEC budget, unless reforms were made: ‘I don’t see how in this country one can lecture trade unions about observing the law, or hooligans about behaving themselves, if the Government say they are going deliberately to adopt a policy of breaking international law.’ He also said it was not a matter for him, whether or not he was asked to serve as a minister: ‘In my experience one doesn’t fill in an application form to ask to join a government. Things have to move the other way.’ At around this time, there was more speculation that a big international job – this time as head of the World Bank – was beckoning. The more there was of this kind of speculation, the more resolutely Heath adhered to his avowed desire to stay in the House of Commons, firmly rooted below the gangway, serving as a thorn in his successor’s side. According to one report, on his way home from the conference Heath asked Peter Luff: ‘Peter, why do they find me so intimidating?’46
In full sail, Heath could still be magnificent in those days and, during a BBC Radio 4 all-nighter during the US presidential election in November, he found himself unexpectedly engaged in a live transatlantic exchange with Milton Friedman, the monetarist economist who had inspired much of the economic policy of the government at that time. Even the late, great Brian Redhead, in NYC for these purposes, could not break the two men apart as Heath laid into Friedman after he told Redhead that ‘unemployment isn’t important’: ‘You want to abolish the industrial base in the same way as is happening in Britain, in which smaller firms are going bankrupt more rapidly than ever before and big firms cannot make profits because of the high exchange rate of the pound sterling. We are realising this in this country and if you persuade Mr Reagan to accept that, then the future for the American people is really pretty bad.’ Fortunately, added Heath, Reagan was ‘too intelligent to follow the policies of ruinous monetarism as they appear to be followed in this country’. ‘It’s nice to have a chance to deal with that man for once,’ commented Heath later. Labour MPs duly put down an Early Day Motion in Parliament congratulating him. Rather wanly, one of his ‘aides’ told the press that, although Mr Heath ‘did not regret the remarks, he had not gone onto the programme with the intention of making them’. Heath had (unwittingly or not) crossed the line by insulting one of Mrs Thatcher’s inspirations. At Prime Minister’s Questions the next day, 6 November, she quoted Heath’s own eve-of-poll message from June 1970 at him.* Indeed Mrs Thatcher would often refer, in glowing terms, to the party’s 1970 manifesto, which, to her mind, proposed a radical change of direction for the nation, towards free enterprise and a smaller state – a forerunner of her own brand of fiery Toryism (or, one might argue, latter-day Gladstonian liberalism). On this occasion, Heath reportedly gave a ‘half smile’.
Heath was always highly resistant to those who compared him with Mrs Thatcher, although they have a point. Until the battles with the miners became intractable and unemployment hit 1 million the government Heath led was in many respects proto-Thatcherite. There is an argument that, far from decrying Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s, Heath should have offered praise and taken a sly opportunity to bask in well-deserved, reflected glory; instead of which, of course, he simmered over with righteous (and all-too-often public) indignation. As Michael Heseltine said:
‘He was the forerunner of what Margaret Thatcher became associated with. The Selsdon agenda was every bit as radical and far-sighted as what Margaret did; and, of course, in 1974, he announced the right to buy council houses. It is credited to her, but it wasn’t her at all – it was Peter Walker and Ted Heath.’
Later on in that November, Heath dispensed with even half a smile as, in the House of Commons, he attacked the Government’s policy of pushing up interest rates and the rate of sterling, as a means of constraining the money supply and squeezing inflation out of the system. This prompted a fierce counter-offensive from Mrs Thatcher’s supporters in the Commons and, unexpectedly, one from the lady herself in an ITN interview broadcast three days later, in which she explicitly attacked the record of the Heath Government and likened herself to a firm nurse:
‘Keep taking the medicine . . . shake out of it . . . Unemployment rose very sharply in Ted’s time as well. He tried to overcome it by pumping money into the economy. We got an artificial boom and do you know where the money went? It did not go into investment or expansion. It went into the biggest property boom we’ve ever seen and I don’t wish to see the like of that ever again. It did the Conservative Party immense harm . . . I am just as worried as he is about mounting unemployment. I hope he will admit that unemployment has gone on mounting for the last twenty years.’47
It was reported at the time that several ministers were most unhappy about her response, which made it all the more surprising that there were also reports that Heath was being sounded out about possible jobs.
Peter Luff has mentioned Heath’s thyroid problem, which kept him out of action for the early part of 1981. Avid Heath-watcher Simon Hoggart perceived a change in Heath afterwards:
‘The formerly aloof party leader, capable of deeply wounding a trusted colleague with a cutting remark, has gone. In its place there is a far more relaxed and amiable and energetic man. The secret of this startling change is his recovery from a serious and long undetected illness. For years he had been suffering from an underactive thyroid. The symptoms include lassitude, lack of concentration, irritability, and the disquieting habit of falling asleep without warning. Some of his colleagues now say that they could detect the first signs during his spell as Prime Minister; his mind would wander off during important meetings, or he would look unexpectedly drowsy. The illness is progressive but slow, so that friends, and even his own doctor, did not notice how severe it was becoming.
‘Now his celebrated chilly remarks have been replaced by self-deprecatory humour. Earlier this year he gave a surprise party for two friends who had just married. One of the guests was Sir George Young, who had just been appointed (to a chorus of abuse from those who normally serve as the Downing Street hit-squad) race relations Minister. “Ah, the second most unpopular man in the Tory Party!” Heath beamed when Sir George walked in.’48
Although he claimed to have made a full recovery, Heath remained prone to narcoleptic moments, especially when drink had been taken. Watching him canvassing on behalf of the Conservative candidate during the Glasgow, Hillhead by-election in 1982, Simon Hoggart believed Heath was still playing a longer game:
‘Heath is no fool, and he doesn’t see the remotest chance of his leading the Tories again. Nor is he running through an elaborate game plan, designed to let him sidle back into power. What he does believe, however, is that a confused result in the next election might bring him back into the Cabinet. He has no intention of joining the Social Democrats, who have, he thinks, too strong a socialist leaning for comfort. But he has said in public that if the next election forced an accommodation between the Tories and the SDP, he would be willing to serve. And, though he doesn’t mention this, everyone knows that the first condition made by the SDP would be the swift disposal of Heath’s greatest political enemy. With her out of the way, who could resist the demands to find work once again for Britain’s best-known unemployed man of destiny?’49
Also in Heath’s private office during this period was Simon May, who went on to have an academic career of considerable distinction. His particular interest was in foreign affairs, with which Heath, then a sprightly sixty-something in robust physical condition, was very significantly engaged, usually seeing things for himself at first-hand, usually in connection with speaking engagements and/or his continuing role as the most active member of the Arthur Andersen PRB. Simon May sets the scene:
‘It was extraordinary, as a recently minted graduate, to be invited to lunch with Edward Heath at his home in Belgravia. I was to be interviewed for a position as his assistant for foreign affairs, though it seemed prima facie bizarre that I could offer any advice at all to a man who had presided over so many major international events, from British entry into the European Community, to the independence of Kuwait, to the opening of full diplomatic relations with China, and had met almost every world leader from Winston Churchill and Helmut Schmidt to Mao Tse-Tung and Ronald Reagan.
‘I was struck not only by his obviously powerful physical presence, with those piercing eyes and huge paws of hands, and his commanding forehead and demeanour of impenetrable privacy, but also by his instinctive meritocratic willingness to give a non-entity of a newcomer a full and careful hearing. There was nothing dismissive about him; you had to earn his contempt as much as you had to earn his respect. If you could hold his attention – by proposing something specific for which you could argue in the face of the sceptical reserve that could easily paralyze conversation with him – it didn’t matter in the least who you were, or weren’t.
‘Perhaps presumptuously, I had arrived with ideas for how he might intervene in aspects of foreign affairs where a figure of authority, armed with no more than his own prestige and the capacity to be an honest broker, might seek, in the manner of Jean Monnet, to promote great ideals by winning acceptance among political, business and trades unions leaders for a small number of practical proposals for action that, if implemented, would form the nucleus of a new way of thinking and acting. They centered around European integration and – a then recent passion of his – international economic development and justice.
‘I was treated to an extraordinary tour d’horizon of world affairs for nearly two hours, in which he reminisced freely about events and people he had known, never in great detail, indeed often in a surprisingly snatched, unstructured and even diffident way, but with an extraordinary capacity to recreate moments that had affected him deeply. In between we talked about music, a deep mutual interest, and the one topic on which he was never diffident or distant – though he could be outrageously, almost comically, self-confident about his judgement, such as when he accused the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin of being un-rhythmical.
‘I found, from that lunch on, that as long as one stuck to world affairs and music one wouldn’t be mired in the agonising silences for which he was so widely known. Any attempt to contrive conversation, or to discuss a topic that had no immediate emotional or practical urgency for him, would end in failure, and the harder you tried to arouse his interest the more decisively you would fail.’
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Heath’s life during this period was his contribution to the Brandt Commission or, more accurately described, the ‘Independent Commission on International Development Issues’, established in the wake of a call to arms from Robert McNamara at the World Bank and which former West German chancellor Willy Brandt formed and chaired between 1977 and 1980, when it issued its first report. Simon May worked very closely with Heath on this:
‘After European unification, “Third World” development, as it was then known, was Ted’s second great international ideal. It was a late love – he took to it in earnest only after the oil shocks of the 1970s and the turmoil that would lead to the 1979 Iranian revolution. Like European unification, it was, for him, a moral ideal rooted in enlightened self-interest and to be pursued by pragmatic means – above all, the identification of mutual economic interest.
‘Ted was convinced that the only way of taking action on the necessary scale was to forge a new global agreement between the key players in the West, the oil-rich world, and the resource-poor developing countries. Such an agreement must coalesce, he thought, around a very specific programme of action, in which North and South had powerful mutual interests, or else it would come to nothing.
‘That programme was provided in the shape of two reports, published in 1980 and 1983, of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, set up at the instigation of Robert McNamara, then President of the World Bank. It was chaired by Willy Brandt, former Chancellor of West Germany, and consisted of eighteen strikingly different personalities, from the former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, to the Proprietor of the Washington Post, Kay Graham, from Abdlatif al-Hamad, then Kuwait’s Minister of Finance, to Eduardo Frei Montalva, a former president of Chile.
‘But for Ted’s drive and vision there might have been no reports. The Commission had degenerated into a talking shop where a minority of its members would make content free interventions, rich in rhetorical bluster, occasionally lasting over an hour, to the despair of everyone except the speaker in question. Shortly before the first report was due, it had broken up in disarray with Brandt all but resigned to years of deliberation ending in failure. To break the deadlock Ted, in collaboration with Sonny Ramphal, then Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, went back to London and hammered out a draft, advised by such academic luminaries as Robert Cassen, which he then steered through the final meeting of the Commission with patient relentlessness. The result was the first Brandt report of 1979.
‘It was followed in 1983 by a second report, also produced under the supervision of Ted and Sonny, assisted by a small group based in London, of which I was honoured to be one.
‘Ted travelled the world giving speeches to huge audiences and meeting presidents and prime ministers in an effort to win support for the Commission’s key proposals. No other member of the Brandt Commission, save Sonny Ramphal, engaged in this task with remotely his dedication, reach and success.
‘In every session of the Brandt Commission that I attended, as well as in innumerable meetings with political leaders around the world, Ted was relaxed, gracious, witty and self-deprecating in a way that many failed to realise he could be. On our travels he was almost invariably superb company and seldom evinced the grumpy silence that was widely assumed to be his default mood. And, as with Europe, he had an extraordinary capacity to frame a great vision in a few simple sentences, aided by those trademark expansive gestures of his hands that seemed to trace the contours of new worlds.
‘Whatever the rank order of his ideals, there is no doubt that for Ted politics was above all a moral calling. Power was secondary, a means to a higher end. For all his attachment to power, for all his mourning its loss, for all his resentment in ceding Downing Street to Harold Wilson or the Conservative Party to Margaret Thatcher, for all his famed sulking, his lodestars were always great moral ideals: the defeat of the Nazis, the integration of the UK into the European Union, the defeat of poverty at home and abroad. To paraphrase Jean Monnet, his unfailing ambition was to do something, not merely to be someone.’
One of Heath’s finest speeches in the House of Commons came when MPs debated the Brandt Report in May 1980. Speaking entirely without notes, he showed a mastery of his brief that clearly bears out Simon May’s belief that this was now a cause every bit as dear to him as European unity was:
‘We ended up with total unanimity because we had come to the conclusion that we needed recommendations to recreate the world economy and not just to deal with individual items that affected individual developing countries.
‘That is what is required today. It was done with the Marshall Plan, with America and Europe. It may be said that it is more difficult because there are more European countries and 105 developing countries. It is more difficult, but that is an institutional, organisational problem. However, if it is not solved we shall continue the slide into the economic abyss, and neither North nor South will escape.
‘The two decades ahead for the coming generations will be bleak, but if leadership is prepared to take a grip on this and to ensure that instructions are given for the programme to be worked out, implemented and carried out in time, the comment that there is no hope for the developing world and no hope for us will be completely fallacious. Then we shall surmount our troubles. We shall overcome them. Once again, we shall be able to embark on a prosperous path and an expanding economy, and there will be hope for both North and South.’50
It is possible Heath never made any speech that more impressed colleagues across the House. Even Enoch Powell, who spoke immediately after him, was supportive, praising ‘the breath-taking comprehensiveness and competence of the speech to which the House has just been listening’. A few weeks later, Heath received an extraordinary, hand-written letter, dated 8 July 1980, from the then Speaker of the House of Commons, George Thomas (later Lord Tonypandy):
‘I have been intending for some time to write to tell you how deeply moved and impressed I was by your speech in the Debate on the Brandt Commission. You made the event into a major parliamentary occasion. I hope you will forgive me saying that I thought it to be one of the best speeches I have ever heard in my thirty-five years in the House. Suddenly the whole House is aware that you are undoubtedly our greatest World Statesman. Your vision of global problems and the practical measures you propose, have set a lot of our young MPs on fire. It is no mean achievement for one man to influence so many. I consider myself very fortunate to have been in the Chair for the greater part of your speech.
‘Please forgive me for writing in so personal a way, but I do so because I believe you are directly in the tradition of the great Parliamentarians whose speeches have inspired the House of Commons during past centuries. Ever, George.’51
Heath increasingly used humour as a way of defusing potentially explosive disagreements with his fellow Conservatives and, at the 1981 party conference, coined one of his more felicitous phrases: ‘Please don’t applaud. It may irritate your neighbour.’ Apparently Mrs Thatcher turned to her neighbour on the platform, and murmured: ‘That’s a good one.’
Heath’s private secretary between 1982 and 1986 was Peter Batey, who noticed a big difference in Heath before and after the 1983 general election:
‘My time as Head of the Private Office fell into two unequal parts, with the 1983 General Election as the watershed. The first part from the middle of 1982 until the 1983 General Election and the second from then until I left to go to China in 1986. In the first period there was still a sense that he might return to high office. That seems hard to believe from today’s perspective, but it was only after Mrs Thatcher increased her majority in 1983 that it became clear she would not offer him a position in government. During the second period, he seemed more relaxed and easier to deal with from the private secretary’s point of view.
‘Dealing with Ted was often a challenge. He was never a man to be taken for granted. Getting a decision from him was not always easy, but once you had a decision there was no back-sliding or evasion and he was straightforward. He was not a man to blame those who worked for him and if he committed himself to something he pursued it with energy, not hesitation nor equivocation. He gave loyalty and expected it. He took responsibility – but the decisions themselves were sometimes hard to elicit. At other times, when the circumstances required it, he was quick and decisive.
‘Hardest to judge was when to speak and when to remain silent. Long car journeys sitting next to him were initially intimidating when I first began work for him as a green (though I didn’t think so at the time) twenty-four year old in 1982. Not one for small talk, he nevertheless enjoyed conversation and so sitting next to him for two or three hours at a time one had to gain a feel for when to say nothing, when to talk to the driver and the Special Branch officer in the front seats and when to address him directly. It took time to develop a feel for his mood. One useful tactic was to initiate conversation on a topical matter that one felt might interest him with the (frequently amusing and entertaining) protection officer and see whether he would rise to the bait. It was often hard to gauge when he was asleep: he lurked like an old crocodile waiting to pounce on a subject that roused him. Sometimes his interventions would be terse and sceptical, though usually amusing; at other times he would engage enthusiastically.
‘He was generally at his best after a good dinner, surrounded by a preponderance of those whom he liked and trusted, with a large glass of malt whisky in hand when he would often open up with strings of anecdotes from all periods of his long political career and other aspects of his life.
‘Malt whisky was one of Ted’s basic requirements. He consumed prodigious quantities and it was the Private Secretary’s sacred duty to ensure it was available wherever he dined or stayed overnight. Indeed one was expected to carry a bottle of the “medicine” as it was generally known in one’s luggage in case of emergency. His favourites included Talisker and Glenmorangie. But he was also highly disciplined about alcohol. He appeared regularly on Newsnight, at 10.30 pm in the 1980s, and would not touch a drop before television appearances, no matter how tempting the wine at dinner. I once said to him while sipping a glass of Latour 1970 (one of his favourites which some generous host had kindly provided), “This is superb, surely you could have one glass?” “No,” he replied. “I have tried that before, and the camera always picks up that flushed look, even after one glass.”’
The 1983 general election had incalculable personal significance for Heath. Achieving what had seemed impossible twenty-four or even eighteen months earlier, when the Conservative Party lay for a time in third place in the national opinion polls, his supposed nemesis, Mrs Thatcher, had won a substantial three-figure majority in the House of Commons. A combination of the ‘Falklands Factor’ and a strong showing by the SDP/Liberal Alliance, which gravely damaged the Labour Party, had enabled the party to increase its majority in the Commons by around 100 seats, despite winning half a million fewer votes than in 1979. Heath must have realised that, for him, there was now no coming back. He hosted a party for new MPs. It was, by all accounts, a desultory affair. ‘My wife and I stood there on his front room carpet for ten minutes, trying to exchange words,’ said one attendee. ‘I tell you, it was like getting stuck with the most tongue-tied constituent.’52
According to Peter Batey, Heath soon put the blow of the general election result behind him:
‘Any disappointment was quickly dusted off and he set himself to continue his work in promoting the ideas and policies in which he believed without fear or favour. Reviewing a list of his major speeches for 1983–1985, it is clear that Europe and Third World development, building on his work as a member of the Brandt Commission, were the issues to which he attached greatest importance. He also continued to articulate his views on economic policy.’
In mid-January 1984, it was announced that Heath had acquired someone whom the Sunday Times described as ‘one of the most promising young Tory MPs’ – Mark Robinson, the recently elected Member for Newport West – as his PPS.
‘Ted . . . gladly took me into his confidence and I had the privilege of discovering what a great raconteur he could be on all things political, both past and present, and how mischievous he could be in his comments on certain colleagues who had got too close to “that woman” simply to advance their careers, perish the thought!
‘I was charged with setting up lunches, dinners and drinks at Ted’s home in Wilton Street. At that time he wanted to meet as many members of the 1983 intake as he could “provided they were not beyond the pale”. It was left to me to decide who might fall into that category and I must have got this more or less right as I was never ticked off for my choice of guests. Acceptances were high as most wanted to see where Ted lived and his reputation as a good host was well known. After one of the lunches David Heathcoat-Amory took me aside and said in rather too loud a voice, “Mark, do you think you could persuade Ted to refer to Mrs Thatcher as the PM, not as her?” This was overheard by Nicholas Soames who bellowed, “I think we were lucky, it might well have been it.”’
On 17 January 1984, Heath became the first former Prime Minister to vote against his own side, when he became one of thirteen rebels on the Second Reading of the Rates Bill, which would give ministers the power to ‘cap’ the expenditure of local authorities. It was one of the earliest responses to the ‘Loony Left’ Labour authorities, mainly in London and Liverpool, which were both morally and financially bankrupt – Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 being another. Heath’s speech pulled no punches:
‘The Bill . . . goes to the very root of Conservative philosophy, which has endured for centuries. It has always been Conservative philosophy that one of our main purposes in politics is to balance the power existing in our society. In particular, we have been opposed to the centralisation of power because we have throughout realised the intense dangers to freedom that that holds for everyone. The Bill deals with the balance of power between central and local government, and weighs it now heavily on the side of central Government.
‘I ask what we would have been saying about centralisation and control from Whitehall if the Labour Party, as the Government, had introduced such a Bill. The complexity of the Bill will lead to an enormous growth of bureaucracy. Ministers themselves will not have the time to go into the details of each local authority and it will have to be left to civil servants. Those who are so strongly supporting the Bill but, at the same time in leaders in the press, are damning bureaucracy ought to think about that aspect of it. I do not believe that these powers should be given to the Minister.’53
That evening, in a lecture to the Foreign Exchange Dealers’ Association, Heath attacked Mrs Thatcher’s handling of the economy, calling for more investment in infrastructure and attacking ‘naïve and simplistic’ monetarism. He was also critical of the ‘explicit decision to give and to continue to give inflation priority over unemployment regardless of all other considerations . . . the methods chosen to reduce inflation have been effective mainly by boosting unemployment . . . On both sides of the Atlantic there are governments who believe it natural and right to go their own way and devil take the hindmost: a national, selfish and often self-defeating view . . . Britain has suffered a recession deeper than any of her OECD partners. This has been due in part to policies deliberately pursued by the Government.’54
The coverage in the right-wing press the next day was damning. The Daily Mail headline was simply ‘Traitor’. Heath responded by telling Robin Day: ‘It is characteristic of the Mail to have a headline like that. If you differ from anyone you are a traitor. This is getting very close to the end of democracy as far as the Mail is concerned. It has no arguments, so it resorts to abuse of the grossest kind . . . A newspaper can say “all those members are calling him a traitor”, but they don’t have to give names or numbers to prove anything. It is a gross abuse of the freedom of the press and extremely dangerous.’
The Daily Telegraph was more subtle, with a pithy editorial that was spitefully sarcastic in tone:
‘If Mr Heath did not exist, we would have to invent him. Although he says little that is witty or intentionally amusing, he has become one of our greatest comic characters. His corrosive dislike of Mrs Thatcher, his huge self-satisfaction, his infatuation with the Brandt Report, his conviction that the period between 1972 and 1974 was a brief idyll of enlightened and efficient government, his speeches, which set the world to rights, his sailing, his funny books, have marked Mr Heath out as a true eccentric who richly deserves the love and affection which have come his way since he gave up being Tory leader . . . If there is another politician who makes an equal contribution to the gaiety of nations, we do not know his name.’55
After Mrs Thatcher used the centenary luncheon of the parliamentary lobby to say she wanted to be remembered as the person who abolished consensus, Heath responded tartly: ‘We always have to remember that in a democracy a time may come when the position of those in power will change. If a bitter legacy of non-consultation is left behind then those who take over will be animated by a similar spirit which cannot be good for the country as a whole.’56 In March 1984 questions were raised about Mark Thatcher’s interests in Oman. Heath was not being drawn: ‘Mrs Thatcher has always maintained that the situation is absolutely proper and, of course, one accepts that.’ Within ten days, 241 backbenchers had signed an early day motion from Edward du Cann supporting Mrs Thatcher. The press noted that Heath had not signed it. He never signed early day motions.
What did stir Heath into activity was the deadlock between the UK and its European partners over contributions to the Community’s budget. When Mrs Thatcher made a statement to the Commons about the unsatisfactory European Council meeting in Brussels on 19–20 March, she was in feisty mood and made no apologies for vetoing a proposed budget increase that she regarded as inequitable to the UK. ‘The Community is in a difficult situation,’ she stated. ‘We shall, however, persevere in our efforts to achieve a reform of its finances and to make its internal and external policies more relevant to the needs of today’s world. I want to see a more effective Community, developing its full potential. That is the Community in which I believe.’57 It seemed to be implicit in her words that, in extremis, she would withhold budget contributions. In a long ‘question’, Heath was generally statesmanlike and took care to be supportive. There was a sting in the tail, though: ‘In these circumstances, is my right hon. Friend aware that many of us could not accept illegality in withholding funds from the Community?’58 He received a chilly response. As soon as the statement was over, Heath hand-wrote a letter to Mrs Thatcher:
‘Dear Prime Minister, I am writing to emphasise the last point in my question this afternoon – on which you did not comment – that I could not support, indeed I would strongly oppose, any act of illegality by HM Government affecting the European Community, just as I have always opposed illegality at home. However, as the Chief Whip will confirm, this is also the position of many senior members of the party in the House of Commons as well as many backbenchers who did not make their voice heard this afternoon. I hope that the Cabinet will appreciate this in any discussions it may have on these matters. Yours sincerely, Ted Heath.’59
There is no record of any reply being received, or sent. This marked the beginning of a new period of froideur between Heath and Mrs Thatcher. The next battleground was the Government’s decision to abolish the Greater London Council (GLC). Heath had no truck with GLC leader Ken Livingstone or his left-wing posturing, but he thought abolition was vindictive and fundamentally undemocratic – and that there were better ways of addressing the problem. In the House of Commons, Heath sought to set out a philosophy in clear counterpoint to that of the Government:
‘Worst of all is the imposition by parliamentary diktat of a change of responsible party in London government. It immediately lays the Conservative Party open to the charge of the greatest gerrymandering in the last 150 years of British history. That is what we, as a party, are being exposed to . . . The path on which the Government have embarked is very dangerous. Undoubtedly reforms need to be brought about both in the GLC and in the metropolitan counties. If one is to have those measures, one wants to bring them about with the greatest possible agreement. That means patience, examination and consensus about local government. The present path is extremely dangerous for local government, for the Conservative Party and for the Government because of the chaotic management that will result. It is extremely dangerous for our country to have local government treated in that way.’60
At Prime Minister’s Questions the following day, Mrs Thatcher ‘swung the handbag’: ‘In so far as there was a difference between (Mr Heath) and myself, I am sure that I was right.’ Heath stuck to his guns a month later as the measure progressed, asking his one-time private secretary William Waldegrave, now the local government minister: ‘Does he believe that it is morally or politically justifiable to change the political control of the authority in the capital city by edict of Parliament?’61
Despite these skirmishes, Heath was given a semi-official role in the party’s 1984 campaign for the European Parliament. He was given an itinerary of eighteen visits – the first of which was in Orkney, about as far away from London as it’s possible to get without entering the Arctic circle. One can only speculate that the Conservatives in Shetland (if there were any) refused to cooperate. He also went to the West Country. When a Telegraph journalist turned up for his press conference at Plymouth, Heath feigned delight: ‘Ah, a national event.’
For the rest of that summer, Heath did not break too much of a sweat. In late June he visited Moura Lympany in Rasiguères and, together, they gave a concert with the Manchester Camerata of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Heath was inducted into the Confrérie des Tastevins des Vignerons Catalans, donning ceremonial robes for the occasion. His speech of thanks was brief, to the point and, mercifully, light on the French language: ‘I don’t care what I do, so long as I have beaucoup de vin.’
In the early autumn, Heath made a private visit to Cuba, a ‘rogue state’ treated as a pariah by the US and its allies. He had meetings with Castro, made a couple of arranged visits and presided over a grand lunch with Castro’s brother Ramon as a guest, but also took the opportunity to relax. He arrived home, via Bermuda, just before the Conservative Party conference in Brighton, which he had no plans to attend. Then the bomb went off in the Grand Hotel and, the next day, Heath came to sit on the platform during Mrs Thatcher’s keynote address to the conference and the two of them made a big display of shaking hands at a party conference, for the first time in seven years, in an expression of solidarity and support after the bomb. He also went to visit Norman Tebbit in hospital.
In November 1984 journalist Kenneth Rose noted in the Sunday Telegraph that ‘Edward Heath’s hair, as white as snow a few months ago, now seems to have acquired a golden hue’62. The head of the office at the time, Peter Batey, recalls how this very public problem was resolved:
‘The solution was expensive for me. I went (at my own – not inconsiderable – expense) to Grosvenor House, to have my hair cut by Edward, who cut EH’s hair (I think “stylised” was the parlance, doubtless implying more than cutting and including colouring) at the time. I explained to him that I would prefer it if he would ditch the “Strawberry Blond” and go back to the “Dulux Brilliant White Emulsion”. He said he would try but that he had used strawberry blond because EH said he wanted to look younger. I told Edward to be firm with EH and insist that strawberry blond didn’t look quite right. My ploy worked and we remained permanently with the Dulux brilliant white thereafter.’
Heath began 1985 in Cassandra mode, warning about the dangers of mass unemployment and expressing a pious hope that ministers might do more to mitigate it:
‘I stand here as an avowed advocate of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer described so elegantly as voodoo witchcraft. Perhaps I could explain to the House what I mean by that. It is simply that I regard the present level of unemployment in Britain as appalling. The situation north of Watford is shameful. To go to the north-east of England and find there more than 19 per cent overall unemployment, to find areas of male unemployment of 30 per cent or more, and to find in Consett 60 per cent juvenile unemployment is to me shameful.’63
In response the Sun newspaper ran an editorial describing Heath as the ‘world’s worst loser’ and saying: ‘Mr Heath waits for the call back to power. It will never come.’64 The following week, Heath responded, point by point, repeatedly attacking any parallel between his situation and that of Alec Home, whom he had appointed as foreign secretary: ‘No such invitation for any shadow cabinet or Government post has ever been made to me.’ ‘What is the Sun afraid of?’ asked Heath. ‘Only one thing. The truth. Why does it concentrate on character assassination? Because it has no intelligent answer to the political arguments now raging up and down the country. The Sun is the lackey of its financial bosses. Poor Sun.’65
Shortly after that rejoinder, he was interviewed for another Murdoch title by the Labour-leaning lawyer and playwright John Mortimer. It was 11 am. ‘What would you like?’ asked Heath, proffering his hand. ‘Coffee? Cognac, bacon and eggs?’ Was Heath happy, asked Mortimer. ‘I’ve only been happy during three periods of my life,’ he responded. ‘When I was at Balliol, when I was at the Foreign Office, which many people say amounts to the same thing – and when I was Prime Minister.’ ‘Did it come as a terrible shock to you when you lost the leadership election to Mrs Thatcher in 1975?’ ‘You know what Clemmie said to Churchill when he lost the 1945 election? “It’s the Will of God.” And Winston said, “Well, then, God moves in a most mysterious way.” Yes, it came as a terrible shock, particularly when all the predictions were OK.’ ‘What do you think Churchill would have made of the present government?’ ‘He’d have been appalled.’ ‘Do you think you’ll ever be Prime Minister again?’ ‘No. Absolutely not.’66 This interview coincided with Mrs Thatcher’s tenth anniversary as party leader.
When the national miners’ strike ended on 3 March, Mrs Thatcher had decisively achieved what he had failed to do: she had asserted the power of the state over the trades unions. Heath had never commented on the strike, he said, because he ‘didn’t want the Government to be distracted’, but he did speak out about the rate of unemployment, which was over three million people. The so-called ‘Budget for Jobs’ in 1984 had not borne fruit. At the instigation of Peter Batey, Heath now produced an alternative budget, as part of a well-orchestrated outburst against the Government. Unemployment in some regions had tripled since 1979 and he wanted to demonstrate something could be done about it. His focus was on increased investment in industry, infrastructure and training. He put a figure on it too: borrowing £12 billion in 1985–86 instead of the proposed £10.5 billion. The ‘Alternative Budget’ went out on Channel 4 on 13 March 1985, in the week before Budget Day; and Heath’s recipe for saving the nation was a dose of unreconstructed Keynesian economics. Sitting in his drawing room at Wilton Street, Heath quoted the CBI, which had recently warned that Britain was ‘falling to bits’. What was needed, he said, was more public investment – and he prudently pre-empted his critics, one of whom appeared on the broadcast, claiming his proposals would cause interest rates to ‘soar’ and sterling to ‘collapse’. It is also worth noting both the classic Heath use of ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ and also his closing dig at the prevailing Thatcherite slogan ‘There Is No Alternative’:
‘What we really need is a Budget for industry – to help industry create jobs. We need to invest. The investment that I propose as a matter of priority would mean increasing public borrowing by £5 billion . . . We’re always accused by our critics of wanting to “spend our way out of a depression” and of “throwing money at problems”, but these are slogans not arguments. How can it be wrong to use the savings of our people to invest in their future? Successful businesses borrow, in order to expand and grow – and that is what we as a nation must do . . . We would all like tax cuts, but our priority must be the unemployed and the lower paid. The way to help them is not by cutting taxes at the moment . . . There is a much better way. There is an alternative.’
He followed up with a trenchant half-hour speech in the budget debate in the House of Commons. Roy Jenkins commented, ‘I do not know what effect losing the leadership of the Conservative Party is said to have had on his temper, but it has had a remarkably good effect on the sense and sweep of his judgment and view of the world.’67
Having a home he could truly call his own was an ambition Heath had nurtured for many decades. While his father was alive, he had a room in Thanet to which he could return – which he did, often – and when he was first elected to Parliament, he rented a small bachelor flat at 88 Petty France. He did not entertain there and even his old friend Madron Seligman recalled being invited there only once, to change into evening dress before he and Heath went to an event together. His description seems extraordinary: ‘A bed-sitting room with a kitchen and bathroom, a few water colours, but otherwise impersonal.’68 When the lease there ran out in late 1962, he moved briefly into something similar, but by now he had set his heart on something more ambitious, where he could spread his wings, install a piano – and entertain, which seemed to him crucial for furthering his political career.
As soon as he had been elected as an MP, Heath put his name down for a ‘set’ at Albany, close to Piccadilly – ‘an almost perfectly preserved Regency retreat’. When one did become available, early in 1963, following the death of Arnold Bax’s brother, Heath wasted no time in seizing it. He relished having his own home at last and brought in a specialist interior designer, Jo Pattrick, to achieve the right effect of ‘light and colour’ and put his personal stamp on it, installing ‘furniture that is comfortable and homely and modern’. The set was large enough for Heath to entertain and also to hold interviews or meetings with colleagues and he also acquired room for a housekeeper. He could also, for the first time, effectively display the beginnings of the art collection that still, at the time of writing, adorns his Salisbury home.
The expiry of Heath’s initial lease at Albany coincided almost perfectly with his election as Prime Minister in June 1970, so he moved out, never to return. He had the state rooms at No. 10 renovated and gave Chequers a makeover too. When he lost office at the beginning of March 1974, it took him six months to find a house in Wilton Street, near Buckingham Palace, where he paid a modest, ‘peppercorn’ rent. For ten years, that was his one home. Twice he was targeted there by Republican terrorists, but he retained it until he stepped down from Parliament, in 2001. From 1985, however, it was merely a base for operations in London, to be used increasingly rarely – because his PPS, Robert Key, had gone far beyond the ‘call of duty’ and found him his dream home:
‘Within a few weeks of me joining his team, Ted said how much he longed for a home of his own. He had told every estate agent in the south what he wanted – an attractive house not too far from London, not far from the sea (specifically the Solent), not in the centre of a town but not isolated in the country either. As it happens, that perfectly describes Salisbury – though I didn’t tell him so at that time.
‘Within months I was in the Cathedral, stewarding the Eucharist as usual, around the turn of the year between 1984 and 1985. After the service I caught up with an old school friend, whose mother had recently died and who had lived in a very beautiful Queen Anne house in the Close. I asked him if he would now come and live in the Close. He said he already had a nice house south of Salisbury, so Arundells, with sixty years of the lease yet to run, was being offered back to the Chapter of the cathedral.* They were now seeking to let the sixty-year lease through an agent in Salisbury. On Monday morning I went to the Agent and collected a brochure. That evening, after the ten o’clock vote, I went around to Wilton Street and said to Ted, “I’ve found your house!” We talked about it until after midnight.
‘On Tuesday morning I was sitting at my desk in The House when the phone rang. It was Ted. “I hope they haven’t sold my house! Can you come with me to Salisbury on Wednesday morning?” Within an hour he had decided. We returned to London and his lawyers, Freshfields, were on the case. In due course, they even managed to compel the Chapter to sell him the freehold at the market price prevailing at the time the lease was granted. This led to frosty relations with Chapter, which thawed when, in 1992, HRH Prince Charles devised the amazing “Symphony for the Spire” and Ted helped persuade some of the world’s leading musicians and actors (including Placido Domingo, Jessye Norman, Ofra Harnoy, Charlton Heston and Phil Collins) to come and perform in a great fund-raising concert presided over by Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
‘Ted loved entertaining in his newly-refurbished home. He brought with him his larger-than-life Italian cook. She sourced food local from Salisbury Market and local butchers. Ted loved his vegetable garden and served home-grown produce in season, but Italian broad beans in the pod, sliced and sautéed in butter, were not Broadstairs and were soon off the menu. Sue and I knew Ted well enough by this time to expect a phone call at lunch time on a Saturday, inviting us at short notice to fill his table the next day, because someone could not fly in from abroad that night. Several times Madame Pompidou, widow of the former French President, would be present. Another regular – and probably his favourite company – was Kay Graham, owner of the Washington Post.
‘Soon I was PPS and Social Secretary, too. He would ask me to draw up a guest list for his Salisbury dinner parties. Sue and I had great fun! He came to supper at our very modest home in Woodfalls, a few miles south of Salisbury, where he was absolutely charming to our two little girls. He must have been happy, because he fell asleep in front of the fire! On one occasion Sue and I had been invited to dinner with friends who owned a lovely Elizabethan Manor on the edge of the New Forest. It was early days for Ted in Salisbury, so we asked June and George if we could please bring him. They were delighted and superb hosts. It was a snowy, icy drive there and back. Ted was on good form. He suddenly said, “Do your constituents often ask you out?” I said yes: I had known many of them since childhood. Ted replied, “I have never been invited to dine in the home of a constituent.” How sad.
‘In his last years in The House, Ted responded only occasionally to whips, even to three-line whips. He preferred life in Salisbury. There is no doubt he was lonely. A couple of times a week, he and his minder would go out to one of his favourite pubs in the villages round about. At least three still talk of “Ted’s chair”. People were very kind to him. He undoubtedly had the common touch. He never forgot his family roots and he had an easy relationship with the people he met in the pubs on weekday nights. To him they were the salt of the earth, representing all he loved best about his country.’
The internal redesign of Arundells was undertaken swiftly and decisively. Heath did not use Jo Pattrick this time, but Derek Frost, who lived more closely at hand. ‘We did not set out to restore this house,’ said Heath, ‘but to recreate something new within it . . . I found it very exciting to use contemporary design ideas inside the house, but sometimes the difficulty for me was to visualise what Derek proposed.’69 Early on in his time in Salisbury, Heath struck gold when he appointed a head gardener to bring order to the extensive grounds of his first and only true home. He recruited Stuart Craven, a musician who had once played with Mungo Jerry and stayed with Heath until the end of his life (and beyond, spending ten years in charge of the house after Heath’s death, until he retired in 2015). From the late 1980s until Heath’s demise in 2005, Stuart was as close to him as anyone was; and, in common with all of us who worked for him over the years, he knew all too well the chimerical nature of the man, from mischievous to magnanimous, from grim-faced to generous, from cantankerous to kind:
‘His oft-quoted phrase of “there are two gardeners here, I have the ideas and someone else does the work” was typical, but his input was not much despite his protestations. The Seligman family bought him a good pair of secateurs for Christmas and he started to deadhead the magnolia blossom on the patio. When I returned he had fallen off the ledge and gashed his shin and promptly gave me the secateurs saying it was too dangerous. Originally he had ideas of rounded, Italian-style borders, but I had to change a few things, such as the view to the rivers, as it was deemed too easy to shoot him from the opposite bank (a Home Office instruction). He liked to take the credit for everything to do with Arundells, even in my company, but always with a twinkle in his eye.
‘After my divorce, about which he learned through a protection officer as I was reluctant to tell him my personal business, he called me up and gave me surprisingly fatherly advice about not trusting and moving on with my life, all of which I really appreciated. After asking me about how divorce affected me, he daily walked down the garden to find out how I was and whether I had been to the doctor etc. He was very caring and concerned, which certainly made me appreciate his loyalty, which I of course returned. A short while later he went on BBC Question Time and a question about divorce came up (I think they are aware of the questions beforehand). He spoke quite eloquently about his experience of how divorce affected his constituents, mirroring our discussion and, for a bachelor, got a round of applause!’
One of the most colourful accounts of Heath’s life in Salisbury comes from Derek Frost’s partner Jeremy Norman, who included the following section in his book No Make-Up: Straight Tales from a Queer Life:
‘At ten o’clock one Saturday evening the telephone rang at our country cottage in Hampshire: it was Sir Edward Heath. “Those overpriced cushions you made for me are falling apart,” he said, with a twinkle in his voice, not quite joking but not altogether serious either. He didn’t know quite how to call someone just as a friend, without making a business excuse. The call was to Derek, Sir Edward’s interior designer. Some half a dozen years previously, Derek had undertaken a major project to redesign and decorate Arundells, Sir Edward’s magnificent Queen Anne house in The Close at Salisbury. The former Prime Minister had often demonstrated his wish to retain a friendship with us both, but always on unequal terms. He was invariably “Sir Edward” – while we were “Derek” and “Jeremy”. It was clear to us that he was lonely and looking for an excuse to meet, either at his house in Salisbury or as our guest at our cottage on the Solent. We sensed that, in his own highly inhibited way, he was reaching out to us as a gay couple. He undoubtedly felt comfortable in male company. With us he was relaxed and at ease.
‘Old Ted, as we couldn’t call him, was a great raconteur and loved his own stories about important people and world leaders he had known. “Chairman Mao gave me this hideous piece,” he would declare with his characteristic unnatural laugh and heaving of his shoulders. The house was full of such memorabilia and photographs of world leaders and monarchs in silver frames on the piano. On one card President Nixon had added a hand-written note – “In our line of business you need a second string” – presumably a reference to his music and sailing interests.
‘While Derek was decorating Arundells and for some time after, we would often visit. Heath’s delight in his new home was evident. He had never before worked with an interior designer to create a stylish personal home. He relished both the experience and the result. He was happy getting down on the floor to examine samples of fabric and to pore over Derek’s plans, his comments were always thoughtful and considered. Through the experience of working closely with him on so personal a project, Derek was able to touch an intimate part of his make-up. The long-buried gay designer gene expressed itself in his enthusiasm. His keen intelligence and appreciation of another’s skill made him an ideal client; he learnt a great deal and gave a great deal of thought and attention to the matter. He discovered a newfound delight in decoration and design. He listened and learnt fast from someone who had much to teach about how to make the best use of available space and to achieve a harmonious and stylish result.
‘His pride in the result was evident to see, but he was niggardly in his praise and often took credit for Derek’s ideas. For some years after the job was finished, Derek would retreat to the study at Arundells with Sir Edward to discuss his long list of complaints and snags. It was as if he did not want to let go of either the experience or the relationship that it had engendered. ‘Derek found it difficult to say no to such a prestigious client. Sir Edward pushed the limits of what could be considered fair and reasonable in free after-care service. We suspected that these frequent requests for help were his way of keeping in contact and not losing our friendship. He was an excellent client when it came to settling his account, but there were times when he stretched our patience with his niggling and petty requests.
‘Although he could be quite entertaining, his conversation centred on himself; he never showed the slightest interest in our lives. His capacity for friendship rested solely on his entertainment and celebrity value; hence his loneliness. Our friend, Michael Wade, recalls a typical Heath reply to his question, “What do you consider your greatest achievement?” Always ready with a sharp rejoinder and conversation stopper, Sir Edward retorted: “Don’t you think becoming prime minister is a sufficiently great achievement?”
‘We discussed gay matters in relation to politics and I asked him for his views on issues such as the age of consent for gay sex. I asked him why he had voted against equality; he claimed that he had always favoured an equal age, but that politically it was impossible until now: “The rank and file of the party would never have stood for it,” was his comment. Ever the politician, he put pragmatism before principle.
‘As a gay man, I couldn’t help but conclude that he was a deeply closeted gay man. He was clearly not rampantly heterosexual and, given that he was ambitious, it seems likely that he had decided early in life to sublimate his sexuality to his political ambitions. That he was right to do so was underlined by the tragic Jeremy Thorpe affair. At that period, at least, a political leader could not have risen to great heights and been a homosexual; he would have been discovered and exposed. His love of the organ (or so an organist told me), his exaggerated affection for his mother, his great artistic sensibilities and his bachelor, almost monastic, life lead me to the conclusion that if he had a sexuality – as nearly everyone must – he had to be inclined towards men. That impression was reinforced by his monosyllabic answers to questions about his love life and his one close woman friend: he clearly had something to hide. Sir Edward was a master at monosyllabic equivocation and evasion. “Yes, that’s right,” was all he would reply to the question, “Were you sad when she married someone else?”’
At the party conference of 1985 Heath was in dyspeptic mood. When his time as Prime Minister was criticised at a meeting, he responded by saying ‘this conference is rigged’, adding: ‘That woman during my government was the biggest spender of them all, along with Keith Joseph.’70 When he was presented at a restaurant with a marzipan bust of Mrs Thatcher, he ceremoniously cut it into four pieces and had it sent across to another table, where four cabinet ministers were dining.
In February 1986 the debate about selling British Leyland to General Motors had unhappy echoes of the Westland affair. Heath was cheered by many Labour MPs and not a few Tories too, when he expressed reservations to the new Secretary of State, Paul Channon, about what was proposed:
‘I have been accused of many things in my life, but not of being isolationist. Moreover, I hope that he will not accuse me of being anti-American. I first went to the United States in 1939 as a student. I fought alongside the Americans. I have worked closely with four presidents of the United States. I am a great admirer of the Americans. Moreover, I admire what General Motors has done. I well recall one of the most famous phrases in history under President Eisenhower’s Administration, that what was good for General Motors was good for America. That may well be true, but it does not follow that what is good for General Motors is good for Britain, and that is what concerns me.’71
Peter Batey’s successor running the private office was Richard Burn:
‘It is well known that Ted Heath disliked Margaret Thatcher and never forgave her from replacing him as Party leader, but it is not true that he always referred to her as “that woman” or that he did not recognise her capabilities. He was perfectly gracious to her when she went to his fiftieth anniversary party in Claridge’s in February 2000 and went to her 75th birthday party later the same year, when the then party leader, William Hague, did not. I remember watching the television news with him when Edwina Currie, then a minister, was in trouble over tainted eggs, and asked him if she reminded him of Thatcher. “Oh no,” he said, “there was much more to her.” And then much later when Tony Blair was on the news, hectoring Parliament as he tried to justify the invasion of Iraq, which Ted Heath bitterly opposed, believing it illegal and likely to have disastrous consequences, I said (trying to get a rise out of him) “He’s as bad as Thatcher”, to which he immediately retorted, “No, he’s much worse – Blair’s evil.” Hardly ringing endorsements, but he grudgingly recognised her strength of character.
‘He had a great sense of humour and was often quite self-mocking among friends. When I worked in his office he would often ask my opinion after giving a speech. I tried to be honest although it was difficult to be too critical: luckily he was a very good speaker, particularly when talking off the cuff to an audience he liked. But occasionally, if I felt he hadn’t been at his best, I might be lukewarm in praise. That normally elicited a grumpy response but if on the other hand I ever said he had spoken very well, he would say: “Oh praise indeed, the fool Heath has got something right!”
‘I remember once sitting at my desk in his office when the phone rang and it was someone from an NGO asking if EH would be prepared to go to India to give a speech at a conference about aid to the developing world, also explaining that, unfortunately, they were unable to pay him a fee. I looked at his diary and discovered that, by chance, he was due to be in India anyway the same week. I rang him and told him about the speech and the coincidence of his being in India. “What’s the fee?” he asked. I told him they were a non-profit making organisation and unable to pay a fee. “Well tell them,” he replied, “that if they pay me a large fee, that will help them not to make a profit!” There was a long pause and then we both laughed. He did the speech without a fee.
‘On one occasion (after I had stopped working for him) he was unable to use four tickets for Glyndebourne and asked if I would like to buy them, “to entertain my clients”. I readily agreed and happily sent him a cheque. About two weeks before the opera, he rang up and said that, as it turned out, the event for which he had abandoned Glyndebourne had itself been cancelled, so he was free to go after all. My heart sank as I thought he would ask me to sell him back the tickets, but he had another solution: he would be pleased to come as my guest. That sort of practical joke was typical of him and those of us who knew him well understood that it was meant to be funny, as well as clever. Alas, people who did not know him rarely saw the amusing side of his pranks and deadpan remarks.’
The general election of 1987 was inevitably quieter for Heath than any other since 1950: although he did apparently visit twenty-eight constituencies, in support of friends and allies,* he felt no need to take any national profile. With the opposition parties still inflicting damage on one another with great vigour, Mrs Thatcher won more comfortably than expected, with a majority of around 100 seats. Once the election was over, Heath was quickly out of the traps, in the spirit of Nostradamus. In the debate on the Queen’s Speech, he made it plain he did not see himself as a spent force, at least as a presence both baleful and baneful for ministers. Following a speech by David Owen, of whom he was never fond, he could not resist starting with a dig:
‘In congratulating the Prime Minister, her colleagues and our party on their success in the election, I believe that it would be grossly unfair of me not to pay full tribute to the contribution by the Leader of the Opposition and the leaders of the alliance in that process. Their contribution was in all ways remarkable.’72
He went on to criticise the Government on devolution, crime, the debts of the developing world and, at some length, its proposals for reform of schools. He also identified the proposal that would cause the Government endless, ultimately mortal, pain, but seemed to believe ministers had already crafted an escape route for themselves. Perhaps he was joking:
‘I am encouraged by the fact that the proposals in the Queen’s Speech are all couched in terms that the Government could change, if persuaded to do so. They do not commit themselves to the poll tax: the speech states that fresh arrangements will be made. That gives the Government every opportunity . . . I hope that they will take advantage of every opportunity of accepting advice that we can give them . . . The characteristic of a poll tax is that it is not related to people’s ability to pay, nor to the circumstances in different areas of the country. Those are two basic failings of the poll tax, quite apart from the administrative problems. The Secretary of State for the Environment last night said that he believed that it was right that tax should not be related to people’s ability to pay. That is not a radical proposal; it is a reactionary, regressive proposal for the tax not to be related to people’s ability to pay.’73
The ‘Great Education Reform Bill’ (known as the ‘GERBIL’) was taken through Parliament by Heath’s former PPS, Kenneth Baker. It proposed a national curriculum, the power for schools to ‘opt out’ of local authority control and also extensive budgetary devolution to schools, which had already been pioneered in certain Conservative-controlled local authorities. At second reading Heath did not spare Baker’s blushes:
‘The extent of the Secretary of State’s power will be overwhelming. Within the parliamentary system, no Secretary of State should ever be allowed to hold such a degree of power. He should surrender that power. There is no confidence in the claim that all the processes of consultation that the Secretary of State has mentioned will be effective or that the Secretary of State will take any notice of them.
‘Opting out should be dropped completely. It will undermine the whole of the basic educational system of this country. The proposition of dictating to the universities what they should do, how they should do it and what will happen to their staff must also go. There is so much to be done and the Secretary of State could create a record for himself akin to that of Balfour and Butler. He will not do it this way. I beg my right hon. Friend to look at his predecessors and follow the line, both practical and philosophical, taken by them.’74
In January 1988, Heath spoke in support of the Protection of Official Information Bill that his back-bench colleague Richard Shepherd had introduced as a Private Member’s Bill. He supported the liberal principles of the Bill (which did find their way into law in the era of the Blair Government) and deplored the Government’s decision to impose a three-line whip against it, an act he believed was without precedent. The occasion produced one of his most impressive parliamentary performances and also one of the lowest majorities the Thatcher Government ever enjoyed – as it succeeded in killing the Bill (and creating considerable ill feeling amongst its own supporters) by 271 votes to 234. More than ever, Heath was effectively in opposition.
Despite these high-profile domestic interventions, Heath was still an inveterate traveller and there is a picaresque quality to the best tales from this period. There is the visit to China that descended into farce when Heath obediently sent his packing ahead to the airport and only then realised he had packed all his trousers. Peter Batey alone could remotely approximate the Heath girth, so Heath struggled into his trousers while Peter had to go to the airport swaddled in towels, until the luggage could be retrieved. There was also a trip to the then Soviet Union, during which a ‘spook’ from the British Council warned Richard Burn that the handsome young man assigned by their hosts to accompany the Heath party was a suspected ‘agent provocateur’, specially chosen for the fruitless task of attempting to catch the eye of the confirmed bachelor Heath and gain his amorous attentions. Much ribaldry ensued, with one of Heath’s Special Branch protection officers mirthfully exclaiming, within Heath’s earshot, that ‘They’re going to roger Tubs* on the night train to Leningrad.’ Needless to say, the sole object of Heath’s affections throughout the trip was the private supply of whisky his entourage had provided for him.
When Nigel Nelson, Political Editor of the Sunday People, interviewed Heath in summer 1988, he was less than flattering about Heath’s physical decline and sartorial sense: ‘Ted Heath waddled into the room looking more like a Torremolinos tourist than a former Prime Minister,’ he wrote. ‘The one button holding his short-sleeved shirt together threatened to give at any moment, and the tight white shorts were so tight they were like a pair of incongruous hot-pants which seemed about to carve his midriff in two . . . but . . . 72-year old Mr Heath proved that his brain was as razor sharp as ever.’ On one subject in particular, Heath was not far wide of the mark: ‘I have attacked the Government’s policy for the Poll Tax because I think it’s absolutely unjustifiable. It’s going to be very damaging to the party.’ In the course of an hour, Heath did not mention Mrs Thatcher once by name and, when challenged on his parliamentary voting record (around 5 per cent) he simply responded: ‘I spend a lot of time in my constituency and a certain amount of time abroad . . . A Government which has this size of a majority doesn’t need to have everyone there.’75
On 20 September 1988, Mrs Thatcher travelled to Bruges and made one of her most famous speeches. Framed in terms that might arguably put her on the pro-European wing of the modern-day Conservative Party, this is the section of the speech that has achieved an immortality of its own:
‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels. Certainly we want to see Europe more united and with a greater sense of common purpose. But it must be in a way which preserves the different traditions, parliamentary powers and sense of national pride in one’s own country; for these have been the source of Europe’s vitality through the centuries.’
Heath was indignant beyond words. He saw this speech as a complete abnegation of the pro-European attitude that had predominated in the party since the early 1960s. At the party conference in October, he set out to refute it. This felt like civil war. Jonathan Aitken was scheduled to speak before Heath, but spoke after him instead; and seemingly denounced not what Heath had said, but what he, Aitken, had expected him to say. Certainly there was nothing in Heath’s fairly modulated words that justified Aitken’s description of him as the ‘unacceptable face of Conservatism’.
That same month, Heath was the surprising – and also surprised – recipient of the ‘Parliamentarian of the Year’ Award from the Spectator. It was an award he accepted with genuine pleasure and then cherished. At the end of May the following year, Heath himself went to Belgium, consciously flouting the well-established convention of not attacking one’s own leaders when abroad, in his words, to ‘wipe away the stain on its [the European Community’s] principles and beliefs left behind last September by what is now known as the Bruges Speech by the British Prime Minister’. He was roundly attacked for his pains, even by former aides such as Douglas Hurd and Kenneth Baker. He defended himself unapologetically: ‘We have reached the stage where there is no point in going on talking in coded terms. Ex-Ministers have been doing that for ten years. One has to speak out because the situation is so serious.’
Many people were fascinated by how Heath’s constituency party felt about his self-isolating position within the party and, every so often, journalists would go to Bexley, no doubt in the hope of uncovering splits or causing mischief. Heath’s agent at this time, Tom Jolly, was an old hand and knew very well how to handle such expeditions. In any case, what the press found was a mixture of acquiescence in Heath’s behaviour, resigned acceptance and dogged, personal loyalty to him. In my experience, the Bexley association was, in its views, much like any other – only those on the left of the party felt more able to speak out. Through a subtle admixture of charm, intimidation and sheer force of personality, for almost fifty years, half of which he spent as an outspoken and controversial self-appointed sage in the wilderness, Heath managed to inspire broad loyalty amongst the Tories of Bexley.
Robert Vaudry, who ran Heath’s office between 1988 and 1992, was notably entrepreneurial in the role. The lunches in Salisbury went more ‘showbiz’, with the likes of Bob Geldof, Toyah Wilcox and Richard Branson in attendance. He once insisted that the great cellist Jacqueline du Pré should be invited and only reluctantly would he accept that her multiple sclerosis was far too advanced for that. Heath also befriended the rock star Sting and his wife Trudie Styler. For a fee that was paid to his charitable trust, he even advertised English cheeses (‘Red Leicester?’ ‘No, I prefer Blue Stilton’). Vaudry realised how much Heath enjoyed publicity – ‘He liked to be the centre of attention – it gave his life meaning’ – and on a Friday he would sometimes call Chris Moncrieff of the Press Association, entirely off his own bat, to stir up a story in Heath’s name. The following Monday, an amused Heath might comment, ‘I was clearly very busy over the weekend!’ Vaudry kept Heath off BBC Question Time, but did negotiate his appearance on The Dame Edna Experience, in which Barry Humphries, in his pink and flowery guise, asked Heath whom he had in his life to tell him when he had spinach on his teeth. Heath handled himself superbly, with a surprising lightness of touch.
In June 1989, the Conservative Party, which had been far more pro-Europe than Labour in the 1979 and 1984 European election campaigns, changed tack significantly, with posters about voters being fed a ‘Diet of Brussels’ should they neglect to vote Conservative. Many in the party were uneasy and, as she sought to calm the waters in the week before the European Parliament elections, Mrs Thatcher responded in a highly stage-managed way to a question from Tory MP Roger King asking her to confirm that no Conservative candidate was opposed to Britain’s membership of the EEC:
‘Yes, of course I confirm that, unlike the Labour Party, all our candidates in the Euro-elections believe that Britain’s future lies in the European Community. A Conservative Government led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup had the vision to take Britain into the Community . . . A successor Conservative Government have made such a success of Britain’s membership.’76
Heath was seen to nod his head to this, twice, slowly. Nonetheless, he was appalled by the party’s gradual conversion to an anti-European stance. In his memoirs, he described that Tory campaign as ‘an object lesson in political inconsistency, as well as distortion’.
In a debate on Security and Intelligence later in the same year, Heath excoriated Mrs Thatcher’s use of the No. 10 press operation, which was increasingly becoming involved in briefings against individual ministers who had fallen out of favour: ‘They have used their press office at No. 10 in a way which can be described as corrupt – in a way which went far beyond not only the achievements but even the aspirations of any previous Government.’77 Heath’s principal media spokesman when he was Prime Minister, Sir Donald Maitland, later drew a strong contrast with that earlier era: ‘There was never any occasion when I commented on the performance of any member of the Cabinet, for the very good reason that the Prime Minister never discussed his Cabinet colleagues with me . . . My relationship with Ted Heath was obviously a very close one, but on no occasion did that arise in any conversation he had with me, and I didn’t expect it to.’78
Heath continued to travel, in particular to China, where he was feted as a statesman and old friend. As Peter Luff recalls, these visits were sometimes more than ceremonial:
‘In April 1982, I went with Heath to Peking and met Deng Xiaoping. The conversation was formal but lively. I was struck by how often Deng laughed and by how often he spat. He sprung one big surprise about his vision for the future of Hong Kong. From nowhere came the unexpected idea of “One Country, Two Systems”, clearly intended to be relayed immediately to the British government. The ambassador, Sir Percy Cradock, swore the Heath team to silence and quickly sent his telegram to London. But it seems Mrs Thatcher could not believe the Chinese would use Heath as the conduit for such important news and the British took no action to follow up on the proposal. Months of negotiating time were lost as a result of Thatcher’s disbelief, born of the growing mutual antipathy.’
Through the late 1970s and the 1980s, it did seem Heath’s policy of ‘ouverture’ towards ‘Red China’ was the correct one and would continue to bear fruit. Critics called him an apologist, but, so long as China’s internal affairs seemed to be moving in a positive direction – more freedom, a greater inclination to trade, frigid relations with the Soviet Union – his position was defensible. Then came the dreadful events in Tiananmen Square in July 1989, when hundreds of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators were murdered. So much for which Heath had worked, now seemed to have come to naught:
‘Many of us . . . are still stunned by the trauma in Peking and other big cities in the People’s Republic of China. I acknowledge immediately that I am one of them. No one believed that it could possibly happen. How could it happen when the people at the top had themselves suffered during the cultural revolution? Deng Xiaoping said to me: “I am here only because Mao Tse-Tung said that not a hair on my head was to be damaged.” . . . We still need to know the whole story. Perhaps we shall never know it, but the ghastly tragedy was there for us all to see.
‘The pernicious and dishonest journalist, Edward Pearce, has accused me of condoning the massacre. I have never condoned it for a moment. I am not ashamed that in 1972 as Prime Minister I brought about full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China . . . In my first discussions with Mao Tse-Tung I obtained from him, in the presence of Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng, an undertaking that nothing serious would happen in Hong Kong and that the changeover in 1997 would be peaceful . . . I could not possibly condone for one moment the massacre in Peking and the executions and shootings in the other cities that followed.’79
Unlike the gerontocracy in China, Mikhail Gorbachev and his supporters baulked at deploying brute military force to suppress the flowering of freedom. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Heath and Vaudry were flown to Berlin for a live broadcast that Heath would undertake with Denis Healey. As the two old rivals and Balliol contemporaries were preparing to go live, Healey donned a joke-shop false eye, on a spring. The moment they were on air, he allowed it to drop into his lap. After the interview, Heath and Vaudry went to the Wall, which was being slowly demolished by the population, and walked through a gap. On the other side they were confronted by a group of nervous, young, armed border guards. Not for the first time, Heath’s sangfroid stood him in good stead.
By 1990, Mrs Thatcher was in difficulties. Nigel Lawson had quit as Chancellor, widespread hostility to the poll tax was hardening and many of her fellow Conservatives were alarmed by her growing hostility towards Europe. The polls looked grim and there was a hint of mortality about the Government. She nonetheless attended a lunch at the Savoy Hotel in February, held to mark Heath’s fortieth anniversary as a Member of Parliament. Heath’s former PPS Tim Kitson paid this tribute to Heath:
‘Those who have known and served with Ted Heath for many years will recognise in him the characteristics of a great parliamentarian: his honest belief in rational argument and debate as the means of reaching solutions and drawing out the truth; his straightforwardness and wit in speech; and his gift for friendship and unfailing courtesy towards other Members.’80
In early September the House of Commons was recalled during the summer recess, to discuss the invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraqi troops, which had taken place in early August. Mrs Thatcher was in her element, with much talk of resisting aggression. For once she did not have to resist any aggression from Heath, who welcomed the lead the United Nations was giving, made unsympathetic noises about Israel and sympathetic ones about Jordan; and then set out only one, very carefully calibrated, warning:
‘I ask that we be careful in making absolute commitments, because on this occasion it is possible that Arab countries themselves will work out a solution to the security of their own region. That will not be easy, but it has been done on previous occasions.’81
A sizeable number of British citizens were taken hostage by the Iraqi government, for use as ‘human shields’. Heath offered to go and negotiate their release. There had initially been indications from the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, that Heath’s trip would carry the official sanction of Her Majesty’s Government, but that had been withdrawn, apparently after Mrs Thatcher flew into a rage when she heard of it. During the party conference, Robert Vaudry organised, through Central Office, a room for a press conference. This gathering clashed with Michael Heseltine’s speech at the conference, but journalists sensed the better story was with Heath. He was, he told the assembled throng, going to Iraq to lobby Saddam for the release of the hostages. Vaudry describes Heath’s ten-minute opening presentation as ‘the best I ever saw him’ and the occasion on which he most clearly saw how and why his employer had become Prime Minister: ‘I was so proud at that moment in time.’ After questions they all had to make a quick exit, because Heath was hosting one of his traditional party conference dinners, at his home in Salisbury. The journalists, headed by the Press Association’s legendary political editor Chris Moncrieff, later described how privileged they felt, to be part of the biggest story going. This was a far cry from all too many of these gatherings, where the gossip and food were plentiful, but everyone felt far removed from the mainstream of events.
When Heath left Arundells to travel to Iraq, accompanied by a number of British journalists, the police there mused to Stuart Craven that they might never see him again. Heath, Vaudry and Heath’s personal physician, Jeffrey Easton, who had replaced the now-retired Brian Warren, flew first to Jordan, then on to Baghdad, where they met (and were charmed by) Saddam’s foreign minister and confidant Tariq Aziz. At first they were told they were staying in the same hotel as the foreign press corps, but Heath objected (not least because the place was known to be bugged) and they were relocated to one of Saddam’s palaces. Outside the British embassy, a crowd had gathered with ‘Maggie Out’ placards. ‘I think they’ve got the wrong person,’ said Heath.
When Heath and his sidekicks met the ‘human shield’ hostages, they were accompanied by a sizeable press pack and set about distributing, Santa-like, sackfuls of mail they had brought from loved ones. The Iraqis had in mind the approximate number of hostages they were willing to release but the negotiations were complicated by the fact that the names of the Westerners had been transliterated into Arabic and back into Roman script, making the lists all but useless. With the Ambassador, the group set about identifying those hostages whose medical conditions made their release most urgent. A total of thirty-three hostages were identified, about whom the British Embassy had been most concerned.
When Heath went to see Saddam, he had with him only an interpreter. Nonetheless a remarkable account exists of their meeting – an account that itself came to light in remarkable circumstances. If visitors from abroad come to Arundells these days, there is always a decent likelihood of them seeing something relevant to their home country and the excellent guides try to make a point of finding this out. On one occasion a visitor who had come to the UK from Iraq was shown a cartoon depicting Heath as a snake charmer, working his wiles on Saddam Hussein when he went to negotiate the release of the British hostages. The guide started to tell the story. ‘I know all about that,’ said the visitor, ‘because I was there with him – I was the interpreter.’ The guide encouraged the man to tell his extraordinary tale:
‘We were invited to go into a room, where Saddam Hussein was sitting at a table, with two armed guards standing behind him. We sat down after the usual greetings and then Edward Heath turned to me and instructed me: “Explain exactly what I say. Don’t change any of the wording. Tell him only a coward would hide behind the shirts and skirts of women and children.” I thought at that point we were both dead. I steeled myself and said exactly that. The smile went off Saddam’s face and the two guards behind him shifted on their feet, which made things even worse. Then Mr Heath smiled at Saddam Hussein and said: “Now tell him that, having met him, I will assure my government that he is not a coward and would never dream of doing such a thing.” Then the smile returned to Saddam’s face, the two guards relaxed and puzzlement spread on Saddam’s face, as he weighed up what had happened and realised he had been cornered. Apparently it worked, because he then released a number of the hostages.’
When Heath and the released ‘guestages’ arrived home at Gatwick, a junior foreign office minister, Mark Lennox-Boyd, was there, but merely exchanged pleasantries and kept a low profile. Heath was not amused and some of his language was less than diplomatic. There was a danger the triumph might rapidly morph, in the words of Robert Vaudry, into ‘another Heath vs. Thatcher scenario’. Fortunately it did not, largely because the mission was ‘enough of a success for him to get away with it’. Heath flew straight off to Germany for a paid speaking engagement. In December, 100 more hostages were released, as part of the agreement Heath had negotiated. At an event at Buckingham Palace in November 1992, Heath and Her Majesty the Queen discussed Iraq with the first President Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker. Heath suggested to Baker that he should have gone to Baghdad, as he himself had done, for face-to-face talks with Saddam Hussein. Baker was not persuaded. In front of television cameras, Her Majesty intervened, saying: ‘But he couldn’t get to Baghdad, like you could.’ ‘Why not, Ma’am?’ asked Heath. ‘I went to Baghdad.’ ‘I know you could,’ laughed the Queen, ‘but you’re expendable now.’ Heath had little choice but to laugh.
After Mrs Thatcher lost the party leadership in November 1990, John Major defeated Michael Heseltine and Douglas Hurd in the contest to become her successor, thanks to the support of a substantial majority of right wingers in the parliamentary party, including his predecessor, Mrs Thatcher. Heath (who never disclosed his allegiance in this matter, but almost certainly voted for Heseltine in the first round and Hurd in the second) quickly warmed to Major in the 1990–1992 period and was particularly delighted when he stated, at the meeting of the party’s Central Council in Southport on 23 March 1991 that, ‘I want to place Britain at the heart of Europe’. An endorsement from Heath was more kiss of death than breath of life to a Tory leader, but when Labour introduced a ‘no confidence’ motion against the Government, specifically referring to the poll tax and only to the poll tax, just four days after Major’s Southport speech, Heath made an unexpected, but sincere, well-intentioned and extremely powerful intervention:
‘The main reason I want to speak is to give the fullest possible support to the Prime Minister, who has embarked on an enormous task and faces formidable problems. I am sad if what I say disappoints all those Opposition Members who have so strongly and loudly supported me during the past fifteen difficult years, but I am now in a position to say these few words. I believe that what the Prime Minister is doing is absolutely right – perhaps I say so the more strongly because I was one of those who previously said that the Government were absolutely wrong.
‘In the debate during the passage of the Local Government Finance Bill on 17 December 1987, I summed up: “The poll tax is unfair and unworkable. It does not increase accountability and will be immensely damaging to the Conservative Party.” The Prime Minister is now limiting the damage and leading the Conservative Party to recover from that damage.
‘I am puzzled why the Opposition particularly asked that this vote of no confidence should be concerned only with the poll tax. I cannot recollect any other occasion in the House in the past forty years when a vote of no confidence has been limited to one particular subject . . .
‘Why were they not prepared to give the Prime Minister all the credit for what he has done in restoring our situation in Europe? He has changed the whole position. Why were the Opposition not prepared to discuss the part that he played in the crisis in the Gulf? Why were the Opposition not prepared to discuss the dramatic step that he took in saying, within a month of taking office, that haemophiliacs will of course receive proper compensation for being infected with AIDS as a result of bad blood transfusions, something which had been argued about in a petty way for years? My right hon. Friend dealt immediately with all that, so why will not the Opposition give him credit for it?
‘I just do not understand, except that they are not prepared to acknowledge the good things that have been done in the past 100 days. I am, and I warmly congratulate the Prime Minister and his colleagues on that.’82
This vivid account from the sculptor Martin Jennings of dealing with Heath during this generally much more mellow period in his life is both revealing and hilarious:
‘I had been commissioned to make a bronze portrait bust of Ted Heath for the Oxford Union and turned up at his house off the Close in Salisbury one hot August morning in 1991. I sat and waited in the garden with a coffee. Eventually Heath tacked lugubriously across the lawn and sat down, casting me a long baleful look. He did not appear to be looking forward to the business.
‘The first thing I needed was a series of photographs of his top half to work from when he wasn’t actually sitting for me. I asked him whether he could put on a suit and tie for the purpose. Releasing a huge sigh of despair he wandered back to the house, appearing what seemed like hours later wearing jacket and tie but having also put on what must have been the grubbiest pair of sailing trousers in his wardrobe. He was grinning broadly. Clearly it was all going to be a battle of wits.
‘Modelling of the portrait took place in the large drawing room. Heath was a good hour late for most of the sittings which could be a problem not least because the morning was the best time to work. Invariably he fell asleep in the afternoon. As soon as his chin slumped onto his chest I had to down tools. A deep rumbling would emanate from him, the only sound apart from the buzzing of the odd trapped bee in an otherwise deserted house. During the pause I would take to watching out of the window as the two or three Wiltshire coppers consigned to guard the gates of his home idly toyed with their machine guns in the summer heat. What was I meant to do with this somnolent grandee? When eventually I managed to wake him after virtually yelling his name he would pull his head back and bark at me in turn: “I wasn’t asleep! I was thinking!”
‘The thinking bit of his face was interesting and I concentrated on it, furrowing the portrait’s clay forehead like some of the Epstein busts I’d been studying. His nose, beloved of caricaturists, was of less interest to me than the primness of his mouth. Further down, the shelf of his stomach tugged against his jacket in waving sheets. At one point he turned to the sculpture and suggested I treat it to “a deal less neck”. But how could I? The jowls were the man.
‘Heath was provocative, rather like a bored teenager, but there was something very gratifying about his lugubrious wit. Before I drove off with the finished clay he told me in mock despair how feebly the work mirrored its subject. A few weeks later I had a call from his researcher to say that Heath rather liked it and wanted to buy a cast for himself.’83
Heath would bask in the glasnost of the Major era for some time to come and, remarkably, became something of an out-rider (albeit a freelance one) on Major’s behalf whenever Mrs Thatcher sought to criticise or undermine him. Heath’s most explicit – ‘splenetic’ is not too strong a word – attack on Mrs Thatcher came when, on Tuesday 18 June 1991, she had made a speech in New York attacking the European Community. Addressing 1,700 businessmen at the Economic Club of New York, she said it was time for the UK to look beyond the EC and ‘begin to lay the foundations of an Atlantic Economic Community, embracing the EC, EFTA and the new democratic states of Eastern Europe on one hand, and North America on the other’. Europe was already dominating the headlines at home. On the Monday, there had been an attempt to bounce European foreign ministers into accepting a federal future for the European Community, which had prompted John Major to assure an uneasy House of Commons: ‘A European super-state would not be acceptable to me or to the House – and in my judgment it would not be acceptable to the country.’ Something inside Heath snapped and what followed overshadowed in its vitriol anything he had previously said – in public or even in private – about his successor. On Channel 4 News, Heath said of her New York speech:
‘It is full of falsehoods – in ordinary English, lies – and every attempt to discredit the Community . . . She says that the European Commission is autocratic in its decision-making. It is nothing of the sort. It can only take decisions if ministers agree on those decisions. These are blatant falsehoods, and the history which she purports to put forward is again entirely false. She also is so ignorant that she does not realise we have a European culture as well as individual national aspects. Beethoven is European; Goethe is European; Michelangelo is European. These are all part of European culture and she has no realisation of that at all.
‘What it is doing is showing that Mrs Thatcher is entirely out of touch with events in this country. She does not realise the situation John Major is having to deal with; she doesn’t realise she was the cause of it; and she doesn’t realise that in Europe she is regarded not just as irresponsible but entirely not to be considered at all in any way.
‘She goes on talking about the results of freedom in this country; she shows no appreciation of the ghastly legacy she has left her successor. She doesn’t realise she was pushed so unceremoniously out of No. 10 because of what she said about Europe – and the party wouldn’t stand for it. She talks about the glories of the poll tax. Well, this country repudiated the Poll Tax because it was unfair, unmanageable and expensive. She talks about the great partnership with Reagan. She doesn’t seem to realise Reagan is completely discredited in the US as a president.’84
In light of all that it’s hardly astounding that Heath was invited onto every other news outlet. Later the same evening, he carried on where he had left off on BBC 2’s Newsnight. He was asked whether the vehemence of his assault on Mrs Thatcher might not astonish people. He said: ‘A lot of people won’t be astonished because they are sick and tired of hearing this from Mrs Thatcher. We have held ourselves back now for ten years and the whole question is absolutely crucial as far as the European Community is concerned.’ When he was asked what he thought of her warning that the Community was acting like a ‘little club’ and might exclude the new democracies of Eastern Europe, he retorted: ‘The little mind is her own – minute, that’s what it is.’
Surprisingly, during this period of heightened activity, Heath did at last turn some small part of his attention to the matter of his personal archive and a possible memoir. He recruited extra help and, in reality, extra company to add colour and interest to his time in Salisbury. The most notable recruit was American researcher Jeff Stacey, who first encountered Heath a year or two earlier:
‘The first intimate view of Sir Edward’s personal character for me came in the spring of 1990, when he came to the University of Michigan as the Deroy Visiting Professor. He was wined and dined by the President and invited to give a public address, but his specific role was to teach a two-week seminar to a hand-picked group of Honors Program students. I have to admit, that autumn prior I didn’t even know who he was; but a mate of mine schooled me on the significance of this opportunity – “Thatcher worked for this guy” – and cajoled me to apply.
‘On the seminar’s first day the ten selected students were whisked off to a mansion owned by the university, used for wooing donors and never before seen by the likes of us. In a rather ornate library we situated ourselves on an assortment of grand leather sofas and then waited for this eminent individual, about whom we had been reading for weeks, to arrive. He finally did, and to our surprise, waddled straight past the finely carved lectern over in our direction and plunked himself down on a sofa, between myself and another student; he then slapped his hands on his thighs, looked around at us, and said, “So, what would you like to talk about?”
‘We were more than a little taken aback and not at all prepared for so informal an experience. And so it was to be. So much so that by the end of our sessions and lunches I felt no inhibition at all in telling Sir Edward that I would be travelling to the UK that summer to study English and Irish literature; his instant response met my expectation: “Splendid; I shall look forward to your joining me for mint juleps on the Terrace.” At the time I had not a clue he was referring to the most secluded bar in the land, jutting out over the Thames from the Palace of Westminster and requiring an MP in one’s party to attend – nor that mint juleps are a southern American cocktail, and hardly British.
‘To my surprise, halfway through the trip while traipsing around the grounds of the Salisbury Cathedral my professor surprised us by leading the way to Sir Edward’s adjacent home, Arundells, to accept an invitation for tea. While my contemporaries gorged on mountains of scones and finger sandwiches, my professor and I fed on conversation with our host about Gorbachev and the prospects of the 2+4 talks – the end of the Cold War was in full swing.
‘My second intimate view into Sir Edward’s persona came at the tail end of that trip. I arrived in London suffused in Hardy and Yeats, eagerly anticipating meeting up with a mentor in the making. Some ten telephone calls later, my hopes seemed wrecked on the shores of a dubious private secretary; I decided to ring up his office yet one more time, and after languishing on hold for nearly ten minutes was about to put the phone down when the private secretary got back on the line and relayed an invitation from Sir Edward to me to attend Sunday lunch at Arundells.
‘As fortune would have it, the other guests included two MPs, a Lord, a famous chef, and their respective partners. Literally awash in alcohol after some umpteen courses and sublime conversation right the way through, Sir Edward sensed my trepidation when I accepted a snifter of cognac that all the other guests subsequently refused. He poured himself the same, and beckoned me to join him in a window seat next to the drawing room’s grand piano. Not long into the conversation he asked me what I planned to do after graduating from Michigan; when I smugly replied I would be attending law school in the US, he retorted snidely: “Why on earth would one ever do such a dreadful thing?” Roundly offended, I finally stammered a feeble question as to just what he meant (a year hence it would take me six months of working for him to discern when he was wielding that mordant wit of his and when he wasn’t). His reply: “Why, you should come to work for me, of course.”
‘Suffice it to say, I never went to law school. That sole year working in London was simply the best year of my life, and that was due largely to Sir Edward. I found him to be intensely loyal to his staff, even to the point of being treated like the family he didn’t have. I soon found myself invited to more speeches, interviews, openings, galas, and events of all kinds, than I could have imagined – the boss simply took myself and another researcher along for the ride whenever he could. My greatest thrills came in those Sunday lunches, before which he would ask me, “Whom should we invite along this time? The musicians, the economists, the journalists?”
‘I came to believe that the infamous animosity between Heath and Thatcher had less to do with jealously and pique, and more to do with an honest assessment that she was doing a disservice to the country – from fighting a needless war with Argentina, to her “One of Us” embrace of Reagan, to the poll tax. After all, he had kept quiet in the House for quite some time, until he couldn’t bear it any more, for not speaking up would have violated his principles. As to the inability of the press and public to distinguish between the two, it seemed he could not care less.’
Divisions over Europe were the bane of John Major’s life, but whereas the ‘noises off’ from Heath and Mrs Thatcher were not exactly helpful, at least the arguments were being ventilated, the two extreme positions were being set out (not particularly persuasively) – and the battlefield was well outside the cabinet room. As he had in the Thatcher years, Heath served the function of an ‘out-rider’, providing cover for others who shared his misgivings about the state of the party. Furthermore, so far as Heath’s reputation was concerned, he was in the, for him, unusual position of seeking to defend and consolidate the position of his party’s leader. In November 1991, for example, with his ‘pet’ subject being discussed in Parliament, Heath could not refrain from making a speech:
‘When the Prime Minister said, on his appointment, that he wanted Britain to be at the heart of Europe, my heart leaped with joy. That joy was echoed right across Europe. Other European countries said that the new British Government would be positive and co-operative and would put forward proposals for bringing about the completion of the European Community, for which they had been working for the past forty years. I believe that that is the Prime Minister’s intention, which is why I shall strongly support him tonight.’85
After Heath had been on his feet for half an hour and began to draw his remarks to a close, his successor sought to make a point of her own. Their exchange was electrifying:
Mr Heath: ‘I have here a quote from [Mrs Thatcher], who said in the debate on the referendum [on 11 March 1975]: “It would bind and fetter parliamentary sovereignty in practice.” I agree with her entirely. It would, and I see no reason to change my view, or her view, at this moment or in the future. I do not believe in referendums as a means of government.
Mrs Margaret Thatcher: ‘I know that I inherited that position from my right hon. Friend, and I loyally upheld it. Now, it looks to me as if three parties will be for a single currency and for sacrificing a great deal of the work that it has previously been the right of Parliament to do. How are the people to make their views known in this absence of choice? That was the particular point. My right hon. Friend will remember that our right hon. Friend the noble Lord Hailsham, made an interesting speech on elective dictatorship.’
Hon. Members: ‘Oh!’
Madam Deputy Speaker: ‘Order.’
Mrs Thatcher: ‘Therefore, as he has been in the House longer than I have, will my right hon. Friend tell us how people can make their views known when all parties take the same view but each is divided?
Mr Heath: ‘This is an occasion which constantly occurs in parliamentary history.’
Mr Budgen: ‘Rubbish.’
Mr Heath: ‘What a pity some people have such a limited vocabulary.’
As the 1992 general election approached, Heath offered full support to John Major and praised both his emollient approach on European matters and also the less stringent approach to economic policy that was emerging, as the country came out of its second slump in a decade. One does, however, detect another hand at work (presumably that of a politically ambitious member of his private office): ‘He is an excellent Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party . . . the former banker who likes to say “yes”.’86
After John Major led the Conservative Party to victory in the general election, it was announced that Heath was to become Sir Edward – a Knight of the Garter. Nothing in his life delighted him more than this elevation, which was in the personal gift of Her Majesty the Queen, whom he both admired and adored. He would never go to the Lords, he said: ‘Sir Winston Churchill felt the most wonderful thing you could be was a Knight of the Garter and I agree with him.’87 He was installed, a beaming smile on his face, on 15 June 1992. Before that, as Father of the House of Commons, he had to preside over the election of a new Speaker. He greatly admired Betty Boothroyd and subtly did everything he could to ensure she had the best possible chance of becoming the first woman to hold the office. When she defeated former Tory Cabinet minister Peter Brooke by 372 votes to 238, he gladly ceded the chair to her. A week after he was installed as a ‘KG’, Heath went into hospital for what was described as a ‘routine operation’ – which was, in fact, an elaborate procedure to rid him of bowel cancer.
An important factor – and significant source of inconvenience – for Heath in the years that followed would be the slender majority John Major won in April 1992 and the growing split within the party on Europe. In division after division during the 1992–1997 Parliament, every vote increasingly counted, as a combination of an unusually active Grim Reaper and three very different defections by disgruntled Tory MPs rapidly took the Government’s majority precipitously down into single figures. Heath did not like this at all. John Major had the immense positive quality, in Heath’s eyes, of not being Mrs Thatcher, but as the Euro-sceptics ran him ragged, for Heath the sheen rapidly came off him. Yet he was often required in the division lobbies. When I was in the Heath office for the final two years of the 1992–1997 Parliament, I found the whips extraordinarily helpful and accommodating. Just once did Derek Conway, then MP for Shrewsbury but later to return to the House as Heath’s successor in Bexley, lose his cool with me, warning me (not unreasonably in the circumstances) that, ‘if Ted wants to remain as a Conservative MP, he’d better come and help’.
Heath was certainly mellowing, but not everyone was persuaded and his enemies would still seek out opportunities to traduce him whenever possible. One example of Heath being misrepresented comes from Michael Fabricant MP:
‘Not long after I was first elected, a rumour about Ted Heath and me started to do the rounds at Westminster – and then found its way into print. The suggestion was that he had asked me if I wore a wig – “Because, if you do, it isn’t a very good one”. Needless to say, it wasn’t true. Ted Heath never made any such comment to me. However, this was a light and – to some people – amusing story, playing into Ted’s grumpy image, so it was duly recounted and repeated in various other magazines and newspapers. A couple of weeks later, Ted came up to me in a House of Commons corridor and said, “I am very embarrassed about what the press are claiming that I have said about your hair. I do hope you know that I would never dream of making such an impertinent and personal comment either to your face or behind your back.” I later discovered that he had been genuinely upset by the story and I thought it rather decent that he should apologise so generously for something he had never done.’
Richard Bull was recruited to Heath’s office in 1993 and worked there, on a temporary basis, in January 1994. He then worked full-time in the private office from July 1994 until September 1995. He recalls Heath’s continued interest in foreign affairs during this period:
‘Edward Heath . . . was – and remains – rare amongst recent Prime Ministers in having a strong foreign affairs agenda before assuming the premiership. Any opportunity to assert himself on the world stage was accordingly eagerly devoured. Familiarity with the subject matter was never going to stay a grasping hand.
‘So, an invitation to alight on the complex terrain of Iranian politics was excitedly accepted even though Heath was not quite up to speed with developments following the Islamic revolution. Sir Edward was approached by Iranian born businessman Sir David Alliance (now Lord Alliance) to rebuild UK/Iranian relations.
‘Armed with a patchy knowledge of recent Iranian history, Heath formed the strong view that the UK was losing out to EU competitors in trading opportunities with Iran because of the running sore of the fatwa on novelist Salman Rushdie imposed by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomenei in February 1989, a few months before his death. Heath believed – with characteristic confidence – that his intervention would be decisive.
‘I began to have misgivings during a conversation about our accommodation in Tehran. Used to wonderful embassies the world over, the prospect of a chargé d’affaire’s villa (Britain having withdrawn its ambassador in 1989 on account of the fatwa) was not appealing. Heath wanted to make sure that the chargé would be sufficiently supplied with decent alcohol. I reassured him, adding: “Of course that is particularly important in a dry country.” “Dry country?” he retorted. “Dry country? What do you mean dry country?” I explained. I was met with absolute incredulity. And Heath had the last and, as he thought, decisive word on the subject: “When I visited the Shah in 1968, there was alcohol everywhere.” His triumphant end to our discussion made manifest that he was locked into a view of Iran that had long been buried in the chaos of a bloody and ruthless cultural revolution.
‘This intrigued me. It was as if he had stopped thinking following his departure from No. 10. The world that Heath left behind was fixed in his mind. Various explanations for this are possible. Of course, by 1995, Heath was not in the first flush of youth. And Iran had never been a focus of his policy. But these are for me insufficient explanations. I find more compelling the thought that the involuntary loss of power has profound psychological effects – for instance, Margaret Thatcher’s thinking essentially froze in 1990. Heath was younger when he left office and he maintained vigour – participating in the Brandt Commission and the EEC referendum to give but two examples. But brooding on events takes its toll. It diverts attention. For Heath therefore, Iran merely had a new government which was less western orientated in its thinking.’
Richard Bull also remembers some revealing remarks made by Heath about John Major:
‘Edward Heath was in my experience suspicious of intellectuals. They inclined to idealism and it was a perverse idealism which had disrupted the early years of his life. Even his European zeal was founded on very practical considerations. Heath was nonetheless proud of his university education, but Oxford was for him as much a finishing school as a place of learning. I sensed this most particularly over lunch one Friday following a particularly splenetic performance at PMQs by John Major. Heath found Major’s ill temper and want of finesse troubling. He asked whether I would have so behaved at the despatch box. He warmed to his theme: “Of course you wouldn’t. You know how things are done: you went to university.” This was a rare direct personal criticism of Major in my hearing, but it was deep rooted. The personal criticism was not fuelled by Heath’s increasing despair of Major’s lack of direction on the European question: Sir Edward had his ideal of the politician. Major, one sensed Heath felt, was not of the calibre – or class – required. Oxford conferred on Heath the social status which he felt enabled him to join the ranks of the Elect. Nonetheless Heath was somewhat disappointed in the Major Government too. The period when I worked in the office was dominated by Europe. Heath was frustrated by the lack of purpose of the government. But in the leadership ballot of 1995, he gave short shrift to those MPs who urged him to vote for Redwood so as to make the way clear for a Heseltine challenge.’*
In this emerging ‘Indian Summer’, Heath took great pleasure both in meeting new people and also in being recognised. One summer’s day in the mid-1990s, he was in a recording studio in West London. He had spent the greater part of a Saturday conducting an orchestra for a recording of Christmas music. Upon leaving the studio he enquired of his staff where would be a good place for an early dinner, as he was starving, having not eaten all day. They suggested the Berkeley Hotel, which Heath used regularly and was not too far away, but he declined as he didn’t wish to go back into Central London. As a more convenient alternative, they suggested the Brilliant Restaurant in Southall, close to Heathrow, to which Heath readily assented. On arrival at the venue, Heath’s staff spoke briefly to the owner, who made a great fuss of him and welcomed him with much aplomb to his premises. After several whiskies, dinner was duly served to Heath and his team. Heath ate with gusto and thoroughly enjoyed the food prepared for him. The restaurant was extremely busy and a large function was evidently taking place on the floor above, for dozens of people, beautifully dressed, were entering the restaurant and heading straight upstairs.
As Heath was coming to the end of his meal, a gentleman approached one of his staff and asked, very politely, if he might have a word with him. The man explained that he was one of the Ugandan Asians whom Heath, as Prime Minister, had allowed to come to the UK, when he and his community were expelled by Idi Amin; and the celebration upstairs in the Brilliant that evening was to commemorate that event twenty-five years earlier. He explained that he and his fellow diners would be overwhelmed if Heath would agree to speak to them before he left the restaurant. Heath acceded to the request and proceeded to ascend the stairs to the first floor. Midway up, he turned and said, ‘Well stitched up’. The Ugandan Asians were ecstatic that their saviour, by sheer coincidence, was available that evening to say some congratulatory words to them. On the following Sunday evening whilst ensconced in the corner of a pub in deepest Wiltshire, the team assured him they had had absolutely no idea that the Ugandan Asian party was taking place in Southall. Heath was not convinced.
The well-established lynchpin of Heath’s private office by the time I arrived in 1995 was Henrietta Rolston, now Henrietta Mayhew. She told me that Heath saw the world as existing in three tiers: Her Majesty the Queen and her close family; Heath; and everyone else. She was only slightly joking:
‘Getting to know someone when they are in their seventies is a strange thing. It’s like being by a river as it nears the sea. So much has gone before that has determined its course. You only know what you see; you hear tell of the fast moving places, the middle course, but what you witness is the slow (and stately, we hope) progression of its later stages. By 1990, the slow moving feature of the political landscape that was EH was still in Westminster. I went to work for Mr Heath towards the end of 1990. At my interview he asked whether I liked opera and ballet, then fell asleep. I had been warned that this might happen, that you just had to wait and he would wake up again. OK. At his 80th birthday dinner at No. 10 Downing Street, it fell to no less a person than Her Majesty the Queen to nudge him back to wakefulness when he dozed off.
‘I was a backroom girl, one of the two secretaries. Friends assumed that working for him would be grim, but it was a fascinating job, and Europe and his dislike of Mrs T didn’t take up the 90 per cent of his existence that the press made out. Rosemary Bushe, who had become EH’s constituency secretary in the 1950s, used to refer to EH as “The Great Man”. I am sure he liked that, but by the time I got to know him we didn’t think of him quite like that. Familiarity bred affection, jokes, wry amusement, a touch of cynicism and occasional wonder at his more grandiose tendencies.
‘EH would generally come up to London, depending on the Whip, Tuesday to Thursdays and stay at Wilton Street, where Teo Lopez, his London housekeeper, would give him bacon and eggs for breakfast – a welcome contrast to the grapefruit and wholemeal toast regime in Salisbury. The Belgian chocolates were always hidden in the top left drawer of the desk, away from state intervention.
‘After Mrs Thatcher went in 1990, there was a feeling of Glasnost, so it was a good time to be in the office. Justice had been done and unsurprisingly the press made much of his glee. Arundells had its own press line and it frequently rang with journalists wanting him to comment, stirring him up to rash pronouncements. If Mrs Thatcher had said something, then the press line would ring some time after 7 am, he would answer and then agree to go on the 8.10 slot. Caught in the trap again and again. By the time the Private Secretary arrived in the office, the damage had been done.
‘If he had been married, there would perhaps have been some constraint on this, a wise head beside him to question the wisdom of even answering the phone to such a call. And perhaps a glance to steady the ship, tone down the comments. Not caring what the papers said about him, not expecting a good press, was very refreshing in a boss. Most people are terrified of bad publicity, but during my time in the office, EH never seemed bothered by it. But he did have a good relationship with many of the political correspondents. Each year, during Party Conference, he would take out his favoured political journalists for a long and jolly dinner – an amicable, open, on-the-record evening.
‘His home life in Salisbury seemed very peaceful, at least until one of the “green-ink brigade”, who used to write frequently, sometimes daily, appeared there one day. “Please tell Sir Edward that I would like to see him.” She told the policeman. “I am telepathetically [sic] linked to him.” The message went up. “Please tell her that if I am telepathetically linked to her,” came EH’s response, “she will know that I don’t want to see her.”’
I worked for Sir Edward Heath between 1995 and 2000. That was too long and I must confess I have some regrets about that period of my life. For an aspiring young Tory of my generation, having the name ‘Edward Heath’ on my CV was no bonus. After I lost my job as a special adviser in the summer reshuffle of 1995, I received an unexpected call from Charles de Lisle, known to me as a diary columnist on the Daily Telegraph. He informed me that he had been appointed to take charge of the production of the Heath memoirs, regarded in the world of publishing as the Bermuda Triangle of political writing.* He assured me ‘The Book’ would now be happening and Heath required a new private secretary to run his office while a team of eager young researchers scoured his archive and prompted his recollections, in order that a suitably comprehensive tome should emerge. I wrote a letter to Heath expressing puppyish interest; and I was summoned for interview.
The office was extraordinary – home to a mass of paper, a vast array of battered filing cabinets, a goldfish tank populated by two bloated inmates (one named, as Henrietta Mayhew reminds me, ‘Sir James Goldfish’ and one known as Saddam Hussein – ‘named by the office, not EH’) and eclectic, colourful trophies, presumably from Sir Edward’s foreign trips (cowboy boots, a Torremolinos donkey; could there have been a pair of castanets?). I had entered the Twilight Zone. The conversation with Sir Edward himself was certainly not out of any conventional HR manual. He was terse, monosyllabic and seemed not especially interested in me. I bade him farewell and left.
For several days I heard nothing. I began to panic. Other possible job openings had been snapped up by eager young rivals. I called Charles de Lisle. Sir Edward was sad and resigned to not recruiting me, he said, because he had not heard from me. Apparently that was how it worked. I was first in a field of one and it was for me to accept. So I telephoned Heath late one evening, evidently catching him just after he had returned from the pub; and accepted the position. When he heard my voice, he obviously expected me to turn it down, and sounded really overjoyed when I said yes. It was the last time I ever felt myself to be in a position of strength vis-à-vis Heath.
Life was now very different. Many former colleagues treated me as they might a lost soul. When I introduced myself to my new colleagues in the office – the indispensable Henrietta and coolly detached Penny – I explained that my role would be different from that of Nick Edgar, my recently departed predecessor. Sir Edward now intended to make a series of keynote speeches on subjects other than Europe; and his memoirs were going to be written. I have never found it harder to disentangle contempt, pity and ennui from within a unison response. I suppose Henrie showed some pity and Penny erred on the side of languid contempt, but neither showed one iota of conviction that our employer would indeed rouse himself from the torpor to which he was now long and agreeably accustomed, to new, Herculean efforts. They had heard it all before and I quickly learned that here was a venerable oil tanker that had no intention of changing course by even one degree – and which was probably incapable of it.
It took time to get used to his ways. Once I proposed to send his apologies for an event he could not attend. ‘Never apologise!’ he told me firmly. ‘Just send my regrets.’ It unnerved me and, seemingly, I used a phrase to him in closing, repeatedly, which I have known myself to use before or since: “Okey doke”. He never mentioned his disdain to me directly, but two colleagues in the office were rapidly instructed to warn me off using it ever again. Paddy Hunt – the wife of my previous boss, David Hunt – met Sir Edward at a party thrown by Lynda Chalker. ‘I hope you’re looking after Michael,’ Paddy said. ‘I thought he was supposed to be looking after me’ he countered. Meanwhile a newspaper diary piece commented dryly: ‘McManus now has the job of assisting the former PM in producing his memoirs. It is moving at a pace rather slower than the building of the Great Pyramid.’88 Sometimes I sensed they felt sympathy towards me; sometimes it was more akin to pity. At the party conference at Blackpool, my job was to assemble a group of acceptable journalists for dinner at Sir Edward’s regular hideaway, the Riverhouse at Poulton-le-Fylde. The food was excellent and the only other in-house guest was Cedric Brown, the controversial chief executive of British Gas. The dinner did not begin propitiously with Michael White of Guardian fame whispering to me as we filed in for dinner: ‘You seem to have joined the care profession.’
In that first autumn, I had the opportunity to accompany Sir Edward to Tokyo, to attend the remarkable rituals and ceremonies associated with the Praemium Imperiale. Before this trip, he must have sensed I was apprehensive. ‘You don’t like the Japanese, do you?’ he asked me. I didn’t think this was quite fair, so I just shrugged. ‘Well, you must learn to like their money.’ End of conversation. Around the same time I ill-advisedly bought a new dinner suit. It was rather baggy, with lapels that pointed sharply upwards. Sir Edward grunted at me when he first saw it: ‘Isn’t that terribly old-fashioned?’ The next time I wore it was when I accompanied him to Tokyo for the annual presentation of the Praemium Imperiale awards. We both noticed at once that all our hosts were wearing dinner suits in the same style. He caught my eye and, afterwards, said to me: ‘Well they don’t know any better.’
Not long after came the principal rite of passage for any Heath staffer – the first trip to China. I soon learned how the Chinese revered him and how happy he was there; although, in truth, whilst he admired Chinese diligence, industrial development and history, by a cruel twist of fate, he didn’t care for their cuisine, most of which he described privately as ‘filthy’ or ‘muck’. Often he would play with the food in front of him and not a tittle of it would touch his lips, then he would proclaim it ‘splendid’ or ‘delicious’ as it was all cleared away. He didn’t even like the ubiquitous green tea, which I loved. At a dinner with Peter Batey and other Europeans, at a private club, I heard him use the ‘F’ word for the one and only time, when someone asked him why Sarah Ferguson had taken to writing children’s books. ‘She’s obviously got bored of fucking people,’ he said. We all did a double take and he roared with laughter. At least I was spared the stress experienced by an earlier private secretary, when he had not appeared in the morning and the accompanying detective went to check on him, only to find him flat out on his bed, completely naked and showing no signs of life whatsoever. Help was summoned and everyone assumed he had perished until he reacted suddenly to all the fuss and asked gruffly, ‘What’s going on?’
There was one basic speech that Sir Edward would gladly make ‘off the cuff’, which all of us soon knew off by heart. It was his ‘five superpowers’ speech and, I can testify myself, it was an impressive speech to hear the first time. His argument was that most people in any given room had grown up in an age of two superpowers – the US and the USSR. Naturally, we, as a peace-loving, blissfully freedom-addicted nation, sided with the US. This situation had fundamentally changed. The USSR had been supplanted by Russia – still a major force but not on the same scale – and other superpowers had grown up, notably China and India. Brazil was another possibility. So there was one ‘super duper power’ – the US – and these other superpowers. The thrust was, it was only through the EU that the UK had any opportunity to play a role in that big league. I subsequently discovered that the entire thesis – so brilliantly adopted and adapted – had come from none other than his old sparring partner Henry Kissinger, who had written a book on precisely these lines some years earlier.
The Major Years were, of course, years of ‘Tory Civil War’, at least so far as the media were concerned. Any hint of a rift and they would gleefully pounce. In the meantime, the Prime Minister and his ministers were patiently doing rather a good job, I feel, but that seems to have been of no account. After the abrupt ending of his ‘wilderness years’, Sir Edward was somewhat confused. Certainly he despised the Euro-sceptics – or ‘Euro-septics’ as he would term them, with a schoolboy’s glee – as they clamoured for John Major to resile from the Maastricht Treaty or leave the EU altogether. Of course he was excessively concerned to protect what little remained of his personal legacy to the public life of the nation – but he also genuinely believed the future of the nation was at stake. In his eyes he had a duty to speak, but there was an ever-present danger that, in so doing, he would draw further attention to rifts within the Conservative Party and contribute yet another ‘Tory rift’ headline to the press cuttings file.
On Friday 12 January 1996 I travelled down to Salisbury to find him in an unusually dyspeptic mood. In his drawing room there was a single telephone, but three different lines came into it, one of which was a line exclusively for use by the media. When I arrived that line was blinking. ‘It’s been going all day,’ he said, bleakly. It stopped. It started again. ‘They all want me to comment on her speech.’ The day before, in the Keith Joseph Memorial lecture, Mrs Thatcher had said this: ‘I am not sure what is meant by those who say that the Party should return to something called “One Nation Conservatism”. As far as I can tell by their views on European federalism, such people’s creed would be better described as “No Nation Conservatism”.’ This had been interpreted as another salvo in the ‘civil war’ so, naturally, journalists wanted to fan the flames. ‘I think you should ignore the calls and say and do nothing,’ I told him, firmly. He cannot have been surprised; indeed he had been waiting for me to come and say precisely this. He regarded me with distaste. ‘Typical of you,’ he said after a brief pause. ‘So weak. So we just let her get away with it?’ I held my ground: ‘As matters stand, Lady Thatcher stands accused of making mischief, of causing trouble for the Prime Minister, of dividing the party. If you keep your own counsel, she will stand accused and you won’t. The story will just die and she will look disloyal.’ He stared at me, for all the world like a petulant child who had been denied his favourite toy. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Very well.’ I was in disgrace – precisely because he knew I was right. Yet it would always be my decision, not his.
While ‘The Book’ was busily not happening, my private office team and I were fully occupied with preparations for Sir Edward’s eightieth birthday. The birthday itself, on 9 July 1996, coincided with a state visit to the UK by Nelson Mandela, which kept him nicely busy for much of the day and evening, although I did arrange for him to be serenaded on the lawn of Arundells first thing, by a string ensemble from a local girls’ grammar school, which was broadcast live on the Big Breakfast television show. On the following Saturday, 13 July, there was a gala concert in Salisbury Cathedral, which raised the necessary funds to renovate one of the ‘spirelets’ on the roof of the cathedral, then, the following week, there were two special dinners. The first was for around sixty people, hosted by John and Norma Major at No. 10 with Her Majesty the Queen the principal guest of honour (I think this was only the third occasion on which she had been to No. 10 as sovereign). The following night there was a dinner for several hundred friends at the Savoy Hotel. Excerpts from some of that night’s extraordinary tributes are included elsewhere in this book.
Just five days after the birthday, John Junor, with whom he had a longstanding policy of mutual loathing, wrote a particularly vicious attack on him:
‘There is one thing that has always puzzled me about Sir Edward Heath . . . How does he come to be so fabulously rich? He certainly did not inherit any family fortune . . . Nor has he ever earned very much . . . Yet he has always lived and acted like a grandee . . . He has a fabulous house within the cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral. Another in Belgravia. He has a superb art collection, including paintings by Sickert, Piper and Augustus John. And he has the lifestyle of a very rich man indeed. For the benefit of posterity could he not tell us just how he has done it? Or is the answer quite simple? Could it perhaps be through having pursued a policy throughout his life of seldom if ever putting his hand into his own pocket?’89
Despite the overwhelming bonhomie of that celebratory month – or possibly because Junor’s virulence jarred in so gratuitous and rebarbative a manner with it – Sir Edward was incensed by this onslaught. He brooded in Salisbury, then dictated a response:
‘In his column on 14th July 1996 Sir John Junor chose the occasion of my eightieth birthday to make an unwarranted series of allegations against me under the heading “How did Sir Ted become loaded?” and then challenged me to answer them. “How does he come to be so fabulously rich?” he asked. I am not and I have never been fabulously rich and no-one else has ever suggested it. “. . . he has always lived and acted like a grandee” he states. For the first twenty years after the end of the War I lived in London in a bed-sitting room following which I lived in a flat costing £12.50 per week until I became Prime Minister and then lived at No. 10 where there were no charges.
‘“He became an international yachtsman with a series of boats only a really rich man could afford” he declares, displaying his ignorance. The first Morning Cloud cost me £7,500. In it we won the Sydney to Hobart race overall, one of three great ocean races of the world. The Royal Ocean Racing Club covered some of our expenses and I then sold my boat for more than it had cost. I gave up sailing ten years ago.
‘“It is true he has written books and gone on lecture tours,” he declares, “but none of the books has ever been in the Jeffrey Archer money-making class.” I agree that my books are not the rubbish which make Jeffrey Archer money, but John Junor ignores the fact that in the late 1970s I had three serious books, Sailing, Music and Travels, which were all bestsellers, not only in Britain and America, but in other European countries, in Singapore and in translations in Japan and China. “And I cannot believe he has ever received really serious money as a lecturer.” It is obvious John Junor does not know what I receive for lectures. Why then should he make the allegations? He is in fact wrong.
‘“He has a fabulous house within the cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral. Another in Belgravia.” I suppose I must take it as a compliment that everything about me is described as fabulous. He confuses the cloisters inside the Cathedral with the Close, where my house is, outside it. The house I rent in London is a simple two-bedroomed house with rooms for the housekeeper. He praises my “superb art collection”, but he has no idea whatever what it has cost me over a spread of forty years to collect drawings and paintings.
‘Finally, he comments “he has the lifestyle of a very rich man indeed.” This is ignorant nonsense as I am glad to say that we have seen nothing of each other for the last twenty years. “For the benefit of posterity,” John Junor goes on to ask, “just how has he done it?” Yes, by continuous hard work, by savings and by avoiding every form of extravagance. “Or is the answer quite simple?” he continues. “Could it perhaps be through having pursued a policy throughout his life of seldom if ever putting his hand into his own pocket?” What a filthy insinuation to suggest that I have lived by begging, borrowing or stealing from other people. Yes, a filthy allegation but typical of John Junor.’
The letter was never sent. Sir Edward had heeded his own advice to others and resisted the temptation to become drawn into a public row with his detractors. For once I was not involved.
The next year (1996–1997) was gruelling. We were in the dying months of the Parliament elected in 1992 and there was an unmistakable whiff of the grave about the Major Government, whose majority in the Commons had dwindled, through single figures, to nothing. Sir Edward – for so long the absentee landlord, dropping in to Westminster infrequently, to deliver himself of major utterances on matters of great import – sometimes provided the vote that kept John Major in office. In September 1996, he was thoroughly dismayed by the Government’s weakness on Europe, so there was nothing I could do to dissuade him from co-signing, along with Leon Brittan, Peter Carrington, Geoffrey Howe, Douglas Hurd and Willie Whitelaw, a letter to the Independent, marking the fiftieth anniversary of Winston Churchill’s famous speech in Zurich about European cooperation. There was no intention to undermine John Major. Au contraire. The ‘grandees’ were seeking to shore up his position against the onslaught from the Euro-sceptics that was beginning to turn the party into an unelectable pandemonium:
‘We believe that active British involvement in a strong European Union offers our country its surest guarantee of continued influence and prosperity in the world. From Washington to Tokyo, Britain’s political voice counts because we are central to, not detached from, the interests of our continent . . . We have to find the confidence, as a nation and as a people, to make a success of our European destiny. The British instinct is to lead, not walk away. Our greatest patriots have never been little Englanders . . . For us now to rule out British membership of a single currency would be to betray our national interest. To countenance withdrawal from the European Union would be to court disaster. To commit ourselves, by contrast, to a positive role in the leadership of Europe is the most fitting tribute we can pay to Churchill’s Zurich vision.’90
During the party conference Sir Edward warned that, whilst the sceptics would never relent in their demands, neither would they win the concessions on policy they wanted: ‘They can’t possibly change that, so the divisions with these people will remain.’ During one debate on Europe, an anonymous note was brought in to him in the Commons chamber. Scrawled across it were the words ‘Mr Heath for Prime Minister’. It came to the office with his addition: ‘I agree.’ He had been re-adopted to contest his Bexley seat again, but enthusiasm locally was growing subdued and, for one awful moment it seemed we might not have to nurse him through his fourteenth electoral battle after all. On 25 February 1997, the constituency chairman, Howard Ruse, wrote to him in the wake of a Newsnight interview in which he had said: ‘There was a crisis in Tiananmen Square after a month in which civil authority had been defied. And they took action about it. . .’ Then he began a new point, as was his custom, with the rather old-fashioned words – used as a form of breath mark by him – ‘Very well. . .’
Many people had been ‘deeply offended,’ warned Ruse: ‘I cannot recall you having been so isolated before, within our Party.’ Ruse was under formidable pressure within the association and it was to his credit that he never buckled, as a difficult election approached. ‘I must advise you . . . that many of your supporters simply cannot understand why you have chosen such a sensitive time as this, with just a few weeks before the General Election campaign, to be so outspoken and controversial and to outrage so many of those whom you will be asking to vote for you.’ A few days later there was a ‘High Noon’ meeting in Sidcup between Sir Edward and the officers of the association. I did not attend, but I can well imagine how he used sheer force of personality to crush any putative rebellion. He must have sensed, however, that his days as their candidate were now numbered. Some weeks later that same interview caused us more pain and difficulty, when there was a wilful misrepresentation of his words in several newspapers, eliding his two discrete sentences together and claiming he had said the Chinese authorities ‘took action about it very well’. That interview was not his finest hour, but the slur against him was as unfair as it was crude: although he could be selectively blind to the shortcomings of the Chinese regime, he had been devastated by the events at Tiananmen and it was clear this was a deliberate, conscious and vicious attack on him. The press refused to recant. It was my first – but far from my last – experience of the limitations of the self-regulatory system for the press.
Although no one (of course) dared to talk openly of this being the old warrior’s last campaign, the general election campaign of 1997 felt like the end of an era. In the months before the campaign, he was uneasy. He knew perfectly well he could not be wholly immune from the unfavourable national tide. He had gained Bexley in 1950 by just 133 votes – helped by the intervention of a Communist candidate – and he had never, quite, turned it into an unassailably safe seat. So, just as his health was beginning to fail and he found himself, once again, increasingly out of sympathy with his fellow Conservatives, he knew he had a fight on his hands.
So, on the cusp of his eighty-first birthday, with a failing as well as a sinking heart, Sir Edward Heath KG MBE embarked upon his fourteenth consecutive general election campaign in Bexley. He agreed to spend several days a week in the constituency in the four weeks of the campaign and a rag-tag gang of former private secretaries, political colleagues and admirers was assembled, to augment the local support, which was vigorously orchestrated by his agent, Barry Fowler. It all felt like a throwback to happier times – the final foray of a once-great but now seriously denuded army. Despite the changed times, he insisted that certain traditions would be maintained. Despite his difficulties walking, he wanted to get out and meet people. So, on a Saturday morning, the car would deposit him on a shopping street and he would make off, in an extremely stately fashion, to ‘press the flesh’. The car and detective would shadow him discreetly, ready to whisk him away when it got too much for him.
He had not had to campaign like this since the 1970s. We took him and Douglas Hurd to a large supermarket. He stood at the threshold and seemed momentarily lost for words. ‘So much choice . . .’ he began, then trudged desultorily into the aisles, in the hope of meeting some voters. In a smaller store, a dear lady, evidently unaware his hearing was failing him, pounced with zeal. She introduced herself. He didn’t catch a word of it over the background din, but I gleaned she was the widow of a Bexley resident he had known well and who had died unexpectedly since she had last seen her MP. She persisted. ‘You used to come to our house and play piano duets together,’ she said, in a voice that would have carried to Erith. With great emphasis she repeated her husband’s name. Sir Edward’s eyes lit up with belated recognition. ‘Ah yes,’ he said with a broad grin. ‘And how is he?’
The prospect for witnessing the old warhorse canter round the course one more time was too much to resist for the media. We had regular visits from television news and a very pleasant morning with that excellent journalist, Jonathan Freedland, who wrote an excellent account in the Guardian of his visit:
‘The octogenarian parliamentarian is not pushing himself too hard. A gentle stroll up the High Street, a few handshakes, then a coffee break followed by a long pub lunch with his party workers. To save energy, Sir Edward does his door-to-door canvassing by car. The candidate only gets out when one of his younger volunteers finds a waverer worth meeting; otherwise he stays tucked up on the back seat.
‘Still, he is prone to lapse into curmudgeon mode. “Come on, take hold of the situation” he tells one hapless aide* who has failed to nab a corner table in the pub. And don’t get him on to the sleaze troubles bedevilling today’s Tory party: “Neil Hamilton is an absolute shit,” he says. But he is happy to send up his own reputation for pomposity . . .
‘But the poignancy of the Heath situation is not purely personal. Watch him walk down the High Street, either ignored or greeted with zero formality – “Hello, Ted mate!” – and it’s hard to believe one is looking at a former prime minister. No way Messrs Carter, Reagan or Ford would be treated so casually. “If I go to any other country in the world, I’m still called Prime Minister, the same way a president is always called Mr President,” he muses.’91
Sir Edward’s mood in the run-up to the campaign had not lightened when he learned that his former economic adviser, Brian Reading, had agreed to stand against him on behalf of Sir James Goldsmith’s virulently anti-EU ‘Referendum Party’. The Referendum campaign literature in Bexley did not deal in light and shade. Above Brian Reading’s signature appeared the following:
‘Joining the single currency is a step on to a bus, made in Maastricht, driven by Brussels, destination the Fourth Reich. Sir Edward Heath wants to push us on. The Lib-Dems wish us to board voluntarily. Labour wants on, but dare not say so. In Old Bexley and Sidcup I alone say, “let the bus leave without us”.’
Heath regarded Brian’s decision to run as an act of gross disloyalty. I liked Brian, having met him before, at an event in Jersey in September 1995. When my path first crossed his during the 1997 campaign, he told me that he had accepted the invitation to stand because, had he not, there would have been far more animus in the Bexley campaign and ‘I didn’t want to see Ted get hurt’. I tried to intercede with Heath and explain Brian’s motives. He swatted me away. In Brian Reading’s own account of that campaign, he says:
‘I had no angst against Heath, just disagreed over Europe. I campaigned for just three weeks, going round in a van with a loud speaker on top – “Save the Pound, Vote Reading”. To my horror the Referendum Campaign launched a vitriolic personal attack on Heath. I had no hand in this. I therefore made a speech addressing the accusation that Heath had lied when taking us into the then European Economic Community.’
Anyone hoping the speech would denounce his old boss as a serial mendicant was, however, doomed to disappointment, as Brian confirmed again in 2016:
‘It was my intention to disappoint those baying for Ted’s blood . . . I don’t have a copy of the speech because I never “write” a speech for myself, I do it in my mind beforehand. I remember exactly what I said, but not word perfect. I was appalled to discover how Goldsmith directed the campaign personally against Ted. I would never have stood had I known that in advance. There is a genuine case against EU membership because of the way it has developed. Ted’s position was totally understandable given his experience and generation. He was not dishonest, but to my mind mistaken given the way things developed. To impugn an opponent because you disagree with him is reprehensible. Ted had many faults, but he was genuine.’
Brian’s earlier account of the campaign then continues the story:
‘Polling day came and I attended the count with my agent. Candidates and agents were allocated a room in which to wait and watch TV. Heath was ensconced with security personnel outside. When my agent attempted to enter he was told to “bugger off”. He went to the Returning Officer who put the security man in his place. We joined Heath in the candidates’ room. He was sitting in an armchair with a bottle of Malt Scotch and regularly replenishing his glass. He ignored me completely and went on drinking and watching the results on TV. So I ignored him. It would have been graceful if he had acknowledged that I had fought a clean campaign and offered me a drink. But then I had sinned by opposing him and he bore grudges.’
At the count, Sir Edward’s mood grew more and more gloomy. ‘My poor party,’ he muttered. My colleague Anthony Staddon remembers the scene well:
‘During election night itself, EH spent most of it immersed in the TV coverage via a small portable television in the polling station, watching impassively as Conservative MP after Conservative MP lost their seats. He took no enjoyment in this – in fact I think he was in shock. He was no fan of Michael Portillo, but I watched him closely as the result of his defeat was announced. There was very little emotion and he certainly took no enjoyment from Portillo’s humiliation. He still cared very deeply about the Conservative Party and took no pleasure that his warnings had come to pass.’
At last the local count was complete – he was in, by 3,569 votes. Anthony Staddon broke the news, apologising for the close result. He shrugged: ‘In the context of this evening, it’s a minor triumph.’ Up on the platform for the declaration, Heath talked animatedly to the Liberal Democrat and made a great (and rather rude) show of not acknowledging Brian Reading’s existence in any way.
My gut feeling was that he had pretty much a neutral effect in the local campaign. For every constituent who voted for him out of habit, loyalty or gratitude, I sensed there was another who had simply had enough of him, of the rareness of his appearances, of his dogged reluctance to set up home locally and of his penchant for isolating himself politically. Others disagree. I know Anthony Staddon, who worked harder on that campaign than anyone, believes any other candidate would have lost Bexley for the Tories in 1997:
‘Perhaps some people didn’t vote for him because of his age and views on Europe (although these issues rarely came up on the doorstep), but my suspicion is his personal vote carried him through and it is worth noting that the neighbouring constituency fell to the Labour Party.’
He may well be right. Certainly, when people did feel personal loyalty, it was spontaneous, immoderate and a wonder to behold. Furthermore, his warnings about the direction of the Conservative Party, which had seemed both bitter and Cassandra-like, had now turned out to be just Cassandra-like: disbelieved at the time, but subsequently coming to pass. The legacy of the Thatcher years was a party that had abandoned its supposed ‘secret weapons’: cohesion and loyalty.
We had got through, just; and what was left of the team gathered to wish Sir Edward good night. We sat and chatted for a while, then he stood up to go home, involuntarily farting very loudly in the face of one of his volunteers, Jay Dossetter, a young office intern from Kent, who was cured at a stroke of any lingering desire for further political entanglements. As Anthony Staddon comments: ‘it cleared the room if I recall and was as good as any other post-election analysis of the Conservative Party’s performance.’
_______________
* This story has gone the rounds for forty years now, but Heath vehemently denied it to me – his comment being merely that ‘I thanked her’.
* The equivalent of over £500,000 in 2015 prices.
* Presumably meaning he never learned but also never forgot.
* A play by John Wells, about Denis Thatcher and his relationship with his second wife, Margaret.
* ‘Once a decision is made, once a policy is established, the Prime Minister and . . . colleagues should have the courage to stick to it. Nothing has done Britain more harm in the world than the endless backing and filling which we have seen in recent years . . .’
* Heath soon discovered that two previous occupants, a canon and his sister, had lived to the ages of ninety-eight and ninety-four. ‘I find that very encouraging,’ he would joke.
* Including Battersea, which John Bowis gained for the party, against the national trend.
* One of the many ‘pet’ names for Heath.
* In contrast, Baroness Thatcher was very supportive of John Major’s challenger. When he received eighty-ninevotes, she commented, ‘John Redwood’s very respectable vote does justice to his decision to stand.’
* I subsequently discovered that Charles had lobbied Heath assiduously for this role for the previous five years.
* Anthony Staddon and I both lay claim to being this ‘hapless aide’.