11
On Saturday 12 October 1974, two days after the defeat, Neave rang around some of his 1922 Executive colleagues to discuss the next move. They agreed that the main reason they had lost was ‘E. Heath’s unpopularity’. The eighteen-member Executive was due to meet two days later, on Monday 14 October. ‘We felt [it] would probably be unanimous that he should go as soon as possible.’ He repeated this view to a BBC journalist who rang, saying that ‘Heath should announce his resignation,’ but cautioning that ‘time should elapse before the election of a leader took place.’ Neave was only saying what even Heath’s closest friends were advising him. On Sunday, he called Sara Morrison, the spirited vice-chair of the party and the nearest thing Ted had to a female friend and confidante, who told him ‘she had tried to get Heath to resign on Friday afternoon [i.e. the day the results were announced] and to offer to stand down during the [leadership] election.’1 He added, ‘I doubt if she has such influence with him but who has?’
A further complication was that ‘there are certainly people pressing him to stay but the majority are against this and it will seriously split the party if he did.’ The Sunday papers frothed with speculation about replacements and Neave was ‘rather annoyed at the way that the Press and Television are trying to elect our leader for us’. He noted that among the newspaper comment there was ‘some possibility of an official bandwagon for Willie Whitelaw’. Back in June, after the first defeat of the year, he had mused about Heath standing down ‘in favour of Whitelaw’ but had since come to regard him as an implausible candidate.2 ‘There will be no support for this,’ he wrote. ‘Most think he could not cope at the Dispatch Box. He is far too bumbling.’
That left Keith Joseph as favourite, but his temperament was also suspect. Neave had been told by Jack Weatherill that he was ‘liable to nervous breakdowns’. In the same entry, Neave wrote, ‘It looks as though Margaret Thatcher will not stand this time. She thinks the country is not ready for a woman prime minister but I think they soon will be.’ Before the election, on BBC radio’s Any Questions?, she had claimed she did ‘not think the country is ready to have a woman leader,’ and would not be for ten years. On the day after it, she told the London Evening News, ‘You can cross my name off the list. I just don’t think I am right for it.’
It is highly unlikely that this was her sincere belief. But whether out of conviction that he was the best man for the job, or because she believed her chances were too slim, she now committed to backing Keith Joseph. Progress required surmounting the formidable obstacle of Heath’s determination to cling to office, which showed no signs of crumbling, despite the continued entreaties of several friends, among them Toby Aldington, with whom he spent the weekend.*
The press had got wind of the Monday-morning meeting of the 1922 Executive, scheduled at du Cann’s house in Lord North Street, and were camped outside when Neave turned up at 11.45. While expressing mild annoyance, he seems to have relished the attention. He was ‘photographed several times. A few reporters actually knew my name.’3 From now on, he would increasingly be identified with the defenestration process under way – and the enthronement that followed.
There was a high degree of unanimity at the meeting. They agreed that parliament was likely to last at least three years under a Labour, or possibly a national, government. ‘All thought Heath should go’, but with different views on when. Neave was for an early departure, ‘preferably after the debate on the Queen’s speech’, which was due in a fortnight’s time. The only dissonant note was struck by du Cann, who ‘thought Heath should stay two years’. This surprising attitude, Neave speculated, was perhaps because du Cann had ‘thoughts of the job’.
Du Cann now had to relay the views of the Executive to Heath and the Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins, and tell them that a full meeting of the 1922 Committee would be held in eight days’ time. This, some thought, might prompt him to resign beforehand. Du Cann was due to report back the following day with Heath’s response. It was agreed that in order to give the press the slip, they would reconvene in secret in the boardroom of Keyser Ullmann (of which du Cann was chairman), in Milk Street in the City of London.
The gathering provided some light relief as a comic example of inept plotting, and those who attended it would be dubbed the ‘Milk Street Mafia’. The attendees arrived undetected and du Cann relayed Heath’s predictable reaction. As Neave reported it, he had ‘made no comment as he [du Cann] told him our opinion that he should resign!! We are being snubbed again.’4 Heath regarded du Cann not as the elected shop steward of Tory backbenchers, but as an enemy who was abusing his position to undermine the leader. The Executive in general he believed to be dominated by right-wing opponents. While the robust tendency was well represented, there were also a fair few from the liberal wing of the party: the likes of Nigel Fisher, an opponent of capital punishment, supporter of homosexual law reform and opponent of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act to restrict immigration.† Fisher joined Neave, Angus Maude‡ and Neil Marten§ in calling for a meeting of the full 1922 Committee the following week, to maintain the pressure on Heath. However, the majority of the Executive were against it and a date of 31 October was fixed. In the meantime, du Cann composed a letter on the Executive’s behalf telling Heath it was ‘in the best interest of the party that he should state his intention’.
Even now there was some sympathy for Heath. Peter Hordern, a well-respected City figure and MP for Horsham who was present, recalled there was still significant support for him on the Executive. However, the tactics of the Heath camp worked to undermine it. Hordern says that Humphrey Atkins rang du Cann during or after the meeting and told him, ‘You have absolutely no right to have this meeting. You don’t represent the party at Parliament. There’s going to be an election next week for the executive and we shall make quite sure that you’re not re-elected, any of you.’5
Ted’s men had put their knowledge of the gathering to good use. As Neave and the rest were leaving, they ‘heard there were Press and cameras outside and the place of meeting had been again leaked’.6 Du Cann ‘led us to the back door and a key was found’. The scurry to the fire exit reminded several of Airey’s great claim to fame and ‘there were many jokes about Colditz.’ They opened the door to a blaze of flashbulbs. That afternoon’s Evening Standard revealed the existence of the ‘mafia’ furtively plotting their leader’s downfall. Neave was furious. ‘Everything is being put out by the whips to represent the Executive as acting unconstitutionally and to make it look absurd,’ he fumed.7 He later saw Jack Weatherill, who he trusted, and ‘explained the situation to him but we have lost the first round’.
A week after the election, despite doubts about his personal fitness to shoulder the burden of leadership, Keith Joseph had emerged as the front runner. He offered something new: a clear alternative to Heath’s centrist approach. All summer, he had been making speeches developing a ‘monetarist’ theory that argued that control of the money supply, rather than the incomes policies tried by Labour as well as Conservative governments, was the way to beat inflation. Joseph’s restless mind ranged in many directions and he was careless of the effect of his utterances. On 19 October, he made a speech in Edgbaston on the subject of population control, a live political issue of the day. ‘The balance of our population, our human stock is threatened,’ he warned. The wrong sort of people were having the wrong sort of babies, for ‘a high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world.’ These women ‘from classes four and five are now producing a third of all births’. All Joseph was arguing for was better propagation of birth control. The cold sociological jargon of ‘classes four and five’ made him sound like an early-century apostle of eugenics. It was soon clear that his credibility as a candidate had been severely, and possibly fatally, damaged.
The immediate effect of the media squall that followed was to relieve the pressure on Heath. Joseph had been ‘very tactless,’ wrote Neave. ‘This has raised a storm and will affect his chances of replacing Heath. The latter seems to have recovered his position and I suppose we have to accept the worst.’8 His fears were confirmed a week later when, following the Queen’s opening of Parliament, he saw Heath interviewed by ITN. Heath’s message, he recorded, was ‘I shall not resign. I am the leader. I have obligations to 11 million people who voted for me and the party.’9 Two days later, on 31 October, the full 1922 Committee convened. Out of twenty-one who spoke, ‘only two’ were in favour of Heath.10 However, even those who were critical were ‘eminently fair’. The most telling contribution came from Kenneth Lewis, a rare bird in the Tory aviary having been born the son of a Labour-supporting Tyneside shipfitter, who in the course of what Neave regarded as a moderate speech declared that the leadership was ‘a leasehold not a freehold’. He concluded, ‘Anyone but he would resign after this meeting.’
In early November, the elections for the 1922 Committee Executive were held. There were fifty candidates for the eighteen places, some of them Heath supporters standing to counter what the leader regarded as the existing members’ implacable hostility to him.11 The result dented any hope Heath might have nourished that the threat to him was fading. Despite Humphrey Atkins’s warning, all the incumbents were returned – ‘triumphantly’ in du Cann’s judgement.
Even Heath could see that some conciliatory gesture was needed. On 14 November, he met the committee. Neave recorded that he was kept waiting for ten minutes, then received ‘coldly but politely’.
The leader told them that he was now prepared to submit himself for re-election. However, in the meantime he would not be standing down. Given that this was an unprecedented situation – the first time a Conservative leader’s continued tenure had been openly challenged – he intended to ask Alec Douglas-Home to chair a committee to draft new leadership election rules. This naturally created unease. The fear was that the new arrangements would be fixed to the leader’s liking. At a ‘kind of anti-Heath rally’ at the home of Julian Ridsdale, the Powellite MP for Harwich, on 14 November, where ‘many other right-wingers’were present, Airey urged an early election on the existing rules, but failed to convince du Cann.12
Neave was now more exposed than at any time since he arrived at Parliament. During his career to date he had steered clear of party intrigues. His dissatisfaction with Heath was shared by many backbenchers, alienated by their leader’s rudeness and complete lack of interest in them or their concerns. But now Neave’s head was silhouetted dangerously above the parapet. For all his moaning about ‘what hell it is to be an MP’,13 politics was his life. The leadership crisis was becoming a matter of personal survival. ‘If Heath wins this battle (which he might) my position will be hopeless,’ he wrote on 16 November.
For the next several weeks, Neave pursued a parallel course of seeking to mend fences with Heath, while at the same time positioning himself to be on the winning side when the leadership contest eventually played out. The relationship between Ted and Airey had always been rather more complicated than the old story of the post-heart-attack encounter suggested. Lately it had taken on a disquietingly personal edge that Neave was anxious to blunt. On 21 November, he lunched with the leader’s PPS, Kenneth Baker, who told him that ‘Heath says “people keep coming to say that Airey dislikes me.”’ Neave replied that he ‘never said I “disliked” him but [had] criticised his style of leadership.’ He told Baker he wanted ‘to see Heath about this’, and the PPS said he would look into it. Later he discussed the matter with du Cann, who suggested that the badmouthing had come from the whips.
There soon came further evidence of Heath’s animus towards him. Diana heard via someone who had encountered Heath at the home of Toby Aldington that the leader regarded her husband as ‘wicked’.14 This news prompted Neave to call on Humphrey Atkins the following day, 6 December, to try and arrange an air-clearing meeting. ‘He agreed I ought to see E. Heath and “have it out with him”,’ he recorded. Ten days later, on Monday 16 December, they met. It was, he told Diana that evening, ‘an extraordinary interview’. It started – apparently in the Leader of the Opposition’s office in the House – at 7 p.m., and Heath offered him a drink, which he refused. Heath, he noted primly, ‘took 2 whiskies during the 35 mins I was with him.’
Neave began with a forthright declaration that ‘I thought that I should tell him my views and that over Christmas he should consider standing down,’ as ‘it would be impossible for him to reconcile the differences in the party.’ This was a vague formula which avoided the assertion that the central issue was Heath’s personality and the perception that he was an electoral liability. Neave suggested that he should do this (i.e. stand down) ‘before campaigns for individual candidates began’. Heath replied that Neave was ‘ingenuous’ to think that campaigns had not started ‘the day after the election’.
There followed some conversational va-et-vient. Airey suggested that Heath might want to take up some ‘position in Foreign Affairs’, given that ‘he was so important in Europe’. As Britain’s membership of the EEC had finally been agreed, it was obviously vital to have a senior figure overseeing the entry process. Ted smartly knocked back the idea that he might serve under a new leader, replying that ‘if people didn’t want him, he was still young enough to get another job.’ (He was then fifty-eight.)
They locked horns when Neave asserted that the party machine should remain aloof from the leadership process and ‘Central Office should not promote any individual candidate.’ Heath replied that ‘Central Office supports the Leader,’ while admitting there could be some there who ‘might support a particular candidate’ – which Neave took to be a reference to Willie Whitelaw.
So it went on, but although minds never met, the atmosphere seems to have been civil enough. Ted ‘became more friendly when I said I had no axe to grind and could not hold office because of health, and he referred to my visit to him as Chief Whip in 1959.’ That Heath was happy to bring this up is surely further proof that the encounter was not the seismic event of legend. He made a last attempt to get Neave to understand his point of view, asking him, ‘Would I not “as a friend” agree that the 1922 ctee were aiming to overrule him and the Shadow Cabinet? I said they were more moderate than he thought. As I left he said, “We must fight on.”’
The meeting – the most prolonged encounter they had had in years – ended at 7.35 p.m. On his way out, Airey passed on his thoughts about Ted to Humphrey Atkins: ‘I told the Chief Whip I was sorry for him.’ It went further than that. ‘I feel he is in no fit state to lead a political party,’ he wrote, ‘but I could hardly expect him to agree with what I said.’
Heath was, of course, right in saying that the campaign to oust him had started as soon as he lost the election. By now there were clear runners in the field, but as yet Neave had yet to make up his mind which one to back. It was a crucial decision, on which his future depended, and heart and head were in constant conflict.
He had first come to think of Margaret Thatcher as a possible replacement for Heath a full fifteen months before, in September 1973. Recording a conversation with Diana in which the usual complaints about his ‘lack of any idea of how to handle MPs or their wives’ were aired, they discussed ‘whether we can stand him much longer’. Then the only possible rivals were ‘Whitelaw, Barber and possibly Margaret Thatcher’.15 Since the visit to the constituency in July that year his admiration for her had only increased. There had been a further local encounter at the end of September when she toured Harwell, where ‘Margaret made a hit with the scientists and it all went very well.’16 The Thatchers stayed the night and the following day visited Uffington churchyard to inspect the graves of ‘several members of the Thatcher family … They appear to have been local farmers dating back to the 18th century.’17 There was a jolly lunch at the Old Rectory with Philip and Val Goodhart and others (‘smoked salmon, curried chicken and ices, champagne to begin with, red and white wines’). The visit was ‘a tremendous success’ and Margaret raised the prospect of the Thatchers buying a cottage in the Vale of White Horse, handy for Swindon, where Burmah Oil, of which Denis was a director, had its headquarters.
During the fevered months between the two Conservative defeats of 1974, Neave made several remarks in his diary about her cleverness and at a lunch in April assured her ‘she had great political future’.18 At that time she had no intention of letting her ambition shine too brightly and, as the summer passed, let it be known that if it came to a contest, she would be backing Keith Joseph, now seen as an ideological ally.
In the meantime, Neave had been pulled into the orbit of Edward du Cann. He had been impressed by his deft performance as chairman of the 1922 Committee, and soon after the second defeat it seemed likely that he had enough potential support to be a serious contender to replace Heath – an impression du Cann encouraged without explicitly confirming. He exercised a curious attraction on Airey, who was normally unimpressed by City types. He was emollient and sympathetic, a smooth-haired and impeccably tailored tribune of the back-bench plebs. He was also emotionally intelligent and a skilful flatterer. One July evening, despite suffering from a recurrent throat infection, Airey struggled into the House for a vote. There he ran into du Cann, who urged him to get well soon, ‘as I had an important part to play. “There were no big men left.”’19
Neave felt du Cann took him seriously, and he – always troubled by the feeling that he was overlooked and undervalued – responded warmly to the attention. When the October plotting commenced they were as thick as thieves. Airey had detected the first faint creaking of a Thatcher bandwagon preparing to roll. Even before the election, he had reported whip Jack Weatherill’s conviction that ‘she can be leader of the party.’20 But he was not yet aboard, and would not be until du Cann’s possible candidacy was played out.
As the autumn progressed, he was pulled in different directions by the forces of loyalty, ambition and self-preservation. It was an agonising time. Du Cann was a difficult man to pin down – Heath had attached the word ‘slippery’ to him.21 Keyser Ullmann was rumoured to be in deep trouble and Labour were said to have compiled a dossier on its dealings that would blow a possible du Cann leadership bid out of the water. On 13 November, Neave was present at a meeting at the House chaired by Nigel Fisher to discuss du Cann’s candidature. ‘It appears he is not yet willing to stand, partly owing to his wife’s dislike of politics,’ he wrote. It was apparent that there might be other reasons for his hesitation. They ‘discussed how rumours about his reputation in the City can be countered, as inquiries show nothing against him, though Keyser Ullmann has a doubtful reputation.’ They decided that it was ‘premature to start a campaign’.
On 20 November came the first reports that Margaret Thatcher had decided to declare her candidature, and the following day Neave was told by Geoffrey Finsberg, a Tory MP whose Hampstead constituency was next door to Thatcher in Finchley, that ‘Margaret would definitely stand.’ How Finsberg knew is unclear, but it emerges from Charles Moore’s biography that by her own account it was indeed on that day that she made up her mind.22 The decision followed an early-evening meeting with Keith Joseph at his office in the Commons, where he told her that the furore that followed his Edgbaston speech, and the effect that it had had on his wife Helen, had dissuaded him from taking on the challenge.
Despite their good relations, Airey was not involved at all in Margaret’s decision. On 26 November, he went to see her in her room in the House and she confirmed the news. ‘She seemed rather apprehensive about the effect on her Shadow Cabinet colleagues,’ he recorded. In her autobiography Thatcher referred to a meeting which took place at about this time. ‘Airey had come to see me shortly after my decision to stand was known,’ she wrote.23 At that time, though they ‘got on well’ and she was ‘conscious of mutual respect … we were not yet the close friends we were to become.’ Neave told her that he ‘hoped to persuade Edward du Cann to stand’, but ‘until Edward decided one way or the other it was not, of course, possible for Airey to support me actively.’ However, she ‘knew that I could rely on his advice and he promised to stay in touch, which we did,’ coming to her room in the House ‘to exchange notes on several occasions between then and the end of the year’.
Neave left the meeting reckoning that ‘she has a good chance.’ This was still not enough to persuade him to abandon his support for du Cann, around whom stories of Keyser Ullmann’s financial difficulties continued to swirl. They had prompted Neave to consider asking a constituent, Paul Paubon, who he described as a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, to make some checks – though if he did so and what resulted is not recorded.24
As the days passed, the odds changed continuously. On Friday 29 November, he lunched at the House and, ear to the ground as always, ‘talked to some members about Margaret Thatcher, about whom there is not much enthusiasm.’ A week later, another encounter with her persuaded him that ‘I shall back her if Edward Du Cann¶ does not stand.’25
On Thursday 12 December, he saw Thatcher again. She too seemed to believe that du Cann was the best candidate. They ‘had a private conversation … She made it clear that if Edward Du Cann were to stand she would drop out.’ Much depended on the form of the election system Alec Douglas-Home was due to reveal the following week. The new proposals were announced on Tuesday 17 December. Home’s committee came up with two changes to the rules. One was a provision that made it possible for the leader to be challenged by MPs every year. The other was to change the existing system by which, to win the first ballot, a candidate had to have an absolute majority, plus a 15 per cent margin over their nearest rival. This was now to be modified so that the 15 per cent would be calculated on the total number of MPs eligible to take part, whether or not they did so. The proposals were to be voted on in the New Year. ‘Everybody quite cheerful but confused,’ Neave recorded. However, the general view was that Home had not favoured his boss and ‘pro-Heath people complain that he is given too hard a task to win on the first ballot.’
In the run-up to Christmas 1974, the Westminster weathervane was swinging to all points of the compass and it was impossible to detect a strong prevailing wind that favoured any particular candidate. Mrs Thatcher had recovered easily from an early low blow by the Heath camp which publicised an old interview she had given to a small magazine called Pre-Retirement Choice in which she revealed that she stockpiled tins of ‘expensive proteins: ham, tongue, mackerel …’ as a strategy to beat inflation. This was immediately presented across the media as evidence of ‘hoarding’. Stockpiling was something only the well-off could afford and the word still carried pejorative overtones from the last war.
When the story broke, Airey had thought it ‘very silly of her to talk to the Press’, not realising until later that the interview had in fact taken place before the election.26 Though he felt ‘disillusioned’, he told himself ‘not to take it too seriously’. He was right to do so. Mrs Thatcher turned her thrift into a virtue. She told the BBC that, though others might call it stockpiling, ‘I call it being a prudent housewife,’ and invited the media in to inspect the shelves of the larder in the Thatchers’ home in Flood Street, Chelsea.27 Neave, who was always careful to note the effect that she had on women voters, believed that the brisk counter-attack had worked and ‘many housewives think she is taking a commonsense precaution.’28
Margaret undoubtedly had spirit and determination, yet Airey must still have not rated her a winner, for late on 18 December he went to a meeting organised by Nigel Fisher at which ‘we all signed a letter urging [du Cann] to stand in the first ballot.’ He advised the gathering that ‘if [he] did not stand … we should all support Margaret, but there is no unanimity. She has less chance at present. Heath’s stock is rising again.’29
On Christmas Day, the great ‘will-he-won’t-he’ was unresolved. ‘Not too happy about E. Du Cann,’ he wrote. ‘Since his bank Keyser Ullmann is clearly in difficulties. I plan to ring him in a week’s time to discover whether he has decided to stand. If not, we must clearly back Margaret.’ The day was windy, cold and wet. Airey rose early and brought tea to Diana, then walked next door to St Mary’s church to attend matins and read the first lesson. They had a ‘happy Christmas lunch’ and he ‘discussed the future with the boys and we feel we shall somehow fight our way through.’ Airey’s home life could hardly have been happier. On 29 December, he looked out on the garden of the Old Vicarage, at ‘the Christmas roses, the best ever’. It was a date he never forgot: ‘Our wedding day, 32 years ago and still very happy.’
Beyond the walls of the Old Vicarage, the scene was dark. Reviewing the year ahead, he wrote, ‘Everyone expecting the worst in 1975. They do not seem to realise how much they have brought these misfortunes on themselves.’30 He listed the figures that spelt out Britain’s woes: 20 per cent inflation, a £4 billion balance-of-payments deficit and many major enterprises heading, it seemed, for bankruptcy, including British Leyland.31 The car-maker was beset by strikes and had a reputation for lousy workmanship. He had his own personal experience of its shortcomings. Two days before Christmas, he had taken delivery of a new Austin 1800, provided after some haggling as part of his remuneration by Clarke Chapman.32 On driving out of Lex Motors in Swindon, he ‘had a premonition that it would not last the day’. Sure enough, ‘as I was driving Diana back from Farringdon there was a bang … it proved to be the suspension. I took it back after lunch all down on one side.’33
The seemingly permanent national crisis affected all but the very rich, and even among the upper-middle classes there was a strong feeling of precariousness. In Neave’s diaries there are many references to money, or the lack of it, and at the start of the New Year he calculated they would have to borrow £6,000 to get through it.34 As he prepared to return to Westminster after the break, nothing had been resolved. On Sunday 5 January, du Cann rang him and they spoke for forty minutes. Du Cann told him that he had seen Margaret Thatcher and advised her that for her campaign she needed a ‘strong group’ around her. He found her ‘naïve but admired her character’. His willingness to dispense advise to a potential rival seemed evidence of a lack of seriousness and, indeed, he confessed that he ‘still had not made up his mind whether to stand’. He proposed a ‘head count as soon as possible so we know what the probable figures are’, and Neave agreed to talk to Nigel Fisher.
He was in an awkward situation. He had encouraged Margaret and, as he revealed later, had ‘promised her support’ – but had also signed a letter effectively declaring his loyalty to du Cann. The latter’s endless dithering, however, meant he was restrained from honourably switching allegiance. He told du Cann as much, saying ‘it was difficult to commit myself entirely to Margaret and he said I must do what was right for the country!’ This, Airey concluded, ‘did not help. Until we know how many will back Margaret Thatcher I do not think any decisions will be made.’
He was due to have lunch with her in four days’ time. On Thursday 9 January, he and Diana drove to 19 Flood Street, ‘a very nice house, a bit too tidy with everything wrapped in cellophane’. There was some preliminary discussion about tax exemption on historic houses, a cause he had recently taken up, before the real subject was broached.
Margaret revealed that she had gained an important supporter – the social services spokesman Geoffrey Howe, along with ‘one or two’ other members of the Shadow Cabinet.** They shared her view that ‘a change was essential’. Once again it was personality rather than policy that was the problem. Heath had never run ‘a real cabinet’ and ‘never confided in anyone’. Then it was down to brass tacks.
Thatcher agreed with Neave’s proposition that, before a campaign could be launched, ‘a headcounting must come first and it was possible that she and E. Du Cann might get the same type of support. There was so far no campaign structure. I said this was not possible until a provisional assessment of the figures could be made. She had heard from the Press that E. Heath would get 120 (he would have to get 159 to win on the first ballot). I said 70 or 80 was more like it. The numbers for E. Du Cann and her could be close, in which case they would have to settle whether both should stand. I find it difficult because having promised her support, I have also signed the letter to E. Du Cann but do not yet know if he will stand.’ They also discussed whether or not ‘W. Whitelaw who is ambitious would stand. I did not fancy his chances but it was possible that Central Office would influence MPs on his behalf through their constituency associations.’
On Monday 13 January, Nigel Fisher made a further effort to squeeze a decision out of du Cann. Neave had learned from Fisher that their man was citing his wife as a reason for his prevarications. She ‘did not want to give up their beautiful home in Somerset, which they could not afford without the bank’.35 Fisher called a gathering for Wednesday evening at the House, by which time it was hoped things would be clearer. In the meantime, Neave’s thoughts and energies were focused on Margaret. He updated her on developments and told her he would ring her on Thursday with a read-out on the meeting. ‘It looks as though we should mobilise support for Margaret after we have organised a counting of heads,’ he wrote. Despite the assumed backing of Howe, he was ‘still doubtful of the outcome’.
The following day, Tuesday January 14, du Cann at last made up his mind. ‘[He] told me he would definitely not stand,’ wrote Airey. ‘He could not “let down” his wife. It seems she was against his becoming Chairman [of the 1922 Committee] years ago.’
This was a liberation. Neave expressed no word of regret at du Cann’s decision. For the next few weeks he would be absorbed in an adventure that rivalled the great dramas of his life, a game of high stakes and potentially rich political rewards. Over lunch with Margaret, he had revealed a talent for electoral number crunching. Added to that were skills he had developed in his wartime secret service days. Among them were an ability to divine people’s intentions and a capacity to nudge them in directions they might not otherwise have taken. His campaign would also involve a degree of deception, another art of his old trade.
On Wednesday, 15 January, a brief encounter with Nigel Fisher between divisions in the House produced an agreement ‘that I should chair a new group to support Margaret Thatcher’. That evening, in Interview Room J, he took the first steps in building her parliamentary campaign machine. ‘After 1½ hours, with contributions by Bernard Braine,†† Billy Rees-Davis‡‡ and many others, it was agreed that a Campaign organisation should be set up in favour of Margaret,’ he wrote. ‘Many expressed disappointment that Du Cann will not stand and that the choice was so narrow.’ He recorded several ‘anti-woman’ voices being raised, including that of Betty Harvie Anderson. The dissident was a 62-year-old Scotswoman, member for East Renfrewshire, who had commanded an anti-aircraft regiment on the Home Front during the war. As Neave was to discover in his own constituency, Conservative women did not necessarily look kindly on the idea of one of their own sex leading them.
Margaret Thatcher already had the nucleus of a campaign team in the shape of two back-bench supporters: Fergus Montgomery, a right-wing former teacher from South Shields who had served as her PPS, and Bill Shelton, the hard-working and likeable member for Streatham. Neave approached them both that evening, though the precise details of what passed are not noted in the diary. According to Thatcher’s account, he told Shelton that if they ‘could come to some agreement’, he would bring over du Cann’s supporters to her camp.36 ‘In fact,’ she wrote, ‘the “agreement” simply consisted of Airey taking over the running of my campaign with Bill assisting him.’
Later Neave came to her room and they ‘performed a diplomatic minuet. Slightly disingenuously, he asked me who was running my campaign. Hardly less so, I replied that I didn’t really have a campaign. Airey said: “I think I had better do it for you.”’ She ‘agreed with enthusiasm … Suddenly much of the burden of worry I had been carrying around fell away.’
A parallel effort to manage her image outside Westminster was directed by Gordon Reece, a PR consultant, whose success or otherwise would give some indication of how Mrs Thatcher would play with voters. Neave arranged with Shelton ‘to hold a meeting to discuss “identification”’ of her supporters the following Monday, 20 January, at 9 p.m.
The day after his role at the head of the Thatcher campaign was formalised, the 1922 Committee endorsed the new rules to elect the leader. The game was now afoot. Henceforth Neave would be roaming the corridors, restaurants, cafeterias and bars of Westminster, saying little, hearing much and, with Bill Shelton, endlessly computing the arithmetic of victory.
A slightly complicating factor arose when, on 16 January, Hugh Fraser told Airey that he too intended to stand. The idea had been incubating for weeks. As long ago as 3 December, over lunch with Neave in the Members’ Dining Room – where Airey rarely ventured – he had expressed distaste for both Thatcher and du Cann. He had considered supporting Whitelaw, but after some prevarication had now decided to make a stand himself. It was a quixotic gesture, to raise the standard of traditional Toryism, which Fraser himself knew had zero chance of success. For all the affection Neave felt for his old comrade, he would not be rallying to Fraser’s flag. After their lunch he had remarked that ‘Hugh is invariably eccentric (and wrong).’ Fraser’s intervention ‘would certainly take votes off Margaret and Heath but what would it avail?’37 After this there were no further nominations and it was clear that it was in effect a two-horse race – between ‘a filly and a gelding’, as the joke had it.
Flushed with the excitement of his new role, Airey went down to Ashbury on Friday 17 January and that evening addressed a private meeting of Conservative supporters at Wallingford town hall. The experience ‘was a near disaster’. After explaining why he wanted Heath out and his role in the Milk Street affair, he ‘foolishly’ declared that ‘since there were only two candidates I would support Margaret. I was immediately attacked for deserting Heath, why was there only a woman and so forth. Some of the questioners were quite rude afterwards, especially Mrs Douglas-Pennant of Aston Tirrold. I expect some resignations from the branches. I miscalculated badly.’ The audience seemed particularly aggrieved that the choice of candidates was so narrow and he chided himself that he had ‘not implied that other candidates would stand and otherwise wrapped it up’.
Afterwards he was ‘extremely upset’ and the following day was no better. It was ‘miserable for me and the aftermath of the Wallingford meeting stayed with me all the time. If only I had had time to think how to present the leadership crisis. They were angry because I gave my views instead of allowing them to state theirs.’38
The episode illustrates the sensitivity to criticism noted by Veronica Beckett and by his own family. It is also evidence of a respect for other people’s feelings and opinions, suggesting a far softer personality than the calculating Machiavellian of caricature. Nevertheless, guile would be needed if he was to pull off the feat of propelling Margaret Thatcher into office. She aroused mixed feelings among the 276 other members who sat on the Tory benches, all but six of whom were men. To some she was too suburban, to others too shrill. Those who shared Heath’s centrist, corporatist outlook were suspicious of her identification with the emerging Tory counter-culture of monetarism. Yet those who might be attracted to her emphasis on shrinking the state and rewarding individual effort were, on the face of it, the most likely to be nervous of the idea of a woman leader.
Neave had grasped the crucial factor in the contest, which was that, one way or another, Ted Heath was finished. Even his strongest supporters, and they were still surprisingly numerous both inside and outside parliament, realised that, no matter how much they might admire his abilities and share his opinions, he was ballot-box poison and sooner or later he would have to go. Whatever her faults, Margaret Thatcher was the agent of change. What was more, a vote for her did not mean her inevitable translation to the leadership. Neave and his team would emphasise her qualities to potential converts. But they would also employ a subtle argument to the less enamoured: by voting for her in the first round, you would not necessarily be getting her as leader. But you would be getting rid of Ted and forcing a second round, which would open the field to other candidates.
On Sunday 19 January he got down to work. That morning he spoke on the phone to Mrs Thatcher, who was ‘pleased we are getting started’, and told her who was in the group. She told him that Keith Joseph was backing her. He felt they were off to a good start because ‘that meant that supporters of Joseph, Thatcher and Du Cann were now united’. He ‘told her to forget it and stick to the Finance Bill’. By that he meant she should leave the campaign to him and concentrate on opposing the government legislation going through the House. It was sound advice. In the coming days she pulled off some sparkling performances in her clashes with the Chancellor, Denis Healey, standing up to his special brand of brutal sarcasm and hitting back with some wounding sallies of her own.
On Monday night the Campaign Group, as Neave was now calling it, met at the House. There were twenty present. Names were farmed out among them ‘on the basis of personal knowledge’, so that intentions could be canvassed.39 Neave wrote that the group was ‘formed of people of all shades of thought in the party’. There was a sense of excitement in the air. ‘So the balloon has gone up,’ he wrote with satisfaction.
To pursue the imagery of the turf that was constantly employed during the contest, on form Margaret Thatcher was the outsider. Her political experience was limited and she was a woman, one whose appearance and manner were not universally appealing. Her stable was a scratch squad and she had put in little time on the gallops. But as Neave was soon telling Arthur Palmer, his Labour colleague on the science and technology select committee, and the Scottish Old Etonian Labour MP Tam Dalyell, ‘As particular friends of mine, I’d put your money on the filly.’40
During the course of the day following the Campaign Group meeting, Tuesday 21 January, he wrote that ‘It became evident that Margaret was in the lead and I told her so.’ When they gathered again on the Wednesday evening and compared notes, they decided to ‘release the news that she was ahead on ballot 1 according to our present count’. Neave passed the news on to the BBC Political Editor, Peter Hardiman Scott, and the Daily Mail. When the news was broadcast next morning on the Today programme, it ‘caused a sensation and sent the Establishment into a flat spin’.41 That evening Heath ‘came to the 1922 Committee and woodenly announced that he accepted the rules for election’. It was his prerogative to choose the date and he announced it would be in twelve days, on Tuesday 4 February. Neave felt this was another dirty trick. ‘The Establishment’ had ‘deliberately advanced the date to put us at a disadvantage.’
While his lieutenants fanned out through Westminster seeking pledges of support, Neave arranged for Margaret’s voice to sound in the Tory press, fixing with the Telegraph editor and former Conservative MP Bill Deedes for her to write an op-ed (in fact penned by Angus Maude) the following week. He also fielded a request from BBC Midweek for Margaret to be filmed for a programme on Thursday 30 January, in which Heath and Hugh Fraser would also appear.
Neave had little time for the new media aristocracy (‘I hate these arrogant, selfish TV teams’),42 but it was all part of the game and he agreed. This put him in conflict with Gordon Reece, to whom he seems to have taken an immediate dislike, referring to him in the diary as ‘one Rees’. Reece complained that by appearing on Midweek she would upset Granada’s World in Action programme, who had already spent five hours filming her.
Neave replied robustly that ‘They could not possibly have monopoly of the whole week. World in Action does not come on till next Monday. I eventually won the day.’43 Mrs Thatcher duly appeared on both, interviewed while having her hair done on Midweek and talking widely and confidently on her background, her beliefs and her conviction that she could cope with the strains of leadership ‘every bit as well as my colleagues’ in the World in Action programme broadcast on the eve of the poll.44
Neave spent the weekend of Friday 24 January in the constituency. He attended another meeting of Tory supporters in Abingdon. To his relief, the mood was much more friendly than it had been the week before in Wallingford and ‘nobody opposed my right to come out for Margaret and act as her manager.’ He noted that people were ‘not yet used to the idea of a woman leader’. He returned to London on Sunday afternoon and went with Keith Joseph and Bill Shelton to Flood Street to see Thatcher. They sat in the drawing room and Neave revealed the latest figures. Their polling gave her 112 pledges and Heath fewer than 80. To win on the first ballot, she needed 159. The figures, he judged, ‘must be too optimistic’. He knew very well that statements of intention were not to be trusted and that there was a tendency for members to give questioners the answer they wanted to hear. ‘One has to remember,’ he told himself, ‘that practically all canvasses are overoptimistic and that in the [1965] Maudling/Heath contest Maudling was told he was in by 30!’45 The numbers possessed the power to shift events one way or the other as MPs weighed the odds. Such data was precious and had to be guarded. Henceforth, he decided, ‘it is essential to give out no figures.’46 The line would be that ‘Margaret was in a “strong position” and leave it at that’.47
With a week to go, the demands on Neave’s time and energy meant he was no longer able to maintain his diary. The last entry is for Tuesday 28 January. It records a new addition to the team, Joan Hall, who had been elected MP for Keighley in 1970 but lost her seat in February 1974 and to whom Neave had taken a shine. She was thirty-nine, ‘most competent and popular’, and would man the phones as well as driving Mrs Thatcher around in her MGB GT sports car. That day, the see-saw of opinion seemed to have tipped Heath’s way. After all, he had ‘all the patronage and Establishment organisation behind him whereas we are amateurs’.48 But nonetheless he noted that though ‘there are allegedly signs that Heath support is growing and that he may win outright, our canvass does not support this.’
If Neave and his team were amateurs, they were energetic and skilful ones. He was generally regarded as quiet and unobtrusive, and in the opinion of Richard Ryder, who worked with him in Margaret Thatcher’s private office, ‘a shy man with men as well as women’.49 To succeed, Neave now had to transform himself into something he had never been – a schmoozer.
He proved unexpectedly good at it. Norman Tebbit recalled his experience of the Neave technique. ‘Airey suggested to me that Margaret Thatcher was the preferred candidate and I scratched my head a bit … I was of the view that we needn’t make our lives more difficult than [they] had to be and that selling a woman candidate to the Conservative Party would be a big step. Airey said, “Well come and talk to her … these reservations could be overcome.” I think most people thought that it would be inevitable that there would be a woman party leader before long, but most … took the view that it would be the Labour Party [that produced one] … I decided that was not the case and then I worked with Airey … to get Margaret elected.’50
Tebbit was not alone in having little personal knowledge of the candidate. There was no social ground in the Commons on which they were likely to meet. Neave arranged for small gatherings of backbenchers in the rooms of a West Country MP, Robert (‘Robin’) Cooke, for a cup of tea or a glass of wine, where they could form an impression of her. With the help of David James, MP for North Dorset, he also organised a series of lunches at the ‘ladies side’ of Boodle’s club, a private dining room where MPs brought their wives to meet Mrs Thatcher. Diana Neave was in support. According to one who was close to the arrangements, things ‘went very nicely’ and ‘a number of waverers were persuaded’.51 These events were markedly more successful than Ted Heath’s belated attempts at bonhomie. It was too late to start being nice now, and the lunches, dinners and visits to the Smoking Room that his team pressed him into did more harm than good.52
Neave was meticulous in his list-making, never taking a pledge at face value. ‘People were not straight,’ remembered Jonathan Aitken, then a young backbencher.53 ‘They were fearful that Heath would take revenge.’ Thus ‘people were sent off to double check. “We know X says he is going to vote Heath, but is he really?” They would go off to X’s best friend and grill them to find out his real intentions.’
All this was simply common sense and perfectly above board. There are many stories, though, of cases where Neave was more inventive, provoking subsequent accusations that he had employed ‘dark arts’ acquired in his intelligence service days to swing the result.
Aitken remembers being cornered by Sir John Rodgers one night in Pratt’s club when the sixty-eight-year-old member for Sevenoaks, who had broad intellectual interests and was by no means a reactionary, was in his cups. Rodgers disliked Heath but nonetheless felt he should continue as leader. He told Aitken that he had been approached by Neave and told, ‘John, you know Margaret’s not going to win but we’ve got to give Ted a jolt.’ Rodgers agreed and ‘Airey persuaded [him] to vote for Thatcher on the grounds that Heath needed a kick up the bum and then he’ll behave much better.’ When the results came through, ‘John was furious. “That fucker Neave – he said there was no chance of her winning!”’
Neave used the same technique when engaging in a clever piece of media manipulation. According to Richard Ryder, the night before the poll he spoke to Bob Carvel, political editor of the Evening Standard, an important publication in the pre-internet age, when its early editions could set the news agenda. He told the reporter that Heath’s figures were higher than his own canvass suggested. The story was carried in the first edition, which appeared before lunch, and Neave arranged for extra copies to be distributed around the Commons facilities. The idea was that members who wanted Heath out but intended to back candidates other than Thatcher who would emerge in the second round would get the message and make sure Ted did not survive.54
On Tuesday 4 February, in Committee Room 14 in the House, polling began. It closed at 3.30 p.m. and the first results based on ballots cast on the spot produced a tie. Postal votes determined the outcome. When they were counted, Thatcher had 130, Heath 119 and Fraser 16, with six abstentions and five spoiled ballots.
Mrs Thatcher had not won outright and there would have to be a second ballot. Nonetheless, that night the Neaves gave a party at Westminster Gardens. There was champagne and the TV cameras were allowed in. The celebrations were premature but understandable. Margaret Thatcher had defeated the incumbent, who now resigned. Whatever happened next, she was the moral victor. She had demonstrated those qualities that Neave had long identified in her: courage, boldness and determination. That did not mean that she would necessarily win the next round. But by hanging back, the candidates who now came forward made unconvincing leaders. A week later the second ballot was held. Thatcher got 146 votes, Willie Whitelaw 79, Jim Prior and Geoffrey Howe 19 each and John Peyton§§ 11. She had won by the margin required, and with higher support than Neave and Shelton’s figures had estimated. It was fitting that it was Airey who brought her the news as she waited in his small room in the Commons.
* Toby Low (1914–2000), educated Winchester and New College, Oxford; served in WW2 and in 1944 was the youngest brigadier in the British Army; Conservative MP for Blackpool North, 1945–62; created Baron Aldington, 1962; in 1989 awarded £1.5 million in libel damages arising from allegations concerning his supposed role in repatriating prisoners of war to the Soviet Union.
† Nigel Fisher (1913–96), educated Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; served in Welsh Guards in WW2 (MC 1945); Conservative MP for Hitchin, 1950–55, and Surbiton, 1955–83; knighted, 1974.
‡ Angus Maude (1912–93), educated Rugby and Oriel College, Oxford; journalist before becoming Conservative MP for Ealing South, 1950–58, and Stratford-on-Avon, 1963–83; known as ‘the Mekon’ because of his dome-like forehead; created Lord Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, 1983.
§ Harry Neil Marten (1916–85), educated Rossall School; in WW2, parachuted into France to work with the French Resistance; FCO, 1947–57; Conservative MP for Banbury, 1959–83; knighted, 1983.
¶ Neave, whose spelling and accuracy with names is usually punctilious, chose to spell it thus, although the correct form is ‘du Cann’.
** Her belief that she had Howe’s backing in the race would turn out to be mistaken.
†† Bernard Braine (1914–2000), educated Hendon County Grammar School; served North Staffordshire Regiment WW2; Conservative MP for Billericay, 1950–55, South East Essex, 1955–83; created Baron Braine of Wheatley, 2000. For many years unofficial UK ambassador to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London.
‡‡ William Rees-Davies (1916–1992), educated Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; commissioned Welsh Guards, 1939; invalided out after losing an arm in 1943; flamboyant barrister and QC, nicknamed the ‘one-armed bandit’; Conservative MP for Isle of Thanet, 1953–74, Thanet West, 1974–83.
§§ John Peyton (1919–2006), educated Eton and Trinity College, Oxford; commissioned in 15/19 Hussars, 1939; captured in Belgium, 1940, and POW until 1945; barrister; Conservative MP for Yeovil, 1951–83; created Lord Peyton of Yeovil, 1983.