Edward Heath

Heath was convinced that the time was ripe for a high-level meeting between employers and union leaders, presided over by the Prime Minister, which would open the way for a new age in industrial relations. To his dismay his Cabinet colleagues were politely unenthusiastic – the project was too ambitious, it would be dangerous to convene such a meeting until the ground had been carefully prepared and a measure of consensus established. ‘Further consideration was needed,’ concluded the Prime Minister. Undeterred, Heath battled on and by the end of July 1960 was able to tell the Cabinet that both the British Employers’ Confederation and the TUC were ready to enter into talks. He had arranged for a meeting of the Joint Consultative Committee in the near future.6 By the time it took place he had moved on, but he had launched a process which was to be carried on by his successor, John Hare. Heath’s relationship with the unions tends to be judged in the light of his performance as Prime Minister, particularly by the legislation which he championed intended to place the unions within the framework of the law. ‘In the period from 1959 to 1964,’ writes Eric Wigham, ‘the Ministry of Labour moved from the field of talk into that of action and legislation. Perhaps it began with Edward Heath, the future Prime Minister with the laughing shoulders and cold eyes.’ Cold eyes or not, Heath’s most considered views on labour relations in these earlier days were delivered at the Swinton Conservative College in May 1960. What should be done to improve industrial relations, he asked. ‘Some people would like to see the legal situation tightened up, but there is a grave danger in seeking legal solutions. How would they work in practice? What happens if thousands of men ignore the law and go on strike?…In dealing with these problems, we are dealing with the whole of the industrial population of this country. Those who think it is purely a legal affair would do well to remember that the law deals with criminal and civil cases in which one person or a small number of persons is involved. Here we are dealing with very large numbers indeed, with a long history behind their problems, and holding very deep feelings. They need to be approached very carefully, both by industry and by ourselves.’ It might have been better for Heath if he had had those words engraved and displayed permanently on his desk.7

In June 1960 Heathcoat-Amory finally retired as Chancellor. In the reshuffle that followed Heath was moved to the Foreign Office, to serve as Lord Privy Seal, with a seat in the Cabinet, under the new Foreign Secretary, Alec Home. When Heath became Minister of Labour his one stipulation had been that he should serve for the full period of the Government; now he was to be transplanted before he had been able to do more than start on what he thought was necessary. With Home in the Lords, however, he would speak for the Foreign Office in the Commons and, still more important, would be in charge of Britain’s relationship with Europe. If any other Foreign Secretary had been involved Heath might have had doubts, but he liked and trusted Home and believed that they would work successfully together. Some people predicted dire consequences from the divided leadership but James Stuart, always one of Heath’s most ardent admirers, reassured him. ‘I quite like the idea of FO in the Lords’, he wrote, ‘because the Commons mustn’t get into the way of regarding themselves as entitled to all important posts. Also, from your own personal future angle, it should be of great value to you to get the experience of another most important Department and to have to run important debates in the House.’ For Heath it was the prospect of negotiating British entry into Europe that was above all enticing. He had no doubt that he must accept the challenge. But he left Labour with regret. ‘I know you’ll do a first-class job,’ wrote Vic Feather, ‘which is why I rather wish you’d had another year or so at the Ministry of Labour where you’d so quickly won the respect and confidence of the unions. Anyway, there it is – from one hot spot to another!’8

Though Europe was to be at the centre of Heath’s time at the Foreign Office, it was by no means his only responsibility; indeed, for several months, it made relatively few demands on his time. In Cabinet Home tended to take the lead when any subject except Europe was under discussion but Heath would often accept responsibility when the countries of the Gulf, particularly Bahrain or Kuwait, were causing problems. He visited both states and considered himself something of an authority on the area; allegedly assuring the immensely experienced Sir William Luce, then Resident in Bahrain, that he understood how the Arabs thought and needed no advice on the subject.9 Otherwise he filled in for Home whenever the Foreign Secretary was out of the country or otherwise engaged. When Madame Furtseva visited London she became increasingly discontented with her programme and finally went on strike when required to visit Henry Moore’s studio – ‘It would be quite inappropriate for a Soviet Minister of Culture to inspect the work of a sculptor who put holes in people.’ Heath came to the rescue, took her to Wimbledon and the ballet and invited her to visit him in his new flat – the first time she had ever entered a British home. But though there were occasional compensations, the work was far less interesting and the responsibilities less serious than had been the case at the Ministry of Labour. Nor did his performance in the House of Commons do much for his reputation. ‘He seems to lack authority and grasp of his subject,’ said the MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, Lord Lambton – a comment that reflects more on the amorphous nature of his job than the merits of his performance but still makes it clear how difficult it was for Heath to shine when presenting someone else’s case on issues which were not under his control. In the Sunday Graphic in July 1960, the Tory MP Gerald Nabarro had tipped ‘the tough, imperturbable Edward Heath’ as a future Foreign Secretary. A few months later he had slipped back in the stakes so far as future promotion was concerned.10

The setback was only temporary. Heath’s real work at the Foreign Office more than restored his reputation. When he was appointed Lord Privy Seal he was known to be well-disposed towards Europe and critical of the Labour Government’s failure to move towards the Common Market, but he was not generally held to be – to use the phrases current some fifty years later – a Europhile, still less a Eurofanatic. Once Macmillan had taken the decision to apply for British entry and had charged Heath with the task of negotiating acceptable terms, however, what he had always felt would be a most desirable step forward became for him the Holy Grail. Heath became totally committed to the concept of Britain as an integral part of Europe and fought for it tenaciously until the day he died.

To a remarkable extent the decision to apply for British membership was made by Macmillan alone. He had, of course, to take the Cabinet with him but it was he who led and the rest who followed. The crucial moment probably came in January 1961 when Macmillan returned from a meeting with the French President, de Gaulle, at Rambouillet to report that there were ‘some grounds for thinking that it might now be possible to make some further progress towards a settlement of our economic and political relations with Europe’. There were, he said, ‘powerful influences in favour of the development of a close political federation in Europe’. De Gaulle was resolutely opposed to any such development. He believed that the United Kingdom by and large shared his views and would be a useful ally in the battle against the federalists. While there was no guarantee that de Gaulle would welcome British entry it was at least possible that he would not oppose it. It might therefore be best to seek a settlement while de Gaulle was still in power. The Cabinet enthusiastically agreed that steps should at once be taken to see if the way could be made clear for British entry.11

But what did entry into Europe mean? In Britain, wrote Heath in 1967, ‘a myth has become fashionable that we were concerned only with economic affairs…Nothing could be further from the truth. The main purpose of the negotiations was political.’ Robert Marjolin, one of the two French Commissioners on the first European Commission, called on Heath in the House of Commons in March 1961. The EEC ‘was not an end in itself but only a stage on the road to a wider political union’, he said. The question was not whether the British wished to be associated with the Community as it was today but as it would be in the future. The UK, Heath replied firmly, ‘had always made it clear that they regarded the…question as primarily political’. The historian Keith Middlemas has suggested that Heath more than any other Conservative minister recognised the full implications of this concept and accepted ‘how great and painful the adjustments would have to be’. Probably this is true, but he shared his vision with the Lord Chancellor at least. ‘I am myself inclined to feel’, he told Lord Kilmuir, ‘that we have allowed ourselves to be over-impressed by supranationality, and that, in the modern world if, from other points of view, political and economic, it should prove desirable to accept such further limitations on sovereignty as would follow from the signature of the Treaty of Rome, we could do so without danger to the essential character of our independence and without prejudice to our vital interests.’ Kilmuir replied that he thought it would be difficult to persuade parliament or the public to accept any substantial surrender of sovereignty. ‘These objections ought to be brought out in the open now because, if we attempt to gloss over them at this stage, those who are opposed to the whole idea of our joining the Community will certainly seize on them with more damaging effect later on.’12

Heath accepted the argument, but with reservations. It might be undesirable to let this sleeping dog lie altogether, but there was no need to wake it too energetically. The emphasis when arguing the case in public should be on the immediate advantages to be gained from British entry and the damage that would be done by staying out; not on a hypothetical threat to national sovereignty that might or might not arise in the distant future. When the issue of sovereignty did arise, Heath played it down. Speaking at a private meeting in Chatham House in October 1961, he emphasised that any move towards federation could only come about with the unanimous support of all the members: ‘Therefore the position of those who are concerned from the point of view of sovereignty is completely safeguarded.’ That he believed this to be true is certain; that he privately considered that when the time did come the arguments in favour of some surrender of sovereignty would prove irresistibly strong is no less clear. This was not the moment to argue that case, however. He did not seek actively to mislead the British public about his expectations, but he did not feel it necessary or desirable to spell out the full implications of British entry in any detail.13

Until July 1961, however, the British Government was not committed to make any formal application to join. Exploratory missions were despatched to the most important capitals: Macmillan and Home received an encouraging reception in Bonn, Heath went to Rome in August 1960 and was assured that the Italians would welcome British accession. It was in Paris, though, that the problems were going to be found. Heath went there in October and found the French ‘predictably difficult’. Their stance was not that they opposed British entry but that they professed not to see how it would be possible. It was not as if the United Kingdom alone was applying to join. Largely to counter the EEC, Britain had been instrumental in creating the European Free Trade Area (EFTA), a loose association of seven fringe countries forming a rival trading bloc. Heath was able to tell the Cabinet that EFTA welcomed the British application, but only on the understanding that, in any negotiations, the British ‘would have full regard to the interests of their partners’. Were such interests, the French wondered, compatible with membership of the EEC?14

Worse still, there was the Commonwealth. The French had defended the position of its former empire when the Common Market was established; such arrangements could hardly now be renegotiated to meet a still greater complex of individual needs. Macmillan hopefully proposed that, when explaining the British position to the Commonwealth, ‘we should set the economic considerations in the context of the great political issues which were involved and the importance of reaching a settlement in the interest of Western unity’.15 That was all very well, said the French, but would the Commonwealth countries necessarily put the need for Western unity ahead of their export markets? And, if they did not, would the British be prepared to abandon them? Heath was impressed by the calibre of the French negotiators but not by their readiness to compromise. Couve de Murville, the Foreign Minister, was coolly non-committal. His deputy, Olivier Wormser, was quite as cool but rather more ready to commit himself. His preliminary views on the question of Commonwealth exports were so unforthcoming that Maudling exclaimed: ‘It seems to me to be pointless to be talking about any negotiations with them. They have in effect rejected in advance any proposals on the points of vital interest to us.’16 Baumgartner, the Minister of Finance, was one of the few Frenchmen in a high position who seemed favourable to British entry; but, he warned Heath, his Cabinet was divided and ‘he did not know what General de Gaulle’s innermost thoughts were on this’.17

Nor did anyone else. The General kept his own counsel. Pierson Dixon, the British Ambassador in Paris, believed that de Gaulle was hostile to British entry but hedged his bets by saying that he would ‘not be able to turn down a genuine offer from us to join’; Macmillan clung to his hope that the General would welcome the UK as an ally against creeping federalism in Europe. Jean Monnet, the great architect of European unity, maintained that in the last resort de Gaulle would accept British entry because his views ‘were coloured and guided by thinking how history would judge his actions’. One thing on which everyone agreed was that, if a British application was in principle desirable, there was no point in deferring it in the hope that de Gaulle would make his intentions known. In May 1961 Heath told the Cabinet that the signals from Paris were more encouraging; the French seemed less unwilling to take into account British obligations to EFTA and the Commonwealth. Ministers were divided: Christopher Soames, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Duncan Sandys, the Minister for Defence, and Heath were eager to start negotiations, Hailsham and Maudling saw no justification for such a step, Butler was characteristically uncertain. The Prime Minister had no doubts; it would have taken more than a few sceptics to check him. The decision to enter negotiations was announced in the House of Commons on 31 July. A fortnight later, on holiday in Brittany, Heath read in a newspaper that he was to conduct the talks. When he had left London a final decision on the matter had still not been reached. ‘There was nothing that I wanted more than this.’18

A formidably competent team was quickly assembled. The original proposal had been that the leading official should be Eric Roll, a polyglot civil servant of Austrian birth, who was an academic economist by training and possessed the unusual ability to lip-read in three languages – an invaluable asset in international negotiations. Heath respected his talents but told Macmillan he doubted whether he should be the senior official on the delegation. Macmillan agreed: ‘He thinks it specially important that the official in charge should be a man of standing and authority.’ That man, at Heath’s insistence, was Pierson Dixon: ‘Knowing that French agreement was the key to success, he wanted to put the man who was closest to them in charge in Brussels.’ The disadvantage of this was that, if Dixon was much of the time in Brussels, he would no longer be so close to those making policy in Paris. Probably it made little difference to the final outcome but it certainly placed an almost insupportable burden on Dixon himself and, on balance, was a mistake.19

But the real leader was Heath himself. The members of his team were united in their admiration for his achievements. He was outstanding, said Roll. ‘He combined in a unique way the qualities of a first rate official having complete mastery of complex technical details with the necessary political touch in his contacts with Ministers and officials of other countries, with the press and with London. He was the sort of Minister British senior civil servants particularly admire and like to work with, always ready to listen to advice yet quite clear in the end as to what ought to be said and done.’ Donald Maitland, the chief press officer seconded from the Foreign Office, wrote that, within the first few days, ‘Heath managed to create an almost tangible team spirit among members of the delegation. He was relaxed yet totally in control, he let others speak, including the most junior, and he ensured that by the end of the evening we each knew what was expected of us.’ The pressure on both Heath and his team was unremitting. In the eighteen months after May 1961 Heath flew 100,000 miles and spent one night in five abroad. His team spent less time in aeroplanes but were more often away from home; when the negotiations finally ended Heath sent Donald Maitland’s wife a bouquet of flowers with an apology for so often disrupting her family life.20

Jean Monnet was the European whom Heath most respected and to whose opinions he paid the greatest heed. In Monnet’s view the way was wide open for British entry: ‘The greatest difficulty was to take the decision which the British Government has taken.’ The right tactic, he urged, was that Britain should accept the Treaty of Rome as it stood and then, having acceded, seek to change things from within. The idea had obvious attractions. Even de Gaulle could hardly have rejected an unconditional application to join and if Britain had become a member in mid-1961 it would have been in time to participate in the formulation of the Common Agricultural Policy instead of being confronted with a system largely devised to meet the needs of French farmers. But though left to himself Heath would probably have proceeded along such lines, he knew that there was no possibility that either the Government or the country would let him do so. Willynilly, he was doomed to fight for the interests of EFTA and the Commonwealth. He told Monnet that Macmillan would never ‘let the substantial domestic opposition which he faced prevent him from carrying out his aim of taking the United Kingdom into the developing European Union’; but in fact Heath knew that such opposition could not be ignored and that his conduct of negotiations in Brussels would have to take account of it.21

When he expounded to the Cabinet the line that he intended to take in his opening statement on 10 October 1961 he said that he would stress that ‘the aims and objectives of the Treaty of Rome were accepted by the Government’. That point made, however, he would ‘deal in some detail with the three major matters – the Commonwealth, agriculture and EFTA – for which satisfactory arrangements would have to be secured if the UK were to join the Community’. If a united Europe had been eager for British accession such an approach would have been reasonable, but given the attitude of the French it guaranteed that there would be, at the very least, endless delays and difficulties, and possibly final failure. He told the Cabinet a fortnight later that the response to his speech had been ‘reasonably favourable’. When speaking at Chatham House he was still more hopeful. Fears among the Six – France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – that Britain sought only to break up the union, or at least to impede its growth, had, he believed, been finally dispelled by his assurances. ‘The fact is that they do want us there, I believe now, broadly speaking, and we shall know finally one day.’ He would indeed. So far as five of the Six were concerned his optimism was well based, but if he found cause for comfort in the cool hostility of the French he was sadly deluding himself.22

In retrospect it is easy to say that Heath should have fought harder in London to be allowed to decide for himself which items were worth a battle and which were not. As it was he found himself proposing terms which he knew would be unacceptable and in which he did not even believe himself. This was particularly true of the transitional periods which Heath proposed should be allowed before the full rigour of the EEC’s rules affected the Commonwealth exporters. ‘It was no good talking only about a short transitional period,’ he told the secretary general of the Italian Foreign Ministry, Cattani. ‘The Commonwealth system would continue and must be protected from anything which would seriously damage the interests of its members. It would not be possible from the internal political point of view in the UK to accept arrangements which caused such damage.’ Yet, as he admitted in his memoirs, the opening position that he was required to take up was ‘always unrealistic, at times farcically so’. The result was that even Britain’s staunchest allies among the Six wondered whether the will to join was really present; the French were exultant at such clear-cut evidence that the British were not serious in their application.23

Once it became clear that every commodity – from butter, through bananas, to kangaroo meat – was to be the subject of lengthy bargaining, it became obvious that the negotiations would be protracted, tedious and faintly absurd. It was his activities at this period that earned him Private Eye’s mocking nickname of ‘Grocer Heath’. The noble concept which Heath cherished was almost lost in a welter of trivial haggling. Since, after every British offer, the Six had to retreat into conclave to agree on their response, the delays became almost intolerable.

The French rejoiced in this sluggish progress. It was their object to spin matters out so as to ensure that the Common Agricultural Policy would be operational before matters came to an end. Heath might reasonably have despaired at the snail-like advance of the discussions. Instead he remained alert, cheerful and resolute. ‘A less resilient personality than the Lord Privy Seal’, wrote Nora Beloff of the Observer, ‘would have been driven to distraction by the long hours he was to spend pacing in ante-rooms.’ He saw it as his function not only to remain abreast of every detail of the bargaining but to keep up the spirits of the British team. Morale was not always high. Both Eric Roll and Patrick Reilly, a future ambassador in Paris then working in the Foreign Office, believed that the extravagant demands of London, particularly those of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, had made it far more difficult for the other members of the Six to overrule the French.24 Heath himself felt that, after a bold start, the British delegation had disappointed their allies by failing ‘to stand up to the French and to outwit and out-manoeuvre them’. Yet he had been left with so few cards to play that his ability to outwit or out-manoeuvre was very limited. ‘It was a gallant and indefatigable effort,’ wrote George Ball, an American diplomat who was as eager as anyone to see the negotiations succeed, ‘but inevitably mired in technicalities. During the ensuing debate the British purpose became obscure; the political momentum was lost in niggling bargaining.’25

Heath was resolved that the purpose should not become obscure, that the flame should continue to burn. Late every evening in Brussels he would join the journalists in the basement bar of the Metropole Hotel. ‘On these occasions,’ remembered Maitland, ‘he was thoroughly relaxed and totally in control. His mastery of detail was complete and his confidence infectious.’ In London he used every avenue open to him to dispel what he felt to be unhelpful misunderstandings. The Labour Party, which for the most part had switched under Gaitskell’s leadership to opposition to British entry, was beyond his power to influence but he used his old contacts with the trade unions to brief them at regular intervals. Would he be giving a similar report to the House of Commons? asked the trade union leader Frank Cousins. ‘Mr Heath replied that in Parliament he could only give broad outline statements of what had been taking place and could go nowhere near so far as he had at the present meeting.’ The one point that the union leaders made repeatedly was that there should be a specific reference in the Treaty of Rome to the maintenance of full employment. Heath replied that ‘if they were successful in achieving the general aims of the Treaty, full employment would follow naturally’. Not wholly satisfied by this assurance, Cousins returned to the charge and Heath retorted that the trade unions in the Six were happy with the existing formula; the British could hardly insist on more.26