Edward Heath

He made no attempt to thrust himself into the limelight with a premature display of fireworks. As in the Oxford Union, he was content at first to watch and listen. He ‘took the quiet but persistent way’, remembered Anthony Eden. ‘He attended the House regularly and modestly, but missed nothing. Pains and patience are needed to learn the way at Westminster. Heath had both.’3 In his first five years in the Commons Heath only missed ten divisions, and he had been paired in six of those. He put a parliamentary question in May 1950 – on an issue relating to civil aviation on which he could reasonably be held to have some expert knowledge – but did not make a speech in the House of Commons until 26 June. When he finally spoke, however, it was to considerable effect and on the subject with which his parliamentary career was above all to be identified: that of Europe.

It can be argued that Heath would never have become so irrevocably committed to the cause of Britain in Europe if he had not been entrusted by Harold Macmillan with the negotiations for British entry in the early 1960s. He was by nature strikingly single-minded and, if he had been given some other task, would have pursued it with similar dedication. But from the time that he had fought his way across Germany in 1945 he had felt passionately that war in Western Europe must never be allowed to happen again. The only way by which he felt this could be achieved with certainty was by tying Britain, France and Germany into a union so inextricable that war would become not merely inconceivable but impossible. Britain had to be part of such a group, not just to cement it but to lead it; as the Empire disintegrated British influence in the world would inevitably be diminished; only by entering Europe would the British be able to retain that position in the world, economic as well as political, to which they were accustomed. When colleagues suggested that any European Union, if it were truly to be a force in the world, would have to involve a possibly unacceptable sacrifice of national sovereignty on the part of its members, he brushed the arguments aside. The word ‘federalism’ held no terrors for him and he envisaged a Europe where, in the long term, all important decisions, whether on foreign policy, economics, defence or social policies, would be made in common, without any individual member state being able to frustrate the ambitions of the others. ‘The nation state is dead,’ he would say. ‘What has sovereignty to do with anything in the twentieth century?’4 But though these were his private views, he was still cautious about pressing them openly unless he was certain that he was addressing a sympathetic audience. One can feel pretty sure that he did not express himself very forcibly on the subject when, in the summer of 1950, he was taken by another Conservative MP, John Rodgers, to lunch in the South of France with that arch-imperialist and enemy of British association with Europe, Lord Beaverbrook. ‘I liked your young friend,’ Beaverbrook told Rodgers after the meeting. ‘I think he should go far.’ (Beaverbrook’s favourable view of Heath did not survive the discovery of his true views on Europe. By August 1962 he was telling Alec Martin: ‘If you meet that young man Heath, of whom I once formed a good opinion, please tell him to look westward.’)5

In 1950, his dream of a united Europe with Britain at its heart seemed infinitely remote. The Labour Government had refused to take part in the conference that drafted the treaty setting up the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Heath was dismayed. ‘A very short-sighted and, for the United Kingdom, an immensely damaging decision,’ he judged it. ‘It was quite simply an abrogation of leadership.’6 The Conservatives, if only to be seen to oppose, were formally critical of the Labour policy, but Heath knew well that many of his colleagues were sceptical about the merits of European union and that the heir-apparent to the visibly crumbling Churchill, Anthony Eden, was quite as anxious to preserve full British sovereignty as any Labour minister. But though he knew that he was swimming against the tide, Heath never ceased to press the European cause when any opportunity arose. In his constituency he was as likely to talk of Germany and the need to bring it back into the comity of nations as to offer more orthodox fare about cripplingly high taxes or stultifying controls. When he visited Germany in the Whitsun recess of 1950 he was both exhilarated and alarmed by the pace of recovery; what was already a high priority in his mind took on fresh urgency. And when in June 1950 the House debated the Schuman Plan, the blueprint for European unity conceived by Jean Monnet and accepted in principle by both Germany and France, Heath saw the opportunity to make his maiden speech on a subject about which he was an authority and which he had passionately at heart.

Heath was exceptionally good at expounding complex issues with clarity and objectivity; he could produce apparently impromptu after-dinner speeches or memorial addresses which were as amusing or as moving as the occasion could demand; but he rarely excelled with the parliamentary set-piece. His maiden speech was one of the exceptions. For fourteen minutes he pleaded with the Government to take the Schuman Plan seriously and to join in its formulation before it became set in a rigid structure which might not suit our national interests. This was an opportunity which might never recur; to bind Germany into a peaceful Europe and to ensure that the voice of Britain was heard loudly in the creation of this new union. ‘It was said long ago in the House’, he concluded, ‘that magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom. I appeal tonight to the Government to follow that dictum and to go into the Schuman Plan to develop Europe and to co-ordinate it in the way suggested.’7

The Government, of course, did not follow that dictum, nor did Heath expect them to. Even the most sceptical of Labour members, however, were impressed by his authority and obvious sincerity. His own colleagues were still more enthusiastic. The content of Heath’s message was not really to Eden’s taste but he still wrote appreciatively: ‘Warm congratulations on a very capable and debating maiden speech. The House enjoyed it very much; so did I.’ Heath wrote in his memoirs that this note gave him ‘immense pleasure’.8 His own career as leader of the party might have run more smoothly if he had himself written rather more such messages to backbenchers hungry for a little encouragement from on high.

It was, however, not as a pro-European but as a committed member of the liberal wing of the party that Heath made an early mark. More than most of his colleagues he was possessed by a strong social conscience. He had been brought up in an era of mass unemployment and he felt that any government which condoned it was committing a crime against the country which it ruled. Many years later, when Heath was prime minister, the then Minister of Housing and Local Government, Peter Walker, wanted him to appoint a 26-year-old as chairman of one of the New Towns in the north of England. Heath was sceptical but asked Walker to bring his protégé along to Number 10. ‘Do you really know the north-east?’ he asked the young man. He took him up to his flat and pointed out a painting by John Cornish of a miner slumped semi-conscious at the bar of a grim Durham pub. ‘That’s the north-east!’ said Heath. ‘If I appoint you, do you think you can see that man and his children have a rather better quality of life in the future than he and his family had in the past?’9

The instincts of youth were reinforced by his experiences during the war. The men beside whom he had fought in France and Germany were now the dockers and the miners who would confront him when he was prime minister. The sense of common purpose and national unity which had existed during the Second World War could and must be revived. There was such a thing as society. The issues which were in time to separate him so starkly from Margaret Thatcher were partly personal, but it should never be forgotten that they were also separated by a very real and deep ideological divide. Throughout his life Heath was repelled by the standards of unbridled capitalism and the defeatist philosophy of laissez-faire, with which, unfairly or not, he identified Margaret Thatcher. ‘I fear that to place one’s faith in some invisible hand, rather than to grapple with problems with determination, is a failure of the human spirit,’ he told a young Conservative who questioned his political philosophy. ‘What distinguishes man from animals is his desire and his ability to control and to shape his environment.’10

The ardently left-wing trade-union leader, Jack Jones, once described Heath as being ‘very much a one-nation Tory’. It was Disraeli who had written that in England ‘the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations’, and ever since then liberal Conservatives had from time to time claimed that it was their role to fuse the two nations into one. Heath did as much as anyone to revitalise the concept. When a group of left-wing Tory members with whom he was associated were preparing a pamphlet summarising their beliefs, there was much debate about what to call it. All were agreed that ‘A Tory Approach to Social Problems’ summarised the contents of the paper but, as a title, lacked punch. Some advocated ‘The Strongest and the Weak’, but, Heath recorded, ‘the irreverent feared that this might deteriorate into “Mild and Bitter”’. I do believe, he went on, ‘that what I might call the “One Nation” approach is the only right approach to social and economic problems in this country today’.11 ‘One Nation’ was the title adopted, and the ‘One Nation Group’ was the banner under which assembled a band of young or youngish Tory members, who were disturbed by the reactionary policies of some of their leaders and were resolved to push the party into the modern age. Heath claimed in his memoirs that the group had its genesis in a late-night talk between him, Angus Maude and Gilbert Longden after Duncan Sandys had made a particularly disastrous contribution to a debate on housing. Certainly he was recruited at an early stage but Maude, Longden and Cuthbert ‘Cub’ Alport seem to have been the originators of the movement. Robert Carr, Richard Fort, Enoch Powell, John Rodgers and Heath himself were soon added; Iain Macleod, according to Heath, was something of an afterthought: ‘We were suspicious that he might remain under the influence of the party machine, with which he was closely involved, as part of the Conservative Research Department.’12

In fact Macleod played a highly important part in the group’s deliberations and, though there was never anyone who could formally have been described as the leader, was both the most conspicuous and the most creative among its members. So much so that one member suggested that they should be called not the One Nation but the ‘One Notion’ Group, the notion being that Macleod should be drawn as vigorously as possible to the attention of the leaders of the party. They met, at first, at dinner in the guests’ dining room in the House of Commons; then, when they had begun work on their policy papers, assembled two afternoons a week to discuss progress and inspect each other’s contributions. Heath was charged with producing a paper on the financing and future of the social services, a subject which was bound to create dissent within the party when it returned to power. According to John Rodgers he was not considered one of the more significant contributors or potentially an important innovator: ‘I believe that Enoch thought Ted wasn’t an intellectual at all – he tended to brush him aside. It was true that Ted over-simplified, he didn’t see the light and shade of an argument.’ He would listen to the pontifications of Macleod, Maude or Powell and then surface with some such question as: ‘Well, what are we going to do about it?’ ‘However,’ Rogers added, ‘I can’t recall that he ever told us what we could do.’13

When One Nation was finally published in October 1950 it met with guarded approval from the party leaders. ‘A healthy piece of constructive work,’ R. A. Butler described it, praising the fact that it advocated not laissez-faire but ‘private enterprise in the public interest’. Maude and Powell did most of the work in preparing the pamphlet, though Iain Macleod, co-editor with Maude, got most of the credit.14 Heath definitely gained in reputation by his association with what was seen as an influential and distinguished group but he did not form any particularly close ties among its members. He was, indeed, generally taken to be something of a loner. After the easy camaraderie of Oxford and the army, with ready-made friends formed almost automatically by the way of life pursued in the two institutions, he found the shifting world of the House of Commons difficult to encompass and a bit alarming. He was quite clear about himself, his abilities, his position in the hierarchy, but found it hard to fit into any coherent, still less cosy pattern. ‘One should never under-estimate the loneliness of a political career,’ says John Selwyn Gummer.15 Heath was never ‘part of a gang’; it was not in his nature to be so: and a member who is not part of a gang in the House of Commons is confronted by a host of acquaintances and a paucity of friends. It is doubtful whether, in the House of Commons in 1950 and 1951, Heath could have named a single member whom he could properly have described as a close, still less an intimate, friend.

In January 1951 Iain Macleod wrote to the members of the One Nation Group to report that he had been approached by a Labour backbencher, Reginald Paget (celebrated as being the only Labour MP to have been master of the Pytchley Hunt), to discuss the possibility of a coalition. The suggestion was that Labour should retain the social services and economic ministries, while the Conservatives should take over foreign affairs and defence. ‘It might be an idea if we could know each other’s minds on this subject before the House meets,’ suggested Macleod. ‘It may be, of course, that we cannot reach agreement, but this, above anything else, is precisely the sort of subject on which the voice of a group is of importance, when the individual opinions count for little or nothing.’ There is no reason to think the matter was taken any further. Paget was a lone voice in the Labour Party and he would have commanded little support for his initiative. The enterprise was clearly a hopeless one. If it had become a serious possibility, however, Heath might have been more interested than certain other members of the One Nation Group, Enoch Powell in particular. Heath never felt that the ideological divide between leftwing Tories and right-wing Socialists was insuperably wide and might well have been in favour of at least exploring the possibility of a regrouping which would link the moderates on both sides. The concept would certainly have provoked some lively discussion within the group and might well have put some strains upon its unity. Macleod saw another reason why it might have been difficult for the group to present a united front. ‘It might be again’, he suggested, ‘that the position would be complicated by one of us being offered an important position such as PPS to the Assistant Postmaster General.’16 Since there was to be no coalition, no such alluring invitation was issued, but within a few weeks of Macleod’s letter Heath received an offer which had similar results. He was invited to become one of the Tory Whips.

He was uncertain whether he should accept. To become even the most junior of the Whips would be to rise above the ruck of back-bench MPs; he would be the first of his generation to do so and thus would have stolen a march on the others. So far, so good, but by many members the Whips’ Office was seen as something of a dead end. Promotion might be gained within it, but it was not often that a former Whip became a senior minister. ‘It had traditionally been the place for the less bright and imaginative of men,’ wrote the political historian Anthony Seldon. The vacancy which Heath was asked to fill had been caused by the resignation of Sir Walter Bromley-Davenport, a hearty squire from Knutsford who was to become a member of the British Boxing Board of Control. On one unfortunate occasion, Sir Walter had been tempted to exercise his pugilistic skills in the House of Commons. Observing a man whom he thought to be one of his flock sneaking out of the House when he should have been waiting to vote, Bromley-Davenport kicked him heartily, bringing him to the ground. Legend has it that the target of his kick was not a Conservative MP but the Belgian Ambassador; in any case the victim, not unreasonably, took exception to this maltreatment. Bromley-Davenport, it was felt, had gone too far and must be replaced.17 To be appointed successor to such a boor hardly seemed appealing to Heath. The Chief Whip, Patrick Buchan-Hepburn, insisted, however, that a change of style was intended. The new junior Whip was to be sensitive, a good listener, ready to argue with recalcitrant members rather than kick them. Heath seemed unconvinced. ‘I don’t think he was very keen to come into the Whips’ Office to start with,’ wrote Buchan-Hepburn in 1968. ‘It curtailed his speaking in the H of C and in the days of the 18 majority there was not much time to speak outside either.’18 The fact that a Whip was precluded from speaking in the House was, indeed, one of the most unfortunate aspects of Heath’s promotion. His forced silence lasted for eight years; by the time that he resumed normal service in October 1959 he had largely lost the knack of handling the Commons in a difficult debate. At the best of times, he would never have been an Iain Macleod or a Michael Foot, have displayed the quicksilver ingenuity of Harold Wilson or the eloquence of Aneurin Bevan; as it was he had to struggle to be merely competent. Only when he was relieved of the burdens of office – and indeed of loyalty to his party’s leadership – did he develop a style which was truly suited to his personality and the needs of the occasion.

His life as a Whip, however, gave him unrivalled knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of his colleagues. ‘He did know about people,’ Buchan-Hepburn remarked perceptively. ‘He took great trouble to know about them, and their backgrounds and what they wanted…He enjoys people, but I don’t know that he needs them – he’s extraordinarily self-sufficient.’19 His role as a Whip ensured him a wide acquaintanceship with the Tory members and all their vagaries but also denied him any chance of intimacy. This merely reinforced a predilection that was already obvious, but his new role gave him an obligation to behave in such a way. He did not formally sever his ties with the One Nation Group until the Tories were in power and he found himself on the front bench, but already he had begun to distance himself from their proceedings. The day that he accepted the role of Whip saw the extinction of the last chance that he would ever ‘join a gang’.

He was in one way particularly well suited for the job, because he found the endless grind of House of Commons life perfectly acceptable and had no compelling wish to be elsewhere. He had the advantage of being what was termed in the Commons NHTGT – No Home To Go To.20 His poky flatlet in Petty France, little more than a bed-sitting room, offered few attractions. He would have liked to go to operas or concerts but disliked spending money unnecessarily and was saving every penny that he could; what then could be more appealing than the warmth, light and animation of late night sittings at the House? Ned Carson, a young Conservative MP from Kent, once went into the Whips’ Office after an indecently protracted debate and asked indignantly why Heath did not get married, go home and leave people like him free to go to bed. ‘He looked up slowly, with a very blank face, and answered simply: “I don’t want to get married”.’ Nor did he want to go home, or even particularly to go to bed. His dedication, his self-discipline, his mastery of detail, won the respect of his fellow Members. He was not outstandingly well liked but, as Buchan-Hepburn pointed out, that did not matter much in the House of Commons: ‘Respect is the first thing, and confidence. Popularity comes very much second.’21

‘He was shy to start with,’ said Buchan-Hepburn, ‘but quickly developed and became invaluable to me, and I am sure that from his own point of view it was very important for him to have those years in the Whips’ Office – breaking down the reserve, getting on with all and sundry.’ Heath would have agreed. He much enjoyed the organisational role involved in being a Whip. ‘I loathe incompetence, inefficiency, bungling and waste,’ he told Michael Cockerell on television in 1988. Even when he was the most junior of the Whips it was noticeable that the Office functioned more smoothly for his presence; once he had become Deputy Chief Whip in April 1952 procedures were revolutionised. The Whips, if only to be alert to incipient scandal, had always felt it necessary to know a lot about the private lives of the individual members; under Heath procedures were regularised, card-indexes established, the psychological strengths and weaknesses of each member analysed and recorded. The Bromley-Davenports of this world had barked commands and expected unquestioning obedience: Heath relied more upon reason and persuasion. ‘Now be a good chap. It’s not really a matter of your conscience this time, is it?’ was the line Ned Carson remembered him taking. If it really was a matter of conscience he did his best to be sympathetic. As a result, when he did find it necessary to be tough, he was listened to with attention. ‘I remember one occasion when he was stern in a tactful way and I was so surprised I went into the lobby at his bidding.’ The deadpan and slightly black style of humour which was more and more to become his trademark matured during his years as a Whip. His object seemed to be more to disconcert than to amuse; its victim was often uncertain whether Heath’s remarks were intended as a joke or were to be taken seriously. Sometimes both were true. John Peyton, a future minister in Heath’s government, once let off steam to him about the failure of certain ministers to consult interested members about problems which affected them or their constituents. Some months later Heath, as Deputy Chief Whip, asked Peyton whether he would like to serve as a parliamentary private secretary. ‘To whom?’ asked Peyton. Heath looked at him in affected surprise: ‘Do you not feel equally warmly towards all our colleagues?’22

It was not only his social life that was circumscribed by his work as a Whip. In 1951 he gave up command of the 2nd Regiment HAC. The historic rituals, the social consequence, the pomp of the Honourable Artillery Company had all appealed strongly to Heath; as well as the unstrained masculine comradeship of the mess and the training camp and the feeling that, as an effective element in the Territorial Army, his unit was making an important contribution to national defence. He knew that he had to retire but deplored the need. The blow was softened when Lord Alanbrooke, Colonel Commandent of the HAC, offered him the appointment of Master Gunner within the Tower of London. The post was almost entirely honorary but it enabled Heath to entertain dignitaries in the grand manner and at small expense and to dress up and preside over the firing of salutes on occasions such as the royal birthday. He relished such opportunities and even endured with equanimity the debacle when on one occasion the ammunition was damp and all four guns failed to fire. At one point the desperate troop commander was reduced to extracting a faulty shell and, for want of a more suitable repository, flinging it into the Thames. It was a singularly courageous action but not one recommended by the drill manuals. The officer concerned could well have earned a stiff rebuke, even dismissal, but Heath and Alanbrooke between them saw to it that the War Office was not troubled by any report of the incident.

More importantly from the point of view of his finances, once he became Deputy Chief Whip Heath felt he could no longer work part-time for Brown Shipley. As a tyro backbencher he had managed to spend most mornings in the City and even as a junior Whip he had kept up more-or-less regular attendance. The arrangement had suited Brown Shipley well: to have a promising young MP on their staff both lent the bank a certain prestige and gave them a potentially useful foothold in Westminster. In the summer of 1951 they had sent him on a visit to the United States and Canada; not to transact any particular business but so that he could get to know how Brown Brothers Harriman, Brown Shipley’s associate in New York, transacted its affairs and to make contact with people who might be useful to him both as a banker and as a politician. One of those he hoped to meet was the influential Senator Paul Douglas from Illinois. A mutual acquaintance wrote enthusiastically to urge the Senator to set up a meeting. Heath, he said, was ‘very able and exceedingly well informed and a very fine guy indeed…He’s much more “liberal” that most of our best Democrats, but withal a genuine and convinced Tory…Recently he’s been made an Assistant Whip which, I’ve just learned, makes him a Front Bencher and, should the Conservatives get in power, very likely a cabinet minister.’ Heath’s rise was not to be quite so meteoric but the judgment is of interest as showing how seriously he was already taken in political circles in the United States. A date was fixed for a meeting with the Senator but before it could take place Heath visited Ottawa, staying at the same hotel as Labour’s foreign secretary, Herbert Morrison, and his parliamentary private secretary, Eddie Shackleton. On 19 September he met the pair of them heading hurriedly towards the exit. ‘Have you heard?’ asked Shackleton. ‘Attlee has just called a general election!’ ‘And the bloody fool didn’t ask me first,’ added a disgruntled Morrison.23