Edward Heath. Philip Ziegler

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СКАЧАТЬ why he had visited Spain the previous year he wrote: ‘To observe the Civil War’; to ‘What is the purpose of your present visit’, he wrote: ‘To observe the peace.’ Perhaps the Spanish authorities found this unduly flippant; perhaps they disapproved of his republican sympathies; the visa was refused. Instead, the two set out for a tour of Danzig and Poland, travelling by way of Germany. Seligman’s Jewish blood, Heath told Winckler, provided the couple with ‘many amusing moments’. The words were curiously chosen: it was less than a year since the pogroms of Kristallnacht and since then the plight of the German Jews had inexorably worsened. Seligman was protected by his British passport, but if they had got their timing wrong and war had broken out while they were still in Germany he would have been in great danger. Even as it was it must have been always unpleasant and sometimes distressing. The English were not well liked in Germany in 1939 and an Englishman of Jewish appearance was doubly unwelcome.²⁹

      They travelled to suit Heath’s budget rather than Seligman’s, which meant that discomfort was added to their other woes. The train from Berlin to Danzig was filled with drunken Austrians and they had to try to sleep in the luggage rack: when they had a meal with the consul next day, according to Seligman, Heath was half asleep and ‘didn’t utter a word the whole way through lunch except to say how bad the food was’. By the time they reached Warsaw it was obvious that war was imminent; they were sped on their way and hitch-hiked towards the frontier with the Polish army as it moved up to defend its country. Once in Germany things were still worse; the – far more formidable – German army was moving the other way and they had to battle against the tide. Suspicion of foreigners, particularly English-speaking foreigners, was even worse than it had been on the way out and several times they thought they were on the point of being arrested or beaten up. Eventually they arrived at Paris and called at the Embassy, to be told: ‘Unless you get out now you will never get out at all!’ The advice was perhaps unduly alarmist but the situation was indeed dire: Heath got back to Dover a week before war broke out.³⁰

      His Oxford career was over. He had reason to feel proud of his achievements. He had attained heroic status within the university – ‘That’s Teddy Heath. He’s going to be prime minister one day’, a new arrival among the women undergraduates – the future Mrs Anthony Barber – was excitedly informed. More important, his name was known in Westminster; visiting politicians had noticed him as a potential recruit to their ranks. Only in one way was he disappointed. He had read Modern Greats (PPE) and he would have liked to crown his triumphs with first-class honours. He knew that the time and effort which he had devoted to the Union, the OUCA, the Balliol JCR and his musical duties had made his task doubly difficult. ‘He would have done even better had he not been a man of wide and very active interests,’ wrote Lindsay. ‘I have the greatest admiration for Mr Heath’s energy, initiative and sense of responsibility.’ Such praise from Lindsay was most welcome but Heath had still hoped for more. ‘You seem to have got a very nice Second in the Schools, and I dare say that all things considered you are quite satisfied,’ wrote one of his tutors at Balliol consolingly. Heath did not think his Second was very nice and he was far from satisfied. He believed that, with just a little more application, he could have gained the coveted First.³¹

      In this he was probably wrong. The notes which Lindsay made on the undergraduates, based on the reports of the various tutors, show that Heath was not felt to be distinguished academically. One don was ‘not impressed, uninspired work’, others contributed ‘fairly intelligent, decent, slow mind’; ‘No outstanding work; second class’; and even ‘stupid, lacks thought’. This was not the whole picture; some said that he was ‘v. intelligent’ or ‘can do v. good work’; but the overall picture was not that of a student for whom first-class honours could be expected.³² The economist Redvers Opie taught both Harold Wilson and Heath at Oxford and left notes on his pupils. Wilson had ‘exceptional intellectual ability and a remarkably comprehensive mind’; Heath, on the other hand, ‘was usually given a beta mark and criticised for trundling out run-of-the-mill views’.³³ When he was writing his memoirs Heath got hold of Harold Wilson’s marks in Finals so that he could compare them with his own. He found that he had one beta+ while the rest were betas or beta–. Wilson got one beta+ and the rest alphas. The figures were not quoted in Heath’s memoirs.

      If Heath had achieved all he did at Oxford and nevertheless gained first-class honours it would indeed have been a triumph. If, though, he had failed to become President of the Union and, in spite of the extra effort put into his work, had still gained only a Second, it would have been a sad waste. No one can doubt that he made the right decision and put his energies where they counted most.

       THREE War

      New graduates leaving Oxford at the end of the summer term of 1939 must have been aware that whatever career they planned was likely to be interrupted. It was still possible, however, that war would not come. If it did, it might last only a few months. The only sensible thing to do was to prepare for a peacetime future with a tacit awareness that all such plans would probably come to nothing.

      For Heath the first and most important decision was whether he should pursue music as a career. As organ scholar at Balliol he had put in a more than adequate performance in college chapel; as a pianist too he was competent beyond the standards of the talented amateur. He had no illusions, however, that he would ever achieve greatness as an instrumentalist. To choose as his life work something – however enjoyable – in which he knew he would never progress beyond the second-rate would have been unacceptable to Heath. If music was to be his career it would have to be as a conductor. Heath already had more experience in this field than most musicians of his age. He had been largely responsible for conducting the Balliol Choral Society, one of the oldest and most distinguished of Oxford choirs. Since childhood, too, he had been involved with the Broadstairs carol singers and, even though less than twenty years old, he had taken over the running of their annual carol concert in the mid-1930s. The Mayor of Oxford’s Christmas Carol concert, conducted by Dr Armstrong, seemed to him a model of its kind and, despite the far smaller resources available, he decided that Broadstairs could do something similar. He conducted his first carol concert there in 1936; it was judged a great success and the tradition was established of an annual concert under Heath’s baton, which continued for some forty years. But did such modest achievements provide a base from which a professional career could be mounted? Heath consulted Sir Hugh Allen, Heather Professor of Music at Oxford and a man of vast influence in musical circles. If Heath made some money and went into politics, the possibilities were limitless, judged Allen. Probably he would end up as prime minister. If instead he became a conductor he would have to dedicate himself totally to it, and even then it would be a fierce struggle to get to the top. ‘I believe you can do it, but if so you must be prepared to be just as big a shit as Malcolm Sargent.’¹

      Heath might not have been put off by the thought of having to emulate Malcolm Sargent’s shittishness but the need to dedicate himself exclusively to the task was a serious deterrent. He knew that his heart was in politics. If a career in music would rule out politics for ever, it could not be right for him. It would have taken more encouragement than Allen was prepared to offer to make him reach a different conclusion. Thomas Armstrong, himself an organist of great repute and one-time Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, many years later heard Heath’s recording of the Beethoven Triple Concerto. ‘I sometimes wonder’, he wrote, ‘whether HPA[llen] was right, after all, and in spite of all you’ve done, to steer you away from a professional career in music.’² Heath may sometimes have wondered the same thing, but he can never seriously have doubted that he had reached the best, the only possible conclusion.

      A life in politics, therefore, was his firm objective. But the concept of the professional politician, without private means, who lived on his salary as an MP or worked his way up through the party organisation, was almost unknown in 1939. Heath would have to make his name, and with luck his fortune, in some other walk of life before he could begin to СКАЧАТЬ