Edward Heath. Philip Ziegler

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СКАЧАТЬ Heath, appreciated his qualities and served him with total loyalty through twenty-five years and seven electoral campaigns. A good agent, especially if the MP concerned takes on responsibilities which make it hard to devote as much time as is desirable to the affairs of his constituency, is one of the most necessary elements of political life. From the moment Pye was appointed, Heath never had cause for serious concern about the running of his constituency. He was to prove as assiduous a member as he had been a candidate, but without the safety net of an efficient local organisation no MP can guard against the sort of lapse which leaves a sense of grievance among the constituents and can cost vital votes on election day. It was largely thanks to Pye that Heath was accepted, even by his political opponents, to be a model constituency member. It did not come easily. Though he genuinely enjoyed talking to the young about their ambitions and preoccupations, he lacked social graces and already showed some of the unease in company which was increasingly to mar his public life. ‘The road to Westminster’, he wrote in his memoirs, ‘was not so much a long march as an interminable dinner-dance…I made more speeches, presented more prizes and danced more waltzes than I had ever done in my life.’¹⁹ Even for somebody more naturally sociable than Heath it must be a strain to be endlessly jolly while doing things that bore one with people whom one does not find particularly congenial. For Heath it must sometimes have been agonising. The prize was worth the price, but the price was a high one. It did not become smaller with the years. He developed a technique for coasting through social gatherings in overdrive, with fixed smile and a battery of bland banalities, but it never came easily and the self-discipline which kept the carapace in place became progressively more tattered as he grew in consequence and found the demands made on his time and energies ever less tolerable.

      His colleagues in Brown Shipley were not the only people from outside the constituency who were ready to come to his help at election time. Among the many responsibilities which he crowded into an already amazingly cluttered life was the Territorial Army. Early in 1947 he was asked to re-form the 2nd Regiment of the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) – a heavy anti-aircraft regiment. The HAC was the oldest surviving regiment in the British army and the second most senior territorial unit. Heath felt that the Territorial Army was a critically important element of Britain’s defences at a time when the Cold War was setting in and a hot war seemed a serious possibility. He was eager to serve in it and took immense pride in his association with a unit as ancient and distinguished as the HAC. He flung himself into the recruiting of members with all the energy and conviction he had shown in building up the Bexley Conservative Association. It was a time-consuming task: almost every day he had to devote some part of his energies to the affairs of the HAC; every Tuesday night was given up to drill at the HAC’s headquarters in Finsbury; once a year two weeks of his allotted holidays were spent at the annual training camp. For months before camp he would spend much of his exiguous spare time in preparation, while the months after would be devoted to consideration of what had gone right and what wrong. ‘Believe me,’ wrote a colleague in 1948, ‘the success at camp was due to your leadership, inspiration and enthusiasm, and in saying this I am confident that I speak for the whole Regiment.’ That he did speak for the whole regiment was shown by the number of volunteers who flocked to Bexley to help their commanding officer when the electoral campaign began.²⁰

      Such military preoccupations, particularly when linked to a body as traditional as the Honourable Artillery Company, might suggest that Heath was as conservative in instincts as the political label that he bore. He did indeed cherish a nostalgic affection for some of the more picturesque and time-hallowed practices of the past but by the time of the 1950 election he had acquired the reputation of being a reformist, even, in the eyes of some, a dangerous radical. ‘Without sharing your desire for a larger opposition, I hope at least to see you here soon,’ wrote Roy Jenkins from the House of Commons. Whatever his father may have thought when he recommended Heath to Attlee as a potential Labour candidate, Roy Jenkins knew that Heath was a committed Tory, but he knew too that his Balliol friend was well to the left and that the two young men probably had more in common with each other than either did with the extremists of their own parties. At his adoption meeting Heath had told his future constituents that ‘there is still a suspicion of our party in the minds of the people’. That suspicion, he privately believed, had more than a little justification. The country was growing tired of Labour, he told Professor Winckler at the end of 1947, ‘but there is not yet, I regret to say, a very great revival of trust in the Conservatives. The Conservatives have still a lot of hard thinking to do about our present problems.’²¹

      He regretted greatly that he was not himself in a position to contribute much to that process. He joined the Coningsby Club, a dining society where some of the more liberal Tories foregathered, but though this put him in touch with current thinking it was no substitute for joining in the policy making. Though he felt that the Labour Party was trying to do too much too fast, and was particularly sceptical about its belief that nationalisation was a panacea for all Britain’s social and economic woes, he accepted that much of what it was doing was necessary and desirable. He openly supported the nationalisation of the Bank of England and privately felt that it was inevitable that the coal industry too should come under public ownership. The Tory Party’s efforts to bring its policies up to date seemed to him belated but eminently desirable. He wholeheartedly backed Butler’s Industrial Charter, which for the first time in Tory circles accepted that the trade unions were a vital and desirable part of society and should be worked with rather than treated as enemies. He was a one-nation Conservative before the term had gained – or regained – popular acceptance, and he made it plain to the voters of Bexley that these were his views.

      The voters of Bexley liked what he said and seemed prepared to believe him when he rejected Ashley Bramall’s claim that the Tories were bent on restoring a high level of unemployment as a means of curbing the just demands of Labour. But when the general election was called for 23 February 1950, it was anyone’s guess who would win at Bexley. Everyone accepted that the Tories had gained ground since their disaster of 1945, but would Bexley necessarily follow the national trend and, even if it did, would the swing be sufficient to wipe out Bramall’s majority? Heath had come in for his fair share of heckling and abuse at the innumerable meetings he addressed. ‘Your candidate was born in Kent,’ one local chairman had announced. No particular enthusiasm was evoked by this revelation. ‘He was educated in Kent!’ the chairman went on. Still the response was muted. ‘And he lives in Kent!’ the chairman concluded. ‘And for all I bloody well care, he can die in Kent!’ shouted a Labour supporter from the back. On the whole most of the meetings had gone well, but so too had Bramall’s. There was a Liberal candidate in the field who nobody thought would win but who was expected to poll a few thousand votes. At whose expense would those votes be cast? More satisfactorily from the point of view of the Tories, there was also a Communist standing: any votes he garnered could only come at the expense of Labour. By the early afternoon of polling day Heath was reasonably hopeful, but the flow of Labour voters on their way back from work disquieted him and by the time the count began neither Heath nor Bramall would have put money on their prospects. As the count went on it became obvious that it was going to be a desperately close-run thing. Finally the result was announced: both the leading candidates had secured between 25,000 and 26,000 votes; Heath led by a mere 166. The Communist had polled 481 votes, thus losing the election for Labour. ‘In the next election if you have any trouble finding money for your deposit I’ll look after that,’ a grateful Heath told him. ‘You must stand again. It’s your right to stand.’²²

      Bramall demanded a recount. It took place and Heath’s majority shrank still further to a mere 133. A request for a further recount was lodged but refused unless the Labour candidate was prepared to meet the cost himself. This Bramall refused to do and the result was confirmed. Edward Heath at the age of 33 was Member of Parliament for Bexley. He would be joining a party still in opposition, for though the Conservative Party had made substantial gains, reducing Labour’s lead from 142 seats to a mere five, Labour could still cling on to power. From Heath’s point of view this was almost better than an overall victory. He could not have hoped to have been offered any sort of job if the Conservatives had won, it seemed likely that they would be in power after the next election, in the meantime a short period in opposition would give him a chance СКАЧАТЬ