Edward Heath. Philip Ziegler

Чтение книги онлайн.

       SIX Chief Whip

      ‘Painless flagellation is what we are all looking forward to,’ wrote Fitzroy Maclean – then a junior minister – when Heath’s promotion was announced. Derek Marks of the Daily Express doubted whether this would work: ‘I still think you have far too much sympathy with the chaps who smoke in the rugger team to make a very good head prefect.’ Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as Tony Benn then still styled himself, from the opposition, thought he would bring it off: ‘How you manage to combine such a friendly manner with such an iron discipline is a source of respectful amazement to us all.’¹ Benn caught exactly what was Heath’s aspiration: he did not wish to overemphasise the iron discipline but knew that it was a vital part of a Chief Whip’s role; he believed that he could exercise it with restraint and liberality. Sir Thomas Moore, a veteran Tory MP and perhaps extravagantly uncritical admirer of Heath, told him that he had known six Chief Whips but that Heath was different because he had ‘the capacity of making friends easily. That may make things much easier for you, or it may not…I believe that under that friendly smile you have the strength of character to make an outstanding success of this job.’ Comforting though such assurances might be, Heath had no illusions about the scale of the problems which faced him. He believed he could overcome them. ‘In this post,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury assured him, ‘you will spend your time controlling the uncontrollable and reconciling the irreconcilable! But, after all, that is the best kind of life.’ Throughout his career, even when the facts pointed most vigorously to the contrary, Heath believed that the uncontrollable could always be controlled, the irreconcilable reconciled. This was how he saw his future role.²

      The most essential quality in a Chief Whip is loyalty. This Heath had in abundance. He saw himself as the servant of the Prime Minister, appointed by him and there to do his bidding. He could argue, point out the dangers, but in the last resort what the Prime Minister decided was law. Macmillan quoted Asquith as saying that a Chief Whip should have a ‘large capacity for self-assertion and self-effacement’. This was true, he considered, but there was one characteristic even more important: ‘absolute and undivided loyalty’. Heath had given him this ‘without reserve’. Loyalty did not imply supine acquiescence. John Wyndham, Macmillan’s most private private secretary, said that Heath was ‘tremendously loyal’ and also ‘tremendously frank. I think he regarded himself as a conduit for conducting information about what the party was thinking.’ But tremendous frankness must be as far as it went. Unlike a minister, a Chief Whip could not allow himself the luxury of a conscience. ‘The resignation of a government Chief Whip on a major issue of policy would be a mortal blow to confidence in the government,’ wrote Heath in his memoirs. ‘For a Chief Whip to resign…would be an act not only of utter disloyalty, but of wilful destruction.’³

      This austere creed meant that Heath sometimes found himself arguing against the causes which he held most at heart. He told Geoffrey Rippon, a future minister in his government, that if he went on supporting motions in favour of Europe he would have to resign as parliamentary private secretary. Many years later Rippon reminded him of this. ‘The jowls flipped. “Did I say that?” said Ted doubtfully. “If I did, it did not fit in with what I was doing behind the scenes!”’⁴ This may have been true, but in front of the scenes he never even hinted at his real feelings. He ‘soundly berated’ a group of Tory backbenchers who had put down a parliamentary motion calling for British membership of the Community, and when John Rodgers remained unconvinced, he told him: ‘For God’s sake don’t rock the boat.’⁵

      A Chief Whip could not afford to have intimates; even among his fellow Whips there had to be a certain distance. But he needed friends, many friends, people with whom he could communicate easily and with natural confidence. To those who knew only the withdrawn and often curmudgeonly figure of later years it is hard to conceive Heath as mixing affably with all around him. Yet Gerald Nabarro, a man temperamentally as far removed from Heath as it is possible to imagine, claimed that he had more friends than almost any other politician; Benn, when he called on Heath to discuss the possible renunciation of his peerage, described him as ‘a most amiable and friendly soul’.⁶ But even in those early days he did not always find it easy to establish a quick rapport. He had a ‘heart full of kindness’, wrote Woodrow Wyatt, but there was also ‘an element of reserve and awkwardness’ which held him back: ‘The warmth in him has never got out properly.’ Jim Prior was in time to get to know him better than any other member of the House of Commons. He had quality and vision, wrote Prior, and ‘even if he never dared to show it, he had a softer side which we understood. This enabled us to share things with him.’⁷

      In the mid-1950s the softer side was more readily accessible and the ability, vastly important in a Chief Whip, to persuade people ‘to share things’ was immediately apparent. But he was resolved not to commit himself totally to any relationship, not to take sides or adopt partisan attitudes, not to use his influence to help those whom he had befriended. His career is pitted with the complaints of friends who felt that he had failed to reward or even thank them for their loyal support; the tendency grew more marked as his power to help grew greater, but even now a former Balliol friend was disgruntled when Heath refused to back his candidacy for a Sussex seat on the grounds that, as Chief Whip, he never interfered in such matters.⁸ СКАЧАТЬ