Название: Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography
Автор: Philip Ziegler
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007412204
isbn:
Heath probably thought there were certain advantages in distance; he was genuinely fond of Kay, he got as close to loving her as he was ever to come with any woman except his mother, but at least once the war was over he seems never to have contemplated accepting the total commitment which is or should be involved in marriage. Perhaps he felt he had outgrown Kay, perhaps he did not feel financially secure, probably most of all he had a deep-seated preference for living his life on his own, without the responsibilities and distractions of matrimony. Kay continued to hope but the hopes grew increasingly more wistful; eventually she accepted that she would have to settle for friendship and that Heath was going to find it difficult to find time even for this in an increasingly crowded life.13
What most conspicuously filled that life was politics. Heath was a Conservative by nature almost from childhood. His father had taught him that the freedom of the individual was the highest goal and that socialism and liberty were incompatible. Heath found much that was appealing about the Liberal Party but, supremely practical in disposition, concluded that it had no real chance of capturing power and should therefore be avoided. That left the Conservatives. But though he never doubted that it was to the Tories that his allegiance was due, he found certain elements in the party snobbish, self-interested and out-of-date. The true Conservatives were ‘compassionate men who believed in opportunity, and a decent standard of living for all’. Baldwin, the then prime minister, he felt had the right instincts but was stuck in the past, slave of a class system which held the country back. Chamberlain was even worse: ‘infinitely boring’, a ‘small-time businessman’. His heroes were Churchill, Macmillan and most of all – if only because he held high office while the other two were in the wilderness – Anthony Eden. He heard of Eden’s resignation in early 1938 when he was in the rooms of Philip Kaiser. ‘I remember that Ted said very little that night,’ recalled Kaiser. ‘It affected him, Eden was important to him…a great thoughtfulness settled on him…He thanked me and then walked out.’ But he never thought of leaving the party. He had nowhere else to go. He would stay with the Conservatives and give his support to those of its leaders who wanted to change it. In the end, he had little doubt, he would contribute to that change himself.14
Lindsay’s Balliol was on the whole a left-wing college. Though Heath became president of the Junior Common Room, his immediate successor was Denis Healey; Kaiser followed Healey but the president after that was Roy Jenkins. When Heath joined the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), its membership in Balliol was so sparse that he was immediately appointed secretary of the college branch. He soon found that Balliol was not unusual in its politics; in the mid-1930s most of the more politically conscious undergraduates were to the left and a fair number of them, believing that no other effective force was combating the growth of fascism, were Communist as well. Heath therefore joined an organisation that, if not moribund, was at least unfashionable. His energy and persuasive powers were quickly recognised and in June 1937, against inconsiderable opposition, he was appointed president of the OUCA. His biographer George Hutchinson wrote that he built up its membership from 600 to around 1,500. The previous president, Ian Harvey, a Conservative politician whose career was prematurely ended when he was arrested cavorting with a guardsman in the bushes of St James’s Park, claimed that the achievement was really his, Heath was only moving further down a path that had already been prepared for him. There may be some truth in this, but Heath was rightly considered a president of outstanding ability, under whose leadership the OUCA prospered at a time when it might well have suffered an almost terminal decline. He canvassed vigorously when Professor Lindemann, the future Lord Cherwell, stood as Conservative candidate in a by-election in 1936 and, as a reward, was asked back to the Professor’s rooms when Churchill came down to support his friend and scientific adviser. It would have been surprising if Heath had not been impressed by the grand old warrior. ‘I was struck not only by the force and clarity of his arguments but by his sheer presence,’ wrote Heath in his memoirs. He ‘reinforced my determination to help articulate and later implement a new brand of Conservatism’.15
It was in the Oxford Union, not the Conservative Association, that Heath first attained real prominence. He did not seem a particularly promising candidate for such a role. Physically he was unremarkable. Asked by David Frost how he would describe himself, Heath said that he was 5 feet 101/2 inches tall and ‘fairly lean’. He flattered himself; even as an undergraduate he verged on the portly. ‘Glad to hear you are getting some exercise,’ wrote a friend in 1936. ‘If you keep it up you should get rid of that fat.’ Though he kept the fat within the bounds of respectability for another forty years he habitually ate and drank too much and remained inelegantly solid. His face, recalled Philip Toynbee, was ‘soft and unformed’; his most impressive attributes were his striking blue eyes which in repose could seem detached, even glaucous, but when animated blazed with vehement excitement. His voice was powerful but unmelodious, his oratorical technique more that of the battering ram than the rapier. ‘Teddy Heath was born in the summer of 1916, some two years before the Tank,’ said the Oxford magazine Isis, when it nominated him its ‘Isis Idol’. ‘Lacking the thickness of skin of this early rival, he soon outstripped it in charm of manner, and has since proved its equal in force of utterance and ability to surmount obstacles.’ There was, indeed, something relentless about Heath’s public speaking; his weapons were a powerful memory, a mastery of the facts and a capacity to marshal and deploy them to best advantage. He saw the need to leaven this mass with a little humour but while he could be genuinely witty, particularly when in a small group of people whom he knew well, his more considered efforts to amuse often seemed laborious and were occasionally embarrassing. In 1938 Alan Wood, in another Oxford magazine, Cherwell, said that Heath was ‘the Union’s best speaker’ and that he succeeded ‘by the simple process of knowing more about the subject than his opponents’. He eschewed the flamboyant and rarely made any emotional appeal. Why did he think there was no place for public political passion, he was once asked. ‘I’ve always distrusted rhetoric and I still do,’ Heath replied.16
For his first few debates Heath wisely kept silent, content to listen and learn. His most important lesson came from the then Home Secretary, John Simon, СКАЧАТЬ