Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath [1st ed.] 9783030536725, 9783030536732

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
The Heath Premiership: Existing Academic Perspectives (Andrew S. Roe-Crines, Timothy Heppell)....Pages 1-18
The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1965 (Thomas McMeeking)....Pages 19-39
Modernising Conservatism in Opposition Under Heath (Mark Garnett)....Pages 41-61
The 1970 General Election (Martin Farr)....Pages 63-86
Competition and Credit Control, Monetary Performance, and the Perception of Macroeconomic Failure: The Heath Government and the Road to Brexit (James Silverwood)....Pages 87-113
Industrial Relations: Reappraising the Industrial Relations Act 1971 (Sam Warner)....Pages 115-140
Social Security Policy (Ruth Davidson)....Pages 141-164
The Heath Government and Local Government Reform (David Jeffery)....Pages 165-187
Northern Ireland (Shaun McDaid, Catherine McGlynn)....Pages 189-209
Entry into the European Communities (Peter Dorey)....Pages 211-238
Party Management (Philip Norton)....Pages 239-259
Heath, Powell and the Battle for the Soul of the Conservative Party (Gillian Peele)....Pages 261-291
The Labour Party in Opposition (Timothy Heppell)....Pages 293-316
Edward Heath: Leadership Competence and Capability (Christopher Byrne, Nick Randall, Kevin Theakston)....Pages 317-354
Who Governs? The General Election Defeats of 1974 (Andrew S. Roe-Crines)....Pages 355-375
The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1975 (Emily Stacey)....Pages 377-397
Margaret Thatcher and the Heath Premiership: Recent History Re-written (Antony Mullen)....Pages 399-420
The Heath Premiership: A Transitional Era? (Timothy Heppell, Andrew S. Roe-Crines)....Pages 421-442
Back Matter ....Pages 443-446

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath Edited by Andrew S. Roe-Crines Timothy Heppell

Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership Series Editors Ludger Helms University of Innsbruck Innsbruck, Austria Gillian Peele Department of Politics and International Relations University of Oxford Oxford, UK Bert A. Rockman Department of Political Science Purdue University West Lafayette, IN, USA

Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership seeks to gather some of the best work on political leadership broadly defined, stretching from classical areas such as executive, legislative and party leadership to understudied manifestations of political leadership beyond the state. Edited by an international board of distinguished leadership scholars from the United States, Europe and Asia, the series publishes cutting-edge research that reaches out to a global readership. The editors are gratefully supported by an advisory board comprising of: Takashi Inoguchi (University of Tokyo, Japan), R.A.W Rhodes (University of Southampton, UK) and Ferdinand Müller-­ Rommel (University of Luneburg, Germany). More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14602

Andrew S. Roe-Crines  •  Timothy Heppell Editors

Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath

Editors Andrew S. Roe-Crines Department of Politics University of Liverpool Liverpool, UK

Timothy Heppell Politics and International Studies (POLIS) University of Leeds Leeds, UK

Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership ISBN 978-3-030-53672-5    ISBN 978-3-030-53673-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy Stock Photo Edward Heath, as the new Prime Minister, arriving at No 10 Downing Street for the first time, after going to Buckingham Place to see the Queen. June 1970. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The editors and contributors would like to thank the Politics and History specialist group of the Political Studies Association (PSA) for financing the conference that we held at the University of Liverpool in July 2018, which resulted in this edited collection. We would also like to thank the editorial team at Palgrave for their help and guidance throughout. March 2020

Andrew S. Roe-Crines Timothy Heppell

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Praise for Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath “This exciting and innovative new collection examines Edward Heath and his impact on the leadership of the Conservative Party. The book benefits substantially from contributions by a wide range of experts on the ideology, leadership, membership and support base of the Conservative Party. We learn much about Heath’s importance and significance as a major player in British politics through outstandingly thorough archival research and rigorous analysis by leading political scientists. This is essential reading for anyone with an interest in party politics.” —Jon Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of Liverpool, UK

Contents

1 The Heath Premiership: Existing Academic Perspectives  1 Andrew S. Roe-Crines and Timothy Heppell 2 The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1965 19 Thomas McMeeking 3 Modernising Conservatism in Opposition Under Heath 41 Mark Garnett 4 The 1970 General Election 63 Martin Farr 5 Competition and Credit Control, Monetary Performance, and the Perception of Macroeconomic Failure: The Heath Government and the Road to Brexit  87 James Silverwood 6 Industrial Relations: Reappraising the Industrial Relations Act 1971115 Sam Warner 7 Social Security Policy141 Ruth Davidson

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Contents

8 The Heath Government and Local Government Reform165 David Jeffery 9 Northern Ireland189 Shaun McDaid and Catherine McGlynn 10 Entry into the European Communities211 Peter Dorey 11 Party Management239 Philip Norton 12 Heath, Powell and the Battle for the Soul of the Conservative Party261 Gillian Peele 13 The Labour Party in Opposition293 Timothy Heppell 14 Edward Heath: Leadership Competence and Capability317 Christopher Byrne, Nick Randall, and Kevin Theakston 15 Who Governs? The General Election Defeats of 1974355 Andrew S. Roe-Crines 16 The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1975377 Emily Stacey 17 Margaret Thatcher and the Heath Premiership: Recent History Re-written399 Antony Mullen 18 The Heath Premiership: A Transitional Era?421 Timothy Heppell and Andrew S. Roe-Crines Index443

Notes on Contributors

Christopher  Byrne  is Lecturer in Politics at Leeds Beckett University. He is the author of Neo-liberalisms in British Politics (2018) and the co-­ author of Disjunctive Prime Ministerial Leadership in British Politics: From Baldwin to Brexit (Palgrave, 2020, with Kevin Theakston and Nick Randall). Ruth Davidson  is a visiting research fellow at King’s College London. Her research interests focus on gender, activism and social policy in twentieth-­century Britain, and her articles have appeared in leading journals such as Twentieth Century British History. Peter Dorey  is Professor of British Politics at Cardiff University. He has authored or co-authored 12 books on post-war British politics, including British Conservatism and Trade Unionism 1945–1964 (2008); British Conservatism: The Politics and Philosophy of Inequality (2010); From Crisis to Coalition: The Conservative Party 1997–2010 (Palgrave, 2011, with Mark Garnett and Andrew Denham); The British Coalition Government 2010–2015: A Marriage of Inconvenience (Palgrave, 2016, with Mark Garnett); and The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher (Palgrave, 2016, with Andrew Crines and Timothy Heppell). Martin  Farr is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History at Newcastle University. He is the co-editor (with Michael Cullinane) of Presidents and Prime Ministers: From Cleveland and Salisbury to Trump and May 1895–2019 (Palgrave, 2019), and Margaret Thatcher’s World (2021). xi

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Mark Garnett  is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Lancaster University. He is the author of Whatever Happened to the Tories? (1997, with Ian Gilmour); Keith Joseph: A Life (2001, with Andrew Denham); Splendid! Splendid! The Authorised Biography of Willie Whitelaw (2002); From Crisis to Coalition: The Conservative Party 1997–2010 (Palgrave, 2011, with Peter Dorey and Andrew Denham); and The British Coalition Government 2010–2015: A Marriage of Inconvenience (Palgrave, 2016, with Peter Dorey). Timothy  Heppell is Associate Professor of British Politics at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Tories from Winston Churchill to David Cameron (2014), the co-author (with Andrew Crines and Peter Dorey) of The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher (Palgrave, 2016), and the author of Cameron: The Politics of Modernisation and Manipulation (2019). David Jeffery  is Lecturer in British Politics at the University of Liverpool. He is the co-editor (with Antony Mullen and Stephen Farrall) of Thatcherism Today: The Social and Cultural Legacy of Thatcherism in the 21st Century (Palgrave, 2020). Shaun  McDaid is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Huddersfield. He is the author of Template for Peace: Northern Ireland, 1972–75 (2013), co-author of Radicalisation and Counter-radicalisation in Higher Education (2018) and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Catherine  McGlynn  is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Huddersfield. Her publications include Abandoning Historical Conflict? Former Paramilitary Prisoners and Political Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (with Peter Shirlow, Jonathan Tonge and James W.  McAuley) published by Manchester University Press, which was the Political Studies Association of Ireland Book of the year in 2011. She is co-author of Radicalisation and Counter-radicalisation in Higher Education (2018). Thomas  McMeeking is Teaching Fellow in British Politics at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Political Leadership of Prime Minister John Major (Palgrave, 2020). Antony Mullen  recently completed his doctorate in the Department of English Studies at Durham University. He is the founder and convener of the Thatcher Network and the co-editor (with David Jeffery and Stephen

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

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Farrall) of Thatcherism Today: The Social and Cultural Legacy of Thatcherism in the 21st Century (Palgrave, 2020). Philip Norton  is Professor of Government and Director of the Centre for Legislative Studies at the University of Hull. He is author, co-author or editor of 30 books, including most recently Reform of the House of Lords (2017), and Parliament in British Politics (Palgrave, 2013). He was elevated to the peerage in 1998, and he was the first Chairman of the House of Lords Constitution Committee. He has been described in The House magazine—the journal of both Houses of Parliament—as ‘our greatest living expert on Parliament’. Gillian Peele  is Emeritus Professor in Politics and Tutorial Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall, at the University of Oxford. Her articles have appeared extensively on British and American politics, and her most recent publications are The Regulation of Standards in British Public Life: Doing the Right Thing? (2016) with David Hine and David Cameron and Conservative Renewal: The Limits of Modernisation? (2016, edited with John Francis). Nick Randall  is Senior Lecturer in British Politics at Newcastle University. He is the co-author of Disjunctive Prime Ministerial Leadership in British Politics: From Baldwin to Brexit (Palgrave, 2020, with Kevin Theakston and Christopher Byrne). Andrew  S.  Roe-Crines is Senior Lecturer in British Politics at the University of Liverpool. He is the (co)-author/editor of over ten books including The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher (Palgrave, 2016); Democratic Orators (Palgrave, 2016); Republican Orators (Palgrave, 2017) as well as publishing in leading national and international journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, Parliamentary Affairs, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, amongst others. He also recently won the PSA Richard Rose Prize for distinctive research. James Silverwood  recently completed his PhD at the University of Hull and is now Lecturer in Emerging Markets at Coventry University. His research interests focus on British macroeconomic policymaking, and his articles have appeared in Political Quarterly. Emily Stacey  is a teaching fellow within the Department of History at Oxford Brookes University. Her doctoral research focused on the

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Conservative Party leadership of Margaret Thatcher in the opposition era of 1975–1979. Kevin Theakston  is Professor in British Government at the University of Leeds. He is author of ten books, including Winston Churchill and the British constitution (2004) and After Number 10: Former Prime Ministers in British Politics (Palgrave, 2010). He co-authored William Armstrong and British Policy Making (Palgrave, 2017, with Philip Connelly) and Disjunctive Prime Ministerial Leadership in British Politics: From Baldwin to Brexit (Palgrave, 2020, with Nick Randall and Christopher Byrne). Sam  Warner is Associate Lecturer of Politics at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the management of British capitalism, especially with regard to the politics of depoliticisation. His articles have appeared in leading politics journals such as the British Journal of Politics and International Relations and British Politics.

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4 Table 5.5 Table 11.1 Table 14.1 Table 14.2 Table 14.3 Table 16.1

The electoral record of the conservative party (1945–2019) 3 Leadership preferences and aversions in the parliamentary Conservative Party, 1963 25 Candidate support in the conservative party leadership election of 1965 31 Inflation performance of the Heath and Thatcher Governments101 Economic growth and unemployment during the Heath Government105 Public expenditure and public sector net borrowing during the Heath Government 106 Imports and exports during the Heath Government 107 Balance of Payments during the Heath Government 107 Government rebellion rates in the House of Commons (1945–1997)249 Skowronek’s typology of leaders, regimes and patterns of politics319 Heath’s attitude towards the regime, 1965–1970 321 Twenty most frequent word-stems in Heath speeches, by period 336 Candidate support in the Conservative Party Leadership election ballots of 1975 391

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CHAPTER 1

The Heath Premiership: Existing Academic Perspectives Andrew S. Roe-Crines and Timothy Heppell

In post-war British politics, there have been four periods of Labour Party governance: 1945–1951 under the leadership of Clement Attlee; 1964–1970 under the leadership of Harold Wilson; 1974–1979 under the leadership of Wilson again and then James Callaghan; and the 1997–2010 period under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. There have also been four periods of Conservative governance, and three of those periods have lasted a decade or more: 1951–1964 under the leadership of Winston Churchill; Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-­ Home; 1979–1997 under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher and John Major; and the period since 2010 under the leadership of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. The fourth period of Conservative governance was the 1970–1974 premiership led by Edward Heath and it

A. S. Roe-Crines University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK e-mail: [email protected] T. Heppell (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_1

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holds an unwarranted distinction—it is the only post-war premiership to be removed by the voters at the first opportunity. All of the aforementioned eras involved some form of re-election for the governing party. The Attlee premiership that entered office in 1945 (majority 146) did secure re-election in 1950 (majority six) before losing office in 1951; the Wilson premiership of 1964 (majority four) secured re-election in 1966 (majority 99) before being defeated in 1970; and the second Wilson era entered office as a minority premiership in March 1974 and secured a small majority (of three) at the General Election of October 1974. The Blair era would involve three successive election victories and majorities of 179 (in 1997), 167 (in 2001) and 66 (in 2005). The three long-serving eras of Conservative governance saw the party securing stronger parliamentary performances when seeking their first re-election. They re-entered office in 1951 with a parliamentary majority of 17 and their majority increased to 59  in 1955 (and increased again to 100  in 1959). The victory that the Conservatives secured at the General Election of 1979, with a majority of 44, was followed by three further victories—in 1983 with a majority of 144; in 1987 with a majority of 102; and then a majority of 21 in 1992. Their return to office in 2010 as a coalition with the Liberal Democrats was followed by three further General Elections in the next decade, all of which resulted in the Conservatives holding onto power—in 2015, they secured a majority of 12 under Cameron; in 2017, they failed to secure a majority but held onto office as a minority premiership (under May); and finally, they held a majority of 80 under the leadership of Johnson in late 2019 (see Cowley and Kavanagh 2018; Cutts et al. 2020). What must have been distressing for Heath personally was the performance of the Conservatives while he was their party leader, relative to their performances before and after his party leadership tenure. As Table  1.1 demonstrates, he led the Conservatives into four successive General Elections between March 1966 and October 1974 and he led them to three defeats alongside one victory at the General Election of June 1970. The four General Elections prior to him being leader of the Conservative Party (1951–1964) involved them winning three out of four, and the four General Elections after he was leader of the Conservative Party involved them winning all four (1979–1992). The 1951–1959 era saw the Conservative vote base oscillate between 13.1 and 13.7 million. Between 1979 and 1992, their vote base peaked at 14.0 million (in 1992) and was at its lowest in 1983 at 13.0 million, when ironically they secured

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Table 1.1  The electoral record of the conservative party (1945–2019) Election

Elected Conservatives

Percentage share of vote

Total votes received

Government and majority

1945 1950 1951 1955 1959 1964 Heath era 1966 1970 1974 F 1974 O 1979 1983 1987 1992 1997 2001 2005 2010

213 299 321 345 365 304

39.8 43.5 48.0 49.7 49.4 43.4

9,577,667 12,502,567 13,717,538 13,311,936 13,749,830 12,001,396

Labour Labour Conservative Conservative Conservative Labour

146 5 17 59 100 4

253 330 297 277 339 397 376 336 165 166 198 307

41.9 46.4 37.9 35.8 43.9 42.4 42.3 41.9 30.7 31.8 32.4 36.1

11,418,433 13,145,123 11,872,180 10,464,817 13,697,923 13,012,315 13,763,066 14,092,891 9,602,957 8,357,622 8,772,473 10,726,555

2015 2017 2019

330 317 365

36.9 42.4 43.6

11,334,226 13,636,684 13,966,565

Labour Conservative Labour Labour Conservative Conservative Conservative Conservative Labour Labour Labour Conservative-­ Lib Conservative Conservative Conservative

97 31 Minority 3 44 144 101 21 179 167 66 Dem Coalition 12 Minority 80

Source: Adapted from Cowley and Kavanagh (2018) and Cutts et al. (2020)

a landslide parliamentary majority of 144 caused by the nature of the fragmentation of the Labour (27%) and Social Democratic Party (SDP)/ Liberal Alliance vote (25%) (Butler and Kavanagh 1984). When the Conservatives lost power at the General Election of 1964, their vote fell to 12.0 million (down by 1.7 million from the 13.7 million secured five years earlier), but that decline did occur at the end of a 13-year period in office. Their vote base when losing office in 1964 (at 12.0 million) was larger than the vote base that the Conservatives secured in February 1974 after only three and half years in office—11.8 million—and the vote share in 1964 was significantly larger (at 43.4%) than the vote share in February 1974 (at 37.9%). That the electorate was sceptical of the merits of the Heath premiership was confirmed by their performance in the second

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General Election of 1974, when their vote share fell further (to 35.8%) at a vote base of 10.4 million (Butler and Kavanagh 1974, 1975). Between the General Elections of 1970 and October 1974, the Conservatives lost 2.7  million votes and they experienced a vote share reduction of 10.6 percent. That was the Heath effect and, much to his chagrin, the Thatcher effect was just as pronounced but in the opposite direction. Between the October 1974 and May 1979 General Elections, the Conservatives gained 3.2  million votes and increased their vote share by 7.9% (Butler and Kavanagh 1980). That the Heath era seems a failed era for the Conservatives—the so-called self-­proclaimed party of government—is evident from the fact that the General Election victory of 2019 was their 8th General Election victory out of 11 General Elections since his era. The re-election of the Johnson premiership, in what became known as the Brexit General Election of 2019, has ensured that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union. That the year of exiting will occur on the 50th anniversary of the General Election of 1970 and the beginning of the Heath premiership carries a certain irony. That is because the greatest policy achievement, and thereby governmental legacy of the Heath premiership, was securing entry into what was then known as the European Community1 (Kitzinger 1973; Lord 1993; see also Crowson 2007; Wall 2013). This provides the rationale for political historians to reassess the Heath premiership. If the most significant legacy of that era is now being reversed, as voters reject the benefits of integration within Europe, then does that impact upon how we interpret the Heath premiership? Or to put it another way, do we need to reassess the validity of the two rival perspectives that exist vis-à-vis the Heath premiership, that is, the critical perspective and the contingencies or circumstances-based perspective?.  

The Critical Perspective of the Heath Premiership The critique of the Heath premiership is multifaceted. The dominant critique is the view expressed by those on the free market or economically liberal wing of the Conservative Party (who would later become defined 1  The European Communities were comprised of three entities: the European Economic Community, European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). It was the first of these that was most prominent—often referred to as the ‘Common Market’—and the main focus of the UK application to join. However, for the sake of consistency and to avoid confusion, we will refer to it as the European Community (or EC) throughout this book.

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as the Thatcherite dries). They argue that the policy review process that was conducted in the opposition era under Heath (between 1965 and 1970), and which informed the construction of their 1970 manifesto, had established what an incoming Conservative administration for the 1970s (and beyond) should be seeking to achieve.2 That programme appeared to be a challenge to the consensus politics of the post-war era (Kavanagh and Morris 1994; Dutton 1997). Heath wanted to modernise the British economy. His strategy for promoting economic growth involved reducing state intervention in the economy,3 making the case for lowering both taxation and public expenditure, advancing competition and promoting efficiency. Initiating this plan for economic modernisation required entry into the European Economic Community and trade union reform, increasing selectivity in terms of the allocation of welfare entitlements and the rejection of formal prices and incomes policies (Kavanagh 1996: 366). Furthermore, his commitment to this new approach seemed to be clear from the language used in the Conservative Party manifesto of 1970, as Heath argued that:  I want to see a fresh approach to the taking of decisions. The Government should seek the best advice and listen carefully to it. It should not rush into decisions, it should use up to date techniques for assessing the situation, it should be deliberate and thorough … once a decision is made, once a policy is established, the Prime Minister and his colleagues should have the courage to stick to it … courage and intellectual honesty are essential qualities in politics, and in the interests of our country it is high time we saw them again. (Quoted in Campbell 1993: 271)

2  In an overt piece of pre-election campaigning, Prime Minister Harold Wilson contributed to the impression of Heath as a hard-faced economically liberal and socially authoritarian Conservative. Naming Heath as ‘Selsdon Man’—after the Selsdon Park Hotel where the Conservatives held a policy review session in January 1970—Wilson argued that Heath had ‘an atavistic desire to reverse the course of 25 years of social revolution; what they are planning is a wanton, calculated and deliberate return to greater inequality’ (Campbell 1993: 265). 3  This commitment to reducing intervention in the economy was reinforced by the rhetoric of John Davies, President of the Board of Trade, in November 1970. He said that the Heath premiership was determined to make ‘industry stand on its own two feet or go to the wall’ and that the ‘consequence of treating the whole country as lame ducks was national decadence’ (HC Debates, Vol. 805, Col. 1211–8, 4th November 1970).

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That commitment seemed to be reaffirmed in the speech that Heath gave to the Conservative Party Annual Conference of late 1970, just a few months after entering Downing Street after the General Election of June that year. Dubbed the ‘quiet revolution’ speech, Heath argued that: This then is the task to which your Government is dedicated: to give to all our people both freedom and responsibility. That is the challenge and from it will come opportunity. Opportunity to take our destiny, the destiny of the nation, once again in our own hands. If we are to achieve this task we will have to embark on a change so radical, a revolution so quiet and yet so total, that it will go far beyond the programme for a Parliament to which we are committed and on which we have already embarked; far beyond this decade and way into the 1980s. For it is the task of building something of style, of substance, and worth; something so important to the life and the future of this country of ours. We can only hope to begin now what future Conservative Governments will continue and complete. We are laying the foundations, but they are the foundations for a generation. (Heath 1970)

The rhetoric used appeared to be long term and left little room for ambiguity. After an initial attempt to begin the process of implementing their agenda, the evidence that it could work was not immediately forthcoming. Not only was inflation increasing, but what was more problematic was the increases in unemployment, which hit the one million mark in the winter of 1971–1972, a figure that Heath feared was politically unacceptable (i.e. re-election would not be possible at this level) (Kavanagh 1996: 373). As a consequence, Heath engaged in a process of policy reappraisal that he thought represented pragmatic adjustments, but his right-­ wing critics thought smacked of betrayal (Bruce-Gardyne 1974; Holmes 1982, 1997). The belief in a hands-off approach to industry and to not bail-out failing companies was backtracked on as they intervened to nationalise Rolls Royce and then rescued Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. They were forced to accept that their attempt at trade union reform, via the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, had failed—their new approach proved to be inoperable after the Trade Union Congress decided that they would expel any trade union that registered under the act. Having previously committed to cuts in public expenditure they did the exact opposite in 1972. They attempted to boost output and stimulate growth by reflationary methods, in what became known as the ‘Barber Boom’, after the Chancellor, Anthony Barber, which in itself was said to be the cause of the inflationary pressures that developed thereafter. They also contravened

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their initial claims by intervening to impose  an incomes policy (Bruce-­ Gardyne 1974; Holmes 1982, 1997). However, what did remain consistent was their focus in securing entry into the European Economic Community (Lord 1993). To his critics on the free market/economically liberal wing of the Conservative Party, Heath had backed away from their agenda. Thatcher would speak of the ‘poisoned legacy of our U-turns’ which she said stemmed from the fact that Heath had ‘no firm principles’ (Thatcher 1995: 240). A similar view was expressed by Norman Tebbit, later a key ally of Thatcher, who described the abandonment of the free market agenda that they had agreed in opposition, as a ‘retreat into corporatism’ and a ‘climbdown’ that was characterised by a ‘mish-mash of ill-­considered centralist and socialist hand to mouth devices with no intellectual nor political cohesion’ (Tebbit 1988: 105, 124). Bruce-Gardyne concluded that the U-turn led to a fatal combination of (a) a statutory incomes policy that created conflict with the trade unions and (b) an expansionary financial policy, which served to increase inflation (Bruce-Gardyne 1974; see also Holmes 1982, 1997). The right-wing critique, or betrayal thesis, would thereby ‘precipitate the birth of Thatcherism’ (Gamble 1988: 69). However, the critique of the Heath premiership is not solely limited to the disappointment of economic liberals who berate him for abandoning their agenda due to his lack of ideological backbone. The U-turns provoked considerable disquiet within Conservative parliamentary ranks, and a clear critique would emerge of Heath as a party manager (see Critchley 1973; Norton 1978; Franklin et al. 1986). Parliamentary rebellion rates were significantly higher than in previous Conservative governments of the post-war era. The overall parliamentary rebellion rate was 18% across the 1970–1974 Parliament (including a 29% in the 1970–1971 parliamentary session), as compared to the following rebellion rates across the 1951–1964 period: 0.8% in the 1951–1955 Parliament, 1.4% in the 1955–1959 Parliament and 11.8% in the 1959–1964 Parliament (Norton 1978: 208). Despite being a former Chief Whip with experience of the challenges of ensuring discipline, Heath adopted an inflexible approach to party management. That reluctance to compromise and offer concessions flowed from his determination to secure his legislative objectives ‘unchanged’ and left little outlet for backbenchers to exert influence upon policy, thus fuelling dissent (Seldon and Sanklecha 2004: 55; see also Heppell and Hill 2015).

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Alongside the critiques of Heath for his policy U-turns and his difficulties in terms of party management, it is important to identify the problems that his administration had in terms of demonstrating governing competence. In a damning verdict, Kavanagh identified how the Heath era was associated with a ‘record number of work days lost due to strikes, some of which severely dislocated life for millions of ordinary people’ as they suffered ‘states of emergency, double digit inflation, a three-day working week, blank television screens, lawlessness and vandalism’ (Kavanagh 1996: 360). In economic terms, Heath was left bemused as ‘inflation and unemployment continued to defy the textbook by rising together’ (Heath 1998: 343). These difficulties in terms of economic performance, which ran parallel to their failure to improve industrial relations (Moran 1977), contributed to the image of the decade as ‘disconnected, quarrelsome, unsteady, ineffective and self-defeating’ (Beer 1982: 1; see also Whitehead 1985; Fry 2005; Beckett 2009; Sandbrook 2010; Black and Pemberton 2013). Ultimately, the cumulative effect of perceptions of leadership failure and ideological inconsistency, internal party disunity and governing incompetence was electoral rejection—their vote base collapsed from 13,145,123 to 11,872,180 between the General Elections of 1970 and 1974, and their vote share fell from 46.4 to 37.9% (Butler and Pinto-­ Duschinsky 1971; Butler and Kavanagh 1974). It is also the case that all accounts of the history of the Conservative Party make reference to some or all of the themes identified above (see, for example, Ramsden 1996, 1998; Evans and Taylor 1996; Blake 1998; Charmley 2007; Bale 2012; Heppell 2014).

The Contingencies or Circumstances Perspective of the Heath Premiership Alongside the critique of the Heath premiership, there is the revisionist perspective. This is based primarily on identifying the difficult circumstances that the Heath premiership faced, with Seldon arguing that  it is  this contingencies  perspective which ‘provides the fairest judgement’ (Seldon 1996: 19). In this context, Seldon asks political historians to acknowledge the constraints that Heath was forced to operate under. The economic circumstances of the times would create challenges for any political party or prime minister, being as it was an era associated with

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notions of economic decline and the ungovernability or overload thesis4 (see King 1975; Tomlinson 2000). Concerns about increases in inflation and unemployment predominated, and it is worth noting that both the preceding and successor Labour administrations would also struggle to overcome the same issues (see Ponting 1990; Coopey et al. 1993; Dorey 2006, 2019; O’Hara and Parr 2006 on the 1964–1970 era; and Holmes 1985; Harmon 1997; Hickson and Seldon 2004; Hickson 2005a and Shepherd 2013 on the 1974–1979 era). Linked to the difficulties in terms of economic performance was the perception of increasing trade union power. It is evident that the dysfunctional relationship between government and the trade unions was a contributing factor in the downfall of the Heath administration that is, the non-viability of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, the 1972 Miners’ Strike, the 1973–1974 Miners’ Strike and the imposition of the three-day week leading to the ‘Who Governs’ General Election of February 1974 (see Seldon 1988; Taylor 1996; Butler and Kavanagh 1974; see also Moran 1977; Dorey 1995, Chap. 5; Phillips 2006, 2007). However, Taylor suggests that  the problem was that the Trade Union movement was structurally and ideologically incapable of securing an agreement with the Heath premiership, or working with them to create the modern European social market economy that Heath envisaged (Taylor 1993: 218). Moreover, as Barnes and Reid (1980) observed, trade union power and influence had been a significant factor in the fall of three successive prime ministers, as either side of Heath, Wilson had been undermined by the failure of In Place of Strife, and Callaghan was undermined by the Winter of Discontent (Shepherd 2013; Dorey 2019). Furthermore, the constraints that Heath was operating under were not limited to those associated with the economy and industrial relations. He was also constrained by the escalating conflict within Northern Ireland, the suspension of the Stormont Parliament and the imposition of direct rule from Westminster (Arthur 1996; Smith 2007; McDaid 2013). Political historians who adopt the contingencies or circumstances perspective on the Heath Premiership argue that, once the difficult operating environment is acknowledged, more nuanced arguments can emerge. 4  The Heath premiership also coincided with destabilising international economic circumstances. The ending of the Bretton Wood system of fixed exchange rates intensified the uncertainty, and the weakened British economy of the early 1970s was ill prepared to deal with the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Arab states (October 1973), which ‘led to the quadrupling of oil prices by OPEC countries’ (Kavanagh 1996: 380).

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First, given that the Heath premiership possessed a healthy parliamentary majority (at 31), they did manage to deliver—in a legislative sense— what they claimed were their main objectives when entering office, even if some of these were reversed by the successor Labour administrations of 1974–1979; for example, they did secure their primary objective of negotiating their entry into the European Economic Community and they gained parliamentary approval for this. They also delivered in legislative form in  the following areas:  reforming taxation, housing finance and industrial relations, and they also recognised health care, central and local government and  they ended  mandatory comprehensive education (Kavanagh 1996: 362). Second, if we acknowledge the difficult economic environment, then their policy changes should be seen as being pragmatically driven rather than the abandoning of principles. As such, the betrayal thesis perpetuated by the Thatcherite right vis-à-vis the U-turns is an ‘exaggeration’ (Seldon 1996: 13). Seldon argues that the significance of the Selsdon agenda and the Conservative Party manifesto of 1970 was overstated because Heath was ‘never a believer in laissez faire, but was a traditional Tory who saw the state as an essential deliverer of economic and social policy’ (Seldon 1996: 14). As such  some of the  policies that they had advocated at the 1970 General Election, for example, the rejection of an incomes policy and tax and spending cuts, were driven by ‘instrumentalism and opportunism, not ideology’ (Seldon 1996: 14). Kavanagh endorses this scepticism, arguing that Heath was ‘consistent about ends, flexible about means: he was a pragmatist, concerned with pursuing the best means to achieving economic growth and greater personal freedom’ (Kavanagh 1996: 367).

Between Critique and Contingencies/Circumstances: The Heath Premiership and a Transitional Perspective Having identified the two existing perspectives on the Heath premiership—the critical and the contingencies/circumstances perspectives—the aim of this book is to advance an alternative perspective. This perspective involves acknowledging the failures and difficulties that the Heath premiership experienced and thus accepting that there is validity to both existing perspectives. But rather than subscribing to one perspective or the other, it is credible to see the Heath premiership as a transitional

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government. By that we mean that although the ability of the Heath premiership to pursue a new policy agenda was compromised by difficult circumstances—which creates the evidence of policy failure—their policy legacy and political impacts were more pronounced than might be initially assumed. To help us in our reassessment of the Heath premiership, we shall structure the book around the dimensions of the statecraft model. The statecraft model is associated with the work of Jim Bulpitt (1986)5 and it represents a useful analytical framework6 for us when examining the only post-war government that failed to secure re-election. Statecraft refers to the method(s) by which political parties attempt to win office (the politics of support) and then govern competently (the politics of power). When assessing its value to our understanding of Conservative Party politics, Hickson has argued that ‘statecraft should be viewed as an examination of how the Conservative Party has sought when in power to insulate itself from social, economic and international pressures’ and then ‘how it has sought to manipulate them in order to maintain some degree of governing competence’ (Hickson 2005b: 182). Statecraft has the following interconnected dimensions (which should be seen as cyclical ending in re-election if pursued effectively, with the determinant of effectiveness being relative to the Labour Party): (1) A Winning Electoral Strategy Whatever policy platform the leadership decides to construct, it has to be perceived as viable (i.e. achievable) so that it can secure a sufficient level of voter support to provide the basis for a parliamentary support. That process may involve compromises in order to maximise their potential vote base, but those compromises have to be tempered by the need to retain the support of their own activist base (Bulpitt 1986; Stevens 2002; Hickson 2005b; Taylor 2005; Buller and James 2012) (2) Evidence of Governing Competence Flowing from the policy platform that was (a) constructed in opposition and then (b) secured enough electoral support to win 5  For academic discussions on the strengths and limitations of the statecraft approach, see Stevens (2002: 119–150); Buller (1999: 691–712); and Buller (2000: 319–327). 6  Marsh has acknowledged that statecraft theory is a key approach through which to understand British government and politics (Marsh 2012: 48–49).

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power, the (new) governing party now have to demonstrate that they can provide governing competence, especially in the sphere of economic management (Bulpitt 1986; Stevens 2002; Hickson 2005b; Taylor 2005; Buller and James 2012) (3) Political Argument Hegemony Linked to the above theme on governing competence, the governing party will use power to (a) deflect blame on any policy failings onto the predecessor government, and (b) by doing so, they will seek to delegitimise the views of their Labour opponents so as to establish that it would be a risk to return to a Labour government at the next General Election. Bulpitt defines this as gaining dominance of elite debate so as to ensure that as  the governing party they can push their values and agenda up the political agenda, whilst simulatenously pushing down the political agenda the values and agenda of their (Labour) opponents  (Bulpitt 1986; Stevens 2002; Hickson 2005b; Taylor 2005; Buller and James 2012). ( 4) Effective Party Management This acknowledges the importance of internal cohesion in terms of how voters perceive the Conservative Party relative to their Labour opponents.7 Historians of the Conservative Party have often emphasised how, in the pre-Heath era, the Conservatives were known for their parliamentary unity in the division lobbies, their emphasis on loyalty to their leader and their rejection of ideological dogmatism in preference for political pragmatism or adaptability (Ball 1998; Blake 1998; Charmley 1996; Davies 1996; Evans and Taylor 1996; Gilmour and Garnett 1998; Ramsden 1995, 1996, 1998). The aim of this book is to make the case for viewing the Heath premiership from a transitional perspective.  To do this, we split the book into three parts. Part one of the book—entitled from opposition to office—is devoted to the first dimension of the statecraft model—the construction of a winning electoral strategy. It will offer an assessment on the key developments within the Conservatives in the opposition era of 1964–1970. In 7  Writing in 1964, Richard Rose concluded that the Labour Party were a party of factions, involving stable, cohesive and organised groups that sought to advance specific policies and leaders. The Conservative Party, in contrast, were a party of non-aligned tendencies, based on fluctuating alignments amongst parliamentarians, but these were transient alignments that lacked the cohesiveness of the more factional Labour Party (Rose 1964: 33–46).

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Chap. 2, Thomas McMeeking identifies how and why Heath won the Conservative Party leadership election of 1965, which was the first democratic leadership election in the history of the party. In Chap. 3, Mark Garnett examines how and why the Conservative Party’s policy agenda was amended in the opposition era. In Chap. 4, Martin Farr analyses the General Election campaign of 1970, where the Conservatives secured what was seen to be at the time an unexpected victory. For the second dimension of the statecraft model, governing competence, part two of the book—entitled policy implementation—re-examines the central policy objectives of the Heath premiership. Part two considers the coherence, contradictions, failings and impact of their policies. In Chap. 5, James Silverwood reconsiders the economic performance of the Heath premiership. In Chap. 6, Samuel Warner reappraises the record of the Heath premiership vis-à-vis industrial relations, via a case study analysis of the failure of the Industrial Relations Act of 1971. In Chap. 7, Ruth Davidson evaluates the approach of the Heath premiership towards social security reform. In Chap. 8, David Jeffery examines the significance of the local government reforms of the Heath premiership. Chapter 9 sees Catherine McGlynn and Shaun McDaid re-examine the difficulties that the Heath premiership experienced in relation to the politics of Northern Ireland. In our final policy-based chapter (Chap. 10), Peter Dorey examines the primary policy success of the Heath premiership—seeking and securing entry into the European Economic Community. The third and fourth dimensions of the statecraft model—political argument hegemony and party management—are considered within part three of the book—entitled political debates. In this section on wider political debates, we consider the following. In Chap. 11, Philip Norton reconsiders how effective Heath was at managing relations within the Conservative Party in terms of the wider organisation and the parliamentary party. Chapter 12 sees Gillian Peele reconsider the difficulties caused by Enoch Powell and the politics of Powellism. Chapter 13 sees Timothy Heppell place the Heath era within the context of wider party politics by re-examining the developments of the Labour Party in opposition. Following on from this, Chap. 14 sees Chris Byrne, Nick Randall and Kevin Theakston offer a new leadership interpretation on the performance of Heath as prime minister. Ultimately, an effective statecraft strategy will see the governing party being re-elected and, as such, Bulpitt sees his model as being cyclical, that is, the fifth and final dimension involves securing re-election and then

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starting the cycle again. As such, in Chap. 15. Andrew Roe-Crines reassesses the fateful decision to call the General Election of February 1974. Then, in Chap. 16, Emily Stacey charts how and why, when in opposition, Heath was removed from the leadership of the Conservative Party. To broaden the debate out, in Chap. 17, Antony Mullen locates the Heath premiership within the context of consensus politics and how it has been interpreted (and exploited) by Thatcher and the post-1979 Conservative premierships. By structuring the book around the statecraft model, this provides us with a new way of assessing the Heath premiership. In Chap. 18, Andrew Roe-Crines and Timothy Heppell argue the case for moving beyond the prevailing perspectives on the Heath premiership, that is, the critique or the contingencies/circumstances perspective, as they make the case for the Heath premiership being seen as a transitional era in British politics.

Bibliography Published Primary Sources House of Commons Parliamentary Debates (HC Deb).

Speeches Heath, E. (1970). Speech to the Conservative Party Annual Conference. Blackpool, 1970.

Memoirs Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life: The Autobiography of Edward Heath. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Tebbit, N. (1988). Upwardly Mobile: An Autobiography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Thatcher, M. (1995). The Path to Power. London: Harper Collins.

Books, Chapters and Articles Arthur, P. (1996). The Heath Government and Northern Ireland. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government (pp. 1970–1974). Harlow: Pearson. Ball, S. (1998). The Conservative Party since 1945. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Bale, T. (2012). The Conservatives Since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barnes, D., & Reid, E. (1980). Governments and Trade Unions: The British Experience, 1964–79. London: Heinemann. Beckett, A. (2009). When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies. London: Faber. Beer, S. (1982). Britain Against Itself: The Political Contradictions of Collectivism. London: Faber. Black, L., & Pemberton, H. (2013). Reassessing 1970s Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Blake, R. (1998). The Conservative Party from Peel to Major. London: Arrow. Bruce-Gardyne, J. (1974). Whatever Happened to the Quiet Revolution? London: Charles Knight. Buller, J. (1999). A Critical Appraisal of the Statecraft Interpretation. Public Administration, 77(4), 691–712. Buller, J. (2000). National Statecraft and European Integration: The Conservative Government and the European Union 1979–97. London: Pinter. Buller, J., & James, T. (2012). Statecraft and the Assessment of National Political Leaders: The Case of New Labour and Tony Blair. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 14(4), 534–555. Bulpitt, J. (1986). The Discipline of the New Democracy: Mrs Thatcher’s Domestic Statecraft. Political Studies, 34(1), 19–39. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1974). The British General Election of February 1974. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1975). The British General Election of October 1974. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1980). The British General Election of 1979. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1984). The British General Election of 1983. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Pinto-Duschinsky, M. (1971). The British General Election of 1970. London: Macmillan. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath. London: Jonathan Cape. Charmley, J. (1996). A History of Conservative Politics 1900–96. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Charmley, J. (2007). A History of Conservative Politics since 1830. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Coopey, R., Fielding, S., & Tiratsoo, N. (Eds.). (1993). The Wilson Governments 1964–70. London: Pinter. Cowley, P., & Kavanagh, D. (2018). The British General Election of 2017. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Critchley, J. (1973). Stresses and Strains in the Conservative Party. Political Quarterly, 44(4), 401–430.

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Crowson, N. (2007). The Conservative Party and European Integration Since 1945: At the Heart of Europe? London: Routledge. Cutts, D., Goodwin, Mm Heath, O., & Surridge, P. (2020). Brexit, the 2019 General Election and the Realignment of British Politics. Political Quarterly, 91(1): 7–23. Davies, A. (1996). We the Nation: The Conservative Party and the Pursuit of Power. London: Abacus. Dorey, P. (1995). The Conservative Party and the Trade Unions. London: Routledge. Dorey, P. (Ed.). (2006). The Labour Governments 1964–1970. Abington: Routledge. Dorey, P. (2019). Comrades in Conflict: Labour, the Trade Unions and 1969’s In Place of Strife. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Dutton, D. (1997). British Politics Since 1945: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Consensus. London: Blackwell. Evans, B., & Taylor, A. (1996). From Salisbury to Major: Continuity and Change in Conservative Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Franklin, M., Baxter, A., & Jordan, M. (1986). Who Were the Rebels? Dissent in the House of Commons 1970–74. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 11(2), 143–159. Fry, G. (2005). The Politics of Decline: An Interpretation of British Politics from the 1940s to the 1970s. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Gamble, A. (1988). The Free Economy and the Strong State. London: Macmillan. Gilmour, I., & Garnett, M. (1998). Whatever Happened to the Tories? The Conservatives Since 1945. London: Fourth Estate. Harmon, M. (1997). The British Labour Government and the 1976 IMF Crisis. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Heppell, T. (2014). The Tories from Winston Churchill to David Cameron. London: Bloomsbury. Heppell, T., & Hill, M. (2015). Prime Ministerial Powers of Patronage: Ministerial Appointments and Dismissals Under Edward Heath. Contemporary British History, 29(4), 464–485. Hickson, K. (2005a). IMF Crisis of 1976 and British Politics. London: I.B. Tauris. Hickson, K. (2005b). Inequality. In K. Hickson (Ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hickson, K., & Seldon, A. (Eds.). (2004). New Labour, Old Labour: The Wilson and Callaghan Governments 1974–1979. London: Routledge. Holmes, M. (1982). Political Pressure and Economic Policy: British Government 1970–1974. London: Butterworth. Holmes, M. (1985). The Labour Government, 1974–79: Political Aims and Economic Reality. London: Macmillan. Holmes, M. (1997). The Failure of the Heath Government. London: Macmillan.

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Kavanagh, D. (1996). 1970–1974. In A.  Seldon (Ed.), How Tory Governments Fall: The Tory Party in Power since 1783. London: Longman. Kavanagh, D., & Morris, P. (1994). Consensus Politics from Attlee to Major. Oxford: Blackwell. King, A. (1975). Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s. Political Studies, 23(2–3), 284–296. Kitzinger, U. (1973). Diplomacy and Persuasion: How Britain joined the Common Market. London: Thames and Hudson. Lord, C. (1993). British Entry to the European Community under the Heath Government, 1970–74. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Marsh, D. (2012). British Politics: A View from Afar. British Politics, 7(1), 43–54. McDaid, S. (2013). Template for Peace: Northern Ireland, 1972–75. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Moran, M. (1977). Politics of Industrial Relations: The Origins, Life and Death of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. London: Macmillan. Norton, P. (1978). Conservative Dissidents: Dissent Within the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1970–74. London: Temple Smith. O’Hara, G., & Parr, H. (Eds.). (2006). The Wilson Governments 1964–1970 Reconsidered. London: Routledge. Phillips, J. (2006). The 1972 Miners’ Strike: Popular Agency and Industrial Politics in Britain. Contemporary British History, 20(2), 187–207. Phillips, J. (2007). Industrial Relations, Historical Contingencies and Political Economy: Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. Labour History Review, 72(3), 215–233. Ponting, C. (1990). Breach of Promise: Labour in Power 1964–1970. London: Harmondsworth. Ramsden, J. (1995). The Age of Churchill and Eden 1940–1957. London: Longman. Ramsden, J. (1996). The Winds of Change: Macmillan and Heath 1957–1975. London: Longman. Ramsden, J. (1998). An Appetite for Power: The History of the Conservative Party. London: Harper Collins. Rose, R. (1964). Parties, Tendencies and Factions. Political Studies, 12(1), 33–46. Sandbrook, D. (2010). State of Emergency: The Way We Were, Britain 1970–1974. London: Allen Lane. Seldon, A. (1988). The Trade Unions and Fall of the Heath Government. Contemporary Record, 2(1), 36–46. Seldon, A. (1996). The Heath Government in History. In S.  Ball & A.  Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970–1974: A Reappraisal. London: Longman. Seldon, A., & Sanklecha, P. (2004). United Kingdom: A Comparative Case Study of Conservative Prime Ministers Heath, Thatcher and Major. Journal of Legislative Studies, 10(2–3), 53–65.

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Shepherd, J. (2013). Crisis: What Crisis? The Callaghan Government and the British Winter of Discontent. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Smith, J. (2007). Walking a Real Tight-Rope of Difficulties’: Sir Edward Heath and the Search for Stability in Northern Ireland, June 1970–March 1971. Twentieth Century British History, 18(2), 219–253. Stevens, C. (2002). Thatcherism, Majorism and the Collapse of Tory Statecraft. Contemporary British History, 16(1), 119–150. Taylor, A. (2005). Economic Statecraft. In K. Hickson (Ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party Since 1945. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Taylor, R. (1993). The Trade Union Question in British Politics. Oxford: Blackwell. Taylor, R. (1996). The Heath Government and Industrial Relations: Myth and Reality. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government, 1970–1974: A Reappraisal. London: Longman. Tomlinson, J. (2000). The Politics of Decline: Understanding Post-war Britain. Harlow: Longman. Wall, S. (2013). The Official History of Britain and the European Community, Volume II: From Rejection to Referendum, 1963–1975. London: Routledge. Whitehead, P. (1985). The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies. London: Michael Joseph.

CHAPTER 2

The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1965 Thomas McMeeking

The defeat that the Conservative Party suffered at the General Election of October 1964 brought an end to 13 years in government under four different prime ministers. Winston Churchill had brought them back into power after securing a parliamentary majority of 17 at the General Election of October 1951 (Butler 1952; Seldon 1981). Anthony Eden replaced Churchill in April 1955 and then increased that parliamentary majority to 59 in the General Election of May 1955, before he was replaced by Harold Macmillan in January 1957  in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis (Butler 1956; Ramsden 1995). Macmillan then propelled the Conservatives to a third successive victory in the General Election of October 1959, with a landslide parliamentary majority of 100 (Butler and Rose 1960; Ramsden 1996). The Macmillan era would represent the high watermark of one-­ nation conservatism, enabling the party to reap electoral rewards as the economic climate gradually improved throughout the 1950s (Bogdanor and Skidelsky 1970; Boxer 1996; Black and Pemberton 2004).

T. McMeeking (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_2

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Their ability to present themselves as the party of governing competence and rising living standards was compromised in their fourth term, with their governing degeneration demonstrating the exhaustion of their one-nation approach to statecraft (Evans and Taylor 1996: 121). A series of events would erode their governing credibility between 1961 and 1964, including relative economic decline (Pemberton 2001), their failed attempt to secure membership of the European Economic Community (Stennis 1998), the botched Cabinet reshuffle of 1962 dubbed ‘The Night of the Long Knives’ (Alderman 1992) and the Profumo scandal (Knightly and Kennedy 1987). By the time they faced the voters at the General Election of October 1964, their ability to secure re-election was compromised further by (a) the fact that they had been in office for so long (Heppell 2008a) and (b) the fact that, in the shape of Harold Wilson, the Labour opposition had a young, dynamic and credible alternative candidate to be prime minister (Dorey 2012). Wilson was to expose the leadership limitations of Alec Douglas-Home (formerly Lord Home), who had replaced Macmillan in controversial circumstances in October 1963 (for consistency, we shall refer to Home as Douglas-Home throughout this chapter). The cumulative effect was a gradual decline in the appeal of the Conservatives in the early 1960s and, by the time of the General Election of 1964, their vote share fell from 49.4% in 1959 to 43.4. Their overall vote also dropped from 13,749,830 in 1959 to 12,001,396, as their parliamentary representation fell from 365 to 304 (Butler and King 1965). When assessing why they had lost, the Conservatives convinced themselves that ‘voters were not so much objecting to our policies as objecting to our faces’ and, as a consequence, ‘we must start thinking very hard now of the bright new image—in terms of personalities—that we wish to present to the public’ (CPA CRD 2/48/85, ‘Thoughts on a Close Election’; 23 October 1964; CPA CRD 2/48/86, ‘The Next General Election’, 19 October 1964). The dominant personality that they would turn to, and would dominate the next decade, was to be Edward Heath. The General Election defeat of October 1964 was to be the first of four electoral rejections that the Conservative Party would experience in a ten-­ year period up to October 1974. It was a decade in which the Conservatives would ‘struggle to construct a new statecraft strategy that would enable [them] to win elections (the politics of support) and govern competently (the politics of power)’, and these events ‘coincided with the leadership

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tenure of Heath’ (Heppell 2014: 39). A decade under his leadership influence would see their electoral return fall from 12,001,396 votes and 43.4% vote share to 10,464,818 votes and a 35.8% vote share (Butler and Kavanagh 1974). If the Heath electoral impact was to be so negative, it lends the question: how and why was he made the leader of the Conservative Party? The aim of this chapter is to consider how and why Edward Heath emerged as the first democratically elected leader of the Conservative Party in July 1965. The chapter can be categorised into the following clearly defined component parts. First, the chapter considers the significance to of the leadership succession crisis of October 1963 the Conservative Party, in which Harold Macmillan was replaced as party leader by Douglas-Home in controversial circumstances. Second, the chapter considers the consequences of losing the General Election of 1964 for the Conservative Party in terms of the leadership position of Douglas-Home. Built into this part of the chapter is a discussion on the changes that Douglas-Home initiated in opposition to ensure that no future leader of the Conservative Party should have their legitimacy questioned in the way that he suffered. Third, the chapter examines the Conservative Party leadership election of 1965, which took place after Douglas-Home decided to resign shortly after he had established new democratic rules for selecting the next leader. The subsequent analysis involves profiling the respective candidates—Heath, Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell—as well as offering explanations as to why Maudling (who was expected successor) was defeated by Heath by 150 to 133 votes, with Powell left third on 15 votes. The rationale for engaging in this stems from the fact that whereas the era of democratic leadership elections within the Conservative Party has spawned a wealth of academic insights on specific contests, the first of their democratic leadership elections has been largely neglected within the academic literature (see, for instance, on the 1975 leadership election, Wickham-Jones 1997; Cowley and Bailey 2000; on the 1990 leadership election, Alderman and Carter 1991; Cowley and Garry 1998; on the 1995 leadership election, Alderman 1996; on the 1997 leadership election, Alderman 1998; Heppell and Hill 2008; on the 2001 leadership election; Alderman and Carter 2002; Heppell and Hill 2010; on the 2005 leadership election, Denham and Dorey 2006; on the 2016 leadership election, see Jeffery et al. 2018; Quinn 2018).

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Selecting Douglas-Home: The Conservative Party Succession Crisis of October 1963 By 1963, Macmillan had been leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister for six years. Given that he was 69 years old and the Conservatives would have to contest a General Election by late 1964, this created a conundrum. If Macmillan did lead the Conservatives into a 1964 General Election and was successful, speculation would immediately begin about the succession, given his age. That being the case then, should the Conservatives have dealt with the question of the succession before seeking their fourth term in office? In attempt to address this dilemma, the Party Chair, Lord Poole, asked Macmillan to make his intentions clear, so that they could end the speculation and plan ahead with some certainty (MS. Macmillan dep c. 962, Lord Poole to Harold Macmillan, 28 August 1963). Macmillan appeared to want to lead the Conservatives into the next General Election in 1964 and govern for a couple of years thereafter (MS. Macmillan dep c. 962, Harold Macmillan to Lord Swinton, 12 August 1963). However, those plans were to be undone, as ill-health forced him to offer his resignation in early October 1963 (Lamb 1995: 491). When the moment of resignation came, events would move with remarkable swiftness as Macmillan manipulated what he himself described as the ‘various proper methods of communications’ (Stark 1996: 16) to secure his preferred outcome (Churchill 1964). The ‘discreet, flexible and expert’ processes in 1963 lasted ten days in all between Macmillan becoming ill on 8 October and Douglas-Home being called to the Palace to be offered the chance to form a new government on 18 October (Punnett 1993: 262). In order to fully understand the events of those ten  days, it is first important to define exactly how the Conservative Party organised the leadership succession in that era, that is, what we mean when talk of the so-called magic circle (Macleod 1964). The system worked on the basis of elites within the Conservative Party engaging in discussions through which an agree candidate would emerge. These discussions could involve assessing opinion within the parliamentary party, although this would not be quantified (Bogdanor 1996). The system tended to work well: nine leadership transitions occurred between 1902 and 1957 without significant disputation within the party, although the successions of 1911, 1923 and 1957 were not as clear cut as the other six successions—1902, 1921, 1922, 1937, 1940 and 1955 (Fisher 1977: 198).

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Prior to stepping down—in July 1963—Macmillan had informed the 1922 Executive Committee of backbenchers that he recognised that there was ‘not an heir apparent’ (Goodhart 1973: 189). This may have been the view of Macmillan, but it was not necessarily shared by all. Some assumed that the obvious successor was R. A. Butler. Not only was Butler regarded as the leading intellectual figure of post-war Conservatism, but he had served as Chancellor, home secretary and deputy prime minister and had previously acted as acting prime minister when ill-health impacted upon Eden. He had been considered for the succession back in 1957, only for the customary processes of consultation to determine that Macmillan was a preferable option (Evans and Taylor 1996: 128; Blake 1998: 278). In the aftermath of the war of the Macmillan succession, Iain Macleod argued that ‘at all times, from the first day of his premiership to the last’, Macmillan had been ‘determined that Butler, although incomparably the best qualified of the contenders, should not succeed him’ (Macleod 1964). Why? It can be argued that Macmillan held three issues against Butler. First, he feared that Butler, who was regarded as being located on the outer-left of Conservatism, would be unacceptable to the right-wing and would thus undermine party unity. Second, he feared that Butler might lack electoral appeal and might struggle to win the next General Election for the Conservatives—Macmillan felt that Butler was a ‘dreary figure’ who would struggle to appeal to ‘floating’ voters (MS. Macmillan dep c. 962, ‘Memorandum by the Prime Minister—for the Queen’, 18 October 1963). Finally, having outmanoeuvred Butler in the 1957 succession, he had concluded that Butler was indecisive and lacked the strength of character to be both leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister (Horne 1989: 471; Watkins 1998: 69–70). Those were the political reasons for Macmillan working to prevent Butler from securing the leadership. But it could be that two non-political reasons may have existed. First, Macmillan simply disliked Butler (Pearce 1997: 116), with Watkins recalling a conversation between the two of them in late 1962, in which Macmillan told Butler: ‘I don’t see why I should make way for you, old cock’ (Watkins 1998: 70). Second, it would be alleged that Macmillan had predetermined that he thought Butler was not acceptable as a leadership option—after all, Major John Morrison, Chair of the 1922 Executive Committee, would tell Butler months before Macmillan stepped down that he would not succeed Macmillan as ‘the chaps won’t have you’ (Bogdanor 1996: 77). It was from this assumption that Macleod would construct his conspiracy theory in which the magic circle was a stitch-up

24 

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process orchestrated by the Etonian Macmillan to advance the Etonian Douglas-Home at the expense of the non-Etonian Butler (Macleod 1964). In terms of alternatives to Butler then, the next best option appeared to be the Chancellor, Reginald Maudling. Aged 46, he was from the next generation of Conservatives, but Macmillan also had reservations about his prime ministerial capabilities (Horne 1989: 531). The other next-­ generation contenders included two figures who would threaten party unity: Macleod (aged 50) who was too aligned to the left and would be unacceptable to the right, and Enoch Powell (aged 51) who was regarded as excessively right-wing and would be unacceptable to the left (Powell’s resignation as a Treasury minister in 1958 established his reputation for individualism and divisiveness; Schofield 2015: 114–121; see also Green 2000). Macmillan appeared to be discounting Heath as an option at this stage on the basis that he lacked the experience and profile at this time (Fisher 1977: 151). In his determination to find an alternative, Macmillan was to benefit from circumstances. Just a few months earlier, a parliamentary bill had passed permitting hereditary peers to (a) renounce their peerages and then (b) stand for election to the House of Commons (Blake 1998: 290–291). These  changes meant that Macmillan suddenly had the opportunity to look beyond the next generation and turn back to his own generation for a non-Butler alternative successor. This brought into the equation Lord Hailsham (Lord President and Minister for Science) and Lord Home (Foreign Secretary) (Shepherd 1994: 304). The Peerage Act was clearly unhelpful to Butler (Stark 1996: 88). He was concerned that piloting in a prime minister from the House of Lords would involve having to find a safe parliamentary constituency for them and that this may have a ‘psychological impact’ upon voter perceptions of the Conservative Party (Fisher 1977: 107). Macmillan discounted this, and the processes of consultation would commence in the knowledge that Hailsham and, conceivably, Douglas-­ Home could be considered. We say conceivably due to how those processes of consultation were initially devised. The Cabinet had convened and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Dilhorne, suggested that because he would not be a candidate, he would be willing to lead the processes of consultation within the Cabinet. Lord Douglas-Home announced that he would assist Dilhorne, thus suggesting that he did not see himself as a candidate (Hailsham had already announced his willingness to be considered (Gilmour and Garnett 1998: 189)). Alongside assessing opinion within the Cabinet, it was agreed that (a) the Chief Whip, Martin Redmayne,

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would determine opinion amongst junior ministers and the backbenchers; (b) Lord Poole, Party Chair, would canvass opinion amongst constituency chairs; and (c) Earl St Aldwyn would identify opinion amongst the peers (Punnett 1992: 40–41). Consultations amongst the peers were uncontroversial, and they advocated the still Lord Douglas-Home, followed by Butler, then Hailsham with Maudling last (MS.  Macmillan dep c. 962, Lord St. Aldwyn to Harold Macmillan, 15 October 1963). Amongst the constituency chairs, Poole concluded that their preference was for Hailsham. The view of the activists, which was easiest to discount, was that they tended towards Lord Douglas-Home, and that they were concerned about the unifying capability of Butler (Punnett 1992: 40–41). However, it was the way in which Redmayne assessed opinion within the parliamentary ranks that created the most controversy. Perhaps he may have been influenced by this claim by former Conservative backbencher, Humphrey Berkley. He claimed that Macmillan told Redmayne: ‘I want Douglas-Home’, so ‘somehow or another you have got to devise a way so that I can say that the party wants Douglas-Home’ (Stark 1996: 18). To aid this objective, Redmayne was not really interested in giving equal weighting to the findings of parliamentarians. He preferred to consider those ‘whose opinion one would more strongly rely on than others’ (Redmayne 1963). Conservative parliamentarians were therefore asked three questions: (a) their first preference, (b) their second preference and (c) who they would object to? (Bogdanor 1996: 76). Table 2.1 provides the details of the Redmayne findings. Through this process, it could be said that Douglas-Home had the highest number Table 2.1  Leadership preferences and aversions in the parliamentary Conservative Party, 1963 Candidate

First preferences

Second preferences

Definite aversions

87

89

30

86 65 48 12 10

69 39 66 18 17

48 78 6 1 1

Lord Home/Alec Douglas-Home R. A. Butler Lord Hailsham/Quintin Hogg Reginald Maudling Ian Macleod Edward Heath

NB These figures do not include members of the Cabinet and are based on junior ministers and backbenchers Source: Adapted from Baston (2004: 208)

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of first preferences. This was also true of the second preferences. Douglas-­ Home also had the least definite aversions amongst the three leading candidates. These findings would lead Redmayne to conclude that Douglas-Home was best positioned to unify (MS. Macmillan dep c. 962, Martin Redmayne to Harold Macmillan, 16 October 1963). Macleod would later admit to being ‘neither impressed nor surprised’ by the findings (Macleod 1964). Redmayne also asked parliamentarians an additional hypothetical question based on the idea of deadlock between Butler and Hailsham. The question was whether parliamentarians would be willing to accept Douglas-Home as a compromise candidate (Bogdanor 1996: 76). This may have had a distorting effect upon the findings; for example, Jim Prior would recall that his actual preferences were as follows: first preference, Butler, second preference, Hailsham, and although not explicitly allowed to have a third choice, it would have been Douglas-Home. However, he did say yes to the issue of would he accept Douglas-Home as a compromise candidate in a deadlock situation between Butler and Hailsham, whereupon he subsequently found out that he had been recorded as a Douglas-Home vote (Prior 1986: 32–33). During these consultations, Heath informed Macmillan that Douglas-Home would be best equipped to unify the parliamentary party, whilst either Hailsham or Butler would further  intensify internal divisions (MS.  Macmillan dep c. 962, ‘Note for the Record’, 15 October 1963). Macleod would say that the level of ‘error’ within the findings ‘must have been enormous’, with this applying to the calculations not only within the Cabinet but also amongst junior ministers and backbenchers (Macleod 1964). Macleod calculated that from within the Cabinet, there were 11 members ‘from my personal knowledge’ who opposed DouglasHome, but Dilhorne told Macmillan that 10 Cabinet ministers endorsed Douglas-­Home, 3 endorsed Butler, 4 Maudling and, finally, 2 for Hailsham (MS.  Macmillan dep c. 962, Lord Dilhorne to Harold Macmillan, 15 October 1963). Macleod described these findings as ‘simply impossible’ (Macleod 1964). What might back Macleod up is the idea that Edward Boyle (Minister of Education) who was widely seen as a ‘card-carrying Tory left winger’ had abandoned Butler to make Douglas-Home his first preference (Shepherd 1994: 326). Macmillan used these (distorted) processes of consultation to draft his memorandum to the Queen, recommending she send for Douglas-Home to be appointed the new prime minister. Fearing that Macmillan was attempting to bounce the monarch into appointing Douglas-Home with undue haste, a number of senior Cabinet members, including Butler,

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Hailsham, Macleod, Powell and Maudling, attempted to stall the process. They discussed the possibility of jointly refusing to serve under Douglas-­ Home, thus reopening the succession process on the basis that Douglas-­ Home had been unable to form an administration—a fact that Douglas-Home later acknowledged would have worked (Home 1976: 185). Whilst Macleod and Powell carried out their threat, the others agreed to serve Douglas-Home, thus enabling Macmillan to secure his objective. Butler could not bring himself to activate the Macleod plot, given the damage it might cause to the unity and electoral prospects of the Conservative Party (Cosgrave 1981: 141–143). However, a perception existed that the selection of Douglas-Home was ‘unfair’ and that it had ‘damaged’ the image of the Conservatives (CPA, CCO 20/39/3, Norman St. John-Stevas to Sir Alec Douglas-Home, 24 November 1964).

From Magic Circle to Parliamentary Ballot: October 1963–February 1965 It is worth remembering the position of Heath in the Redmayne findings. He was the first preference of only 10 parliamentarians and yet, within two years, he would have won the first democratic election for the leadership of the Conservative Party with 150 votes (Heppell 2008b: 33–49). So, what factors helped to improve his position so much between October 1963 and July 1965? First, it can be argued that the events surrounding the Conservative Party leadership succession crisis were damaging to all of the other candidates in different ways. The victor, Douglas-Home, was to be permanently scarred by the manner in which he had acquired the premiership. But it was not just a failure of process, that is, the discrediting of the magic circle, it was also a failure of outcome—Douglas-Home had significant limitations as political leader, most notably in presentational terms (Campbell 1993: 139; see also Leonard 2003). The disappointment that came with being passed over for the leadership again and the subsequent defeat at the General Election of October 1964 prompted Butler to leave frontline politics, and he accepted the post of Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (Jago 2015: 405–409). The credibility of Hailsham was undermined not only by the scale of aversions to him becoming party leader when Redmayne consulted Conservative parliamentarians, but also because a number of cabinet members had made it clear that they would not want to serve under him (MS. Macmillan dep c. 962, ‘Note for the Record’, 14 October 1963). Doubts about Maudling emerged with regard to the

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rather tepid speech that he delivered at the Conservative Party Annual Conference of October 1963, which had coincided with the succession race. Macleod created an impression of himself as a divisive figure by his refusal to accept the outcome and the selection of Douglas-Home (Campbell 1993: 139). Three of the six contenders for the throne in 1963—Douglas-Home, Butler and Hailsham—would be out of the way in the next contest; Macleod had damaged his credentials and Maudling had failed to seriously advance his. As such Heath, by his loyalty and his inexperience, relative to the other candidates, had managed to come last but had done the least damage to his reputation. Second, it can be argued that Heath enhanced his reputation within the parliamentary ranks of the Conservative Party during the Douglas-Home premiership. He was appointed to a super-ministry that gave him the catch-all title Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development and President of the Board of Trade (Cummings cartoon depicted the promotion, with Heath carrying a large briefcase with ‘SOSFITARDAPOBOT’ marked on it—Butler’s was small by contrast and had simply ‘FO’ on it). This position increased the profile of Heath as he set about abolishing resale price maintenance (RPM) (Campbell 1993: 147–150). Although this was seen by some as an essential safeguard for small shopkeepers and protected them from being undercut by new supermarkets, it was felt by free market Conservatives to be an anachronism and an obstacle to the free market (Campbell 1993: 151). Although it was controversial, it may have aided Heath over the longer term. It allowed Heath to project himself as the architect of a piece of reforming legislation that symbolised Conservative modernisation (Heath 1998: 266–267). In the course of its implementation, Heath displayed the qualities—conviction, resolution and steadfastness under fire—that the Conservatives might be looking for in any post-Douglas-Home scenario (Campbell 1993: 155–156). Furthermore, given that the impression of the Conservatives was that they had run out of ideas by late 1964, the reforming zeal of Heath made him seem like an exception (CPA, CRD, 2/48/86, ‘The Liberal Revival’, 30 October 1964). Third, developments as the Conservative Party entered opposition worked to the advantage of Heath and the disadvantage of Maudling, who was seen to be at that time the leading candidate to succeed Douglas-­ Home. Having been Chancellor when they were in office, Maudling was moved across to shadow Foreign Secretary in opposition, and Heath was appointed shadow Chancellor (Campbell 1993: 168). This constituted a

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significant promotion for Heath. Not only did it provide him with a platform to showcase his leadership credentials—like leading the opposition to the new government’s Finance Bill—but it also marginalised Maudling from frontline domestic political debate (Gilmour and Garnett 1998: 217). The perception that Douglas-Home favoured Heath over Maudling (Douglas-Home did in fact vote for Heath in the subsequent leadership ballot, Roth 1971: 156) was confirmed when Douglas-Home appointed Heath to replace the retiring Butler as Chair of the Advisory Committee on Policy (Campbell 1993: 170–171). Heath used this new position to advance his own leadership credentials and to undermine Maudling—he even went so far as forbidding the Research Department from sending Maudling copies of the policy papers that were emerging from the committee (Campbell 1993: 172). Heath also benefitted at this time from the choices Maudling made in the initial opposition period. Maudling decided to accept a number of lucrative directorships, which certainly raised eyebrows amongst Conservative colleagues at Westminster (Baston 2004: 247–249). Fourth, Heath was to benefit from the decision to end the traditional magic circle system of leadership succession and the introduction of formal internal democracy (if we accept the idea that the more senior Maudling would have more likely to be chosen by the old magic circle). Having recognised that the disputed nature of his acquisition of the party leadership had left him devoid of legitimacy, Douglas-Home decided to make sure that no future leader of the Conservative Party should suffer the same fate. A committee was set up and all parts of the Conservative Party were consulted and discussed how to select their leader in the future (Butler and King 1966: 47). Debate focused on how wide the electorate should be. Ultimately, the idea of membership participation was rejected on the basis of being too complex and the agreed a new process of multiple parliamentary ballots (CPA, CRD 3/47/6, James Douglas, ‘Selecting a Leader’, 19 November 1963; CPA, CCO 20/39/3, Norman St. JohnStevas to Sir Alec Douglas-Home, 24 November 1964; CPA, CRD 3/47/6, James Douglas, ‘Selection of the Party Leader’, 5 February 1965). On the issue of whether a simple majority of parliamentarians was sufficient, the committee also devoted considerable attention. They concluded that it was important that the newly elected party leader had a strong mandate to lead, to ‘preclude the emergence of factions of determined opposition’ and, as a consequence, they added the majority and the 15% extra requirement (CPA, CRD 3/47/6, James Douglas to Michael

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Fraser, 16 November 1963; CPA, CRD 3/47/6, James Douglas, ‘Possible Methods for Selecting a Leader of the Party’, 20 November 1963). Having determined the electorate and the margin for victory, the committee also added in two other significant provisions. First, that candidates could also enter at the second ballot stage; and, second, that these new procedures only applied for vacancies created either by resignation or death of the incumbent—there was no means by which the democratically elected leader could be challenged (CPA, CRD 3/47/6, Conservative Central Office, ‘Procedure for the Selection of the Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party’, 19 February 1965; see also CPA, LCC, 1/2/1 Shadow Cabinet Minutes, 8 February 1965). Having created these new democratic procedures, Douglas-Home had three options. Option one was that he could resign immediately. Option two was that he could have chosen to submit himself to the procedures— securing their approval against an alternative candidate would have provided him with the legitimacy that he had been lacking since October 1963. Option three was to try to continue and argue that these new procedures would apply for the future but that they did not need to be activated now. Douglas-Home attempted to pursue the third option. However, after a few months, his position started to be openly questioned. A heated meeting of the 1922 Executive Committee of backbenchers involved supporters of Maudling demanding that Douglas-Home resign (Baston 2004: 253). Backers of Heath were also pushing for his resignation (Campbell 1993: 176). The ability of Douglas-Home to continue was becoming a source of continued press speculation (e.g. see Rees-­ Mogg 1965). One complicating factor was the possibility of a snap General Election, remembering that the Labour government only had a small majority. The Conservatives did not want to be activating their new election procedures if a General Election was about to be called. The complicating factor had been decision of Wilson to announce (in June 1965) that he would not be calling a General Election in 1965 (Pimlott 1992: 395). Following on from consultations with the Chief Whip, William Whitelaw, Douglas-Home decided that he should resign (Butler and King 1966: 51).

Electing Heath: The Conservative Party Leadership Election of July 1965 The first democratic election to determine the leadership of the Conservative Party would involve three contenders: first, representing the traditional one-nation left was Maudling; second, advancing the cause of

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the free market right was Powell; and, positioned between them, but closer to Maudling and the one-nation left was Heath. All three candidates transcended the traditional elitist backgrounds that were normally associated with successions under the old magic circle. That system would have favoured older candidates such as the Etonians Hogg and the former Chancellor, Peter Thorneycroft. But, they had calculated that they would lack the necessary support within the new succession system (as did the former Chancellor and Foreign Secretary, but non-Etonian, Selwyn Lloyd1) (Thorpe 1989: 395; Campbell 1993: 177). The candidature of Powell was justified (by him) on the grounds of laying down a marker for the future (Shepherd 1996: 293). He knew that he stood no chance of winning, but he wanted to inject new ideas into what he perceived to be an ideology-free contest (Evans and Taylor 1996: 145). As Powell was not regarded as a candidate who could actually win, this meant that most Conservative parliamentarians saw voting for him as a waste of their vote (Stark 1996: 101). Viewed as an irritant by standing, Powell was to receive only 15 votes or 4.9% of the votes (see Table 2.2) (Shepherd 1996: 293–294). Although there were three candidates, it was, in effect, a two-horse race between Heath and Maudling, and the questions were (a) who would win and (b) would it require two ballots or one? On the first question, it was widely assumed that Maudling would win (Clark 1998: 409). Maudling was regarded as being senior to Heath and held a higher profile (Blake 1998: 298). His highest office was Chancellor (1962–1964), and he had entered the Cabinet in 1957, whereas Heath entered the Cabinet two Table 2.2 Candidate support in the conservative party leadership election of 1965

Candidate

First ballot votes

Percentage

150 133 15 6

49.3 43.8 4.9 2.0

Edward Heath Reginald Maudling Enoch Powell Abstentions Source: Heppell (2008b: 40)

1  Having returned to the frontbench when they entered opposition, Macleod did contemplate standing and was believed to have the backing of potentially 40 Conservative parliamentarians. However, as he was widely perceived to be divisive due to his conduct in the aftermath of the succession crisis, he calculated that he would be unable to emerge victorious (Shepherd 1996: 291).

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years later and reached his most senior office—President of the Board of Trade—in 1963, with this being a post that Maudling had already held himself between 1959 and 1961. Maudling was also identified as the candidate that voters preferred—amongst known Conservative supporters, he was preferred to Heath by a margin of 48% to 31%, and amongst the wider electorate, he was preferred by 44% to 28% (Roth 1971: 185). It was assumed that Conservative parliamentarians would be influenced by these aforementioned factors. Added to these was the awareness that Maudling had secured more backers in the consultation processes of October 1963. Maudling had 48 first preferences and 66 second preferences, whereas Heath had 10 first preferences and 17 second preferences. Given that Maudling was ideologically aligned to Butler and Macleod, it was assumed that their preferences—Butler had 86 first preferences and Macleod had 12—would tend towards Maudling more so than Heath2 (Baston 2004: 208). The question of whether it would take one ballot or two was too difficult to call—remembering that if all voted, then 173 (or a lead of 45 voters) was assumed to be the hurdle for winning on the first ballot. The Maudling camp believed that they had 154 supporters and that Heath had 100—they could not accurately predict how many of the remaining 50 Conservative parliamentarians were backing Powell and how many were undecided (Campbell 1993: 183). The Heath camp believed that they had approached 160 potential backers, which was significantly higher than the number that the Maudling camp believed that their opponent would have (Gilmour and Garnett 1998: 220). So, the assumption was that a second parliamentary ballot would be required. The predictions of the Heath camp turned out to be far more accurate than those of the Maudling camp. Heath had won the first parliamentary ballot by a margin of 17 voters, but because his percentage lead over Maudling was only 5.5%, Maudling was entitled to proceed to a second parliamentary ballot (Punnett 1992: 60). The dilemma for Maudling was where would the necessary second ballot votes come from? It was highly unlikely that all of the abstainers and all of the Powell supporters 2  The October 1963 consultations were conducted based on the parliamentary Conservative Party from the 1959 to 1964 Parliament (n  =  365), and the Redmayne findings do not include all parliamentarians. Also, the 1965 parliamentary Conservative Party was smaller after the General Election defeat of 1964 (n = 304), accounting for retirement and defeats in 1964, and the new intake of 1965 would have changed the composition of the electorate somewhat.

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gravitated to him—Heath was more likely to appeal to the freed up Powellite vote and thus, it was seen as inevitable that Heath, with the momentum behind him, would annex the party leadership in a hypothetical second parliamentary ballot. Maudling admitted that his first parliamentary return had been a ‘bitter blow’ and, as he felt that the first parliamentary ballot had been ‘quite decisive’, he withdrew his candidature, thus handing the leadership to Heath without the need for an additional parliamentary ballot (Maudling 1978: 134, 136). Although the press had largely backed Maudling, the newly elected leader took pleasure in the positive response that they showed to his election: Heath was praised as a ‘man of change’, a ‘rough rider’ and ‘the tiger in the tank’ (CPA, PPB 12, 1964–65, 26 July 1965). What went wrong for Maudling or, to put it another way, what went right for Heath. We have to start with the issue of their respective approaches to campaigning and seeking support. Maudling adopted an approach that can best be described as ‘amiable indolence’ with regard to active campaigning, having concluded that one should not ‘irritate’ experienced parliamentarians who were more than capable of making their own minds up (Campbell 1993: 179). Conservative backbencher, Philip Goodhart, described the Maudling campaign as ‘the worst organised leadership campaign in Conservative Party’, adding that it was a ‘total shambles’ (Baston 2004: 256). The contrast with the Heath campaign team was clear. They were professional, organised and energetic, and most significantly they openly canvassed for votes (Roth 1971: 183–184; Fisher 1977: 125). In his memoirs, Heath was fulsome in his praise for the campaign that was run on his behalf, describing it as ‘magnificent’ in part due to their ‘checking and double checking’ of every pledge and the emphasis on persuading waverers to back Heath and not Maudling (Heath 1998: 268). The approach that Maudling adopted reflected doubts that existed about his temperament. Consider the recollections of Jim Prior: ‘Reggie is a very agreeable man, and I was very fond of him, but he was not the stuff of which Prime Ministers are made’ (Prior 1986: 37–38). Whereas Maudling thought it was beneath him to engage in consultations to persuade Conservative parliamentarians to back him, possibly on the back promises with regard to shadow ministerial appointments, others thought it smacked of complacency. Whoever the Conservatives selected would be opposing Wilson and a perception grew that Maudling lacked the dynamism and energy needed to oust Wilson in a General Election campaign

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(Roth 1971: 185; Campbell 1993: 179; Baston 2004: 255). That he lacked the necessary drive to lead and succeed would upset Maudling. In his memoirs, he would argue that he did ‘resent’ the accusation that he failed to win because he was ‘too lazy to work hard enough for it’ (Maudling 1978: 136–137). This was a perception that had consequences. Even though Maudling was perceived to be the establishment candidate, he actually lost the support of key elites. He had hoped to give his campaign momentum by gaining the public backing of Douglas-Home, but the departing leader deliberately kept his own counsel throughout (and made no reference to how he voted in his memoirs, Douglas-Home 1976).3 He also failed to gain the backing of his ideological soulmate, Macleod, who backed Heath instead. In addition, most of his potential backers also switched their support to Heath (Campbell 1993: 181; Shepherd 1994: 400–403; Watkins 1998: 186). It was also becoming clear that three quarters of the shadow Cabinet were coming out in support for Heath. That this was being discussed may have had an impact on junior shadow spokespeople and backbenchers, making it easier for the organised Heath campaign to persuade soft Maudling supporters to switch their allegiances (Fisher 1977: 125–127). One example of this type of lost vote was Margaret Thatcher. She had originally planned to vote for Maudling (which retrospectively seems like an ideologically incongruous choice for her), but she switched her allegiance to Heath, as did Keith Joseph (Thatcher 1995: 135–136). Of the new processes, Thatcher described them as having gone ‘very smoothly and calmly’ and, of the outcome, she said she looked forward to ‘working hard and happily’ under Heath whom she described as a ‘tough taskmaster’ but one who will ‘drive others as hard as he drives himself’ (Thatcher 1965).

Conclusion Having won the leadership of the Conservative Party in July 1965, Heath would remain in position until February 1975. Nearly two-thirds of his tenure as leader of the Conservative Party would be in opposition (July 1965–June 1970 and March 1974–February 1975), and he would serve 3  Maudling was convinced that the failure of Douglas-Home to endorse him contributed to his defeat. He was rumoured to have commented, in the aftermath of his rejection, that ‘it was Alec who did for me’ (Baston 2004: 256).

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as a Conservative prime minister for only three years and eight months (between June 1970 and February 1974). He was only removed from the leadership of the Conservative Party in February 1975 after an amendment to the leadership elections to permit a challenge to him (Quinn 2012: 37). The rationale for that amendment was that he would not resign (Fisher 1977: 152–153). The assumption was that a leader who was damaging to the interests of the Conservative Party—repeatedly losing General Elections—would voluntarily step aside. As Fisher argues, the rule makers in 1965 did not think that ‘a leader who had lost the confidence of a substantial section of the party would wish to continue in office’ (Fisher 1977: 147–148). Moreover, when constructing their new democratic procedures, the aim was to create an outcome in which there was no disputing the authority or legitimacy of the newly elected party leader—as Douglas-­ Home stated, ‘once the party had elected a leader that was that’ (Hutchinson 1970: 138). The period between March 1974 and February 1975 would showcase the limitations of the new system of internal democracy that the Conservative Party had constructed in opposition in 1964–1965 (Fisher 1977; Bogdanor 1996). However, when their new system was first used in July 1965, the Conservatives felt vindicated and were very self-praising. Heath was seen to be a legitimate new leader of the Conservative Party whose authority was undisputed—a sharp contrast to the immobilising impact that the disputed leadership succession of October 1963 had on Douglas-Home (Fisher 1977; Bogdanor 1996; Stark 1996). Furthermore, after a succession of party leaders either drawn or married into the aristocracy, the Conservatives had selected a ‘grammar school boy to replace the Old Etonian’, as the ‘man to take on Wilson’ (Prior 1986: 38). The very best of Heath as a political operator was evident in the period between October 1963 and July 1965. He outmanoeuvred his main rivals from his own generation—Maudling and Macleod—to significantly aid his chances of winning the party leadership after Douglas-Home. Given that he seemed to be behind them in the pecking order for the succession in October 1963, this represents a significant achievement. He achieved this in three ways. First, in the midst of the succession crisis of October 1963, while he remained uncontroversial and loyal by backing the eventual winner, Maudling alienated himself from Douglas-Home somewhat, and Macleod established for himself a reputation for disloyalty by his refusal to serve. Second, having secured the backing of Douglas-Home, he was able

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to exploit his patronage, securing for himself significant promotions, which expanded his influence and enabled him to showcase his leadership credentials. Third, once the first democratic election for the leadership of the Conservative Party was initiated, he was simply better prepared and more organised than Maudling. Now ensconced as the new leader of the Conservative Party, it was his responsibility to initiate a process of reform and renewal that would enable them to regain office.

Bibliography Archives Conservative Party Archives, Bodleian Library., University of Oxford. Harold Macmillan Papers, Bodleian Library., University of Oxford.

Newspapers and Periodicals Macleod, I. (1964). The Tory Leadership. The Spectator, January 17. Redmayne, M. (1963). The Commons in Action. The Listener, December 19. Rees-Mogg, W. (1965). The Right Moment to Change. Sunday Times, July 18. Thatcher, M. (1965). Impressions from Westminster. Finchley Press, August 13.

Memoirs Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life: My Autobiography. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Home, L. (1976). The Way the Wind Blows: An Autobiography by Lord Douglas-­ Home. London: Collins. Maudling, R. (1978). Memoirs. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. Prior, J. (1986). A Balance of Power. London: Hamish Hamilton. Thatcher, M. (1995). The Path to Power. London: Harper Collins.

Books, Chapters

and

Articles

Alderman, K. (1992). Harold Macmillan’s Night of the Long Knives. Contemporary British History, 6(2), 243–265. Alderman, K. (1996). The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1995. Parliamentary Affairs, 49(2), 316–332. Alderman, K. (1998). The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1997. Parliamentary Affairs, 51(1), 1–16.

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Alderman, K., & Carter, N. (1991). A Very Tory Coup: The Ousting of Mrs Thatcher. Parliamentary Affairs, 44(2), 125–139. Alderman, K., & Carter, N. (2002). The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 2001. Parliamentary Affairs, 55(4), 569–585. Baston, L. (2004). Reggie: The Life of Reginald Maudling. Stroud: Sutton. Black, L., & Pemberton, H. (Eds.). (2004). An Affluent Society? Britain’s Post War Golden Age Revisited. London: Ashgate. Blake, R. (1998). The Conservative Party from Peel to Major. London: Arrow. Bogdanor, V. (1996). The Selection of the Party Leader. In A. Seldon & S. Ball (Eds.), Conservative y: The Conservative Party since 1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bogdanor, V., & Skidelsky, R. (Eds.). (1970). The Age of Affluence 1951–1964. Basingstoke: London. Boxer, A. (1996). The Conservative Governments, 1951–1964. London: Longman. Butler, D. (1952). The British General Election of 1951. London: Macmillan. Butler, D. (1956). The British General Election of 1955. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1974). British General Election of February 1974. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & King, A. (1965). The British General Election of 1964. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & King, A. (1966). The British General Election Of 1966. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Rose, R. (1960). The British General Election of 1959. London: Macmillan. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Pimlico. Churchill, R. (1964). The Fight for the Tory Leadership. London: Heinemann. Clark, A. (1998). The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State 1922–1997. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Cosgrave, P. (1981). R. A. Butler: An English Life. London: Quartet. Cowley, P., & Bailey, M. (2000). Peasants’ Uprising Or Religious War: Re-examining the 1975 Conservative Leadership Contest. British Journal of Political Science, 30(4), 599–629. Cowley, P., & Garry, J. (1998). The British Conservative Party and Europe: The Choosing of John Major. British Journal of Political Science, 28(3), 473–499. Denham, A., & Dorey, P. (2006). A Tale of Two Speeches: The Conservative Leadership Election. Political Quarterly, 78(1), 35–41. Dorey, P. (2012). Harold Wilson 1963–64 and 1970–74. In T.  Heppell (Ed.), Leaders of the Opposition from Churchill to Cameron. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Evans, B., & Taylor, A. (1996). From Salisbury to Major: Continuity and Change in Conservative Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Fisher, N. (1977). The Tory Leaders: Their Struggle for Power. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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Gilmour, I., & Garnett, M. (1998). Whatever Happened to the Tories: The Conservative Party Since 1945. London: Fourth Estate. Goodhart, P. (1973). The 1922: The Story of the 1922 Committee. London: Macmillan. Green, E. H. H. (2000). The Treasury Resignations of 1958: A Reconsideration. Twentieth y British History, 11(4), 409–430. Heppell, T. (2008a). The Degenerative Tendencies of Long Serving Governments…1963…1996…2008. Parliamentary Affairs, 61(4), 578–596. Heppell, T. (2008b). Choosing the Tory Leader: Conservative Party Leadership Elections from Heath to Cameron. London: I. B. Taurus. Heppell, T. (2014). The Tories: From Winston Churchill to David Cameron. London: Bloomsbury. Heppell, T., & Hill, M. (2008). The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1997: An Analysis of the Voting Motivations of Conservative Parliamentarians. British Politics, 3(1), 63–91. Heppell, T., & Hill, M. (2010). The Voting Motivations of Conservative Parliamentarians in the Conservative Party Leadership Election of 2001. Politics, 30(1), 36–51. Horne, A. (1989). Macmillan 1957–1986: Volume II. London: Macmillan. Hutchinson, G. (1970). Edward Heath: A Personal and Political Biography. London: Longman. Jago, M. (2015). RAB Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had? London: Biteback. Jeffery, D., Heppell, T., Hayton, R., & Crines, A. (2018). The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 2016: An Analysis of the Voting Motivations of Conservative Parliamentarians. Parliamentary Affairs, 71(2), 263–282. Knightly, P., & Kennedy, C. (1987). An Affair of State: The Profumo Case and the Framing of Stephen Ward. London: Jonathan Cape. Lamb, R. (1995). The Macmillan Years 1957–63: The Emerging Truth. London: Murray. Leonard, D. (2003). Alec Douglas--Home: Right Man, Wrong y. Political Quarterly, 74(4), 503–512. Pearce, E. (1997). The Lost Leaders: The Best Prime Ministers We Never Had. London: Little Brown. Pemberton, H. (2001). A Taxing Task: Combating Britain’s Relative Economic Decline in the 1960s. Twentieth y British History, 12(3), 354–375. Pimlott, B. (1992). Harold Wilson. London: Harper Collins. Punnett, R. (1992). Selecting the Party Leader: Britain in Comparative Perspective. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Punnett, R. (1993). Selecting the Party Leader in Britain. European Journal of Political Research, 24, 257–276.

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Quinn, T. (2012). Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders in Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Quinn, T. (2018). The Conservative Party’s Leadership Election of 2016: Choosing a Leader in Government. British Politics, 14(1), 63–85. Ramsden, J. (1995). The Age of Churchill and Eden 1940–1957. London: Longman. Ramsden, J. (1996). The Winds of Change: Macmillan and Heath 1957–1975. London: Longman. Roth, A. (1971). Heath and the Heathman. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Schofield, C. (2015). Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seldon, A. (1981). Churchill’s Indian Summer: The Conservative Government 1951–1955. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Shepherd, R. (1994). Iain Macleod: A Biography. London: Pimlico. Shepherd, R. (1996). Enoch Powell. London: Pimlico. Stark, L. P. (1996). Choosing a Leader: Party Leadership Contests in Britain from Macmillan to Blair. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Stennis, K. (1998). The European Challenge: Britain’s EEC Application in 1961. Contemporary European History, 7(1), 61–90. Thorpe, D. R. (1989). Selwyn Lloyd. London: Jonathan Cape. Watkins, A. (1998). The Road to Number 10: From Bonar Law to Tony Blair. London: Duckworth. Wickham-Jones, M. (1997). Right Turn: A Revisionist Account of the 1975 Conservative Party Leadership Election. Twentieth y British History, 8(1), 74–89. Ziegler, P. (2010). Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography. London: Harper Press.

CHAPTER 3

Modernising Conservatism in Opposition Under Heath Mark Garnett

The idea that, as leader of the Opposition from 1965 to 1970, Edward Heath was engaged in a self-conscious effort to ‘modernise Conservatism’ immediately encounters two well-founded objections. First, from the perspective of 2020, the word ‘modernisation’ in the context of British political parties cannot escape association with the successive and overt attempts by Tony Blair and David Cameron to make their parties seem more relevant to the contemporary context (see Smith 1994; Dommett 2015). Although both of these projects involved policy changes, the main purpose was to update a party’s image, chiefly for electoral purposes. When they became leaders of their respective parties, both Blair and Cameron believed that their most urgent task was to ‘detoxify’ their ‘brands’ (Wring 2005: 137–147; Bale 2010: 283–362). There is no evidence that Heath felt the same way about the Conservative ‘brand’, which he inherited after the leadership election of 1965. In any case, he was contemptuous of political imagery as it related to either parties or leaders, seeing no reason to modify his wooden public persona from the time he became Conservative

M. Garnett (*) Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_3

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leader to his retirement from the House of Commons in 2001 (Garnett 2015: 304–305; Ziegler 2010: 184–188, 231–232). If it seems wrong to include Heath among those who have sought to ‘modernise’ their parties, it can also be disputed whether he deserves to be associated with ‘Conservatism’—or indeed with any kind of ‘ism’ (Gamble 1974: 91). True, in his memoirs, Heath wrote that on becoming leader, ‘I now had the chance to stamp my brand of Conservatism on the party’, but in the absence of real evidence of a desire to change the existing approach, that phrase has the ring of a self-justifying cliché (Heath 1998: 269). At the end of successive chapters which deal with this period, Heath insists on his ‘One Nation’ credentials, but this broad approach had been prevalent under Macmillan and survived the brief interlude on Home, who would probably have liked a shift to the ‘right’ on domestic matters but carried little weight on domestic matters (Heath 1998: 296, 324). As we shall see, within a few months of winning the party leadership, Heath was criticised for an excessively empirical approach to political questions. As Enoch Powell put it in a typically vivid phrase, Heath ‘would immediately become angry and go red in the face’ if anyone started to talk about ideas (Contemporary Record 1990: 37). While Powell’s was a retrospective and jaundiced view, it is undeniable that many ardent Conservatives were disappointed from an early stage by Heath’s lack of interest in abstract ideas.1 It is more surprising, indeed, that they ever hoped for anything else from Heath, who had never shown any interest in philosophical speculations (despite his respectable performance in PPE at Oxford) (Ziegler 2010: 17–34). Thus, Heath can scarcely be seen as a ‘moderniser’ of his party, to rank alongside Blair or Cameron, and he was not interested in re-defining ‘Conservatism’. Nevertheless, these themes provide useful keys to his conduct and fortunes as Opposition leader between 1965 and 1970 (Denham and O’Hara 2007). Heath felt that it was unnecessary to ‘modernise’ his party, and in itself, this is an interesting reflection on his outlook since the Conservatives had looked increasingly ‘out of touch’ prior to their electoral defeat in 1964. As Gamble notes, Heath felt that ‘to be an effective political force, had to turn its back on the past and become a party of progress’ (Gamble 1974: 91). Equally, although Heath did not feel 1  To illustrate this point, Heath is not included in an edited collection on the key contributors to the political thought of the Conservative Party in the post-war era (see Garnett and Hickson 2009).

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compelled to set out his personal understanding of ‘Conservatism’, this is also instructive since he did hold clear views but was too ready to assume that this basic framework of principle, shared with the overwhelming majority of senior politicians of both main parties—‘One Nation’ Conservatives and Labour’s ‘social democratic’ wing—reflected a kind of ‘common sense’ which was not vulnerable to any rational challenge. It was only during the 1980s, when this elite ‘consensus’2 was swept aside by Thatcherite populism, that Heath made more explicit his rival understanding of ‘Conservatism’. By that time, it proved all too easy for his opponents to accuse him of ‘sour grapes’ against Thatcher, his supplanter (Kavanagh 2005). Nevertheless, the label of ‘moderniser’ is undoubtedly appropriate to Heath because he was determined to ‘modernise’ the country, in tandem with what he hoped would be a successful negotiation of British entry to the European Economic Community (EEC), and he believed that this could only be achieved under the stewardship of a Conservative Party which was fully committed to this course, discarding illusions based on outdated assessments of Britain’s global status. In these senses, at least, it is true that Heath saw his task as leader between 1965 and 1970 in terms of ‘modernising Conservatism’.

Stage I: Heath as Leader of the Opposition, July 1965 to March 1966 The timing of Home’s resignation as Conservative Party leader had been influenced by the knowledge that the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, would not be calling a General Election in 1965 (Pimlott 1992: 395). The Conservative opposition could thus contemplate a change in the summer of 1965, in the expectation that their new party leader would have time to consolidate their position before having to face an election campaign. That said, Wilson’s wafer-thin majority meant that the next contest could not be long delayed (Pimlott 1992: 396). Thus, for the first months of his leadership, Heath was like a student knowing that a crucial examination was imminent, but that he would have to sit the paper on a day to be chosen by someone who was desperate for him to fail. 2  On the debates that surround consensus politics, see Kavanagh and Morris (1994) and Dutton (1997).

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Even in the short period before Wilson called the election for 31 March 1966, Heath had been given an unpleasant introduction to the pressures of leadership. Following Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence, in November 1965, the House of Commons voted on the imposition of oil sanctions against the illegal regime of Ian Smith. Although Wilson’s government was acutely discomfited by the crisis (Coggins 2006), this was not an issue which played to Heath’s personal strengths, since he was inclined to regard the Empire (and indeed the Commonwealth) as a legacy from a by-gone episode in Britain’s history. However, Rhodesia evoked conflicting passions among many of his parliamentary colleagues. Although instructed to abstain by Heath, the parliamentary party would actually split in three directions: alongside the abstainers were 50 Conservatives who voted against sanctions and 31 who voted to support the Wilson government (Stuart 2002). Labour took comfort in the difficulties that Heath was experiencing. Wilson suggested that Heath had advocated abstaining in an effort to secure some semblance of party unity, and yet not only had he failed to do so, but he had sacrificed his principles in the process (Campbell 1993: 204). Tony Benn recorded that the Conservatives are ‘splintering before our eyes’ and Heath looks like a ‘pathetic figure, kicked this way and that’ and ‘incapable of giving firm leadership’ (Benn 1987: 354). The Rhodesian question did little to dent public expectations that the Labour Party would win a forthcoming General Election. Shortly after Heath was elected as the new leader of the Conservative Party, they secured the ‘usual boost in the polls that occurs in such occasions’ (Bale 2012: 106). The Conservatives took an opinion lead with the Gallup poll, which placed the Conservatives on 49% of the vote compared with Wilson and Labour’s 41%, as of August 1965 (King and Wybrow 2001: 9). By October 1965, that opinion polling lead had been lost as the Labour Party acquired an eight-point lead (49–41%), and they still had an eight-point lead (50–42%) by February 1966 when Wilson decided to call the General Election (King and Wybrow 2001: 9). On the question of leadership satisfaction, 60% of voters were satisfied with the performance of Wilson as prime minister, and although Heath had begun his leadership of the Conservative Party with a high satisfaction rating of 64% (as of August 1965) this had fallen to 40% by February 1966 (King and Wybrow 2001: 188, 206). In a by-election of January 1966, Labour retained the previously marginal seat of Hull North with a comfortable majority, despite a mass influx

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of Conservative canvassers and visits by prominent party figures (Butler and King 1966: ix). Wilson needed no further prompting before calling a General Election (Wilson 1971: 259). During the Hull North by-election campaign, the government had announced that a bridge over the River Humber, which had been projected before the Second World War but held back through lack of funds, would now go ahead. It was a vivid, if somewhat cynical echo of the title chosen by the Conservatives for their 1966 election manifesto, showing that Wilson could also appreciate the political importance of Action Not Words. The document of that name— which included more than a hundred separate policy pledges, to the detriment of any vote-winning themes—probably had little effect on the 1966 national result, but could not have made life any easier for grass-roots Conservatives trying to persuade wavering voters. The voters gave Labour an overall majority of 98, with a tally of 364 compared to 253 returning Conservatives (Butler and King 1966). For Tory supporters, the misery of the night was compounded by the fact that their party failed to gain a single constituency (Ramsden 1996: 261–267). After the General Election defeat, supporters of Heath in the media quickly deployed the kind of coherent narrative that the party had sorely lacked in the campaign itself. They absolved Heath himself from blame and there was ‘only limited discernible criticism’ of him (Rhodes James 1972: 99). In fact, they argued that he had performed with considerable credit as he went about his thankless task (Campbell 1993: 210). In hindsight, even impartial observers would find it difficult to deny this verdict. Heath did oversee a well-organised campaign, and his own contributions were effective, not least in helping to shape the battlefield for the next contest. In particular, his repeated claim that this would be a ‘vote now, pay later’ election allowed him to fight in 1970 in the knowledge that he had issued well-founded warnings back in 1966 (Rhodes James 1972: 98–99). The concerted effort of Heath’s well-wishers to rally around him after the 1966 General Election was understandable, given the precipitous task he had faced and the fact that, from an impartial perspective, it was difficult to convict him of any avoidable mistakes during the campaign itself (Campbell 1993: 210–211). However, it was an inescapable fact that he had secured more than half a million fewer votes than the party had won in 1964, under the over-promoted and anachronistic Douglas-Home. Of course, some of the 1966 ‘swing’ from the Conservatives to Labour could be explained by a feeling that Wilson should be given a fair chance (an

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attitude that was confirmed by the Conservatives’ private polling: see Ramsden 1996: 262). But, it can be argued that the 1964 Conservative vote was shored up at least to some extent by two considerations which did not apply to Heath: first, the fact that Douglas-Home was fighting as an incumbent prime minister, and second, that, as a hereditary aristocrat, he could count on the support of ‘deferential’ members of the working class—the ‘Angels in Marble’ identified by Benjamin Disraeli and still sufficiently important to attract academic analysis a hundred years later (McKenzie 1968). A reduction of half a million votes between 1964 and 1966 could easily be attributed—among academic observers, at least—to the party’s loss of incumbency and social deference (Ball 2005: 17). However, Heath had not been chosen as party leader in order to furnish plausible explanations for a more resounding Conservative defeat than the 1964 setback. Although he retained his position after the 1966 General Election without any obvious rival in sight, Heath had good reason to expect that he would come under irresistible pressure to vacate the leadership if he lost his next electoral encounter with Wilson (Campbell 1993, Chaps. 11, 12, and 13).

Stage II: Heath as Leader of the Opposition, March 1966 to June 1970 On the eve of the General Election of June 1970, senior Conservatives were steeling themselves for the task of persuading Heath to step down (Ziegler 2010: 219). Only one of five national polling organisations found a (wafer-thin) Conservative lead, and a survey conducted just a few weeks before the poll found that 56% of voters expected a Labour victory, compared to just 26% who thought that the Conservatives would prevail (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 172). However, these doleful tidings did not entirely quench the enthusiasm as Conservative candidates, many of whom were receiving more positive responses on the doorstep. The possibility of a late swing towards the Conservatives in June 1970 was entirely consistent with surveys of public opinion after 1966, which suggested that voters were more volatile than ever before. According to Gallup, for example, the Conservatives were in the lead throughout 1968 and 1969, but their margin varied between 28 and 3.5 points (King and Wybrow 2001: 9–10). The widespread expectation of a comfortable Labour win in June 1970 also conflicted with real

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results since 1966. Between November 1967 and June 1968, for example, the Conservatives beat government candidates in eight consecutive by-­ elections, of which five were Opposition gains (McKie 1973: 223–263). However, even though the Conservatives led the Labour Party by 28 points in one opinion poll in May 1968, only 31% of voters were satisfied with Heath as leader of the Conservative Party (King and Wybrow 2001: 10, 206). The safest conclusion from these data was that the Conservatives, and their leader in particular, were failing to make a positive impression, that is, that their putative support was soft and heavily dependent on the fortunes of the Wilson government (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 174). In this respect, Wilson arguably proved to be a more potent electoral weapon for the Conservatives than Heath. For example, the run of Conservative by election victories began in November 1967, which was the same month in which (a) Wilson gave up his protracted battle to prevent a devaluation of sterling (Bale 1999), and (b) France’s President de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s second attempt to join the European Community (Parr 2006). In combination, these humiliations should have made the Conservatives near-certainties for victory at the next General Election. Wilson had set his face against a voluntary devaluation of the currency, despite considerable evidence that this would help the prospects for the British economy, precisely because he thought that this would deal a devastating blow to his chances of winning the next General Election (Cairncross and Eichengreen 1983). Panic-stricken in the wake of devaluation, Wilson compounded the problem with his notorious ‘pound in your pocket’ broadcast, which made him look ‘economical with the truth’ as well as being an economic bungler, for all his boasted expertise in the subject (O’Hara 2006). Problems in Opposition Although the economic situation would stabilise thereafter, it is quite possible that devaluation would indeed have dealt a deadly blow to the government’s chances of re-election. However, the Conservatives were perfectly capable of inflicting savage injuries on their own electoral prospects. The most infamous illustration of this was the intervention of Enoch Powell in April 1968 on the likely impact of mass immigration from the new commonwealth. His ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech (Powell 1968) is one of the best-known orations of the post-war period and continues to attract

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attention more than 50 years after it was delivered (for recent accounts see Crines et al. 2016; Hickson 2018). The complex interrelationship between Heath and Powell and the politics of Powellism is considered in detail by Gillian Peele (in Chap. 12), but a few observations are worth noting here in terms of consequence. First, long before his outburst on immigration, Powell’s pronouncements on defence had been a persistent problem for Heath, whose emotions on hearing of the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech probably included a leaven of relief, since he could now correct his initial mistake by sacking Powell and replacing him with a more orthodox defence spokesperson. Heath justified his decision by arguing that the speech was ‘inflammatory and liable to damage race relations’ (Heffer 1999: 461). In addition, by consulting most of his colleagues before taking the decision, Heath ensured that his team was united against Powell on the subject of immigration and, by implication, against the politics of Powellism in all of its manifestations. He had a largely sympathetic reception from his most senior colleagues regarding the difficulties of dealing with Powell. This implication was not lost on the shadow cabinet’s small Powellite group, especially Keith Joseph who was clearly dismayed that Powell’s liberal views on economics were not mirrored by a laissez-faire approach to race and immigration (Denham and Garnett 2001: 172). Second, the sacking of Powell did nothing to silence backbenchers who shared his views on immigration (on the Powellites, see Schoen 1977). The proximate provocation for ‘Rivers of Blood’ was Labour’s Race Relations Bill, which was essentially a liberal fig leaf for a government which was restricting settlement rights for non-white Commonwealth citizens (Dean 2000). The Shadow Cabinet, including Powell, agreed on a reasoned amendment which, it was hoped, would allow Conservatives to oppose the Bill without seeming to endorse racist views (Whitelaw 1991: 81)—that is, they sought to accept the principle of the legislation but wanted to reject it on the basis that it could not be effectively implemented (CPA, LLC minutes (68), 23rd meeting, 10 April 1968). This expedient succeeded in concealing the most serious divisions in opposition ranks on the second reading of the Bill. However, on the third and final reading, Conservative parliamentarians tabled their own amendment in order to register disapproval of the legislation. This was supported by 44 Conservatives after furious exchanges in Parliament with their Home Affairs spokesman, Quintin Hogg (Alexander and Watkins 1970: 96–97). Right-wing Conservatives noted how Heath had a relaxed attitude to

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leftish Conservatives who rebelled against the official line, including the Shadow Chancellor Iain Macleod and the spokesperson on Education, Edward Boyle (Ziegler 2010: 206). Powell would generate considerable press attention for his intervention, and the extent to which it influenced public opinion and Conservative support in the General Election of 1970 has been a source of academic conjecture (Deakin and Bourne 1970; Studlar 1974, 1978). Heath and his supporters preferred to regard the Conservative recovery between 1966 and 1970 as a by-product of their policy review. This is not the place for a detailed recapitulation of the policy exercise, which has been discussed at length elsewhere (Ramsden 1980: 233–285; Garnett 2005: 205–211). The scale of the operation was clearly inspired by the programme of policy renewal led by Butler after the defeat at the General Election of 1945 (Hoffman 1964). However, the context in 1964 was very different or, at least, Heath himself thought that the precedent was inexact. In 1945, it was widely believed, especially by younger Conservatives like Butler and Hogg, that the Conservatives had been punished for their alleged inaction in the face of social deprivation during the 1930s (on the defeat at the General Election of 1945, see Kandiah 1995). Thus, a radical reappraisal of Conservative policies was indicated after 1945, and since Labour enjoyed massive parliamentary majority of 146, it was all but inevitable that the opposition would have plenty of time in which to reflect (on their recovery after 1945, see Ramsden 1987; Willetts 2005). By contrast, as we have seen, the outcome of the General Election of 1964—with a small Labour majority of four—made it very likely that the voters would be asked for a new verdict in the near future. In any case, Heath did not feel that a period of deep reflection was necessary. In his view, the Conservatives had simply run out of steam after 13  years in office, and although their record was obviously far from perfect, its general approach particularly under Harold Macmillan between 1957 and 1963 had been sound and as such, their policies needed updating, but not on the basis of a fundamental rethink (on the record of the 1951–1964 era see Boxer 1996). Indeed, if a more modern approach was necessary, a precedent was already in place, thanks to Heath himself (Caines 2017: 11–95). As mentioned in Chap. 2, despite some concerted opposition among Conservative backbenchers and grassroots members, Heath had enhanced competition within the retail sector by forcing through the

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abolition of Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) during his brief tenure as president of the Board of Trade (Findley 2001). However, not all Conservatives shared this view. In January 1966—that is, barely six months after Heath became leader—the shadow spokesperson for the colonies, Angus Maude, wrote an article for The Spectator magazine in which he claimed that the party’s own supporters were ‘divided and deeply worried…while to the electorate at large the Opposition has become a meaningless irrelevance’ (Maude 1966a). After a few days’ hesitation, Heath relieved Maude of his front-bench duties. Maude was a very seasoned journalist—indeed, in 1958, he had resigned from parliament to edit The Sydney Morning Herald for three years—and these were clearly not off-the-cuff comments. The remainder of his article elaborated on his arresting first paragraph and included the warning that ‘for the Tories simply to talk like technocrats will get them nowhere’. The situation facing the Conservatives, Maude thought, was ‘desperately dangerous’, because even moderate grass-roots members were becoming increasingly ‘restive’ and ‘the radical wing of the party’ was increasingly attracted by the economic views being expressed by Powell. To underline the sense of urgency, after his sacking, Maude wrote another Spectator article in which he claimed that his initial diatribe had attracted a very positive response from Conservative Party members (Maude 1966b). Heath supporters began to suspect an element of collusion between Maude and Powell. After all, they were long-standing associates, having helped to found the backbench One Nation Group back in 1950 (on one nation Conservatism, see Seawright 2010). Maude was one of the most interesting and enigmatic figures in the post-war Conservative Party, whose idiosyncratic ideas were expressed in a substantial tract published before the General Election of 1970 (Maude 1969; Garnett and Hickson 2009). In a later article, previewing the 1966 Conservative conference, he made his position more explicit, arguing that his party was in danger of falling between two stools—alienating older voters by ‘carrying the politics of consensus to a point at which they become indistinguishable from their opponents’, but failing to enthuse younger voters. Making the fatal political mistake of thinking way ahead of most of his contemporaries, Maude was working towards the idea that material ‘satisfaction’ was (or should be) far less important than the quality of one’s life (Maude 1966c). Not surprisingly, given his eclectic ideas, Maude was anxious to deny that he was calling for a shift of party policy to the ‘right’—a term which he strongly disliked—and he bemoaned the

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prospect that ‘the rational voice of genuine disquiet may well be drowned in the dreary old shouts for capital and corporal punishment’ (Maude 1966c). In effect, Maude was arguing that Heath had drawn the wrong lessons in the art of opposition from the experience of 1945–1951. In the wake of their landslide parliamentary defeat, Conservatives at all levels had to accept that the electorate had taught them a lesson and that they should reach some kind of accommodation with the Attlee settlement if they wanted to return to power (Hoffman 1964). By contrast, the General Election of 1964 had left the Wilson administration in a precarious parliamentary position. Far from preparing for a long haul back into office, the Conservatives should be straining every sinew to make life uncomfortable for a government whose tenure was likely to prove temporary (Caines 2017: 25–56). Thus, Maude was suggesting a two-pronged approach to opposition: parliamentary wrecking-tactics, combined with a philosophical rethink. The problem for Heath was that he had little taste for either elements of this strategy. Apart from his general satisfaction with the policies and approach of the Macmillan era, he seemed to dislike the sort of parliamentary firebrands who would be required for a guerrilla-style resistance to the Wilson government. Thus, for example, on becoming their new party leader, he had dropped from his shadow team John Boyd-Carpenter, whose ever-present thirst for parliamentary combat had earned him the nickname ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ (Aitken 2014: 98). In this respect, and in others, Heath based his strategy on the assumption that voters would be much more impressed by rational discussion rather than pugilistic gestures or ideological soul-searching. Progress in Opposition Two barometers of progress in opposition that can be identified relate to changes in the public face and the public policy platform of the Conservatives (Bale 2012: 103–107, 124–129). Heath’s clear preference was for serious-minded politicians characteristic of the left-leaning Bow Group. His real mission, as the difficult period of opposition unfolded, was to avoid the Conservative Party becoming ‘toxified’ by shifting too far to the right. As such, he was particularly sensitive to attempts that were being initiated to deselect moderate Conservative parliamentarians such as Nigel Fisher, Terence Higgins and Edward Boyle (Rhodes James 1972:

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213). His desire to place the Conservatives on a centrist course would have been much easier if the right-wing challenge had been launched by someone other than Powell, who had the uncanny ability to give the appearance of putting principle above personal interest while maintaining a steely eye on self-advancement (see Heffer 1999). Despite his deep dislike of Powell and his ideas, Heath could not ignore him completely. Prior to his modification of their position on immigration after ‘Rivers of Blood’, Heath had delivered a speech at Carshalton in July 1967 on another favoured Powellite theme—prices and incomes policy. Powell himself was pleased to learn that Heath had condemned a compulsory approach on this subject as ‘not only impracticable, but unfair, undesirable and an unjustifiable infringement on the freedom of the individual’ (Heath 1967). A similar language found its way into their manifesto for the General Election of 1970, despite the fact that both Heath and his Shadow Chancellor, Iain Macleod, were agnostic on the issue. Such episodes showed that Heath could not insulate his policy review from events in the outside world. Nevertheless, he persevered in the view that the most effective form of opposition is to forge his team into a government-­in-waiting (Caines 2017: 71–94). This strategy culminated in the holding of a gathering of front-benchers at the Selsdon Park Hotel, Croydon, at the end of January 1970, purportedly to put the finishing touches to the long process of policy formulation. Instead, as the minutes of the meeting reveal, the discussions merely uncovered the extent of the work which remained to be done. As a result, it was difficult to come up with any sound bites for the media, which had been encouraged to think that the closing press conference would be like a de-briefing after a Cabinet meeting. So, they came up with some suitably tough remarks about law and order (Gilmour and Garnett 1998: 242). This publicity stunt seemed to worry Wilson and less than a week later, he coined the phrase ‘Selsdon Man’ to characterise the Conservatives, alleging that they were driven by ‘an atavistic desire to reverse the course of twenty-five years of social revolution. What they are planning is a wanton, calculated and deliberate return to greater inequality’ (Wilson 1971: 954). However, Wilson had been alerting wavering Conservatives of all kinds to the heartening possibility that their party might have come up with something ‘calculated and deliberate’, as Campbell concludes: ‘Selsdon Man’ was a brilliant phrase, but it rebounded on Wilson, first because it lent the opposition’s earnest catalogue of humdrum policies pre-

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cisely the cloak of philosophic unity and political impact that they had hitherto lacked, and second because it turned out that the electorate was at least as much attracted as repelled by them. At a stroke Wilson had succeeded, as Heath and all his advisors had consistently failed to do, in sharpening the Tories’ image and opening up the appearance of a clear political choice between Labour and Conservative. (Campbell 1993: 265)

That their policy formulation process exposed gaps in their thinking carries with it a certain contradiction. That is because the Heath opposition era is often cited as an example of an opposition frontbench and leader of the opposition who was better prepared for entering government than others (Heppell et al. 2015: 13–14). For those who have argued that Heath proved to be no better, and perhaps even as worse as prime minister,3 then the standard response for Heathite defenders has been to argue that he successfully negotiated British entry into the European Community (Lord 1993). However, that is scarcely counted as an achievement in the eyes of those who emerged as Conservatives Eurosceptics in the decades that would follow—thus showing the failure of Heath to sell the pro-­ Europeanist cause within his own party (Crowson 2007: 105–126). This critique is dependent ideologically upon where people stand on the European question. An alternative way of viewing Heath with regard to the European question is to see it through lens of an objective confirmed in opposition and delivered in government (Kavanagh 1996). Having made this his personal priority, he would, once in office, oversee the process with considerable skill (see Chap. 10), even if Holmes argues that the real credit for the parliamentary passage of the European Communities Act belonged to pro-European rebels, rather than Heath (Holmes 1997: xviii). In retrospect, it is possible that studies of Heath in opposition have overlooked the European issue because they knew (or thought they knew) that this story had ended happily for him, so the more interesting task was to identify the roots of his multiple failures in government (e.g., see Lindsay and Harrington 1974: 236–262). The other reason why relatively little attention has been paid to the development of Conservative policy towards Europe in these years is that the policy didn’t really develop at all 3  Amongst performance-based rankings of post-war prime ministers, Heath was ranked ninth out of 12 amongst British prime ministers between 1945 and 2010 (Theakston and Gill 2011).

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between 1965 and 1970, and the relevant policy group was a desultory affair. However, directing more attention towards this issue does cast a rather different light on the policy process as a whole. After all, Heath saw membership of the European Community as the cornerstone of his strategy for Britain’s revival from post-war lethargy (Young 1998: 214–256). The European issue would provide opportunities for Heath to show both his abilities and his shortcomings. In May 1967, he ensured that the parliamentary Conservative Party was relatively united in backing the Wilson government in their renewed bid for entry into the European Community. Only 21 Conservatives, as compared to 34 Labour parliamentarians, voted against; the list of Conservatives who supported the government included the pre-Damascene Powell (Baker et al. 1999: 78). More impressive than these bare figures was to be Heath’s speech, in which he landed a few gentle jibes on Wilson but made it clear that he was not prepared to play politics with such an important issue (HC Deb, Vol. 746, Col. 310–332; 2 May 1967). If some of his contemporaries, and successors, who decided to take sides on the European question had followed his example, Britain might have made a greater success of its membership, whether or not this proved to be short-lived (George 1990; Gowland and Turner 1999). Nevertheless, while more tribal Conservatives might have excused the occasional spasm of constructive opposition, they must have found it galling that Heath seemed to make his most effective debating points against Wilson in a speech which supported government policy.4 The debate on Wilson’s application came a few months after three lectures on Britain’s place in Europe and the world, which Heath delivered in March 1967. Once again, these highlighted Heath’s ability to transcend his image as a stickler for petty details, and to display an enviable grasp of global developments. He accused early opponents of European Community membership of ‘thinking of Britain’s position in terms of the 1920s and 1930s, indeed in terms of our history during the period of development of the nation state’ and implied that the time was ripe for a rethinking of the concept of national ‘sovereignty’, which would include the acceptance of interdependency and the concept of ‘pooled’ sovereignty (speech at Harvard cited in Heath 1970). This was a very plausible argument. But it was typical of Heath that it should be set out in such clear and 4  Possibly this precedent was in the minds of Conservative strategists when they decided, mistakenly, to oppose In Place of Strife (see Dorey 2019), whose proposals they supported no less than Wilson’s strategy on seeking membership of the European Community.

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dispassionate terms before an academic audience rather than a gathering of voters hoping to be convinced—and not at Oxford or Cambridge, but at Harvard, where he was even less likely to encounter disapproval for the idea that Britain was now ready to acknowledge global developments since the interwar period. Furthermore, in this setting, Heath felt free to assure his listeners that opinion in Britain has changed. The understanding of Britain’s comparative power in the modern world is more realistic … there can be no doubt that the belief in interdependence, so skillfully fostered by Mr. Macmillan, and the recognition that Britain can best achieve her purpose in the modern world as a member of a larger grouping has the support today of a majority of British people. (Heath 1970: 19–20)

If he had consciously been trying to explain his lack of success as an opposition leader in a single passage, Heath could hardly have done better. The unmerited tribute to Macmillan, who in truth had tried to smuggle Britain into the European Community without explaining the underlying rationale to the general public, provides us with one clue (on the first application, see Ludlow 1997). Unlike Powell, who was prepared to subject Macmillan’s legacy to clinical (if coded) criticism, Heath continued to idolise his former mentor. More seriously, Heath showed a willingness to detect signs of modernised thinking among British voters even when empirical evidence was lacking. Whatever the reasons for the temporary rise in support for EEC membership leading up to Wilson’s 1967 application, it is highly doubtful that they had much to do with a new appreciation of Britain’s place in the world. The idea that Britain should throw off the illusions of the 1920s and 1930s would have caused consternation and alarm among most of the voters who supported ‘Brexit’ in 2016, let alone the British public of 1967. The pro-market mood turned sour after de Gaulle’s second veto; according to one poll in February 1970, just 18% of voters favoured entry, compared to 72% against (Zakheim 1972: 233). When he announced his conversion to Euroscepticism in 1969, Enoch Powell must have been relieved to discover that on this issue, like so many others, he was in tune with national opinion. This overestimation of the acumen of the average British voter explains why Heath could remain confident that the tide of opinion would turn his way, in respect of Europe and of domestic policy. However, it does not take a pronounced streak of cynicism to apply to Heath the familiar

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argument that businessmen rarely fail if they make a more realistic assessment of public intelligence. Heath duly went out of business in 1974; the wonder, and the cruelty, lies in the fleeting moments when he was allowed to dream that his approach could ever prosper.

Conclusion The record of Heath as Leader of the Opposition between 1965 and 1970 is a fascinating case study in the influence of historical hindsight under the influence of events (Garnett 2005, 2012). After the unexpected General Election victory in 1970, it was natural for scholars to seek out the secret of his success, and equally predictable that they would exaggerate the importance of his policy review. This tendency survived his fall from office and his replacement by Thatcher. On this version of revisionism, Heath had won in 1970 because he had been persuaded to present the electorate with a consensus-busting programme based on the Selsdon Park conference, where he had adopted at least some elements of the Powellite prospectus. On the influence of Powell on the General Election of 1970, academics have argued that the Conservatives might have benefitted from their tougher approach on immigration policy: it was estimated that their lead on immigration equated to a swing of 1.3% or 1.5%, from Labour to Conservatives (see Studlar 1978; Miller 1980). However, according to his critics, once in office, Heath betrayed the sacred principles of Selsdon Park and received his well-deserved comeuppance; the only shame was that the rest of the country was made to suffer as a result of his inadequacies (Bruce-Gardyne 1974; Holmes 1982, 1997; see also Thatcher 1995). This Thatcherite revisionism only deserves serious notice because it has retained its currency, partly because so many Conservatives accepted it as the truth during the triumphalist 1980s. It was answered very effectively by John Campbell, in his magnificent unauthorised biography of Heath, in which he exposed the flaws of Selsdon Man perspective (Campbell 1993: 265–267). Nevertheless, Campbell’s account bore some imprint of Thatcherite revisionism in the extent to which it accused Heath himself, rather than media commentators and maverick shadow ministers like Keith Joseph, of moving party policy to the right at the time of Selsdon Park, and at least tacitly accepting the idea that Heath performed an ideological U-turn once in office (Hennessy 2000: 356).

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Many loyalist ministers from the Heath era dispute the accusation of betrayal and avoid the rhetoric of U-turn, as does Heath himself—Heath 1998; see, for example, Pym 1985; Prior 1986; Walker 1991. The defence case that they try to present on behalf of Heath suggests that he deserves credit for his refusal to surrender to the forces of right-wing populism, which was gaining momentum within British Conservatism within the mid- to late 1960s. Prior concludes that, in this ideological squabble, Heath was actually ‘struggling to retain control’ throughout the whole of his time as Leader of the Opposition between 1965 and 1970 (Prior 1986: 55). Although Heath was ultimately successful in his primary statecraft objective for the Conservatives—regaining power—contemporary accounts of his conduct as Leader of the Opposition were not particularly positive (Alexander and Watkins 1970). Of his limitations, Lindsay and Harrington argued that: The main function of an Opposition is to discredit the Government and to win the next election. This requires political flair, showmanship and an eye to the main chance. Heath, for all his qualities, was not this kind of man. Consequently, his leadership of the Opposition was not a happy time for him. (Lindsay and Harrington 1974: 250)

Bibliography Archives Conservative Party Archives, Bodleian Library., University of Oxford.

Published Primary Sources House of Commons Parliamentary Debates. (HC Deb).

Speeches Heath, E. (1967). Speech at Carshalton, Conservative Central Office (CCO). London, July 8. Powell, E. (1968). Rivers of Blood speech. Birmingham, April 20.

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Newspapers

and

Periodicals

Maude, A. (1966a). Winter of Tory Discontent. The Spectator, January 14. Maude, A. (1966b). A Reply to My Critics. The Spectator, January 28. Maude, A. (1966c). The Road to Blackpool … and After’. The Spectator, October 7.

Memoirs

and

Diaries

Benn, T. (1987). Out of the Wilderness. London: Hutchinson. Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Prior, J. (1986). A Balance of Power. London: Hamish Hamilton. Pym, F. (1985). The Politics of Consent. London: Hamish Hamilton. Thatcher, M. (1995). The Path to Power. London: Harper Collins. Walker, P. (1991). Staying Power. London: Bloomsbury. Whitelaw, W. (1991). The Whitelaw Memoirs. London: Aurum. Wilson, H. (1971). The Labour Government 1964–1970: A Personal Record. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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Aitken, J. (2014). Margaret Thatcher Power and Personality. London: Bloomsbury. Alexander, A., & Watkins, A. (1970). The Making of the Prime Minister 1970. London: Macdonald Unit. Baker, D., Gamble, A., Ludlam, S., & Seawright, D. (1999). Backbenchers with Attitude: A Seismic Study of the Conservative Party and Dissent on Europe. In S. Bowler, D. M. Farrell, & R. S. Katz (Eds.), Party Discipline and Parliamentary Government. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Bale, T. (1999). Dynamics of a Non-decision: The Failure to Devalue the Pound, 1964–7. Twentieth Century British History, 10(2), 192–217. Bale, T. (2010). The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bale, T. (2012). The Conservative Party since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ball, S. (2005). Factors in Opposition Performance: The Conservative Experience Since 1867. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), Recovering Power: The Conservatives in Opposition Since 1867. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Boxer, A. (1996). The Conservative Governments, 1951–1964. London: Longman. Bruce-Gardyne, J. (1974). Whatever Happened to the Quiet Revolution? London: Charles Knight. Butler, D., & King, A. (1966). The British General Election of 1966. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Pinto-Duschinsky, M. (1971). The British General Election of 1970. London: Macmillan.

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Caines, E. (2017). Heath and Thatcher in Opposition. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Cairncross, A., & Eichengreen, B. (1983). Sterling in Decline: The Devaluations of 1931, 1949, and 1967. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Pimlico. Coggins, R. (2006). Wilson and Rhodesia: UDI and British Policy Towards Africa. Contemporary British History, 20(3), 363–381. Contemporary Record. (1990). Symposium on Conservative Party Policy Making 1965–1970. Crines, A., Heppell, T., & Hill, M. (2016). Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” Speech: A Rhetorical Political Analysis. British Politics, 11(1), 72–94. Crowson, N. (2007). The Conservative Party and European Integration Since 1945: At the Heart of Europe. Abington: Routledge. Deakin, N., & Bourne, J. (1970). Powell, and the Minorities and the 1970 Election. Political Quarterly, 44(4), 399–415. Dean, D. (2000). The Race Relations Policy of the First Wilson Government. Twentieth Century British History, 11(3), 259–283. Denham, A., & Garnett, M. (2001). Keith Joseph: A Life. Chesham: Acumen. Denham, A., & O’Hara, K. (2007). The Three Mantras: Modernisation and the Conservative Party. British Politics, 2(2), 167–190. Dommett, K. (2015). The Theory and Practice of Party Modernisation: The Conservative Party Under David Cameron, 2005–2015. British Politics, 10(2), 249–266. Dorey, P. (2019). Comrades in Conflict: Labour, the Trade Unions and 1969’s ‘In Place of Strife’. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Dutton, D. (1997). British Politics Since 1945: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Consensus. London: Blackwell. Findley, R. (2001). The Conservative Party and Defeat: The Significance of Resale Price Maintenance and the General Election of 1964. Twentieth Century British History, 12(3), 327–353. Gamble, A. (1974). The Conservative Nation. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Garnett, M. (2005). Planning for Power. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), Recovering Power: The Conservatives in Opposition Since 1867. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Garnett, M. (2012). Edward Heath 1965–70 and 1974–5. In T. Heppell (Ed.), Leaders of the Opposition: From Churchill to Cameron. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Garnett, M. (2015). Edward Heath. In C. Clarke, T. James, T. Bale, & P. Diamond (Eds.), British Conservative Leaders. London: Biteback. Garnett, M., & Hickson, K. (2009). Conservative Thinkers: The Key Contributors to the Political Thought of the Modern Conservative Party. Manchester: Manchester University Press. George, S. (1990). An Awkward Partner: Britain and the European Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilmour, I., & Garnett, M. (1998). Whatever Happened to the Tories? The Conservatives Since 1945. London: Fourth Estate.

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Gowland, D., & Turner, A. (1999). Reluctant Europeans: Britain and European Integration. London: Longman. Heath, E. (1970). Old World, New Horizons: Britain, the Common Market and the Atlantic Alliance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hennessy, P. (2000). The Prime Minister: The Office and its holders Since 1945. London: Penguin. Heppell, T., Seawright, D., & Theakston, K. (2015). What Makes for an Effective Leader of the Opposition. London: Centre for Opposition Studies. Heffer, S. (1999). Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell. London: Orion. Hickson, K. (2018). Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech: Fifty Years on. Political Quarterly, 89(3), 352–357. Hoffman, J. D. (1964). The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1945–1951. London: Macgibbon and Kee. Holmes, M. (1982). Political Pressure and Economic Policy: British Government 1970–1974. London: Butterworth. Holmes, M. (1997). The Failure of the Heath Government. London: Macmillan. Kandiah, M. (1995). The Conservative Party and the 1945 General Election. Contemporary Record, 9(1), 22–47. Kavanagh, D. (1996). 1970–1974. In A.  Seldon (Ed.), How Tory Governments Fall: The Tory Party in Power Since 1783. London: Longman. Kavanagh, D. (2005). The Making of Thatcherism 1974–1979. In S.  Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), Recovering Power: The Conservatives in Opposition Since 1867. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kavanagh, D., & Morris, P. (1994). Consensus Politics from Attlee to Major. Oxford: Blackwell. King, A., & Wybrow, R. (2001). British Political Opinion 1937–2000: The Gallup Polls. London: Politicos. Lindsay, T., & Harrington, M. (1974). The Conservative Party 1918–1970. London: Macmillan. Lord, C. (1993). British Entry to the European Community Under the Heath Government, 1970–74. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Ludlow, P. (1997). Dealing with Britain: The Six and the First UK Application to the EEC. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McKenzie, R. (1968). Angels in Marble: Working-Class Conservatives in Urban England. London: Heinemann. McKie, D. (1973). By Elections in the Wilson Government. In C.  Cook & J. Ramsden (Eds.), By-Elections in British Politics. London: Macmillan. Maude, A. (1969). The Common Problem. London: Constable. Miller, W. (1980). What Was the Profit in Following the Crowd? British Journal of Political Science, 10(1), 22–38. O’Hara, G. (2006). “Dynamic, Exciting, Thrilling Change”: The Wilson Government’s Economic Policies, 1964–70. Contemporary British History, 20(3), 383–402.

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Parr, H. (2006). Britain’s Policy Towards the European Community, 1964–1967 Harold Wilson and Britain’s World Role. Abington: Routledge. Pimlott, B. (1992). Harold Wilson. London: Harper Collins. Ramsden, J. (1980). The Making of Conservative Party Policy: The Conservative Research Department Since 1929. London: Longman. Ramsden, J. (1987). A Party for Owners Or a Party for Earners? How Far Did the British Conservative Party Really Change After 1945? Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 37, 49–63. Ramsden, J. (1996). The Winds of Change: Macmillan to Heath, 1957–1975. London: Longman. Rhodes James, R. (1972). Ambitions and Realities: British Politics 1964–1970. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Roth, A. (1971). Heath and the Heathman. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Schoen, D. E. (1977). Enoch Powell and the Powellites. London: Macmillan. Seawright, D. (2010). The British Conservative Party and One Nation Politics. London: Continuum. Smith, M. (1994). Understanding the Politics of Catch-up: The Modernization of the Labour Party. Political Studies, 42(4), 708–715. Stuart, M. (2002). A Party in Three Pieces: The Conservative Split Over Rhodesian Oil Sanctions. Contemporary British History, 16(1), 51–88. Studlar, D. (1974). British Public Opinion, Colour Issues and Enoch Powell: A Longitudinal Analysis. British Journal of Political Science, 4(3), 371–381. Studlar, D. (1978). Policy Voting in Britain: The Coloured Immigration Issue in the 1964, 1966, and 1970 General Elections. American Political Science Review, 72(1), 46–64. Theakston, K., & Gill, M. (2011). The Post-war Premiership League. Political Quarterly, 82(1), 67–80. Willetts, D. (2005). New Conservatism 1945–1951. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), Recovering Power: The Conservatives in Opposition Since 1867. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Wring, D. (2005). The Politics of Marketing the Labour Party. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Young, H. (1998). This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair. London: Macmillan. Zakheim, D.  S. (1972). Britain and the EEC  - Opinion Poll Data 1970–72. Journal of Common Market Studies, 11(3), 191–233. Ziegler, P. (2010). Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography. London: Harper Press.

CHAPTER 4

The 1970 General Election Martin Farr

Arranging In the prelapsarian spring of 1968, one of the authoritative five main polling companies reported that ‘the Government has broken all records for unpopularity’, while the Conservative party had achieved, at 23.4%, the largest lead ever recorded.1 By the autumn, the Conservatives had settled on their campaign strategy, one made possible by a party machine much larger and better funded than that of the government: there were over 400 salaried professional agents, halls were already booked and printing presses

1  NOP (National Opinion Polls) Bulletin, May 1968, [1]; NOP Bulletin, April 1968, [1]. Abbreviations used in references: CPA, Conservative Party Archives, Bodleian Library, Oxford; LPA, Labour Party Archives, People’s History Museum (PHM), Manchester; LPP, Liberal Party Papers, British Library of Political and Economic Science (BLPES), London; CAC, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge; TNA, The National Archives, London; GNMA, Guardian News and Media Archive, London; MS Wilson, Harold Wilson papers, Bodleian Library; Jeremy Thorpe papers, British Library, London. Edward Heath’s papers at the Bodleian were not open for consultation.

M. Farr (*) Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_4

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prepared.2 An unexpected boost for the government came with the Balance of Payments moving into surplus, a boon not least as it was then effectively the principal criterion for judging the state of the economy. It followed that Labour had a greater feeling of confidence than at any time since before devaluation. A general election had to be held by April 1971, but decimalisation would by then just have been introduced, and the inflationary consequences of the abandonment of the income policy might well be felt. The Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Sir Michael Fraser thought that a spring 1970 election possible because ‘they are on a short term recovery but not necessarily a long term one’.3 Whenever the election came, his party’s task was to persuade one million Labour voters not to vote and half that many to switch: those ‘rarely educated beyond fifteen, heavy viewers of TV, and readers of The Mirror, The People, and The News of the World, and politically illiterate’.4 Labour’s Campaign Committee had only been instituted in July 1969, and Harold Wilson placed himself on it in August.5 It was at the apex of a more shoestring affair: only 128 constituencies had full-time organisers as election agents.6 Meeting fortnightly in the prime minister’s room at the House of Commons, the Committee made much of the importance of television, and of the targeting of younger women. The new voters, those in their ‘late teens’, were also the quarry of the Conservatives—with Tomorrow—Newspaper of the 70’s—and Edward Heath, with his thoughts of a fashion magazine on their future.7 A memorandum on ‘the Young Voter’—‘Getting Through’—was sent to all Conservative candidates (‘AVOID … Trying to be “with it” (especially when one is “without it”)’).8 It was a group of middle-aged men and one woman, who met at a hotel in Croydon in January 1970, to draw together the Conservative manifesto. The party commissioned research into public reaction to the Selsdon 2  Brendan Sewill, Conservative Research Department (CRD) Report on the 1970 General Election, 17 July 1970, 1, CPA, CRD 3/9/95; Minutes of a General Election Meeting, 6 November 1969, Michael Wolff papers, CAC, WLFF 3/5/12. 3  Sir Michael Fraser to Heath, 13 October 1969, CRD 3/9/91. 4  James Douglas to Sir Michael Fraser [copy], 30 May 1970, Wolff papers, WLFF 3/5/6. 5  Harry Nicholas to NEC, 1 August 1969, Campaign Committee, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 6  General Election 1970, Report by the General Secretary, n.d., LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 7  Edward Heath, ‘Britain in the Seventies’, Queen, 17 September 1969, 53-5. 8  Richard Sharples to all candidates, May 1970, Viscount Hailsham papers, CAC, HLSM 2/43/10/4.

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Park conference, and policy predominated in voters’ minds; two in particular, and as intended: lower taxes and stronger law and order.9 The leader’s election tour was finalised in February, with highly detailed, printed, day-by-day itineraries.10 Fraser privately expressed his hostility towards ‘determinists’ who felt that victory was a matter of course.11 Almost as if having invited contradiction, two days later, at the Bridgewater by-election, on 12 March, the first time those in their late teens could vote, there was an 8.6% swing to the Conservatives, which translated to a general election would mean a Commons majority for Heath of 150. April brought ‘Attacking to Win’, Labour’s new publicity campaign, overseen by its principal advertising professional David Kingsley, which included ‘Yesterday’s Men (They failed before!)’ whereby six of the middle-­aged men were rendered in plasticine for plastering on hoardings for two, pre-campaign, weeks.12 April also brought the 20th iteration of the Conservatives’ Campaign Guide, while the Conservative Steering Committee, chaired by Heath, ‘agreed that the autumn still seemed the most likely date’ for an election and that the summer ‘must be filled with activity’.13 A report to Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) warned that an early election ‘will be very much a “Do it Yourself campaign”’, and only a later one would allow the party’s full plans to materialise.14 Even in the event that ‘there is an election in October’, the Labour’s Voluntary Publicity Group warned, ‘we have only six months left of our campaign’.15 The widespread expectation remained for October.16 The Conservatives were spending heavily on newspaper advertising, particularly in Labour-leaning national tabloids, which contrasted with Labour’s

 Opinion Research Centre (ORC), A Snap Survey of Reactions to The Weekend Conference at the Selsdon Park Hotel, 2 February 1970, CRD 3/9/93. 10  Minutes of a General Election Meeting, 16 February 1970, CRA, CCO 500/24/288; CCO 500/24/289. 11  Sir Michael Fraser, quoted by Hugo Young, 10 March 1970, Conversations 1969-1976, Hugo Young papers, GNMA, HJSY 2/2. 12  A document prepared for the Voluntary Publicity Group, 14 April 1970, MS Wilson. c. 1401. The Current Publicity Campaign, 17 May 1970, Peter Shore papers, WHL, Shore 8/35. 13  Steering Committee Minutes, 13 April 1970, Wolff papers, WLFF 3/2/83. 14  Progress Report on the Pre-General Election Campaign, 20 May 1970, LPA, NEC Minutes & Papers, December 1969-July 1970. 15  Voluntary Publicity Group, 14 April 1970, MS Wilson. c. 1401. 16  Financial Times, 23 April 1970, 1, 36; Guardian, 23 April 1970, 1; Alastair Burnet to Denis Healey [copy], 17 February 1970, MS Wilson c. 1070. 9

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budget-restricted spend in the cheaper provincial press.17 The Liberal Research Department was charged with the third party’s preparation, something ‘easier said than done’, its Director thought, in a party that ‘seems often to regard a General Election as secondary to the pastime of setting up more committees, [or] revising the Constitution’.18 The May local elections saw a swing of 10–15% to Labour compared with 1969 which translated to a general election would mean a Commons majority for Wilson of 50. Spring betokened renewal and rebirth, even for George Wigg, who told Wilson that with economic travails apparently behind them, it was ‘blossom time’ for Labour’.19 Their sap rising, parliamentary colleagues, too, were free with advice to their leader. Hugh Jenkins advised that ‘A bird in the hand in June is worth two in the bush in October’.20 Barnett Janner advised not going in October, owing to the number of Jewish Holydays.21 Brian Walden advised delay: the party machine needed more time, and the World Cup would distract ‘the hesitant, somewhat indifferent last 5% of voters who may poll’.22 Eric Moonman advised that ‘too long a gap before the General Election may well dissipate this present feeling of confidence’.23 That present feeling of confidence was buoyed by the Balance of Payments figures, and the necessarily time-limited electoral asset of the generous wage increases the government had been affording working-­ class voters. The holiday season would begin in June with 650,000 more Conservative than Labour voters away; newly moneyed workers would still be at home, but not for long: Wakes weeks in 17 northern towns would begin on 25 June, with 16 on 2 July, 31 on 9 July and 26 on 16 July.24 Summer violence around the South Africa cricket tour and in Northern Ireland was expected. There were millions of new, young, and Labour-inclined voters. ‘Immigrant groups’ would be voting in large scale 17   David Kingsley, Labour Party Voluntary Publicity Group, Report to Campaign Committee, 17 November 1969, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box; Allocation of Press advertising, 14 April 1970, MS Wilson c. 1401. 18  Ron Arnold, Research Department, General Election 1970, 18 June 1970, LPP, GE, 9/13/90. 19  George Wigg to Wilson, 2 April 1970, TNA, PREM 13/3423. 20  Undated, unsigned, note, MS. Wilson c. 1401. 21  Barnett Janner to Wilson, 17 April 1970, MS Wilson, c. 1401. 22  Brian Walden to ‘Bob’, 23 April 1970, MS. Wilson c. 1401. 23  Eric Moonman to Wilson, 11 May 1970, MS Wilson c. 1535/138. 24  Sunday Times, 26 April 1970, 2; Election memorandum, 11 May 1970, TNA PREM 13/3173.

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for the first time. Polling stations would be open an hour later until 22.00 in potentially fine weather on virtually the longest day of the year, thereby encouraging traditionally relatively low-polling groups, such as working-class voters (as the Conservatives had noted25). Constituency boundaries had been allowed advantageously to be out of date. With pollsters uniformly proclaiming a Labour win, John Harris, special assistant to Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins, urged 11 June, in case the 15 June trade figures were bad, but Fred Peart, leader of the House of Commons, said he needed another week to process parliamentary business; on 13 April Wilson decided.26 On 17 May Wilson confided, to a ‘council of war’—of the NEC and Cabinet—at 10 Downing Street where Labour’s ‘Strategy for the Seventies’ was scrutinised.27 The following day, the prime minister asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament, and sent identical letters to Edward Heath and Jeremy Thorpe, informing them that the election would be on 18 June.28 One day after he had told Richard Nixon.29 For all the sense of the country having been in pre-election ‘limbo’, the announcement still surprised.30 ‘Announced fairly suddenly (fortunately)’, Tony Crosland diarised, ‘so no time for elaborate pre-planning’.31 ‘This election has come earlier than many of you expected’, Liberal candidates and agents were told. ‘Some are still recovering from hard-fought local elections’.32 Perhaps for this reason, and for all the auguries, there remained uncertainty. Andrew Roth concluded his parliamentary survey ‘All in all, this is one of the elections any sensible analyst would like to skip’.33 Without further comment, some on the Labour left noted that election day was also the anniversary of Waterloo.34 25  Conservative and Unionist Central Office, General Election Memorandum No. 12, 16 June 1970, 1. 26  Joe Haines, Glimmers of Twilight (London, 2004), 26; Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (London, 1991), 297; Joe Haines to David Butler [copy], 6 November 1970, MS Wilson c. 1070. 27  Harry Nicholas to NEC Cabinet members, 14 May 1970, Shore Papers WHL, Shore 8/35. 28  Wilson to Heath, 18 May 1970, [copy]; Wilson to Thorpe, 18 May 1970, Thorpe Papers, ADD MS 89073/3/101. 29  Wilson to Richard Nixon, n.d. [17 May 1970], [copy] TNA PREM 13/3173. 30  Sunday Times, 17 May 1970, 12. 31  Tony Crosland, ‘1970 Election’, Crosland papers, WHL, CROS 7/7/18. 32  General Election Bulletin No. 1, 20 May 1970, LPP, GE 9/13/97. 33  Andrew Roth, General Election Forecast, 1970 Edition (London, 1970), 8. 34  Denis Cobell, Socialist Leader, 30 May 1970, 3.

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The timing of the election was at one with Heath’s central critique, and with which he introduced the Conservative manifesto: Wilson’s was ‘a cheap and trivial style of government’.35 Further, it was the Conservative programme which was published first, quite an achievement, its author thought, ‘especially as our Manifesto contained substantial and detailed policy proposals and their’s did not; and as our’s was printed and their’s was only duplicated’.36 A Better Tomorrow promised resolute leadership, repudiated statutory income policy and further government intervention in the industry and the economy, and committed to controlling inflation and immigration. Ministers required to prepare ‘a political critique and analysis’ of A Better Tomorrow in their fields found it ‘a catalogue of bromides and generalities’ both ‘trivial and unworthy’.37 The menace of Selsdon Man—Wilson’s aborigine of Croydon who had ‘escaped from the jungle and roams the market-place, appealing to people’s worst instincts and prejudices’38—dissuaded the Conservatives from adopting more dynamic manifesto and instead to stress ‘the integrity of government’.39 Notwithstanding such circumspection, as Douglas Hurd, Heath’s private secretary, put it, ‘There runs through it a note of genuine puritan protest’.40 Labour’s manifesto was an altogether more cavalier affair. Two days before it was adopted, the Defence Secretary suggested ‘there ought somewhere to be emphasis on increasing the growth rate of the economy’.41 Wilson waived the constitutional provision for a meeting with the parliamentary party, and the NEC alone considered it; the document was still being produced, effectively as a part work, and ferried, in a pantomime of taxis and elevators, to a roomful of increasingly impatient journalists awaiting its launch at Transport House.42 That launch revealed that Labour was short only of resources. ‘This will be, for us, the election of long slogans!’ The Voluntary Publicity Group had proposed ‘an achievements plus future  A Better Tomorrow: the Conservative programme for the next 5 years, 1970, 1.  Sewill, CRD Report, 17 July 1970, 1, CRD 3/9/95. 37  Michael Stewart to Peter Shore, [copy], 8 June 1970; Denis Healey to Shore, 4 June 1970 [copy], TNA PREM 13/3116. 38  Labour Party, ‘Today’, 17 June 1970, 6. 39  Fraser to Heath, 25 May 1970 [copy], CRD 3/9/79; Press Conference to Launch Conservative Manifesto, 26 May 1970, CCO 4/10/127. 40  Hurd, An End to Promises (London, 1979), 14. 41   Denis Healey to Harry Nicholas, n.d. [25 May 1970], LPA, ‘General Election 1970’/‘Healey’. 42  Special Meeting of the National Executive Committee, 27 May 1970, LPA, NEC Minutes & Papers, December 1969-July 1970; Times, 28 May 1970, 10. 35 36

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benefits idea: “NOW BRITAIN’S STRONG, LET’S MAKE IT GREAT TO LIVE IN”—VOTE LABOUR’, a mouthful that became the manifesto title. Inelegant as that was, it was still not What a Life! Show ‘em You care!, the Liberal programme, so titled, the party explained, as to be ‘understandable and relevant’.43 After the adverse reaction to Attacking to Win, Labour shifted to the ‘personal, human, natural’.44 ‘When it comes down to it, aren’t Labour’s ideals yours as well?’ was only marginally shorter, empathetically asked of voters by ‘Labour’s Team’ whose beatific countenances were in stark contrast to those of the inert Yesterday’s Men.45 Tony Benn had suggested to Wilson having the Cabinet photographed in session as part of the pre-­ election campaign—‘it would re-inforce the idea that we are a team’; the idea developed into an image of Wilson standing in front of a group of middle-aged men and one woman arrayed around a vast oval table in a sepulchral space.46 Labour’s ideals were bolstered by the improbable duo of Humphry Berkeley and Selsdon Man, the former, a former Tory MP now very publicly voting Labour, and the latter seen as Wilson’s ‘missing link’ in his hopes of re-election.47 Implicitly highlighting the reason for that special feeling of confidence, 450,000 ‘when it comes down it’ leaflets—more than twice as many as for any other minister—were printed of a Roy Jenkins solicitously, if improbably, standing outside a factory.48 Co-opted celebrities ran the gamut from Jackie Charlton to Sybil Thorndike, only one of whom could influence the next stage: ‘we are experimenting with substituting for “ideals” words such as “aims” or “goals” (according to our performance in the World Cup) to harden the quotation later on’.49 Irrespective of the team, a general view was that on voting day ‘the decisive issue will be Harold Wilson’.50 The prime minister was the biggest  News from the Liberal Party, 28 May 1970, LPP 9/13/177.  Campaign, 15 May 1970, 2; a document prepared for the Voluntary Publicity Group, 14 April 1970, MS Wilson. c. 1401. 45  Voluntary Publicity Group, Election Slogan, 17 May 1970, General Secretary’s File, Book 1, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 46  Benn to Wilson, 16 August 1969, MS. Wilson c. 1401; Times, 19 September 1969, 3. 47  Humphry Berkeley, Guardian, 15 May 1970, 14; Economist, 13 June 1970, 10. 48  With the exception of Ted Short. Literature Issued during the 1970 General Election, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 49  Percy Clark, ‘The Current Publicity Campaign’, 17 May 1970, Cabinet/NEC meeting, Shore papers, 8/35. 50  Economist, 23 May 1970, 13. 43 44

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electoral asset for both parties. (A Tory staffer asked, ‘Why don’t we always say Mr Wilson’s Government, instead of the Labour Government?’51) Labour’s presidential campaign intended to narrow the choice between Wilson and Heath (the Liberal Party’s Operation Poster Plaster, in winnable seats, met the challenge of differentiation: ‘Which twin is the Tory?’52) whose mutual antipathy was evident. Wilson sought to radiate calm, intending Heath thereby to sound strident. ‘One must admire the self-confidence which enables a man…to assert that his main virtue is that his opponent is worse’, the Economist confessed. ‘In the last analysis that is the argument for Mr Heath, too, but he would never have the self-­ confidence to do it’.53 Heath was expected personally to be blamed for his party’s apparently now-inevitable defeat: ‘The Scapegrocer’.54 A man more of government than party, predilections could be laid bare, Hurd privately admitted, ‘in a personal contest for which Ted has no taste and little aptitude’.55 Some shadow ministers worried that Heath as Prime Minister may similarly be ‘inflexible, even imperious’, supplied, Hugo Young predicted, ‘with an endless stream of the highest-class paperwork in the land, he will be able at last to relegate the chores of party politics to their proper station’.56 Chores such as the journalists’ daily facilitated pilgrimage from the Labour press conference in Smith Square to the Liberal press conference near Smith Square (the party having been priced out of Smith Square), to the Conservative press conference in Smith Square. Location provided another third-party squeeze, prompting fear of the Liberals being sidestepped, literally, altogether.57 They were offered a room in No. 34: ‘The fact that we were in “the Square” may be the paramount consideration’.58 Locations, however, had been superseded by communications: theroom in 34 Smith Square ‘proved unsatisfactory for the television people’.59 They were further dissatisfied when, having invited the three  Keith [Britto] to Douglas [Hurd], 7 June [1970], Wolff papers, WLFF 3/5/6.  Bill Pearson to Thorpe, 1 May 1970, Thorpe Papers, ADD MS 89073/3/101. 53  Economist, 23 May 1970, 14. 54  After William Holman Hunt: William Rushton, Private Eye, 22 May 1970, 14. 55  Hurd, quoted by Young, 5 November 1969, Young papers, HJSY 2/2. 56  Hugo Young, Sunday Times, 17 May 1970, 13. 57  Francis Flavius, Tribune, 5 June 1970, 3. 58  [Unclear] to Thorpe, 10 April 1970, Thorpe Papers, ADD MS 89073/3/101. 59  Lord Byers to Anthony Barber, 26 May 1970, quoted in News from the Liberal Party, n.d., LPP 9/13/176. 51 52

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leaders to participate in a new type of programme where voters would question them on air, each summarily refused.60 Politicians and broadcasters met secretly at 12 Downing Street, where the parties declined any involvement in programmes involving audience participation: both means and ends marking what Thames Television’s Jeremy Isaacs described as ‘a mastery of news management’.61 Liberals needed as much publicity as they could get, as Harold Evans acknowledged by proudly informing Jeremy Thorpe that his Sunday Times had assigned a journalist to the Party.62 Despite that present feeling of confidence, there remained the question as to whether the preceding three years would, or could, be forgotten. Neither Heath nor Wilson could point out that devaluation was the cause of an apparently improving economy, because neither had believed in the policy, though Wilson alone was injured by it. Conservative ‘critical seats’ polling had demonstrated economic matters as being overwhelmingly the most important to voters, particularly the cost of living and rising prices.63 For Reginald Maudling, privately, the swing to Labour had a simple explanation: ‘wage inflation’.64 Expectations of the outcome of the election uniformly had been reversed in the space of a few months. The Conservatives were left depending on their voters regarding the election as being more important than would Labour voters, and therefore be more likely to turn out than Labour voters, abetted by much better organisation. The sudden reversal of apparent fate was the greatest challenge to both Wilson and Heath. ‘How they react to it over the next few weeks will not only help to decide the nature of the next government’, the Economist thought, ‘but could also fashion the politics of the next decade’.65

Campaigning For viewers of TV, heavy or not, only one candidate for prime minister could be watched on the BBC discussing the World Cup on Sportsnight, and on ITV singing ‘Cockles and Mussels’ with the cast of Coronation 60  Isaacs to Wilson, 14 May 1970, MS Wilson c. 401; Isaacs to Thorpe, 14 May 1970, Thorpe Papers, ADD MS 89073/3/101. 61  Jeremy Isaacs, Listener, 18 June 1970, 822. 62  Harold Evans to Thorpe, 20 May 1970, Thorpe Papers, ADD MS 89073/3/101. 63  Opinion Research Centre (ORC), A Survey on Critical Seats (Summary), AprilSeptember 1969, CCO 180/11/4/1. 64  Reginald Maudling, quoted by Young, 28 May 1970, Young papers, HJSY 2/2. 65  Economist, 16 May 1970, 13.

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Street at the Sun Television awards.66 Harold Wilson wanted a ‘happy election’.67 Smiling and waving in the sunshine, his regal walkabouts were modelled on those of the Queen on her recent tour of Australia.68 The Conservatives privately noted that ‘Wilson is trying to fight quiet campaign’, ‘intended to hide lack of material in his speeches and avoid talking about Labour’s record’.69 For Wilson, in campaigning as in governing, change meant convulsion. Compared, variously, to Baldwin, or Macmillan, the Sunday Express discerned ‘the smug look of a man who has discovered the secret of perpetual power’.70 ‘For a common man’, as he by contrast appeared to Newsweek, the leader of the opposition ‘displays little in the way of common touch’.71 It was to the rectification of which that journalists found themselves at a café on the A1 near Newport Pagnell to watch Edward Heath and Sir Edward Boyle eat egg and chips; ‘ocular proof that the Leader of the Opposition, being of like clay as us, stops when he is hungry on the motorway, and eats egg and chips like any other man’.72 Heath was photographed holding a tray. For those who took the prospect seriously, there were prefigurements of a governing style. His ‘presidential aeroplane’ failed to fulfil journalists’ hopes of it since the leader sat at the front and ignored those at the back (he had been, Hurd admitted, ‘reluctant to allow the Press to travel in his aeroplane’73). ‘It would be wrong to pretend that some of his revealed faults would not be serious drawbacks in No 10 Downing Street’, the Economist noted. ‘Even in his politics he makes no concessions. It has sometimes seemed as if he would rather be right than prime minister’.74 One staffer adjudged Heath’s campaigning ‘Appalling’ and its effect on poll ratings ‘disastrous’.75 Selwyn Lloyd contributed to the air of collegiality by commenting that ‘Mr Heath happens to be leader of the party at the

 Daily Telegraph, 15 May 1970, 1; Guardian, 25 April 1970.  Sunday Telegraph, 14 June 1970, 7. 68  Joe Haines, The Politics of Power (London, 1977), 170-1. 69  Office Luncheon Meeting No. 1, 1 June 1970; Office Luncheon Meeting No. 2, 2 June 1970, CCO 500/24/293. 70  Sunday Express, 14 June 1970, 1. 71  Newsweek, 29 June 1970, 15. 72  Insight, Sunday Times, 7 June 1970, 13. 73  Hurd to Sir Michael Fraser [copy], 4 August 1969, Wolff papers, WLFF 3/5/12. 74  Economist, 30 May 1970, 15. 75  Miles Hudson to Sewill, 18 June 1970, CRD 3/9/95. 66 67

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moment’.76 ‘Covering Heath’, complained one reporter, ‘is like covering El Salvador in the World Cup’.77 Organisationally, the contrasts were equally, though conversely, evident, particularly in parties’ provision for postal votes.78 Each party had its daily briefings for candidates and agents of snippets from speeches and interviews, theirs and their opponents’. Labour produced ‘Today’, the Conservatives colour-printed and bound 7500 copies of their ‘Daily Notes’, edited by Oliver Stebbings and Chris Patten; the Liberal Party had its typed, Xeroxed, and stapled ‘General Election Bulletin’. Changing demographics manifested themselves in Labour highlighting ‘Commonwealth citizens’ for special treatment, and in London alone sending 10,000 letters in Urdu, 10,000  in Bengali and 7000  in Hindi, stressing the Race Relations Act and the Community Relations Commission, committing Labour against repatriation, but deciding not to mention the Commonwealth Immigration Act.79 The changing franchise manifested itself in Josephine Hobson, 18, being crowned Miss New Voter 1970.80 Presentationally, the contrasts were similarly pronounced. Wilson was always amongst people, strolling and waving in the sunshine, to and from committee rooms which the party stipulated should be situated in wide streets or new housing estates; molluscs notwithstanding, ‘We do not, repeat not, wish to visit committee rooms of the Coronation Street type’.81 The Tories had noted early on that ‘Heath’s quiet interview voice was more popular than public hall speaking voice’, yet persisted with public hall events.82 An ‘A Better Tomorrow’ standard design unit had been constructed as background for television broadcasts, press conferences and halls around the country, but its centred, concentric, circles made Heath look as if he were being viewed down a gun barrel, or in front of a plug hole, or under a vortex up which he was in danger of disappearing; it also  Guardian, 17 June 1970, 7.  Quoted in Time, 29 June 1970, 17. 78  Ian Waller, Sunday Telegraph, 31 May 1970, 8; Tom Normanton to John Cope, 29 July 1970 [copy], CCO 500/24/294. 79  Harry Nicholas to regional organisers, 1 June 1970, General Secretary’s File, Book 1, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box; Hindi + Urdu letters, LPA, GE 1970 box. 80  Daily Express, 17 June 1970, 7. 81  Ron Hayward to regional organisers, 21 May 1970, General Secretary’s File, Book 1, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 82  Office Luncheon Meeting No, 1, 1 June 1970, CCO 500/24/293. 76 77

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made it look as if, despite being on an ostentatiously national tour, he was always speaking from the same place.83 Specially commissioned standard music was played before each meeting, though not the national anthem, which, on practical grounds ‘Mr Heath agrees reluctantly’ should be dropped.84 His own team despaired of him ‘appearing alone on the stage backed by a pale copy of an advertisement for Omo with the net result that he seemed to be a voice from outer space with all the remoteness but none of the mystery of such apparitions’.85 More successful were Geoffrey Tucker’s Party Election Broadcasts, which pretended to be News at Ten, complete with pretend commercial break and pretend newsreaders, while a real News at Ten newsreader privately offered Heath communications advice.86 ‘Breakfast-time television’—‘a barbarity’—was introduced by the BBC with Good Morning Britain, which was essentially a television studio full of newspaper journalists.87 TV coverage would culminate, as the head of BBC current affairs put it, with ‘the most complex technical operation ever undertaken in Television Centre’.88 Computers and colour-coded results meant that, as the producer, Richard Francis, put it, ‘the days of pretty girls running information around the studio are numbered’.89 Francis, who oversaw three years of planning, cited as its model the BBC’s coverage of Apollo 13.90 More auspiciously, ITV based its election night programme on its coverage of Apollo 11.91 Despite such excitements to come, the campaign remained comatose. As William Hardcastle put it, ‘this is not good lethargy-shaking weather’.92 The Conservatives privately were worried that ‘the level of public interest in the Election is low’, and a low poll benefitted them only when seeking to retain, rather than win, power.93 Ministers were confident, perhaps 83  Andrew Alexander and Alan Watkins, The Making of the Prime Minister 1970 (London, 1970), 173. 84  Geoffrey Tucker to Central Office Agents, 26 May 1970, CCO 4/10/127; Hurd to Richard Webster, 24 November 1969, CCO 500/24/288. 85  Hudson to Sewill, 18 June 1970, CRD 3/9/95. 86  Reginald Bosanquet to Heath, 4 June 1970, Wolff papers, WLFF 3/5/12. 87  John Whale, Sunday Times, 14 June 1970, 14. 88  John Grist, Listener, 2 July 1970, 4. 89  Richard Francis, Ariel, July 1970, 14. 90  Radio Times, 11 June 1970, 15. 91  TV Times, 13 June 1970, 10. 92  William Hardcastle, Listener, 18 June 1970, 819. 93  Douglas to Fraser, 30 May 1970, WLFF 3/5/6.

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overly: Barbara Castle thought her colleagues, Wilson apart, ‘lackadaisical’94 (‘Today I took a complete rest. It has been one of the easiest campaigns I’ve known’.95). Even less appeared to be happening when there were no newspapers to read, a result of a national three-day strike over a 25% pay demand, which might have reminded voters of the salience of wage inflation and industrial relations, but was the one dispute that denied the Conservatives the chance to remind them. More generally, Heath needed the press, which was largely supportive, to be printing, and the strike, which might have reminded voters of the salience of wage inflation and industrial relations, was the one dispute that denied the Conservatives the chance to remind them. Wilson had reason to duck as well as wave. Eggs, some hard-boiled, some double-yolked, impacted on the campaign, and several on the prime minister, eliciting a less-common witticism from the leader of the opposition. Since his tours were not announced in advance, Heath said, with mock-solemnity, it meant ‘that there are men and women in this country walking around with eggs in their pockets on the off-chance of seeing the Prime Minister’.96 Wilson soon had his own repertoire of egg jokes, such as their very abundance being proof of how stable the cost of living was. ‘We have not tried to rival the Tories in egg-throwing’, Harry Nicholas, Labour’s General Secretary, more seriously, told all candidates and agents. ‘In the long run public opinion is bound to turn against egg-throwing’.97 Given that ‘there is a limit to the sunshine shots that even the most inventive television cameraman can take’, with little else to report, personalities and polls came to dominate.98 After Wilson and Heath, the most prominent personality by far was Enoch Powell. As did George Brown, Powell attracted large retinues and larger audiences, the difference being that Brown’s whistle-stop tour was—perhaps surprisingly—conspicuously in support of his leader, whereas Powell was widely thought to have much to gain from the defeat of his. Powell seemed almost to monopolise attention, conversation, and Heath’s daily press conference, with incendiary  Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries 1964-70 (London, 1984), 804 (28 May 1970).  R. H. S. Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Vol.3, Secretary of State for Social Services, 1968-70 (London, 1977), 944 (14 June 1970). 96  Alexander and Watkins, Prime Minister, 177. 97  Harry Nicholas to all candidates and agents, 6 June 1970, General Secretary’s File, Book 1, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 98  Economist, 13 June 1970, 15. 94 95

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speeches invoking traitors and immigrants, communists and anarchists, in a Britain ‘under attack’.99 Devon North was also under attack and could only be defended, Jeremy Thorpe, another prominent, if contrasting, personality, told his adjutants, provided that ‘I am in the Division for the greater part of the campaign’.100 ‘The one issue of overwhelming interest which has so far emerged’, it seemed to one political expert, is ‘simply which side will win’.101 Leached of any countervailing narrative, the end became the story. ‘There can be little doubt’, Hardcastle felt, ‘that the polls have generated what little tension this election has provided’.102 Tribune felt that the polls were ‘being used as a means of changing public opinion’, with journalists reduced to the role of ‘fortune-tellers studying tea leaves in the bottom of a cup’.103 In addition to its own weekly national poll, the Sunday Times offered ‘a scientifically-­consolidated index of the current findings of the other five national polls’.104 Even Campaign thought them ‘newspaper gimmicks’, part of the ‘new marketing’, the equivalent of sponsored sport, giving ‘back to the newspapers a political power they once had, but lost’.105 Seeing a gap in the market, Punch had ‘decided to become the first journal which is not printing a half-hourly opinion poll’.106 Yet both parties found the findings as contradicted by their experiences. ‘I can’t help thinking there is something funny about the Polls’, the Conservative MP Gilbert Longden noted, ‘especially as they run counter to the impression gained by many canvassers’.107 His party was ‘baffled’, and diagnosed a depressive effect on party workers.108 ‘There are 19 chances in 20 that the Polls Index is within 2 per cent of a totally accurate reading’, the Sunday Times maintained, which meant a Labour lead of 100 seats over the Conservatives: ‘it would require a political miracle actually 99  Office Luncheon Meetings No 9. 11 June 1970 and No. 11, 15 June 1970, CCO 500/24/293. 100  Thorpe to Lord Byers, Mrs Gorky, Mrs Prowse, Eric Lubbock, Ted Wheeler, James Isaac, n.d. (for 13 May 1970 meeting), Thorpe Papers, ADD MS 89073/3/101. 101  Alan Ryan, Listener, 4 June 1970, 738. 102  Hardcastle, Listener, 18 June 1970, 820. 103  Tribune, 5 June 1970, 1. 104  Sunday Times, 24 May 1970, 1. 105  Campaign, editorial, 5 June 1970, 13. 106  William Davis, Punch, 3 June 1970, 812. 107  Gilbert Longden, F & G. P. Meeting, 21 May 1970, Agenda, WHL, Longden Papers, 3/10; George Brown, In My Way (London, 1971), 262. 108  Daily Telegraph, 15 June 1970, 1.

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to obliterate the advantage Labour had won’.109 ‘It is just remotely possible’, that the polls were wrong, the Sunday Times’s Ron Hall conceded, ‘because in sampling everything is remotely possible. But the odds are more than 100,000 to one against’.110 ‘The outcome is already certain’, the veteran political correspondent Robert Carvel informed Londoners. ‘Labour has victory in the bag’.111 ‘We are going to lose this General Election if we cannot raise the political temperature’, Heath’s campaign staff was told two days later.112 The 7 June meeting at Heath’s apartment at Albany was immediately dubbed a ‘council of despair’. As the Conservatives’ Director of Research Brendan Sewill’s ‘mid-course assessment’ put it, ‘We can go on banging away at the Labour record but on each point we come up against the almost subconscious answer—“yes, but they have got the balance of payments right”’.113 The Conservatives had to choose between stressing Labour’s economic record, or issuing prophesy. They decided on the latter, but to shift from likely crisis to likely troubles—a more plausible possibility and therefore more powerful message. After all, ‘Wilson must have had a decisive reason for wishing to call a June Election and for not waiting until the Autumn’.114 On 9 June, Roy Jenkins announced a record Balance of Payments surplus. Four days later, National Opinion Polls (NOP) gave Labour a 12.4 lead. Headlines had Labour winning by 140.115 The Conservative response was to ‘take offensive’.116 Heath, tanned and actively engaging in smiling, went on his own walkabouts in the sunshine, waving much more regally than Wilson ever did; messages were simultaneously sharpened and hammered. Then, in the last five days of the campaign, a sudden, aberrant, infamous, concatenation of circumstances: the weather, briefly, broke; West Germany came from behind to knock England out of the World Cup; Heath prohibited any further discussion of Powell in his press conferences; and adverse trade figures were announced. Having made so much of having got the Balance of Payments  Sunday Times, 14 June 1970, 1, 19.  Ron Hall, Sunday Times, 7 June 1970, 9. 111  Robert Carvel, Evening Standard, 4 June 1970, 21. 112  James Douglas to Fraser, Sewill, Hurd, and Wolff, 6 June 1970, Wolff papers, WLFF 3/5/12. 113  Sewill, 1970 General Election, mid-course assessment, 3 June 1970, CRD 3/9/95. 114  Norman Collins, Campaign Strategy No, 2, 3 June 1970, Wolff papers, WLFF 3/5/12. 115  Evening News, 13 June 1970, 3. 116  Office Luncheon Meeting No 4. n.d. [4 June 1970], CCO 500/24/293. 109 110

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right, the latter, especially, were devastating, even more so for coinciding with the end of the newspaper strike. Inopportune economic news had threatened that present feeling of confidence since the beginning of the campaign, with the inflation figures and Jim Callaghan’s dissimulation about a wage freeze. Conservative researchers had been urged to include in all their outputs price increases, taxation, unemployment, strikes, and interest and mortgage rates; Labour noted that the Tories were hammering the cost of living.117 The strategy was supported by Aims of Industry, which launched a press and postal campaign, building on Lords Cromer, and, more awkwardly, Kearton, embarrassing the government on Panorama. On 16 June, Wilson drew attention to a Conservative Research Department paper on a ‘further devaluation’, but for him even to have uttered the word was to have reminded the electorate of the preceding three years.118 On 17 June, Wilson made a poor, partisan, and Heath a positive, everyman, final television appearance. What Iain Macleod called ‘Wilson’s joyless strip-tease’ reached its grisly dénouement on polling day when record unemployment figures were released.119 The evening of the first midsummer election for over a century was party time in town. Hundreds dined and danced at the Savoy although Rab Butler was in no mood for the latter, telling Humphry Berkeley ‘that we are in for an evening of disaster’.120 At 10.25, the giant screen in the ballroom displayed BBC Election 70, the first election night programme broadcast in colour, featuring complexions as brown as the suits and the set. It began with Nicholas Harman’s novel exit poll at Gravesend which revealed a 4.4% swing to the Conservatives, shortly followed by indications of a 6% downturn in turnout. Then came the first declaration. After the second Robert McKenzie, fumbling with his swingometer, said ‘This is sensational’.121

117  Sewill to All Research Department officers, 28 May 1970, CRD 3/9/83. Harry Nicholas to all candidates and agents, 3 June 1970, General Secretary’s File, Book 1, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 118  Financial Times, 17 June 1970, 10. 119  Macleod, quoted in James Douglas, ‘The Public Opinion Polls in the 1970 General Election’, 19 November 1970, CCO 180/11/4/7. 120  Humphry Berkeley, Crossing the Floor (London, 1972), 87; Tatler, July 1970, 18. 121  Robert McKenzie, Election 70, BBC 1, 18 June 1970.

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Explaining The outcome was known in minutes. It would still have been sensational had it been eked out into the morning. But it was immediate. McKenzie’s appendage had to be extended, on air, by a man with a pot of paint and a brush. General discombobulation amidst the most complex technical operation ever undertaken in Television Centre was rendered hysterical when Monty Python—who had been working for Wilson—later that year parodied BBC Election 70 (‘this is largely as I predicted, except that the Silly Party won. I think this is mainly due to the number of votes cast’.).122 With the biggest swing since 1945, the election was the first time a working majority for one party changed to a working majority for another since 1906. It was the lowest turnout, and, not coincidentally, Labour’s lowest share of the vote, since 1935. One million Labour voters had, indeed, not voted, despite wheezes and gerrymandering: 16-year old boundaries meant a variation in size of constituency from Billericay with 124,215 to Glasgow Kelvingrove with 19,019; 16 seats had more than 100,000 voters, and 12 had fewer than 30,000.123 Of the 77 seats with electorates of under 45,000, Labour won 58; of the 90 seats with more than 80,000 electors, the Conservatives won 70. But while it took 39,718 to elect a Conservative, and 42,305 for a Labour MP, 351,536 were required for a Liberal.124 One was Jeremy Thorpe, who successfully, if barely, defended Devon North, but his sequestration in the West Country injured his party, which lost half its MPs. The journalists’ explanation was that they had been ‘wiling dupes of the polls’, as George Gale fumed; the result ‘both confounds and disgraces all of us who have reported the election campaign’.125 One correspondent blamed the press for there having been a surprise in the first place. BBC Election 70 may have pioneered regional opt-outs, but Sir Edwin Leather reported of ‘itinerant writers who rushed in and out of five constituencies a day to send their reports to Fleet Street’, and not speaking to party workers.126 Certainly, much of the reporting was about polling, to Heath’s 122  Peter Davis to Marcia Williams, 13 April 1970, MS. Wilson c. 1403; Monty Python’s Flying Circus, BBC 1, 3 November 1970. 123  Election Expenses: Return to an Address of the Honourable The House of Commons Dated 21st July 1970, HMSO, 23 March 1971, 58, 92. 124  1970 General Election, LPP, 9/13/442. 125  George Gale, Evening Standard, 19 June 1970, 9. 126  Ted Leather, letter, Economist, 27 June 1970, 4.

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disadvantage. For those campaigning, ‘the outcome would not have been at all surprising if it had not been for the unrealistically high expectations to which the opinion polls gave birth’.127 ‘In a way not experienced before’, David Wood, political editor of the Times reflected, ‘the campaign was dominated by the polls’.128 Hurd recalled that they were ‘hypnotic’.129 The pollsters’ explanation was keenly anticipated, given that for the first time both parties had relied on external publicity professionals, and by their own admission, ‘The people have made fools of us all’.130 Thus, agencies immediately were called on to explain themselves.131 The Market Research Society appointed a committee to discover what had gone wrong.132 ‘There have always been two things which scare the hell out of pollsters’, said the only pollster whose polls had been correct. ‘One is late swing, and the other is differential turnout. In this election we had both’.133 Gallup, privately, blamed the former; NOP agreed, and added the latter; the Opinion Research Centre (ORC) alone—‘because we were running more scared than any “of the other polls”’—re-interviewed people.134 ‘Don’t blame the polls’, Political Quarterly cautioned, ‘only those who are governed by them’: two academic investigations determined that it was not the polls that were the problem so much as the uses made of them: since they had been commissioned by newspapers, pollsters were inclined to be newsworthy in their presentation of findings.135 Polling near major cities to facilitate the delivering of packages to head office in London also over-represented Labour—more sampling and a greater margin of error were common suggested remedies, as even was a ban on polling during a campaign. But the Labour bandwagon the Conservatives accused  Socialist Commentary, July 1970, 1.  George Clark, ‘The Election Campaign’, Times Election Guide, 26-30; 26. 129  Douglas Hurd, Memoirs (London, 2004), 187. 130  Clive Irving, Campaign, 26 June 1970, 16. 131  Admap, June 1970, 198-200. 132  Public Opinion Polling on the 1970 Election, British Market Research Society, 1972, 6. 133  Humphrey Taylor, quoted in Sunday Times, 21 June 1970, 10. 134  Gallup Political Index, Report No. 121, June/July 1970, 88; NOP Political Bulletin, The Polls and the 1970 General Election, n.d., 1-2; June/July 1970, 1-4’; Survey Research Centre, Occasional Paper No 7, ‘The Polls and the 1970 Election’, University of Strathclyde, 1970, 41, CCO 180/11/4/7. 135  ‘The Election in Retrospect’, Political Quarterly, October 1970, 373-374. Ian Lloyd, ‘Opinion Polls and the British General Election of June 1970’, The Parliamentarian, October 1970, 270-274; Mark Abrams, ‘The Opinion Polls and the 1970 British General Election’, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 34:3 (1970), 317-24. 127 128

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the pollsters of having created may actually have benefitted the Tories: by presenting a Labour victory as a matter of fact rather than of doubt, ‘the whole exercise becalmed the electorate’ a Labour staffer thought; ‘at least, those who were Labour voters’.136 On BBC Election 70 minutes after the second declaration a grim David Kingsley found himself face to face with his Yesterday’s Men manikins. He revived a few weeks later, telling Harry Nicholas, ‘Well, that’s democracy for you, I guess’.137 The Conservatives’ explanation was that ‘the decisive issue was the strength of the economy’, both generally and, Brendan Sewill thought, specifically: the adverse trade figures provided ‘tangible proof that the economy was not as strong as Labour claimed’, and the record unemployment figures ‘must have done a good deal to keep Labour voters at home on Polling Day evening’.138 Conservative private polling said the message about the economy had been getting through, and ‘when the eggshell of credibility cracked large numbers returned to the views they had a few months earlier’, with a final movement in the last four days of the campaign ‘unprecedented’ in size, speed and lateness, amongst those some might consider politically illiterate and coinciding with the end of the newspaper strike.139 Conservative spending in those Labour-leaning titles had borne fruit. The hypothesis that campaigns have only marginal effect, that longer-term trends implied that intuition was sounder than psephology, was not contradicted by ‘late swing’. ‘We won’, the Conservative Research Department’s James Douglas told Sir Michael Fraser, ‘because at the grass-roots level Conservative supporters were much more determined to get the Labour Government out than Labour supporters were to keep the Labour Government in’.140 The Labour explanation began with Wilson himself on BBC Election 70: it was a ‘low poll’.141 One Labour MP told another ‘When we knew it was only a 64% poll I thought “that’s it”, lets go home’.142 ‘I think the trade figures were unfortunate’, Bob Mellish told Wilson, ‘and I am certain there was a backlash of Powell in abstention of many Labour

 David Warburton, Tribune, 26 June 1970, 9.  David Kingsley to Harry Nicholas, 15 July 1970, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 138  Sewill, CRD Report, 17 July 1970, 13, CRD 3/9/95. 139  ‘Public Opinion Polls’, 19 November 1970, CCO 180/11/4/7. 140  James Douglas to Sir Michael Fraser, [copy], 26 June 1970, CRD, 3/9/95. 141  Wilson, Election 70, BBC 1, 19 June 1970. 142  Eric Ogden to Robert Sheldon, Sheldon papers WHL, Sheldon 6/3. 136 137

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voters’.143 Tribune blamed Labour’s record more than the campaign and the lack of substance behind the long slogans: the manifesto was ‘a rushed job’; better to have gone in October.144 Others blamed the fetish made of the trade figures.145 An organisational report felt that the manifesto lacked detail and that the campaign peaked a week before polling day; the final Conservative offensive went unchallenged.146 Not getting out the postal vote cost Labour 19 seats, and organisation in the marginals was ‘the usual mixture of ad-hoc-ery and dedicated enthusiasm to scenes of unbelievable panic at being faced with a June election’.147 Equal Pay alone meant women should have voted Labour, Betty Lockwood, editor of Labour Women, thought, but they were scared off by campaigning on the cost of living and rising prices: the price of bacon outweighed comprehensive education and non-selective healthcare.148 Labour MPs gave their views at a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting in July where all possible explanations were given, and the following day, there was such disorder when the shadow cabinet convened that Michael Foot thought ‘a few meetings like this will take years off my life and theirs’.149 The feeling was greater for almost no one having expected the result. ‘Up to last Sunday I was certain of Victory and over 40 majority’, Mellish admitted.150 For Tony Benn the result ‘was a complete surprise in that I thought we would be back with a working majority’.151 ‘The arguments against a June election turned out to be right, but they were largely based on superstition’, Roy Hattersley felt. ‘The arguments in favour proved wrong, but they were based on the best evidence then available’.152 Confrères consoled the leader of the opposition. ‘Don’t blame yourself’; ‘Your timing of the election was most welcome to the Parliamentary Party before the Election’; ‘You had to go

 Bob Mellish to Wilson, 20 June 1970, MS Wilson c 1535/87.  Richard Clements, Tribune, 26 June 1970, 1, 5. 145  Catalpa, Socialist Commentary, July 1970, 12. 146  Interim Organisational Report on the General Election, 18 June 1970, LPA, ‘General Election 1970’ box. 147  Alan Lee Williams, Socialist Commentary, August 1970, 4. 148  Betty Lockwood, Labour Woman, July/August 1970, 103. 149  Minutes of a Party Meeting, 15 July 1970, NEC Minutes & Papers, December 1969July 1970; Notes on Shadow Cabinet meeting, 16 July 1970, Michael Foot Papers, PHM, MF/C1. 150  Mellish to Wilson, 20 June 1970, MS Wilson c 1535/87. 151  Tony Benn to Sir Richard Clarke, 23 June 1970, Clarke Papers, CAC, 4/3/3. 152  Roy Hattersley, New Statesman, 31 July 1970, 114. 143 144

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in June’.153 There was one exception. ‘I cannot forbear to point out that I did sound the warning’, George Brown told Wilson. Despite his belligerence at his declaration that he had only lent his constituency, Brown had come to the view during the following four days that ‘I do not think it would be of any value to anybody for me to seek to come back to the House’, and asked for a peerage.154 There had also to be an explanation for what, on the morning after the election, Wilson described as ‘the infection from Wolverhampton’; to American ears ‘Britain’s new household word’: Powellism.155 Powell ‘thoroughly disrupted the campaign of his own party’, Douglas Hurd reflected; ‘He seemed determined that we should lose, and lose badly’.156 A paperback book was rush-produced, which, appropriately, began in conception as an investigation into the election with reference to Powell and Powellism and ended up a book about Powell and Powellism with reference to the election: predictably it maintained that Powell was critical.157 His finalweek speeches convinced many it was a pitch for the leadership once Heath had lost; when Heath won for others it was those speeches that had been material. ‘No one will be able to say for a long time that election campaigns do not change people’s minds’, the Economist concluded.158 Wilson’s was unsustainable for more than a fortnight. The Conservatives managed to break through ambivalence to underlying areas of disquiet.159 Trends from 1969 proved to be a better indicator than the polls during the campaign: indeed, what was surprising was not the result, but that, ‘after five and a half years of Labour Government which even impartial observers would recognise as dogged by failure and unpopularity, we so nearly lost’; the reason adduced was general identification with Labour ideals, ‘so that the public turn to the Conservatives in time of trouble but do not think of us 153  Mellish to Wilson, 20 June 1970; Robert Maclennan to Wilson, 23 June 1970, MS Wilson c. 1535/323; Terence Lancaster to Wilson, 25 June 1970, MS Wilson. c.1411. 154  Brown to Wilson, 24 June 1970, MS Wilson c. 1524/101. 155  ‘The Nation Decides’: Interview with Harold Wilson by David Frost, Transmitted 19 June 1970, MS Wilson c. 1259/291; Time, 29 June 1970, 19. 156  Hurd, End to Promises, 22. 157  John Wood (ed.), Powell and the 1970 Election (London, 1970); Nicholas Deakin and Jenny Bourne, ‘Powell, the Minorities, and the 1970 Election’, Political Quarterly, 41:4 (October 1970), 399-415. 158  Economist, 20 June 1970, 9. 159  James Douglas to Hurd [copy], 10 December 1970, CCO 180/11/4/7.

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as their Party’.160 The Tories noted that half of voters had changed their vote since 1964 and most of their net gains were direct conversion of Labour voters, albeit ones of a ‘fragile’ allegiance.161 ‘We must at all costs continue to show a very compassionate image’, a colleague told Brendan Sewill. ‘I have no doubts that we shall be an extremely competent Government but I do still have certain reservations as to whether we shall be able to convince people that we care about ordinary human problems’.162 Sewill averred, ‘To put this right must surely be the major task of the Conservative Government and the Conservative Party between now and the next election’.163 As to the unfancied leader, by common accord ‘only one man has really won this election, and that man is Mr Heath’.164 So consistent was the swing that it was a nationwide verdict. ‘The victory is his. The party is his’; ‘it was, in a particular and personal sense, his own triumph’.165 ‘There need not be another election for five years’, the Sunday Times assured its readers. ‘A government is installed which has an adequate majority to deal with any crisis’.166 There had, after all, been no single-term Conservative government since 1929. The outcome and legend of the election were in stark contrast to a campaign ‘marked by brilliant sunshine and an almost total absence of events other than an earthquake in Peru’.167 For the histories of the Wilson and Heath governments it tended to serve as a placeholder for complacency and opportunity respectively. More than most general elections, it featured in the memoirs and diaries, and then the biographies, of ministers and shadow ministers. More than most elections it featured in histories of the parties, of the two governments, and of the period, of the decade ending and the decade beginning.168 More than most it attracted free-­standing studies: supplements, articles, and chapters; and books, one amusingly so, in the sense of how wittily it was written, and also how it had hastily to be  Sewill, CRD Report, 17 July 1970, 17, CRD 3/9/95.  Conservative Central Office, ‘1970 General Election’, CCO 150/11/4/4. 162  Charles Bellairs to Sewill, 17 June 1970, CRD 3/9/95. 163  Sewill, CRD Report, 17 July 1970, 17, CRD 3/9/95. 164  Richard Rose, ‘Voting Trends Surveyed’, Times Election Guide, 31-32. 165  Economist, 20 June 1970, 9; Sunday Times, editorial, 21 June 1970, 12; Daily Express, Heath’s Election: How the Tories Took Britain (London 1970), 4. 166  Sunday Times, editorial, 21 June 1970, 12. 167  Sewill, CRD Report, 17 July 1970, 11, CRD 3/9/95. 168   Most notably Robert Rhodes James, Ambitions and Realities: British Politics 1964-1970, 217-37. 160 161

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re-written.169 Publication of the Nuffield study gave scope for the green-­ fingered to take lapsarian pleasure at the embarrassment of the lab-coated horticulturists who had apparently supplanted them. For David Wood, ruminating in his potting shed at the Times, ‘Something vital has always escaped analysis or defied the slide rules’.170 Peter Preston did not know for whom to feel sorrier: Harold Wilson or David Butler.171 Barbara Castle lumped together psephologists and pollsters. ‘The human element has defeated them’, she sniffed. ‘So it is back to the humble historian after all’.172 For all the sun-drenched clarity of its circumstances, there remained an opacity to the 1970 General Election. ‘No one will ever be sure how the victory occurred’, recalled one who was at the centre.173 The election repays study in its own right. It evoked that of 1945 in the unexpectedness, of its outcome, but was the greater surprise given, as was thought, much more sophisticated electoral intelligence. Circumstances were unusually propitious for the government because the government had engineered them. Yet their differences in organisational culture meant that the party in power, which had called the election, was less prepared than was the opposition. Labour seemed to be hoping for little more than that the public was willing to accept some more Labour Government. Wilson had indeed identified an, as it proved, short-term recovery and not a longterm one. Haste in arranging was followed by leisure in campaigning. Labour’s somnambulance was surmounted by a Conservative campaign of discipline and, eventually, intensity. Irregular though its outcome may have been, the election nevertheless revivified the platitudes that governments lose elections and that, as someone once said, a week is a long time in politics. For all the longer-term trends, had the election been on 11 June, there would never have been a Heath government. Fred Peart was an unlikely, and unacknowledged, Tory auxillary. So it was that the 169  Alexander and Watkins, Prime Minister. Sarah Hogg, Election 1970: the Way Heath Won (London, 1970). Steven Fielding, ‘The 1970 General Election’, in Steven Fielding and John W. Young (eds), The Labour Governments 1964-1970: Labour and Cultural Change (MUP, 2003), 217-235. 170  David Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (London, 1971); David Wood, ‘Psephology thrown on the defensive’, The Times, 19 April 1971, 13. 171  Peter Preston, Guardian, 15 April 1971, 12. 172  Barbara Castle, New Society, 15 April 1971, 641. 173  Hurd, End to Promises, 25.

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government of Edward Heath came about through the arranging, and campaiging, of Harold Wilson. A Prime Minister with a working majority had called a snap election and lost it. It would not be the last time. For once decadists were vindicated: 1970 as the end of one era and the beginning of another. It may have been known that the 1960s were over, but not that 1970’s would be the last general election of a United Kingdom governed by a sovereign parliament. In this context the election also repays the study for what it portended. Heath won against expectation, despite his party, despite his critics, and despite the press. Some speculated that the experience may prove consequential in how he might conduct his premiership. But if Heath wanted a new style of government, he had started with an old trope: the hostage to fortune. So much was there in A Better Tomorrow, that there was much to hold against it, tomorrow; but, for today, on the cloudless morning of Friday 19 June 1970, there could be no doubt as to who ran Britain.

CHAPTER 5

Competition and Credit Control, Monetary Performance, and the Perception of Macroeconomic Failure: The Heath Government and the Road to Brexit James Silverwood

Views about  economic management by the Heath Government seem fairly well entrenched. The lofty ambition with which the Heath Government entered office to revitalise British capitalism through the injection of a new competitive ethos claimed to have quickly floundered in a quagmire of ineptitude, policy U-turns and a retreat to the safety of Keynesianism. Whilst it is not the intention of this chapter to ride to the rescue of the Heath Government’s reputation for competence in economic management it  does challenge some established perceptions. Importantly, the chapter registers the ripples through British capitalism emanating from the 1971–1973 monetary experiment of Competition and Credit Control (CCC), the impulses from which ultimately led to the maelstrom of the global financial crisis and facilitated Brexit.

J. Silverwood (*) Coventry University, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_5

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The chapter is structured around a reappraisal of three prevailing perspectives on the Heath Government’s economic management available in the literature. The chapter begins with an evaluation of twin charges. First, that the Heath Government betrayed the move towards liberal economics encapsulated in the Selsdon Declaration1 through a series of policy U-turns that ensured the perpetuation of the Keynesian consensus. Second, that economic management by the Heath Government is not worthy of much more than a footnote in British economic history. This charge is rebutted through a discussion of CCC, which is found to be an important milestone in the disintegration of the post-war Keynesian consensus on economic management. The CCC also retains an enduring legacy into the contemporary period beginning a process in which economic management became increasingly depoliticised and the financialisation of the British economy was accelerated. The unbalanced and unequal growth model created by this policy regime combined with the technocratic policy responses to the global financial crisis fuelled  public  resentent  against political elites  contributed to the populist backlash that culminated in the  vote for Brexit. The United Kingdom exiting the European Union (EU) is an unfortunate epitaph for Edward Heath, a committed Europhile, given that it was his administration that had secured entry to the European Community in the first place back in 1973. The chapter then considers the accusation that the Heath Government was too timid in its efforts to tackle inflation. The chapter deems this indictment unfair with comparative analysis of monetary performance by the Heath and Thatcher Governments finding the national myth that the latter defeated inflation to be an exaggeration. Indeed, monetary management between the two governments exudes rather more continuities than it is likely either would have cared to imagine. Where there were differences between the two governments in terms of monetary policy, particularly in the use of unemployment to reduce inflation, they are found indicative of the wider structural change of British capitalism initiated by CCC. The final consideration is the claim that economic management by the Heath Government failed when measured against a myriad of macroeconomic objectives it established for itself during its time at the apex of the British political establishment. The findings, here, largely confirm the 1  The ‘Selsdon Declaration’ emerged from a meeting of the Conservative shadow cabinet held in February 1970 at the Selsdon Park Hotel, Croydon.

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negativity within the existing literature, albeit with some important contextualisation of disappointing macroeconomic performance highlighted. The conclusion notes how undue attention on these macroeconomic failures risks missing the broader picture delineated in this chapter as to the role economic management by the Heath Government has played in the trajectory of contemporary British capitalism.

The Perpetuation of Keynesianism? Competition and Credit Control, 1971–1973 Indelibly linked to the notorious ‘Selsdon Declaration’, and sometimes erroneously classed as a proto-Thatcherite agenda for economic reform, the Heath Government entered Downing Street on a manifesto that sought to restore prominence of the market mechanism through a reduction of government expenditure, decrease of industrial interventionism, reform of industrial relations and avoidance of income policy. For a small but committed group of Conservative members of parliament, the election victory in 1970 on this economic platform seemed to offer the chance to radically change the direction of post-war British capitalism. Tory party grandee, Peter Carrington (cited in Ziegler 2010: 215), described the Selsdon Declaration as entailing a ‘fairly assertive restatement of the virtue of capitalism and the benefits of free enterprise’. Arch-Thatcherite, Norman Tebbit (cited in Ziegler 2010: 215, 218) went further by positing that the Selsdon Declaration involved the ‘repudiation of the post-war Buskellite consensus’ and that, by the election in 1970, ‘Ted Heath was committed to the end of … [the post-war Keynesian] consensus and to the new liberal economics’. When the Selsdon Declaration was abandoned in a plethora of economic policy U-turns in 19722 it was considered tantamount to a betrayal by such Conservative members of parliament, illustrative of a supposed political cowardice in the Heath Government’s approach to economic management and represented a wasted opportunity to arrest economic decline by saving the British economy from the clutches of state control.

2  Two economic policy U-turns, in particular, are cited as examples. The adoption of Keynesian fiscal policy at the 1972 Budget to secure a higher economic growth rate and the Industry Act 1972, which allowed the Heath Government to provide an unprecedented level of financial assistance to British industry.

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Elsewhere he Heath Government’s place in accounts of post-war British economic history is often given a rather dull caricature as having inspired only minor alterations in economic management in an increasingly desperate and futile rear-guard action in defence of the Keynesian paradigm (Hall 1993: 290). The Heath Government often found worthy of only brief mention in discussion of post-war trajectory of British political economy (Gamble 1994: 121–126). Commonly, it is other events of the 1970s such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan crisis (Burk and Caincross 1992) or the election of Margaret Thatcher (Dutton 1997) that are selected for intense scholarly examination with both events being located as the stimuli for significant change in post-war British capitalism. Neither the accusation of cowardice or minor alteration in economic management should be levelled at the Heath Government. The introduction of CCC in September 1971, which remained in operation until December 1973, been described as the ‘most radical overhaul of UK monetary policy since the Second World War’ (Needham 2014: ix). Importantly, CCC can be identified not only as an important act in the breakdown of Keynesian economic management of the British economy, but also in terms of its influence in guiding us towards the contemporary conjuncture of British capitalism. The Heath Government were undoubtadly compliant bystanders in the implementation of CCC. The intellectual development of the monetary experiment was firmly located within the Bank of England—the driving force behind the monetary experiment, which since the 1967 Devaluation Crisis had been using unpublished targets in an attempt to bring monetary growth into line (Needham 2014). Nevertheless, the Heath Government, or at the very least key personnel within the Cabinet, such as Anthony Barber (Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1970 to 1974), were aware of the CCC and its implications for the British economy. Importantly, the Heath Government could also have stopped this monetary innovation in its tracks had it wanted. That the Heath Government did not may have had something to do with how CCC was sold to Heath as a means to stimulate competition in the British economy, which left Heath as the least able to grasp the monetary repercussions of CCC of any member of his government (Needham 2014: 55, 62, 70). Nevertheless, the CCC was not a Bank of England monetary project pushed on a recalcitrant Heath Government and Treasury, as the latter was fully briefed on what the CCC would entail and had its own reasons for supporting its implementation (Copley 2017).

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CCC swept aside the plethora of quantitative controls on credit initiated in the post-war era. Henceforth, ‘bank lending would be controlled on the basis of cost’ (Needham 2014: 3), with interest rates providing price signals to the market. In other words, the disbursement of credit was to fall upon supply and demand. In order to prioritise transition to monetary control via cost of credit the CCC promoted competition between British banking institutions. The removal of significant restrictions on credit creation allowed banks to aggressively compete over the expansion of their customer bases. CCC also abolished the cartel arrangement between clearing banks, in which they agreed between themselves a range of interest rates, including those for bank lending. Consequently, CCC constituted a significant act of financial liberalisation, which directly challenged key principles of post-war Keynesian economic management: that financial capital should be held in abeyance constrained by institutions rooted within the nation-state that promoted full employment, industrial investment and equitable distribution of economic growth. Government influence on credit creation was excercised  under CCC through three monetary policy instruments: the Bank Rate, Open-Market Operations (OMOs) and special deposits. The Bank of England’s frustration at Heath’s intransigence in his refusal to countenance increases in the Bank Rate led to its replacement in October 1972 with the Minimum Lending Rate (MLR),3 which was set at 0.50% higher than the average rate for Treasury bills rounded to the nearest 0.25%. In principle, the 3  Monetary policy instruments have undergone several iterations since experimentation with the CCC. Bank Rate, at the outset of the post-war era, established the rate at which the Bank of England would lend to the banking system in exchange for security. Bank Rate was replaced in October 1972, with the introduction of the MLR. After 25 May 1978, the MLR was set by an ‘administrative decision’ by the Chancellor of the Exchequer akin to the postwar Bank Rate. The MLR was then suspended on 20 August 1981 and was replaced with the Minimum Band 1 Dealing Rate—the minimum rate at which the Bank of England would deal in Open-Market Operations (OMOs) for securities that fell within band 1 (maturity of 1–14 days). In total, there were four bands, and the bank ‘influenced interest rates by its reactions to offers’ from discount houses, aiming for a specific level. Falling largely outside of the scope of this chapter was the move to a Repo Rate in 1996, before the arrival of the Official Bank Rate in 2006 (Bank of England 2019a). Notwithstanding the various technical differences involved in these monetary policy instruments, the intention of each was to wield indirect influence over credit creation by manipulating short-term market interest rates. Although not historically accurate, in the interests of simplicity and to avoid confusion, the chapter uses Bank Rate in its discussion of monetary policy prior to October 1972 and MLR thereafter.

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MLR was established by the market mechanism alone, but the government retained an indirect influence over its level through its call for special deposits from the banking system and open-market operations (Needham 2014: 60, 62–64, 71). Meanwhile, the Bank of England sought control over the money supply via OMOs, through which the Bank supplied liquidity of the British financial system. Nevertheless, ‘control afforded over short-term interest rates was…far less extensive and effective’ (Caincross 1996: 127). CCC therfore purposefully removed many post-­ war direct controls over credit creation, with only an indirect influence preserved on the banking system via interest rates. A key principle of CCC was to cede macroeconomic governance to the market mechanism, with the CCC beginning a process by which British economic management became increasingly depoliticised. This delivered yet another direct challenge to a nostrum of post-war Keynesian consensus that economic management should be socialised within political institutions whose first duty was to deliver economic stability.

The Legacy of Competition and Credit Control: Financialisation of the UK Economy ‘Financialisation’ is defined here as a ‘process whereby financial markets, financial institutions and financial elites gain greater influence over economic policy and economic outcomes’ (Palley 2007: 2 cited in Davis and Walsh 2016: 667). Identifying when the process of financialisation of the British economy began has recently undergone something of a revival. A common critical juncture  in the financialisation of  British capitalism is identified in the election of Thatcher and the Conservative Party in 1979, who is said to have entered office with a plan to promote the international competitiveness of the City of London (Coakley and Harris 1992). Elsewhere, specific policies implemented by the Thatcher Governments are implicated, including the abolition of exchange controls (Wade 2013: 53–54), the 1981 Budget and the refutation of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management (Needham 2014: ix), the introduction of ‘Right to Buy’ in the 1980 Housing Act, the deregulation of financial services in the ‘Big Bang’ reforms of 1986 (Kirkland 2015) and 1986 Building Societies Act (Boddy 1989). Scholars are also beginning to identify earlier genesis of financialisation in the 1976 IMF loan crisis (Davis and Walsh 2016) or deregulation of the London Stock Exchange in the same year (Ohren and

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Blyth 2018). Although not explicitly stated why, Jessop (2017: 135) has mooted 1975 as the provenance of financialisation, possibly because it was in the budget of that year that a Labour government eschewed full employment in favour of the macroeconomic objective to defeat inflation through deflationary economic policy (Silverwood 2015). Another event proposed as the progenitor of financialisation is CCC. Copley (2017) found that financialisation of the British economic growth model was one of the impetuses behind the implementation of CCC. Belief had arisen within the Treasury that Keynesian economic management was failing to deliver rising prosperity, which had reached its limits under the repetitive strain of stop-go economic crises. A new regime for capital accumulation was therefore  deemed required and policymakers chose finance-capital as its engine. Once free from the shackles of post-war quantitative monetary control British financial services used its new-found freedom to engage in an orgy of lending. Reid (2003: 43–67) provides an imperious account of this in her book on the ensuring secondary banking crisis of 1973–1975. By the time the CCC was brought to an end in December 1973, total Sterling advances to UK residents had risen by 148% and lending by clearing banks had climbed by 112%. Amongst the steepest rise in lending was from secondary banks ascending from £395 million to £3.4 billion in just two years. It is the flow of this lending that is instructive. The 24 months prior to November 1973 saw loans to the property and financial sector quadruple to £6.4 billion; a stock of capital more than that delivered to manufacturing and coming largely from the secondary banking system that lay outside the Bank of England’s regulatory system. This was problematic as many of the features of an economic boom we now consider common were in evidence. The banking system discarded its critical faculties and abandoned prudence in the allocation of credit, the belief became entrenched that ‘this time was different’ and the economic boom would last forever, and the value of property rose. Indeed, the average price of a new house had soared by a staggering 52% in the years from June 1972 to 1973, but as economic boom turned into recession, house prices crashed and so did the secondary banking system leaving the Bank of England no option but to organise a financial bailout. It is argued here that the CCC was not the origin of financialisation in the post-war period. The roots of financialisation  of the British economy burrow deep into the late seventeenth century and, in any case, can be traced in the post-war period to the deregulation of financial markets begun by the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan in 1958

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(Reid 2003: 23–24). The rapidity with which the banking system under CCC funnelled capital into speculative property investment, rather than building the capacity of industrial production, illustrates the precious little long-term impact the Keynesian revolution in economic management had on the role of finance in the British economy. The historical orientation of the British economy has nearly always pointed towards services with distribution, transport, communication and financial services being the dominant suppliers of gross domestic product (GDP) and employment growth throughout the majority of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Lee 1986: 10–12). At the epicentre of this service economy was the City of London, which, despite the rise in provincial banks, had subjugated English financial markets as early as 1700 (Lee 1986: 60), not because of entrepreneurial dynamism in free markets, but because of consistent state support since the English financial revolution of 1694 (Lee 2017; Silverwood and Woodward 2018). The confluence of finance and state agency was further entrenched within British capitalism by the imperialism of the British Empire. This positioned the City of London as the premier global financial centre of the world economy, rendering to it enormous structural power and informal influence and having a momentous bearing upon the development of the world economy (Strange 1994). The post-war biography of the City of London by Knayston (2001) makes it clear that the City shed none of its global pretensions after the Second World War. Evidently having learnt nothing from the interwar period, the City was obsessed with returning to its preeminent position within overseas finance. The repetitive stop-go crises of the post-war period therefore the logical outcome when economic activity was constrained by the City’s overseas accumulation strategy, which required Britain to maintain the illusion that Sterling was a global currency. The post-war era therefore saw the City eschew the humdrum activity of funnelling capital to industry. Eventually, the City found an outlet for its frustrations when it provided a tax haven for the emerging Eurodollar market (Burn 1999). The point of this historical sojourn is to identify that financialisation is not something particularly new for the British economy, it having been its default position for the entirety of the modern period since the seventeenth century. If CCC is not the origin of financialisation it is certainly the point in the contemporary period in which it accelerated. The CCC cut financial services loose from some of the shackles placed on it by the

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post-war control of credit creation and cut a key sinew of the Keynesian consensus on economic management. The orgiastic dispensation with which British banks greeted this freedom in a wave of lending that led to secondary banking crisis sadly did not herald a salutary lesson for policymakers. Successive Conservative and Labour governments accelerated financialisation further via all-encompassing deregulation and liberalisation of financial markets, deeply altering the shape of the British economy by increasing the share of financial services in economic activity and laying the foundations for a global financial crisis in the opening decade of the twenty-first century (Kirkland 2015). The CCC should therefore be considered as a second English financial revolution in our economic history—a point at which state agency formed a ‘developmental market’ (Lee 2018) that saw state power directed towards and management of the British economy subordinated to the promotion of the City of London as a global financial centre. Perpetuation of this accumulation strategy by successive British governments since CCC has led to the British economy suffering from a finance curse (Christensen et al. 2016). Sharing a conceptual similarity with the resource curse suffered by some developing economies, the finance curse is said to occur when the financial sector of an economy plays too large a role in the generation of economic activity, leading to the misallocation of resources and dubious distribution of economic rewards. A recent econometric study of the finance curse calculated that it cost the British economy between 1995 and 2015 approximately £4.5 billion, close to 2.5 years of annual GDP. Of that sum, £2.7 billion was found to have arisen from the misallocation of resources (Baker et al. 2018). The finance curse has delivered deleterious consequences for the British economy by quickening deindustrialisation, exacerbating spatial imbalances in economic growth, sustaining high levels of inequality of income and wealth (Berry and Hay 2016), and driving the emergence of a new precariat class, as work in the gig economy has taken on a new insecure and less predictable form (Hunt and McDaniel 2017). Public resentment at this state of economic affairs has only grown in the decade since the global financial crisis and contributed to the vote to leave the EU in the referendum on 23 June 2016. Rising anger at the inequities of the British economic growth model by those communities and individuals who feel left behind (Goodwin and Heath 2016) and let down (Watson 2018)

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created a malleable political constituency that populist politicians could attract to the Brexit cause by what turned out to be increasingly a nationalistic, xenophobic and racist rhetoric (Standing 2014).

The Legacy of Competition and Credit Control: The Depoliticisation of Economic Management from Competition and Credit Control to Inflation Targeting A critical component of the Keynesian consensus on economic management in the post-war period was that economic activity should be sheltered from oscillations in the economic cycle by politicised institutions whose first duty was to deliver economic stability. Traditional indirect tools of monetary control remained after the Second World War within the arsenal of macroeconomic policymakers in the Bank Rate and open-­ market operations, but they were increasingly supplemented by a panoply of policy instruments, such as liquidity ratios and hire purchase controls (used with increasing frequency as the 1950s wore on), formal requests and ceilings on bank lending, and special deposits (Needham 2014: 14–18) that were formulated and implemented from within the Treasury. This politicisation of British economic management was short-lived and began to unravel after the introduction of CCC, with a number of scholars now classifying its implementation as part of an explicit statecraft strategy of depoliticisation (Burnham 2011; Copley 2017). ‘Depoliticisation’ is defined here in its simplest form as ‘involv[ing] placing the character of decision-making at one remove from the central state’ (Wood 2017). Copley (2017: 693) has identified the Treasury’s acceptance of CCC as resting on its role in serving to ‘depoliticise the state’s role in managing crisis’ and devolve ‘the enforcement of financial discipline to the price mechanism’. The CCC dismantled the politicised monetary system of ‘administrative guidance’, through which the British state had exerted a direct influence on credit creation in the post-war period (Lee 2018: 56) and replaced it with the indirect influence on credit creation offered by the MLR and open-market operations (OMOs). CCC thus allowed the Treasury the opportunity to abrogate some of its key responsibilities for economic management built up after the Second World War to liberalise the British economy. Henceforth, the market would take a much greater role in the determination of credit creation, with the

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Treasury relying on price signals, entrepreneurial constraints and increasingly special deposits to have a suitably expansionary or chastening effect on economic activity. CCC was only the beginning of depoliticisation of economic management with successive British governments experimenting with various systems of macroeconomic governance. Whilst these systems may have regularly changed since the end of CCC they have neverthelessrevolved around an important continuity inaugurated by the CCC that the best route to economic stability was through a depoliticised rules-based order for economic management that constrained ministerial discretion. This underpinning notion has remained the same as British governments and policymakers have experimented with monetarism, shadowing the Deutschmark and membership of the Exchange-Rate Mechanism before resting on the current inflation target system. In each of these systems of monetary governance policy was deemed to reside within the domain of technocracy it being the job of officials in the Treasury or Bank of England to exert only an indirect influence on credit creation via the MLR and OMOs in such a way that previously announced targets for monetary policy could be achieved and price stability secured. Fiscal policy underwent a similar move towards rules-based governance. The underlying motif was that it plays a supportive role to monetary policy either by directly reducing monetary growth or because budgetary orthodoxy maintained the confidence of global financial markets keeping interest rates low. The depoliticisation of economic management contributed to the liberalisation of the British economy and was  the means by which politicians could displace responsibility for macroeconomic strategy from the British state onto a logic of ‘no alternative’. This trend towards depoliticised economic management (inaugurated by the CCC) survived the global financial crisis helping to fuel the public’s dissatisfaction with political elites; a key driver in the vote for Brexit The fiscal rules of the Conservative-Liberal Coalition government ushered in an age of austerity (continued by later Conservative governments) that was premised on the logic that there was ‘no alternative’ but to satisfy and secure economic credibility with international bondholders to avoid the national shame of economic default. The price was to take a swinging axe to public spending and decapitate investment into public services, causing not only public satisfaction in their quality to fall, but also an environment where unscrupulous populist politicians can link the problems public services have in maintaining supply in the face of rising demand pressures to

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anti-immigrant rhetoric. Meanwhile, the implementation of the monetary policy of quantitative easing (QE) itself is really just another form of OMO (Brittan 2013), which has helped support economic growth only through rising asset prices that benefit the rentier class and exacerbate entrenched wealth inequality (Partington 2019). These technocratic responses to the greatest financial crisis in our living memory, in lieu of widespread economic and social reform, and widely suspected as being aimed at the resurrection of the pre-crisis socio-economic status quo, have only antagonised the anger of the ‘let-down’ and ‘left-behind’, further powering the sense of alienation felt by the sections of the British populace that voted to leave the EU.

The Heath Government and Inflation: A Comparative Reappraisal of Monetary Performance with the Thatcher Government Already noted was the contentiousness and divisiveness within the Conservative Party of the Heath Government’s macroeconomic policy reversals away from the Selsdon Declaration towards Keynesian fiscal policy and statutory price and incomes. The post-war consensus on Keynesian economic management was never accepted entirely within the Conservative Party, with many of its members still clinging to beliefs pertaining to free markets and the moral principle that extension of the state into society and economy threatened individual freedom (Wade 2013). These principles were rejuvenated by the nascent emergence of monetarism that prioritised ‘sound money’ (price stability) as the only macroeconomic objective that should be pursued by the government. The alleged rejection of these dogmas in the macroeconomic policy U-turns of 1972 was an abhorrence to those Conservative members of parliament who considered themselves to be monetarists (Campbell 1993: 480–481, 524; Glynn and Booth 1996: 186, 313–314; Wade 2013: 105). For those Conservative politicians with monetarist sentiments macroeconomic policy U-turns by the Heath Government, leading to rising public expenditure and government borrowing, were associated with the explosion of monetary growth and prices in the early 1970s.4 The Heath 4  The assertion that public expenditure and government borrowing drives monetary growth was a peculiarity to what would become the British rational expectations’ school of monetarism (Jackson 2012). Reducing public expenditure as the means to balance the bud-

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Government was therefore cast as commiting a major crime against competent economic management in its  unwillingness to take the difficult decisions necessary to curtail monetary growth and conquer inflation (Seldon 1996: 6–9). For example, one historian of post-war Conservative economic thought has  argued that monetary excess between 1971 and 1973 had ‘clear inflationary consequences’ and the Heath Government should have done ‘what was required’, meaning to raise interest-rates, ‘in order to slow the growth of credit and thereby bring both increase in the money supply and the rate of inflation back under control’ (Wade 2013: 53–54). However, such interpretations are necessarily structured, whether consciously or not, with the supposed determination and record of the Thatcher Government in conquering Britain’s inflationary problem. In sharp contrast to the existing monetary narrative detailed in the previous paragraph, comparative analysis of the monetary record under the Heath Government shows that performance in this area is comparable with that of the Thatcher Government, where many more continuities than might be expected exist. Causes of monetary growth between 1970 and 1974 were myriad ranging from the residual impact of the 1967 devaluation crisis to expansionary domestic policy in the United States and the militancy of trade unions (Woodward 1991: 197–198). Another culprit in significant growth of the money supply during the Heath Government was most certainly the eruption of lending by the British banking system within the newly liberated financial markets created by the monetary reform of the CCC. The broad money supply grew before December 1973 by an astonishing 72% (Needham 2014: 3), and whilst growth of narrower £M3 measure of money was slower, £M3 also rose by 28% per annum in both 1972 and 1973 (Tomlinson 1990: 273). Lamentable control of the money supply under Heath was echoed in the performance of £M3 under the Thatcher Government after 1979, which grew well above the target rates for monetary growth, established in the medium-term financial strategy (Middleton 2000: 115). Failure to exert control over the money supply was the main reason why experimenting with CCC was discarded by the Bank of England and Treasury eventually being replaced late in 1973 with the special deposits get and lower national debt would become the cornerstone of the Thatcher Government’s medium-term financial strategy to defeat inflation and secure price stability.

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supplementary scheme (otherwise known as the corset). The Bank of England was left bruised by the experiment with CCC left feeling  that Heath had personally torpedoed its potential success in curtailing monetary growth in his reluctance to raise the MLR to the levels necessary to contract the money supply (Needham 2014: 50, 53, 55–58, 65, 70). Barber, fully conversant that curtailment of monetary growth under CCC would require a sharp rise in interest rates, often found himself under pressure from Heath to avoid that very action (Needham 2014: 55, 62, 70). As a consequence, the MLR never reached the eye-watering levels of the first Thatcher Government after its election in 1979. The new-found flexibility of the MLR saw an increase between October and December 1972 from 7.25% to 9%, without countervailing action ordered by Heath to halt the rise (Needham 2014: 60). Following relaxation of MLR from that figure to 7.5% in June 1973, MLR then raised sharply to 13% in November 1973 (Bank of England 2019b).5 Heath’s averseness to a higher MLR to combat growth in the money supply was twofold. The first was that higher interest rates were contradictory to the expansionary fiscal strategy of stimulating industrial investment and the Heath Government was subjected to a ‘considerable and largely successful lobbying attempt by industry to persuade the government not to put up interest rates’ (Wade 2013: 53). The second was that higher interest rates directly afflicted a core political constituency of the Conservative Party: homeowners, by raising the costs of mortgages (Campbell 1993: 529). It is certainly correct to say that Heath was unwilling to countenance higher interest rates, but economic management in this regard does not differ that much from Thatcher. The ‘Iron Lady’ persona cultivated by Thatcher could not have provoked a more distinctive legacy when it came to national myths pertaining to monetary performance. Thatcher was thought to have been unwilling to take prisoners from established interests who might seek to divert her from her mission of defeating inflation in the British economy through strangulation of the money supply. The problem is that such a description is too simplistic with Thatcher as equally worried as Heath about the impact of interest rates on British businesses and homeowners. After winning the 1979 General Election on 3 May 1979, the MLR was raised in successive steps from an inherited level of

5  All subsequent figures for the minimum lending rate are taken from the same Bank of England data set.

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12% to 17% by 15 November 1979, helping to catapult the British economy into its deepest economic recession since the 1930s. After this initial increase in the MLR it turned out that the ‘lady was for turning’ (Needham 2014: 1) after all, and with monetary growth running above target levels, the Thatcher Government embarked upon a reversal of monetary policy (Needham 2014: chapter five). The MLR fell in three stages to 16% on 3 July 1980, 14% on 25 November 1980 and 12% on 11 March 1981 to ease the liquidity squeeze faced by British firms for credit and to help price their exports more competitively in world trade. A further stake driven through the heart of Thatcher’s perceived reputation for intransigence towards special interests was her willingness to carouse homeowners into voting Conservative through the provision of government subsidies (Lee 2010: 625). Comparative similarities exist in other areas of monetary policymaking beyond monetary growth and the Bank Rate. Table  5.1 provides the respective inflation performance of both Conservative prime ministers. It shows that inflation performance in the periods of Heath and Thatcher’s respective premierships was not as divergent as one might have expected if the prevailing narrative about economic mismanagement of the Heath Government is accepted wholesale. For example, average annual inflation during the Heath Government was 9.3%, as opposed to the 8.116% per annum achieved by Thatcher. Furthermore, it was only in 1974, a year in which the Heath Government served only until 4 March, that the inflation rate reached double figures. In contrast, inflation reached double figures in three years (1979–1981) of the Thatcher Government—a period in which performance against the aforementioned monetary targets was terrible, and attempts to deflate the British economy through macroeconomic policy ensured it entered a recession.

Table 5.1  Inflation performance of the Heath and Thatcher Governments Government

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

Heath Thatcher

5.9%

8.6%

6.4%

8.4%

17.2%

1983 Thatcher (cont.) 4.6%

1984 5.0%

1985 6.1%

1986 3.4%

1987 4.2%

1979

1980

1981

1982

13.4% 1988 4.9%

18.0% 1989 7.8%

11.9% 1990 9.5%

8.6%

Source: Twigger (1999: 16–17). All inflation rates in this chapter are taken from this source

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Differences do exist in other areas of monetary policy, where monetary performance by the Thatcher Government can be said to have outperformed the Heath Government is in future expectations about inflation. The ignition in monetary growth that took place upon experimentation with CCC, alongside the utilisation of income policies that often only have a transitory beneficial impact upon the fight again inflation, meant that the Heath Government left an inflation time bomb in the British economy that detonated after the Labour government of Harold Wilson entered office, with inflation rising exponentially to 17.2% in 1974 and 24.2% in 1975. Table 5.1 similarly shows inflation rising rapidly towards the end of the final Thatcher administration, reaching 9.5% in 1990. However, there was never the feeling that inflation had once again become ‘hardwired’ (Needham 2014: 19) into the economic system as it had during the Heath Government. Instead, inflation towards the end of Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister was transitory and was the result of economic mismanagement by the Thatcher Government after the 1987 General Election that exacerbated, rather than abated, an economic boom. Here  more similarities are evident with economic management by the Heath and Thatcher Governments both showing the startlingly analogous characteristics of an ill-timed expansionary macroeconomic strategy bequeathing to their successors a legacy of escalating inflation and recessionary crisis in the British economy. The readiness of the Heath Government to rely on statutory incomes policies to quell inflation6 and the willingness of the Thatcher Government to use mass unemployment as a counter-inflationary tool were also significant differences in monetary policy between the two governments. Herein lies the main monetary difference between the two governments—the Conservative government under Thatcher elevated the defeat of inflation and achievement of price stability to the primary goal of British macroeconomic policy in a way that the Heath Government would never countenance. Indeed, the descent into statutory incomes policy by the Heath Government was less an inflationary policy and more a way to ensure that the proceeds from the ‘dash for growth’ fiscal strategy was channelled into 6  The Counter Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Bill was given successive readings in Parliament throughout November 1972 before receiving Royal Assent and passing into law on 30 November. The outcome of the Counter Inflation Act has been described as ‘an unprecedented peacetime expansion of government intervention into the British economy’s basic price mechanism’ (Wade 2013: 113).

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industrial investment and the creation of jobs rather than pay increases. The willingness to use unemployment to defeat inflation was indicative of the wider impulses within British capitalism towards financialisation and depoliticisation, which had been set in motion by CCC.  The Thatcher Government’s aim to conquer inflation and secure price stability was of direct benefit to the rentier and capitalist classes. The prioritisation of price stability above all other macroeconomic objectives is of itself part of a strategy to financialise the British economy and the fact that the Thatcher Government was willing to sacrifice a significant human cost to achieve this through unemployment, and in so doing create vast inequities between peoples and regions of Great Britain, would have been an abomination to Heath and his government.

A Failure on its Own Terms: Macroeconomic Management by the Heath Government Analysis of economic management by the Heath Government has been overwhelmingly critical with a positive appraisal of its performance in this area having dwindled to a loyal band of supporters of the erstwhile Prime Minister including  Heath himself (Seldon 1996: 2–6). More often, the Heath Government is castigated for its stewardship of the economy on its own terms been described as having ‘failed in several of its major objectives’ and leaving in its wake a ‘charge of incompetence’; an indictment albeit mitigated by the acceptance that the ‘misfortune of the Heath Government was to have presided over the British economy at a time of major international change’ (Gamble 1988: 78–79). Specific ire is often directed at the ‘dash for growth’ instigated at the 1972 Budget. The stimulus to aggregate demand injected over too short a period, causing currency depreciation and skills shortages in the economy (Woodward 1991: 201–202). Furthermore, along with vast credit creation after financial liberalisation by CCC, it helped deliver a boon to property speculation, which caused a financial crisis that necessitated a rescue of the secondary banking system to the tune of £100 million (Reid 2003). In order to assess whether economic management under the Heath Government failed on its own terms, it is necessary to establish its macroeconomic objectives. The Conservative Party fought the 1970 general election on a manifesto that stated ‘in implementing all our policies, the need to curb inflation will come first … for only then can our broader

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strategy succeed’. This came to appear immoderate once Heath and his ministers left the public office. The 1970 election manifesto was similarly stringent about the need to control public expenditure, stating that cuts to taxation would only be possible because of a reduction in ‘unnecessary government spending’. The opening Queen’s speech of the Heath Government on 2 July 1970 therefore identified its ‘first concern’, which was to ‘strengthen the economy and curb inflation’, with only the ‘greatest importance’ attached ‘to promoting full employment and an effective regional policy’ (HC Deb, Vol. 311, Col. 9–13, 2 July 1970). A reordering of these macroeconomic objectives was already evident by the time of the Queen’s speech in the House of Lords on the 2 November 1971. It was now the ‘first care’ of the Heath Government ‘to increase employment by strengthening the economy and promoting the sound growth of output’; the curbing of inflation relegated to an ‘aim’ alongside ‘increased efficiency’ and a ‘strong balance of payments’ (HC Deb, Vol. 325, Col. 1–5, 2 November 1971). It is 1972, however, that is often recognised as being a turning point in the macroeconomic strategy pursued by the Heath Government. The year 1972 was a year when the various pledges signalled in opposition fell by the wayside, having failed to withstand pressure from a myriad of economic events and an embarrassment of macroeconomic policy U-turns. By the time of the Queen’s speech on 31 October 1972, it was now the Heath Government’s ‘overriding concern’ to achieve a ‘high and sustained rate of economic growth’ and ‘establish effective means of enabling a faster growth of national output and real incomes’ consistent with ‘a reduction in the rate of inflation’ (HD Debs, Vol. 845, Col. 1–5, 31 October 1972). In the Queen’s speech of 30 October 1973, even this aspiration had been downgraded; the Heath Government’s ‘primary concern’ was now ‘to sustain the expansion of the economy while achieving the necessary improvement in the balance of payments’, with the pledge to merely ‘continue their efforts to counter inflation’ (HC Deb, Vol. 863, Col. 1–5, 30 October 1973). With the exception of inflation, which was the focus of the previous section, the chapter now evaluates the performance of the Heath Government against the other macroeconomic objectives that it set for itself in terms of economic growth, employment and a strong Balance of Payments. The British economy had been performing relatively well when the Heath Government entered office. It had even begun to be hoped that the 1967 devaluation crisis had gone some way towards resolving the

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repetitive ‘stop-go’ crises that had blighted post-war British capitalism, where economic growth conjoined with decreasing inflation and a surplus in the Balance of Payments prior to the 1970 general election. This fortuitous economic inheritance was not to endure. Unemployment and inflation began to rise in tandem, with unemployment continuing its inexorable progress towards the politically sensitive one million mark that had begun in the mid-1960s. The first sign of change in the macroeconomic strategy came in the form of fiscal policy, which is an arena of economic policymaking where tension had slowly ratcheted since the first days that Heath entered Downing Street. The 1971 Budget presented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1970–1974), Barber, was a relatively dull affair fixating on tax reform; the centrepiece of which was the replacement of purchase and selective employment tax with value-added tax. However, the continued steady upswing of unemployment during the latter half of the 1960s continued in the first year of the Heath Government and was the spectre haunting all macroeconomic policy deliberations. The increase in unemployment from 964,000  in 1970 to 1.058  million in 1971 meant that unemployment had broached the politically sensitive level of one million (Bank of England 2019c). The Heath Government responded by adopting an expansionary fiscal strategy at the 1972 Budget. A target rate for economic growth was set at 5% per annum, with a reduction in unemployment aimed at half a million. When considered against this duopoly of macroeconomic objectives, Table 5.2 gives the appearance that the ‘dash for growth’ inaugurated at the 1972 Budget was successful. The British economy underwent a period of economic expansion, during which economic growth surpassed the stated objective of 5% set at the 1972 Budget. However, economic growth did not secure the reduction in unemployment the Heath Government Table 5.2  Economic growth and unemployment during the Heath Government Years

Economic growth (yearly)

Unemployment (yearly) (% of working population)

1970 1971 1972 1973

2.7% 3.5% 4.3% 6.5%

3.75% 4.14% 4.34% 3.65%

Unemployment (yearly) (volume) 9,640,000 1.058 m 1.116 m 9,460,000

Sources: Bank of England (2019c); HM Treasury (2010: 59); Keep (2019: 5); ONS (2019a)

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had aimed for. Indeed, Table 5.2 demonstrates how performance against this supplementary macroeconomic objective was poor. At best, expansionary fiscal policy can be said to have halted the worrying upward trend of unemployment beyond the politically unacceptable post-war level of one million persons. What Table  5.2 does not show clearly is how illusory the macroeconomic gains under the Heath Government really were, with the ‘dash for growth’ generating an economic boom that was simply unsustainable. Structural flaws within British capitalism meant that economic growth was not delivered through increased industrial investment as intended but via the propagation of a vast housing boom. When this asset price bubble burst, the ‘Barber Boom’ (the name given to economic expansion in this period) descended into a maelstrom of financial crisis in the secondary banking system and economic recession from 1974 to 1975. Table 5.3 vividly expresses the various other macroeconomic costs attached to the Barber Boom. Public sector net borrowing rose to a level hitherto unexperienced in the post-war period, both in terms of volume and as a percentage of GDP. Farce turned to tragedy when the Keynesian growth strategy adopted by the Heath Government in its 1972 budget coincided with uncoordinated fiscal expansion by other countries across the global economy. The result was an upward surge in world commodity prices that raised the cost of imports. Higher domestic prices led to a fresh outbreak of industrial unrest, which eventually led to the instigation of a three-day working week. As if the maelstrom of global economic events had not already been enough to contend with, the first Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) shock of the decade in 1973 saw oil prices quadruple. Table 5.3  Public expenditure and public sector net borrowing during the Heath Government Years

1970/1971 1971/1972 1972/1973 1973/1974

Public expenditure (£billion)

Public expenditure (% of GDP)

£17.4 £19.8 £22.4 £26.4

32.7% 33.4% 33.2% 35.0%

Sources: HM Treasury (2010: 59); Keep (2019: 5)

Public sector net borrowing (£billion) −0.3 0.6 1.9 3.4

Public sector net borrowing (% of GDP) −0.6% 1.0% 2.6% 4.1%

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Table 5.4  Imports and exports during the Heath Government Years

Imports (annual growth rate %)

Exports (annual growth rate %)

Goods imports (annual growth rate %)

Goods exports (annual growth rate %)

1970 1971 1972 1973

4.9% 5.4% 9.9% 11.1%

5.3% 7.2% 1.3% 12.6%

5.7% 4.7% 11.3% 13.7%

4.2% 6.1% −0.2% 13.3%

Services Services imports exports (annual (annual growth rate growth rate %) %) 2.1% 7.6% 5.6% 3.2%

8.4% 9.8% 5.0% 10.7%

Sources: ONS (2019b, 2019c, 2019d, 2019e, 2019f, 2019g)

Table 5.5  Balance of Payments during the Heath Government Years

Current account (% of GDP)

Trade balance in goods and services (% of GDP)

1970 1971 1972 1973

1.3% 1.6% 0% −1.5%

0.6% 1.1% −0.2% −2.2%

Trade balance in Trade balance in goods (£million) services (£million) −94 120 −829 −2676

443 602 703 883

Sources: ONS (2019a, 2019h, 2019i, 2019f)

The final nail in the coffin was the implosion of imports into the British economy caused by the ‘dash for growth’ as shown in Table 5.4, which proved fatal to the objective of securing a strong Balance of Payments. By the end of 1973, imports had grown by more than half in total. The majority of that growth came from the import of goods, in part led by building and associated trades, as the speculative boom in property in the British economy channelled economic resources into the construction industry. Table 5.5 shows how surplus in the trade balance of goods and services was squandered with a significant deficit emerging. The value of the surplus in the trade of services almost doubled, but it failed to compensate for the dramatic deterioration of the trade balance for goods. This corroborates the story shown in Table  5.4 of how the positive export performance of services was not enough to counteract the

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deterioration in the performance of goods. This downturn in trade performance had a significant impact on the current account in Table 5.5, which developed an inchoate deficit that has continued into the contemporary period. Blaming the Heath Government solely for this nadir in economic management would be unfair. Behind the scenes, in Whitehall, the Heath Government had been placed under significant pressure to implement expansionary fiscal policy. The Treasury reported to the Heath Government that it considered high levels of unemployment and space capacity in the British economy ‘to constitute a large-scale waste of resources’ (Wade 2013: 111), and thus that the Heath Government should seek to moderate this. The financial press was also supportive of the measures taken to boost aggregate demand and employment. Nevertheless, the U-turn to Keynesian fiscal strategy was intimately linked to Heath, who was a key driver of its adoption within Whitehall, such that it is difficult not to contemplate what might have been were it not for the sad passing of Iain Macleod only weeks into the Heath Government. Macleod had served as Shadow Chancellor, and all too briefly Chancellor, until his death. Not only was Macleod’s personality described as ‘powerful and independent minded’, he was also committed to seeing a reduction in government expenditure (Seldon 1996: 4–5). He was also generally regarded as being the intellectual equal of Heath. This was in stark contrast to Barber, Macleod’s successor as Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was far more genteel and conciliatory a character. The loss of Macleod, who would have operated from within the Treasury as a countervailing force to the Prime Minister, gave Heath much more latitude to interfere with economic management. This made departures from the vision of economic management sketched out in opposition more likely once the Conservative Party entered government. The switch to expansionary fiscal policy that began in the summer of 1971 was at the instigation of Heath, whereas Barber was sceptical as to the scope and efficacy of reflation planned through fiscal policy, but he ultimately acquiesced in the implementation of expansionary fiscal policy after the registration of only muted remonstrations (Ziegler 2010: 333, 355, 357).

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Conclusion It was never the intention of this chapter to salvage the reputation of the Heath Government for competent economic management, nor has it done so. The chapter has catalogued how the Heath Government performed against the evolving array of macroeconomic objectives it set for itself during its period and finds its performance was often quite poor. The best-known example being the ‘dash for growth’ at the 1972 Budget, which surpassed its objectives for economic growth, but only at the cost of an unsustainable economic boom that descended into financial crisis, economic recession and a deterioration of the Balance of Payments. Undue fixation on these macroeconomic failures, however, risks missing the broader trends in British economic history that this reappraisal of the Heath Government’s economic management has sought to identify through its challenge to some established perceptions in section one and two. The national myth that the Conservative government of Thatcher defeated or conquered inflation does not stack up to a comparative analysis of monetary performance with the Heath Government, which showed several important continuities in economic management, but also an integral difference in the role played by unemployment in the reduction of inflation. The different approaches to unemployment taken by the Heath and Thatcher Governments matter because they are indicative of the impulses established in the British economy by the monetary experiment of CCC. This monetary experiment was an important first step in the breakdown of the Keynesian consensus starting a process in which economic management became depoliticised and the economy financialised. Built on by future governments, financial deregulation and liberalisation eventually led to the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. The technocratic managerial response to this crisis has failed to deliver substantial economic or social change designed to re-constitute the pre-crisis socio-economic status quo. This limp response to the greatest political and economic crises of our age fed into dissatisfaction with political elites, which has fuelled political support for populists, the vote for Brexit and the consequent cheapening and coarsening of our democracy thereafter. In this regard, we may consider the CCC as being both the beginning and the end of the current epoch in British capitalism. Either way, the Heath Government can no longer be bypassed as a relatively uninteresting or unimportant moment in British economic history.

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Kirkland, C. (2015). Thatcherism and the Origins of the 2007 Crisis. British Politics, 10(4), 514–535. Knayston, D. (2001). The City of London: A Club No More, 1945–1990. London: Chatto and Windus. Lee, C. H. (1986). The British Economy Since 1700: A Macroeconomic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, S. (2010). Necessity as the Mother of Invention: The Industrial Policy Debate in England. Local Economy, 25(8), 622–630. Lee, S. (2018). From Technocratic Pragmatism to the Developmental Market: Conceptualising the Politics of Brexit in Terms of the Rivalry of Two Different Political Economies. Marmara Journal of European Studies, 26(1), 51–74. Middleton, R. (2000). The British Economy Since 1945. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Needham, D. (2014). UK Monetary Policy from Devaluation to Thatcher, 1967–1982. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ohren, T., & Blyth, M. (2018). From Big Bang to Big Crash: The Early Origins of the UK’s Finance-Led Growth Model and the Persistence of Bad Policy Ideas. New Political Economy, 24(5), 605–622. Reid, M. (2003). The Secondary Banking Crisis, 1973–1975. London: Hindsight Books. Seldon, A. (1996). The Heath Government in History. In S.  Ball & A.  Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970–1974: A Reappraisal. London: Routledge. Silverwood, J., & Woodward, R. (2018). Still Picking Winners: The Political History of UK Industrial Strategy. In C. Berry (Ed.), What We Really Mean When We Talk About Industrial Strategy. Manchester: Future Economies. Standing, G. (2014). The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. Strange, S. (1994). Finance and Capitalism: The City’s Imperial Role Yesterday and Today. Review of International Studies, 20(4), 407–410. Tomlinson, J. (1990). Public Policy and the Economy since 1900. Oxford: Clarendon. Wade, R. (2013). Conservative Economic Policy: From Heath in Opposition to Cameron in Coalition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Watson, M. (2018). Brexit, the Left Behind and the Let Down: The Political Abstraction of the Economy and the UK’s EU Referendum. British Politics, 13(1), 17–30. Woodward, N. C. W. (1991). Inflation. In N. F. R. Crafts & N. Woodward (Eds.), The British Economy Since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ziegler, P. (2010). Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography. London: Harper Press.

CHAPTER 6

Industrial Relations: Reappraising the Industrial Relations Act 1971 Sam Warner

That the Industrial Relations Act failed is beyond question. As Stephen Abbot, one of the architects of the Conservative Party’s approach to reform in the 1960s, noted, at best, it was a ‘non-event’ and at worst ‘positively harmful’ (CPA CRD 3/7/12/1, Abbot to Douglas, 9 December 1973). The so-­called trade union ‘problem’ (Taylor 1982) was left anything but resolved. In February 1974, the Conservative Party lost a General Election on a ‘who governs Britain?’ ticket, as a second miners’ strike in two years brought the government to its knees. But this only tells us part of the story. Policy failure is seldom black and white. It is instead characterised by shades of grey (McConnell 2010). Periodic reappraisal on the basis of new evidence is, therefore, always important. The Act provided a framework of rules, rigidified by a range of punitive measures and institutions, to regulate collective bargaining practices at

S. Warner (*) University of Manchester, Manchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_6

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arm’s length. However, this ‘depoliticised’ approach1 became swamped by informal modes of rank-and-file resistance that risked undermining the Rule of Law (Warner 2019a, 2019b). The industrial relations landscape shifted as unofficial wildcat strikes in the private sector gave way to nationwide disputes, often within the ‘commanding heights’ of the British economy (Davies and Freedland 1993: 327). The Act was effectively out of date no sooner had it been enacted, ultimately being repealed by an incoming Labour government after just three years on the Statute Book. However, in presenting policymaking as a form of learning, Kavanagh (1991: 494) persuasively argues that ‘the most important influence [on policymakers] is likely to be past policy and its consequences’. For this reason, in reappraising the Act, its impact on the ‘successful’ trade union legislation of subsequent years must be taken seriously. Despite much comment on the Heath government, study of the dayto-­day operation of the Act and its implications has received scant academic attention. This is surprising, given the availability of a considerable amount of archival material. In this chapter, I reflect on several strategic failings regarding the Act’s implementation. I argue that associating the Act too closely with the Heath government’s infamous U-turns risks obscuring its lingering significance. In this respect, I discuss continuity in Conservative Party industrial relations policy, as the crisis of Keynesianism was superseded by neoliberal approaches in the management of British capitalism. Drawing on themes from the existing literature, including failures in planning, flawed assumptions and strategy, I demonstrate how the Act informed a wounded Conservative Party’s commitment to ‘step-bystep’ reform while solidifying a steely resolve among key reformers to make their efforts ‘stick’ second time around. In short, much of the contemporary industrial relations landscape bears the hallmark of this shortlived Act.

1  By depoliticisation, I refer to the work of Burnham (2001) who describes a process of ‘placing at one remove the political character of decision making’ and that of Flinders and Buller (2006) who identify rules-based, institutional and preference shaping forms of the strategy.

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Reconfiguring the Relationship Between Trade Unions and the Law The need to reform British industrial relations permeated the minds of Conservative politicians throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Driven by unofficial, wildcat strike activity, the number of working days lost soared as the state had few answers to rank-and-file militancy and spiralling wage claims. Trade union leaders were said to have lost control of their membership, while employers repeatedly succumbed to rank-and-file demands (Coates 1989: 45–46). Trade unions found themselves in a position of relative strength, as their membership numbers swelled in response to everyday economic challenges associated with rising prices, low wages and the threat of unemployment (Wrigley 1996: 278). Leading figures within the Labour and the Conservative Parties argued that British industry needed discipline. Trade unions became the ‘favourite political scapegoat’ for economic decline (Gamble 1994: xvi; Taylor 1980: 455–456). A Royal Commission led by Lord Donovan (HMSO 1968), the Conservative Party (Conservative Political Centre 1968) and the Labour Party through In Place of Strife (HMSO 1969) all concluded that it was necessary to reconfigure the relationship between trade unions, employers and the state. The Labour Party’s climb down in the face of trade union resistance to reform did little to alter this mindset (Dorey 2019). As one Department of Employment (DE) official noted, despite their differences, all three approaches ‘were preoccupied with the need to reduce unofficial stoppages and irresponsible activities at a local level which were regarded as a crippling burden on the economy and a serious nuisance to most of the workers affected’ (TNA LAB 10/3928, Barnes to Edwards, 1 May 1973). Before 1971, British industrial relations was characterised by voluntarism, known for the ‘absence of state regulation’ from collective bargaining practices (Hyman 2003: 41). Leading industrial relations lawyer, Otto Kahn-­Freund (1954: 44), argued that there was ‘no country in the world in which the law has played a less significant role in shaping [industrial] relations than in Great Britain’. Yet this shrouds as much as it reveals. Lord Wedderburn (1972: 270), for example, acknowledges: a clearly enunciated legal framework for British industrial relations, a structure so intimately related to the social institutions engaged in bargaining and conflict that “framework” suggests too remote a character for laws that grew as threads inherent in the social web.

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Rather than presenting an absence of the law, it is more accurate to characterise post-war British industrial relations as a system of negative rights or immunities that removed legal obstacles to collective action (Hyman 2003: 39). While the state did intervene, generally, this was only in areas like health and safety, protection of vulnerable groups and social security (Clegg 1979: 290–291; Wedderburn 1972: 271). For the analysis that follows, this is important because immunities won through years of struggle secured a voluntarist settlement, in which direct state intervention was minimal. When it happened, controversy followed, for voluntarism implied ‘not so much a distrust of legislation but of the courts of law’ (Flanders 1974: 354). As Clegg (1979: 289) notes, ‘the part played by the state in British industrial relations has always been considered as intervention from outside’. Judicial interest in the affairs of trade unions, while not unheard of, was still an alien concept to those schooled in a tradition suspicious of legal intervention (Flanders 1974: 363). Nonetheless, Conservative politicians like Geoffrey Howe (1994: 48) staunchly believed that ‘disorderly chaos’ was able to fester in the vacuum created by the absence of a codified legal framework to regulate collective bargaining practices. Herein lies the first major problem. The Conservative Party’s reformers were acutely aware of their reputation as ‘the Party of “the bosses”’, noting that ‘when [a Conservative] speaks of “trade union reform” the reaction is akin to that of a lawyer who hears a shop steward demanding transformation of the Legal Establishment’ (CPA CRD 3/17/21, PG/20/66/58, 17 November 1967: 5). If the ‘pluralism’ of voluntarism reflects the ‘ignoble social myth’ that social power can be wielded equally in collective bargaining (Fox 1973: 231), it becomes easy to see how attempts to tame trade unions could be perceived as a ‘state licence’ on their activities (Hyman 1975). The ‘neutral aims’ of the Act obscured the Conservative Party’s commitment to curb trade union power by re-forging the system of industrial relations, not simply tinkering at the edges (Weekes et al. 1975: 5). Given the divisive nature of the task, Keith Joseph even argued that unless reform was even-handed, trade unionists would become ‘political victims or martyrs in a class war’ (CPA CRD 3/17/20, Matters for further consideration, 11 January 1966: 12). The Act did contain collectivist elements, but its restrictive clauses clearly embedded the view that trade unions were an impediment to the free market (Marsh 1992: 12). It professed to further collective bargaining but did so by strengthening individual rights and empowering trade union

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leaders (Weekes et  al. 1975: 220–221). This reflects the view, held by many, that individual trade unionists were being swept along by a militant minority, and that trade union leaders needed to reassert control over their membership. Heath believed that, privately, trade union leaders welcomed this opportunity (TNA CAB 128/47, CM (70) 12th Conclusions, 3 September 1970: 12). This, however, betrayed a misunderstanding of trade unions and, indeed, employers. Hyman (1989) points to the twoway nature of power within trade unions that beholds leaders to their members, something Conservative politicians neglected at the time. Through a system of registration, the Act sought to bring trade unions within its framework by offering certain immunities to those who played by its rules. However, by creating a National Industrial Relations Court (NIRC) to adjudicate disputes—a decision with intuitive appeal—the Act contained a fragility in that the Rule of Law became a key battleground (Warner 2019b). In summary, the Act that was contradictory, poorly drafted and driven by fundamental misunderstandings. Moreover, identifying trade unions as the ‘problem’ risked a head-on collision between trade unions and the state. In what follows, I trace how these strategic errors were codified at the heart of this novel system of law.

The Failure to Consult The link between a lack of consultation and policy failure has been long understood (King and Crewe 2013: 652). This was certainly the case with the Industrial Relations Act. The Conservative Party entered office with detailed plans (Taylor 1996: 164), but while the policy document Fair Deal at Work (Conservative Political Centre 1968) presented a blueprint for a legal framework, it also shrouded both tension and compromise between hardliners and pragmatists within the party (Dorey 2006: 50–51). Furthermore, despite its calls for ‘a fair, relevant and sensible framework of law’ designed to ‘exert stabilising pressures and help raise general standards in the way men do business’ (Conservative Political Centre 1968: 10), the policy work remained ‘insulated from the main interest groups in industrial relations’ (Moran 1977: 61). This insular approach continued once in office. The Act became a ‘closed’ document, both in terms of its complexity and the time made available for discussion between affected parties (Silkin 1973: 437). As its legislation was marched towards the statute book, the government succumbed to a serious case of the ‘fastest law

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in the west’ syndrome (Dunleavy 1995), with haste favoured over rigour in drafting. When Robert Carr, the Secretary of State for Employment, first met Vic Feather, President of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), full consultation was offered with the reassurance that ‘it was certainly not the government’s intention to rush forward legislation’ (TNA LAB 10/3559, Meeting with Carr, Feather and Greene, 23 June 1970). Within the government’s inner circle, the picture was very different. Carr informed Cabinet that a prolonged, TUC-led challenge was likely and that the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), too, would not relish the prospect of reform (TNA CAB 129/151, CP (70) 30, 28 July 1970). The key message, however, was that the major provisions of the proposed Bill would be devised without consultation and only minor additions on points of detail should be expected. For ministers, speed was of the essence if the Bill was to receive its Second Reading by December 1970, as intended (TNA CAB 129/151, CP (70) 30, 28 July 1970). Carr was convinced that ‘whatever the political battle or the industrial action that might ensue…when [the Bill] reached the Statute Book, it would promote an improvement in industrial relations and would offer better prospects for industrial peace’ (TNA CAB 128/47, CM (70) 10th conclusions, 30 July 1970: 15). As Middlemas (1990: 317) correctly observes, the government’s haste ensured that the Bill’s inconsistencies ‘were set quickly and immutably into a document from which the Party itself ensured there would be no derogation’. The failure to consult, therefore, has been described as a ‘serious political misjudgement’ (Moran 1977: 61), and one that the archival record suggests was avoidable. On the same day that Feather informed the General Council that Heath was ‘open to argument’ on the legal framework (MRC MSS.292D/20/3, GC 14th meeting, 3 September 1970: 133), Carr reassured the Cabinet that the passage of the Bill ‘was not being delayed by the need for formal consultation’ (TNA CAB 128/47, CM (70) 12th conclusions, 3 September 1970: 8–9). The problem resulting from this rushed approach, as Carr would later admit, was that even he did not fully understand the sheer complexity of the Bill (Whitehead 1986: 71; Charmley 2008: 199). Similarly, a junior official recalled that ‘we went through the legal aspects and there were chunks I didn’t understand’ (cited in Holmes 1997: 32). The government had given the trade unions false hope of consultation and, in doing so, risked a muddled Bill.

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Unsurprisingly, this antagonised an already disgruntled TUC leadership. Feather argued that ‘haste seems to me to be inconsistent with the emphasis that the Prime Minister himself has laid on the need to make important changes to the policy only after careful thought and the fullest examination of all the considerations’ (TNA LAB 10/3559, Feather to Carr, 5 October 1970). However, when the parties met, the principle of a legal framework was held sacrosanct. Carr defended the government’s position on the grounds that the proposals were entirely necessary, had been in the public domain for some time, and that limiting consultation would extend the time available for scrutiny in Parliament (TNA LAB 10/3559, Note of meeting with F&GPC, 13 October 1970). Similar discontent was expressed by the CBI on viewing the Consultative Document, noting that ‘no concessions has been made’ following their recommendations (MRC MSS.200/C/3/EMP/3/17, L.337.70, December 1970), leaving Leonard Neal, then responsible for presenting the CBI view, ‘personally disappointed that all the work of the CBI committees and the representations to officials and Ministers had made so little impact on the Minister’s intentions to date’ (MRC MSS.200/C/3/79, C.1.71— Minutes of Council of CBI, 16 December 1970: 7). None of this was news to officials and ministers. Before the Consultative Document was even released, one DE official expressed concern that ‘the chance that, as introduced, it will be a well-considered Bill are bound to be seriously diminished’ (TNA LAB 43/600, Krusin to Burgh, 23 September 1970). Another official described ‘the timetable as uncomfortably tight, both in relation to the substance of work on the Bill and the credibility of the consultation process’ (TNA LAB 43/600, Burgh to Smith, 24 September 1970). In correspondence with William Whitelaw, Lord President of the Council, Carr acknowledged that such a complex Bill would normally go through as many as ten prints before publication (TNA PREM 15/466, Carr to Whitelaw, 10 November 1970). In this case, only one draft was made available for comments. Arguing the case for delay, a senior DE official suggested that the legislation was ‘like a rock rather than like a diamond’, while the passage through Parliament was now expected to be damaging (TNA LAB 43/600, Burgh to Smith, 6 November 1970). Carr ignored what he described as ‘a very real risk that some of the major concepts of the Bill will be found to be imperfectly fashioned’ (TNA PREM 15/466, Carr to Whitelaw, 10 November 1970), and the Bill hit the Statute Book by August 1971. As events unfolded, the

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consequences of favouring haste over precision haunted the government for the remainder of the Parliament.

Immediate Trouble for the Act The Act’s credibility was under pressure soon after it was enacted. The cumulative effects of industrial unrest throughout the ‘glorious summer’ of 1972 (Darlington and Lyddon 2001) fractured the government’s arm’s-­length approach to industrial relations. Tripartite talks with the TUC and CBI secured no agreement as the country lurched towards the statutory incomes policy the government had rejected. It is important not to confuse the aims of the Act and counter-inflation policy, but neither can be considered in isolation of the other. Ministers had hoped that the Act would assist in holding down wage settlements, even if in the short-term confrontation with the unions made matters worse (TNA PREM 15/314, Note on inflation, November 1970: 5). The reality was that, despite the government’s message of disengagement from collective bargaining, ministers micromanaged and feared the consequences of inflamed tensions caused by the Act. When a major dispute with the miners began in January 1972, DE officials warned of a ‘trial by strength’ if the Act’s emergency provisions were used (TNA PREM 15/986, Miners’ Pay Dispute 1971–72, n.d.). Behind the scenes, the government was heavily involved in negotiations, with Carr meeting representatives of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), National Association of Colliery Overmen and Shotfirers and the National Coal Board (TNA PREM 15/984, various). Writing to Heath towards the end of December 1971, John Davies, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, lamented the failure of the disengagement strategy, recalling a conversation with a nationalised industry chairman who ‘had never [had] to deal with a more determinedly interventionist government’ (TNA PREM 15/411, Davies to Heath, 29 December 1971). The miners won a vastly improved pay offer, setting the scene for the prolonged resistance to the Act that came to a head in two major disputes. When the railwaymen began working to rule in defence of their wage claim, the government applied for a cooling-off period under the Act’s emergency provisions. It was granted and the NIRC was adhered to. However, when a ballot was forced, the railwaymen backed a wage settlement that was considered unacceptable by ministers. In a parallel set of disputes, waves of industrial action swept across the docks as individual

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trade unionists flouted the law. When the Transport and General Workers’ Union (T&GWU) was held vicariously liable for the actions of its shop stewards, the risk of unlimited fines focused the minds of senior figures within the TUC. While trade unions were now permitted to defend themselves before the court and fines were paid, the unofficial activities of shop stewards continued. When the Court of Appeal overturned the NIRC’s decisions, there was little option other than to commit five dockers to prison for contempt of court. Only a game of legal wrangling secured their release by the House of Lords. It was unsurprising that judges were perceived to be acting politically (Darlington and Lyddon 2001; Lindop 1998a, 1998b; Warner 2019a). After these events, the government turned to a retrenched form of corporatism to devise a joint strategy for economic management, especially controlling inflation. However, despite there being some evidence of a willingness to get around the negotiating table, the government and TUC were at a standstill over the Act, as neither side was willing to show its hand. When discussions on amendment commenced, Macmillan was clear that if changes to the Act were made, it must be ‘without weakening its prime purpose’ (TNA PREM 15/1678, Macmillan to Heath, 9 August 1972). When a working group of officials was established, led by Denis Barnes, this principle often governed the agenda. In its preliminary meeting, the group recorded that its task was ‘to make the Act work better— not water it down’ (TNA LAB 10/3929, Holland to Barnes, 17 August 1972). Discussions ranged across all aspects of the Act, although a general theme was that any concessions on controversial provisions like registration would have to be met with further restrictions on secondary action and trade union immunities (TNA LAB 10/3929, various). Incidentally, these would become two of the flagship concerns of Thatcher and her acolytes. After the first round of discussions, Barnes confirmed that his group’s efforts had ‘not identified any worthwhile changes which the Government might contemplate as an early unilateral move to influence public opinion and union moderates’ (TNA LAB 10/3929, Barnes to Holland, 11 September 1972: 3). As tripartite negotiations ratcheted up, Maurice Macmillan, Carr’s replacement at the Department of Employment, demonstrated the government’s resolute commitment to the Act, stating it was non-negotiable (TNA PREM 15/972, Macmillan to Heath, 20 October 1972). This reflected his view that talks with the TUC were unlikely to lead to ‘an agreement which will be acceptable to all three Parties and creditable

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either abroad or to the general public at home’ (TNA PREM 15/972, Macmillan to Heath, 20 October 1972: 7). Similarly, Heath was only willing to discuss a negotiating package that included the Act if there was movement on controlling prices and incomes (TNA PREM 15/972, Note for the record, 27 October 1972). The reality was that the parties never came close to an agreement on the economy, let alone the Act. When Barnes’ working group published its report the following day, the impasse was confirmed. The group concluded that the Act must be warranted with given a reasonable trial period and not judged on ‘causes celebres’. In addition, it had to be accepted that repeal or putting the Act on ice was an ‘impossible concept’, even if the government would show restraint by only using the emergency procedures as a matter of last resort. A joint working party to review the Act would only be possible if the principle of a legal framework was accepted (TNA CAB 130/600, GEN 117 (72) 74, 31 October 1972). The talks eventually broke down, with the parties deadlocked over how to control prices and incomes. When the Cabinet met on 2 November, the day the talks ended, it was agreed that the Act would not be abandoned, with militants rendering it largely inoperable through the TUC’s non-­ cooperation policy. The conclusions state: It would be unwise to sacrifice the support of the more moderate elements in the unions by appearing ready to compromise on the principles of a statute which the Government had deliberately enacted in an attempt to create a more equitable and orderly structure of industrial relations. (TNA CAB 128/50/49, CM (72) 48th Conclusions, 2 November 1972: 6)

What became an immediate 90-day freeze on wages, prices, rents and dividends sparked a three-phase statutory approach to counter-inflation. But this hardly speaks of a straightforward U-turn, given the staunch defence of the Act. Moreover, in a meeting with Feather with Heath in the days following the breakdown, Vic Feather claimed the freeze was secretly welcomed by all but the militant ‘nuts’ on the TUC General Council (TNA PREM 15/973, Meeting with Feather and Heath, 13 November 1972). If the Act was designed to depoliticise the role of government in industrial relations, statutory intervention on wages and prices achieved the opposite. The latter was a U-turn in that the government had committed to avoiding a statutory incomes policy in its manifesto. Furthermore, it

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confirmed that the government’s intention to disengage from collective bargaining was over. However, the government remained committed to the principles behind industrial relations reform. The CBI acknowledged this tension, distinguishing between a ‘managerial’ and ‘governmental’ approach. The former, represented by the Industrial Relations Act, involved rational management and free collective bargaining supported by civil law. The latter, represented by the counter-inflation proposals, put the government centre stage in deciding wage and price levels, with the ultimate sanction of criminal law in place (MRC MSS.200/C/3/ EMP/3/84, Review of the Industrial Relations Act, 22 March 1973: 1). In terms of policy implications, given that an incomes policy weakens collective bargaining, amendment to strengthen the punitive aspects of the Act became less important, while measures to increase cooperation between both sides of industry and the government came to the fore. Indeed, the CBI concluded that any suggestions on amending the Act must now consider how the government’s incomes policy would be supported (MRC MSS.200/C/3/EMP/3/84, Review of the Industrial Relations Act, 22 March 1973: 2). Once a statutory incomes policy was in place, irrespective of the government’s ongoing commitment to industrial relations reform, it had effectively undermined its own strategy. Senior officials noted that amendment of the Act must now reflect the new context and, crucially, the trade unions’ response to the government’s statutory incomes policy (TNA PREM 15/1678, W. Armstrong to R. T. Armstrong, 26 March 1973). The Act had been subjugated to a supporting role, as a very different framework to regulate collective bargaining developed. This was confirmed by the TUC General Council, who recorded: ‘The IR Act was not so important now in regard to collective bargaining rights because the Government’s incomes legislation restricted those rights and was achieving what the IR Act set out to do in this regard’ (MRC MSS.292D/20/6, GC 15th meeting, 23 May 1973: 132). With this in mind, it is important to look more closely at the Act’s final days and whether it is appropriate to argue it was abandoned.

One of Heath’s U-turns? For Seldon (1996: 7), the government’s actions after the summer of 1972 position the Act among Heath’s U-turns. More commonly, it is argued that the Act was tacitly abandoned (Ball 1996: 329) but ‘just one step

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short of a complete U-turn’ (Holmes 1997: 31). In agreement with this, a variety of expressions used are broadly accurate, referring to the Act being placed in ‘cold storage’ (Taylor 1993: 200) or ‘put on the back burner’ (Whitehead 1986: 79) or even in ‘suspended animation’ (Thomson and Engleman 1975: 126). Of course, the Act was not repealed and only limited suggestions for amendment featured in the Conservative Party’s February 1974 manifesto (Bale 2012: 163; Dorey 2006: 73–75; Dorfman 1979: 65; Taylor 2007: 164). The archival evidence adds nuance to the U-turn narrative, revealing that supportive attitudes hardened in defence of the Act, even if minor amendments might be conceded. For example, in January 1973, Robert Keith, President of the Registrar of Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations (RTUEA), was informed by senior members of Barnes’ working group that amendment to the Act was ‘on the shelf and likely to remain there pending a General Election, unless matters take an unexpected turn requiring fresh legislation’ (TNA NF 1/5, Note of meeting on 24 January, 25 January 1973). In an accompanying footnote, it states that ‘pre-election amendment [was] obviously controversial, timeconsuming and tactically weak’ (TNA NF 1/5, Note of meeting on 24 January, 25 January 1973). To get a sense of the practical effects of the Act after the summer of 1972, a fruitful avenue of investigation is the work of its institutions. In a short chapter this cannot be an exhaustive exercise, but nevertheless, important details of the day-to-day life of the Act can be revealed. The RTUEA, for example, ran down its time by cutting corners to avoid disputes, a policy it styled ‘tactical procrastination’ (TNA LAB 10/3610, RTUEA rules work: General policy, 15 February 1973). This was to try and play for time, given that under the Act, just 11% of trade union membership was covered, down from 75% under the previous system (TNA LAB 10/3928, Three briefs on registration, 26 April 1973). Support from employers had also eroded. A CBI report concluded that ‘[t]he idea of using registration for disciplining purposes had not proved effective’, with an accompanying handwritten note proposing ‘it should be abandoned’ (MRC MSS.200/C/EMP/3/84, Registration—CBI view, n.d.). The Commission on Industrial Relations (CIR) had effectively been frozen out for some time as a result of non-cooperation. Trade unions were boycotting the CIR’s decisions, even when it found in their favour. By the end of 1972, senior officials concluded that referring disputes over trade union recognition to the CIR was pointless while the TUC noncooperation policy was in place (TNA LAB 0/3688, Cox to Barnes, 31

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October 1972). The DE was in a difficult position. In correspondence, senior figures acknowledged that ‘since the CIR is the Government’s agency for reforming industrial relations it cannot very well allow the CIR to rust away through a lack of references caused by the TUC boycott and employers resistance’ (TNA LAB 10/3688, Secretary of State’s references to the CIR, 13 November 1972). This situation was never truly resolved, as references were always deemed controversial and seldom won ministerial support. Despite its difficult start, the NIRC achieved some positive results outside of the major disputes that hampered its early work. This was, at least in part, driven by the fact that it adopted a less confrontational approach (Weekes et al. 1975: 198). Following the disputes in the docks, the TUC permitted trade unions to appear before the NIRC in self-defence. In December 1972, the first TUC-affiliated trade union applied to the NIRC directly, prompting the secretary of the court to note that ‘[t]he doctrine of self-defence had come a long way’ (Hills 1973: 278). Donaldson not only believed that the controversy surrounding the court was dissipating as trade union attention shifted to incomes policy (TNA J 120/3, Donaldson to Dobson, 28 March 1973: 2), but he was left exacerbated by the lack of a government defence of its work (TNA PREM 15/1678, Carr to Heath, 4 October 1973). The 1973 CIR Annual Report also makes for interesting reading. The number of days lost was down from 23.9 million to 7.2 million, even if stoppages overall had increased (HMSO 1974: 18). For the likes of Jim Prior, this pointed to a need to distinguish between ‘politically controversial provisions’ and those that ‘have made a substantial contribution to the improvement of industrial relations in this country’ (TNA PREM 15/1654, Prior to Hailsham, 20 November 1973). This is perhaps one of the more curious aspects of the government’s strategy. Outside of the controversial cases that made national headlines, the Act was operating, albeit below capacity. Ministers remained totally committed to reform but were extremely cautious about defending the Act in public. Internal discussions often turned to strengthening the provisions of the Act, even providing the precursor to later reforms. When Heath, Macmillan, Carr and Howe formed a working group to personally discuss the Act, it was swiftly concluded that any commitment to amendment would simply discredit it further and empower the government’s opponents (TNA CAB 130/697, GEN 181 (73) 1, 3 July 1973). It was common knowledge that the TUC was by now looking towards the next government and complete repeal if the Labour Party won (TNA PREM

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15/1674, Note for the record, 10 July 1973). When tripartite talks commenced once again in June 1973, the Act barely featured. In discussions over Stage III of counter-­inflation policy at Chequers in August, only Jack Jones, President of the T&GWU, mentioned the Act. No one else on the TUC, CBI or government side pursued the point (TNA LAB 10/3910, Lawman to Carr, 12 September 1973). As Moran (1977: 144) puts it, the Act ‘continued to haunt political and industrial life like a malign spirit’. A key point, as noted earlier, is that the ‘strike problem’ that the legal framework was designed to inhibit had changed. This is most obviously demonstrated by the fact that another dispute with the miners was fermenting in the background. While key figures, notably Howe, were willing to defend ‘the basic rightness of the Industrial Relations Act’ (TNA PREM 15/1654, Howe to Hailsham, 30 October 1973), much damage had already been done. Robin Chichester Clarke, Minister of State for Employment, rather missed the point when he mounted a defence some days later: ‘Most of the cases coming before the court have been settled to the satisfaction of both parties without difficulty. The work has gone largely, indeed almost totally, unpublicised, quietly and unspectacularly’ (HC Debate, Vol. 863, cc. 491–492, 2 November 1973). With the industrial relations landscape shifting, however, the fact that these cases were dealt with out of the limelight did little to change the negative perceptions associated with the Act. When the miners commenced an overtime ban out in pursuit of improved pay and conditions, Heath was informed by Macmillan that any attempt to use the legal provisions of the Act would only make matters worse (TNA PREM 15/1680, Macmillan to Heath, 21 November 1973). The government was stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Act could not be used, nor could it be reformed or suspended. In the final policy document on the matter, Macmillan wrote at length about why the principle of a legal framework must be retained: Although the sanctions provided by the Act have so far been of limited practical use, the principle that there should be such restraints must certainly be maintained in any revision of the legislation. To jettison it would put the clock back to the continuously deteriorating situation which forced the present Government and its predecessor to abandon traditional concepts of a mainly voluntary system of industrial relations and to resort to the law as a brake on industrial power. (TNA CAB 130/697, GEN 181 (73) 3, 30 November 1973: 1)

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If anything, there was a growing sentiment that if the Act was to be amended, decoupling trade union immunities from registration, for example, further restrictions would be needed (TNA CAB 130/697, GEN 181 (73) 3, 30 November 1973: 1). In a potentially conciliatory move, DE officials discussed a ‘hypothetical Bill’ to extend immunities to unregistered trade unions (TNA LAB 10/3910, Barnes to Stainton, 13 December 1973), although following the advice of Parliamentary Counsel, they decided that such an attempt may well open up ‘a pretty wide range of controversial issues’ (TNA LAB 10/3910, Edwards to Dawe, 20 December 1973). All that can be concluded from the 18 months of backand-forth on amendment is that commitment to limiting trade union power remained strong. Central Policy Review Staff officials summarised the position well, arguing that ‘though a certain amount of water can be thrown away, the baby must at all costs be kept safely in the bath’ (TNA CAB 184/150, Industrial Relations Act: The feasible options, 28 January 1974). The dispute with the miners soon looked like an unwinnable battle. On 5 February 1972, the NUM called an all-out strike to commence four days later. Attention quickly shifted towards a General Election. Two of the Act’s staunchest defenders, Robert Carr and Geoffrey Howe, made one final plea to use its emergency procedures. If the government called for a 60-day cooling-off period, they informed Heath, public pressure would be applied, even if the NUM ignored it (TNA PREM 15/2128, Carr to Heath, 6 February 1974). Although this was rejected by officials, it remains an important footnote in the life of the Act. Both men were conscious that victory in any General Election would require an endorsement of the Act with only minor amendments (Howe 1994: 684–685). The letter concluded: ‘We feel that people will say that if we are not prepared to use the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act to attempt to deal with a crisis of this magnitude, it is unlikely that we should ever make use of it and the whole thing is therefore a dead letter’ (TNA PREM 15/2128, Carr to Heath, 6 February 1974). Perhaps this is the most accurate summation of the life of this Act. Despite the government’s enduring committment to reform, events had overtaken the Act and it was rendered impotent. However, while it became a ‘dead letter’ in the eyes of many, it left deep wounds in the Conservative Party, the scars of which remain to this day. It is to this legacy that the chapter now turns.

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The Enduring Legacy of the Act A good way to frame a reassessment of the Act’s legacy is to borrow a phrase of Sir John Donaldson, President of the NIRC, who described it as a useful ‘pilot experiment’ (TNA PREM 15/1678, National Industrial Relations Court, 4 October 1973), which, like all experiments, involved trying ‘to find out what works and what does not’ (TNA PREM 15/1678, National Industrial Relations Court, 4 October 1973: 20). As part of the legacy of this failed experiment, it is unsurprising that an ‘overriding conviction’ to get the job done emerged among Conservative politicians (Taylor 1996: 189). As Marsh (1991: 293–294) argues: If Mr. Heath became the spectre at the feast, the trade unions remained the devil to be invoked and held responsible for the failure of both the 1970–74 Conservative government and its Labour successor. As such, to negotiate with the unions would have been to sup with the devil.

Yet this was not the only lesson learnt. While the idea of negotiating with trade unions was unthinkable to many Conservatives, taming the trade unions would require more subtlety than the unwinnable outright confrontations that characterised the 1970s (Taylor 1996: 163). Thus, the experience of the Act fermented two, seemingly, incompatible mindsets, and it is these that can be traced into the Thatcher governments. A closer look at the Conservative Party’s work in opposition reveals this tension. Reflecting the growing sense that Britain had become ungovernable (King 1975), an Authority of Government Policy Group was established in September 1975. Although not limited to matters of industrial relations, the failure of the Industrial Relations Act and the state’s relationship with trade unions dominated early discussions. Figures like Lord Jellicoe—a Cabinet Minister under Heath—and Ian Gilmour—a wellknown ‘wet’ throughout the Thatcher years—acknowledged that a loss of public support was driven by deficiencies in the Act and dislike of the government’s economic policy. This was coupled with a ‘lamentable lack of contact and understanding’ between the Tories and trade unionists, and when the government enjoyed a small majority, such dramatic reforms would always have been a challenge. One take-home message, as articulated by Lord Carrington, was that ‘it was easy to do unpopular things when the Government was popular’ (GYA PG/40/75/1, AG Policy Group, Minutes of 1st meeting, 10 September 1975). In the midst of

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almost constant economic crisis, the Heath government could hardly claim popularity. The following year, once a more a forensic approach to these discussions had commenced, Conrad Heron, a senior Civil Servant at the Department of Employment when amendment was discussed in 1973, informed the group that, in his view, ‘the basic mistake [of the Act] had been to try [...] to put through with what historically was not a very large majority a vast blue-print covering a whole mass of highly sensitive areas in one go’ (GYA PG 40/75/14, AG Policy Group, Minutes of 12th meeting, 21 July 1976: 1–2). The ‘incrementalism’ advocated by Heron was far removed from Robert Carr’s rejection of CBI requests for a ‘step-bystep’ approach because he feared battles with trade unionists after every ‘step’ (MRC MSS.200/C/3/EMP/22/2, Note of Meeting, 5 August 1970: 3–4). In evidence of a shift of attention towards trade union leaders as the ‘problem’, George Younger argued that the leadership was ‘captured by an articulate left-wing’ and that more should have been done to inform the rank-and-file of the individual freedoms the Act would have afforded them (GYA PG 40/75/12, AG Policy Group, Minutes of 12th meeting, 21 July 1976: 2). Such attitudes certainly carried weight among those captured by the ideological individualism beginning to set the agenda within the Conservative Party. The trade unions might not have been the sole cause of the economic malaise, but they represented something government could tackle in a sea of imponderables. This reflects the view of those who had either been involved with the Act directly or the infamous ‘Stepping Stones Programme’. This programme, devised in opposition, was designed to discredit the trade union movement in the minds of the public and, in turn, damage the Labour Party as their allies. This, it was hoped, would secure the terrain for radical reforms (Dorey 2016). In essence, it was intended to attack trade union power as the bedrock of ‘a sea-change in Britain’s political economy’ (THCR 2/6/1/248, Stepping Stones Report, 14 November 1977). Despite compelling evidence that Thatcher was cautious about this approach, it shaped the thinking of key protagonists— namely John Hoskyns and Geoffrey Howe—about what should be done even though the pragmatism of Thatcher and others focused on what could be done (Dorey 2016: 116). The ‘Winter of Discontent’ was the final piece of the jigsaw required to blunt the Labour Party’s greatest weapon—that they alone could manage the trade unions (Taylor 2007: 177).

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When the Conservative Party returned to power in May 1979, the well-­ known ‘step-by step’ approach to reform followed. While Marsh (1991: 297) is correct to note that the ‘step-by-step’ strategy does not necessarily suggest coherence in the government’s approach, the Act’s dual legacy is reflected in it as two competing perspectives that emerge. These two positions—caution and strength—united in what became a ‘successful’ approach to reform. Prior was the main advocate of the former, informing Thatcher that ‘it would be fatal to follow the 1970 pattern and rush things too much’, confirming that the government ‘must live up to our promises to consult’ (TNA LAB 10/3939/2, Prior to Thatcher, 14 May 1979). For Prior, it was ‘more important to minimise opposition as far as we can and to finish up with legislation that sticks’ (TNA LAB 10/3939/2, Prior to Thatcher, 14 May 1979). This is a far cry from the days of worrying about how aspects of the Act would function in practice only once enacted. As Prior confirmed to the CBI, this was not a case of taking a soft approach, but instead his aim was to ‘demolish once and for all the old argument that the law could not be brought into industrial relations’ (TNA LAB 10/939/2, Meeting with CBI, 18 May 1979). The government would not leave itself open to the accusation that it failed to consult. Thatcher herself reassured Len Murray, President of the TUC, that reforms would be ‘small and moderate and would not follow the paths of 1971’ (TNA PREM 15/69, PM’s meeting with Mr Murray, 1 June 1979). However, Murray warned ‘that some people would be looking to make martyrs of themselves, including getting themselves into prison’ (TNA PREM 15/69, PM’s meeting with Mr Murray, 1 June 1979). Senior officials remembered well that ‘[t]he history of 1970–74 points to the dangers of a head-on assault’ (TNA PREM 19/70, Hunt to Thatcher, 18 June 1979). Given such warnings, Prior’s stated approach— to ‘advance cautiously, step by step, and take care that the unions had no cause for complaint over lack of consultation’ (TNA CAB 134/4335, E (79) 3rd Meeting, 19 June 1979)—was not without merit. Back in 1972, officials refused to consider curbing sympathetic action when they were struggling to make existing restrictions ‘stick’ (TNA LAB 10/3929, Barnes—Possible changes to the Act, 25 October 1972). Similarly, writing about trade union immunity in a letter to the President of the Law Society, Thatcher stated: there is no doubt that a total ban on secondary action would directly conflict with the strong tradition of sympathetic action and would give rise to a real

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danger of a concerted campaign to make the Bill unworkable. Nothing is more likely to bring the law into disrepute than for it to be flagrantly disobeyed or if the remedies it provides are not used by those people it is designed to help, as happened with the 1971 Act. (TNA PREM 19/264, Draft letter, July 1980: 3)

Thatcher’s caution was evidently informed by her party’s previous failure. She did, of course, want stringent restrictions on trade union immunities, but ‘for tactical and Parliamentary reasons’ agreed to follow Prior (TNA PREM 134/4442, E (80) 1st Meeting, 15 January 1980: 5). If Thatcher was ‘trapped in moderation’ (Moore 2013: 772), this, in large part, was a consequence of the long shadow of the Act. The legacy of the Act, as Dorey (2016) details, also solidified a hardline bolster to Prior’s incrementalism. In addition to the cautious ‘step-bystep’ approach, familiar figures advocated a harder line. For example, Leonard Neal, formerly the chairman of the CBI working group on the Industrial Relations Bill and latterly President of the CIR, argued that Prior’s pragmatic approach risked adding ‘to the mythology surrounding the 1971 Act—that the law cannot be used to constrain the present excesses of the picket line’ (TNA PREM 19/263, Neal to Prior, 12 March 1980). Like Neal, and in contrast to Prior, senior figures within the Thatcher government expressed the view that more had to be done to attack trade union funds (Dorey 2016: 179–180). Writing to Howe, Hoskyns drew on the experience of the Act directly for two reasons: first, from the point of view of lessons learnt from past efforts; and, second, because this is the main objection from gun-shy colleagues who may have an alarming feeling of déjà vu. This is where the carefully built up mythology that the 1971 legislation (which so nearly worked and would have done if there hadn’t been the February 1974 election) was a disaster from start to finish, is so paralysing in its effect. (TNA PREM 19/261, Hoskyns to Howe, 29 January 1980)

The Act lingered in the minds of both groups, albeit producing different conclusions in terms of strategy. For the hardliners, putting trade union funds at risk reflected the political deftness that Prior’s cautious ‘step-by-­ step’ approach lacked. Writing to Prior, Howe expressed his concerns:

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It is often argued that there are dangers of trying to proceed too quickly in reforming industrial relations, and there obviously are. But in my view there are equally great risks in not moving fast or far enough at a time when major structural change in the economy will inevitably put pressure on existing industrial relations machinery and institutions, and when we may have, perhaps, the best opportunity for constructive change for some time to come. (TNA PREM 19/491, Howe to Prior, 8 December 1980)

In his comments on Prior’s draft Green Paper, Howe argued that it was ‘fairly clear that the [Industrial Relations] Act was put into operation in circumstances rendered unusually confused and testing by certain decisions of the courts at crucial moments’ (TNA PREM 19/491, Howe to Prior, 10 December 1980). The principles embodied in the Act remained as salient to Howe in 1981 as they had in 1971. As Chancellor, he argued for the 1981 Green Paper, Trade Union Immunities (DE 1981), to include the phrase: ‘The long run history of the 1971 legislation might have been different if it had not been prematurely and precipitately repealed’ (TNA PREM 19/491, Wiggins to Dykes, 16 December 1980). Despite protestations from officials, he even advocated a strengthened version, suggesting ‘it is not possible to come to a final judgement about what would have been the long-term effectiveness of the Act had it been allowed a better chance to prove itself’ (TNA PREM 19/491, Tolkien to Fahey, 6 January 1981). What appeared in the final document is softened, but the sentiment remains. Howe became a key member of the group, pushing to shackle the trade unions permanently, arguing for the need ‘to impose upon trade union funds some financial responsibility for the consequences of action taken by or on behalf of the union’ (TNA PREM 19/491, Howe to Prior, 30 July 1981). Indeed, the attack on trade union funds had come so close to destabilising trade union resistance to the Act in 1972. Prior’s cautious approach had served its purpose. The Prime Minister noted via her Principal Private Secretary, Clive Whitmore, that ‘[m]any people had not forgiven the previous Conservative Government for surrendering the right to strike to essential public services’ (TNA PREM 19/491, Whitmore to Dykes, 2 September 1981). She moved to change personnel, replacing Prior with Norman Tebbit to pursue the 1982 Employment Act. This Act was important because it achieved what many had hoped for, removing trade union immunities in tort law and, therefore, making them

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liable in civil courts. The significance of these reforms, as Tebbit informed Parliament, was that the government had: not sought to transform the whole framework of industrial relations law. Nor have we fallen for the error assuming good industrial relations can simply be legislated into existence. We have not attempted root and branch reform on the lines of “In Place of Strife”, not the 1971, 1974 and 1976 Acts. (HC Debate, Vol. 17, Col. 738, 8 February 1982)

Thatcher and Tebbit’s shrewd political calculation would avoid the failures of yesteryear, while achieving the long-desired aim of disciplining the trade unions. The approach, however, contained a distinctive characteristic. In contrast to the creeping interventionism of 1970–1974, this approach limited the government’s exposure by becoming ‘less actively involved’ (Marsh 1992: 73). The 1982 Employment Act allowed for employers to challenge trade unions in the civil courts, ending their hardwon immunities for the first time since 1906. Without the need of the criminal law, collective bargaining was shifted from the immediate purview of government, as employers now possessed the weaponry they required (Dorey 2016; Warner 2019a). An analysis of Thatcher’s reforms is well served by taking the influence of the Industrial Relations Act seriously. Lessons were learnt, mistakes corrected and the aim of empowering employers achieved. This made adding further restrictive layers in 1984, 1988, 1990 and 2016 comparatively straightforward.

Conclusion That the Industrial Relations Act was a failure is not in doubt. It achieved little other than making matters worse. The relationship between government and trade unions was severely damaged, and whatever void had been created between trade union leaders and the Labour Party following the In Place of Strife saga was re-forged in their alliance to get the Act repealed. One generous reading might be that ‘Heath’s intention was not to marginalise the unions but to ensure their responsible participation in the political status quo as recognised social partners’ (Taylor 2007: 178). This reflects the muddled realities of the Act, aptly described by Margaret Thatcher (1995: 204) as ‘in part corporatist and in part libertarian’. In contrast, Davies and Freedland (1993: 427) are right to characterise Thatcher’s strategy as an attempt to ‘de-politicise the trade unions’

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through a ‘reversal of corporatism’. Driven in large part by ideological individualism, the Thatcher governments’ reforms reflected ‘a modulated rejection of collectivism’ (Wedderburn 1986: 83). For Thatcher, the conflicting pragmatism and reforming zeal of competing perspectives united into a workable strategy. There would be no mistakes or harassed parliamentary draftsmen, but complex legal issues, such as vicarious liability, were ‘carefully considered’ (Wedderburn 1986: 60). Wedderburn (1986: 76) summarises the position well, arguing that by drawing on the ‘ordinary’ courts of law, the Conservative Party ‘called up the ghosts of judge-made common law by stripping unions of “privileged” statutory protection against it’. This quickly became the new legal status quo. It is also worth noting that the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, despite being proposed by the TUC as a form of independent conciliation in 1972, was seen by officials to be a success of the Act (TNA LAB 43/710, Briefing: Reaction to TUC/CBI Agreement on Conciliation, n.d.). It remains an important feature of contemporary industrial relations. Writing in 1966, Alan Fox (1966: 33) described how trade unions were often seen by employers as ‘invaders of a private realm’ that disrupted a ‘natural pursuit of a common purpose’ and ‘rational managerial authority’. Such attitudes, coupled with the anti-collectivism of the Conservative Party, are now commonplace. When the first Conservative majority government for 17  years was elected in 2015, it came as little surprise that trade union legislation was back on the agenda, presented as ‘the latest stage in the long journey of modernisation and reform’ (HC Debate, Col. 761, 14 September 2015). Ford and Novitz (2016: 277) describe the 2016 Trade Union Act as ‘a sudden acceleration’ in the incremental approach of the Conservative Party, amounting to ‘unprecedented controls on trade union activity for more pragmatic economic reasons’ (Ford and Novitz 2016: 291). Others see this broader process as a move ‘beyond neoliberal’ and into ‘anti-liberal’ territory (Bogg 2016). In 1965, the Conservative Party devised its approach to reform in the context of a ‘sellers’ market’ for labour, arguing that ‘those special privileges granted in the days of [trade union] weakness should be put to new tests of public interest’ (CPA CRD 3/17/21, PG/20/65/51, 14 July 1965). No such argument could be applied in 2016, but the supposedly market-distorting implications of trade unionism remain deeply embedded within contemporary Conservative ideology.

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Bibliography Archives Cabinet, Department of Employment and Prime Ministers Office Papers, The National Archives. Conservative Party Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. George Younger Archive Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick

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Bale, T. (2012). The Conservatives Since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ball, S. (1996). The Conservative Party and the Heath Government. In S. Ball & A.  Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970–74: A Reappraisal. London: Longman. Bogg, A. (2016). Beyond Neo-Liberalism: The Trade Union Act 2016 and the Authoritarian State. Industrial Law Journal, 45(3), 299–336. Burnham, P. (2001). New Labour and the Politics of Depoliticisation. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 3(2), 127–149.

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Charmley, J. (2008). A History of Conservative Politics Since 1830. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Clegg, H. A. (1979). The Changing System of Industrial Relations in Great Britain. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Coates, D. (1989). The Crisis of Labour: Industrial Relations and the State in Contemporary Britain. Oxford: Phillip Allan. Darlington, R., & Lyddon, D. (2001). Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain, 1972. London: Bookmarks. Davies, P.  L., & Freedland, M. (1993). Labour Legislation and Public Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Department of Employment. (1981). Trade Union Immunities, Cmnd 8128. London: HMSO. Dorey, P. (2006). The Conservative Party and the Trade Unions. London: Routledge. Dorey, P. (2016). Weakening the Trade Unions, One Step at a Time: The Thatcher Governments’ Strategy for the Reform of Trade Union Law, 1979–1984. Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 37, 169–200. Dorey, P. (2019). Comrades in Conflict: Labour, the Trade Unions and 1969’s ‘In Place of Strife’. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Dorfman, G. (1979). Government Versus Trade Unionism in British Politics Since 1968. London: Macmillan. Dunleavy, P. (1995). Policy Disasters: Explaining the UK’s Record. Public Policy and Administration, 10(2), 52–70. Flanders, A. D. (1974). The Tradition of Voluntarism. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 12(3), 352–370. Flinders, M., & Buller, J. (2006). Depoliticisation: Principles, Tactics and Tools. British Politics, 1(3), 293–318. Ford, M., & Novitz, T. (2016). Legislating for Control: The Trade Union Act 2016. Industrial Law Journal, 45(3), 277–298. Fox, A. (1973). Industrial Relations: A Social Critique of Pluralist Ideology. In J. Child (Ed.), Man and Organisation: The Search for Explanation and Social Relevance. London: George Allen. Gamble, A. (1994). Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy and the British State. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hills, D. H. (1973). The National Industrial Relations Court – A Personal History. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 11(2), 259–285. Holmes, M. (1997). The Failure of the Heath Government. London: Macmillan. Hyman, R. (1975). Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hyman, R. (1989). The Political Economy of Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice in a Cold Climate. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

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Hyman, R. (2003). The Historical Evolution of British Industrial Relations. In P. Edwards (Ed.), Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Blackwell. Kahn-Freund, O. (1954). The Legal Framework. In A. D. Flanders & H. A. Clegg (Eds.), The System of Industrial Relations in Great Britain. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kavanagh, D. (1991). Why Political Science Needs History. Political Studies, 39(3), 479–495. King, A. (1975). Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s. Political Studies, 23(2–3), 284–296. King, A., & Crewe, I. (2013). The Blunders of Our Governments. London: Oneworld. Lindop, F. (1998a). The Dockers and the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, Part 1: Shop Stewards and Containerization. Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 5, 33–72. Lindop, F. (1998b). The Dockers and the 1971 Industrial Relations Act, Part 2: The Arrest and Release of the ‘Pentonville Five’. Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 6, 65–100. Marsh, D. (1991). British Industrial Relations Policy Transformed: The Thatcher Legacy. Journal of Public Policy, 11(3), 291–313. Marsh, D. (1992). The New Politics of British Trade Unionism. Basingstoke: Macmillan. McConnell, A. (2010). Policy Success, Policy Failure and Grey Areas In-Between. Journal of Public Policy, 30(3), 345–362. Middlemas, K. (1990). Power, Competition and the State: Threats to the Postwar Settlement Britain, 1961–74. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Moore, C. (2013). Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography. London: Allen Lane. Moran, M. (1977). The Politics of Industrial Relations. London: Unwin. Seldon, A. (1996). The Heath Government in History. In S.  Ball & A.  Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970–1974: A Reappraisal. London: Longman. Silkin, A. (1973). Green Papers and Changing Methods of Consultation in British Government. Public Administration, 51(4), 427–448. Taylor, A. (2007). The Conservative Party and the Trade Unions. In J. McIlroy, N. Fishman, & A. Campbell (Eds.), British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics (Vol. 2). The High Tide of Trade Unionism, 1964–79. Monmouth: The Merlin Press. Taylor, R. (1980). The Fifth Estate: Britain’s Unions in the Modern World. London: Pan Books. Taylor, R. (1982). The Trade Union ‘Problem’ Since 1960. In B.  Pimlott & C. Cook (Eds.), Trade Unions in British Politics. Harlow: Longman. Taylor, R. (1993). The Trade Union Question in British Politics. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Taylor, R. (1996). The Heath Government and Industrial Relations: Myth and Reality. In S.  Ball & A.  Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970–74: A Reappraisal. London: Longman. Thomson, A. W. J., & Engleman, S. R. (1975). The Industrial Relations Act: A Review and Analysis. London: Martin Robertson. Warner, S. (2019a). (Re)politicising ‘the governmental’: Resisting the Industrial Relations Act 1971. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 21(3), 541–558. Warner, S. (2019b). The ‘majesty of the law’: Depoliticisation, the Rule of Law and Judicial Independence. British Politics. https://doi.org/10.1057/ s41293-019-00121-8. Wedderburn, K. W. (1972). Labour Law and Labour Relations in Britain. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 10(2), 270–290. Wedderburn, K.  W. (1986). The Worker and the Law. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Weekes, B., Mellish, M., Dickens, L., & Lloyd, J. (1975). Industrial Relations and the Limits of the Law: The Industrial Effects of the Industrial Relations Act, 1971. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Whitehead, P. (1986). The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the 1970s. London: Michael Joseph. Wrigley, C. (1996). Trade Unions, Strikes and the Government. In R. Coopey & N.  Woodward (Eds.), Britain in the 1970s: The Troubled Economy. London: UCL Press.

CHAPTER 7

Social Security Policy Ruth Davidson

The 1970s were not solely a difficult decade of economic woes and social dislocation (Beckett 2010: 1–6). Whilst there were undoubtedly serious issues, this characterisation of these years has been revised by historians who argue that declinist narratives have been overstated. They point to the way ‘modernizing state investments were bearing fruit’, that income inequality fell to its lowest point of the century and that the welfare state was at its peak (Edgerton 2018: 403; Thane 2018: 301). It was a moment where progress towards a more inclusive society, with the impact of a raft of 1960s equality legislation becoming more evident, saw more overt challenges to the institutional status quo. Further, as Andy Beckett (2010: 3) notes, the 1970s were a period with a flourishing popular culture in television, pop music and fashion. Hugh Pemberton and Lawrence Black, using Peter Hall’s ‘marketplace for ideas’, consider one of the features of the 1970s as being the ‘breadth of the “battle for ideas”’. They question whether the decade was, when taking account of social and cultural change as well as economic, ‘so bad?’ (Black and Pemberton 2013a: 14–16). But despite these necessary correctives, the 1970s was a decade where

R. Davidson (*) King’s College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_7

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something ‘profound and unsettling did happen…and Britons have been living with the consequences ever since’ (Beckett 2010: 4). In the sphere of social policy, it was becoming increasingly evident that the post-war welfare settlement was problematic. The ‘rediscovery of poverty’ was used by some on the left to question ‘technocratic, expert-led approaches’ (Robinson et  al. 2017: 272). The Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), founded in 1955, became, during the late 1960s and 1970s, a strong advocate of a neo-liberal approach. Ben Jackson has argued for neo-liberalism as a philosophy of social welfare in as much as it endorsed some significant state functions for welfare, although the neo-liberal vision of the state’s role differed markedly from ‘universalist’ social policy academics (Jackson 2019a: 148). The significance of these ideas, Jackson argues, caused Richard Titmuss to engage far more seriously than the rest of the left with the neo-liberal challenge (Jackson 2019a: 149). In analysing the different facets of these debates, Jackson concludes that ‘Titmuss’s rhetorical style left space for neo-liberals to claim the mantle of economics and to popularize a different…vision of the welfare state: not as an inclusive form of social insurance, but as a safety net for the weak and vulnerable’(Jackson 2019a: 161). Neo-liberal theories were part of Conservative policy debates from the mid-1960s. While there were no formal ties between the IEA and the Conservative Party, it was a nonpartisan think tank, a small handful of Conservatives, Enoch Powell, Geoffrey Howe and John Biffen, joined during the 1960s (Jackson 2012: 57). Further, as Jackson demonstrates, the IEA pursued an ‘elite’ strategy, as they sought to build support amongst intellectuals and within the media and business communities, all of which was to secure them ‘a dominant position in the marketplace of ideas’ (Jackson 2012: 61). After 1959, the Conservative government began to consider policies that would increase selectivity, albeit that there was some nervousness about making such changes (Bridgen and Lowe 1998: 120–123). Nevertheless, records of the Conservative Research Department (CRD) outline the breadth of ideas that were being seriously considered as part of manifesto preparations before 1970. Despite the relative brevity of the Heath administration, there were some significant social security initiatives, which was, in part, the result of the stability and energy of the ministerial team (Raison 1990: 72). But what this legislation indicates in terms of any underlying intent has been debated. It has been argued that Heath remained embedded in the

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‘consensual’ approach adopted by Conservatives and Labour in the years before 1979 (Dorey 2011: 92–93). For others the Heath era in social policy represents a significant failure from the promises made in opposition. This period, Robert Lowe argues, might have been a ‘focus for bold experiments in selectivity’. But he concludes that in the end, it represented ‘dishonesty and incompetence in the handling of child poverty and an ambitious but unconsummated attempt to reform pensions’ (Lowe 1996: 199). Peter Dorey suggests that if the radicalism of the Conservative party Selsdon programme of 1970 has been overstated the policy shifts after 1972 could be considered a pragmatic response to circumstances rather than a U-turn from a neo-liberal moment (Dorey 2011: 92–93). A perspective, as Tim Bale also notes, that could be seen as ‘simply departures from the previous line—innovations arrived at in office rather than signalled in opposition’ (Bale 2016: 164). The idea of consensus has some merit. There was some overlap in policy and approach with the previous and subsequent Labour governments. The pressures of increased demands on the system and spiralling budgets affected Labour and Conservative administrations alike and caused both to seek ways to contain costs. Robert Page notes that as ‘Labour grappled with such changes, their ideological differences with the Conservatives were more observable at the level of theory, rather than in practical policy making’ (Page 2007: 70). However, the Heath administration’s social security policy was also reflective of the deeper scepticism of universalism within the wider party. By focussing on the range of changes to social security under the Heath administration, there is a discernible pattern that was distinctive from the Labour approach. This chapter considers this moment as one of a more overt challenge to the post-war settlement from the neo-liberal vision of welfare as a ‘safety net’. Selectivity and self-provision were central to this vision, and many of the policies were consistent with these principles, even if not all were implemented. Margaret Thatcher denigrated the Heath era. The Labour government in 1974 overturned some of Heath’s social security policies. Nevertheless, the influence of the changes to social security between 1970 and 1974 were, and remain, significant. The fact that so many initiatives from this era have echoes in current policy should highlight the importance of the Heath government in being a catalyst for the future trajectory of social security.

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Social Security and the Conservatives Before 1970 Beveridge and the Conservative Party In 1942, Sir William Beveridge published his report, Social Insurance and Allied Services. The principles underpinning the report framed subsequent political and public discourse around social security policy. The Beveridge scheme was based on a contributory insurance scheme. This fund would cover unemployment, sickness and pensions, and one central scheme would replace the mix of insurance provisions previously in existence. Beveridge was explicit that his insurance scheme could not be maintained without a national health service, a state commitment to encourage full employment and a universal family allowance (Timmins 2001: 11–25). For Beveridge, the contributory principle was important, as it encouraged thrift and self-reliance, and he favoured a universal approach, as no one went about their work in isolation from the rest of the economy (Renwick 2017: 223–224). The idea of a national minimum level was essential to provide a ‘safety net’ through which none would fall. Finally, he felt means-tests were intrusive and inefficient (Renwick 2017: 225). The 1946 National Insurance Act universalised National Insurance to cover all employees and the wives of insured men (Thane 2018: 198). It was funded by flat-rate contributions from employees and employers. For those uninsured, a National Assistance Board (NAB) was set up. This scheme saw the end of the Poor Law and it was intended to be less stigmatising. It was also hoped that this part of the system would be a subordinate part. Overall, as Thane notes, this settlement covered more people with higher benefits than before the war; however, these soon slipped behind other west European countries and Beveridge was disappointed with ‘the continued salience of means-testing’ (Thane 2018: 199). Work was central to the operation of this scheme. During the 1950s and early 1960s—with employment rates high—the system functioned with few major problems. As Nicholas Timmins notes, between 1951 and 1964, social security other than pensions was one of the least controversial parts of the welfare system, and the NAB was believed by its supporters to be delivering a humane and effective service (Timmins 2001: 192–193). However, Harriet Jones has argued that the debates within Conservatism after 1942 were so intense and sustained that they must question the idea of consensus. She notes that the dislocation of war impacted the party’s ability to respond to the rapid transformation of public opinion regarding

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social policy (Jones 1992: 387–388). By the 1950s, the party’s ideas were gaining a new coherence through the impact of a younger generation of Conservative policymakers. In a 1952 article, Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell defended the use of personal insurance and the means-test as the basis of welfare: ‘why should any social service be provided without a test of need?’ (Jones 1992: 48). Indeed, as Jones notes, Macleod and Powell reasserted traditional Conservative principles. These included the view that social policy should act as a ‘safety net’ for a ‘free enterprise economy’, focussed on means-tested benefits that targeted the poor (Jones 1992: 389). Aled Davies has argued, in the context of Conservative postwar housing policy, that consensus was not a fixed institution but a ‘product of contextual pressures’ and that whilst there was, within Conservatism, an ‘ideological attachment to building a “property-­owning democracy”’, these proposals were constrained by what was deemed possible’ (Davies 2013: 423). He concludes that it was only in the 1970s when the ‘economic and social foundations, which formed these constraints began to be eroded that the idea of mass privatization was liberated and able to gain greater salience’ (Davies 2013: 423). These arguments can also be applied to the progression of Conservative policies regarding social security. Before the mid-1960s, the Conservative Party recognised that state welfare was popular. Indeed, whilst greater affluence might have enabled people to ‘accept responsibility for their own welfare’, collective provision was recognised as cost-effective and in the national and individual interest (Bridgen and Lowe 1998: xiv). This acted as a constraint on Conservative administrations. However, the mid-1960s were to challenge this with new evidence from pressure groups of failings within the welfare state, increased rights-based challenges and political and public concerns over increased costs and tax rises. The Challenges of the 1960s The mid-1960s saw the launch of a wave of pressures groups, each of which highlighted how social security policy was failing those in need. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), launched in 1965, exposed significant levels of poverty amongst working families. Shelter, the Disablement Income Group (DIG) and Help the Aged were also prominent groups that campaigned against inadequacy within housing and on behalf of the disabled and the elderly, respectively, and there were many others. These new pressure groups, with their use of empirical data and contacts within

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Whitehall and the media, created a wave of publicity around these issues which governments were under pressure to respond to. This was accompanied by increased activism at the grassroots. As Robinson et al. (2017: 273) have argued, the 1970s saw the rise of popular individualism and a politics of equality, which was manifest in the range of social movements organised around a variety of causes and identities. At a local level, community-based activism, most especially led by Claimants Unions, was challenging social security decisions. Moreover, as Jackson notes, changing family patterns and increased numbers of working women or single-parent families were challenging the types of services needed, something that even Conservative commentators recognised (Jackson 2019b: 298). All of this was undermining the social security status quo. However, not all external pressures came from groups arguing for expanded universal services. Ewen Green has highlighted the hostility amongst rank-and-file Conservatives to excessive welfare spending dating back to the 1950s (Green 2006: 38). As noted above, right-wing think tanks, such as the IEA, were considering a more selective approach. They wanted services to be purchased on the open market, supported by state subsidies if necessary. There was also growing scepticism within the broader public about social security. Research by the Conservative Party in 1968 noted a belief that the Labour party gave too much money in benefits, especially family allowances and unemployment benefit (CPA, CCO 180/30/1/1, Opinion Research Centre Report, 6 May 1968, point 11). The research highlighted the perception that people worked less hard because of social services and that three-quarters of the electorate thought that people who were unemployed should not get benefit unless they were prepared to do any job that was available. It also found that two-thirds of the electorate felt that means-tests were acceptable for rents and family allowances and half felt they were acceptable for prescriptions (CPA, CCO 180/30/1/1, Opinion Research Centre Report, 6 May 1968, point 12). For the Conservative Party, these trends provided an intellectual and popular fillip for their long-­standing preference for selectivity within social security. Policy Preparation Before 1970 The period between 1965 and 1970 was one of intense policy preparation. Brendan Sewill, director of the Conservative Research Department between 1964 and 1970 recalls that this was because it was Heath’s prime

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interest. But he also notes that the Conservative Party wanted to dispel the view that they had run out of steam after 13 years in government (Sewill 2009: 55). The CRD was at the heart of this, with different sub-groups charged with policy formulation. The Social Priorities Working Group was set up with Sewill as Chairman. This group was influenced by the Bow Group, an independent body set up in 1951 as a counter to the Fabian Society (Page 2015: 63). The emphasis from these groups was on increased selectivity, albeit couched in progressive terms, which ‘was of little comfort’ to more ideological neo-liberal Conservatives (Page 2015: 64). From the right, there was dissent. Sewill noted Powell wanted large cuts but was opposed by Reginald Maudling (Sewill 2009: 59). And pressure was brought from the IEA who were keen to look at a massive reduction in tax and welfare spending, reliance on market forces, increased means-testing and vouchers schemes to allow ‘customers’ to choose social services (Deacon and Bradshaw 1983: 56–61). However, despite the general stress on a more selective approach, the precise mechanisms for achieving such selectivity remained under debate. The rhetoric of selectivity was part of the 1966 Conservative manifesto, although there was little in the way of concrete policy to back this up (Timmins 2001: 273). In the Conservative Party’s mid-term manifesto drafted for the 1969 party conference, Make Life Better, Heath stressed that they aimed to concentrate extra help where it was needed (Timmins 2001: 273–274). By 1970, there had been some crystallisation on the policy front. Before the election, Charles Bellairs, who worked in the CRD Home Affairs Section, argued that they needed to concentrate on social services that had public sympathy. This meant they should not focus on family poverty, which would require an increase in family allowances, and public opinion was that people should not have children they can’t afford. Rather, they ought to concentrate on support for ‘sympathetic’ groups such as the old and disabled (CPA, CRD 4/7/3, Bellairs to Cosgrove, 28 April 1970). There were also discussions around a more marketised social security policy. In 1967, the Report of the Working Group on Selectivity and Private Provision in the Social Services concluded that they needed to emphasise that the party looked with more approval on those who look after themselves. This might be through becoming homeowners or purchasing private pensions and healthcare insurance. It concluded that they rejected vouchers but would welcome an approach based around tax reliefs (CPA, CRD 4/7/74, Report of Working Group on Selectivity and Private Provision in the Social Services, 14 July 1967, 30–32). This report also

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noted that they had emphasised selectivity since 1966 and that they were under pressure from organisations such as the IEA to return more aspects of social services to the market (CPA, CRD 4/7/74, Report of Working Group on Selectivity and Private Provision in the Social Services, 14 July 1967, 1). In 1968, Sewill noted the difficulty in developing a general manifesto theme around restricting the role of the state as it might be argued such an approach necessitated an increased emphasis on private education and health. This latter emphasis, Sewill concluded, might be approved of by Powell (and he thought both of them), but he wasn’t sure that Edward Boyle, who co-ordinated policy formation after 1966, and Ted Heath would agree (CPA. CRD 4/7/77, Sewill to Bellairs, 1 November 1968). Other indications of this move towards self-provision can be seen in a 1969 speech by Heath, drafted by the CRD, which noted that they wanted to encourage councils to sell housing and allow councils to provide mortgages. The speech concluded that they believed it was essential that those who were able should provide for themselves (CPA, CRD 4/7/3, Notes for speech from Heath on Social Services, 4 December 1969, 1–14). A comparison between the Conservative Party’s 1966 manifesto and that of 1970 illustrates the development of these themes. Both had an emphasis on selectivity, encouraged wider ownership and economic prudence: ‘We intend to revitalise our Welfare State so that those most in need get the most help and so that our money is used sensibly and fairly’ (Conservative Party 1966). But the policies, other than for housing, were loosely drawn in 1966. The 1970 manifesto, by comparison, was more detailed. The emphasis on selectivity remained alongside some much more specific promises on changes to pensions, National Insurance (NI) contributions and a new negative income tax to help tackle family poverty. The move towards the sort of dismantling of the Beveridge ideals that were to be seen under later Conservative governments was also indicated with mentions of the promotion of private provision, firm action against abuse of the system by ‘shirkers and scroungers’ and the proposed sale of council houses (Conservative Party 1970). As Timothy Raison, Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Aylesbury 1970–1992 notes, the social security policies in the 1970 manifesto were of some significance (Raison 1990: 70). One key assessment of the Heath government has been that of a U-turn on the radicalism of Selsdon. In January 1970, Heath and his shadow cabinet held a brainstorming session at the Selsdon Park hotel in Surrey.

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Harold Wilson sought to use this meeting against Heath, arguing that it indicated a turn away from the centre towards a more market-driven economic policy and increased selectivity in the social services. Contemporaries and commentators have, however, considered that continuity was more evident than change (Deakin 1987: 59; Dorey 2011: 92). As John Campbell comments, the idea of ‘Selsdon man’ rebounded on Wilson as it gave the ‘humdrum’ policies a ‘cloak of philosophical unity’ (Campbell 1993: 265). The perspective that an embryonic neo-liberal approach ‘failed’ under Heath only to be successfully implemented under Thatcher has been part of the valorising of Thatcherism from the right and it has suited subsequent administrations to neglect the importance of the Heath government (Black and Pemberton 2013a: 256). However, there was an element of truth in Wilson’s observations. There had been a gradual increase in Conservative rhetoric around selectivity before 1970 which indicates the degree to which the idea of selectivity had developed within the party (Timmins 2001: 264–5). Overall, by 1970, the Conservative focus was on more generous treatment for those in need alongside greater conditionality and self-provision for those who were deemed ‘less-deserving’ or could provide for themselves. The next sections consider the degree to which these aims were realised.

Family Poverty, 1970–1974 The first, and arguably the most controversial, social security issue for this government was how to resolve the issue of family poverty, most especially amongst families of the working poor. The launch of CPAG had shone a light on the failings of the welfare state and the constant political and media pressure meant politicians could not shy away from this issue. For CPAG, the solution was to increase family allowances as these were not subject to the work disincentives associated with means-tested benefits and were simple to administer. This solution was problematic for politicians, in part because to pay a universal family allowance at a level that would impact poverty would be expensive, but also because family allowances were unpopular. The Conservative Party was aware of this unpopularity. As noted above, in 1968, they commissioned a survey on the social services, which highlighted that the public felt that Labour were inclined to give too much on family allowances and that more than a third of the population would like them to be abolished (CPA, CCO 180/30/1/1 Opinion Research Centre, ‘Cost of Living and Family Allowances’, 6 May

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1968, point 10). Equally, the Conservatives had watched the Labour Party’s struggles over family poverty. Labour had settled on an improved family allowance scheme funded by ‘clawback’; this took money from tax allowances paid to the husband to fund increased family allowances which were paid to the mother. This scheme, which saw the transfer of funds from the ‘wallet to the purse’ and from higher earning families to lower, was controversial. Within the Labour Party, there had been formidable voices against the ‘clawback’ scheme including the Chancellor, James Callaghan. Callaghan had argued for a means-tested family supplement and was concerned about wider public concern over social spending (Banting 1979: 94–99). His concerns were reflected more widely within the party during 1968, as Labour MPs noted that family allowances were an unpopular policy and often raised by constituents (Banting 1979: 106–108). This scepticism was shared by Conservatives. Sewill noted to Bellairs in 1968 that he did not feel it was part of the function of the state to transfer money from husbands to wives (CPA, CRD 4/7/77, Sewill to Bellairs, 1 November 1968). At the Selsdon Park meeting in January 1970, there was some support for increases in family allowances, with Keith Joseph seeing them as the quickest way of tackling child poverty. But Thatcher argued that they tended to ‘increase the number of the poor’ and Iain Macleod said he wanted to abolish family allowances, reduce taxes and increase supplementary benefit. It was clear, as Raison notes, that more work was needed (Raison 1990: 69). In correspondence before the election, members of the CRD discussed the options available, reaching no clear conclusion. In March 1970, Barney Hayhoe, who became an MP in 1970 but had previously worked in the CRD, noted to Sir Michael Fraser, then Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party, that Make Life Better had stated they were working on plans for family allowances to go to families in need. He also he noted that this was broadly agreed at Selsdon and that his feeling was that they might agree with CPAG that family allowances were the only immediate way of helping the working poor (CPA, CRD 4/7/3, Hayhoe to Fraser, 3 March 1970). But in April, Bellairs, as noted above, argued that policies such as family allowances to alleviate family poverty did not have public support (CPA, CRD 4/7/3, Bellairs to Cosgrove, 28 April 1970). In the light of these concerns, it might be considered surprising that Macleod announced that if returned to government, the Conservative Party would increase family allowances by clawing back child tax allowances (Deacon and Bradshaw 1983: 78). Macleod’s

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sudden death shortly after the election meant a reversal of this decision and instead the new Secretary of State, Keith Joseph, introduced a new means-tested benefit, Family Income Supplement (FIS) (Sloman 2016: 226–227). It remains a matter of speculation whether Macleod would have honoured his family allowance commitment. His Selsdon views in January were not supportive of family allowances and, as indicated above, Selsdon did not represent a clear endorsement of family allowances as a long-term solution. Rodney Lowe has argued that Macleod’s promise to CPAG was explicitly short term and that he had already begun to reexamine a negative income tax (NIT) as a solution (Lowe 1996: 201). Nevertheless, the introduction of FIS was an important moment in terms of the Conservative approach to social security policy. There were many, such as CPAG, who were critical of the means-tested route. Yet, if viewed from the perspective of the policy discussions within Conservatism, FIS was entirely consistent with their approach to social security. There was a genuine commitment to tackle what they saw as pools of poverty, but not at the expense of the general taxpayer. For opponents, the problems with FIS were significant. It brought into being what became known as the ‘poverty trap’, where work is disincentivised by making people better off on benefits (Thane 2018: 307). It could also be criticised for subsidising low wages rather than addressing them directly, as David Vincent argues it was the ‘first direct subsidy of full-time earnings since the 1834 Poor Law had brought the Speenhamland system to an end’ (Vincent 1991: 166). Moreover, the problem of take-up, which was a feature of means-­tested benefits, was significant with FIS. FIS, despite being heavily advertised, failed to reach more than 50% of those eligible (Thane 2018: 307). Yet, notwithstanding strong opposition from many in the poverty lobby, and opposition from Labour, who were keen to characterise the Conservatives as means-testers, this benefit was retained by the 1974–1979 Labour administration. It was only replaced under Thatcher with Family Credit in 1986, a similar, albeit more generous, means-tested benefit (Timmins 2001: 399). FIS, therefore, affirmed the importance of means-tested benefits within the social policy mix for the long-term (Deacon and Bradshaw 1983: 96). Michael Hill notes that Frank Field, CPAG’s Director, argued that ‘one of the most significant lasting “achievements” of the Heath government was to institutionalise the “poverty trap”’ (Hill 1993: 97). A further problem for the Conservatives with FIS was that, as Peter Sloman notes, it contributed to an impression of the government as hard, efficient and soulless (Sloman 2016: 228). Their

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concerns can be seen in a memo in 1970. Bellairs wrote to Joseph stating that they should not be apologetic over FIS, as it was the first time help had been given to one-child families, that their long-term aim was to concentrate help on poorer families and that FIS was an attempt to tackle the wage stop issue (CPA, CRD 4/7/74, Bellairs to Joseph, 26 October 1970). But FIS remained problematic as Joseph noted: ‘I have never suggested that FIS was ideal’ (Timmins 2001: 283). A feature of the pre-1979 governments was the seriousness with which they considered the issue of relative poverty. Both Labour and Conservative governments ‘flirted with integrating tax and benefit systems’ (Gladstone 1999: 65). In opposition, the Conservatives had considered a NIT as an ‘elegant solution to the Tory desire to reduce taxation and concentrate benefits only on those in need’ (Sewill 2009: 62). However, practical problems with a NIT and the criticisms of FIS led them to look at a tax credit scheme. By trying to merge the tax and benefit system, this scheme aimed to overcome the downsides of means-tested benefits without the cost of universal payments. Arthur Cockfield at the Inland Revenue devised this scheme, which would use tax credits to be offset against workers’ tax liability or (where they exceed this level) paid in cash (Sloman 2016: 228–230). The Chancellor announced it as the most ambitious plan for the reform of taxation and social security together that had ever been put forward and emphasised how it was essential to simplify the system but also noted its utility in aiding pensioners and low earners (CPA, CCO 170/5/61, Statement by Chancellor, 19 July 1973). As Sloman has argued, Joseph also saw ‘very great attractions from social security point of view’ in reducing means-­testing and alleviating the poverty trap (Sloman 2016: 230). CPAG took these proposals very seriously, hiring an extra staff member, Molly Meacher, to manage their response (LSE, CPAG 62(305), 27 April 1973, 2). Despite significant areas of concern, CPAG did not dismiss the proposals out of hand, particularly as there was the potential for tax credits to be developed into an effective weapon against poverty (LSE, CPAG 62(305), Tax Credits Mark II, 10 May 1973, 2). However, the flaws became more apparent in terms of costs, loss of monies to mothers and issues over working wives (Sloman 2016: 233–234). There was also a degree of scepticism about the ability of tax credits ever to be set at such a level that they would work as a poverty alleviation level as early as July 1973; after the Select Committee report, CPAG resumed their ‘efforts to increase family allowances’ (LSE, CPAG 62(305), Executive Committee Minutes, 19 July 1973, 3). In the event, the

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Conservative defeat in 1974 saw this proposal shelved, although the fact that Tax Credit remained in the 1974 manifesto indicated that the government remained committed to finding a workable solution. Indeed, in September 1974, Heath wrote to Field and reiterated his commitment to the scheme explicitly because the Conservatives believed ‘it to be the most effective and forward-­looking anti-poverty programme proposed in the country at this time…Together we must use the Tax Credit scheme remorselessly to remove poverty and fear from our national way of life’ (LSE, CPAG 54, Heath to Field, 24 September 1974). Tony Lynes argued that tax credits were not a remedy for poverty but a ‘rationalisation of existing taxation and social security arrangements’ and that other mechanisms, such as adequate social security benefits designed to meet the needs of particular beneficiaries, would be cheaper and more effective if poverty elimination was the priority (Lynes 1974: 93). In his exploration of the tax credit scheme, Sloman concludes that this period represented the end of an era when governments were trying to look creatively at social policy, but that this was undone by the 1973 fiscal crisis and the hardening of public attitudes towards welfare and redistribution (Sloman 2016: 241). Hill also argues for this being an interesting period in the evolution of social policy, but for Hill (1993: 90), at the centre of this was a search for ways in which to improve ‘targeting’ of social policy more effectively.

Social Security and Means-Tested Benefits, 1970–1974 Significant parts of the social security budget were directed to those who were unable, through circumstances such as sickness, unemployment, caring responsibilities or disability, to work to support themselves. For some, this situation was a temporary phase as they moved between jobs or recovered from illness. For many others, it was a long-term predicament. How these groups of recipients were categorised and treated began to undergo some subtle, and not so subtle, changes under the Heath administration. Pre-election policy work and the Conservative manifesto had argued that they wanted to alleviate poverty amongst those whom they believed were deserving of help but were more stringent towards undeserving claimants. Means-testing and a focus on ‘scroungers’ were key elements to this approach and, whilst there were notable exceptions of generosity, these need to be recognised as part of more overt attack by the Conservative

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party on the principle of universalism. An approach that presaged the 1980s onslaught on social security benefits, and the welfare state more broadly, under Thatcher. The core premise of Beveridge’s National Insurance scheme was that benefits were set at a flat rate, and contributory. In 1948, a National Assistance scheme was introduced for those who were not supported in any other way. This system was intended to be a secondary system and envisaged as a minor form of support (Alcock 1999: 206–207). By the mid-1960s, it was clear that the balance had shifted. Research by campaigners such as CPAG had identified many cohorts who were living in poverty. National Assistance had grown enormously. In 1966, it was replaced by Supplementary Benefit (SB) and the Supplementary Benefits Commission (SBC) was introduced (Alcock 1999: 208). By the late 1970s, four million people, with increasing numbers of unemployed, were on SB. By 1976, there were 45 means-tested schemes, a significant drift towards selectivity (Alcock 1999: 208–209). Whilst rhetorically the Conservatives were comfortable with an increase in selectivity, their 1966 manifesto had ‘few signs of tougher or more selective policies’ (Raison 1990: 61). However, work in the years running up to 1970 saw a firmer line being taken. As Bellairs noted to Hayhoe in 1968, a consistent theme running through their policy, both social and economic, was to restrict the activity of the state. He argued that framing it as restricting the state’s role was a better phrasing than selectivity and that they should encourage people to provide for themselves (CPA, CRD 4/7/77, Bellairs to Hayhoe, 29 October 1968, 1). Indeed, Bellairs continued that given the positive response they had received for home ownership and occupational schemes in pensions, he would like to see this principle extended to health and to incentivise people to provide for themselves (CPA, CRD 4/7/77, Bellairs to Hayhoe, 29 October 1968, 3). The first Barber budget in 1970 began to limit state support when it introduced a range of cuts including state sickness benefit, which would only commence after the first three days; welfare milk was to be abolished; school milk restricted for those aged 8–11; higher charges for prescriptions, dentistry, spectacles and school meals (Timmins 2001: 280). Unemployment benefit qualifications were also tightened. As Lynes notes, selectivity operated both by denying the unemployed benefits conferred on other beneficiaries and by imposing deterrent penalties on those suspected of being ‘voluntarily unemployed’ (Lynes 1974: 76). In 1971, unemployment benefit was removed for the first three days and, once on

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SB, disqualification could start after four weeks if claimants were unable to demonstrate that they were seeking work. Finally, the long-term unemployed were denied the enhanced benefits that other long-term claimants had been allowed after 1966. Cumulatively, this reflected a ‘popular prejudice’ that unemployment was the fault of the individual (Lowe 2005: 166). Housing was a significant issue. There were issues around the quality and quantity of housing stock, something highlighted by campaign groups such as Shelter. There were also issues to be addressed regarding housing benefits. In 1968, Bellairs commented positively about their proposals for housing subsidies because these would become much more selective. He was in favour of future local authority building programmes being restricted to slum clearances or support only for those with special needs, such as the elderly and disabled. He concluded that the emphasis for those falling outside these categories would be on home ownership (CPA, CRD 4/7/77, Letter from Bellairs to Hayhoe, 29 October 1968, 1). Home ownership, which had long been a favoured Conservative policy, was given more emphasis, although, in the 1970 manifesto, it was not a firm policy. By 1974, the Conservative manifesto included a clear commitment to ‘Right to Buy’. Make Life Better had stated that they wanted a fair rent system and to assist private tenants. Policy discussions before 1970 indicated the difficulty in switching systems. Joseph and Peter Walker, the Minister for Housing, were in favour of a national fair rent scheme, with those councils incurring a deficit because of this scheme getting a payment from the Treasury. However, there were also concerns about local authorities becoming monopoly landlords and that there was felt to be a need to help poorer tenants in private rental accommodation. Both Joseph and Walker favoured taking the function of rent-fixing away from councils, although not all the shadow cabinet agreed (CPA, CRD 4/7/77, Outstanding Policy Issues paper, 13 October 1969: 1–2). These discussions took their final form in the 1972 Housing Finance Act, an attempt to be more selective in state aid, and to bring help to those who had not received it before. As Hill notes: ‘The Heath government took the first…steps towards transforming the…subsidy for low-income house-­holders from…subsidies for public tenants and rent control for private tenants to…“targeting” help to individuals by way of means-tests’ (Hill 1993: 100). Previously subsidies had been managed by local authorities who were given a generalised housing subsidy, which they could use to keep rents down or reduce rates. Walker’s scheme nationalised the rent rebate schemes by making them mandatory, and at the same time, rebates

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were introduced for private tenants in the form of rent allowances (Timmins 2001: 302–303). The Act caused mass protests amongst tenants whose rents had increased and local authorities whose power was diminished. The Conservatives, however, argued this was a fairer system as poorer private rental tenants were getting help for the first time at the expense of the rich council tenant who had received a subsidised rent. All of this, however, meant an increase of those on means-tested benefits. The Labour government repealed the rent increases in 1974, only to reinstate them in 1976. However, from the outset, Labour accepted means-tested rate rebates (Deacon and Bradshaw 1983: 91–2). This meant that a range of means-tested benefits were firmly fixed as part of the housing element of social security provision, regardless of which government was in power. But the Heath administration was not entirely focussed on means-­ testing. In opposition, they had been resolute that those who were able to help themselves should, but that the government, ought to offer help to those were unable to support themselves. This approach saw them more generous in the area of disability benefits. In 1967, as part of the policy process, Bellairs wrote to Sewill that the key aim was to concentrate help on the neediest rather than offer equal benefits across the board. His view was that they would restrict their offer to a chronic disability pension for disabled wives and an extension of the attendance allowance (CPA, CRD 4/7/77, Bellairs to Sewill, 29 December 1967, 1). But they were thinking more broadly about how to help those who could not participate in contributory schemes. In 1969, they considered how they could go further than Crossman by developing a national disability pension which would treat all forms of disability alike as this seemed right in principle, albeit there were concerns about cost (CPA, CRD 4/7/77, Outstanding Policy Issues paper, 13 October 1969, 5). The 1970 National Insurance (Old Person’s and Widow’s Pensions and Attendance Allowance) Act 1970 introduced Attendance Allowances (Glennerster 2000: 103). These payments were made for those who needed care at home during the day and night. Also introduced were a new invalidity benefit for the long-term sick and a higher child allowance for those claiming invalidity allowance. Much of this, as Timmins notes, was bipartisan. Pauline Thompson at DIG noted that they had negotiated with one lot and saw the proposals implemented by the other (Timmins 2001: 285). This was also reflected in the Labour response to Conservative thinking on disability benefits. Jameel Hampton concludes that if they had been elected, the Conservatives

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in 1974 would have introduced disability cash benefits little different to those that created by Labour (Hampton 2016: 243). The Heath government, whilst being generous to some groups of benefit claimants, saw a period of tightening up of both benefit levels and increased conditionality for claimants. This was also a moment that saw Beveridge’s principles undermined in another way. Central to the Beveridge scheme was a flat minimum. However, budget constraints saw Joseph increase pensioner and invalidity benefits more than sickness and unemployment benefits; the unemployed were also cut out of the longterm rate no matter how long they were unemployed. This in effect brought a sharp distinction between long-term and short-term benefits. Timmins has argued there was a logic to this as it was felt those on longterm benefits had the greatest need and those moving back into employment at some point could afford to subsidise a period of lower benefits (Timmins 2001: 286). This move, however, breached the Beveridge principles and, in some respects, reintroduced the idea of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. Moreover, this principle was underpinned by an increased focus on rooting out abuse in the system, as had been indicated in the 1970 Conservative manifesto. In 1971, a committee on the Abuse of Social Security Benefits, the Fisher Committee, was set up by Joseph. Despite this committee finding no evidence of widespread abuse, it concluded that ‘substantial sums of money are misappropriated each year’ (Golding and Middleton 1982: 235). Lynes, writing in 1974, discussed this increased focus on abuse and whilst he noted the findings of the Fisher Committee were moderate, he concluded that: ‘few people will read the report, compared with the very large numbers who will have seen the appointment of the Committee as confirmation of the belief that abuse of the system is rife’ (Lynes 1974: 79). This emphasis on ‘scroungerphobia’, alongside media campaigns exposing abuse, only served to stigmatise those on benefits and contributed to increasingly negative attitudes towards social security benefits. As Peter Golding and Sue Middleton (1982: 229) note, in 1968, 78% thought people worked less hard because of ‘too many social services’ and, by 1975, 34% of people thought unemployment benefit was too high, twice the number that thought it was too low. They conclude that that the welfare consensus had never really taken deep root and it was therefore relatively easy to dislodge by ‘the return of an incisive neo-liberal rhetoric’. This is a rhetoric which they argue was deeply rooted within Conservatism (1982: 229–231). Whilst negative views of welfare recipients were only to get worse after 1979, this period

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was notable as the start of a phase where government policy began to more overtly undermine positive conceptions of the social security part of the welfare state.

Pensions, 1970–1974 The one area of social security policy that saw governments exercise much thought between 1948 and 1970 was pensions policy. As Pemberton notes, the Atlee government, rather than following Beveridge’s recommendations for a funded scheme and gradually introducing the new pension over 20 or so years, chose to pay pensions immediately (Pemberton 2006: 44–45). The consequence was that the idea of national insurance was essentially a fiction and the pension this scheme was able to deliver was inadequate as it had to be set at below subsistence. In practice, this meant that National Assistance had to be used to target the needy (Pemberton 2006: 45). During the period of full employment and labour shortages during the 1950s and 1960s, it made sense for employers to set up generous occupational pensions which guaranteed workers’ loyalty. By 1967, as Pemberton notes, 53% of workers had these pensions and they became central to the system (Pemberton 2006: 48). But pensioners without occupational schemes remained an issue. A new graduated scheme was enacted in the 1959 National Insurance Act, with subsequent upratings in 1961 and 1963, but these measures failed to lift many pensioners off means-tested benefits (Hill 1993: 59). The inability of the Conservative Party to construct a state graduated scheme to deal with these problems before 1964 has been ascribed to a number of factors, including powerful vested interests, ideological opposition within Conservatism to state involvement in pension provision and the constraints imposed by the complex system they had inherited (Pemberton 2006: 49–53). The Conservative preference for self-provision can be seen in a 1965 pamphlet In Place of Beveridge written by Geoffrey Howe, Chairman of the backbench committee on social services. Howe argued for expansion of private schemes and cast doubt on the state graduated pension scheme. He also called for tax relief of 15% of gross remuneration if an individual saved for their retirement and legislation to make pensions portable. The overall aim was a system of ‘self-provision’ (Raison 1990: 58). Despite pensions policy being a significant issue within internal party policy discussions, the Labour Party made little progress until Richard Crossman was reappointed Minster in 1968 (Glennerster 2006: 69–70).

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During the 1960s, Labour in opposition had worked on a National Superannuation Scheme. The difficulties they faced in implementing this were not only a consequence of the private pension lobby, but also trade unions who were concerned that their members might lose their hardearned occupational schemes. As Glennerster notes, a ‘universal compulsory scheme would have destroyed such schemes or heavily curtailed them’ (Glennerster 2006: 69). The Crossman scheme would have phased in a gradual increase in pensions to reduce recurrent demands for increases in pensions. The Crossman White Paper was passing through Parliament when Wilson called the 1970 election. By 1970, therefore, pensions were a problematic area with structural issues and vested interests which constrained action, but also with pressing issues that needed to be resolved. There were some immediate issues that the new Conservative Secretary of State addressed regarding pensions. One group who were especially in need were the over 80s, who had fallen outside the scope of the 1948 Act. This anomaly was rectified in the 1971 National Insurance Act, which gave all pensioners over 80 a special addition with no means-test (Raison 1990: 73). A second initiative was the introduction in 1972 of a £10 Christmas bonus. Introduced as a temporary palliative this payment, in a modified form, exists today, another long-term legacy of the Heath era. Finally, as Bale notes, pension levels were improved and a ‘range of new benefits…doled out to the deserving, particularly the elderly. The latter, the manifesto reminded people, had received a 55 percent rise in their basic pension since 1970 as well as a regular £10 Christmas bonus’ (Bale 2012: 163). Bale further observes that, in 1970, only 10% of Conservative candidates mentioned pensions in their election leaflet, by February 1974, 83% did. In terms of their longer-term strategy for pensions, the Heath government set out a plan that was to be, as Howard Glennerster notes, a harbinger of the future. The Pensions White Paper of 1971, Strategy for Pensions, and the subsequent 1973 Social Security Act, saw the employer and not the state, as the main pension provider (Glennerster 2000: 103). It was a move towards the marketisation of pensions that was to occur under the Thatcher government. In opposition, CRD documents indicate that the Conservatives would alter the Crossman scheme in government if, as they believed, the terms of contracting-­out would be unfair to occupational schemes (CPA, CRD 4/7/77, Outstanding Policy Issues paper, 13 October 1969, 5). The Conservative White Paper placed more emphasis on self-provision. Contributions to the state scheme would be

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wage-related, but payments after retirement would be at a flat rate and so it would only be redistributive for the lowest earners. Most people would have to rely on occupational schemes to make their pensions up to a reasonable level and they would be encouraged, but not compelled, to set up occupational schemes (Denham and Garnett 2001: 209). The electoral defeat of the Conservatives meant this scheme was not instituted and Barbara Castle repealed it to introduce the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) (Page 2016: 160). The Joseph scheme signalled the increased emphasis on self-provision, which was part of the Heath philosophy and was to be fully realised under Thatcher. Further, despite the 1973 Act being revoked, it presaged the 1986 Social Security Act which, as Denham and Garnett argue, bore some resemblance to Joseph’s scheme, albeit with one crucial difference; in 1986, there was no insistence on minimum standards which ultimately led to pensions mis-selling (Denham and Garnett 2001: 209).

Conclusion It is useful to consider this moment, as Black and Pemberton do, as a moment of change that drew on both older ideas and new directions: ‘the 1970s were not just a bridging point but simultaneously the sequel to the 1960s and the prequel to neo-liberalism’ (Black and Pemberton 2013b: 258). The social security policy of the Heath administration reflects this sense of a liminal moment. Davies has argued, in the context of ‘Right to Buy’, that whilst there was a long-standing ideological support within the party for property ownership, it was only from the late 1960s that the Conservatives saw the ‘mass disposal of properties’ as ‘tenable’ (Davies 2013: 438). This, he argues, became ‘tenable’ in the context of socioeconomic changes in the post-war decades not simply as a result of a Thatcherite break with post-war Conservatism (Davies 2013: 438). The same can be argued of social security policy. Selectivity and self-provision had long been part of Conservative thinking and had strong grassroots support and some key proponents within the central party. But the popularity of the post-war welfare settlement meant that before 1970, Conservative governments felt constrained in the degree to which they could implement these policies. By 1970, there was a new ‘market of ideas’ one which, at an elite level, positively promoted rolling back the state. Alongside this was an increased public recognition of the cost of state services, less willingness to fund the more unpopular social security

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benefits and an ‘individualism’ that rejected technocratic solutions. This facilitated a Conservative manifesto in 1970 that more explicitly prioritised private provision, promoted targeted benefits and aimed to address so-called shirkers and scroungers (Conservative Party 1970). In office, they attempted to carry out these promises. As Hill suggests, the ‘main social policy legacy of the Heath government…[were] the early experiments in the extension of means tests for assistance to the working poor’ (Hill 1993: 104). If their rhetoric was more ambitious than their achievements, it can be argued that, in this respect, the Heath administration was not much different to other governments in the area of social security policy. The Labour years of Wilson and Callaghan, for all their positive welfare measures, failed to deliver a ‘fundamental reformulation…[of] social policy’ (Page 2016: 162–163). Overall, whilst the measures introduced under Heath were less innovatory and radical than some might have wished, cumulatively this programme was a ‘catalyst’ in the growth of means-testing in Britain (Deacon and Bradshaw 1983: 96). Heath foreshadowed the Thatcher era and many of the policies implemented here were remarkably durable. There was, in broadest terms, a clear direction of travel and that was towards a more residual and less costly ‘safety net’ welfare state and the resurgence of a rhetoric that was stigmatising. In this sense, 1970–1974 should be regarded as a critical moment in recalibrating the shape and direction of Britain’s social security system.

Bibliography Archives Child Poverty Action Group, London School of Economics. Conservative Party Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Published Primary Sources Conservative Party. (1966). Action Not Words: The New Conservative Programme, General Election Manifesto. London: The Conservative Party. Conservative Party. (1970). A Better Tomorrow, General Election Manifesto. London: The Conservative Party.

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Books, Chapters and Articles Alcock, P. (1999). Poverty and Social Security. In R. M. Page & R. Silburn (Eds.), British Social Welfare in the Twentieth Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Bale, T. (2016). The Conservatives Since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Banting, K. G. (1979). Poverty, Politics and Policy: Britain in the 1960s. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Beckett, A. (2010). When the Lights Went Out: What Really Happened to Britain in the Seventies. London: Faber and Faber. Black, L., & Pemberton, H. (2013a). Afterword. In L. Black, H. Pemberton, & P.  Thane (Eds.), Reassessing 1970s Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Black, L., & Pemberton, H. (2013b). Introduction: The Benighted Decade? Reassessing the 1970s. In L.  Black, H.  Pemberton, & P.  Thane (Eds.), Reassessing 1970s Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bridgen, P., & Lowe, R. (1998). Welfare Policy Under the Conservatives, 1951–1964. Kew: PRO Publications. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Pimlico. Davies, A. (2013). Right to Buy: The Development of a Conservative Housing Policy, 1945–1980. Contemporary British History, 27(4), 421–444. Deacon, A., & Bradshaw, J. (1983). Reserved for the Poor: The Means Test in British Social Policy. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Deakin, N. (1987). The Politics of Welfare. London: Methuen. Denham, A., & Garnett, M. (2001). Keith Joseph: A Life. Chesham: Acumen. Dorey, P. (2011). British Conservatism: The Politics and Philosophy of Inequality. London: I. B. Tauris. Edgerton, D. (2018). The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History. London: Allen Lane. Gladstone, D. (1999). The Twentieth-Century Welfare State. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Glennerster, H. (2000). British Social Policy since 1945 (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Glennerster, H. (2006). Why So Different? Why So Bad a Future. In H. Pemberton, P. Thane, & N. Whiteside (Eds.), Britain’s Pensions Crisis: History and Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Golding, P., & Middleton, S. (1982). Images of Welfare: Press and Public Attitudes to Poverty. Oxford: Blackwell. Green, E. H. H. (2006). Thatcher. London: Hodder Arnold. Hampton, J. (2016). Disability and the Welfare State in Britain: Changes in Perception and Policy, 1948–79. Bristol: Policy Press. Hill, M. (1993). The Welfare State in Britain: A Political History Since 1945. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.

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Jackson, B. (2012). The Think-Tank Archipelago: Thatcherism and Neoliberalism. In B.  Jackson & R.  Saunders (Eds.), Making Thatcher’s Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, B. (2019a). Richard Titmuss Versus the IEA: The Transition from Idealism to Neo-Liberalism in British Social Policy. In L.  Goldman (Ed.), Welfare and Social Policy in Britain Since 1870: Essays in Honour of Jose Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, B. (2019b). Free Markets and Feminism: The Neo-liberal Defence of the Male Breadwinner Model in Britain, c. 1980–1997. Women’s History Review, 28(2), 297–316. Jones, H. O. (1992). The Conservative Party and the Welfare State, 1942–1955. Unpublished PhD thesis, London School of Economics, London. Lowe, R. (1996). The Social Policy of the Heath Government. In S.  Ball & A.  Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government (pp.  1970–1974). Abingdon: Routledge. Lowe, R. (2005). The Welfare State in Britain Since 1945 (3rd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Lynes, T. (1974). Policy on Social Security. In M. Young (Ed.), Poverty Report 1974: A Review of Policies and Problems in the Last Year. London: Temple Smith. Page, R.  M. (2007). Revisiting the Welfare State. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Page, R.  M. (2015). Clear Blue Water: The Conservative Party and the Welfare State Since 1940. Bristol: Policy Press. Page, R.  M. (2016). Social Policy. In A.  Crines & K.  Hickson (Eds.), Harold Wilson: The Unprincipled Prime Minister?  – Reappraising Harold Wilson. London: Biteback. Pemberton, H. (2006). Politics and Pensions in Post-war Britain. In H. Pemberton, P. Thane, & N. Whiteside (Eds.), Britain’s Pensions Crisis: History and Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Raison, T. (1990). Tories and the Welfare State: A History of Conservative Social Policy Since the Second World War. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Renwick, C. (2017). Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State. London: Allen Lane. Robinson, E., Schofield, C., Sutcliffe-Brathwaite, F., & Thomlinson, N. (2017). Telling Stories About Post-war Britain: Popular Individualism and the ‘Crisis’ of the 1970s. Twentieth Century British History, 28(2), 268–304. Sewill, B. (2009). Policy-Making for Heath. In A.  Cooke (Ed.), Tory PolicyMaking: The Conservative Research Department (pp. 1929–2009). Eastbourne: Manor Creative. Sloman, P. (2016). ‘The Pragmatist’s Solution to Poverty’: The Heath Government’s Tax Credit Scheme and the Politics of Social Policy in the 1970s. Twentieth Century British History, 27(2), 226–267.

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Thane, P. (2018). Divided Kingdom: A History of Britain, 1900 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Timmins, N. (2001). The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State. (New ed.). London: Harper Collins. Vincent, D. (1991). Poor Citizens: The State and the Poor in Twentieth Century Britain. Harlow: Longman.

CHAPTER 8

The Heath Government and Local Government Reform David Jeffery

If somebody came from the moon and created a new place called Britain and they recommended for us a system of local government as it is today, we would certainly consider that they needed their heads looking at. —Peter Walker (1969, in Chandler 2013) It is axiomatic that anyone who speaks on local government reform who does not have to wants his head examining. —Harold Wilson (HC Deb 6 July 1972, vol 840, col 899) The Local Government Act 1972 is not explicable in terms of democratic idealism, nor of professional realism, nor of administrative efficiency or convenience, nor yet of political manipulation and party dogma, nor even of Anglo-Saxon muddle headedness, though, of course, it owes much to all of these. The fact is that it has a Past. —Arnold-Baker (1973: 1)

D. Jeffery (*) University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_8

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Introduction The Local Government Act 1972 is ‘one of the few innovations of the Heath Government which has lasted; it also remains among the most unpopular’ (Campbell 2013: 379). Although the reform outlasted the main constitutional legislation passed during the Heath government—the European Communities Act 1972—it has slowly been unpicked by consecutive governments who saw the reforms as suboptimal. This chapter explores three interrelated issues: why reform of local government was necessary in the first place, what the Heath government’s reforms achieved, and how they were justified. For some, the Local Government Act 1972 was held as ‘a radical and progressive reorganisation of the antiquated structure of local government in England and Wales’, and the ‘first major systematic and comprehensive measure which Parliament has placed on the Statute Book in the field of local democracy in this country’ (Jones 1973: 154). On the contrary, John Silkin argued from the Labour opposition that the Act was ‘blurred and tepid. It has soaked up from everywhere ideas and suggestions, often conflicting, as it has gone along. It is a great big sponge … it illustrates the principle of the uninhabitability of the halfway house’ (HC Deb 16 November 1971, vol 826, col 250). This chapter instead argues that the reform of local government undertaken by the Heath government—or more specifically by Environment Secretary Peter Walker, given the general lack of interference by Heath or the cabinet on the process—was driven more by party-political considerations than the stated concerns of moving power closer to local communities, rationalising local government and empowering local authorities. Instead, in a political context where the need for reform of local government was broadly accepted, but a previous unitary system recommendation had been poorly received by Conservative grassroots, the Local Government Act 1972 represented a party-political opportunity to restrict the power of the Labour Party over non-metropolitan Britain whilst also, in some cases, extending the power of the centre over the local—reflecting one of the oldest struggles in British (and its predecessors’) political history (Wilson and Game 2011: 53–54).

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A Brief History of Local Government in the UK The history of local government in the UK, until the Heath government at least, is largely one of evolution rather than revolution; local government typically evolved over time, with areas engaged in a constant struggle for powers and control with the centre, and cities and urban areas in conflict with their rural environs. The principle of multifunctional, elected local self-government was established with the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, even if this could not be considered a system of local government, given the range and variation in local bodies delivering services across the nation (Wilson and Game 2011: 57). The 1835 Act reformed the majority of municipal boroughs—178—in England and Wales (Stoker 1991: 1)1, which were found to ‘exist independently of the communities among which they are found’ (Royal Commission on Municipal Corporations 1835, 2002), often acting as vehicles to return members of parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons and many being closed shops, filled with self-appointed ‘representatives’. The Act required these new municipal boroughs to be governed by town councils that would be elected by ratepayers—this was standardised across boroughs, replacing the various qualifications or requirements provided in old charters. These municipal boroughs were responsible for a range of functions, and being directly elected, thus shared key characteristics of modern local government (Stoker 1991: 1). Whilst the 1835 Act represented the first step in replacing the ‘maze of parishes, commissions and other public bodies’ which governed on a local level with a more familiar set-up of ‘multi-functional local authorities’, there remained work to be done (Elcock 1994: 18). Across Britain, there was still ‘nothing approaching a “system”’ (Wilson and Game 2011: 55); instead, there was a ‘tangle’ of local government (Hollis 1989: 2–3). The municipal boroughs existed alongside over 15,000 parishes (with largely unpaid officers) and counties, which were run by Justices of the Peace, appointed by the Crown, and which had both an administrative role (e.g. for highways, bridges, weights and measures and oversight of the parishes) and a judicial role through county quarter sessions. However, the challenges facing local government as a result of the rapid pace of the Industrial Revolution, such as overcrowding, disease, crime, poor sanitation and 1  Similar reforms were carried out in Scotland with the Burgh Reform Act 1833, and in Ireland under the Municipal Reform Act 1840.

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poverty, made this tangle of literally thousands of appointed and elected bodies, of both single- and multipurpose authorities, unsustainable. There were consistent and urgent calls for reform (Wilson and Game 2011: 55–58). This reform came in the late nineteenth century, with a series of acts of parliament which ‘achieved a constitutional mini-revolution’, surviving for three-quarters of a century and, according to Wilson and Game, attempted ‘to try to square a circle: to create a two-tier structure of elected local government, without destroying the independence of the boroughs’ (Wilson and Game 2011: 58). The first of these acts was the Local Government Act 1888, which created all-purpose, directly elected county councils—or in towns and cities where the population passed 50,000, county borough councils were established, outside of county control. This was followed by the Local Government Act 1894, which, outside of the County of London, established urban and rural district councils wherever a municipal borough council did not already exist. Together, these urban and rural district councils would sit below county councils and form the lower tier of local government.2 The 1894 Act also created civic parish councils, which represented a third tier of local government. The final act in this mini-revolution was the London Government Act 1899, which created 28 metropolitan borough councils in London, which formed the lower tiers within the London County Council. By the turn of the twentieth century, Britain enjoyed a rationalised system of local government for the first time in its history. Although there was not one uniform system throughout the country, as in France, the UK had a dual system of local government—outside of London, the largest urban areas had their own, all-purpose county boroughs (or burghs in Scotland), whilst the rest of the country had a two- or three-tier system, with various powers split between county, district and parish councils. The system was neither neat nor harmonious (Wilson and Game 2011: 58), and according to Cross, this dual system ‘was scarcely satisfactory at the time of its creation’ (Cross 1973: 351). Although the actual powers and 2  These acts applied to England and Wales; Scotland underwent similar reforms under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 and the Town Councils (Scotland) Act 1900, which also created a two-tier county-district structure, but with the four largest burghs—Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen—becoming all-purpose counties of cities, equivalent to English county boroughs (Wilson and Game 2011: 58).

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functions available to localities waned from the so-called golden age of local government in the 1930s, this dual structure remained up until the Heath government’s reforms in the early 1970s.

Why Reform Local Government? Harold Wilson made few contributions to the parliamentary debate on local government reform, but his opening remarks in a 1972 debate make are striking: It is axiomatic that anyone who speaks on local government reform who does not have to wants his head examining. Any Government embarking on local government reform are [sic] likely to make more enemies than friends, both within their own party and on the opposite side of Parliament. (HC Deb 6 July 1972, vol 840, col 899)

Why, if this is the case, did the Heath government embark on such a drastic and wide-ranging reform of local government at all? Firstly, there were long-term issues which had been bubbling away since the mini-revolution of the late nineteenth century. This involved a system of local government which was increasingly poorly suited to the areas it was supposed to represent, with boundaries drawn in the nineteenth century increasingly outdated by the final quarter of the twentieth century, and the sheer number of separate councils—as many as 14,000 (Wood 1976: 177). Elcock highlights the mismatch of the system by the 1960s: In 1961, the largest county borough, Birmingham, had over a million inhabitants while there were thirty-three county boroughs with populations below 100,000. Again, the largest county council, Lancashire, had 2.2 million residents, while Rutland, the smallest county, had a mere 23,000. The smallest municipal borough in the country was Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire, with only 800 inhabitants but nonetheless possessing a mayor, a bench of aldermen, a mace and more important, the full range of municipal borough functions. (Elcock 1994: 19)

Chandler notes how ‘the largest and most widely recognised authorities, in many cities reinforced by Labour majorities, aspired to run almost all their services in-house’, and this often had a knock-on effect for smaller local authorities, who also wanted to deliver services in-house as a point of

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principle, pride, or ego (Chandler 2013: 221). Many of the smaller councils were, however, ‘clearly unviable as deliverers of efficient services’ and the sheer number of councils, coupled with a complex division of powers, led to ‘immense duplication, confusion and waste’ (Campbell 2013: 379). Consequently, public engagement with, and understanding of, local government was limited. It was a Conservative government which first grasped the nettle of local government reform, but focused solely on London. Although they ‘had entered office in the 1950s with no strong modernising agenda’, they ‘left power having initiated a major root-and-branch reform of local government in London’ (Chandler 2013: 192). In many ways, this was a test run for subsequent reform of local government. The ground was laid by a Royal Commission review, which eventually led to the London Government Act 1963. The legislation replaced the County of London with the conurbation of Greater London and the London County Council with the Greater London Council. It also created 32 London boroughs which sat under the Greater London Council and which replaced 82 former boroughs and urban districts (although the City of London Corporation remained unchanged). Those boroughs which were formerly under London County Council were termed ‘Inner London’, and the other 20 ‘Outer London’ (a dichotomy which exists to this day). The division of powers between the two tiers was also cleared up—the Greater London Council was given strategic functions including fire and ambulance services, main roads and refuse disposal, whereas the 32 boroughs held responsibility for were allocated the bulk of services—housing, social services, non-metropolitan roads, libraries, leisure and recreation and refuse collection (Wilson and Game 2011: 60). However, also present was the ‘muddle’ prevalent in local government reform. London County Council had a strong reputation for education provision, which the Inner London boroughs wanted to maintain. Thus, a fudge was concocted. Inner London education provision was administered by a new Inner London Education Authority, whilst the remaining other boroughs took responsibility for education themselves. Although reaction to the reforms was mixed, the reform showed how the existing system of local government could be rationalised—merging smaller councils together to create larger lower tier authorities and more clearly delineating the responsibilities between the two tiers, whilst being willing to grease the wheels somewhat with a fudge or two. As Wilson and Game note, ‘whatever its merits or defects, the reform had demonstrated

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that wholesale change was possible without services being totally dislocated. It also established the principle that an entire conurbation—in this case, the biggest of them all—should be governed as a single unit’ (Wilson and Game 2011: 60). The London Government Act 1963 provided a blueprint of how to address the long-term issues with local government and what an eventual ‘modern’ system of local government could look like. This, however, does not explain the short-term factors for reform, which allowed the central government to overcome ‘the powerful coalitions of resistance that built up whenever change was proposed’ (Elcock 1994: 21). For this, we must go back to the election of the Labour government in 1964. This government was committed to administrative reform and appointed Richard Crossman as Minister of Housing and Local Government—‘In his own mind, at any rate, Mr Crossman was a man of action’—who was backed up by Dame Evelyn Sharp, ‘a powerful and experienced civil servant known to support reform in principle’. However, scope for government action was severely limited under the restrictions of the Local Government Act 1958, necessitating further legislative reform (Wood 1976: 177). Following the example of the London Government Act 1963, Crossman began by setting up a Royal Commission, which was chaired by Lord Redcliffe-Maud. The Commission had a remit to consider the whole of England—except for the recently reformed Greater London—but not to consider the relationship and division of powers and functions between central and local government. A similar committee was set up to consider local government in Scotland, under the Chairmanship of Lord Wheatley, a senior Scottish judge. In Wales, however, the newly set up Welsh Office ‘explained that it was already preparing for reform; it was agreed that the Welsh Inquiry should continue alongside, but distinct from, the English Inquiry’ (Chandler 2013: 197).

The Redcliffe-Maud Report The Redcliffe-Maud Commission produced two reports. The first, representing a majority of the Commission, argued for a system of unitary authorities across the country which would sit under eight non-executive provincial councils for planning and strategy. Most of England would be covered by 58 unitary authorities, with populations ranging from 250,000 to just over a million, with an average of around 400,000. Parish councils would be retained too—they would typically be former village or town

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council areas, which would not provide many services but would rather be a local voice and promote local interests to the new, larger authorities (Chandler 2013: 198). The only exceptions to this unitary system would be in the West Midlands, Merseyside and (what we now call) Greater Manchester, where a two-tier system of metropolitan county authorities sitting above metropolitan districts would exist, akin to Greater London (Jones 1973: 156). A single dissenter, Derek Senior, argued for a more complex ‘multi-tier system of provincial [regional] councils, city regions, district and local councils’ (Wilson and Game 2011: 61). Both reports, however, accepted the ‘basic assumption that the existing map of local government should be torn up and replaced by a much smaller number of larger units that embraced town and country as a single unit’ (Chandler 2013: 198). For Scotland, the Wheatley Commission’s recommendations looked more similar to Senior’s dissenting report than the Redcliffe-Maud report—it argued that Scotland should have a dual-tier system, split between 7 regions and 37 districts, with community (parish) councils acting as an ultra-local body to provide a voice to residents. In Wales, the recommendations were for 5 counties and 36 districts, with an advisory Council for Wales (Chandler 2013: 199). Although the Scottish and Welsh proposals were similar to what was eventually enacted, the RedcliffeMaud’s recommendations were ignored by the Heath government. Although well-thought out, Redcliffe-Maud’s recommendations ran aground on the treacherous coast of politics. For Jones, the argument for unitary authorities across England was strong: the system was simpler and easier to understand; it would allow for the development and delivery of interrelated services to be overseen by a single body, and the larger, stronger local authorities would be a stronger check on the power of Westminster (Jones 1973: 156–157). However, the acceptance of a dual-tier system for just three areas represented a ‘fatal mistake’ in the Commission’s argument—if the dual-tier system was good enough for some areas, why was it not in others? As Jones argues The force of the argument for the unitary authority was thus broken. If a two-­tier system could be justified in one context, why, it was argued, would it not be relevant elsewhere. The Commission itself had provided ammunition for its opponents with its advocacy of the two-tier metropolitan system, even without Derek Senior’s memorandum of dissent urging a two-tier system over the whole country and the Wheatley Royal Commission on Local

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Government in Scotland proposing another type of two-tier system. (Jones 1973: 156)

In the case of Wales, reform of which was designed through the Wales Office, the two-tier system was met with annoyance from the Ministry for Housing and Local Government, which ‘objected to the idea on the grounds that if the two-tier system was possible in rural Wales it would provide a strong argument for rural areas in England to seek a similar arrangement’. However, following a cabinet discussion, it was concluded that both Wales and Scotland were sufficiently different for a two-tier structure to be acceptable (Chandler 2013: 199). Similarly, Arnold-Baker argues that the report followed an ‘admirable’ formula of unitary authorities, strategic regional councils above, combined with a ‘parish council type untrammelled by ultra vires, to provide representative thickening below’. The problem was, however, that the complete reorganisation ‘offended nearly everyone’, especially when it came to Redcliffe-Maud’s attack on the counties, which ‘have a special position in English life, representing diversities which are not merely traditional’ (Arnold-Baker 1973: 3–4). It is ironic then that under the Heath government’s reforms, as we shall see, the main element of RedcliffeMaud that survived was the attack on the counties! Those opposed to single-tier authorities also began to mobilise, with the Rural District Councils Association launching a publicity campaign under the title ‘Don’t Vote for R. E. Mote’ (Arnold-Baker 1973: 4). The County Councils’ Association, which was initially supportive of single-tier authorities, joined with the Rural and Urban District Associations to also oppose the move (Chandler 2013: 200). Despite this rising opposition, the Labour Government began to put together a bill in early 1970, which saw Redcliffe-Maud largely unchanged, apart from the creation of two new metropolitan county areas in West Yorkshire and South Hampshire. This support for unitary authorities from Labour was not surprising. For Jones, it represents an extension of the county borough system where Labour was politically strong; it could be resented as an urban take-over of the counties and as ensuring that solutions to urban problems, the most pressing in Labour’s eyes, would not be impeded by rural and suburban areas. (Jones 1973: 157)

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On the other hand, although the Conservative Party’s response to Redcliffe-Maud was initially muted opposition to the reforms was building within the party, which was unsurprising given the Conservative’s strength in the shires (Jones 1973: 158). This opposition did not, however, reach all the way up to Peter Walker, at that point the Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government. Walker was seen as ‘in the vanguard of the new generation of business-minded Conservatives … a break from the traditional landowning leadership cadre of the party’, and before the 1970 general election met with a series of Conservative council group leaders, where he urged them to consider Redcliffe-Maud ‘not from a parochial point of view or because of sectarian support for a specific type of authority, but from a strategic stance on the overall future of local government’. He was not successful in his endeavours, and in his closing speech, Walker ‘berated them for their insular approach’. A speech in support for the Redcliffe-Maud reforms was also met with hostility at the 1969 Conservative Party Conference (Chandler 2013: 201). Struck by rank-and-file support for the two-tier system, Walker changed tact and instead argued that Conservative reorganisation of local government would involve a two-tier system, but with the proviso that smaller boroughs, rural and urban districts would be merged into larger, more economically viable units. As Chandler argues, Walker’s ‘concession to grassroots Conservatives’ was that ‘lower tier authorities outside the metropolitan area’ should be retained ‘to discharge such functions as can more democratically and without loss of efficiency and confusion be discharged on a smaller scale’ (Chandler 2013: 202). Similarly, a further party-political advantage baked into Walker’s proposals was that whilst the metropolitan two-tier areas suggested by Redcliffe-Maud were to be retained, they were to be more tightly drawn and thus prevent urban cores encroaching on ‘predominantly rural Conservative hinterlands’ (Chandler 2013: 202). Thus, as Wilson and Game argue, the Conservative Party’s rejection of Redcliffe-Maud was ‘partly on philosophical grounds, but partly also because most county councils were dominated by the government’s own party members and sympathisers’ (Wilson and Game 2011: 61). Through apathy—rather than enthusiastic backing—Walker managed to gain shadow cabinet approval for a ‘sensible measure of local government reform’, which included keeping a lower tier of district councils across the country. This formed part of the Conservatives’ 1970 manifesto, alongside a commitment to modernising government more broadly (Wood 1976: 179–180).

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The Local Government Act 1972 Thus, the 1970s started with a new Conservative government with a mandate for local government reform, an energetic minister in Peter Walker willing to push through big changes, and the threat of Redcliffe-Maud’s unitary authorities hanging over the heads of recalcitrant Conservative councillors, which meant any two-tier proposals were received much more favourably as the lesser of two evils. Local government reform was very much a creature of Peter Walker’s ambition, rather than that of Heath’s or the government’s contribution in general. We can see an outline of and a ‘commitment to an alternative set of proposals’ in Walker’s response to the Labour government’s White Paper in February 1970, a response which was ‘very much the work of Mr Walker himself rather than the outcome of lengthy collective discussions by shadow ministers’. Local government reform was Walker’s ‘baby’ (Wood 1976: 97–99). Walker’s choice to act constructively in Opposition, and to take the pulse of the grassroots, meant that once he was made Secretary of State for the Environment, and had the power of a department behind him and ministers under him, he could quickly produce detailed reforms which were acceptable to the party at large. Indeed, the Conservative’s 1971 White Paper came just one year after Labour’s own attempt. The specifics of the reform—maintaining the county-district system, but with larger districts where necessary—chimed with the Heath government’s approach to modernisation of central government, which was based on the idea that ‘bigger means better’ from an administrative point of view. As Wood notes, ‘Walker was applying the same doctrine to the structure of local government, though with care’, and thus was not going against the grain of Heath’s thinking (Wood 1976: 109). Finally, the proposals broadly reflected the structure of reforms Labour would have introduced in Wales and Scotland, so the Opposition was hamstrung in terms of the extent they could criticise the reforms for England. As such during the passage of the bill through parliament, it was the case that The Government would be prepared to make concessions on what it regarded as points of detail, and would stand firm only on broad principles. The Opposition would not launch a major assault on the Bill, but would content itself with harassment and with attempting to embarrass the Government. (Wood 1976: 138)

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When it came to specifics, Walker showed himself to be guided by more than philosophical feelings towards local government’s ideal form—naked partisanism also played a role. A South Hampshire metropolitan area was dropped, amid fears it would undermine Conservative-held Hampshire, whilst the Labour strongholds of South Yorkshire and Tyneside were to become metropolitanised. Even county boundaries would be sacrificed for political gain, with the county boroughs of Teesside and Bristol being absorbed into new counties—these were formerly strong Labour areas, which now sat within new Conservative counties (Chandler 2013: 203). This was noted by MPs at the time, such as the Labour MP Denis Howell, who said the treatment of metropolitan areas had ‘the stench of party political gerrymandering’ for naked ‘party-political advantage’ (HC Deb 17 November 1971, vol 826, col 564). Other issues around specifics which arose were easily dealt with by Walker, with very little input from Heath. Although many Conservative MPs were fond of the idea of retaining aldermen—councillors who were elected by other councillors, rather than by voters—in an attempt to get expertise on the council and to smooth out violent changes in a council’s party makeup, the cabinet approved the removal of aldermen on the grounds of ‘democratic sensibilities’. The cabinet (and civil servants) were also uneasy about giving councils the general power of competence, as it could be used to undermine central government policy—and thus it was not included in the White Paper (Chandler 2013: 204). Thus, despite Walker’s claims that these reforms would represent a shift in power in the British state, from Westminster to the council chamber, in reality they did very little to reduce local authorities’ dependence on the centre. Despite a long, complex and arduous passage through the House of Commons, the provisions of the bill remained largely intact—if not the specific geographical boundaries- and the number of authorities was cut from 1210 to 377. MPs, however, did manage to secure a number of concessions and amendments. For example, Jones argues that the main substantive change was the strengthening of the districts at the expense of the county (Jones 1973: 158–159). Thus, the road to the Local Government Act 1972 was long and winding. Unlike the Redcliffe-Maud report, the act did not represent a principled attempt at constitutional reorganisation to meet some considered, theoretically informed or preferred outcome. It was, instead, often nakedly partisan. For Chandler, the Act (and its Scottish counterpart) was ‘the culmination of continuous pressures throughout the twentieth century for

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change in terms both of the size of local authorities and of their inclusivity and professionalism’, dating back as far as the 1920s (Chandler 2013: 220).

Reforms in Scotland and Wales Unlike the Redcliffe-Maud report for England, the process of local government reorganisation was less controversial in Scotland and Wales. The two-­tier proposals arising from the Wheatley Commission and the Wales Office fell firmly in line with Walker’s ideas for England, and in the case of Scotland, which pre-reform had a proportionately larger number of small authorities than England or Wales, the case was seen as even more urgent. The reforms in Scotland merged 431 counties, cities, burghs and districts into 9 regions, 53 districts and 3 ‘all-purpose’ authorities for the islands of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles. This desire for ‘biggeris-better’ was arguably taken too far in the case of Scotland, with the largest region, Strathclyde, having a population of more than 2.5 million people—half of Scotland’s population and the largest local authority in Western Europe at the time—and the Glasgow district having a population of 850,000. Thus, whilst the desire for a two-tier system was met, any pretence of closeness to the voters was lost (Elcock 1994: 26). In the end, Strathclyde ‘eventually had to establish non-elected sub-­ regional councils for administrative convenience’. The least remote part of local government—community councils—‘had no statutory powers and a lower status than even parish councils’ and thus could not realistically fulfil the democratic thickening role prescribed to English parish councils (Wilson and Game 2011: 62). In Wales, the two-tier system was also accepted. The government rejected the Wales Office’s suggestion for a unitary system for Glamorgan, and for Cardiff, Newport and Swansea to remain county boroughs. Instead the two-tier system was pushed throughout the principality. As Elcock notes, ‘These new Welsh counties were much criticised as making neither geographic nor economic sense’ (Elcock 1994: 26). Thus, as with Scotland, the ideological push for a two-tier system trumped practical considerations.

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Reforms in Northern Ireland Reform of local government also took place in Northern Ireland. Since 1898, the structures of local government had been similar to those of the mainland—6 counties had a two-tier system, with 55 urban and rural districts beneath them, whilst Belfast and Londonderry governed as an allpurpose county borough. However, sectarian gerrymandering had resulted in the Unionist population—which made up the majority of Northern Ireland—drawing boundaries in such a way as to ‘give them control of most councils and exclude the Republican parties from any significant influence’. This was an obvious source of grievance, and in 1969 the Macrory Commission reported on prospects for reform. It argued for a ‘scaled-down two-tier model, with most services being provided by regional councils and a greatly reduced number of districts’ (Wilson and Game 2011: 63). The Local Government (Northern Ireland) Act 1972 was intended to create this two-tier model but ‘with the suspension of the Stormont government in the same year and the introduction of direct rule from Westminster, the proposed elected regional tier did not materialise’. Instead, Northern Ireland was left with 26 single-tier district councils, elected by single transferable vote in an attempt to restrict sectarian gerrymandering, but the reforms also placed significant powers (e.g. over social services, education, planning, housing) in the hands of ‘various nonelected boards, agencies and departments of the Northern Ireland Office’. As a result of these reforms, local government’s annual spending amounted to less than 4% of total public spending in Northern Ireland, and ‘policy power effectively remained at Westminster’ (Wilson and Game 2011: 63).

The Consequences of the Heath Government’s Reforms In the build-up to pushing the Local Government Bill through the House of Commons, Peter Walker outlined four key objectives the government sought to achieve in reforming local government. The first was to move powers down to the closest level to the citizen possible, ‘to encourage a vigorous local democracy by ensuring that initiative and responsibility are exercised as locally as possible’ (HC Deb 16 February 1971, vol 811, col 433W). The Redcliffe-Maud proposals would, it was argued, ‘be very remote from the people concerned was not the proper basis on which to

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reform local government’ (HC Deb 16 November 1971, vol 826, col 228), whilst Walker’s system will ‘have strengthened local democratic institutions so that they operate more successfully and efficiently and have a greater impact on their localities’ (HC Deb 16 November 1971, vol 826, col 230). The second was to ensure a rigorous new structure which would represent ‘a rational system of local government with which to meet the problems of the twentieth century’ (HC Deb 16 November 1971, vol 826, col 228). The reforms would produce ‘a new, clear-cut system of local government. All the difficulties of one authority being answerable to another will come to an end’ (HC Deb 16 November 1971, vol 826, col 249). Thirdly, the government aimed to empower local authorities with these reforms by reducing ‘the number of specific individual controls exercised by central Government over local government’, and with Walker boasting of having ‘already identified 400 such controls’ to abolish (HC Deb 16 November 1971, vol 826, col 233).

Moving Power to Communities The first area for evaluation is the effectiveness of the Act in terms of moving power closer to communities. For Wood, this aim sits at the heart of a tension in the local government reform project between democracy and efficiency. ‘Dominant during the reform process was the view that the two were incompatible—democracy implied small areas and authorities, efficiency demanded large ones’ (Wood 1976: 187). From the enacted reforms, it is clear efficiency won out. Walker’s stated opposition to the unitary authorities of Redcliffe-Maud was that while they had advantages of efficiency, ‘for many of the services vital to local communities it would be too remote’ (HC Deb 19 May 1971, vol 817, cols 1281). Anthony Crosland, the Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, counted this with the claim that the current system was worse than Labour’s proposal, which was more clearly rooted in Redcliffe-Maud: Labour’s 51 unitary authorities have given way to 38 Tory counties. In consequence, both the size and population of the counties are substantially greater than was the case under our proposals and their headquarters are normally further away from the bulk of the population. (HC Deb 19 May 1971, vol 817, cols 1296–1297)

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This critique is only partially fair—although powers which county councils hold under the reforms would obviously be held further away from citizens compared to if they were held in unitary authorities, those powers held by district councils would be held more closely to people than under Labour’s proposals. That is not to say, however, that these powers would be held more closely to the people than they were prior to the reform. As Arnold-Baker notes, at ‘the district level the reduction in the number of councillors has been drastic. There are now about 5,000 district councillors where there were 18,000 before’. As a result of this widening of the remit of councillors, they were ‘responsible for a less detailed field of work than before and might be expected to leave more of the details to officers’ (ArnoldBaker 1973). Thus, relative to the pre-1974 regimes, citizens saw power move further away from them (albeit in some cases not as far as it would have been under Labour’s reform) and with their elected representatives also being further removed from the ‘on-the-ground’ reality of council decisions. Power was moved away from the citizens and away from the councillor. Or, as Jones puts it, ‘each councillor will serve on an authority covering a bigger area; his constituency will be larger and he will have more people to represent. There will be less contact between the citizen and his councillor. Local government will be more remote’ (Jones 1973: 165). Additionally, as noted by Cross, county borough councils—that is, those borough or cities independent of county council control—lost ‘powers which they have exercised for a very long time’ (Cross 1973: 357). In the case of Merseyside, the county borough of the City of Liverpool became a metropolitan district under the metropolitan county of Merseyside, whereas the two county boroughs of Wallasey and Birkenhead, and the two urban districts of Hoylake and Wirral, and the municipal borough of Bebington, were merged to make the metropolitan district of Wirral, also within the metropolitan county of Merseyside. Thus, unlike in Liverpool were only some powers had been moved away from the citizen (since the whole county borough of Liverpool became a metropolitan district and kept some powers for itself) for those in Wallasey, which had run itself since 1913, power had now been moved further away from the citizen twice over—firstly from the old county borough to the metropolitan borough of Wirral and secondly to the metropolitan county of Merseyside. It is thus easy to see the argument of Denis Howell, the MP for Birmingham Small Heath, who argued that ‘The Bill

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is a complete sell-out of almost every large city and town. On almost every point of importance the Government have given way to the counties, instead of taking the views of the towns and cities’ (HC Deb 17 November 1971, vol 826, col 561).

Rationalising Local Government The second area to assess the reforms is on whether they achieved the promised rationalisation of local government. One of the undoubted advantages of Redcliffe-Maud’s reforms was that with all local government powers concentrated in a unitary authority, it would be clear for the individual where power lay. In contrast, in the two-tier system produced by the 1972 Act, there were numerous criticisms regarding the balance of powers and the split between the two different tiers. Jones argues that the new system was ‘hard for the citizen to comprehend’. Provisions for concurrent powers, sharing functions, enabling the staff of one authority to serve another and agency arrangements (whereby one authority can agree with another to operate its functions) blurred responsibility and contradicted the Commission’s and the government’s intention of allocating functions on a clear-cut and intelligible basis (Jones 1973: 161). It is also important to note that the powers assigned to first- and second-­tier authorities in the metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas were not equal. In metropolitan areas, district councils were responsible for most services, with metropolitan county councils having a more strategic role. In contrast, in non-metropolitan areas, the county council was given responsibility over most major powers; for example, education and social services were responsibilities of metropolitan districts, but in non-­ metropolitan areas they were the responsiblity of non-metropolitian counties. Elcock notes how ‘metropolitan county councils were responsible for about 20 percent of local government spending in their areas’, leaving about 80% to metropolitan district councils, whilst non-metropolitan district councils ‘controlled only some 15 percent of local government spending’ (Elcock 1994: 23–25). It is hard to see how this muddled system could be described as more rational or easier for the citizen to understand. Furthermore, it is not clear that the 1972 Act was successful in rationalising powers either. In the case of planning, public transport, roads and waste collection the powers were split between the two tiers. For example,

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with public transport, counties had responsibility for planning provision of public transport, whilst the districts provided the actual facilities. With roads, some were in the hands of the counties while others were district responsibilities (Jones 1973: 161). A similar split was seen with planning policy, with county councils having overall responsibility for planning, and development control resting with the district (Jones 1973: 162). The agency concept also added an element of confusion into the mix. This allowed for an authority to arrange for another authority to carry out some of their mandated functions, which although introduced flexibility for local authorities it also introduced confusion in terms of accountability. Thus, when it comes to the claims that the 1972 Act provided an element of rationality, it is hard to find evidence. Instead, Jones’ measured claim that the new system represented ‘a tangled complexity’ is hard to refute (Jones 1973: 161). Less considered, and certainly more partisan, but no less correct, is the claim made by John Silkin, (Labour MP for Deptford) that unlike the Redcliffe-­Maud reform, which was ‘clear-cut and decisive’, the 1972 Act has ‘soaked up from everywhere ideas and suggestions, often conflicting, as it has gone along. It is a great big sponge of a Bill’ (HC Deb 16 November 1971, vol 826, col 250).

Empowering Local Authorities The third area of analysis is the idea that the reforms empowered local communities, either through increased powers or reduced controls. Walker himself outlined at the dispatch box how there are over a thousand sanctions that central Government has taken over local government … I hope that we will be able to remove from our legislation many of those sanctions and powers of central Government over local government with the result that there will be less interference from Whitehall in local affairs than has been the case previously. (HC Deb 19 May 1971, vol 817, cols 1292)

However, the real consequence was to neither increase the powers granted to local government nor realistically remove key restrictions on their behaviour. As noted by Cross, all councils were at that time subject to the doctrine of ultra vires, that is, they ‘may do not only those things for which there is express or implied authority, but also whatever is reasonably incidental

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to the doing of those things’ (Cross 1973: 353). This doctrine of ultra vires is heavily restrictive (and uncommon in much of Western Europe’s local government systems, bar Austria) (Arnold-Baker 1973: 11). The Redcliffe-Maud committee noted that ultra vires as it operates at present has a deleterious effect on local government because of the narrowness of the legislation governing local authorities’ activities. The specific nature of legislation discourages enterprise, handicaps development, robs the community of services which the local authority may render, and encourages too rigorous oversight by central government. It contributes excessive concern over legalities and fosters the ideas that the clerk should be a lawyer. (Committee on the Management of Local Government 1967, para. 283)

Instead, the report recommended that ‘that all main authorities should have a general power to spend money for the benefit of their areas and inhabitants’, with the only limit being ‘the wishes of the electors and such restrictions placed on local government expenditure in the interests of national policy’ (Cross 1973: 353). Despite this, no powers of general competence were granted to local government and Section 111 of the 1972 Act instead moved the restriction of ultra vires from common law to statute law. However, the government did introduce what became known as the ‘free penny’ provision, which was the idea that local authorities could spend a given amount on ‘any purpose which, in the opinion of the authority, is in the interests of the area or the inhabitants, provided that the object of the expenditure is not the subject of other statutory provision’ (Cross 1973: 354). The level was set at the hardly transformative rate of 2p. This represented a missed opportunity to empower local government, especially since it continued the requirement that local authority decisions had to be linked to a statutory requirement. Similarly, in the area of finance, we can see power being shifted away from local authorities via other routes. The Housing Finance Act 1972 removes from local authorities the power to determine the rents of their council houses (Jones 1973: 164) and, as noted by Crossland at the dispatch box, the issue of free school milk shows how government commitment to local authorities' freedom is not backed up by action:

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The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that he proposes to withdraw this provision, but at the moment it is legally possible for a local authority to provide free milk and pay for it out of rates. Two Labour-controlled authorities, Merthyr Tydfil and Manchester, wish to do this. However, we are told, despite all that is said about Tory freedom for local authorities, that if Manchester and Merthyr Tydfil proceed, the Secretary of State for Education and Science will introduce a Bill forbidding them to do so. In the light of that, what are we to make of the right hon. Gentleman's words last year about democratically elected councillors making their own decisions, about how interference is a great discouragement, and so on and so forth? Never have so many words been eaten so quickly after a General Election. Never has the hypocrisy of Tory freedom been so dramatically manifest. (HC Deb 19 May 1971, vol 817, cols 1304)

Finally, there is the broader point of the role of central government visà-­vis local government. For Jones, there are two interrelated issues. The first is that the ‘continued fragmentation of local government into competing authorities will prevent the emergence of a powerful united local authority association to stand up against the central government’— although it is not clear why the reformed system, with fewer councils across the board, would be in a weaker position than the pre-1972 regime. Secondly, the conflicts between and within local government could increase the role of central government as an adjudicating body, specifically individual secretaries of state (Jones 1973: 164). This can be seen in issues of planning, where ‘in the absence of any provincial or regional level the crucial decisions on the regional framework or strategy of land use will be in the hands of central government civil servants’ (Jones 1973: 159) as will disagreements over new agency arrangements, or failures to agree new agency schemes following the commencement of the bill, which would result in the Secretary of State being called in to arbitrate (Jones 1973: 162). Thus, on the claim of empowering local authorities, the evidence is generally lacking—there is no evidence of meaningful powers of competence but rather giving statutory footing to ultra vires, there is an increased role for central government when it comes to oversight and adjudication and no clear evidence that the net reduction on controls over local government was even achieved. What the government gave with one hand, it took with the other.

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Conclusion The Local Government Act 1972, and the comparative acts for Scotland and Northern Ireland, were major pieces of constitutional legislation for the Heath government, second only to the European Communities Act 1972. Despite rejecting his committee’s own recommendations, RedcliffeMaud stated that the Act ‘will rank as the first major systematic and comprehensive measure which Parliament has placed on the Statute Book in the field of local democracy in this country’ (Jones 1973: 154). Systematic and comprehensive, however, are not synonyms for empowering, effective or rational. It is undeniable that the reforms enacted by the Heath government—or more accurately by Peter Walker with the blessing of the cabinet—were comprehensive in their scope and systematic in their application of a two-tier system across Great Britain, even when this was not suited to the urban or economic geography of certain areas. What is debatable is whether the reforms met the government’s own stated aims. It is to go too far to claim, like Silkin did, that ‘there is no general logical principle underlying the Bill...it remains an untidy compromise, a massive compromise but still a compromise, and it suffers from all the disadvantages of compromise’ (HC Deb 16 November 1971, vol 826, col 250). The government did have stated aims, which have been examined above and shown to be unachieved—there is little evidence that the reforms did move power closer to local communities, nor did it rationalise local government, nor empower local authorities. In this sense, it is not hard to agree with Jones that ‘it is a far from radical measure, and that it seriously damages urban government’ (Jones 1973: 154). There is nothing conservative about reforms which overturned, in the case of some cities, ‘up to eight centuries of local self-government, when … they were “reorganised”’ (Wilson and Game 2011: 54). Instead, the strength of the two-tier system for the Conservative government was that it was not a unitary system, where urban areas—increasingly Labour areas—would have undue power over suburban and rural areas. The two-tier system was essentially a fudge, a way to hem in urban areas and placate Conservative councillors (Wood 1976: 96). This permeated through the bill, with urban metropolitan districts taking in ‘less of their rural hinterland so as to confine Labour-controlled industrial areas within tightly drawn boundaries that prevented them from dominating predominantly rural Conservative hinterlands’ (Chandler 2013: 202).

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Ultimately, the Conservative’s general election victory in 1970 saw the alignment of not only ‘long- and short-term factors’, as argued by Wood, but also medium-term factors (Wood 1976: 179–180). The long-term factor was a widely perceived need for local government reform, coupled with the short-­term need for Peter Walker to show his reforming zeal. The medium-term factor, which in the case of England was of vital importance, was the Conservative grassroot pressure to avoid the unitary system proposed by Redcliffe-Maud. To have such a proposal which was so threatening to Conservative strength in many non-urban areas meant that the party was much more willing to go along with any two-tier system proposed by one of their own. Ultimately, the Local Government Act 1972 took the shape it did not because the unitary system proposed by Redcliffe-Maud was bad, or poorly thought out—in fact, it was very considered and reflected the work of some of the sharpest minds of the time. It was that the unitary system was rendered unviable by party political considerations. Instead, the Local Government Act 1972 was a creature of real(party)politik dressed up in grandiose claims of moving power down, rationalising local government and empowering local authorities—of which there is scant evidence of success. The Local Government Act 1972 may have been one of the Heath government’s longest-lasting constitutional reforms, but it certainly was not one of its proudest.

Bibliography Published Primary Sources Committee on the Management of Local Government. (1967). Report of the Committee on the Management of Local Government. London: HMSO. House of Commons Parliamentary Debates (HC Deb). Royal Commission on Municipal Corporations. (1835, 2002). Defects in Constitutions of Municipal Corporations. Retrieved March 6, 2020, from http://www.victorianweb.org/history/muncorp.html.

Books, Chapters and Articles Arnold-Baker, C. (1973). The Local Government Act 1972. London: Butterworths. Campbell, J. (2013). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Random House.

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Chandler, J.  A. (2013). Explaining local government. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cross, C. (1973). The Local Government Act 1972. Anglo-American Law Review, 2(3), 351–362. Elcock, H. (1994). Local Government: Policy and Management in Local Authorities (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. Hollis, P. (1989). Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government, 1865-1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jones, G. W. (1973). The Local Government Act 1972 and the Redcliffe-Maud Commission. Political Quarterly, 44(2), 154–166. Stoker, G. (1991). The Politics of Local Government (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Macmillan. Wilson, D., & Game, C. (2011). Local Government in the United Kingdom (5th ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wood, B. (1976). The Process of Local Government Reform, 1966-74. London: Allen & Unwin.

CHAPTER 9

Northern Ireland Shaun McDaid and Catherine McGlynn

This chapter analyses the Northern Ireland policy of the Heath government between 1970 and 1974. After providing an overview of the key Conservative Party figures involved, it focuses on four key areas of Northern Ireland policy, which have witnessed considerable academic debate: security policy, the relationship between London and Dublin, attempts to form a power-­sharing government in Northern Ireland and economic management in the region, within the context of Heath’s reputation for economic U-turns. In so doing, the record of the Heath government will be contrasted with that of the Wilson administration, to ascertain strengths and weaknesses, as well as elements of continuity and change in policy. The chapter bases its findings on the analysis of primary archival sources, especially government papers held at the National Archives in London. These official documents, many of which remain under-studied, are combined with the analysis of official inquiries, such as the Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, which also contains official records of government discussions and policy during Heath’s tenure. Information from

S. McDaid • C. McGlynn (*) University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_9

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these sources is triangulated through engagement with sources such as memoirs from key political figures, information gleaned from published parliamentary debates, and secondary sources by other researchers. This provides the ability to bring a fresh perspective to the Heath government’s policy on Northern Ireland, which is grounded in rigorous historical research methods. This is true not only in terms of its appraisal of British security policy, but also in international relations, through engagement with the development of bilateral relations between the United Kingdom and the Irish republic during this crucial period. In assessing the Heath Government’s approach to Northern Ireland, we acknowledge the multiple constraints that put limits on whatever government was installed at Westminster at the time could achieve and we chart the evolution in the Heath government’s approach to Northern Ireland as regards the centrality of an ‘Irish dimension’ to any lasting settlement. However, we show that poor and avoidable decisions, notably in the area of security policy, made the difficult task of managing a situation that had prompted Home Secretary Reginald Maudling’s exasperated description of a Northern Ireland as a ‘bloody awful country’ (accompanied by a request for a large whisky) even more difficult (quote from Sunday Times Insight Team 1972: 213). The chapter also challenges some of the (counter-factual) claims of some authors that power-sharing in Northern Ireland would have survived had Heath remained in power.

Northern Ireland and the Cabinet When Heath took power in 1970, there were grounds to feel hopeful that the situation in Northern Ireland had stabilised. The overreaction of security forces in the region to civil rights protests by nationalists looking to challenge discrimination overseen by the devolved parliament at Stormont in Belfast had led to riots and disorganised street violence as well as the re-­emergence of paramilitary forces. As Labour’s Home Secretary, James Callaghan had been judged to have handled the situation well, and his decision to send in the British Army and protect nationalist families from violent action, including people being forced out of areas by house burning, received cross-party support (McGlynn and McDaid 2016). Key reforms in areas such as housing allocation and local government voting registration were being enacted and, although the situation was fragile, there was scope for optimism.

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Stabilising Northern Ireland and managing political reform was important for the incoming Cabinet as a priority in its own right, but it also has to be viewed in the context of Heath’s cherished aim of membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). Heath saw the entry of both the UK and the Republic of Ireland as something that would aid the return of peace, as the European Economic Community was ‘a body whose very raison d’etre was to bring former enemies together in co-operation and mutual interests’ (Heath 1998: 423). He was also aware that two states seeking membership would need to show that they were dealing effectively with a violent conflagration at the border between them. The assumption had been that the shadow Home Secretary Quintin Hogg would be the one to take up that portfolio and with that Northern Ireland if the General Election of 1970 went in Heath’s favour. To that end, Hogg had had regular meetings and briefings from Callaghan and had utilised the ability to approach communities who were not natural Conservative bedfellows that he had demonstrated in his ‘flat cap’ tour of industrialised constituencies affected by rising unemployment in 1963. His memoirs record his time behind nationalist barricades in what was deemed by the security forces to be a no-go area in Derry, being treated to chicken sandwiches and beer while the residents ‘aired their grievances, imaginary and real’ (Hogg 1990: 373). However, in the end, Heath decided he needed Hogg as Lord Chancellor and so the post of Home Secretary went to Maudling. Maudling’s handling of Northern Ireland has received significant criticism. Jeremy Smith (2007) offers a rare note of praise in claiming he took a radical, constructive and long-term approach to this particular brief, but the view of J. Bowyer-Bell (1973) that his approach was one of languor and drift is more common. Maudling’s biographer Lewis Baston (2004) captures his fatalistic attitude and inertia when faced with the growing evidence that neither the army nor the unionist political elite’s securitybased focus was working. His inability to hit the right tone either publically or with individual groups and actors was conveyed by a Private Eye cover entitled ‘Maudling’s Grief’ in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday (discussed below) that showed him grinning broadly (Private Eye 1972). When Stormont was suspended in March 1972, Maudling was replaced by William Whitelaw, who took up the new position of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, reflecting the fact that the situation was too serious to be dealt with as part of a basket of other policy responsibilities. Judgements of Whitelaw, who had held the position until Heath moved

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him to Employment in December 1973 (with Francis Pym holding the Northern Ireland brief for the short period before the General Election) are far more positive and he was ‘unquestionably the right man for the job’ (Campbell 1993: 343). Unlike Maudling, he was prepared to take risks (such as meeting leaders from the Irish Republican Army [IRA] after the brokering of a temporary ceasefire) and difficult decisions and listen to a range of views. And, much like Heath himself, his views and understanding of the conflict, both in what had caused it and how it should be addressed, evolved in a way that demonstrates a capacity for critical selfreflection (Garnett and Lynch 2002). As it turned out for all involved, the move away from a security-focused approach would be a steep learning curve.

Security Policy: Sticking with Stormont The outbreak of widespread civil unrest in August 1969, and the worsening levels of violence between then and the spring of 1971, posed a severe challenge to the Government of Northern Ireland, which was dominated by an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which was still taking the Conservative Whip in Westminster at this time. Two prime ministers, Terence O’Neill and his distant cousin James Chichester-Clark, had fallen during this period. By March 1971, the office was held by Brian Faulkner, who also held the post of Home Affairs minister, with something of a reputation as a hardliner within the UUP, and opponent of reform during the civil rights protests. Faulkner had been the man responsible for security in Northern Ireland between 1959 and 1963. During that time, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched an ill-­fated campaign to end partition by attacking security installations on the frontier. This was the so-called border campaign (codenamed Operation Harvest). To stifle the campaign, internment was introduced in Northern Ireland, with up to 400 republican suspects arrested. Crucially, however, internment was also introduced in the Republic of Ireland, which increased the pressure on the IRA. But the context during the 1970s was very different. In December 1969, the IRA split into Official and Provisional wings, following the unrest of the summer, and the authorities were unable to keep pace with these changes in terms of intelligence. Of equal importance, a unified security approach with the Dublin government was much more difficult after the violence of the summer of 1969, and the perceived

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partiality of the security forces in Northern Ireland against the nationalist community, most of whom were citizens of Ireland. Faced with the outbreak of a fresh campaign of violence, Faulkner turned to the solution that had worked before, without regard for this changed political context. His memoirs (Faulkner 1978) show a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that that was a mistake, and he maintained to the end that internment had stemmed the growing tide of violence. His biographer and former cabinet colleague David Bleakley, on the other hand, summed up the disastrous nature of this position by entitling the chapter on internment, ‘Miscalculation Supreme’ (Bleakley 1974). Despite being initially wary, when Faulkner made his case, and against the reservations of both the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Michael Carver, and the General Officer Commanding (GOC) in Northern Ireland, Harry Tuzo, Heath acquiesced with Faulkner’s request to introduce internment provided that there was a complete ban on all marches and processions in Northern Ireland. Internment was seen by the Heath government as a last chance to resolve the security situation before direct rule. Whilst the government’s reluctance to implement direct rule was understandable, with hindsight, it was a strategic mistake. Stormont was beyond saving at this stage, and it was an error of judgement on Heath’s part to persevere with it, much less engage the Army in a futile and provocative military exercise, that would further undermine nationalist confidence in his government. Internment was a disaster in both security and public relations terms. The rounding up of suspects began on the morning of 9 August, with a total of 342 people arrested. Only two non-Catholics were arrested, both of whom were either associated with the civil rights movement or republican groups (Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry (BSI), 2010). Worse, the vast bulk of those arrested had no links to paramilitary activity whatsoever, and even those arrested who had were often old men last active during the 1920s, as the intelligence was hopelessly out of date. Adding injury to insult, some of those who were interned suffered ‘interrogation-indepth’ at the hands of the British Army, involving the notorious ‘five techniques’. These were hooding, sleep deprivation, exposure to noise, deprivation of refreshment and standing in stress positions (Compton Report 1971; McGuffin 1974; Faul and Murray 2016; Duffy 2019). Following the publication of the Parker Report (1972) into interrogation procedures in 1972, Heath informed parliament that these methods would be discontinued (HC Deb, Vol. 832, Col. 743-4, 2 March 1972).

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What slivers of remaining goodwill towards the British state that may still have existed among the nationalist community were destroyed by internment. Serious rioting followed, exacerbating tensions between both communities through the remainder of the year. Worse was to follow on Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972. An event that may not have happened had internment not been introduced in the first place.

The Road to Bloody Sunday It is impossible to discuss the Heath government’s Northern Ireland policy without reference to Bloody Sunday in Derry, 30 January 1972. The events of the day need only be recalled briefly. In the course of an illegal demonstration organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) against internment, soldiers from First Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (1 Para) opened fire on civilians during a riot sparked by a confrontation with the security forces. Thirteen unarmed demonstrators were killed on the day; another died of their injuries a month later. Central to academic debates about Bloody Sunday has been the question of government sanction for the actions of the troops. Archival evidence can help us understand the policy environment at the time. The picture that emerges does not suggest that the actions of 1 Para were approved at government level, but they do hint at dysfunction within the security forces, for whom the government was ultimately responsible. And Heath’s handling of the aftermath of the affair has cast shadows over his record in Northern Ireland as a whole. Bloody Sunday was not the only security controversy to besmirch the record of the security forces in Northern Ireland, under Heath’s tenure. The twin debacles of the Falls Road Curfew, imposed for 36 hours in June 1970 was an Army decision, not a political one, but it occurred on Heath’s watch, even if this was early in his premiership and when he may not have been paying as much significant attention to Northern Ireland matters as he might have been (Warner 2006). Likewise, the killings of 11 civilians by 1 Para in the Ballymurphy area of Belfast in August 1971 was a further dark chapter during Heath’s term of office (Wing 2010). The Ballymurphy incident might, and perhaps should, have made the government think twice about the deployment of the Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland, a few months before the Derry killings, but no such restrictions were put in place. That is not to say, however, that there is evidence that what happened in Derry in January 1972 was pre-planned. But, at this

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remove, it is pertinent to ask if it may have been foreseeable, given the past actions of the regiment in question. In the months prior to Bloody Sunday, there was much discussion about what to do about security policy in Derry. Initially, Heath appeared to take a hard line regarding the approach to dealing with the IRA.  A meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Northern Ireland (GEN47) on 7 October 1971 heard that the prime minister noted that ‘the first priority should be the defeat of the gunmen using military means and that in achieving this we should have to accept whatever political penalties were inevitable’ (BSI 2010). However, a more conciliatory tone regarding the situation in Derry is apparent in both political and security circles closer to the end of the year. The Army had made good headway in Belfast, but were still largely absent from the main Catholic neighbourhoods on the west side of Derry, including the Bogside and the Creggan Estate, home to some 33,000 people. A December 1971 document compiled by the Commander of Land Forces (CLF) in Northern Ireland, Major General Robert Ford, set out the advantages and disadvantages of the military options available to the security forces. These were continuing with the current policy of containment from the periphery but adopting a more offensive approach (Course 1), preserving the current policy of undertaking major operations without a permanent presence (Course 2), or establishing a permanent military presence in the areas (Course 3). Ford was clear that Course 3 was the best military solution, but that it was so politically disadvantageous that ‘it should not be implemented in the present circumstances’. Instead, Course 1 was recommended as the best solution for the particular circumstances of Derry. The thinking of senior ministers in Heath’s government chimed with that of the military. The Home Secretary, Maudling, discussed the situation in Derry with the GOC at Thiepval Barracks, Lisburn. Maudling is recorded as saying that he had ‘no doubt the military judgement was right and that it would be wrong to provoke a major confrontation at this stage’ (TNA, DEFE, 24/210, ‘Future Military Policy for Londonderry. An Appreciation of the Situation by the CLF’, 14 December 1971). Shortly after the CLF’s appraisal was circulated, a meeting of the Defence Northern Ireland Policy Group noted that any attempt to reestablish a presence in the Bogside could, in the worst-case scenario, require drastic action up to and including redrawing the UK border. A 22 December meeting recorded that any attempt to ‘take control of the

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remainder of Londonderry would lead to a fight against the people and would set back hopes of a political solution. One solution to this particular problem would be to re-draw the border along the line of the River Foyle’ (TNA, DEFE 24/210, ‘Meeting of Defence Northern Ireland policy group’, 22 December 1971). The archival evidence, therefore, suggests that the action taken on Bloody Sunday was the opposite of what the government, and senior Army personnel, desired in policy terms. Nevertheless, some hardening of attitudes in political terms can be detected from Heath’s utterances in the days preceding the demonstration. At the GEN47 Committee on 27 January 1972, it was recorded that the meeting: [A]greed that the Londonderry marchers must be prevented from leaving the Creggan and Bogside areas; and criticism for the security forces for not entering those areas must be countered by pointing out that it was a matter of military judgement to choose the best place for achieving the aim of preventing the march from reaching its destination.

Crucially, however, the minutes also record that ‘[m]aximum publicity should also be secured for arrests and court proceedings following the marches’ (BSI 2010: 381-387). Thus, it seems likely that what was envisaged at political level was a propaganda victory, to be achieved through arresting and convicting a considerable number of illegal demonstrators. If there had been a plan to shoot unarmed civilians, then there could be little benefit in seeking ‘maximum publicity’. Heath, however, could have made more of an effort to differentiate between those who planned to attend the march who were connected to paramilitary groups and those who were not. At the meeting, he claimed that the ‘official wing of the IRA were no doubt seeking through NICRA to exploit the difficulties of the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Mr Faulkner’. This might have created the impression that NICRA was a front organisation for the IRA, thus colouring the perceptions of some in the political and military establishment towards the marchers, although this perception had no foundation in reality (see Purdie 1988). Nevertheless, it does not, on its own, suggest that there was a plan to ‘make an example’ of them. The government’s handling of the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, however, has attracted some criticism. This is partly explained by its association with the establishment of the Widgery Tribunal, which inquired into the deaths on 30 January 1972. The Widgery Report, for the most part,

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exonerated the Army for its approach on the day. Widgery concluded that there was ‘no reason to suppose that the soldiers would have opened fire if they had not been fired upon first’. However, the report did note that ‘none of the deceased or wounded [was] proved to have been shot whilst handling a firearm or bomb’. There was only, according to him, ‘strong suspicion’ that some had ‘handled’ these items (Widgery Report 1972). Introducing the report in the House of Commons, Heath stated his regret for the casualties ‘whatever the individual circumstances’, but went on to argue that events such as those on 30 January could: [O]nly be avoided by ending the law-breaking and violence which are responsible for the continuing loss of life among the security forces and the public in Londonderry and throughout the Province, and by a return to legality, reconciliation and reason. I hope I may have the support of the House in a renewed appeal for a combined effort to prevent any repetition of circumstances such as led to this tragedy. (HC Deb, Vol. 835, Col. 521-2, 9 April 1972)

Opposition parties took similar views—regret about the loss of life, but sympathy for the situation soldiers found themselves in where fast judgements had to be made. That said, the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, had expressed concern that the Widgery report was hindered from the start by the fact that the government had given its own view of what happened on 30 January before he had the chance to examine these events (Murray 2011). Opposition parties were also, overall, more circumspect about the utility of deploying troops, or at least having such troops perform arrest operations of the sort carried out on Bloody Sunday. This was true of Labour’s Northern Ireland spokesman, Jim Callaghan, and of Thorpe (HC Deb, Vol. 835, Col. 521-2, 9 April 1972; Bloch 2014). Labour also became more vocal in its opposition to internment, with its disproportionate impact on the nationalist community (McGlynn and McDaid 2016). Harold Wilson made the case for a transfer of security powers to London and political discussions (Aveyard 2016: 14). All parties recognised the need for a political initiative, if there was to be any hope of progress. Such initiative would inevitably mean participation from nationalist politicians and at least a consultative role for the Irish government.

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Salami Tactics: The Heath Government and the Sunningdale Agreement Heath’s reluctance to abolish Stormont was a stumbling block to a political solution throughout late 1971. From that year, he had been open to a role for the Dublin government in the political process. Initially, however, he informed the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, that he ‘couldn’t consider anything that meant constitutional change’ (TNA, PREM, 15/478, ‘Transcript of Prime Minister’s telephone conversation with Mr Lynch’, 12 August 1971). This meant sticking with Stormont, to the exclusion of nationalists from power. This was to change as the year wore on, and perhaps predated Bloody Sunday and the prorogation of Stormont in the spring of 1972. In this, Heath’s thinking, or at least the policy of his government, may have been influenced by Northern Ireland’s top civil servant, Sir Ken Bloomfield, who engaged in secret correspondence with Philip Woodfield, later Permanent Undersecretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office, in late 1971. Bloomfield’s proposals envisaged a new kind of administration for Northern Ireland, ‘community government’, which meant ‘a share in governmental power’ for representatives of the nationalist community (TNA, DEFE 24/210, ‘For Woodfield from Smith’, 20 December 1971). Even more radically, for the time, Bloomfield suggested that the government should increase co-­operation with the Republic of Ireland, and not stand in the way of Irish unity if there came a time when the majority in Northern Ireland desired this, via what might be termed ‘plebiscitary salami tactics’1: To begin with, committees or councils for co-operation in certain fields [sic] should be set up: If these proved useful, a referendum would be held after several years on a proposal to extend the field of co-operation and perhaps deepen its nature: and so on step by step: The progression might [sic] lead in the end to the final question of unification.

However, he cautioned that publicising such a policy might provoke strong ‘Protestant opposition’, which could further destabilise the security situation. Furthermore, Bloomfield recognised that his proposal for ‘community government’ could not come from within Northern Ireland itself. 1  The term ‘salami tactics’ is attributed to Hungarian communist Mátyás Rákosi and usually refers to a piecemeal strategy, where one’s opponent doesn’t realise what has happened until it is too late.

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The unionists could not ‘bring themselves to offer it’, and the nationalists would ‘not accept it as a gift from the unionists’. The only way powersharing could come about was for the British to ‘intervene directly’. Bloomfield argued that such intervention should be accompanied by constitutional change, veto powers in government and the legislature, and reform of the electoral system, such as the implementation of a proportional electoral system, which would have ensured a greater voice for the nationalist community. Bloomfield’s proposals were relayed to Prime Minister Heath, who is reported to have read them ‘with great interest’ (TNA, CAB, 164/1175, ‘Robert Armstrong to Burke Trend’, 7 January 1972). Whilst there is no evidence that Bloomfield’s proposals directly influenced Heath, their timing is important, and possibly significant, given that some of what he advocated was adopted as government policy by Reginald Maudling in the spring of 1972. Here, the Home Secretary advocated adapting ‘administration, legislature and Government’ to allow for the participation of the majority. Whilst respecting that the majority in Northern Ireland favoured the maintenance of the union, he made a suggestion similar to that of Bloomfield: that periodic plebiscites be held, primarily to reassure the Protestant community the union was secure. Although the idea of periodic plebiscites did not materialise, a border poll referendum was held in March 1973. Boycotted by nationalist politicians, who knew the result was a foregone conclusion, it showed an overwhelming majority in favour of the status quo. Thus, whilst the future of the union was ‘off the table’, support for constitutional change, power-sharing, and having constructive input from the Dublin government, as advocated by Bloomfield, was gaining increasing traction in London. This change of attitude reflects that Heath’s thinking on Northern Ireland underwent some development during the latter half of 1972. From having told Lynch that he could not countenance constitutional change in 1971, he did just that in endorsing Whitelaw’s 1973 White Paper, The Northern Ireland Constitutional Proposals. This White Paper, which became law as the Northern Ireland Constitution Act (1973), included a significant change to the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, compared to the Ireland Act of 1949. For the first time, Northern Ireland’s place in the union was made conditional on popular support. The 1949 Act stipulated that Northern Ireland would not cease to be part of HM dominions and the United Kingdom without the consent of its Parliament. Since that parliament had, de facto, an in-built unionist

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majority, its position was very secure. The 1973 Act, however, made Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom subject to the ‘consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland voting in a poll’: a simple majority. Whilst this may seem logical, given Stormont was no longer operable, the longer-term implications of changing the law may not have been thought through, given contemporary demographic and political realities. Furthermore, Heath’s government was prepared to introduce radical reforms to the Stormont system, including what amounted to mandatory power-sharing, again, very close to what Bloomfield had been proposing in late 1971. As the White Paper put it, the government of Northern Ireland could ‘no longer be solely based upon any single party, if that party draws its support and its elected representation virtually entirely from only one section of a divided community’ (Northern Ireland Constitutional Proposals, 1973). This was a measure of how far the government, which had presided over a series of counter-productive security interventions, was prepared to go to address the political crisis in Northern Ireland. A new Assembly was duly formed in the autumn of 1973, with discussions about the formation of a cross-community government continuing until the new year. In the meantime, Heath instituted one of his most significant policy initiatives on Irish affairs: the conclusion of the Sunningdale Agreement between 6 and 9 December 1973. At Sunningdale, the British and Irish governments, and the pro-power-­ sharing parties that went on to form a cross-community executive (the faction of the UUP led by Brian Faulkner, the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and non-sectarian Alliance Party) agreed to the formation of an all-Ireland collaborative body with ‘executive and harmonising functions’, to encourage co-operation in fields such as economic development, agriculture, infrastructure, and the arts (Sunningdale Agreement Communique 1973). To soften the potential for the Sunningdale Agreement to raise unionist anxieties, the British and Irish governments used the communiqué to issue declarations concerning the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, which may have actually exacerbated their fears. The UK government made clear that it would support the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland to remain in the union, but added that if in the future ‘they should indicate a wish to become part of a united Ireland’, the British government would support that wish. At the same time, the Irish government accepted the constitutional status of Northern Ireland could never change

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without the consent of a majority there. This, coupled with the proposed ‘Council of Ireland’, was highly controversial from a unionist perspective. Indeed, many unionists felt that any Dublin involvement in Northern Ireland affairs constituted a ‘slippery slope’ towards unity, even where this was not, practically, the case. The extent to which the Dublin government was actively using the Council to advance the cause of Irish unity is hotly debated in the literature (See McDaid 2012; McGrattan 2009). Regardless of Dublin’s intentions, what is significant here is the extent to which Heath was prepared to involve the Irish government in the political future of Northern Ireland. As Jeremy Smith has demonstrated, this willingness could be seen as far back as 1970, with Heath’s approach to British-Irish co-operation and the cultivation of cordial relations with the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, who was under pressure in parliament from a republican rump within his own party (Smith 2007; O’Brien 2000; Hanley 2018). The establishment of a formal role for Dublin in Northern Ireland affairs was to have long-­lasting implications for the development of the conflict in the region. Most immediately, for Heath, was the effect on the longevity of the power-sharing executive which his government was instrumental in establishing. As an experiment in cross-community government, it was short-lived, and the spectre of Dublin involvement in Northern Ireland’s affairs played a role in its downfall, at the hands of unionists and loyalists in May 1974.

The Heath Government and the Power-Sharing Executive As mentioned, an executive was agreed in principle between the three pro-­ power-­sharing parties in the autumn of 1973. Comprising the wing of the UUP led by Brian Faulkner, the SDLP, and Alliance parties, it took office on 1 January 1974. Faulkner became Chief Executive, with the SDLP’s Gerry Fitt as Deputy-Chief Executive. A little over five months later, the power-sharing government collapsed in ignominious circumstances (See Anderson 1994; Fisk 1975). It is not the purpose of the chapter to rehearse its tenure in detail. Instead, we seek to contribute to the scholarly debates still raging about whether the Heath government could have saved the power-sharing administration whilst in office. To do so, it is necessary to briefly recall some key facts about the executive’s downfall.

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The executive was plagued with external challenges during its short lifetime. Republican and loyalist paramilitaries continued their campaign of violence, (republican violence was particularly intense in border regions), which meant that most citizens saw no immediate benefit to the security situation that could be attributed to the new institutions, or increased cross-­border security co-operation. Politically, many unionists were vocally opposed to the power-sharing executive—with or without an Irish dimension. Faulkner, therefore, was under significant pressure from the unionist right, whose numbers included Paisley’s DUP but also the Ulster Vanguard movement, who, following a decision by Heath, were presented with an opportunity to press home their advantage just a month after he assumed the role of Chief Executive. The General Election that Heath called in February 1974 was meant to settle the question, ‘Who Governs?’ In Northern Ireland, however, the only substantive issue that was discussed during the campaign was the continuation of the Sunningdale Agreement. Unionists opposed to the agreement formed an electoral coalition, the United Ulster Unionist Coalition (UUUC), with agreed candidates to maximise their vote. Their emotive, if misleading slogan, ‘Dublin is just a Sunningdale away’ captured the imagination of the unionist electorate, and the UUUC won 11 of Northern Ireland’s 12 Westminster seats, an outcome that was to fatally undermine its credibility (McDaid 2012). Heath lost the election, with Harold Wilson’s Labour returning to power and Merlyn Rees took over as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The executive was eventually toppled by a political strike organised by a body styling itself the ‘Ulster Workers’ Council’ (UWC) in May 1974. The UWC was a ragtag of loyalist paramilitaries, trades unionists from the Protestant community and politicians on the unionist right. In collaboration with the UUUC, the UWC called for the renegotiation of the Sunningdale Agreement, but the Assembly instead endorsed an executive amendment to the motion. On 14 May, therefore, the UWC strike began. The UWC had a distinct advantage over the executive, and the British government, in that their members controlled electricity generating stations, and power was rationed to exert pressure on the executive. Crucially, gangs of loyalist paramilitaries acted as muscle for the UWC, with those from unionist or loyalist communities ‘discouraged’ from breaking the strike, which helped ensure it was widely observed. On 28 May, with essential services such as water, power and sewage under threat, Faulkner tendered his resignation (PRONI, Office of the

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Executive (OE) files, 2/32, executive minutes, 28 May 1974). The SDLP refused to resign, but, under the terms of the Constitution Act, Rees was obliged to dissolve the executive. The UWC strike is still the subject of considerable political and scholarly dispute. Some scholars, such as Brendan O’Leary, claim that the government could, and should, have faced-down the UWC and ensured the executive’s survival. In failing to do so, he argued, Wilson’s government was guilty of ‘abject spinelessness’ (O’Leary 2004: 196). This position has been supported by Tony Craig, who has suggested the strike ‘could and would have been controlled had British contingency plans not warned for years of the dangers of a Protestant backlash’ (Craig 2010: 194). Although by this time out of government, Heath has been dragged into this counter-factual debate about the outcome of the UWC strike. Like O’Leary, Michael Kerr has critiqued the Labour administration for failing to act against the UWC. Kerr, however, takes the argument a step further, claiming that Wilson ‘simply chose not to act…if Heath had remained Prime Minister he would certainly have acted’ (Kerr 2005: 68). But could Heath have done more to save the executive in the face of the UWC strike? A review of the available evidence suggests that this claim may belong in the realms of wishful thinking. In order for the British government to have defeated the UWC strike, the government would have needed to take charge of essential services from the strikers. As mentioned, the UWC controlled the electricity-generating stations. Without the power plant operators, or at least considerable support from middle management or imported expertise, the task of generating and, more importantly, effectively distributing power, would have fallen to the Army (For the discussion regarding security, see TNA, CJ4, Northern Ireland Office /504, meeting between the Secretary of State, the GOC, Chief of Staff, Chief Constable and Officials, 17 May 1974). As Stuart Aveyard’s (2016: 32-36) analysis of archival material has demonstrated, this was a task that was beyond its capacity, notwithstanding the potential security implications of sending troops to engage in strike-breaking activity where paramilitary groups were heavily involved. The situation was deemed, by a contemporary official in Northern Ireland, to be so dire that the prognosis was that essential services could only be maintained between 2 and 14 days without serious risk to public health and at some risk of life to the elderly and infirm in the event of a collapse in the electricity supply (PRONI, OE2/24, ‘Situation report by Maurice Hayes’ (Department of Health and Social Services), Executive

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minutes, 20 May 1974). What swapping Wilson for Heath might have changed in these circumstances is not considered by those suggesting a different approach was possible. Likewise, the assumption that Heath would have acted does not imply that his intervention would have worked. Indeed, such an assumption risks losing sight of the fact that popular unionist opposition to Sunningdale and the executive meant that the prognosis for its survival were grim to say the least. Perhaps the most compelling evidence that Heath may not have been a saviour in waiting for the executive comes from the former prime minister’s own memoir account of the UWC strike. It is worth recalling at length, since it does not suggest that Heath paid particular attention to the details of the strike at the time: Then a strike of petrol tanker drivers took only a week to have its effect. Although a comparatively small number of vehicles was involved, the economic activity of Northern Ireland ground rapidly to a halt. Attempts by the TUC to lead a back to work movement were rapidly doomed. Brian Faulkner and his senior colleagues went to see Harold Wilson … to ask for his help in providing drivers from the armed forces, which he undertook to do. However, none was forthcoming on the Monday and, as a result, the executive lost confidence in the Westminster government. This was a brutal and unnecessary ending to the three-party coalition and another bitter personal blow. At the time, Dr Paisley was in the United States campaigning for funds and had nothing whatever to do with it. (Heath 1998: 434-435)

Heath’s account is riven with inaccuracies about the nature of the strike, which he portrayed as involving little more than some fuel shortages as opposed to the potential threat to public health and life that it was seen as at the time. Further, he completely misrepresented the role of Paisley, who was in Canada (not the United States) to attend a funeral at the start of the stoppage, but returned (when he saw it was likely to be successful) to take a seat on the strike committee, although his considerable presence, and ego, was not always appreciated by the hard men of the UWC (Bruce 2007; McDaid 2013). None of the above adds credence to the notion that Heath was so committed to the executive that he would have been prepared to make the massive investments of time and resources to try and save it—especially when such an investment would have been likely to be futile anyway.

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Northern Ireland: Economic Policy In addition to managing the security situation and looking for political solutions, the Heath government was concerned with the economic picture in Northern Ireland. Not that the two were unrelated, rather they were seen as inherently interlinked. The centrality of tackling chronic economic underperformance in Northern Ireland, with a focus on state support for job creation and small businesses, such as rent rebate schemes or the Local Enterprise Development Unit (set up on in 1971), reflected the belief that reducing unemployment would in itself reduce violent disorder (Cunningham 2001). Whitelaw in particular tried to sell the economic benefits of the union, although policies such as public investment in the shipyard industry, which had long been a site of exclusion for nationalists in terms of employment opportunities, may not have had the impact he hoped (Arthur 1996). It would be unfair to judge the intense economic intervention in Northern Ireland as evidence of Heath’s supposed U-turn from a commitment to unleash the forces of the market. The seriousness of the situation and the sudden escalation of the violence after Heath took office necessitated a pragmatic and open approach, much like his humanitarian attitude to the Ugandan Asian crisis. In addition, one needs to put these policies in the context of what came after them. Successive Thatcher administrations would maintain interventionist policies, such as state responsibility for fair employment, economic stimulation through public sector jobs and investment in commercial enterprise and social housing. The rolling back of the state emphatically did not occur in Northern Ireland (O’Leary 1989).

Conclusion Heath would not return to the front bench of the Conservative Party after he lost the position of leader but Whitelaw would find himself part of a Conservative Cabinet which had to deal with a crisis precipitated by the decision he came to regret most about Northern Ireland. The influx of internees to Northern Ireland’s antiquated prison system created practical as well as political headaches and Whitelaw decided on the expedient course of creating a special category status for those convicted of terrorist offences. The withdrawal of this by Labour provoked protests that would escalate into the hunger strikes of 1980–1981.

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In his autobiography, Heath was very positive about the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that officially drew the conflict that had erupted in the late 1960s to a close. He added that ‘I can only hope that it will fare better than the Sunningdale Agreement, which it in so many ways resembles’ (Heath 1998: 445). The journey away from a security-first approach and from solely internal political solutions that Heath and his Cabinet took supports this claim. Heath and Whitelaw should also take credit for recognising and rectifying mistakes, accepting rebuke over the affront to the rule of law represented by interrogation techniques and engaging with actors and ideas that were so different from their own experience and position. Within the constraints of multiple other policy priorities, the difficulties of trying to manage the expectations and anger of unionist allies, and the limited faith of nationalists after the violent reaction to the civil rights campaign, there were sincere attempts to change things for the better. However, the security blunders of the opening act of Heath’s policies towards Northern Ireland extinguished any opportunity for swift and peaceful resolution of the conflict, and while we cannot find any evidence to support the idea that events such as Bloody Sunday were part of a deliberate policy, the travesty of the Widgery Report reminds us that the government was not a neutral arbiter of the situation and it would be for another Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, to offer a fulsome apology for what happened in Derry that day after Lord Saville published the report of his commission in 2010. To argue that Heath would have bolstered the executive in 1974 and faced down the UWC strike is to engage in magical thinking.

Bibliography Archives The National Archives. London. Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. Belfast.

Published Primary Sources Bloody Sunday Inquiry (BSI). (2010). Volume 1. London: HMSO. Compton Report. (1971). Report of the enquiry into allegations against the Security Forces of physical brutality in Northern Ireland arising out of events on the 9th August 1971. Cmd. 4823. London: HMSO.

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House of Commons Parliamentary Debates (HC Deb). Northern Ireland Constitutional Proposals. (1973). Cmd. 5259. London: HMSO. Parker Report. (1972). Report of the Committee of Privy Counsellors appointed to consider authorised procedures for the interrogation of persons suspected of terrorism. Cmd. 4901. London: HMSO. Sunningdale Agreement (Communique). (1973). Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/sunningdale/agreement.htm. Widgery Report. (1972). Report of the Tribunal appointed to inquire into the events on Sunday, 30 January 1972, which led to loss of life in connection with the procession in Londonderry on that day by The Rt. Hon. Lord Widgery, O.B.E. T.D. H.L. 101, H.C. 220. London: HMSO.

Newspapers and Periodicals Private Eye. (1972). 265. 11th February.

Memoirs

and

Diaries

Faulkner, B. (1978). Memoirs of a Statesman. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Hogg, Q. (1990). A Sparrow’s Flight: Memoirs of Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone. London: William Collins.

Books, Chapters and Articles Anderson, D. (1994). 14 May Days: The Inside Story of the Loyalist Strike of 1974. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. Aveyard, S.  C. (2016). No Solution: The Labour Government and the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1974-79. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Arthur, P. (1996). The Heath Government and Northern Ireland. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government (pp. 1970–1974). Harlow: Pearson. Baston, L. (2004). Reggie: The Life of Reginald Maudling. Stroud: Sutton. Bleakley, D. (1974). Faulkner. Belfast: Universities Press. Bloch, M. (2014). Jeremy Thorpe. London: Abacus. Bowyer-Bell, J. (1973). The Escalation of Insurgency: The Provisional Irish Republican Army’s Experience, 1969-1971. The Review of Politics, 35(3), 398–411. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Jonathan Cape.

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Bruce, S. (2007). Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Craig, T. (2010). Crisis of Confidence: Anglo-Irish Relations in the Early Troubles, 1966-1974. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Cunningham, M. (2001). British Government Policy in Northern Ireland 1969-2000. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Duffy, A. (2019). Torture and Human Rights in Northern Ireland: Interrogation in Depth. London: Routledge. Faul, D., & Murray, J. (2016). The Hooded Men: British Torture in Ireland, August, October 1971. Dublin: Wordwell. Fisk, R. (1975). The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster. London: Deutsch. Garnett, M., & Lynch, I. (2002). Splendid! Splendid! The Authorised Biography of William Whitelaw. London: Jonathan Cape. Hanley, B. (2018). The impact of the Troubles on the Republic of Ireland, 1968–1979: boiling volcano? Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kerr, M. (2005). Imposing Power-Sharing: Conflict and Co-Existence in Northern Ireland and Lebanon. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. McDaid, S. (2012). The Irish Government and the Sunningdale Council of Ireland: A Vehicle for Unity? Irish Historical Studies, 38(150), 283–303. McDaid, S. (2013). Template for Peace: Northern Ireland, 1972-75. Manchester: Manchester University Press. McGlynn, C., & McDaid, S. (2016). Northern Ireland. In A. Crines & K. Hickson (Eds.), Harold Wilson: The Unprincipled Prime Minister? Reappraising Harold Wilson. London: Biteback. McGrattan, C. (2009). Dublin, the SDLP and the Sunningdale Agreement: Maximalist Nationalism and Path Dependency. Contemporary British History, 23(1), 61–78. McGuffin, J. (1974). The Guinea Pigs. London: Penguin. Murray, D. (2011). Bloody Sunday: Truth, Lies and the Saville Inquiry. London: Biteback. O’Brien, J. (2000). The Arms Trial. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. O’Leary, B. (1989). The Conservative Stewardship of Northern Ireland 1979-1987. Sound-bottomed Contradictions or Slow Learning? Political Studies, 45(4), 663–676. O’Leary, B. (2004). The Labour Government and Northern Ireland. In J. McGarry & B.  O’Leary (Eds.), The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Purdie, B. (1988). Was the Civil Rights Movement a Republican/Communist Conspiracy? Irish Political Studies, 3(1), 33–41.

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Smith, J. (2007). Walking a Real Tight-rope of Difficulties: Sir Edward Heath and the Search for Stability in Northern Ireland, June 1970–March 1971. Twentieth Century British History, 18(2), 219–253. Sunday Times Insight Team. (1972). Ulster. London: Penguin. Warner, G. (2006). The Falls Road Curfew Revisited. Irish Studies Review, 14(3), 325–342. Wing, L. (2010). Dealing with the Past: Shared and Contested Narratives in ‘Post-­ conflict’ Northern Ireland. Museum International, 62(1-2), 31–36.

CHAPTER 10

Entry into the European Communities Peter Dorey

Several post-war British prime ministers have retrospectively been identified, either by themselves directly or by others, with a particular policy or achievement. Harold Wilson deemed the creation of the Open University to be his greatest success (Castle 1990: 744, diary entry for 22 March 1976; Haines 1998: 2–3)—notwithstanding that Jennie Lee, as Minister of Arts, was the real architect (Dorey 2015; Hollis 1997: chapters 10–11)—while in 2002, Margaret Thatcher declared that the creation of New Labour was her most important legacy (Burns 2008). For Edward Heath, the pride of his premiership was securing the UK’s membership of the European Community: ‘It was my greatest success as Prime Minister…I had spent my…parliamentary career working towards this’ (Heath 1998: 380). As Heath’s Political Secretary (and later a senior Cabinet Minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major) Douglas Hurd averred, ‘Ted’s overwhelming ambition [was] to bring about British entry into the European Community’ (Hurd 2003: 197). One of his most respected biographers, John Campbell, concurred, noting that securing UK membership of the European Communities (EC)

P. Dorey (*) Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_10

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had been ‘the central plank of Heath’s purpose…. Everything else was, and always had been, secondary’ (Campbell 1993: 442), while another biographer, writing in the midst of Heath’s premiership, prophesied that ‘whatever else he does, taking Britain into Europe is likely to be this Prime Minister’s greatest achievement’ (Laing 1972: 247). Meanwhile, the then Chief Whip, Francis Pym, deemed the European Communities Act to have been ‘by far the most important piece of legislation…the centrepiece of the whole [1970–74] parliament really….The European Bill had to have absolute priority’ (quoted in Kandiah 1995: 205), while a (then) backbench opponent of EC membership described it as ‘his [Heath’s] life’s ambition’ (Biffen 2013: 255). Another Conservative backbencher in the early 1970s, Norman St. John-­Stevas (1984: 41), described EC membership as ‘Mr Heath’s lasting triumph, and the achievement which will ensure his place in history’, while a political historian of the Conservative Party agrees that taking the UK into the EC ‘was undoubtedly his government’s greatest success’ (Garnett 2015: 317; see also Kavanagh 1987: 228). This chapter begins by examining Heath’s motives for placing such a high priority on this policy objective, and then the means by which he pursued it. This entails consideration of three discrete aspects: (1) the key issues addressed in the prior negotiations, and how they were resolved; (2) how Heath and the Conservative whips aimed to maximise parliamentary support for EC membership in a Conservative Party which already harboured some strong Eurosceptics; (3) how Heath sought to ‘sell’ EC membership to an initially sceptical electorate. Not only are these aspects intrinsically important and interesting, they are also imbued with added resonance, given Heath’s reputation as a taciturn leader who lacked communication and interpersonal skills, and emotional intelligence (for details on these, see examples from the leading biographical works on Heath, such as Campbell 1993 and Ziegler 2010). Although sundry other authors have written about Heath and the EC, this chapter benefits considerably from archival materials which have only relatively recently become available to scholars, and which previous authors did not have access to at the time they were writing, namely the Conservative Party’s archives at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and governmental/ministerial papers at the National Archives in Kew.

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Heath and the Case for Pro-Europeanism Heath had initially become enamoured with Europe as a consequence of visiting Paris on a school exchange in 1931, and then, as an Oxford undergraduate, visiting Austria, Germany, Poland and Spain in the three years preceding the start of the Second World War (Heath 1977: Chapters 1–3; Heath 1998: 14, 40–44, 52–57, 68–71). According to his (1970–1973) Press Secretary, Sir Donald Maitland, Heath’s experiences of visiting Europe, under the shadow of Fascism, ‘had had a marked effect upon him. From that moment on…[he] realised that there had to be a different arrangement in Europe’ (quoted in Kandiah 1995: 206. See also Roth 1972: 34–35, 37, 40–41). As Heath himself reflected: ‘all these travels have provided the background, if not the substance, of the policies and ideals I have tried to pursue’ (Heath 1977: 222). Moreover, according to his Parliamentary Private Secretary, Sir Timothy Kitson, Heath’s experience of serving as a soldier in the War itself reinforced his conviction of the need for closer ties between European countries: ‘he came back after the war hell-bent on taking a different look at Europe’ (quoted in Kandiah 1995: 206). This point was echoed by Lord (Robert) Armstrong, Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, who recalled that Heath ‘was determined that there should be some structure that would avoid another European war of the kind that he served through from 1939–45’. This conviction only increased as the British Empire steadily dissipated in the post-era, leaving the UK seeking a new role in international affairs, and a means of restoring at least some of its diminished global status. Lord Armstrong added that Heath ‘felt like a European and he identified with European culture’ (quoted in Kandiah 1995: 206, 207; see also Young 1998: 216–218). Writing an anonymous editorial in the Church Times in November 1948, Heath observed that: ‘on the continent…the man-in-the-street realises the weakness of the nation in isolation’, but this realisation had not yet been attained in the UK. However, Heath himself was already ‘beginning to sense that Britain needed to come to terms with its limitations…. My pre-war and wartime experience had by now convinced me that or future must lie inside a European Community’ (Heath 1998: 122, 122–123). Given that victory in the Second World War had, on the contrary, convinced many people of Britain’s continued strength and supremacy, Heath’s less sanguine ruminations were remarkably prescient.

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Heath’s conviction that it was in the UK’s interest to join the EC was reinforced when Harold Macmillan appointed him Lord Privy Seal in 1960. This was a non-Departmental post, a ‘Minister without Portfolio’, but such appointments invariably entail a specific ad hoc task, and in this case, it was to lead the negotiations for the UK’s first (1961) application to join the EC, even though the country had declined to join the six founding members just four years earlier. Although the UK’s application was vetoed, in 1963, by the French President, General De Gaulle, his discussions with sundry European politicians and diplomats reinforced Heath’s personal commitment to Europe, and the necessity for the UK to secure membership of the EC sooner or later. In addition to his formative experiences and consequent personal commitment to closer, formal, ties with Europe, Heath was convinced that membership of the EC was vital to the UK’s economic and political interests. The 1960s had heard growing concern being expressed about the UK’s relative economic decline. In this context, ‘relative’ had two particular meanings—the performance of the economy in historical context when compared to previous decades and, second, the international dimension, whereby it became evident that other countries were outperforming the UK economically. For example, towards the end of the 1960s, Britain’s average rate of economic growth was just 2%, whereas the six-member European Communities (hereafter referred to as the EC) were enjoying a 6.5% economic growth rate, a fact ruefully noted by the 1971 White Paper delineating the Heath Government’s pursuit of membership: ‘we have begun to drop seriously behind other countries, and particularly the members of the Community, in attaining a higher standard of living’ (HMSO 1971: 12, para. 40 and 15, paras. 51–54; see CPA, CRD 3/10/2/1/2, FAC (71) 3, ‘Britain and the European Communities—Briefing Material for the Parliamentary Debate on the Common Market’, July 1971). From this perspective, the UK’s decision not to join the EC at the outset appeared to have been a mistake, and a missed opportunity. As Reginald Maudling, one of Heath’s senior Ministerial colleagues, candidly acknowledged in hindsight: we underestimated the strength behind the new concept of the European Economic Community in the early 1950s…we doubted in fact it would really come to very much.…We were wrong, and we were wrong because we had failed to recognize the historical decline in our own power…history had overtaken us. (Maudling 1978: 232)

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Heath certainly viewed it as economically imperative that the UK belatedly join the EC, for this would provide a major impetus to the country’s sluggish economic performance by securing access to a free trade zone or ‘common market’ just across the English Channel, and thereby provide a major fillip to British manufacturers in terms of exports. As was noted by the White Paper which heralded imminent legislation to ensure the UK’s accession to the EC: If we do not join, we shall forego these opportunities which the members of the Communities will increasingly enjoy. Their industries will have a home market of some 190 million people.…Our industries would have a home market of some 55 million people. (HMSO 1971: 14, para. 48)

This clearly offered enormous potential for improving the UK’s Balance of Payments, which was often ‘in the red’ due to the scale of imports over exports: the UK had lost its former reputation as ‘the workshop of the world’. On the day that he signed the Accession Treaty, formally confirming that the UK would join the EC in January 1973, Heath reiterated the economic benefits to be accrued, anticipating ‘a great improvement in the standard of living for our people’, and envisaging that the EC would soon rival the United States as a global economic power (Campbell 1993: 437). Or as another of his biographers observed at the time: ‘Europe, he believes, after it has given its original therapeutic shock of competition to this country, will be our salvation and give Britain back her place in the world’ (Laing 1972: 248). So convinced was Heath of the economic advantages to be accrued from the UK’s membership of the EC that he believed that they greatly outweighed the formal diminution of parliamentary sovereignty, which many opponents cited as a key reason for not joining. On one occasion, he explained to the House of Commons that: There is a pooling of sovereignty. Member countries of the Community have deliberately undertaken this to achieve their objectives…because they believe that the objectives are worth that degree of surrender of sovereignty.…When we surrender some sovereignty, we shall have a share in the sovereignty of the Community as a whole, and of other members of it. It is not just…an abandonment of sovereignty to other countries; it is a sharing of other people’s sovereignty as well as a pooling of our own. (HD Deb, Vol. 736, Cols. 653–54, 17 November 1966)

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Heath’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, reiterated this perspective, explaining to an intra-Party policy forum that ‘sovereignty is essentially the capacity of a nation to influence its own future. This could often be achieved better in partnership than in isolation’ (CPA, ACP 2/3, Advisory Committee on Policy, ACP (71) 113th meeting, minutes of meeting held on 21 July 1971). However, although opponents of the UK’s membership of the EC focused primarily on the issue of sovereignty (see later), it is important to recognise that, at the time, member states retained a ‘veto’ over issues deemed to be of particular importance to them, something which Heath emphasised to the Cabinet when he returned from a very successful meeting in Paris, in May 1971, with the French President, Georges Pompidou (NA CAB 128/49, CM (71) 27th Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held on 24 May 1971), and which was echoed by Douglas-Home (CPA, ACP 2/3, Advisory Committee on Policy, ACP (71) 113th meeting, minutes of meeting held on 21 July 1971). The sovereignty/unanimity issue was reiterated in the 1971 White Paper, which explained that: The practical working of the Community…reflects the reality that sovereign Governments are represented round the table. On a question where a Government considers that vital national interests are involved, it is established that the decision should be unanimous….There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty; what is proposed is a sharing and an enlargement of individual national sovereignties in the general interest. (HMSO 1971: 8, para. 29; see also Heath 1970; 34)

In addition to the envisaged economic advantages to be accrued, Heath also strongly favoured UK membership of the EC for political and diplomatic reasons. By the 1960s, it was not just the UK’s economy which was in (relative) decline but the UK’s former Empire and status as a global superpower, the latter reflected and reinforced by the UK’s termination of its permanent military presence in the Far East (particularly in Malaysia and Singapore), the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, a military retrenchment commonly termed ‘East of Suez’. The UK could no longer afford to maintain permanent garrisons and naval bases across the globe, so, instead, the country initially sought solace in the supposedly ‘special relationship’ with the US, albeit very much as a junior partner. According to one proEC Conservative parliamentarian, the ‘great post-war failure of British foreign policy was missing the European opportunity…in 1957 when we

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turned down the chance to sign the Treaty of Rome’ (St. John-Stevas 1984: 40). In this context, Heath was convinced that membership of the EC would restore (if only indirectly) some of the UK’s recently reduced prestige and influence in international affairs. Indeed, according to Lord Armstrong, Heath was convinced that ‘with the dismantling of empire, Europe was where our destiny lay, rather than in any relationship with the United States’ (quoted in Kandiah 1995: 206; see also Heath 1970: 67).

Pre-entry Negotiations In lieu of beginning formal negotiations, there was a tactical issue to be resolved within the new Heath Government. It was envisaged that the French remained the most likely obstacle to UK membership of the EC, even though General De Gaulle (who had vetoed the previous two applications) had retired in 1969, and as such, the Foreign Office favoured working primarily with the other five members in order to isolate France, such that weight of numbers (of the other member states) would compel the French to abandon any residual resistance to UK membership. However, Heath flatly rejected such an approach, instead emphasising the importance of winning the trust of the French political leadership, partly as a matter of principle and partly to ensure that France did not invoke its veto power against the UK for a third time: ‘there was no question of them accepting British membership just because the [other] Five wanted us in’ (Hurd 1979: 58). It was thus decided that, instead of seeking to marginalise France, every diplomatic effort should be made to foster closer and more cordial ties with the French through bilateral meetings, the most important and high profile of which was Heath’s meeting with President Pompidou in Paris on 20–21 May 1971 (NA CAB 128/49, CM (71) 26th Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held on 18 May, 1971; NA CAB 128/49; CM (71) 27th Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held on 24 May 1971). It was at this meeting—originally mooted by the UK’s Ambassador to France, Christopher Soames—(NA PREM 15/368, ‘Note for the Record—meeting between Soames and Heath on 1 March 1971’, 2 March 1971)—that several points of disagreement between the UK and France were resolved, such as the UK’s budgetary contributions—which then facilitated the relatively smooth completion of most remaining negotiations over the UK’s application, sufficient to enable a White Paper to be published in July 1971 (Heath 1998: 364–368).

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Indeed, Hugo Young (1998: 233) described the Heath-Pompidou bilateral as ‘decisive in securing British entry’. The UK’s negotiations with the six founding member states of the EC formally commenced on 30 June 1970 and focused mainly on four main issues, namely budgetary contributions, Commonwealth trade, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the UK fishing industry, although there were considerable interlinkages and overlaps between the first three of these ostensibly separate spheres. Senior ministers, including Heath himself, were acutely aware that ‘the success or failure of negotiations would be determined’ by the resolution of these issues (NA PREM 15/368, ‘Note for the Record—Informal Meeting of Edward Heath, Anthony Barber [Chancellor], Alec Douglas-Home [Foreign Secretary] and Geoffrey Rippon, 31 January 1971’, 1 February 1971; NA PREM 15/62, ‘Record of Meeting between Geoffrey Rippon and the French Prime Minister, 19 November 1970’, 20 November 1970; NA PREM 15/62, Rippon to Heath, ‘European Community Negotiations’, 30 October 1971). Budgetary Contributions/Commonwealth trade The EC’s budget was derived primarily from two main sources of revenue, namely 1% of each member state’s Value Added Tax (VAT) receipts (or the national equivalent thereof) and ‘external tariffs’ imposed on imports of food and manufactured goods from beyond the EC. The former became controversial in the early 1980s when the first (1979–1983) Thatcher Government increased VAT from 8% to 15%, to offset the huge cuts in income tax for the rich. In the early 1970s, though, the main issue was the extent to which the UK would be permitted to ‘phase in’ its overall budgetary contribution, thereby facilitating a period of adjustment rather than pay the full amount immediately. Linked to this issue of timing, though, was the second aspect of the UK’s contribution to the EC budget, namely the tariff to be imposed on imports from the Commonwealth, especially dairy produce from New Zealand and sugar from the Caribbean (CPA, ACP 2/3, Advisory Committee on Policy, ACP (71) 110th meeting, minutes of meeting held on 27 January 1971). As the prime economic purpose of the EC or ‘Common Market’ was to foster trade between member states, the UK’s determination to maintain privileged access for food imports from the Commonwealth—and the extent to which some of these countries relied

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heavily on their exports to the UK—was potentially highly problematic and against the spirit of the EC. Certainly, it could have been construed as evidence that the UK was not yet fully committed to Europe, but wanted— to maintain the food theme—to have its cake and eat it. However, there was another reason why the UK’s Commonwealth food imports were potentially a significant problem during the pre-entry negotiations, namely that French farmers were themselves major producers of sugar beet and cheese (George 1998: 51). Given the extent to which UK negotiators needed to persuade the French to say ‘oui’ to Heath’s application to join the EC—the other five member states having already indicated their desire to admit the UK—this could have been a particularly vexatious source of disagreement and clash of domestic interests. The outcome, though, was a compromise, whereby the UK’s food imports from the Commonwealth would gradually decrease over a fiveyear period, this commencing from the date that the UK formally joined the EC. For example, New Zealand’s butter exports to the UK would be reduced by 4% each year, but this meant that after the five years, the country would still be permitted to export 80% of her existing quota to the UK. The same period would see a parallel increase in the UK’s budgetary contributions (as a share of the EC’s total budget), these rising from 8.6% in 1973 to 18.9% in 1977 (HMSO 1971: 24, para. 93, Table 2; NA CAB 128/49, CM (71) 33rd Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held on 24 June 1971; Heath 1998: 374; Kitzinger 1973: 142). How much of a compromise this represented is indicated by the fact that France had originally insisted on the UK paying its full share of contributions from the first year of membership, while the UK had suggested a starting figure of 3%. However, Rippon had shrewdly envisaged that by offering an unacceptably low opening figure for the UK’s budgetary contributions, subsequently offering more could be a quid pro quo for securing concessions over food imports from New Zealand (NA PREM 15/368, ‘Record of Meeting in the Foreign Office, chaired by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster [Rippon]’, 25 February 1971). The Common Agricultural Policy Inextricably linked to the negotiations over the UK’s budgetary contributions and tariffs on Commonwealth imports was the EU’s CAP, for at this time, the overwhelming majority of EU funds were disbursed to the farming industry in member states. Yet the UK had a very small farming

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industry, both in comparison to other domestic industries and relative to the scale of farming in other member states, especially France. This meant that the UK was faced with the prospect of paying much more into the EC’s budget than it received back. Moreover, it effectively meant that the external tariffs, which would eventually (after a period of transition) be imposed on Commonwealth food imports, would then contribute towards EC subsidies for farmers in other member states. It was this kind of financial imbalance which led Margaret Thatcher, in the early 1980s, to demand ‘We want our money back’, whereupon she eventually secured a Budget Rebate in 1984. However, as with both the external tariff on Commonwealth imports and the UK’s budgetary contribution, the Heath Government opted for a gradualist and transitional approach, in order to avoid political or diplomatic obstacles to securing UK membership. Potential or actual problems were, as far as practicably possible, to be deferred for several years, to be tackled after the UK had become a full member. The reasoning was that the UK would have greater bargaining power or leverage once it had actually become a member—a point explicitly made by Rippon on various occasions when seeking to assuage the concerns of Conservative MPs on specific issues (see, e.g. NA CAB 170/66, Rippon to Bennett, 14 December 1971)—due to the unanimity, between member states, which was required for the most important policy issues. The Heath Government’s tactic, therefore, was to continue negotiations after entry to the EC, with the objective of developing a European Regional or Industrial Policy, which would disburse structural funds to areas of economic decline or social deprivation, in order to facilitate economic growth and regeneration. Not only was it envisaged that this would reduce the dominance of the CAP as the main focus of EC expenditure, it would also greatly benefit the UK especially: ‘Agriculture was expected to take progressively less of the Community’s budget, industry and regional policy—from which Britain would have expected a greater return—progressively more’ (Campbell 1993: 362. See also HMSO 1971: 35, paras. 137–139). It was also envisaged that the general fillip to the British economy, which EC membership was intended to provide, would itself reinvigorate British industry, thereby generating increased growth and employment. This would effectively offset the disadvantage or injustice of the UK’s de facto contribution towards the CAP and was therefore deemed a price

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worth paying; the benefits to the UK economy and industry would greatly exceed the lack of benefit gleaned from the CAP. Fisheries policy One of the most vexatious issues in the pre-entry negotiations concerned fisheries policy and, in particular, the ‘exclusion zone’ around the UK’s coast to protect the domestic fishing industry and those whose livelihoods depended upon it. At the end of 1971, almost 18 months after the start of negotiations between the Heath Government and the other EC leaders over the terms and conditions of the UK’s putative membership, Rippon informed the Cabinet that although most other issues had been satisfactorily resolved, ‘there remained serious fishery problems’. There had been agreement with the EC that the UK would retain a six-mile exclusion zone around its coast for 10 years after acquiring membership, whereupon there would be a review. What was proving problematic was the UK’s insistence that some sections ‘of our coastline which were of major importance to us’ should be protected by a further exclusion zone of up to 12 miles. The EC was willing to accede to this demand with respect to the Orkneys, the Shetlands and parts of the north-eastern coast of Scotland, but the Heath Government wanted this 12-mile zone to apply also to much of the east coast of Scotland and England (as far as Spurnhead, Humberside), and also the south-west coasts of both England and Wales (NA CAB 170/66, Armstrong to Hepburn (MAFF), 26 November 1971). It was acknowledged that failure to resolve this particular issue was likely to alienate some Conservative MPs who had hitherto been supportive of EC membership, particularly those ‘with fisheries interests’ (NA CAB 128/49, CM (71), 62nd Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held on 9 December 1971). Although many Conservative MPs had also been concerned to ensure that the interests of Commonwealth countries were protected with regard to food imports, the issue of fishing was more specific and tangible because the terms of accession to the EC had potentially serious direct implications for the UK fishing industries and associated communities. Moreover, some Conservative MPs represented coastal constituencies in which fishing was the main industry, and this, in turn, might create divided loyalties—would these MPs support their local constituents against their Party leadership in the House of Commons over fishing issues vis-à-vis the EC or vice versa?

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For example, the Secretary of State for Scotland wrote to Rippon reiterating the importance of a satisfactory deal which would simultaneously protect the livelihoods of UK fishermen, be acceptable to the House [of Commons] in general and assuage the anxieties of Conservative MPs in particular (NA CAB 170/66, [Gordon] Campbell to Rippon, 27 September 1971; Campbell to Whitelaw, 12 October 1971). Likewise, the Chief Whip explained to Rippon the negative impact of this issue on some wavering Conservative MPs, especially those representing constituencies in Cornwall (NA CAB 170/66, Pym to Rippon, 5 October 1971). On one occasion, the Chief Whip attended a meeting of the Conservatives’ backbench fisheries committee, being addressed by Rippon, to ascertain the anxieties of members, and he reported that some MPs were ‘very angry’ or ‘livid’ at the potential impact on local fishing industries and communities of failing to secure adequate and effective protection for UK fishermen. The Chief Whip also noted that Rippon’s ‘exposition was poor and went down like a stone’ (NA CAB 170/66, ‘AHW’ to Gregson, 8 December 1971). Indeed, one of the committee’s members, Sir Frederic Bennett (Conservative MPs for Torquay), wrote to Rippon afterwards to explain that he was ‘disturbed by the tenor of your remarks’ (NA CAB 170/66, Bennett to Rippon, 9 December 1971). Yet in spite of these concerns, the Cabinet maintained that the ultimate resolution of this issue should also be deferred until after the UK had formally joined the EC, in order to prevent a delay to accession, while reminding MPs that on issues of major importance or where national interests were involved, member states would effectively retain a veto, due to the need for unanimity in key votes (NA CAB 128/49, CM (71), 63rd Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held on 14 December 1971). Moreover, Rippon also variously argued that the UK would be in a stronger negotiating position after acquiring EC membership, and hence it made tactical sense to defer some detailed or contentious issues, in order to focus on the prime objective of securing EC membership. Afterwards, the UK could return to specific policies and technicalities, in order to negotiate a better deal, whereas driving a very hard bargain at this stage might alienate other member states and ultimately jeopardise their willingness to welcome the UK into the EC.  This, of course, was part of the government’s tactic of managing the parliamentary Conservative Party and seeking to allay some of the concerns of backbench MPs on issues such as fisheries policy.

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Persuading and Managing the Parliamentary Conservative Party The General Election of 1970 had returned 330 Conservative MPs, which (at a time when there were fewer constituencies/seats than today) yielded them a parliamentary majority of 31 seats. On non-controversial issues, this would be sufficient to deliver a relatively comfortable victory for the government in divisions, but on more contentious policies, such a majority was likely to prove more problematic, because ‘rebellions’ by a relatively small number of Conservative MPs would be sufficient to inflict defeat. This clearly had serious implications for the Heath Government when seeking parliamentary approval for pursuing UK membership of the EC, because as the Chief Whip Francis Pym recalled, ‘I do not think there was a great deal of controversy about it in Cabinet. The controversy was in the party’ (quoted in Kandiah 1995: 205). In early 1971, the Whips’ Office calculated that whilst about 218 Conservative MPs supported the government’s position (favouring EC membership), 75 were ‘in doubt’, and a crucial 33 were opposed. The ‘doubters’ encompassed various reservations, the two most notable of which were whether the terms and conditions of UK membership would be sufficiently favourable or advantageous to the UK, and whether EC membership would secure enough support among the people of the UK. Many of those in the former category were adopting ‘a position of “wait and see”. They wish to see the actual terms before they make up their minds’, while various other Conservative ‘doubters’ were ‘waiting to be persuaded by the Government’. There were also some Conservative MPs in this category who were influenced by a perception that public opinion was opposed to membership and, as such, a few were advocating a referendum on whether the UK should join the EC (CPA, CCO 20/32/28, ‘Report and Analysis of the State of the Party’, undated, but circa January 1971; ACP 2/3, Advisory Committee on Policy, ACP (70) 108th meeting, minutes of meeting held on 6 May 1970). However, even if the ‘doubters’ could all be persuaded to support the government, this would still have been insufficient to secure victory in the Division Lobbies if all of the 33 Conservative ‘antis’ voted against their government—unless their opposition was countered by support from proEC Labour MPs. However, Heath did not want to be reliant on support from the Opposition. Closer examination, by the Whips’ Office, of the 33 anti-EE MPs revealed

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a hard core of right-wingers, backed up by some Powellites, Ulster members, a handful of new Members, and one or two who for specialist reasons oppose entry…15 of the antis come from the old brigade…who have always been against the Market and always will be. (CPA, CCO 20/32/28, ‘Report and Analysis of the State of the Party’, undated, but circa January 1971)

Most of these were opposed to UK membership of the EC as a matter of principle, such as Enoch Powell, who eloquently articulated the concerns of many ‘antis’ with regard to the supposedly deleterious impact on parliamentary sovereignty and national autonomy. Powell emphasised the importance of the defence of the independence of a self-governing nation, in the debate on the second reading of the European Communities Bill, as he warned that: [I]t is an inherent consequence of accession to the Treaty of Rome that this House and Parliament will lose their legislative supremacy. It will no longer be true that law in this country is made only by or with the authority of Parliament—which in practice means the authority of this House. The legislative omni-competence of this House, its legislative sovereignty, has to be given up…an unthinkable act. (HC Deb, Vol. 831, Cols, 699, 707, 17 February 1972)

However, although Powell was the most prominent and articulate opponent of EC membership, he was not personally leading an organised faction of Conservative Party ‘antis’ because he ‘operated essentially as a lone voice’. Most of the Conservative opponents of UK membership of the EC were not Powellites per se, even if they broadly shared his views on the issue of parliamentary sovereignty (Campbell 1993: 401). The issue of sovereignty was alluded to by Sir Robin Turton MP, who warned that joining the EC would mean subordinating the UK to ‘an illiberal and bureaucratic leviathan’ (HC Deb, Vol. 823, Col. 942, 21 October 1971), while the (then) chair of the Conservatives’ parliamentary 1922 Committee, Edward du Cann, insisted that membership of the EC ‘must eventually reduce the status of this Parliament…to…that of, say, the Bavarian Landtag or an English county council’ (HC Deb, Vol. 823, Col. 1935, 27 October, 1971). For these ‘antis’, the importance of parliamentary sovereignty and independent nationhood vastly outweighed the purported economic advantages of UK membership which were consistently cited by pro-EC Conservatives, not least Heath himself.

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Further evidence of the primacy of ‘sovereignty’ for the ‘antis’ is provided by Christopher Lord’s analysis of the key themes or issues cited in the relevant parliamentary debates, in July and October 1971. Having analysed 294 speeches on the issue of the UK’s application to join the EC, he found that two-thirds of speeches by Conservative ‘antis’ focused on the loss of sovereignty which would ensue (Lord 1993: 102, Table 2). Not surprisingly, therefore, these Conservative MPs proved to be among the most problematic for the government whips because such MPs were invariably the most ‘dedicated opponents’ of EC membership; ‘nothing would have persuaded many of those on our side who were opposed in principle to what they saw as a surrender of sovereignty’ (Whitelaw 1989: 73, 74). Given that they viewed sovereignty in zero-sum terms, it was unlikely that their opposition could be nullified by concessions or compromises. Other themes articulated by the Conservative ‘antis’ were a commitment to global free trade, and maintenance of political links and trade agreements with the Commonwealth (Lord 1993: 102, Table  2). However, as alluded to earlier, a few Conservative ‘antis’ had specific objections pertaining to the impact of EC membership on the UK’s fishing industry and concomitant close-knit communities. Such MPs spanned the length of the UK, with Wilfred Baker, the MP for the constituency (since abolished) of Banffshire, on the north-east coast of Scotland, sharing similar concerns on this issue as Sir Frederic Bennett, whose Torquay constituency encompassed the Devon fishing town of Brixham (CPA, CCO 20/32/28, ‘Report and Analysis of the State of the Party’, undated, but circa January 1971). Indeed, Bennett warned that although he was not the sort of MP who normally resorted to threats or rebellions against the leadership, he felt so strongly about the need to protect his constituents on this issue that he would be unable to support the government in relevant parliamentary votes if the terms of UK membership of the EC did not guarantee strong and effective protection for the domestic fishing industry (NA CAB 170/66, Bennett to Rippon, 9 December 1971). However, whereas the issue of ‘sovereignty’ was (arguably) non-­ negotiable, or at least, a matter of a priori political principle, these other objections or reservations were, to some extent, potentially capable of being ameliorated by compromises and concessions secured during pre-­ entry negotiations. Moreover, Heath sought to allay fears over the specific issue of the UK’s coastal waters and fishing rights by reiterating that on matters of national importance or interests, member states would retain a

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veto, viz. unanimity voting among member states. Indeed, this is precisely what he did in his closing speech of the second reading debate of the European Communities Bill, reiterating that the UK would continue to enjoy a 6-mile ‘exclusion zone’ around the whole of its coast, supplemented by a zone of up to 12 miles in various locations. This would last until 1982, when it would be subject to review, but with any changes being based on a ‘unanimous decision’, which ensured that ‘we have the ability to protect our essential interests…we have the right of veto’ (HC Deb, Vol. 831, Col. 746, 17 February 1972). Following this emphatic reiteration, many Conservative MPs representing coastal constituencies, and who had hitherto expressed strong concern about the potential impact of the EC’s Common Fisheries Policy on their local fishing industries, such as Wilfred Baker and Sir Frederic Bennett, voted in favour of the Bill. Meanwhile, 48% of speeches by pro-EC Conservatives emphasised the envisaged economic advantages of UK membership, while 30% highlighted the importance of avoiding isolation in an increasingly interdependent world. Furthermore, 27% of pro-membership speeches by Conservative MPs argued that joining the EC would either not entail a loss of sovereignty or entail a pooling of sovereignty, which would enhance the UK’s influence in international affairs (Lord 1993: 102, Table 2). The Conservative whips monitored intra-Party opinion throughout the summer and early autumn of 1971, in the hope and expectation that the completion of the negotiations over the terms of EC membership, and particularly the compromises reached on issues such as Commonwealth trade, would assuage the doubts of some hitherto sceptical Conservative MPs, sufficient that they would now feel able to support the government. Indeed, the Chief Whip noted, in mid-August 1971, that ‘the position in the Party has improved steadily since…the White Paper. That improvement continues, and will do so as long as public opinion is swinging our way’ (NA PREM 15/574, Pym to Heath, 18 August 1971). A parallel survey of backbench opinion, organised (with the approval of the Whips’ Office) by Norman St. John-Stevas, similarly reported that: ‘Since the publication of the White Paper at the beginning of July…there has been a heavy shift of opinion within the Party’, although the number of ‘antis’— ‘there really is very little one can do about them’—remained sufficient to deprive the government of a parliamentary majority unless countered by votes or abstentions by pro-­EC Labour MPs (NA PREM 15/574, St. John-Stevas to Kitson [Heath’s PPS], 1 August 1971).

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Clearly, these intra-Party divisions posed serious problems for the Conservative leadership in terms of securing sufficient support in the relevant parliamentary Debates and Divisions, most notably endorsement of a Motion in favour of UK membership and the subsequent European Communities Bill. Indeed, both the timing of the Motion and whether a three-line whip should be imposed to ensure its endorsement occasioned divergent views at the highest levels within the Conservative government. With regard to timing, Heath was strongly inclined (as was Douglas Hurd) to hold the Debate in the early summer, before the parliamentary recess, but as Chief Whip, Francis Pym counselled against being seen to ‘rush’ the process or making some Conservative MPs feel that they were being ‘bounced’ into acceptance (Heath 1998: 377. See also Hurd 1979: 66). Pym’s tactic was fully supported by the Minister who he had recently replaced as Chief Whip, William Whitelaw (1989: 73). Heath (himself a former Chief Whip) deferred to Pym’s judgement, which meant that several months could be devoted to canvassing support among wavering or doubtful Conservative MPs during the summer, whilst also pursuing a publicity campaign extolling the benefits of EC membership to the wider public. Although the latter obviously played no direct role in the parliamentary Debates, it was assumed that if enough of the electorate was persuaded of the virtues of membership, this could (if only indirectly) increase the electoral pressure on uncommitted or hesitant Conservative MPs. When the Motion was due to be debated in October 1971, Heath and Pym again adopted different perspectives over parliamentary tactics. Heath was inclined to impose a three-line whip to maximise Conservative support in the Division on the Motion, and thereby avoid a humiliating defeat. By contrast, Francis Pym was convinced that a free vote should be permitted, partly because a whipped vote was likely to provoke some ‘antiEC’ backbenchers into treating it as a cause célèbre. Moreover, when the Whips’ Office surveyed Conservative MPs at the start of October 1971, they found that 281 were now in favour (up from 218 at the start of the year), due to the number of former ‘doubters’ who had subsequently shifted in favour of EC membership following the successful negotiations, and the concessions gained. It was also noted that ‘Over the summer, Conservative constituencies had swung firmly behind our accession to the Community’. However, there remained 26 ‘hard-line antis’ and a further six who were wavering between opposing the government or abstaining. There

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were also 13 Conservative MPs who were still undecided, but who the Whips’ Office judged amenable to being persuaded to support the government. Yet in spite of the shift towards the government (and EC membership) by many of the former ‘doubters’, the number of unrelenting Conservative ‘antis’ meant that ‘the Division cannot be won without some Labour votes and/or abstentions’ (NA PREM 15/574, Pym to Heath, 5 October 1971). Pym also calculated that if the relevant vote was un-whipped, it would make it easier for pro-European Labour MPs to support the Motion, and thereby counteract any ‘rebellion’ by Conservative ‘antis’. This, in turn, would send a message to the EC that there was considerable cross-party support for UK membership of the EC rather than the issue being portrayed or perceived as a highly partisan one. In the event, ‘Pym’s wise instinct in relation to the vote’ ensured victory for Heath’s Government because while 39 Conservative MPs voted against the Motion, 69 proEuropean Labour MPs defied their own leadership’s three-line whip by supporting it in the Division, thus ensuring that the Motion was endorsed by 356 votes to 244 (Heath 1998: 379, 380. See also Campbell 1993: 404; Howe 1994: 67; Hurd 2003: 202; Norton 1975: 271–272; Norton 2011: 55). Much less comfortable was the margin of victory in the February 1972 vote on the second reading of the European Communities Bill, when the result was 309 to 301  in favour (HC Deb, Vol. 831, Cols, 753–8, 17 February 1972). In this crucial vote, 15 Conservative MPs voted against and five abstained—mainly those who remained implacably opposed to EC membership on the grounds of ‘sovereignty’— meaning that, again, the government had won with the de facto assistance of Labour MPs who defied a three-line whip imposed by their leadership to vote against the Bill (Norton 2011: 57). Not only had the government imposed its own threeline whip requiring the Party’s MPs to support the Bill in the House of Commons, Heath had actually deemed it an issue of confidence in his administration, which meant that, constitutionally, defeat in the relevant vote would precipitate the government’s resignation and the calling of a General Election. This was a high-stakes tactic indeed, because some Conservative backbenchers already disliked Heath due to his somewhat aloof or autocratic style of leadership (of which this seemed an especially egregious example), coupled with his ‘gauche…pompous and priggish’ persona and his alleged failure to reward ‘enough’ loyal backbenchers with promotion (Fisher,

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1977: 132; Norton 1978: 228–238). As was to be the case in 2018–2019, for some implacable ‘anti-European Conservative MPs, trenchant hostility to Europe transcended loyalty to their Party and its leadership—particularly when they viewed their leader with disdain anyway—although they doubtless convinced themselves that rejecting EC (EU) membership was in the national interest and that they were therefore patriotically putting the country before their Party. In total, the Bill’s passage through the House of Commons entailed 104 Divisions, of which 85 witnessed at least one Conservative MP voting against their own government (for a detailed analysis, see Norton 1978: 64–82). The most frequent ‘rebel’ was Powell, who voted with the Opposition in 80 Divisions, while John Biffen did, likewise, 78 times: ‘Europe dominated my life from the 1970 June election until the summer of 1972 when the…Bill received its third reading’ (Biffen 2013: 258–259). A further 14 Conservative MPs defied their Party leadership and whips in at least 10 Divisions during the European Communities Bill’s passage through the House of Commons (Norton 1978: 80; Norton, 211: 59. See also Campbell 1993: 440). Indeed, Biffen claimed that the most implacable ‘antis’ formed their own group, with Powell as chair and Biffen as its ‘whip’ to co-ordinate votes against the Bill, particularly during committee stage, when amendments were tabled (Biffen 2013: 257). Yet Heath, Francis Pym and those directly responsible for drafting the Bill, most notably the government’s Solicitor-General, Geoffrey Howe, had ‘achieved a considerable strategic coup at the outset, by contriving to condense the legislation into a short Bill of only 12 Clauses…occupying just 37 pages’. This had confounded the right- and left-wing parliamentary opponents of EC membership who ‘had looked forward with relish to a Bill of perhaps 1,000 Clauses’, for this would have provided ample scope for procedural challenges and substantive amendments intended to impede its parliamentary progress (Campbell 1993: 438; see also Heath 1998: 383; Howe 1994: 68; Norton 2011: 56). There was, though, another reason why Heath and his most senior colleagues wanted to minimise the scope for amendments to the European Communities Bill by keeping it as short as possible, namely that any changes imposed by backbench opponents risked ‘unpicking’ the often technical or complex agreements reached in negotiations with the leaders of other member states (NA CAB 128/49, CM (71) 26th Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held on 18 May, 1971; NA CAB 170/121, ‘Note of a Meeting between Whitelaw, Rippon and Howe’, 15 November 1971).

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As the Bill was intended to give legislative effect to the agreement, as achieved in the negotiations conducted since June 1970, on the terms and conditions of UK membership, there was a clear risk that the longer the Bill, and the more Clauses and administrative details it enshrined, the more scope there would be for opponents to pursue amendments that were incompatible with, and quite possibly negated, what had previously been agreed with EC political leaders and diplomats. Thus, Heath explained to the Cabinet: ‘the consequences of any amendments to the European Communities Bill were so serious that it was essential that none was made’ (NA CAB 128/50, CM (72) 26th Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held on 18 May, 1972). Of course, any amendments could have been reversed subsequently, but they might, nonetheless, have proved politically embarrassing, or even highly problematic, and slowed down the progress of the Bill. Certainly, any assumption that they could simply be reversed at a later stage was very risky, so it was deemed essential to minimise the scope for such amendments in the first place. In fact, although the European Communities Bill was subject to scrutiny by a committee of the whole House, as befitted a Bill of such major constitutional importance, it emerged unamended. The government had avoided any defeats, in spite of implacable opposition from a coterie of its right-wing MPs, partly due to the skill of the Party’s Whips in persuading and mobilising the rest of their backbenchers, and partly because ‘crossvoting’ by Conservative opponents of the Bill was countered by support by some Liberal MPs and abstentions by several pro-European Labour backbenchers in key Divisions (Campbell 1993: 441; Heath 1998: 284; Norton 2011: 58–59).

‘Selling’ European Communities Membership to the Public Heath’s personal commitment to UK membership of the EC was never shared by the public, though: on the contrary, throughout 1970 and 1971, there was a clear majority opposed to the UK joining the EC. However, surveys conducted by the Gallup polling company during this period did reveal a steady diminution of public opposition, such that whereas in April 1970, only 20% of people were in favour of joining, while 62% were opposed, the respective figures for September 1971 were 37%

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and 50%. The margin of opposition had fallen from 42% to 13% in 18 months. A further Gallup poll in February 1972 indicated that the margin had fallen to just 2% (Lord 1993: 118, Table 3). In negotiations with the French, though, Rippon maintained that this apparent negativity reflected ‘hesitancy’, rather than hostility, an understandable portrayal or ‘spin’, lest the French viewed negative public opinion as evidence that the UK was not sufficiently committed to EC membership. He even audaciously suggested that public opinion might be rendered more favourable if the French political leadership itself publicly stated how much France now wanted UK membership of the EC (NA PREM 15/62, ‘Record of Meeting between Geoffrey Rippon and the French Prime Minister, 19 November 1970’, 20 November 1970). Much of this shift in public opinion emanated from Conservative voters whose stance was influenced by the perceived success of their government’s negotiations, and who therefore became more willing to support EC membership on the basis of Party allegiance and trust (Lord 1993: 118; see also King 1977: 28). This diminution of opposition to the UK’s membership of the EC effectively vindicated Heath’s calculation, in spring 1971, that within broadly sceptical public opinion, there existed ‘a substantial “grey area” in which pro-Market attitudes would gain the upper hand if it became evident that success was feasible’ (Campbell 1993: 397). This, though, might necessitate ‘a very major re-education of public opinion’, during which ministers would ‘need to get across to the simplest minds in the simplest language the positive case for British entry’ (CPA, ACP 1/22, Douglas Hurd to James Douglas, 10 February 1971; Reginald Maudling to James Douglas, 10 February 1971). Concern was expressed that ‘the public were ill-informed about the positive factors…of entry’, which reflected ‘the amount of public ignorance’ that the Party needed to challenge (CPA, ACP 2/3, Advisory Committee on Policy, ACP (71) 110th meeting, minutes of meeting held on 27 January 1971). In order to overcome this public ‘ignorance’, Rippon suggested to the Conservative Chief Whip that Conservative MPs might want to undertake consultative and educational meetings in their constituencies, during the spring of 1971, although there is no evidence that this suggestion was acted upon to any notable degree (NA CAB 170/106, Rippon to Pym, undated, but circa February 1971). On the other hand, John Selwyn Gummer sensed that younger people were generally more favourable towards Europe and that, as such, promoting the case for UK membership of the EC ‘would be a good way of convincing young people that the Conservative Party was

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not as dull as they often thought’ (CPA, ACP 2/3, Advisory Committee on Policy, ACP (72) 119th meeting, minutes of meeting held on 19 July 1972). In seeking to persuade a sceptical public of the apparent virtues of UK membership of the EC, the Heath Government focused on three main issues. First, and most obvious, was the economic advantage which would supposedly be obtained, in terms of improved trade and (ultimately tarifffree) exports, and a general increase in economic growth and prosperity, thereby reversing years of relative economic decline (HMSO 1971: 11–16, paras. 40–57; HC Deb, Vol. 823, Cols. 1452–65, 21 July 1971; see also CPA, CRD 3/10/2/1/2, FAC (71) 3, ‘Britain and the European Communities—Briefing Material for the Parliamentary Debate on the Common Market’, July 1971). Second, there was an emphasis on the extent to which ministers had secured favourable terms for food imported from the Commonwealth, such that the tariffs ordinarily imposed on non-EC imports were greatly reduced on foodstuffs from Australia, Canada and New Zealand: ‘we have agreed on arrangements which will ensure that about 90 percent of our imports from the outside the enlarged Community will continue to be imported free of duty’ (HMSO 1971: 35, para. 141). The importance of this was not solely economic—vital though this clearly was—but cultural, in terms of the affinity that many British people felt towards the Commonwealth countries and their people, sometimes referred to as ‘our kith and kin’. Certainly, this sense of allegiance and loyalty to Commonwealth citizens was greater than any comparable sentiments towards Europe itself. The third aspect highlighted by ministers in their efforts at overcoming public scepticism about joining the EC concerned the UK’s budgetary contributions. Cognisant that critics could argue that the UK would be contributing rather more than it received, due to the amount which the EC disbursed via the CAP (from the which the UK attained little benefit), it was variously emphasised that in the next five to six years, the EC would be undertaking various internal and structural reforms, which would be advantageous to the UK. In particular, there were plans to develop industrial and regional policies, which would considerably offset the UK’s ‘losses’, namely the CAP (NA CAB 128/49, CM (71) 24th Conclusions, Meeting of the Cabinet held 6 May 1971; NA CAB 129/154, CP (70) 115, Note by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth

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Affairs, ‘United Kingdom Contribution to the Budget of the European Communities, 7 December 1970). Once the Cabinet had formally committed the UK to EC membership, and the relevant legislation had been enacted, adjustments had to be made to the institutional architecture of the British government, with three initiatives or innovations briefly worth noting. The first was Heath’s approach to dealing with European issues in Whitehall, for instead of establishing a new Department for European Affairs, or adding EC matters to the remit of the Foreign Office—as some officials preferred (NA PREM 15/351, Trend to Simcock, 5 May 1971)—he resolved that every Department should have a small team of officials who were responsible for examining the impact and implications of EC membership on their policy remit. This was intended to ensure that a culture of ‘Europeanisation’ developed across Whitehall rather than being ‘siloed’ in one stand-alone Department (Heath 1998: 393). Or as Heath explained to the Cabinet in August 1971: We have now to adapt ourselves to the prospect of entry into the Communities in terms of…our administrative practices.…From now on, we cannot afford to compartmentalise Europe.…In all major problems of policy, whether political, economic or strategic in character, we have to learn to ‘think European’….We cannot expect to achieve this radical change of attitude by creating a new ‘Department of Europe’ or even by relying upon the normal processes of inter-­departmental discussion. What is required is that individual departments should themselves develop the habit of thinking and acting, over the whole range of their business, in the manner appropriate to a member of the Communities. (NA CAB 129/158, CP (71) 100, Memorandum by the Prime Minister, ‘The European Economic Communities’, 2 August 1971)

Thus did James Prior, as a Minister without Portfolio, inform the Cabinet that ‘it is Government policy that all Departments should "think European" and that our relations with the European Communities should be treated as an extension of our domestic affairs rather than as a separate external activity’ (NA CAB 129/166, CP (72) 131, Memorandum by the Lord President of the Council, ‘Parliamentary Questions on the Activities of the Institutions of the European Communities’, 27 November 1972). However, it was acknowledged that some Departments would be more affected by EC membership than others, with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the Department of Trade and Industry, identified as henceforth having the most frequent contacts with the European

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Commission (NA PREM 15/351, Tickell [Rippon’s Private Secretary] to Armstrong, 15 December 1971). The second machinery of government aspect of accession to the EC was ensuring the identification and co-ordination of European issues across Whitehall, on an inter-Departmental basis. This was to be facilitated by establishing a European Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, which would not only oversee the European dimension of Departments and their policies, but liaise with 10 Downing Street itself in identifying (potential) problems and monitoring progress, both within and between Departments, pertaining to the EC. The third EC-related machinery of government reform inaugurated by Heath was to ensure that membership of United Kingdom Representation to the European Union (UKREP)1 was based on the secondment of senior civil servants from Departments across Whitehall rather than just from the Foreign Office. This would not only imbue UKREP with a broader range of policy expertise, it would also ensure that when these senior civil servants returned to Whitehall at the end of their secondment, they would further instil an ethos of Europeanisation in their respective Departments, having acquired first-hand, day-to-day, experience of how the EC, and their counterparts, operated, while also having established valuable diplomatic contacts in Brussels. Heath deemed this to be ‘a very effective way of propagating a European outlook within departmental culture’ (Heath 1998: 394). Or as Rippon’s private secretary expressed it, such a mode of exchange would ‘give a rapidly increasing number of officials from home Departments first-­hand experience of dealing with the Community, and so make a very effective contribution to the spread of European-mindedness throughout Whitehall’ (NA PREM 15/351, Tickell to Armstrong, 15 December 1971). According to one of his Ministerial colleagues, Christopher Chataway, another way in which Heath sought to foster the adoption of ‘a European outlook’ within Departments was by encouraging ministers ‘to take lessons in French and German or other languages’, to the extent that if they

1  UKREP is the UK’s Permanent Representation in Brussels. These senior civil servants provide a conduit between Whitehall, the European Commission and the senior policymakers of other member states. As such, they both convey the UK’s position or perspective to other EC/EU policymakers, and they regularly brief officials in Whitehall about developments and Directives emanating from the EC/EU and how these will impact on the UK.

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employed a private tutor, this was ‘paid for by the British government’ (quoted in Kandiah, 2005: 207).

Conclusion Securing the UK’s membership of the EC was a prime objective of Heath, but rather than interpreting this as a case of prioritising foreign policy or international relations over domestic policy, it should be understood in the context of his overall commitment to economic modernisation and the need to render the UK economy more competitive. Heath was convinced that EC membership would yield a major boost for domestic firms and industries, in terms of facilitating an enormous expansion of customers, across the English Channel, and thereby greatly increase UK exports. It was envisaged, and indeed intended, that this would generate economic competitiveness and growth far more effectively and extensively than any mode of state-­sponsored or dirigiste industrial strategy. In other words, EC membership was not viewed an alternative to reinvigorating a market economy, but integral to it; the export and other trading opportunities offered by EC membership would facilitate the renaissance of the British economy after decades of (relative) decline. Yet Heath and his closest pro-European colleagues had to overcome strong opposition from about 30 Conservative MPs, some of whom bitterly resented the implications of EC membership for parliamentary and national sovereignty, while a few other backbenchers were deeply concerned about either the likely consequences for trade with the British Commonwealth—with whom some such Conservatives harboured a much greater sense of affinity or allegiance than they did with Europe—or the potential impact on the UK fishing industry. With regard to the former objection, Heath simultaneously argued that in an increasingly interdependent world, nation-states could often achieve more for their citizens than could be attained by acting unilaterally, while also insisting that on issues pertaining to national interests, decisions would need to be based on unanimity; in the words, each member state would retain a veto power on issues deemed to be of major national importance, such that considerable control would be retained over national/parliamentary sovereignty. With regard to objections from anti-EC Conservatives pertaining to Commonwealth trade and/or the UK fishing industry, it was emphasised that the former would be granted special treatment and enjoy partial exemptions from external tariffs for the first few years, whereupon imports

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of dairy products and Caribbean sugar would be reduced gradually, thus allowing the exporting countries a transitional period in which they could diversify or foster new trade links. Similarly, a transition period was agreed for the fishing industry, whereby most of the UK’s coastal waters would continue to enjoy the extant ‘exclusion zone’, pending re-negotiations a decade hence. A period of transition was also secured for the UK’s budgetary contributions, which would increase over five years, during which time it was intended that the EC would have devised a package of industrial and regional policies, which would be highly beneficial to the UK. It was envisaged that the advantages of these would at least partly offset the lack of benefits which the UK accrued from the Common Agricultural Policy. In all these spheres, Heath and his main EC negotiator, Geoffrey Rippon, proved to be highly adept and astute in their negotiations, although critics would doubtless accuse them of creating several hostages to fortune. Instead of isolating France, as the Foreign Office recommended, Heath actually devoted much of his time and energy to courting France directly, due to his acute awareness that any objections to UK membership of the EC were, once again, most likely to emanate from the French political leadership. Moreover, Heath recognised that reaching broad agreement on various policy issues, or phasing-in various changes accruing from membership, were more likely to secure accession, than getting too immersed in finalising detailed policies and resolving administrative complexities in advance. Hence, the willingness to defer various policy issues until several years’ ahead, after the UK had joined the EC, when the country would, Heath and Rippon reasoned, be in a stronger bargaining position as an actual, established and paying, member rather than merely an eager applicant. Incidentally, Heath’s renowned pro-European stance was doubtless the main reason why a 2019 YouGov poll of the Conservatives’ mass membership ranked him as the least respected of the Party’s post-war leaders, with only 23% of the Party’s 160,000 members rating him favourably, compared to 58% viewing him unfavourably. By contrast, Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill enjoyed ‘favourable’ ratings of 92% and 93%, respectively (YouGov 2019). It is an indication of how much the Conservative Party has changed in 50 years that what Heath, and many of his closest colleagues and admirers, deemed his greatest achievement, is now viewed by many contemporary Conservatives as a sufficient reason to disparage his premiership.

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Bibliography Archives Conservative Party Archives, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. The National Archives, Kew.

Published Primary Sources House of Commons Parliamentary Debates (HC Deb). HMSO. (1971). The United Kingdom and the European Communities. Cmnd 4715. London: HMSO.

Newspapers Haines, J. (1998). How Harold’s Pet Project Became His Monument. The Independent, 1 October.

Memoirs Biffen, J. (2013). Semi-Detached. London: Biteback. Castle, B. (1990). The Castle Diaries: 1964–1976. London: Macmillan. Heath, E. (1977). Travels: People and Places in My Life. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life: My Autobiography. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Howe, G. (1994). Conflict of Loyalty. London: Macmillan. Hurd, D. (2003). Memoirs. London: Little, Brown. Maudling, R. (1978). Memoirs. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. Whitelaw, W. (1989). The Whitelaw Memoirs. London: Aurum Press.

Books, Chapters

and

Articles

Burns, C. (2008). Margaret Thatcher's greatest achievement: New Labour. Conservative Home/Centre Right, 11 April, https://conservativehome.blogs. com/centreright/2008/04/making-history.html. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Jonathan Cape. Dorey, P. (2015). ‘Well, Harold Insists on Having It!’- The Political Struggle to Establish the Open University, 1965–67. Contemporary British History, 29(2), 241–272.

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Fisher, N. (1977). The Tory Leaders: Their Struggle for Power. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Garnett, M. (2015). Edward Heath. In C. Clarke, T. James, T. Bale, & P. Diamond (Eds.), British Conservative Leaders. London: Biteback. George, S. (1998). An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heath, E. (1970). Old World, New Horizons: Britain, The Common Market, and the Atlantic Alliance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hollis, P. (1997). Jennie Lee: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hurd, D. (1979). An End to Promises: A Sketch of Government, 1970–74. London: Collins. Kandiah, M. (1995). Witness Seminar: The Heath Government. Contemporary Record, 9(1), 188–219. Kavanagh, D. (1987). The Heath Government, 1970–1974. In P.  Hennessy & A.  Seldon (Eds.), Ruling Performance: British Governments from Attlee to Thatcher. Oxford: Blackwell. King, A. (1977). Britain Says Yes. Washington: American Institute for Policy Research. Kitzinger, U. (1973). Diplomacy and Persuasion: How Britain Joined the Common Market. London: Thames and Hudson. Laing, M. (1972). Edward Heath: Prime Minister. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. Lord, C. (1993). British Entry to the European Community Under the Heath Government of 1970–4. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Norton, P. (1975). Dissension in the House of Commons 1945–74. London: Macmillan. Norton, P. (1978). Conservative Dissidents: Dissent within the Parliamentary Conservative Party, 1970–74. London: Temple Smith. Norton, P. (2011). Divided Loyalties: The European Communities Act 1972. Parliamentary History, 30(1), 53–64. Roth, A. (1972). Heath and the Heathmen. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. St John-Stevas, N. (1984). The Two Cities. London: Faber. Young, H. (1998). This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair. London: Macmillan. YouGov. (2019, June 18). Four More Discoveries from Our Conservative Member Survey. Retrieved July 8, 2019, from https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/ articles-reports/2019/06/18/four-more-discoveries-our-conservative-membersurv. Ziegler, P. (2010). Edward Heath. London: Harper Press.

CHAPTER 11

Party Management Philip Norton

In terms of the approach of Conservative leaders to party management, we can distinguish between organisation and personnel. In respect of each, the leader may adopt a position that is close or distant. By this, we mean that in terms of party organisation, a leader may take a leading role in determining policy and structures, either by deciding matters personally or by putting close personal allies in charge (close) or may essentially leave it to others (distant). In terms of personnel, a leader may devote time and resources to communicating with party members, at both the parliamentary and grassroots levels (close) or operating at some distance, at times possibly appearing aloof (distant). Few leaders have devoted themselves both to the detail of party organisation and staying close to the party membership. Distance in terms of both organisation and personnel has tended to increase the longer a leader is in 10 Downing Street. The capacity for a leader to determine the approach is marked in the case of the Conservative Party, given the distinctive role accorded to the leader for most of the party’s history. ‘The most striking feature of Conservative party organisation’, wrote Robert McKenzie in 1964, ‘is the

P. Norton (*) University of Hull, Hull, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_11

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enormous power which appears to be concentrated in the hands of the Leader’ (McKenzie 1964: 21). At the time, the leader not only controlled appointments to the party front bench and the professional organisation (Central Office) but also determined party policy. The leader could draw on party or other bodies to assist in developing policy, but ultimately the decision rested at the top. These distinctive features led to different models of the leader-party relationship being developed. Looking at it in terms of sheer powers, the leader could be likened to a leviathan or monarch (Norton and Aughey 1981: 241). Given the extent to which the leader, nonetheless, depends on the party to achieve outcomes, a family model has also been offered, with the leader akin to the head of the household (Norton and Aughey 1981: 241–243). Heath, on this model, could be characterised as equivalent to a stern Victorian father, not demonstrating much love for the family and deciding both household policy and expecting things to be done in certain ways. Answering back, as we shall see, was neither expected nor tolerated.

Organisation In terms of the management of the party, leaders have differed in the attention they have accorded it. Some have been distant. Margaret Thatcher, for example, although keen to reform inefficient institutions, largely left the management of the party to others (Norton 1987: 21–37; Norton 2012: 102–105). Some leaders have taken a more direct approach. Edward Heath fell in the latter category when he was leader in Opposition, but he became more distant once ensconced in Downing Street. As we shall see, there is a link in that his approach to party management was instrumental. In terms of party policy, Martin Burch has argued that in Opposition, leaders have adopted either a critical approach, focusing on criticising and undermining the position of the government, or an alternative government approach, concentrating on presenting the party as a credible party of government, ready to take the reins of office (Burch 1980: 161–163). The former approach runs the risk of not being seen as ready for office, whereas the latter may present too many hostages to fortune. The two are not mutually exclusive, but it is a matter of emphasis. Both Heath and Thatcher adopted the alternative government approach. There were,

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though, significant differences. As Brendan Sewill observed, some politicians are intensely interested in policy and view politics as a distasteful necessity (Sewill 2009: 56). Heath very much fell in that category, whereas his successor did not. Heath had the advantage over Thatcher in that when he succeeded to the leadership, he was not seen as a divisive figure and was not driven by the political imperative to achieve some balance between different sections of the party. He was able to mould the party organisation, especially the policy-­making process, in the way that he wished. Thatcher’s initial task was to keep the different parts of the party together. Heath’s approach to organisation was arguably a product of his philosophy. As John Biffen summarised it, ‘Heath was a powerful exponent of managerial conservatism as well as having a One Nation social policy’ (Biffen 2013: 252). When he was elected as leader, many members of parliament (MPs) mistook his approach of freeing industry through the application of a free market as an end in itself rather than a means to an end. When it failed to deliver, he changed tack. As we shall see, the fact of doing so and the way he did it created tensions within the party. There was no clear goal-­orientated approach and a failure to engage. Once elected as leader, Heath drew on both the professional and voluntary wings of the Conservative party to help develop policy. In line with his managerial ethos, there was an emphasis on process and reaching outcomes by rational deliberation. He used the Conservative Research Department (CRD), created in 1929 to provide policy advice to the leader and service party committees in Parliament (Ramsden 1980), to oversee a wide range of policy groups, drawing on parliamentarians, business people and academics. In the 1966–1970 Parliament, there were 29 such groups, drawing on 191 politicians and 190 from outside (Cosgrave 1985: 78). The exercise was extensive and seen as preparing the party, in a way that had not happened before, for government. This was the alternative government approach in action. However, as John Campbell recorded, ‘for all his high intentions and some considerable achievements the policy exercise was not in reality quite so impressive—neither so thorough nor so well directed—as was claimed’ (Campbell 1993: 217). There was a problem of numbers, with other bodies set up in addition to the formal policy groups. There was no overarching philosophy imposed from above. There was ‘a concentration on practical proposals and a belief that themes would emerge from these practical proposals as work went on’ (Ramsden 1980: 241). The use of

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discrete policy groups led, as Chris Patten observed, to some eclecticism. It was a case of planting the trees and neglecting the view of the wood. Even the very full and lengthy discussion that took place over a whole weekend at the Selsdon Park Hotel in 1970 did not, as popular mythology would have us believe, result in the formulation of some general concept which could have been termed ‘Selsdon Man’. This conference remained a series of discussions—often in very considerable detail—on a collection of specific policies listed for inclusion in the draft manifesto. (Patten 1980: 17; see also Sewill 2009: 68)

‘Selsdon Man’, rather like ‘Thatcherism’, was a concept given coherence not by supporters, but by opponents, in this case primarily by the Labour leader, Harold Wilson (Patten 1980: 17). In terms of party organisation, Heath ‘continued the process of overhauling the party organisation and shaping the party machine to his own purposes. He boasted of taking a closer interest in matters of organisation than any previous leader’ (Campbell 1993: 214). He managed, after two years in the leadership, to dislodge Edward du Cann—a former minister who had served under Heath when he was President of the Board of Trade—as party chairman and replaced with the more loyal Tony Barber. Heath and du Cann had a notably fraught relationship: ‘they jarred on each other’ (Hutchinson 1970: 178) was one of the milder assessments of their relationship. Heath said of du Cann ‘Instead of shaking up the party machine after the 1964 defeat, his only significant changes were increases in salaries at Conservative Central Office’ (Heath 1998: 29). In fact, du Cann had initiated various reforms, whereas Barber devoted himself to improving relations with the different elements of the party. There was some reorganisation during the period of Opposition that proved fruitful. There was some improvement in the salaries of constituency party agents and, by 1970, the party organisation was superior to that of the Labour Party, though—as Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky noted—the principal explanation for this lay in the decline of Labour Party organisation (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 291). Within Central Office, there was a rationalisation of resources. Management consultants were brought in. An internal budgeting system was introduced and staffing, not least at area level, was slimmed down (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 96). On the significance of this period of opposition, Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky concluded that:

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If the activity at Central Office from 1966 to 1970 is to be summed up in a phrase, it must be the same as for Mr Heath’s handling of the party as a whole: it was a negative success … Despite the marginal advances made towards the goal of greater representativeness, the party remained basically unaltered. (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 109)

There were attempts to widen the party’s support base as well as engage more with party members through the Conservative Political Centre (CPC) (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 98–99; Norton 2002), but neither was to prove a notable success. There was a recruitment drive (‘Action 67’) to encourage more young people to join the Young Conservatives. ‘Within a few months of “Action 67” YC membership declined to its previous level’ (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 101). The CPC had been established in 1945 to stimulate party members to think about and discuss ideas within the party (Conservative and Unionist Central Office 1964: 15). Under Alec Douglas-Home’s leadership, Heath had been appointed to initiate and co-ordinate ‘the biggest policy review in the party since Rab Butler’s in the late 1940s’ (Heath 1998: 267). The CPC under a new director, David Howell (a journalist recruited from The Daily Telegraph), was used to generate new ideas—Howell contributed to the 1966 party manifesto—and was active in disseminating pamphlets and encouraging a two-way dialogue with party members (Norton 2002: 192–193). In many respects, this was a high point for CPC activity. However, although it may have helped reinforce views being developed by Howell, ‘it made little impact on party or public thinking’ (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 102; see also Norton 2002: 193). It was a useful means for those appointed by Heath to develop ideas rather than a means of harvesting new ideas by party members. What discussions did take place in CPC groups were on topics initiated by the centre. Relations with the professional and voluntary wings of the party did not improve once Heath was in No. 10. He appointed Defence Secretary Lord Carrington as party chairman. As Jim Prior recalled: Peter Carrington is a great diplomat but was never very happy at Central Office. His liberal instincts made him dislike some of the hard-nosed characters in the constituencies. He had never experienced the cut and thrust of party politics in the Commons or on the hustings. (Prior 1986: 96)

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Carrington himself acquired ‘a strong distaste for what he considered to be the ramshackle character of Tory organisation’ (Cosgrave 1985: 80). He did, though, make some attempts to address it. There were tensions, not least as a result of attempts to reform candidate selection, making it more professional, as well as to draw together more the voluntary and professional wings of the party and also the parliamentary party, as Bale concludes: At the same time as ‘the centre’ was worrying about surrendering autonomy to the grass-roots, the grass-roots were concerned about what they saw as a significant move towards centralisation. The cause of their concern was the decision … to establish a National Agency Scheme. (Bale 2012: 156)

Constituency associations were keen to protect their independence and did not want the constituency agent to become the employee of the centre. Anything that smacked of interference by Central Office—including indicating a preference when a local party was interviewing for a new candidate—could be counterproductive. The need to render the party more efficient in fighting elections was resisted on grounds of maintaining constituency autonomy. Tensions existed, though, not only with the voluntary wing of the party but also within Central Office. As Douglas Hurd recalled: The leader of the party usually has trouble with Conservative Central Office. Hothouse intrigues flourish unnaturally in that unattractive hulk at the corner of Smith Square. Ted sought to control the situation by appointing Michael [Wolff] as, in effect, chief executive. Sara Morrison was at the same time put in charge of the women’s section of the party … Neither Michael nor Sara was allowed long enough at Central Office to complete the overhaul which they planned. (Hurd 2003: 231)

The party was largely external to Heath’s way of running government. Indeed, much of his time in Opposition was geared to thinking how to manage government effectively. As Peter Hennessy recorded: there was nothing DIY or improvised about Heath’s ideas for the machinery of government. He was, in such terms, the most managerially minded prime minister since Attlee. As leader of the Opposition he had commissioned a depth of detailed planning unmatched by any premier before or since. (Hennessy 1989: 210; see also Hennessy 2000: 336–337)

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In essence, Heath saw the party machinery in instrumental terms. For him, the party was essentially a means to an end. He was focused on how to run an administration rather than lead a party. The latter was necessary to achieve the former. From the moment he was elected party leader, he gave thought to how to structure government. This, as he conceded in his autobiography, ‘engrossed me’ (Heath 1998: 314). He drew on consultants and people in business to assist in developing his plans. Four months after taking office, he presented a White Paper, The Reorganisation of Central Government (HM Government 1970), the first across-the-board look at the quality of Cabinet government, as Hennessy noted, since the 1918 Haldane report on the machinery of government (Hennessy 2000: 338). He sought to achieve a more streamlined system of Cabinet government and a hiving off of certain executive functions. Once Heath entered No. 10, perhaps not surprisingly, party bodies were essentially sidelined. Although more party members got involved in CPC discussion groups (Norton 2002: 193), there is no evidence of the work of the CPC having an impact on the prime minister. The same applies to the professional wing of the party. ‘After June 1970 coherent CRD [Conservative Research Department] input into Government ceased virtually overnight’ (Campbell 1993: 513). During the General Election campaign, Heath was helped by an external team, led by Geoffrey Tucker. Heath hosted a reception for them at Chequers. As Douglas Hurd recalled, ‘I spent much time thereafter warding off complaints from the team that they never saw the Prime Minister’ and that ‘we were lost in a bureaucratic haystack’ (Hurd 2003: 193). It was not just the professional and voluntary wings of the party that were neglected but also the very body that had made Heath leader. He failed to maintain good relations with the 1922 Committee, the body drawing together all Conservative private members (i.e. all Conservative MPs bar the leader in Opposition and all backbenchers when in government) (Norton 2013). Although he had been elected leader by his fellow parliamentarians, he had not necessarily had a smooth relationship with them during his ministerial career. His successful attempt as president of the Board of Trade to abolish resale price maintenance had been resisted by many Conservative backbenchers, influenced by small shopkeepers in their constituencies (see Findley 2001). Heath appeared before a meeting of the 1922 to justify his policy: his argument ‘went down like a lead balloon’ (Du Cann 1995: 88). His victory in the 1965 leadership contest— the first under the party’s new rules for electing the leader—was narrow

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and generally unexpected (as discussed in Chap. 2, see also Heppell 2008: 33–49). He was not the frontrunner, but he benefited from a lacklustre campaign run by his opponent, Reginald Maudling (see Roth 1971: 185; Baston 2004: 255). As Prime Minister, Heath enjoyed the backing of the 1922 for the policy of joining the European Communities (EC), despite some dissent. It proved a forum, though, for criticism of his policy U-turns. At least with the policy of joining the EC, there was a clear goal. With the policy shifts on industry and the economy, the sense of direction was lost. At one point during passage of the 1972 Industry Bill, the chairman of the 1922, Sir Harry Legge-Bourke, fired a warning shot across the government’s bows, suggesting ministers should ‘give full weight’ to the support given to an amendment by leading figures in the parliamentary party (Norton 2013: 20). As leader, Heath’s relations with the 1922 Committee were, at best, correct, but in practice generally frosty. As one member of the executive recalled, ‘He treated most of his Parliamentary colleagues with ill-concealed contempt, especially the Executive, whose meetings with him appeared to us to be no more than a necessary nuisance as far as he was concerned’ (Fisher 1977: 141). As Campbell recorded, he regularly attended the backbench business committee on Wednesdays at 6.15, following meetings of the Shadow Cabinet, ‘but rather to tell the troops what the officers had decided than to listen to what they themselves might have to say’ (Campbell 1993: 216). Elections of officers and the executive of the 1922 were used, in the words of one member, to give ‘a signal to Heath’ (Norton 2013: 21). The most notable example was the election in 1972 of Edward du Cann as chairman. He had been approached, he said, by a number of MPs and those who approached me were quite clear as to what they wanted—someone who would stand up to the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, and ensure he was made aware of Party opinions. They felt he was ignoring the views of his colleagues in the House. (Du Cann 1995: 194)

These views later spilt out into meetings of the 1922. Some members by the end of 1973 were complaining of Heath’s ‘presidential style of government’ (The Times, 19 October 1973). Attempts to create good relations came to nothing. When Humphrey Atkins became Chief Whip in 1973, he arranged a dinner at No. 10 for the officers and executive of the

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1922, ‘in what was intended to be a grand rapprochement’ but ‘proved to be calamitous’ (Ziegler 2010: 431). Heath apparently lost his temper, and the experiment was never repeated. Once in government, Heath favoured civil servants to party figures, as ‘Heath … made use of the Civil Service in a way rarely observed before or since’ (Harris 2013: 470). He drew heavily on the head of the civil service, Sir William Armstrong, and his principal private secretary, Robert Armstrong. Heath’s reliance on William Armstrong grew, especially after the introduction of a prices and incomes policy in 1972 (Holmes 1997: 130–131). Economic policy was shaped by Heath and a small group of civil servants (Baker 1993: 36). The Cabinet and parliamentary party were largely excluded from the process (Holmes 1997: 132–133). Heath’s idea was ‘to reduce politics to the minimum and adopt the best policy, arrived at by experts thinking logically’ (Harris 2013: 470). His means of achieving this was using policy groups to help shape party policy in Opposition and the newly formed Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) for coming up with innovative ideas within government. As its head, Victor Rothschild emphasised it was ‘for’ government ‘but not a tool of the party’ (Jago 2017: 58). The whole of government became more a vehicle for effective administration than for thinking politically. As John Ramsden noted, Conservative Research Department was limited ‘by the strange reluctance of Ministers to act like politicians’ (Ramsden 1980: 294–295). This, though, reflected the basic stance of the party leader. Heath, then, relied on officials rather than party figures. However, according to William Waldegrave, when the government ran into difficulties, Heath felt he had not had the support he deserved from the party hierarchy: I believe that Heath’s embitterment started then [1973–4], as he came to think that the British Establishment, and particularly the Conservative Party Establishment—which he had conquered from far outside its traditional borders—had failed him. There were no strong and confident structures to rely on: just himself, and he could not do it all. (Waldegrave 2015: 119)

There was thus something of a growing disseveration between Heath and his party. As Waldegrave observed, there was no ‘Heathism’, so nothing distinctive behind which he could rally the party. The party organisation served him as leader, but he was busy being prime minister.

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Personnel Heath had been an effective Chief Whip from 1955 to 1959 (Campbell 1993: 90–107; see also Eden 1960: 349). However, he had operated in an era when discipline was seen almost in military terms. Cohesion within the parliamentary division lobbies for the Conservatives was the norm: the rebellion rate in the 1951–1955 Parliament amongst Conservatives was 1.4% of all divisions, and the same rebellion rate was evident in the 1955–1959 Parliament (Norton 1978: 208). Horne identified how as Chief Whip ‘Heath chivvied backbenchers with something of the manner of a sergeant-major’ (Horne 1989: 10), but how Macmillan later described him as a ‘first class staff officer’, adding ‘but no army commander’ (Horne 1989: 242). Edward du Cann offered an even more critical interpretation, arguing that ‘it was commonly believed that his four years as Chief Whip had given him a healthy contempt for his fellow Members of Parliament in the Conservative Party’ (Du Cann 1995: 194). When he became leader, he thus had a somewhat detached view of the very body that he led. The troops were there to support the leader and, in essence, to do so without question, and ‘nothing was explained or justified in principle’, as the ‘party was just expected to accept it’ (Norton and Aughey 1981: 155). A perception developed within the parliamentary party that Heath regarded them as ‘cattle to be driven through the gates of the lobby’ (Cosgrave 1972). This was said to reflect Heath’s desire to avoid what he would see as the ‘embarrassment’ of his government engaging in ‘concessions’ or ‘compromises’ with his own backbenchers, and his determination to secure his legislation ‘unchanged’ (Seldon and Sanklecha 2004: 55). It was a strategy that led to a significant increase in dissent— the rebellion rate would increase to nearly 19% in the Heath premiership (which included a 29% rebellion rate in the 1971–1972 parliamentary session) (Norton 1978: 208; see also Franklin et al. 1986). As Table 11.1 demonstrates, this was the highest rebellion rate of the eight post-war Conservative governments between 1951 and 1997, with only the October 1974–1979 Labour administration surpassing it of the six postwar Labour administrations between 1945 and 1979. It appeared that Heath was more at home with process than he was with people, as ‘he often failed to recognise that a party lives on custom and personal kindnesses more than on rational calculation’ (Norton and Aughey 1981: 145). As a consequence, Robin Harris noted the Conservative Party ‘never learned to love Edward Heath, though it

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Table 11.1  Government rebellion rates in the House of Commons (1945–1997) Government Labour Governments: 1945–1951 1964–1970 1974–1979 Conservative Governments: 1951–1964

1970–1974 1979–1997

Parliament

Majority

Rebellion rate (%)

1945–1950: 1950–1951: 1964–1966: 1966–1970: 1974–1974: 1974–1979:

146 5 4 99 No majority 3

6 2 0.2 8 7 20

1951–1955: 1955–1959: 1959–1964:

17 59 100 31 44 144 101 21

1 1 12 19 12 16 12 13

1979–1983: 1983–1987: 1987–1992: 1992–1997:

Sources: Norton (1978: 208); Cowley and Norton (1999: 86) Bold values signify the scale of rebellion in the Parliament under discussion

respected him and stood with him’ (Harris 2011: 457). The respect was somewhat one-sided. Heath, as John Campbell observed, had little sympathy with the passions and prejudices of the retired majors, small businessmen and hatted ladies who organised fetes and stuffed envelopes in the constituencies and demanded tougher penalties for criminals every year at conference. (Campbell 1993: 509)

As Campbell goes on to observe, Heath made little effort to disguise his disdain (Campbell 1993: 509; see also Ziegler 2010: 232). In meetings with party supporters, he could be distant and sometimes silent, and ‘sometimes he simply could not bother to make any effort at all, particularly if he felt there was little to gain’ (Laing 1972: 173). He was notably antipathetic towards women. As one female MP recalled, Heath ‘disliked women intensely, and did not bother to hide his feelings’ and ‘even in the constituencies, where 90 percent of the work is done by women, he could barely be civil to them’ (Knight 1995: 129; see also Waddington 2012: 91–92). In May 1973, he addressed the Scottish party conference. As Michael Wolff wrote to his wife, Heath used his speech to launch a ferocious attack

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on inefficient British industry, the ugly face of capitalism (the Lonrho company), ‘and finally on the Conservative Party for being smug, upper and middle class and spending its time debating self-congratulatory resolutions’ (quoted in Hurd 2003: 210). The location is significant. Heath had a particular dislike of the landed hierarchy of the Scottish Conservative party (Hurd 2003: 210; Ziegler 2010: 232), which essentially represented the social snobbery that he despised (see Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 100–101). Yet, the respect of the party membership was maintained somewhat longer than that of the parliamentary Conservative Party. Party members rallied to the government’s cause over membership of the European Communities, but they began to waver over the government’s direction from 1972 onwards, as Ball notes: The rank and file remained supportive in public, while sending some remarkably crisp and frank reactions up through the confidential channels of communication within the party structure. (Ball 1996: 331)

Worries over the sense of direction of the government—or lack of it— did not, though, threaten Heath’s leadership. Party members remained supportive, even after support began to drift away in the parliamentary party. It was the party’s MPs who were to be the biggest threat to his leadership. Heath was elected by the parliamentary Conservative Party but did little to sustain his relationship with them, which as Chap. 16 explains was to have consequences. Heath was a prime example of a political leader who took a distant approach. He neither listened to nor rewarded those who sat behind him on the Conservative benches. When he failed to deliver electoral success, his neglect of his parliamentary colleagues was to prove fatal. Heath in the wake of the General Election of 1970 was in a powerful position, and he was largely credited with winning when the Conservatives were expected to lose. He had the kudos of election victory and the considerable levers of power in No. 10 (see Donoughue 1987: 3; Thomas 1998: 74–75). He was able to craft a personally loyal Cabinet and put in place loyalists as head of the party organisation. However, his ability to command the loyalty of his backbenchers proved relatively short-lived. The root cause of conflict was the policies he pursued. Policy shifts, especially the U-turns on industrial and economic policy, generated opposition

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from some backbenchers and a wider sense of unease. The situation was encapsulated by Chris Patten, who served Heath as Director of Conservative Research Department: The Conservative Party shuffled, confused, with the Cabinet Secretary, William Armstrong, at Ted Heath’s side, from a market-oriented policy, designed by a regiment of policy groups in Opposition, to dirigisme and corporatism in government. (Patten 2017: 135)

The policy changes encountered dissent from neo-liberal MPs, notably those who shared the views of Enoch Powell (Norton 1978: 246–254), but it was not confined to them. Although most Tory MPs supported membership of the EC, it was resisted by a significant, and well-organised, minority. The need for legislation meant that dissent was sustained during the passage of the European Communities Bill (Norton 1978: 64–82), though Heath was helped by the fact that, as a result of astute drafting by Geoffrey Howe, it was a relatively short Bill. Despite its brevity, there were over 80 divisions in which Tory MPs rebelled during its passage (Norton 1978: 64–82). When problems became more severe, Heath was vulnerable as a result of his failure to build a body of goodwill among backbenchers. Conservative prime ministers are often adept at maintaining good relations with their backbenchers through the judicious use of promotions and honours (on the use of patronage, see Allen and Ward 2009; King and Allen 2010; Jones 2010). Backbenchers are promoted to junior ministerial office. Long-serving backbenchers are rewarded with knighthoods (or damehoods). The prime minister will go to the 1922 Committee and seek to charm the members. A good prime minister will spend at least some time in the House, occasionally dining there and visiting the tea or smoking rooms. Heath’s problem was not so much that he failed at one of these, but rather that he failed at all of them. He did not help himself by reducing the number of ministerial posts within government, thus blunting his powers of patronage as a tool of party management. Whereas Wilson had 77 ministerial positions (23  in Cabinet and 54 junior ministerial positions), Heath decided to streamline government when entering office, reducing the number of ministers to 56 (18 Cabinet and 38 junior ministerial positions). Although the number of ministerial positions would expand over the four-year time of the Heath premiership (increasing to 70), the number remained lower than what he

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inherited from Wilson, and Theakston concludes that Heath had ‘made the job of managing the parliamentary party more difficult’ (Theakston 1987: 43, 57). It has also been suggested that Heath misused his powers of patronage by his reluctance to engage in reshuffles and to promote and advance talent, especially in terms of promotions into Cabinet (Butler and Kavanagh 1974: 25; Norton 1978: 230–231). Those in office were seen as loyal to Heath—‘one of the complaints against Mr Heath was that he had created too like-minded a team of ministers’ (Butler and Kavanagh 1974: 25)— and when occasional reshuffles occurred, there was a perception of ‘yes men’ filling the vacancies. As Patrick Cosgrave observed, ‘You cannot expect preferment, or even merited reward—so the belief increasingly goes—if you disagree with, or oppose, the Prime Minister’ (Cosgrave 1972: 878). A consequence was not only to build resentment among those overlooked for office but also to leave some notably able MPs on the backbenches, where they could act as effective critics of government (Norton 1978: 235). They included John Biffen, described by The Economist as ‘an exceptionally dangerous parliamentary performer’ (The Economist, 3 March 1973: 20). Long-serving members who would not expect promotion, but who saw themselves as likely ‘knights of the shire’, were also to be disappointed (Ziegler 2010: 237). Only a small proportion of those who had served 20 years or more in the House were knighted. (No Member received a baronetcy, and Heath followed Harold Wilson in appointing only life peers and, even then, only two from backbench MPs; Norton 1978: 237.) His failure to use his patronage went against the advice of his own Chief Whip, Francis Pym (Norton 1978: 237; on the Heath-Pym relationship, see Heppell and Hill 2015). As one backbench MP, Julian Critchley observed, the parliamentary party was ‘once sweetened by the distribution of awards. Mr Heath has set his face against such baubles; just as it was said of Manning that “there is a lobster salad side to the Cardinal”, so there is a Spanish Republican side to the Prime Minister’ (Critchley 1973: 402). William Waldegrave summarised it even more pithily: ‘his handling of honours was admirable but suicidal’ (Waldegrave 2015: 141). Heath’s failure to listen to his backbenchers led to MPs taking their dissent to the voting lobbies, and his failure to mix with them rendered him vulnerable when challenged for the party leadership. His approach was to decide policy, either along or in conjunction with a few trusted ministers (Money 1975: 131), and then essentially announce it to Cabinet

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and to the parliamentary party. There was no real attempt to explain or cajole. Heath expected loyalty and was not disposed to listen to those who took a different view. Fruitful dissent, as The Economist noted, tended to be confused with disloyalty (The Economist, 1 February 1975: 11). Expressing disquiet directly to the prime minister, and being listened to, was an avenue closed to backbench critics. This meant that the only remaining avenue for expressing dissent was the chamber. As one MP, Richard Body, expressed it: ‘Macmillan always listened, but Heath did not. And if the Prime Minister did not listen to you, then the only alternative was to vote against the Government’ (Norton 1978: 230). Heath variously ignored the advice of Francis Pym and insisted on pursuing measures in the face of backbench opposition, with the consequence that the government experienced unprecedented levels of backbench dissent in the division lobbies (Norton 1975, 1978). Tory backbenchers voted against the party whip not only more often than before but to an extent that on occasion resulted in a government defeat. No fewer than 160 Tory MPs cast one or more votes against the whip during the course of the Parliament (Norton 1978: 206) and on six occasions did so in numbers sufficient to defeat the government: three of the defeats were on three-line whips. The most important defeat was on the immigration rules in 1972 (Norton 1976: 404–420). As The Times recorded in the wake of the defeat, ‘There was considerable feeling at Westminster ‘last night that the Prime Minister’ must no longer seek to ride roughshod over his backbenchers’ (The Times, 24 November 1972). However, arguably, the most important dissent did not result in defeat, though it came close to doing so. Heath was the first post-war Conservative Prime Minister to witness some of his own MPs vote against the government on a vote of confidence, when 15 Tory MPs voted against (and five abstained from voting on) the second reading of the European Communities Bill. Potential rebels had been called in ‘and told in no uncertain terms where their duty lay’ (Kitzinger 1973: 387). Heath had made clear in the Commons that, if the vote was lost, ‘my colleagues and I are unanimous that in these circumstances this Parliament cannot sensibly continue’ (HC Debates, Vol. 831; Col. 752, 17 February 1972). The government was saved from defeat by the votes of Liberal MPs and by the abstentions of some Labour members (Kitzinger 1973: 388; Norton 1978: 74; Renton 2004: 291). There was no love lost between Heath and backbench opponents of the Bill.

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Heath’s failure to listen to his MPs had an immediate effect in terms of votes in the Commons. His failure to engage with members had a longer-­ term impact. The loss of the two general elections in 1974 left Heath especially vulnerable to backbench criticism. The Conservative Party does not reward failure and Heath had little reservoir of goodwill on which to rely once he had lost the status and power of a Prime Minister. Heath not only failed to maintain cordial links with the party organisation in the House, he also failed to use opportunities to meet informally with members. The use of informal space in Parliament is crucial to understanding parliamentary behaviour and not least the capacity of party leaders to maintain support (Norton 2019: 257–260). Heath rarely ventured forth to the tea or smoking room in the Commons (Ziegler 2010: 234; Campbell 1993: 216). As William Waldegrave recalled, it was difficult to persuade him to utilise social skills with colleagues: I would mention a backbencher who might be swayed by a little courteous treatment. Heath would wave away the idea: ‘I have spoken to him. Last year. He’s a great friend’. (Often, in reality, he was not.). (Waldegrave 2015: 141)

It was a characteristic observed by Jim Prior when he was Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Heath as Leader of the Opposition: Ted’s difficulty was that he would win one group round—perhaps on the back benches, or amongst the Press—but then it was as though he said to himself, ‘Well, thank goodness that’s over, I won’t have to worry about them again for a while’. So, six months later he would be back to square one, and would have to make a special effort with them all over again. (Prior 1986: 55)

In many respects, it was a problem when Heath failed to meet with colleagues and equally a problem when he did meet them. As John Campbell reported, ‘when Heath did try to show himself’ he actually ‘tended to alienate more good will than he engendered: it became part of Pym’s task to keep the Prime Minister away from the House as much as possible’ (Campbell 1993: 513). As Nigel Fisher noted: his rather rare visits to the Members’ smoking room were unrewarding because, as a friend of his put it to me, he could not talk about unimportant

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things to unimportant people. It bored and embarrassed him. (Fisher 1977: 166)

His Cabinet colleague, Peter Walker, was conscious of the problem: At one point I advised Ted to spend more time in the smoking room since MPs were seeing too little of him as Prime Minister. I went into the smoking room a few days later to find that he had taken my advice and was talking to a ­distinguished Tory. As I passed, I heard him say, ‘That was a dreadful speech you made last Wednesday’. (Walker 1991: 120)

The behaviour was symptomatic of his period as prime minister (Norton 1978: 228–230; Clarke 2016: 88–89). As one backbench MP recalled: he has always been a prickly and difficult colleague, giving the impression that he neither knew nor cared to know even the names of his backbenchers, let alone the backbenchers themselves. (Knight 1995: 129)

Criticisms were taken personally. When Peter Tapsell, who had been Heath’s neighbour in the Albany, criticised his economic policy, Heath never spoke to him again (Peter Tapsell to author). When Heath sought to make pleasantries during the leadership contest in 1975, Members tended to rebuff his advances. It was seen as too little, too late. As one MP, later to be a Conservative Chief Whip, recalled: It was this feeling of being slighted and ignored that caused so many Tory MPs not to support Ted in the leadership campaign of early 1975 … There is no doubt that pent-up irritation with Ted rather than Margaret’s virtues and skills caused her to win and Ted to lose. (Renton 2004: 294)

Conclusion Heath had no lasting legacy in terms of the organisation of the Conservative Party, and his leadership ended as a result of neglecting his power base in the party. He spent too much time being prime minister and not enough being leader of the Conservative Party. Nigel Fisher quoted approvingly Churchill’s observation: The loyalties which centre upon number one are enormous. If he trips, he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered. If he sleeps,

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he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good, he must be pole-axed. (Fisher 1977: 3)

In February 1975, as Chap. 16 explains in detail, Heath was pole-axed by his parliamentary party. This was a consequence of defeat at the General Election of October 1974, which led many members to believe that he was no longer the right person to lead the party. Furthermore, relations between Heath and the 1922 Committee executive became notably strained. The 1922 executive met at the home of the chairman, Edward du Cann, who recorded: ‘They were clear and unanimous in what they demanded: Heath should stand down as soon as possible’ (Du Cann 1995: 200). Although du Cann thought this was premature, he reported the view to Heath. According to du Cann, he recommended that Heath consider appointing a body to devise rules for re-electing a leader, which would give him time to rally support (Du Cann 1995: 201–202). Heath, on the other hand, recalled only that du Cann told him that the executive committee had decided that he should resign and that he had retorted that the members represented no one but themselves (Heath 1998: 528). Heath’s misreading of the opinion of his fellow parliamentarians, which would lead to the removal, carried with it an irony, given his status as a former Chief Whip. Indeed, when considering the rise and fall of Heath, Michael Jago concluded that: From being a widely popular Chief Whip—an achievement in itself—he evolved into a leader who rapidly and comprehensively lost the support of the very members who had promoted his candidacy for the leadership … Ultimately, the support of his colleagues evaporated; the Tory Party rewrote their account of the 1970s to exclude him; there were few after his fall in 1975, who admitted to supporting him a decade before. (Jago 2017: 71)

Bibliography Published Primary Sources Conservative and Unionist Central Office. (1964). The Party Organisation. Organisation Series No. 1. London: Conservative and Unionist Central Office. HM Government. (1970). The Reorganisation of Central Government, 4506. London: HMSO. House of Commons Parliamentary Debates (HC Deb).

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Newspapers

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Cosgrave, P. (1972). The Winter of Their Discontent. The Spectator, December 2. The Economist. (1973). March 3. The Economist. (1975). February 1. The Times. (1972). November 24. The Times. (1973). October 19.

Memoirs and Diaries Baker, K. (1993). The Turbulent Years: My Life in Politics. London: Faber & Faber. Biffen, J. (2013). Semi-Detached. London: Biteback. Du Cann, E. (1995). Two Lives: The Political and Business Career of Edward du Cann. Upton upon Severn: Images Publishing. Eden, A. (1960). Full Circle. London: Cassell. Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life: My Autobiography. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Hurd, D. (2003). Memoirs. London: Little, Brown. Knight, J. (1995). About the House. London: Churchill Press. Patten, C. (2017). First Confession: A Sort of Memoir. London: Allen Lane. Prior, J. (1986). A Balance of Power. London: Hamish Hamilton. Renton, T. (2004). Chief Whip. London: Politico’s. Waddington, D. (2012). Memoirs: Dispatches from Margaret Thatcher’s Last Home Secretary. London: Biteback. Waldegrave, W. (2015). A Different Kind of Weather: A Memoir. London: Constable. Walker, P. (1991). Staying Power. London: Bloomsbury.

Books, Chapters and Articles Allen, N., & Ward, H. (2009). ‘Moves on a chess board’: A Spatial Model of British Prime Ministers’ Powers Over Cabinet Formation. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 11(2), 238–258. Bale, T. (2012). The Conservatives Since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ball, S. (1996). The Conservative Party and the Heath Government. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970–74. London: Longman. Baston, L. (2004). Reggie: The Life of Reginald Maudling. Stroud: Sutton. Burch, M. (1980). Approaches to Leadership in Opposition: Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. In Z.  Layton-Henry (Ed.), Conservative Party Politics. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1974). The British General Election of February 1974. London: Macmillan.

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Butler, D., & Pinto-Duschinsky, M. (1971). The British General Election of 1970. London: Macmillan. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Jonathan Cape. Clarke, K. (2016). Kind of Blue: A Political Memoir. London: Macmillan. Cosgrave, P. (1985). Carrington: A Life and a Policy. London: J.  M. Dent and Sons. Cowley, P., & Norton, P. (1999). Rebels and Rebellions: Conservative MPs in the 1992 Parliament. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1(1), 84–105. Critchley, J. (1973). Strains and Stresses in the Conservative Party. Political Quarterly, 44(4), 401–410. Donoughue, B. (1987). Prime Minister. London: Jonathan Cape. Findley, R. (2001). The Conservative Party and Defeat: The Significance of Resale Price Maintenance and the General Election of 1964. Twentieth Century British History, 12(3), 327–353. Fisher, N. (1977). The Tory Leaders. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Franklin, M., Baxter, A., & Jordan, M. (1986). Who Were the Rebels? Dissent in the House of Commons 1970–74. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 11(2), 143–159. Harris, R. (2013). The Conservatives: A History. London: Bantam Press. Hennessy, P. (1989). Whitehall. London: Secker & Warburg. Hennessy, P. (2000). The Prime Minister: The Office and its Holders Since 1945. London: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press. Heppell, T. (2008). Choosing the Tory Leader: Conservative Party Leadership Elections from Heath to Cameron. London: I. B. Taurus. Heppell, T., & Hill, M. (2015). Prime Ministerial Powers of Patronage: Ministerial Appointments and Dismissals Under Edward Heath. Contemporary British History, 29(4), 464–485. Holmes, M. (1997). The Failure of the Heath Government. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Horne, A. (1989). Macmillan 1957–1968 (Vol. II). London: Macmillan. Hutchinson, G. (1970). Edward Heath: A Personal and Political Biography. London: Longman. Jago, M. (2017). Robin Butler: At the Heart of Power from Heath to Blair. London: Biteback. Jones, B. (2010). Climbing the Greasy Pole: Promotion in British Politics. Political Quarterly, 81(4), 616–626. King, A., & Allen, N. (2010). ‘Off with their Heads’: British Prime Ministers and the Power to Dismiss. British Journal of Political Science, 40(2), 249–278. Kitzinger, U. (1973). Diplomacy and Persuasion. London: Thames and Hudson. Laing, M. (1972). Edward Heath: Prime Minister. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. McKenzie, R. (1964). British Political Parties. London: Heinemann.

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Money, E. (1975). Margaret Thatcher: First Lady of the House. London: Leslie Frewin. Norton, P. (1975). Dissension in the House of Commons 1945–74. London: Macmillan. Norton, P. (1976). Intra-party Dissent in the House of Commons: A Case Study. The Immigration Rules 1972. Parliamentary Affairs, 29(4), 404–420. Norton, P. (1978). Conservative Dissidents. London: Temple Smith. Norton, P. (1987). Mrs Thatcher and the Conservative Party: Another Institution ‘Handbagged’? In K. Minogue & M. Biddiss (Eds.), Thatcherism: Personality and Politics. London: Macmillan Press. Norton, P. (2002). The Role of the Conservative Political Centre, 1945–98. In S.  Ball & I.  Holliday (Eds.), Mass Conservatism: The Conservatives and the Public Since the 1880s. London: Frank Cass. Norton, P. (2012). Margaret Thatcher, 1975–9. In T. Heppell (Ed.), Leaders of the Opposition: From Churchill to Cameron. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Norton, P. (2013). The Voice of the Backbenchers. The 1922 Committee: The First 90 Years, 1923–2013. London: Conservative History Group. Norton, P. (2019). Power Behind the Scenes: The Importance of Informal Space in Legislatures. Parliamentary Affairs, 72(2), 245–266. Norton, P., & Aughey, A. (1981). Conservatives and Conservatism. London: Temple Smith. Patten, C. (1980). Policy Making in Opposition. In Z.  Layton-Henry (Ed.), Conservative Party Politics. London: Macmillan. Ramsden, J. (1980). The Making of Conservative Party Policy: The Conservative Research Department Since 1929. London: Longman. Roth, A. (1971). Heath and the Heathman. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Seldon, A., & Sanklecha, P. (2004). United Kingdom: A Comparative Case Study of Conservative Prime Ministers Heath, Thatcher and Major. Journal of Legislative Studies, 10(2–3), 53–65. Sewill, B. (2009). Policy-Making for Heath. In A.  Cooke (Ed.), Tory PolicyMaking: The Conservative Research Department (pp.  1929–2009). London: Conservative Research Department. Theakston, K. (1987). Junior Ministers in British Government. Oxford: Blackwell. Thomas, G. (1998). Prime Minister and Cabinet Today. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ziegler, P. (2010). Edward Heath. London: HarperPress.

CHAPTER 12

Heath, Powell and the Battle for the Soul of the Conservative Party Gillian Peele

A study of the relationship between Edward Heath and Enoch Powell offers a fascinating prism through which to view the challenges which faced Heath’s premiership and wider questions about the evolution of Conservative Party politics in that period. At its most obvious, the relationship was one of suspicion and enmity between two complex individuals with different values, political agendas and personalities. Edward Du Cann noted that he had never seen ‘two men dislike each other more, or so obviously’ (Du Cann 1995: 127). Their natural antagonism was, he said, ‘electric’. James Prior noted in his memoirs that the feud between Heath and Powell rivalled those of mediaeval Sicily with a profound and long-term impact on politics (Prior 1986: 53). I am grateful especially to the Bodleian Library for help with the Heath papers and with the Conservative Party Archive and to Churchill College, Cambridge, for access to the Powell papers and the Wolff papers. I am also immensely grateful to Mr Michael McManus for discussions about Heath and Powell, and to Lord Hunt for discussing his role at the 1972 Conservative Conference and its aftermath. G. Peele (*) University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_12

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Heath and Powell were major figures in the post-1945 Conservative Party. Their relationship from 1950, when both entered the House of Commons, went through many stages, but its most dramatic period occurred between April 1968, when Powell was sacked from the Conservative shadow cabinet for his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech on immigration (Powell 1968), and February 1975 when Heath lost the party leadership to Margaret Thatcher (Peele 2018). After the dismissal, Heath and Powell never again spoke to each other, but Powell waged a series of strident campaigns on a broad front—on immigration, on the economy, on British membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) and on Ulster—against the policies espoused by Heath and the Conservative Party. In these campaigns, Powell carved out an alternative vision of the character of Conservatism, which, although not strongly supported in Parliament, resonated with the grassroots of the Conservative Party and in certain sections of the media as well as with the general public. The populist appeal of what came to be called ‘Powellism’ was seen as a threat to Heath’s pragmatic and technocratic style of government and his moderate consensus politics. Indeed, it stalked Heath’s leadership of the Conservative Party in government and opposition. Powell’s rhetorical skills, his flair for self-publicity and his willingness to defy political orthodoxy allowed him to demonstrate a popular support beyond the ranks of traditional Conservative voters in a way which was inevitably seductive to a party out of power and challenged Heath’s authority in government. For, although Powell had apparently put himself outside the pale of mainstream politics through his inflammatory crusade over immigration, he retained the capacity to influence the political agenda and to shape opinion inside and outside the Conservative Party. Powell’s growing opposition to the Heath government’s stance on the economy and on Europe increasingly made his continued membership of the Conservative Party anomalous. The issue of British membership of the EEC proved decisive. In the run-up to the February 1974 General Election, Powell announced that he would not seek re-election for his Wolverhampton South West seat and advised voters to vote Labour to secure a referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the Common Market. But, his intense interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland provided a re-entry route into Parliament, and in October 1974, he was elected as an Ulster Unionist MP for South Down, a seat he held until his defeat at the 1987 General Election. And just as Powell’s highlighting of immigration almost certainly helped Heath win in 1970, his

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withdrawal of support almost certainly contributed to Heath’s failure to secure a majority in February 1974. The Heath-Powell enmity thus reflected and tapped into deep divisions and uncertainties within the Conservative Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s, divisions and uncertainties about the character of its ideology, its future policy direction, its popular appeal and its leadership. And it placed in sharp relief the vulnerabilities of Heath’s leadership style and his approach to party management. In this chapter, I explore some of the wider dimensions of the antagonism between Heath and Powell, and argue that in addition to having profound implications for Heath’s ability to command the support of the Conservative Party and his personal authority, it left important legacies for contemporary politics, not least by highlighting fault lines over fundamental principles, policies and tactics. The structure of the chapter is as follows. First, I explore briefly the mood of the Conservative Party during Heath’s leadership both in opposition and as Heath took office in 1970. I explore why, although Heath could congratulate himself for his own continuing faith that the Conservatives would win in 1970, his political authority remained fragile and, as was to become apparent over the next five years, his capacity to retain the support of his Party was vulnerable to Powell’s challenges. Then I suggest some contrasts and similarities between Heath and Powell in their personalities, political skills and political philosophies. In the third section, I look briefly at four of the issues taken up by Powell over the years from 1968 to 1975, especially race and immigration but also the economy, Europe and Northern Ireland, and at what their handling revealed about Heath’s style of leadership and about Powell’s thinking. Finally, in the fourth section, I discuss the extent to which the conflicts over these issues shaped the course of later Conservative fortunes and left legacies for the Party.

Not Quite a Personal Triumph? Heath’s unexpected victory in the general election of 1970 did not produce the degree of personal supremacy that might have been expected. Although Conservative MPs had elected him in 1965, he had not been able to stamp his authority decisively on the Party. A significant factor in this failure (though by no means the only one) was the open warfare, which had erupted between Heath and Enoch Powell over Powell’s crusade to restrict immigration and to encourage repatriation. As Heath

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pointed out to the many correspondents who complained about the dismissal of Powell from the shadow cabinet in response to the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, he had no option but sack Powell because of its racialist tone and because he had strayed from his own shadow cabinet brief into the territory of other shadow ministers (Statement from the Leader’s Office April 1968. MS Heath E.3/3/73). But the sacking was something of a double-edged sword: the speech had turned Powell into a celebrity overnight, and his dismissal freed him to continue his campaigns without any of the shackles of collective discipline. As a former minister with a powerful sense of self-projection, Powell knew how to achieve political impact. With immigration, he had identified an issue which resonated with the public and sections of the Conservative rank and file. Although only a minority of the Conservative Party in Parliament ever felt sympathetic to Powell and many in the Party organisation regarded him as an unreliable maverick, Powell took up a series of issues, not just immigration but also Europe, Northern Ireland and the economy where he could challenge Heath’s leadership. The motives for his engagement with these issues— the balance between opportunism and conviction—varied as did their impact on his popular support. But taken together, these campaigns offered a reworking of Conservative principles, which, even if idiosyncratic, often seemed more inspiring than Heath’s policy formulations. In the 1970 election campaign, the media dramatised the conflict between Heath and Powell by assigning reporters to follow Powell around as though he were of the same stature as the official party leader, giving him a remarkable amount of newspaper coverage (Butler and Pinto-­ Duschinsky 1970: 233 quoted in Schoen 1977: 56). That this conflict should have become such a feature of the election campaign was indicative of the impact which Powell had achieved on the subject of immigration and the changes which were occurring within the Conservative Party. The usual tendency of the Conservative Party had been to suppress its internal differences and display at least a semblance of unity, but not only was there doubt about Heath’s performance as leader, but there was also an increase in factional organisation with the Monday Club on the right and the Bow Group and the Young Conservatives (YCs) on the left. While Heath won the General Election of 1970 against the polling predictions, Powell’s challenge did not disappear. Indeed, Powell claimed that his highlighting of the immigration issue had been decisive in securing the return of a Conservative government. Although the initial research on the 1970 election was sceptical about Powell’s effect on the result, subsequent analysis

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has argued strongly that immigration was a major factor in the 1970 election. While immigration’s potential to affect voting behaviour was not realised in the 1964 and 1966 elections, in 1970 it had become a polar issue, separating the major parties in the electorate’s perceptions and it was a factor in the Conservative victory (Studlar 1978: 46–64). What made the difference in heightening awareness of the issue between 1966 and 1970 was Powell’s campaign, and his reiteration of the need to restrict immigration on Studlar’s calculation gave the Conservatives a net increment in the vote of 6.7% on the basis of the immigration issue alone (Studlar 1978; Schoen and Johnson 1976). After 1970, Conservative leaders could not afford to ignore a topic which so resonated with the Party and the public and on which they had established an advantage over Labour (Schoen 1977: 45–68). Whatever his more liberal inclinations, Heath moved to tighten party policy on immigration as, with more conviction, did his immediate successor (Bale and Partos 2014: 603–619). Powell’s own agenda broadened after 1970, as he staked out positions in sharp opposition to the official Conservative party line on membership of the EEC, on economic policy and on Northern Ireland. As the most obvious and articulate prophet of an alternative version of Conservative doctrine and strategy, he remained a major problem for the period of Heath’s premiership, the more so as Heath’s government seemed to lose direction and coherence.

Heath’s Leadership Style and the Challenge of Powell Successful leadership of any organisation requires qualities over and above the authority, which comes from holding an office of command. In a political party, which itself is likely to contain very different perspectives at different levels, there must be at least three elements—a coherent vision and purpose, the ability to communicate that vision through a compelling  narrative and the ability to understand the needs and ambitions of followers and to mobilise them in support of the leader’s agenda. On each of these dimensions, Heath’s leadership displayed weaknesses, which he was fatally unable to correct. Before examining those dimensions, however, it may be helpful to sketch a little of Heath’s and Powell’s contrasting personalities.

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The Roots of Enmity The years from 1950 to 1968 provide some clues to the origins of the antagonism which developed between Heath and Powell. That antagonism was not the result of markedly different family, educational or employment experiences. Indeed, in some ways, Heath and Powell appeared superficially to have much in common. Both came from modest social origins in marked contrast to the backgrounds of the Conservatives’ traditional leadership elite as typified by its previous ‘grandee’ leaders, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Heath was the elder son of a skilled carpenter who built up his own building business. Heath’s mother had been in domestic service. Heath was brought up in Broadstairs and never entirely lost a slight Kentish accent. These features (what Philip Ziegler called his ‘suspect accent’ and ‘unabashed lower middle class origins’) were to prove a handicap when Heath started looking for a parliamentary seat and almost certainly contributed to his apparent lack of social skills and self-absorption (Ziegler 2010: 55). Andrew Roth opens his earlier study of Heath by noting the difficulty of someone of Heath’s background succeeding in the leadership of the Conservative Party at that time. Roth quotes Lord Hailsham (Quintin Hogg), who was allegedly fond of confiding that Heath envied him for two things: the fact that Hailsham was a gentleman and, second, that he had a first-class degree (Roth 1972: ix). It is likely that Hailsham’s disdain would have been shared by other leading Conservatives, and it is doubtful if Heath could have made himself completely impervious to it. Powell was the only child of school teachers and grew up in Birmingham, retaining its distinctive accent. Both Heath and Powell had obtained places at Oxford and Cambridge, respectively. Heath had won a place at Balliol College, Oxford, to read Modern Greats (PPE) and later in his first year obtained an organ scholarship to support his studies. Powell had won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, to read classics. The two had used their university periods very differently. Heath’s undergraduate years saw him becoming involved in the Oxford Union, the Oxford Conservative Association and the Balliol Junior Common Room. The fact that he became president of all three entities suggests that as an undergraduate at least he enjoyed the respect of his peers. And the presidency of the Union gave him an extra year at Oxford. Certainly Heath’s memoirs indicate that, although initially nervous about the class differences between him

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and many of contemporaries, Heath was at the centre of the social and political life of his Oxford College and the wider university (Heath 1998). Powell by contrast appears to have eschewed Cambridge social life in a determined effort to excel academically (Heffer 1998; Shepherd 1997). At the age of 25, he became Professor of Greek at Sydney, and when the Second World War broke out, he was on the verge of taking up a professorial appointment at Durham. The war took both men into military service, Powell ultimately in the Intelligence Corps and Heath into the Royal Artillery Company. For both it was a formative experience, although Heath was extremely dismissive of Powell’s affection for his regiment and of the fact that Powell, unlike Heath, had not seen much military action. After the war, Powell (although he had voted Labour in 1945) joined the Conservative Research Department which, under R.A. Butler, became a nursery for intellectually able new recruits and a source of policy renewal. Heath joined the civil service until his selection as a parliamentary candidate for the marginal seat of Bexley forced him to resign. Both entered Parliament in 1950 as part of the talented generation of new meritocratic MPs. While both Heath and Powell were active in the formation and early development of the One Nation group, Heath’s participation in its activities was limited, and Powell clearly regarded him as less intellectual than many other members of the group. In fact, despite the apparent similarities in background, the two men had very different mindsets and political philosophies. For Powell, ideas mattered, and although in many respects he was also a romantic, political commitments were intellectually and theoretically driven. Powell was not, however, an entirely consistent or coherent thinker (Corthorn 2019). Although Iain Macleod famously remarked that the problem with following Powell’s train of thinking was that you needed to get off before the end when the train hit the buffers, Macleod also noted that Powell’s remorseless logic should not be exaggerated. Powell’s positions were internally thought out to his own satisfaction and were not necessarily aligned to any external system of thought. And he was capable both of changing his mind abruptly—as occurred with his U-turn over Europe—and of conceptual ambiguity. In his discussions of national identity in relation to the United Kingdom, he would sometimes focus on England as the nation, sometimes on a broader construct of Britain. The important feature of Powell’s approach to political life, however, was that he presented himself as someone whose policy stances were intellectually grounded and that he was obsessive in the degree to which he staked out his own positions. Heath by contrast generally displayed little interest in

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the philosophical underpinnings of policy and politics. He was also suspicious of appeals to the emotion and deeply distrusted the element of showmanship he saw in Harold Wilson. He was above all a details man, concerned with what was achievable and practical. He was driven by the lessons of experience—especially the lessons learnt from his own observation of domestic and international politics. Thus, the blight of unemployment and poverty which had characterised the interwar years remained a powerful factor in shaping his approach to domestic politics, while the horror of the Second World War shaped his international outlook and underpinned his support for European unity. He identified naturally with the post-war economic and welfare consensus and the assumption of a positive role for the state. He could appreciate the need for reforms to modernise Britain’s economy and to make government more efficient, but such reforms would be driven by pragmatism and empirical analysis and not economic doctrine. The contrast between the two men’s political outlook emerged dramatically in relation to economic policy (where Powell became increasingly convinced by monetarism and arguments for a radical reduction of the state’s role in the economy), immigration (where Powell urged ever-­ stricter controls to prevent, as he saw it, of the risk of racial conflict and the dilution of the national culture) and the debate about the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe. For Powell, the nation and the nation state were at the heart of his world view and, although he had supported the United Kingdom’s application to join the EEC in the 1960s on economic grounds, by 1969 he had come to see the European project as a dangerous threat to national identity and parliamentary sovereignty. Heath, who had made his maiden speech on the need for Britain to endorse the Schuman Plan and had conducted the negotiations for British entry under Macmillan, was an ardent supporter of British membership of the EEC.  Unsurprisingly, he subsequently regarded the achievement of the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Economic Community as the greatest moment of his premiership. Objections on the grounds that membership had caused a loss of parliamentary sovereignty and weakened the United Kingdom’s independence were seen as an abstract irrelevance to the creation of a new economic, political and diplomatic strength for Britain. For Heath, the nation state was dead and the protection of sovereignty far less important than cooperation with other countries to promote common objectives.

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It is significant that Powell’s exploration of key tenets of political principle after 1965 and his divergence from Heath on issues of policy, especially on economic policy and on Europe, came at a time of increasingly intense debate about the character of Conservatism and how the Conservative message could be more sharply differentiated from Labour’s. The 1970s also saw a resurgence of interest in neo-liberal ideas, which was to change the character of political argument in the United Kingdom and the United States. Ultimately, of course, the beneficiary of the intellectual reappraisal on the right of British politics was to be Margaret Thatcher not Enoch Powell, but the exploration of the foundations of Conservative politics was a process in which Powell was an early participant. It was also one which inevitably undermined Heath’s command of the Party’s identity. While there is no doubt that Heath was deeply interested in the detail of policy and did have a vision of the kind of society he wished to create, his interest in the reappraisal of fundamental principles was limited. Powell’s rejection of Heath’s version of Conservatism also coincided with a series of major challenges to successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, over the management of the economy and industrial relations but also in other policy areas such as Northern Ireland. Steve Richards notes that, despite having an unusual degree of relevant experience prior to assuming the premiership, Heath was an ‘unlucky prime minister’, not least in the scale of the external challenges that beset his administration (Richards 2019). Heath and Powell were both self-contained individuals who were not obviously gregarious. Early on as a whip, Heath was already seen as someone who did not need company and displayed a degree of disdain for ordinary social interaction. With time, this degree of self-containment transmuted into a manner that seemed brusque to the point of rudeness. Edward Du Cann, who was Chairman of the Party when Heath became leader in 1965, commented that, while Heath’s style of politics had ‘too much of the fact in it (or the supposed fact) and too little of the philosophical and emotional’, it was his personality that separated him from Du Cann and from so many others in the Party (Du Cann 1995: 127). Du Cann asserted that he did not remember Heath ever taking the trouble to be gracious to anyone during the three years he worked for Heath at the Board of Trade and as Chairman of the Party: ‘If politics is about the business of influencing opinion and getting people on one’s side, Heath started (and continued) with a heavy self-imposed handicap’ (Du Cann 1995: 127). Precisely what the causes of Heath’s social

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ineptness were remains open to debate: those who knew him well noted the extent to which he would often maintain long silences and avoid eye contact with people. His circle of real friends was small, and later in life, it was evident that Heath was intensely lonely. That said, although Heath clearly antagonised some colleagues such as Du Cann, he inspired loyalty and affection in many of those who worked with him. William Whitelaw, for example, recorded in his memoirs that he had many happy memories of working with Heath (Whitelaw 1989: 56). James Prior, while noting Heath’s capacity for brusqueness to the point of rudeness, stated that for those who came to work closely with Heath, there was nothing they would not do for him (Prior 1986: 39). Powell was also someone whose manner could be off-putting, but he had the support of a wife and family. Powell’s political campaigns were conducted without too much thought for their impact on his immediate colleagues, and over time, he became increasingly isolated in the parliamentary party. He was never someone who sought to mobilise the support of fellow MPs. In 1965, when he stood for the Conservative leadership in a campaign organised by Nicholas Ridley, he attracted only 15 votes, a mixture of personal friends, converts to his economic views such as Ridley himself, John Biffen (who seconded him) and MPs who endorsed his increasingly explicit concern with immigration control. But, as well as a happy marriage, the Powells maintained an active social life, keeping contact with those back-bench MPs dissatisfied with Heath, as the diaries of Pamela Powell reveal (Churchill/POLL1/8, Pamela Powell Diaries). In the early months in the House of Commons, Heath’s qualities had caught the eye of the whips’ office, and he was recruited as a junior whip, responsible for pairing in the first instance. He rapidly rose to be joint and then sole deputy chief whip. When, in 1955, Anthony Eden needed a new chief whip, Heath was promoted. The long period in the whips’ office had two consequences. First, it gave Heath an unrivalled knowledge of the personalities and ambitions of his parliamentary colleagues, as well as the opportunity to help or impede them. It is an interesting question as to why, having learnt how to cajole and persuade his colleagues as a whip, Heath could not carry this skill forward when he became leader (Du Cann suggests that Heath had acquired a certain contempt for his colleagues while in the whips’ office). Second, the long period as a whip in a sense distanced Heath from the routine participation in parliamentary business and social interaction, and it meant that he did not quickly develop an intuitive understanding of speaking in the House because the whips are

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traditionally silent in debate. The skills which Heath did learn in his early years in the House of Commons were knowledge of policy and procedure and the importance of detail. He also impressed with his loyalty, a quality which Heath especially prized and which perhaps limited his ability to select close colleagues who would give him frank advice on political tactics and his handling of the Party. Heath was rewarded by Macmillan in 1959, becoming Minister of Labour and then Lord Privy Seal with responsibilities in the House of Commons for the Foreign Office and special responsibility for European negotiations. When Home succeeded Macmillan in 1963, Heath became Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development. Powell by contrast had a more tempestuous apprenticeship in government. He entered government as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Housing and then became Financial Secretary at the Treasury. Together with his fellow junior Treasury Minister, Nigel Birch, Powell submitted his resignation when in 1958 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, resigned in protest at increases in government spending. Powell’s 1958 resignation was an early indication of his concern with curbing public expenditure and his tendency to strike his own path. Powell was reinstated in 1960 as Minister of Health, although he was not given cabinet membership until 1962. Powell was not only a highly effective Minister of Health, but he solidified a commitment to a strong welfare state which often put him at odds later with more radical advocates of the application of free-market principles to welfare and health provision. Powell’s relationship with Macmillan was frosty because Powell distrusted Macmillan. For his part, Macmillan disliked Powell (Macmillan found Powell’s presence in cabinet discomforting and had Powell’s seat moved so that he would not have to face Powell’s eyes. Heath later had Powell’s position in the shadow cabinet rearranged to avoid having to face Powell’s facial gestures in argument). When Macmillan engineered the succession of Sir Alec Douglas-Home to the leadership in 1963, Powell, along with Iain Macleod, refused to serve in Home’s government in protest. In the 1965 leadership contest, under the new rules introduced to democratise the way the Conservative Party chose its leader, the three candidates—Heath, Maudling and Powell—represented the coming of age of the 1950 intake. Heath was seen as the dynamic, modernising candidate and the one most able to counter the appeal of Harold Wilson, while Maudling, who had started as the front runner, was weakened by his apparently languid style. Powell’s candidacy was a marker for the future

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and was in a sense a sideshow. Heath defeated Maudling by 150 votes to 133, while Powell’s 15 votes put him well behind. But that he stood at all underlines the fact that he had leadership ambition and wanted a key role in shaping the destiny of his Party. Heath’s victory from the beginning was in many ways a problematic one. John Campbell comments that Heath’s triumph quickly became a ‘protracted nightmare’ (Campbell 2013: 189). Some resented the tactics of Heath’s backers who were suspected as having worked to dislodge Home. For many in the Party who had opted for Heath as the candidate capable of countering Wilson, Heath’s performances in the House were a disappointment, and his apparent lack of personal warmth meant that he failed to generate enthusiasm either on the backbenches or among the public. There were many in the Conservative Party who wondered whether they had made a major mistake in choosing Heath as their leader. Certainly timing was not on Heath’s side. In 1965, he inherited a political situation in which another General Election was inevitable and a second Conservative defeat seemed equally inevitable. If the Wilson victory of 1966 allowed Heath time to reshape the Conservative Party’s image and policies, it also ushered in a period of profound unhappiness on the Conservative benches. It was in this period that Powell began his political odyssey, one which was to take him out of the Conservative Party and ultimately to the ranks of Ulster Unionism, as well as leaving lasting legacies for the Conservative Party. Leadership and Vision As noted earlier, Heath’s mindset was hostile to abstract arguments and the pursuit of philosophical principles. The battle of ideas which increasingly became such a feature of the 1970s was not at all to his taste. Although he allowed Sir Keith Joseph to set up the Centre for Policy Studies after the Conservative defeat in February 1974, he was not greatly interested in its work or that of other think tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).1 From the time of Heath’s election to the ­leadership, there was pressure to produce a more distinctive version of Conservatism. T.E. Utley, an influential journalist and writer whose vision 1  The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), which had been founded in 1958, became an important forum for exploring the application of free market ideas to policy, and it regularly brought together sympathetic politicians, journalists and academics. Powell was a friend of the IEA chairman Ralph Harris and often participated in IEA activities.

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of Conservatism was widely acknowledged to be very similar to that of Powell’s, explored a series of dilemmas which faced the Conservative Party after the Macmillan era, notably the role of government and whether planning or freedom should be given priority. Utley saw Powell’s role in the late 1960s as being to criticise the ‘heresies’ absorbed by the Conservative Party during the Macmillan administration. In 1967, Utley saw Powellism as the ‘most valuable single ingredient in Conservatism today’ but it was not so much a programme as a way of life (Moore and Heffer 1989: 21). Utley’s comments and his support of Powell’s position through the 1960s and 1970s are important because they reflect the yearning for a more robust laissez-faire form of Conservatism and the spread of the influence of neo-liberal ideas in political, academic and media circles, as well as the growing doubts about Heath’s ability to promote a genuinely Conservative vision. Communication In addition to having a coherent vision, a successful leader must be able to communicate it to followers. He or she must have the ability to convey arguments effectively in different arenas from the large and formal settings of Parliament or a party conference to the more intimate venues of smaller party meetings. The ability to be an effective communicator on television is also crucial and had been so in Britain since the early 1960s. What makes a speaker effective is not a clear-cut issue. The mastery of a case is clearly part of it, but so too is fluency of expression and the creation of empathy with the audience. Capturing the attention of the House of Commons is to some extent a learnt skill, and Heath may have been handicapped by his years of silence in the Whips’ Office. Whatever the cause, Heath’s performances in House were rarely stellar. Although his maiden speech had attracted plaudits, his speaking style—at least in formal situations—was often wooden and pedestrian and frequently disappointed his followers. Some of the problem was in the construction of the speeches themselves, despite the best efforts of speech writers. Various studies have drawn attention to the extent to which Heath’s approach to his speeches drove his advisers to despair. Michael McManus quotes Brendan Sewill on the fact that Heath did not have a natural flair with words and that ‘his difficulty with speeches came because he was determined to get the facts right, to present a clear, concise, factual argument’ (McManus 2016: 61). Others wondered how someone with Heath’s ear for music could have so poor an

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ear for the spoken word. His speeches, though carefully written and frequently revised, as a result tended to lack humour and appeared stilted and boring. Part of the problem was that Heath despised the verbal tricks of Harold Wilson and hated attempts to turn politics into emotional appeals. But it put him at a disadvantage with both Wilson and with Powell, whose sensitivity to language was marked. Mobilisation of Support It was perhaps unsurprising in these circumstances that from early in his leadership, Heath’s ability to mobilise support seemed so conspicuously to fail. The period after the 1966 election saw Heath having to fend off a series of rebellions within his own party, as well as trying to counter the Wilson government. It has already been noted that the Conservative Party after 1965 was changing and becoming more factionalised with more organised activity and criticism on both the right of the Party and the left. On the right, the Monday Club had begun to organise both in parliament and in the country in 1961, and it developed a presence also in the universities. On the left, pressure groups such as the Bow Group were highly active, and the Young Conservatives were also well organised. Parliamentary dissent when the Party went into opposition in 1964 focused on a range of inflammatory issues, including sanctions against Rhodesia and industrial relations, as well as Europe and foreign policy. Heath’s leadership style had failed to convince many in the Party that it would deliver electoral success, and his performance in the House of Commons often appeared lacklustre. Compromise positions often had to be adopted, and even so, there were often humiliating episodes in which the party was publicly divided. The difficulty of party management was compounded by the unusual nature of the issues themselves. Some such as the Rhodesian question awakened imperialist sympathies, while others, such as membership of the European Economic Community, touched on what some saw as the core Tory values of nationhood and sovereignty. Any leader would have struggled to maintain a united party in the face of such divisions, but Heath’s lack of social awareness and his neglect of small gestures of concern and courtesy made the task of retaining support harder and increasingly generated resentment. Ziegler points to the handwritten note sent from Anthony Eden to Heath, congratulating him on his maiden speech and lamented that Heath, although noting in his memoirs the pleasure it gave,

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never realised how much such ‘encouragement from on high’ could have smoothed his own relationships with backbenchers (Ziegler 2010: 70). Patrick Cosgrave, writing in The Spectator at the time of the 1972 Conservative Party Conference, drew attention to the lack of ‘love’ between Conservative leaders and their followers, but he noted that Heath loved his followers less than most. He went on to quote Heath’s alleged declaration during a particularly ‘bad patch in opposition’ that he hated ‘the bloody Tory Party’, which he thought ‘never support their leader’ (Cosgrave 1972). Cosgrave, however, suggested that the problem was also that the leader rarely supported the followers. As his leadership progressed, and especially after he became Prime Minister in 1970, the distance between Heath and his followers in both the Parliament and the wider Party grew. Colleagues tried but largely failed to get him socialise more effectively with MPs: Timothy Kitson, Heath’s parliamentary private secretary  tried to get Heath into the Commons tea room after Prime Minister’s Questions, but Heath frequently pleaded the need to return to Downing Street to work and lost these opportunities (McManus 2016: 104). The form of the Heath government after 1970 also exacerbated his isolation. It was a small cabinet, and there was a tendency to rely on men (all but one were men) who were not only close to him and loyal but not likely to challenge his position on policy and tactics. Little attention seemed to be given to the judicious promotion of younger MPs, and the team assembled in 1970 remained largely in place in 1974. As in the formation of his shadow cabinets, Heath was prepared to omit a number of able individuals who might have expected to be included. Powell had been included in Heath’s shadow cabinet as the shadow defence spokesman despite the lack of warmth between them and because, in Prior’s words, although an uncomfortable colleague, Powell was ‘too dangerous to leave out’ (Prior 1986: 42–43). Moreover, Powell’s belief in the need for British defence cutbacks East of Suez was unlikely to be popular in the Party. Increasingly, Powell had developed his own views on economic policy, Europe and immigration, and he took it as his right to express those views even if they strayed into other shadow cabinet portfolios. This freewheeling approach inevitably threatened the discipline of the shadow cabinet and angered other spokesmen such as Iain Macleod and Quintin Hogg and infuriated Heath, who had a strong view about maintaining order in his ranks. Powell’s volatility and his difficulty in subjecting his priorities to those of a team suggest that a break with the shadow

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cabinet would have come sooner or later. Even if Heath had not himself wished to sack Powell for his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, other members of the shadow cabinet, notably Quintin Hogg, Iain Macleod and Robert Carr, were adamant that he should be removed. Powell claimed that his April 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech did no more than reflect existing Conservative policy, but the claim was patently disingenuous. The speech (which was deliberately not centrally cleared in advance) was strategically calculated to maximise publicity for Powell himself. As Michael McManus commented, the episode inspired one of the most passionate sections of Heath’s memoirs in which he noted that the action he had taken in sacking Powell was ‘absolutely right’ and that ‘although it caused friction between the party and extremists among the public, it saved our position with the majority of our people’ (McManus 2016: 74). Heath’s choice of colleagues in opposition and government reflected the enormous premium he put on loyalty, and perhaps it also reflected his conviction that a united team would be more efficient. But the creation of a group of colleagues that looked so dependent on the leader’s approval inevitably generated some resentment and gave the impression that he had deliberately surrounded himself with ‘yes men’ rather than selecting talent from all sections of the Party. Whether the criticism was fair or not, it was not an ideal way to maintain a broad appeal within the Party, and it deprived the leadership of both ability and linkages to wider parliamentary sentiment. In the House of Commons, the effect of Heath’s leadership style as well as the emergence of a sequence of divisive issues triggered an increasing amount of dissent. Although, as Philip Norton has detailed, dissent in the first session of the 1970–1974 Parliament when the Heath government was in office was relatively light, there was already opposition on four issues: arms to South Africa, Rhodesian sanctions, Northern Ireland and, more seriously, membership of the European Union—EU (Norton 1978). The degree of dissent was however to escalate much further in subsequent sessions, and on some of these issues, Powell was to become a major spokesman of the dissenters. There were problems too with the Conservative Party organisation. Edward du Cann, the Party Chairman when Heath became leader, was clearly a critic. Although the pair had developed a deep dislike for each other earlier, Heath could not immediately sack him upon winning the leadership. Although the Nation Union General Purposes Committee recorded its gratitude to Heath in 1965 for keeping Du Cann on as

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Chairman, the relationship was always a strained one (CPA, NUA 5/1/5 1 September 1965). At various points thereafter, Heath came close to removing Du Cann but drew back for fear of provoking opposition inside the Party. In 1967, Du Cann, after a period of frustration with Heath’s style of leadership, offered his resignation and was replaced by Anthony Barber, a Heath loyalist who eventually went on to serve in Heath’s Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Du Cann moved on to chair the powerful 1922 committee of backbenchers and would ultimately see the ousting of Heath by Margaret Thatcher under new amended rules for the leadership election. Du Cann in his memoirs claimed that Heath treated the voluntary Party with little respect and ‘regarded the constituent parts of the Party as instruments for the Leader’s support and little else’, whereas Du Cann could not see them as ‘Heath’s servants, nor as inferior in status to Members of Parliament’ (Du Cann 1995: 119). Clearly this view was coloured by Du Cann’s own dislike of Heath, but it was evident that activities which required extensive interaction with ordinary members were often a trial for Heath and for the MP who had to host him at constituency events. Thus, Sir John Rodgers (who had much earlier beaten Heath to selection for the Sevenoaks constituency and was a friend and constituency neighbour of Heath) wrote thanking Heath for visiting  in 1973. The tone of the letter, while grateful for Heath’s willingness to stay for a buffet supper after his talk in the constituency, was apologetic for calling on Heath’s time and suggests an understanding of how little Heath enjoyed such gatherings (MS Heath 3/3/73).

Dividing Issues and the Battle for Support Immigration The issue of immigration was a continuous thread running through Heath’s period as leader, and it was one which frequently forced him onto the defensive. For Powell, the immigration issue, and his willingness to break the cross-party consensus on it, was the one which for many observers came to define his politics. Certainly it was the one which brought out the very strong antagonism and distrust between Heath and Powell and also exposed sharp divisions within Conservative ranks. Powell may have come to the issue of immigration relatively late by comparison with other MPs such as Cyril Osborne, Norman Pannell and Duncan Sandys, but after 1967 he became increasingly absorbed by it (Peele 2018). In early

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1965, 162 MPs had supported a private members’ bill brought forward by Cyril Osborne, and throughout the period of Heath’s leadership of the opposition, there were efforts within the Party to give the issue more prominence. The 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was but one in a series of speeches in which Powell had started to highlight the necessity of strong immigration control. The timing of Powell’s speech was influenced by the upcoming debate on Labour’s strengthened Race Relations Bill, which Powell thought the Conservatives should oppose on principle because it was not only immoral but also ‘like throwing a match on gunpowder’ in relation to racial harmony. The emotive tone of his Birmingham speech made it completely unacceptable to Heath and the other members of his shadow cabinet. Heath was congratulated for his decisive action in sacking Powell in some quarters, and he claimed the complete support of his colleagues (Churchill/WLFF). Ominously, there was an enormous outpouring of support for Powell in the constituency parties and indeed among the public more generally, including demonstrations by London dockers and Smithfield porters who marched in his support. Heath was at the receiving end of a ‘nasty, vicious reaction’, and his office was inundated with letters deploring the dismissal, many of them so unpleasant that he was distressed his secretaries had to read them (McManus 2016: 74). Ziegler notes that of the 2756 letters Heath received on dismissing Powell, only 12 approved of his action (Ziegler 2010: 207). The volume of support for Powell is also evident in the flood of letters, which Powell received and which continued to come in months afterwards. The 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech made the leader’s task more difficult, as he tried to keep the parliamentary party united in its position on the Labour government’s 1968 Race Relations Bill. While a vocal right-­ wing contingent, including Ronald Bell, wanted the Party to oppose it, others were happy with the principle, and a third group was uneasy about its scope. Powell’s speech was delivered the weekend before the House of Commons was due to debate the Bill’s second reading. The Conservative Party had put down a reasoned amendment which, according to William Whitelaw, Powell had helped to draft (Whitelaw 1989: 64), but it was taunted by the government to be clear about its approach. After a debate which McManus noted ‘fairly crackles off the page’, the legislation was passed but not without serious rifts appearing in the Conservative Party. One Conservative MP, Humphrey Berkeley, resigned from the Party because of the decision to oppose the bill on second reading, and many critics on the right wanted a firmer line. On the third reading (when the

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Conservative party decided not to whip against the principle of the Bill), some 45 Conservatives insisted on dividing the House and voted against. What made this rebellion especially noteworthy was the fact that, not only was the shadow front bench split, but half of the officers of the 1922 Committee joined the rebellion, a move which prompted speculation that there was a plot to destabilise the leadership (Wood and Clark 1968a). In fact, at the subsequent 1922 Committee meeting, the Party’s loyalty to Heath was affirmed (Wood and Clark 1968b). Notwithstanding Heath’s formal rejection of Powell’s position, the sentiment in the country and in the Conservative grassroots sent a powerful signal to the leadership about the sensitivity of the issue. Heath moved to harden the Party’s stance on immigration, setting out a much more restrictive position and promising that the next Conservative government would strengthen legislation to control Commonwealth immigration, a promise which was to result in the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1971. Heath himself had tried while in opposition to respond to the threat from Powell by visiting the areas where immigration was perceived as a major problem. He was persuaded to make a tour of the West Midlands in late January 1969 both because it would give an opportunity to appreciate the problems associated with immigration in the area and because some pointed questions had been asked at the Birmingham press conference in April 1968 as to why he had not visited the area (WLFF 3/2/101). The tour was clearly not an easy one to organise since Heath and his office were very aware that there was considerable support for Powellism in the West Midlands and indeed that Powell as a local MP would be present on the platform at the public meeting in Walsall. The problem of immigration continued to trouble the Conservatives and pose problems for party management after 1970, however. There were several reasons for this. First, however, Heath and the government strengthened the policy of control, and they often found themselves either outflanked by Powell who had moved on to emphasise repatriation and resettlement or found their capacity to deal with immigration and indeed their sincerity on the issue questioned by Powell. A second problem was the extent to which events had the capacity to knock government policy off course. The clearest example of this was the crisis caused by Idi Amin’s persecution and expulsion of the Ugandan Asians in the summer of 1972, where the Heath government decided to admit those who were British passport holders. As the controversy over the admission of the Ugandan Asians underlined, the issue was one that aroused intense feelings on the right, whereas the increasingly

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well-organised Monday Club saw a hard stance on immigration as a vote winner. This stance was energetically resisted by more liberal groups (such as the YCs and the Bow Group), who argued the need to appeal to the more liberal attitudes of new generations of voters, including those from ethnic minorities. Heath was well aware of the rumblings on the issue on the backbenches. In the summer of 1972, John Biggs Davidson, for example, had unsuccessfully urged a recall of Parliament before any Ugandan Asians were admitted and there were regular reports of critical opinions being voiced in back-bench committees. The Ugandan Asian question formed the occasion for a major confrontation between the different party factions, and between the leadership and the Powellites at the Party Conference of 1972. The episode is worth recounting in some detail because it underlines the extent to which it had become imperative to deny Powell and his supporters any symbolic or moral victories and the increasing difficulty of containing dissent on immigration. The 1972 Conference, as The Times put it, turned into a struggle for the soul of the Conservative Party (The Times,  12 October 1972). In general, Conservative Party conferences have been carefully stage managed with rather bland motions put down for discussion and avoid topics which might cause the Party embarrassment. That the 1972 conference would be difficult to manage became evident at the opening when one representative, a Monday Club member and Powell supporter, Richard Devenald-Lewis, moved that the agenda be referred back because it was attempting to whitewash disagreements within the Party (The Times, 12 October 1972). Although the National Union would have chosen the bulk of the subjects for debate well in advance, it was normal for Conference itself to select by ballot two motions in addition. When the time came to select these motions, one in the name of the Hackney South and Shoreditch constituency association topped the ballot with the highest number of votes secured for any motion since the war. On the face of it, the motion could have appeared anodyne, stating, as Schoen puts it, ‘with wicked simplicity’ that Conference believed the Conservatives ‘declared policy on immigration to be the only approach likely to be successful’ (Schoen 1977: 92). The motion was, however, designed to highlight the Party’s failure to implement its 1970 manifesto commitment through the decision to admit the Ugandan Asians. The potential for disruption was further highlighted when, on the day before the debate, the chairman of the association (Harvey Proctor), who was to have moved the motion, ceded his right to do so to  its President who  turned  out to be Enoch Powell. When, in

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response, the Young Conservative Chairman, David Hunt, proposed an amendment congratulating the government on its decision to admit the Ugandan Asians, the scene was set for a major confrontation (David Hunt had prior to the Conference made public a statement calling for an emergency resolution on the Ugandan Asian issue) (Young Conservative Organisation News Service 1972). Hunt’s amendment to the Hackney motion allowed the clash between the government and the Powellites to be fought out without directly involving Heath himself, even though there had been speculation earlier that Heath would himself confront Powell (Wood 1972). The debate was raucous. In addition to the drama and tension of the speeches themselves, David Hunt was given a rousing reception with the platform joining in the applause. There were also groups of Young Conservatives cheering and booing from one of the galleries and holding up placards giving the speakers scores for their contributions (Holroyd-­ Doveton 1976: 236–237). The motion went to a formal ballot—an event so unusual that the tellers (Powell and Hunt) had difficulty using the key to the box. The amendment was carried by 1721 votes to 736, a substantial victory for the government but not perhaps as crushing a defeat as some had predicted. The platform had seen off the threat of a humiliating reprimand to the government’s policy, and for the most part, press commentary applauded the outcome as a vote for moderation. The debate itself did not entirely reflect the substantial minority who voted against the amendment. Nor could it disguise the unhappiness of a section of the membership. There was a sequel as the man who had moved the amendment, David Hunt, was soon deselected for Plymouth Drake at the constituency annual general meeting as a result of his role in opposing Powell. Hunt and Plymouth Drake had agreed that his formal adoption meeting be postponed until after the Party Conference, and at the meeting, there were procedural irregularities involving the infiltration of the meeting by members from Alan Clark’s adjacent constituency of Plymouth Sutton. Hunt declined to stand again in that constituency when the selection procedures had to be rerun. He also received a significant amount of lurid and threatening hate mails. The ongoing battles about immigration inevitably continued to cause problems in government. The attempt to pass new immigration rules in 1972 exposed the continued sensitivity of the subject especially when it linked immigration issues to a new European system, which appeared to give preferential arrangements for immigrants from the EEC over

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Commonwealth citizens. The rules were decisively rejected in what Philip Norton noted was then the most important government defeat in post-­ war parliamentary history (Norton 1972). The rules had to be revised and were passed without a problem in early 1973. After the autumn of 1972, however, the immigration issue appeared to lose much of its immediacy, overtaken as it was by other themes for both Powell and the public. As the authors of the February 1974 General Election study put it, ‘by the end of 1973 as little was being heard about race relations and immigration as at any time for ten years’ (Butler and Kavanagh 1974: 24). Europe The campaign to take the United Kingdom into the EEC from Macmillan’s original application in 1961 took place against wider debates about the decline of Britain and its future role in the world. For Powell, the loss of Empire had been a devastating blow, but once it happened, he accepted the consequences. Following through on the logic of retreat from Empire, Powell advocated a radical retrenchment of overseas military commitments and obligations. He could see little purpose in the Commonwealth and was suspicious about claims that Commonwealth citizens had any claims on British citizenship, especially if that entailed the right to immigrate into the United Kingdom. Although not hostile to military engagement, he was sceptical about nuclear weapons. One important thread running through Powell’s approach to international relations was an enduring suspicion of the United States, which Powell saw as having been hostile to the British Empire and engaged in a policy to unite Britain and Europe. Heath did not have the same degree of hostility to the United States, although in office the initially warm relationship with the US administration became cooler. Heath did not possess the strong personal or family ties, which bound many older Conservative MPs to the Empire/ Commonwealth, and his commitment to seeing the United Kingdom as a full member of the Common Market developed steadily over his career. Membership of the EEC had of course been controversial in British politics since it was first mooted and, while arguably it had become more toxic in Labour ranks, Heath knew that it would also generate opposition inside the Conservative Party. That opposition came generally from the right, but there were divisions even on this wing of the Party as the Monday Club, for example, was not united. Powell himself had shifted his opinion

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on the European issue, having supported the United Kingdom’s application to join in 1961 but moved against membership by 1969. His shift was primarily because of the threat he thought European membership posed to British parliamentary sovereignty and nationhood. Although Powell was relatively muted on the issue in the period up to and during the 1970 General Election, thereafter he hammered it more frequently with a series of anti-membership speeches and publications. Inevitably this stance put him in direct opposition to Heath, whom he accused of misleading the electorate (Schoen 1977). As with immigration, Powell saw the European issue as one where the people were being betrayed by an elite, which had reneged on its promise to take Britain into the EEC only with their full-­ hearted consent. While it is certainly true that public opinion on the issue was very volatile and that there was substantial opposition to membership immediately after the 1970 General Election, much of this opposition reflected concerns about the cost of living, not sovereignty. Public opinion moved towards support for membership once Britain’s application to join the EEC had proved successful. Within Parliament, there had been some long-standing opponents of entry on the Conservative side, including traditionalists such as Robin Turton, Neil Marten, Anthony Fell, Gerald Nabarro, John Jennings and Derek Walker Smith as well as neo-liberal sceptics such as Richard Body and John Biffen. Both pro- and anti-European groups within the Party had been active since the start of the 1970 Parliament, but opinion was fluid on both sides of the House. The maximum level that the Conservative opponents could claim was in the region of 62, a figure which dropped over the course of the long parliamentary debate and which to some extent was balanced by support from Labour pro-marketeers. The House of Commons approved the principle of British entry to the EEC in 1971, but securing this victory and implementing the subsequent legislation were to expose Conservative divisions as well as Labour ones. The government had to work hard to maintain its majority in the subsequent enabling legislation, the European Communities Bill, and there was a war of attrition over its complex provisions. Powell (together with John Biffen, Roger Moate and Neil Marten) led the opposition, but Powell alone stood out as the one Conservative among the anti-marketeers who seemed willing to bring down the government if necessary. In the 1971–1972 session he voted against the EEC bill and related motions in 80 divisions (Norton 1978: 80).

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Within the Conservative grassroots, the opponents of membership had only limited success. At the Conference of 1971, the vote in favour of UK membership was carried by 2474 to 324 (Kitzinger 1973 quoted in Schoen 1977: 85). Once UK membership of the European Economic Community had been implemented, Powell’s alienation from Conservative policy deepened. He finally made a dramatic break with it by announcing that he would not fight the February 1974 election. Many in the Conservative Party could have sympathised with this as honourable if perhaps  quixotic, but his decision to go further and advise voters to vote Labour to achieve a referendum caused outrage in the Party. The advice was also somewhat paradoxical for Powell, since he had always been sceptical about referendums, seeing them as incompatible with the sovereignty of Parliament, which he so cherished as a principle of British government and an element of national identity. Nearly 50 years later of course, that incompatibility was to become dangerously evident, as the Conservatives tried to use a referendum to solve increasingly toxic internal party divisions about EU membership. The Economy and the Role of the State The handling of Britain’s troubled economy eventually brought down Heath’s 1970–1974 government and paved the way for a new leader and a new approach to economic policy under Heath’s successor. Powell had become increasingly interested in free-market economics since the late 1950s and took an early interest in the work of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), which became the intellectual champion of neo-liberal ideas on the economy and social policy in the 1970s. Powell also had come to believe that controlling the money supply was the key to controlling inflation, and he ridiculed attempts to control price and incomes by government. He was a fierce advocate of greater freedom of choice in relation to social services. He was not, however, a proponent of introducing market principles into the provision of health and welfare across the board and retained a strong commitment to a strong universal National Health Service free at the point of delivery. On this, he differed sharply from the most enthusiastic stalwarts of the free market. Powell also disagreed with many of the free market theorists on the issue of the free movement of labour, where Powell believed the protection of national identity trumped economic arguments about the efficiency of the labour market.

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The centrality given to planning by the Wilson governments of 1964–1970 was anathema to Powell, and he initially saw much in Heath’s approach in opposition to commend. But once in office, Heath’s essential pragmatism became the dominant motif and Powell became a vocal critic. This antagonism emerged early in the Heath government. Powell was deeply sceptical about the nationalisation of parts of Rolls Royce in 1971, arguing to the Conservative Political Centre (CPC) at Dover in February 1971 that the causes which had brought Rolls-Royce down were the same as those that had ‘held Britain back and subdued her spirit’ over the past quarter century (Powell 1971). Taken together, they had cast an elaborate spell over the nation and, in Powell’s view, the shock of the bankruptcy, however painful, would be a blessing if it broke that spell. No firm, however much it was a symbol of national prestige, could survive in defiance of market forces: ‘patriotism and pride’ were desirable things, but in the economic world they were a luxury that could not be bought without profits. Powell’s message was a stern admonition about the inevitability that firms which failed should be allowed to go bankrupt. He was even more savage about the statutory prices and incomes policy, which Heath’s U-turn of 1972 produced. Powell had been critical of all forms of prices and incomes policies since the 1960s, seeing them as doomed to failure in the bid to control inflation. His views were increasingly echoed by economists, and by the time of the Thatcher government of 1979, there was a broad consensus in the Conservative Party in opposition to such policies. But Powell’s objections to prices and incomes policies were not simply based on the futility of trying to control inflation by prices and incomes policies instead of the use of money supply. He also argued that the attempt to control prices and incomes would require the extensive use of state power and would push a country towards authoritarian, even fascist, methods. The confrontation with the unions which engulfed the Heath government confirmed Powell in his view that democratic systems cannot enforce such policies and retain their democratic character. Powell’s trenchant views on the economy were slowly to become dominant within the Conservative Party after October 1974, although there remained important figures in its ranks who took a more pragmatic view and who continued to argue that economic doctrine needed to be tempered by policy concerns about its social effects. Although Powell became increasingly isolated in the Conservative Party after 1971, he enjoyed social relationships with a number of backbenchers beyond the obvious core of his supporters. And, as recorded in

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Pamela Powell’s diaries, his association with the IEA was reinforced by personal friendship with its director Ralph Harris and his wife Jose. As the Conservative Party’s economic thinking and Powell’s aligned more closely after 1979, Powell could claim that his arguments had triumphed, although, as mentioned earlier, he never embraced the more radical neo-­ liberal views on social policy. Northern Ireland Northern Ireland increasingly absorbed the attentions of Heath and Powell in the 1970s. Heath as Prime Minister from 1970 to 1974 had the responsibility of addressing the tensions and divisions which had erupted in violence in Ulster in the late 1960s. Despite the fact that Powell had displayed little interest in Ulster’s politics before the late 1960s, his intense concern with the ideas of national identity and of the integrity of the British state, as well as his scepticism about the merits of devolution, combined to raise the salience of Northern Ireland in his priorities. Powell’s reverence for the sovereignty of the Westminster parliament and its historical role in the national life also made him hostile to devolution for Scotland and Wales, but it was Northern Ireland which concerned him most. He seems to have taken a conscious decision to immerse himself in the issue at the end of 1970 and made a speaking tour of Northern Ireland in 1971, where he further strengthened his links with Unionist politicians in both the Province and Westminster (he was a close friend of James Molyneaux, and the Ulster Unionists broadly shared his opposition to British membership of the EEC). Ulster thus provided another theme on which Powell could attack Heath and the government’s efforts to address an increasingly intractable issue. Yet Northern Ireland was not a cause which resonated much with the general public or the majority of the Conservative Party. It did, however, provide a political lifeboat to him after he resigned his Wolverhampton seat in February 1974 and later that year accepted nomination for a constituency in Northern Ireland. Powell’s involvement in the cause of Ulster Unionism was in many ways problematic. There was a tension between the realities of Northern Ireland politics, the priorities of its Unionist leaders and his own markedly abstract vision of the relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom (Corthorn 2012: 967–997). His opposition to

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government policy on Northern Ireland between 1970 and 1974 isolated him further from his Conservative colleagues and, after October 1974, when he became the MP for South Down, he was inevitably further distanced from mainland politics. The suspension of Stormont and the imposition of direct rule in 1972 after 50 years of devolved government caused intense anger among the Ulster Unionist MPs, but although it initially seemed to generate concern on the back benches, in fact the opposition to the move from Conservative MPs was very much less than anticipated (Norton 2002: 129–142). Only nine Conservative MPs voted against the second reading of the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Bill, which introduced direct rule, and a further six Conservative MPs rebelled at various stages of the legislation’s passage through the House of Commons. The legislation passed with a good deal of cross-party support, but with its passage, the Conservative Party effectively lost the support of its Ulster Unionist allies. The instinctive sympathy between Conservatives and Ulster Unionists eroded as the intricacies of the conflicts between unionists and nationalists became ever more distant from attitudes in the rest of the United Kingdom. Heath himself never understood the dynamics of Ulster politics and lacked sympathy for the passions generated by the conflicting identities there. The search for a new formula for returning self-government to Northern Ireland constituted a central element of the Heath government’s agenda, albeit one doomed to frustration by the sectarian politics of the Province. Powell’s approach to Northern Ireland policy was increasingly idiosyncratic and in conflict both with British government policy and with the priorities of the Unionist community with which he identified. For Powell’s policy prescription for the Northern Ireland problem was to integrate it fully into the rest of the United Kingdom. Most of his Ulster Unionist friends, however, wished a restoration of Stormont, preferably on their terms without the complications of power-sharing and certainly without an explicit role for the Republic in Northern Ireland’s affairs. Powell’s approach represented his belief that integrating Northern Ireland fully into the United Kingdom would undermine its constitutional and political unity with the mainland and its enduring place as part of the traditional nation state. Powell became involved in Northern Ireland at a time when its politics had been destabilised by violence and when traditional alliances had begun to fragment over issues of principle and tactics. Powell kept his distance

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from the more extreme elements of the Protestant community. He refused, for example, to join the Orange Order, and he certainly was critical both of William Craig and of the Vanguard movement. As British government policy seemed to trample on Unionist sensitivities, Powell was forced to confront difficult questions about whether the allegiance of Northern Ireland to the wider United Kingdom could be conditional and on the extent to which the future governance of Northern Ireland would have to accommodate a role for the government of the Republic of Ireland.

Conclusions The conflict between Enoch Powell and Edward Heath was one in which personal animosity and policy disagreement reinforced each other. There was however a difference in that Heath loathed and despised Powell, whereas Powell’s attitude to Heath was less intense and reflected contempt rather than hatred. The degree of Heath’s antipathy to Powell was underlined on Powell’s death in February 1998 when, unlike many other politicians who paid tribute to his parliamentary career, Heath refused to say anything. The policy tensions between Heath and Powell prefigured and fed into later divisions in Conservative politics about the United Kingdom’s constitutional structure, the role of the state, the relationship with Europe and the character of British society. For Heath, the radical technocrat, such questions were ones to be settled pragmatically, and the task of government was to devise its policies on the basis of evidence and judgement. Such an approach, while laudable in many respects, was unable to capture the imagination of his party or inspire enthusiasm. When, not surprisingly, Heath’s government was inevitably buffeted by events, his ability to maintain support crumbled, destroyed by intellectual challenges and his failures of leadership. In the process, Powell’s series of attacks and his own crusades had an impact. On immigration, they certainly pushed the issue to the centre of public consciousness, even if Powell’s predictions of civil strife proved largely unfounded. For many critics, Powell’s legacy was a toxic one for the Conservative Party, alienating ethnic minorities and creating division and fear in the wider society. Certainly the Conservative Party has had to work hard to erase the image of hostility to ethnic minorities and, while it has arguably made great strides in terms of increasing Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) representation in Parliament, it still is at a substantial disadvantage in terms of the voting preference of ethnic

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minorities. (See, e.g. the Opinium poll taken just before the 2019 election (Opinium 2019)). Although Heath was deeply hostile to racial prejudice and even regarded Powell as ‘evil’, Powell’s campaign had the effect of pushing Conservative governments after 1970 to tighten immigration controls and to that extent helped create a new environment. On the economy, Powell’s questioning of the Keynesian approach and his urging of a reduced role for the state fed into the broad intellectual movement towards neo-liberalism, even if his was but one voice among many by the 1970s and even if it was Mrs Thatcher’s governments that would implement the shift in policy orientation. On Europe his challenge appears to have triumphed, as the Conservative Party has abandoned its commitment to the European Union and opted for a return to national sovereignty and control. It might be tempting to suggest that indeed the Conservative Party of today has taken on board Powell’s populist strategy and that, as new fault lines reshape Britain’s politics, not only will Powell’s reputation be vindicated, but Heath’s premiership will seem increasingly marginalised by history. Such a judgement would be a dangerous oversimplification. On economic policy and the balance between state regulation and the market, today’s Conservative Party is likely to be motivated by practical concerns and not economic doctrine. And while the tension between a populist and, for want of a better word, elitist, strand of Conservatism is still visible, there is a sense in which all political parties have become more populist in the wake of the increased use of referendums and of social and technological changes, especially the advent of social media. The experience of the Heath government has left its own legacies in terms of the politics of support. The dangers inherent when leaders become isolated from criticism and their own support bases were underlined by Heath’s experience but also ironically by the ousting of Mrs Thatcher. Enoch Powell famously remarked that the careers of all politicians were doomed to end in failure. Both Heath and Powell, although outstanding figures in their political generation, saw both men’s political careers come to a less than happy end, disappointing their own and many observers’ expectations. In both cases, personal character flaws were significant factors, which contributed to their political downfall. But the toxic rivalry between these two political figures was a central and tragic element in a saga, which played out over the tumultuous decade of the 1970s.

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Bibliography Archives CAC Churchill Archives Centre. Cambridge: Enoch Powell Papers. CAC Churchill Archives Centre. Cambridge: Michael Wolff Papers. CPA, Conservative Party Archives. Oxford: Bodleian Library. Edward Heath Papers. Oxford: Bodleian Library.

Speeches Powell, E. (1968). Rivers of Blood Speech. Birmingham, April 20. Retrieved from https://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/rivers+of+blood+ speech/1934152.html. Powell, E. (1971). Speech to Dover CPC, February 20. Retrieved from http:// www.enochpowell.info/.

Memoirs and Diaries Du Cann, E. (1995). Two Lives: The Political and Business Careers of Edward Du Cann. London: Images Publishing. Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life: The Autobiography of Edward Heath. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Prior, J. (1986). A Balance of Power. London: Hamish Hamilton. Whitelaw, W. (1989). The Whitelaw Memoirs. London: Aurum. Young Conservative Organisation News Service. (1972). Statement by David Hunt, National Chairman of the Young Conservatives and Young Conservative Advisory Committee, September 21.

Books, Chapters and Articles Bale, T., & Partos, R. (2014). Why Mainstream Parties Change Policy on Immigration: A UK Case Study of the Conservative Party, Immigration and Asylum, 1960–2010. Comparative European Politics, 12(6), 603–619. Butler, D.  E., & Pinto-Duschinsky, M. (1970). The British General Election of 1970. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Butler, D. E., & Kavanagh, D. (1974). The British General Election of February 1974. London: Macmillan. Campbell, J. (2013). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Vintage. Corthorn, P. (2012). Enoch Powell, Ulster Unionism and the British Nation. Journal of British Studies, 51(4), 967–997.

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Corthorn, P. (2019). Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heffer, S. (1998). Like The Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Holroyd-Doveton, J. (1976). Young Conservatives: A History of the Young Conservative Movement. Edinburgh: The Pentland Press. Kitzinger, U. (1973). Diplomacy and Persuasion. London: Thames and Hudson. McManus, M. (2016). Edward Heath: A Singular Life. London: Elliott and Thompson. Moore, C., & Heffer, S. (1989). Tory Seer: The Selected Journalism of T. E. Utley. London: Hamish Hamilton. Norton, P. (1972). Intra-Party Dissent in the House of Commons: A Case Study of the Immigration Rules, 1972. Parliamentary Affairs, 29(4), 404–420. Norton, P. (1978). Conservative Dissidents: Dissent Within the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1970–74. London: Temple Smith. Norton, P. (2002). Conservative Politics and the Abolition of Stormont. In S. McDougall (Ed.), The Northern Irish Question in British Politics. London: Palgrave. Opinium. (2019). Ethnic Minority Voting Intent 6 November. Retrieved from https://www.opinium.co.uk/ethnic-minority-voting-intention-polling6th-november-2019-2/. Peele, G. (2018). Enoch Powell and the Conservative Party: Reflections on an Ambiguous Legacy’. Political Quarterly, 89(3), 377–384. Richards, S. (2019). The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May. London: Atlantic Books. Roth, A. (1972). Heath and the Heathmen. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Schoen, D. (1977). Powell and the Powellites. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Shepherd, R. (1997). Enoch Powell: A Biography. London: Pimlico. Studlar, D. T. (1978). Policy Voting in Britain: The Colored Immigration Issue and Voting in the 1964, 1966 and 1970 General Elections. American Political Science Review, 72(1), 46–64. Ziegler, P. (2010). Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography. London: Harper Collins.

Newspapers

and

Periodicals

Cosgrave, P. (1972). Love and the Tory Party. The Spectator, October 14. Schoen, D., & Johnson, R. W. (1976). The ‘Powell Effect’; Or How One Man Can Win. New Society, July 22, pp. 168–172. The Times. (1972). Diary. October 12. Wood, D., & Clark, G. (1968a). Tory Revolt Threat on Race Bill. The Times, July 5. Wood, D., & Clark, G. (1968b). Tories in Disarray on Race Bill. The Times, July 9. Wood, D. (1972). Mr Heath Takes Up Mr Powell’s Challenge. The Times, October 11.

CHAPTER 13

The Labour Party in Opposition Timothy Heppell

The aim of this chapter is to consider the Labour Party in opposition. For a party of opposition to secure their objective of gaining office by winning the next General Election, there are two preconditions that we could argue are required. First, there needs to be clear evidence that the governing party is not be worthy of being re-elected. Governing incompetence as evidenced from policy failure, internal division and/or weak leadership will be what makes a party of government vulnerable to eviction. This is what Norton describes as the necessary precondition for a change of government (Norton 2009: 31–33). When facing a competent, unified and effectively led government, such as the Tony Blair government when entering the General Election of 2001, then the Conservati ves, as the party of opposition, will find that they are unable to make a credible case as to why a change of government is necessary (Butler and Kavanagh 2001). The Blair government had entered office at the General Election of 1997 in part because the John Major government was widely viewed as incompetent, divided and ineffectively led (Butler and Kavanagh 1997). Second, just because the governing party is showcasing incompetence,

T. Heppell (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_13

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division and/or weak leadership, that may not be sufficient for a change of government. The party of opposition has to demonstrate that they are worthy of office. The Blair-led opposition demonstrated that they were a credible alternative government at the General Election of 1997. However, a governing party showcasing weaknesses in office may be able to remain in office, if doubts about the opposition override voter doubts about the governing party—here the example of the General Election of 1992 demonstrates this, as the conditions were conducive for removing the Major government, but the Neil Kinnock-led Labour opposition were still unable to win the General Election (Butler and Kavanagh 1992). As the chapters elsewhere in this book demonstrate, there were clearly signs that the governing Conservatives met the necessary precondition for a change of government, that is, sufficient doubts existed about their competence, the unity of the Conservatives and the Prime Ministerial leadership of Heath. This chapter broadens the analysis out and considers the case of the Labour Party in opposition, to establish how they set about seeking to regain office, that is, ensuring that they could exploit the governing difficulties of the Conservatives. It considers the following themes in relation to the Labour Party when in opposition—first, the issue of the party leadership and the wider public face of the party; second, their policy platform and how that evolved during opposition; and third, how unified the Labour Party appeared. However, before analysing these three themes, the chapter opens up with a discussion on how and why the Labour Party found themselves back in opposition, after the General Election of 1970. That they were was not something that they had expected. During the election campaign, Tony Benn recorded in his diaries that they were on course for a majority of around 100 seats1 (Benn 1988: diary entry, 11 June 1970).

1  Barbara Castle doubted the size of the opinion polling lead that the Labour Party had during the campaign. ‘I wish there weren’t another five days before the election’ as ‘although Heath is making such a pathetic showing personally and is getting such a bad press, I have a haunting feeling that there is a silent majority sitting behind its lace curtains, waiting to come out and vote Tory’ (Castle 1984: 805).

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The Failure(s) of the Wilson Government of 1964–1970 After 13 years in opposition, the Labour Party won the General Election of October 1964 (Fielding 2007). Their return of 12,205,814 votes, a 44.1 percent vote share, provided them with a small parliamentary majority of 4 (Butler and King 1964). Wilson called a General Election in March 1966, and with 13,064,951 votes, and a 47.9 percent vote share, that parliamentary majority was increased to 99, which ensured that they could govern for a full five-year term, should they so wish (Butler and King 1966). With the Labour Party overturning the opinion polling lead that the Conservatives had held between February 1967 and April 1970, and then establishing a lead over the Conservatives of 7.5 percent (49 to 41.5 percent) by 17 May 1970, Wilson made the fatal decision (on 19 May) to call a General Election for 18 June 1970, nearly one year earlier than was necessary (King and Wybrow 2001: 9–10; However, the Labour Party vote declined from the 47.9 percent secured at the General Election of 1966 to 43 percent, and their return of 12,178,295 votes represented a decline of 886,656 votes, and resulted in them losing 75 seats (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971; see also Abrams 1970). Critically, with the Conservatives securing an overall parliamentary majority of 31, the Labour Party entered opposition in the knowledge that the Conservatives would be able to govern for a full term. To determine what changes to initiate once in opposition, a party needs to construct a clear understanding of the reasons why they were ejected from power. The cumulative effect of policy failure, internal disunity and leadership limitations would undermine the Labour Party, meaning that by the time of the General Election of 1970, their governing credibility was open to question, and their policy legacy was patchy—as Denis Healey would later admit that they were ‘not regarded as a success, even by the Labour movement’ (Healey 1990: 345). This would lead to an historical interpretation of the Wilson era as a missed opportunity, as their achievements did not stand in comparison with the Attlee governments of 1945–1951 (Ponting 1990; Coopey et al. 1993; Dorey 2006; O’Hara and Parr, 2006). Their reforming zeal was evident in social policy as they introduced equal pay for women, the statutory right to redundancy pay and rent rebates for nearly one million householders; they increased pensions and family allowances, and they legislated to outlaw racial discrimination (Page 2016). They accelerated the demise of the eleven plus; they expanded

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participation within higher education by the creation of new polytechnics and the innovation that was the Open University (Dorey 2015). Parliamentary time was granted to facilitate the passage of a  series of socially liberal reforms—the legislation of male homosexuality (for those over 21); the abolition of the death penalty; the liberalisation of abortion law; and divorce law reform (Donnelly 2005: 116–131). Although a significant socially reforming agenda was evident, the record of the Wilson governments with regard to economic policy, industrial relations and European policy was less straightforward. The Labour Party had entered office with a clearly defined set of objectives in terms of the economy (Tomlinson 2003; O’Hara 2006). Wilson sought to create a choice between the Conservative Party as the party of economic decline and the Labour Party as the party of economic modernisation based on technological change (Edgerton 1996). Their strategy was to construct the national economic plan, which was published in 1965, and it aimed for a 25 percent increase in gross domestic product by the end of the decade, with this requiring an annual economic growth rate of 3.8 percent (Walker 1987: 203). Given that the economic growth over the period from 1951 to 1964—a period that incorporated the so-called age of affluence or politics of prosperity (Black and Pemberton 2004; see also Black 2003 on affluence and the left)—was only 2.9 percent annually, this was a very ambitious target (Pollard 1983: 345). The means by which the national plan and their growth targets would be achieved was by the creation of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), alongside a newly formed Ministry for Technology, and they were both created as part of a wider modernising strategy of how government should be organised and how it should operate (Blick 2006). The rationale for the DEA was that it would be responsible for long-term economic planning, whereas the Treasury would concentrate on short-term economic management, but it became viewed as a failure when the annual growth rates were lower than those intended within the national economic plan—at just 2.2 percent (Walker 1987: 203). Closely aligned to the difficulties in hitting the growth targets of the economic plan was the issue of devaluation. The Wilson administration was in a bind. They entered office facing a significant trade deficit, and even with sterling overvalued against the dollar, Wilson was determined to avoid devaluation. They used deflationary measures in response to the Balance of Payments deficit. In addition to increasing taxation, this involved cutting public expenditure and initiating a statutory six-month

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wage freeze, the latter two of which served to alienate their activist, membership and voter base, and also undermined their ability to achieve the economic growth targets of the national economic plan. Despite their deflationary measures, the Wilson administration was eventually forced into a humiliating devaluation, from $2.80 to $2.40, in November 1967 (Bale 1999). Alongside the difficulties of implementing the national economic plan and the humiliation of devaluation, the Wilson administration was struggling to manage both unemployment and inflation. In the first Wilson parliamentary period (1964–1966), the rate of unemployment was 1.6 percent, but the rate increased to 2.5 percent over the course of the second parliamentary period (1966–1970), whilst the inflation rate was on an upward trajectory as well, at 4.7 percent in 1968 and increasing to 5.4 percent in 1969 (Thorpe, 2015: 168–169). Compounding their governing difficulties was the escalation of trade union militancy, and Wilson would be humiliated when he (along with his Employment Secretary, Barbara Castle) attempted to intervene with legislative proposals to manage industrial relations more effectively (Tyler 2006). The white paper, entitled In Place of Strife, would significantly alter the relationship between the trade unions and the state (Ponting 1990: 350–351). From its initial inception, it provoked considerable levels of disquiet amongst trade unionists. Jack Jones, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) in succession to Cousins, took the view that the proposed legislation was ‘repressive’ and he advocated ‘total opposition to any legislation restricting the right to strike’ (Trade Union Congress General Council Meeting minutes, 18 December 1968). Wilson, however, was being led to believe that the opposition amongst trade unionists would not be problematic. One of his advisors, Gerald Kaufman, informed Wilson that he had been told by Victor Feather, General Secretary to the Trade Union Congress, that they had ‘no belly for a fight’ (TNA, PRO, PREM, 13/2724, Letter from Kaufman to Wilson, 14 January 1969). Wilson also needed to be sensitive to opinion within Cabinet. They were split and Callaghan, now Home Secretary and seeking to resuscitate his reputation after being moved from the Treasury after the devaluation of 1967, came out against the legislation. He told his Cabinet colleagues that it was ‘absolutely wrong and unnecessary’ (TNA, CAB 128, Cabinet Minutes, C1 (69), 3 January 1969). It was also clear that there were reservations amongst back-bench parliamentarians (LPA, PLP Minutes, 29 January 1969). The Chief Whip, Bob Mellish,

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would warn the Cabinet about the scale of discontent (TNA, CAB 128 /44 Part 1, CC (69), 17 June 1969). Wilson was increasingly aware of the need to back down, but he was deeply concerned about how this would be interpreted—he informed Cabinet that he feared that the government ‘would lose all credibility’, and their ‘authority would crumble’ (TNA, CAB 128 /44 Part 1, CC (69), 17 June 1969). However, with it being evident that over 100 Labour backbenchers would vote against the proposals or would abstain, and with Wilson being faced down by senior figures within Cabinet, he was forced to back down (Tyler 2006; Dorey 2019). These failings, in relation to the national economic plan, devaluation and industrial relations, have to also be placed within the context of the failed attempt to secure entry into the European Community. In opposition, when the Macmillan administration had sought entry, the Labour Party was split but not necessarily along traditional lines (Broad, 2001). Although it is easy to speak of a simplistic social democratic right versus socialist left split, with the left defending further nationalisation, promoting unilateralism and being anti-marketeer, and the right questioning nationalisation, arguing for multilateralism and being pro-marketeer, the fractures that would emerge from 1962 were actually more complex than that (Meredith 2012). Gaitskell could not afford another bout of infighting within the Labour movement, after his failed attempt to reform Clause IV in 1959, and the schism between the unilateralists and multilateralists in the 1960–1961 period (Jones 1996). Moreover, on these two disputes, Gaitskell knew that the socialist left was in the minority, but on the European dilemma, his faction was in the minority—Haseler estimated that the majority of Labour parliamentarians in the 1959–1964 Parliament were anti-marketeers (Haseler 1969: 228). Calculating that the Macmillan application would be rejected anyway, Gaitskell sided with the anti-­ marketeers, traditionally assumed to be aligned to the left, and ‘ironically’ but temporarily, he unified the party (Howell, 1980: 235). Once in office, Wilson, engaged in an incremental shift towards contemplating seeking entry, in part due to the assumed economic advantages that this would create and its contribution to modernisation (Parr 2006; Pine 2008). However, its divisive capability was evident when the Wilson administration (May 1967) sought parliamentary approval for negotiating for entry—although the division was won by 488 votes to 62, a total of 35 Labour parliamentarians voted against, and a further 51 abstained (Broad, 2001: 67). Although their subsequent attempt to secure entry was

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rejected, and could be interpreted as a failure, Wilson had bizarrely done reasonably well in terms of party management—he could turn to the pro-­ marketeers (predominantly, but not exclusively, on the social democratic right) and claim that he had sought entry, and the anti-marketeer and socialist left were relieved that the application was rejected (Wrigley 1993; see also Daddow 2003). The cumulative effect of these difficulties in relation to the national economic plan, devaluation, industrial relations and Europe was that the Wilson administration was widely felt to have failed to have delivered upon the ambitious objectives that they had when entering office. The impact was evident in terms of public opinion. Two months into their time in office (December 1964), their approval rating was +18 (48 percent approve, 30 percent disapprove), and this remained relatively static by the time Wilson decided to hold a General Election in March 1966: +12 (48 percent approve, 36 percent disapprove). By December 1968, their approval rating reached a low of −53 (17 percent approve, 70 percent disapprove), and although their approval ratings  would improve (by December 1969, it was −22, 31 percent approve and 53 percent disapprove), and this levelled out by the time of the General Election of 1970 (42 percent approve, 42 percent disapprove), it cannot mask the scale of disapproval that did exist throughout the latter parts of the Wilson era (King and Wybrow 2001: 168–169). As such, it could be argued that as they were still in the process of recovering ground in the early part of 1970, then fulfilling the full five-year Parliament, and holding a General Election in early 1971, may have been preferable. When the parliamentary Labour Party met in the aftermath, John Mackintosh captured that sentiment, arguing that more time was needed to secure an economic recovery that could win over support that was lost by the trauma of devaluation, and the humiliating climbdown on industrial relations (LPA, PLP minutes, 15 July 1970). A period in opposition provided them with the time and space to reflect upon their performance in government. Change was necessary, but what form of change should they adopt? Did it require a change of party leader and the leading figures on the frontbench? Did it require a change of direction in terms of their public policy platform? If it did require a change of policy direction, should that involve an ideological policy shift to the middle ground of British politics and the location of the median voter, or should they tilt more to the ideological left and offer a more radical public

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policy programme? Finally, given that they had appeared internally divided when in office, could a new party leader and/or a modified public policy platform provide the basis for greater internal cohesion?

Labour in Opposition (1970–1974): Issues of Leadership One obvious form of renewal is to change the leader of the party. Wilson had seen his political credibility erode over his six-year tenure as Prime Minister, for example, his satisfaction rating was as high as +28 at the time of his calling of the General Election of 1966 (60 percent satisfied, 32 percent dissatisfied). The lowest it sunk was to −26 in November 1968 (31 percent satisfied, 57 percent dissatisfied), and although it improved by the time of the General Election of 1970 (+6, 49 percent satisfied, 43 percent dissatisfied), Wilson was a diminished figure by the time of becoming leader of the opposition for a second time (King and Wybrow 2001: 187–188). Leadership change within the Labour Party in 1970 could be achieved by one of two means: one, the voluntary resignation of Wilson; two, a challenge to Wilson, forcing a ballot of the parliamentary Labour Party. Wilson gave a sharp response in the immediate aftermath of defeat when a journalist asked whether there will be an inquest—he shot back that ‘there is no post-mortem when there is no body’ (quoted in Hatfield, 1978: 37). It seems clear that, although devastated by the loss of power, Wilson did not seriously contemplate resignation (Pimlott, 1992: 571). If the Labour Party wanted a change of party leader, then it would have to be via a formal challenge. There was little to be gained from a challenge by a candidate who lacked the ability to actually defeat Wilson, that is, a signal-sending challenger  who  would expose divisions and undermine Wilson, but would fail to replace him directly or cause him to resign and create a vacancy. That meant it needed to be a credible figure, capable of defeating Wilson outright and one who had (a) the credibility to unite the Labour Party (not easy to demand after disloyally challenging the incumbent); (b) who had the attractiveness to increase the electoral appeal of the Labour Party; and (c) who had the skills to be an effective Prime Minister (Stark, 1996). Most attention was focused on Roy Jenkins, the former Home Secretary (1965–1967) and Chancellor (1967–1970). During 1968 and 1969, with the Labour Party trailing the Conservatives in the

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opinion polls, there was considerable press speculation about whether Jenkins would make a formal challenge to Wilson. However, Jenkins calculated that a challenge to a sitting prime minister was ‘too risky’ (Pimlott, 1992: 490–491). Their working relationship suffered as a consequence of the press speculation, and Wilson used Cabinet to criticise the manoeuvrings of Jenkins. He emotionally informed colleagues that he knew where the ‘leaking and backbiting comes from, it arises from the ambitions of one member of this Cabinet to sit in my place’ (Jenkins 1991: 258). Even after losing power, Jenkins remained concerned about the risks of a formal challenge, and as consequence a toxic dynamic remained—Wilson was a ‘long suffering, much abused, ever exasperated, wearily tolerant monarch’, opposed by Jenkins, his ‘brilliant, cruel and indifferent heir impatiently waiting for his inheritance’ (Pimlott, 1992: 490). In his memoirs, Jenkins would regret his unwillingness to challenge Wilson for the party leadership, arguing that to do so might have been ‘better for the future health of the party’ (Jenkins 1991: 621; a view shared by Owen 1991: 190). With the party leadership denied, Jenkins instead stood for the deputy leadership. This was vacant, following the defeat of George Brown, at the General Election of 1970. Jenkins won on the first ballot with 133 votes (53.6 percent) over the left-wing backbencher Michael Foot on 67 votes (27.0 percent) and Fred Peart (former Leader of the House of Commons 1968–1970) on 48 votes (19.4 percent) (Campbell 2014: 361–362). Jenkins had to withstand a left-wing challenge to him in November 1971—he won 140 votes in the first ballot (48.3 percent) with Foot (96 votes or 38.0 percent) and Benn (46 votes or 16.3 percent) splitting the left-wing vote. In the subsequent second ballot, Jenkins secured 52.6 percent (140 votes) over Foot (126 votes or 47.4 percent) (Campbell 2014: 362–392). It is interesting to note that in both of these contests, Wilson ironically backed Jenkins, but for calculating reasons. The selection of a leftish candidate for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party might be problematic for Wilson, as Pimlott argues: ‘he wanted to bind the right to him [Jenkins]; the last thing he wished for was to be shackled to a reconstituted left’ (Pimlott, 1992: 570). Both of these deputy leadership ballots showcased the strength of Jenkins and suggested that he would have been well placed to succeed Wilson, had he not resigned as deputy leader in April 1972 due to his opposition to the leadership position of deciding to hold a referendum on membership of the European Community (Campbell 2014: 391–392). In the vacant ballot, the unity candidate, the former

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Education Secretary (1968–1970), Edward Short, emerged as the new deputy leader, defeating Foot and Anthony Crosland, who had held various Cabinet roles under Wilson (LPA, PLP Papers, 1971–2, minutes of party meeting, 20 April 1972). With the party leadership remaining unchanged, and with the deputy leadership being held by two figures who had both been in the Wilson Cabinet, the public face of the Labour Party in opposition seemed relatively similar to their time in office. This is significant, as one of the ways to symbolise change and renewal is through an influx of new faces, who can put forward alternative new ideas and present them enthusiastically. The vast majority of the last Wilson Cabinet before the General Election of 1970 remained on the frontbench in the shadow Cabinets when in opposition, and by the time of the General Election(s) of 1974, the Labour Party had a frontbench that looked experienced or ageing, depending upon your viewpoint. What was also problematic for the Labour Party was the conduct of Wilson as Leader of the Opposition between 1970 and 1974, as compared to his first period as Leader of the Opposition between 1963 and 1964. Wilson was widely praised for his conduct in the 1963–1964 period, for example, Shore argued that Wilson showed ‘sustained brilliance and effectiveness’ (Shore, 1993: 87–88). This was reflected in the opinion polling evidence—by the time of the General Election of 1964, 59 percent of voters thought Wilson was doing a good job as Leader of the Opposition, whereas only 24 percent thought he was not (a + 35 rating) (King and Wybrow 2001: 211). However, during his second stint as Leader of the Opposition, Wilson had ‘lost much of his former confidence and sureness of touch’ (Dorey 2012: 64). Dorey argues that three factors explain why Wilson was a weaker politician in 1970–1974, as compared to 1963–1964. First, he argues that Wilson lost ‘energy’ and ‘enthusiasm’, with the difficulties of governing between 1964 and 1970 being ‘emotionally and politically exhausting’ for him (Dorey 2012: 64). Second, the complexities of managing a fractious parliamentary Labour Party damaged Wilson’s reputation and relations with many Labour elites. For example, Healey felt that Wilson had significant limitations as a political leader—i.e. his ‘short term opportunism’ and ‘self-delusion’ had created a Labour government, which had ‘no sense of direction’ (Healey 1990: 331, 336). Crosland felt that the operational effectiveness of government was undermined by Wilson’s deviousness, saying ‘one hasn’t the faintest idea whether the bastard means

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what he says even at the moment he speaks it’ (Crosland, 1982: 184). One unnamed member of the Wilson frontbench reinforced that shifty reputation, when they humorously observed that ‘there are two things I dislike about Harold: his face’ (Kellner and Hitchens, 1976: 180). Third and finally, Wilson was a disengaged and distant figure in opposition, especially in the initial period of the Heath administration (Ziegler, 1993: 372). He spent the initial period of opposition focusing on writing his own account of his time in office between 1964 and 1970 (Wilson, 1971). Indeed, after six months in opposition, his parliamentary private secretary, Frank Judd, urged him to initiate a public campaign to reintroduce himself to the electorate, by touring the country listening to the concerns of voters (MS Wilson, c. 914, Judd to Wilson, 6 November 1970). Wilson continued to believe, however, that Heath would experience a honeymoon period, and that a hyperactive approach in the initial period of opposition would be futile (Ziegler, 1993: 372). These three factors contributed to Wilson having lower approval ratings in his second time as leader of the Opposition. The positive rating that he had at the time of the General Election of 1964—at +24 percent in terms of whether he was a good leader—was much lower at the time of the General Election of 1974. Only 38 percent of voters thought he was a good leader, whereas 49 percent thought he was not (a −11 rating) by February 1974 (King and Wybrow 2001: 211–212).

Labour in Opposition (1970–1974): Issues of Policy When they first entered opposition, Wilson made it clear that they would be ‘no lurches of policy from what we did in Government’ (Hatfield, 1978: 38). The social democratic right felt that they were on the defensive because of the senior roles afforded to them in the 1964–1970 administrations. Some of them appeared to be arguing that if strategic change was needed, it was towards the centre-ground of British politics. From the frontbench Jenkins argued that the Labour Party needed to shed itself of its class-based and sectional image and broaden out its appeal (Jenkins 1972: 21–22). From the backbenchers, John Mackintosh, considered the choice between a socialist and socially democratic future. He spoke out against sectional and class-based politics, which he derided as ‘populist socialism’, and he warned of the risks of the Labour Party becoming ‘merely the puppet party of those powerful union leaders whose first

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interest is not socialism or social justice, but simply the well-being of the particular wage earners whom they represent’ (Mackintosh 1972: 484). When considering the wider strategic choices facing Wilson and the shadow Cabinet, we have three core dilemmas to consider: first, how viable was economic planning; second, what type of link to the trade union movement should they adopt; and third, how could they construct an approach to European policy that would unify the party? The overall impact of four years of opposition was that Wilson was forced into a significant degree of policy development, and that a more leftish or radical policy agenda would emerge in terms of the economics of redistribution, the approach to industrial relations and positioning on membership of the European Community. Policy renewal  culminated in the development of the Labour’s Programme 1973 document, which was approved at the annual party conference that autumn (Labour Party 1973; Minkin, 1978: 336–337). That agenda would feed into the Labour Party manifesto of 1974, which was best known for the phrase about initiating ‘a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people’ (Labour Party 1974: 15). It committed them to renegotiating the terms of entry into the European Community; to repealing the Industrial Relations Act of 1971; and it also committed them to price controls, public ownership, economic planning and the extension of industrial democracy. They also advocated the creation of a National Enterprise Board that could buy into private firms in the national interest. This investment by the state would drive up productivity and stimulate economic growth. The plans envisaged that the National Enterprise Board would take control of around 25 companies, including large manufacturers, and the state would enter into planning agreements with a further 100 private sector manufacturers in return for financial assistance (Tomlinson 1982: 99–122; see also Tomlinson 2003). The imprint of the National Executive Committee (NEC) upon policymaking was evident, as was that of the parliamentary left elected onto the NEC, that is, Michael Foot and Tony Benn. Foot described Labour’s Programme as the ‘finest socialist programme I have seen in my lifetime’ (Guardian 1973), whilst Benn felt that it demonstrated that ‘the party was now firmly launched on a leftwing policy’, which was ‘a remarkable development’ and the product of ‘three years of hard work’ (Wickham-Jones 1996: 1). If the minority parliamentary left (and extra-parliamentary left) were ecstatic at this radical shift to the left, the social democratic right was aghast—Crosland would describe the

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programme as something that had been ‘written by people who didn’t live in the real world’ (Wickham-Jones 1996: 1). The breakdown in relations between the trade unions and the Wilson leadership when in government, over In Place of Strife in 1969, was partly overcome by their shared hostility towards the Industrial Relations Act of 1971. Ongoing dialogue between the Labour Party Liaison Committee and the Trades Union Congress—TUC (Taylor 2000: 209) led to the construction of the following document, Economic Policy and the Cost of Living (TUC/Labour Party 1973). In addition to a return to voluntary collective bargaining, the document also showcased their joint interests in price controls, subsidies for public transportation and house building, and the redistribution of incomes and wealth (TUC/Labour Party 1973: 313–315). This would culminate in the construction of the so-called social contract between the next Labour government and the trade union movement. It amounted to a quid pro quo—the trade unions would take responsibility for moderating ‘real’ wage claims, and in return, the Labour government would enhance the ‘social’ wage, that is, increasing public expenditure, redistributive taxation and greater public ownership (Harmon 1997: 56). There was no specific promise vis-à-vis incomes policy, which could be said to reflect trade union scepticism in this regard, and amounted to an assumption that an incoming Labour administration would not introduce an incomes policy. Taylor felt that it was an imbalanced deal, that is, the Labour Party had agreed to ‘little more than a shopping list of TUC demands’ (Taylor 2000: 211). As has been well documented elsewhere, the weak condition of the British economy would undermine the ability of the Labour administrations of 1974–1979 to deliver on the social contract. The decision to approach the International Monetary Fund to seek a loan required that the now Callaghan-led administration had to impose cuts to public expenditure and introduce deflationary budgets. As a consequence, the Callaghan administration was reneging on their commitment to enhance the social wage, that is, their side of the bargain within the social contract. Their decision to introduce a formal pay policy reflected their view that wage restraint was unavoidable, but to the trade unions, it was unacceptable. The collision course that culminated in the Winter of Discontent in early 1979 was the conveyer belt to Thatcherism (Hickson 2005; Wass 2008; Rogers 2011). Just as being in opposition required that the Labour Party respond to the Heath government’s Industrial Relations Act of 1971, they also had to

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react to their decision to seek entry to the European Community. The dilemma for Wilson was both personal and political. In seeking entry to modernise Britain and aid economic performance, Heath was merely replicating a case that the Wilson administration had themselves made. For Heath to succeed where Wilson  had failed as Prime Minister would be something the Conservatives could humiliate Wilson over. Politically, it was problematic because, for Wilson, it remained a hugely divisive issue within the Labour Party. Wilson constructed a classic Wilsonian compromise in an attempt to address the political problem (Dorey 2012: 57–58). To placate those on the pro-market (and predominantly socially democratic right), Wilson did not dispute the principle of seeking entry, but to keep the anti-marketeer (and predominantly socialist left) onside, Wilson argued against the terms upon which the Heath administration was seeking to secure entry. It was clear that Wilson constructed this position to preserve party unity, as he told the parliamentary Labour Party that they must not ‘relapse’ into ‘backbiting’ that voters would not find ‘edifying’ (LPA, PLP Papers 1970–1971, minutes of party meeting, 20 July 1971). As the subsequent section of the chapter considers in more detail, this approach was unravelling by late October 1971. Although instructed to vote against the Heath administration, in a division  about joining the European Community, a total of 69 Labour parliamentarians rejected the instruction and voted for entry, including Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers, whilst a further 15 abstained (Shaw 1988: 167–179). Running simultaneous to the Jenkins’ faction strengthening their commitment to entry, Wilson was being pressurised by Benn on the left to commit to the confirmatory referendum, if a future Labour administration had engaged in renegotiated terms of entry. For the anti-­ marketeers, this created the means by which a future Labour administration could construct a route map out of the European Community, should the Heath administration secure parliamentary approval for entry (Meredith 2008: 80–89). In March 1972, Wilson sought shadow Cabinet approval to endorse a two-stage policy position for a future Labour administration. In stage one, they would renegotiate the terms of entry into/with the European Community, a position which was consistent with their opposition to the Heath administration on the terms of entry. Then in stage two, they would present to the electorate a binary ‘yes/no’ choice on continued membership on those renegotiated terms (Pimlott, 1992: 583–586). Once again, the sticking plaster solution that Wilson was advocating failed to bridge the divide within the Labour Party—Jenkins resigned as deputy

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leader, in April1972, in opposition to the drift towards what he regarded as an anti-marketer position (Meredith 2008; 88–91). When put alongside the new positioning on economic and industrial relations, the general impression being created was that Wilson was tilting towards the agendas being advanced by the left (Bell 2004).

Labour in Opposition (1970–1974): Issues of Unity Throughout the post-war era, internal division had been a recurring problem for the Labour Party and their leaders. Richard Rose had famously defined the Conservatives as a party of non-aligned tendencies, whereas the Labour Party was a party of factions (Rose, 1964). The factional infighting between the social democratic right and the socialist left covered debates over (a) public ownership, (b) unilateralism versus multilateralism and (c) the Common Market, but it  also had a ‘power-political’ or personality-­ based dimension, as well as ideology (Crowcroft 2008; see also Haseler 1969; Sibley 1978; Jones 1997). What complicated matters further for Wilson was that they were not entirely cohesive socialist and socially democratic blocks, that is, the assumption that an economic expansionist was a unilateralist and anti-common market, and that an economic consolidator was an multilateralist and pro-common market, was not necessarily the case. There was some cross-cutting or zigzagging in ideological terms (Hayter 2005: 6; Meredith 2008: 8–12). This point is best demonstrated by noting the academic research on the ideological composition of the October 1974–1979 parliamentary Labour Party. On the economic policy divide, Heppell et al. identified 156 expansionists to 133 consolidators (and 24 neutral or beyond classification); 118 unilateralists and 140 multilateralists (with 55 neutral or beyond classification) and 167 anti-common market and 136 pro-common market (with 10 neutral or beyond classification). When mapping all three ideological divides together, they identified that 92 were on the absolute socialist left (i.e. they adopted the traditionalist position on all three policy divides), and 93 were on the absolute socially democratic right (i.e. they adopted the revisionist position on all three policy divides), with 120 Labour parliamentarians engaging in ideological zigzagging (Heppell et al. 2010: 75, 83, 88). No similar academic study exists on the 1970–1974 parliamentary Labour Party, but given that around 90 percent of Labour parliamentarians in the October 1974–1979 Parliament had been in the

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1970–1974 Parliament, the above-mentioned argument seems credible when applied to their period opposing the Heath administration. As the Labour Party entered opposition, many of the key party leadership roles remained within the hands of the social democratic right. As mentioned earlier, Jenkins was elected to the deputy leadership by fellow parliamentarians, and he was also Shadow Chancellor, and the other leading shadow portfolios remained tilted against the instincts of the socialist left, that is, James Callaghan (shadow Home Secretary) and Denis Healey (shadow Foreign Secretary). The extra-parliamentary was frustrated by this ideological imbalance. Fearing that this imbalance was institutionally embedded, the left focused on addressing the following two issues. First, they devoted their efforts on the National Executive Committee in terms of extending its reach, notably in terms of policy development, and the impact of elections to the NEC saw it tilt to the left in opposition (see Minkin, 1978). Second, they formed the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in 1973, with the aim of democratising the Labour Party (Kogan and Kogan, 1982: 23–35). Thus, the opposition years seemed to be defined by the socialist left being on the ascendency and the defensiveness of the social democratic right. Although disagreements would exist about the construction of their new approach to economic policy and industrial relations, they were overshadowed by a fratricidal struggle between anti- and pro-marketeer forces. Whereas the likes of Foot and Benn feared the capitalist and free-market character of the common market, Jenkins and his allies came to regard membership as a ‘sign of their intellectual sophistication [and] modernity’, making it ‘a matter of high principle’ (Cronin, 2004: 139–140). Jenkins made two crucial decisions in opposition that would cost him the leadership of the Labour Party. First, he led that group of 69 into the division lobbies with the pro-European Conservatives in late 1971, after the failure of attempts (mobilised by Bill Rodgers) to allow Labour parliamentarians a free vote2 (LPA, PLP papers, 1970–1971, minutes of party meeting, 19 October 1971). Second, he then resigned from the shadow Cabinet in 1972 in opposition to the decision of Wilson, and the rest of the shadow Cabinet, to embrace a renegotiated and referendum strategy. 2  Jenkins recalled that he was ‘convinced that it was one of the decisive [parliamentary] votes of the century’, and as such, I ‘had no intention of spending the rest of my life answering the question of what did I do in the great division by saying “I abstained”’ (Jenkins 1991: 329).

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The decision to embrace what Jenkins felt was a ‘left-wing bandwagon’ was the ‘last straw’, but his resignation left him facing accusations from fellow parliamentarians that he was being divisive (LPA, PLP Papers 1972, minutes of party meetings, 29 March, 1972, 12 April 1972, 19 April 1972). Jenkins was a charismatic politician who possessed a band of acolytes who shared his frustrations with the trajectory of the Labour Party in opposition (Crewe and King 1995: 55–56). After his resignation, Jenkins began, via speeches and essays, the process of articulating his wider political agenda beyond the European question, covering issues around industrial relations, trade union reform and public expenditure. The publication of What Matters Now, outlined an alternative programme that the Labour Party could pursue (Jenkins 1972). It was also seen as the basis upon which Jenkins could present himself as a future leader of the Labour Party (Bell 2004: 198–208). However, what Jenkins had succeeded in doing was fragmenting the social democratic right into two subgroups and then marginalising the subgroup that he himself was the de facto leader of. Let us consider the process of fragmentation first. Other key players associated with the socially democratic right were not as obsessed by the European question as Jenkins. For example, Jenkins’ one-time ideological soulmate, Crosland, felt that by rebelling and resigning, Jenkins and his acolytes had ‘divided the Labour right against itself’ (Marquand 1991: 170). In terms of marginalisation, Jenkins had reduced his own power and influence, thus undermining his ability to shape future policy (Bell 2004: 206). The combined impact, according to Crosland, was that Jenkins had ‘allowed the left into the citadels of party power’ (Marquand 1991: 170). This would also have longer-term implications, as those who became aligned to the Jenkins faction in 1971–1972 would form the basis of those who would subsequently join the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981—according to Owen, this is where the ‘true story of the formation’ of the SDP would begin (Owen 1991: 172). A similar argument is put forward by Hattersley, who argues that Jenkins’ resigning was ‘the moment when the old Labour coalition began to collapse’, thus making the ‘eventual formation of a new centre party inevitable’ (Hattersley 1995: 109). The short-term consequence of their repeated infighting was that the opposition era of 1970–1974 left voters with an impression that the Labour Party remained disunited, despite the best efforts of Wilson. In his first term as Leader of the Opposition, Wilson had made a significant impact upon perceptions of internal division. Before Wilson replaced Gaitskell, only 25 percent of voters thought that the Labour Party was

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unified, and 47 percent thought they were divided (a −22 rating) (as of May 1962). By December 1963, and a year of Wilson as the Leader of the Labour Party, 51 percent of voters viewed the Labour Party as being unified, as opposed to 31 percent who regarded them as divided (a +20 rating) (King and Wybrow 2001: 44). The challenges of office saw a gradual erosion of those positive internal unity ratings. They reached their lowest point in March 1968, when only 15 percent of voters thought that the Labour Party was unified, against 76 percent of voters who felt they looked divided (a −61 rating). Although this stabilised in the latter part of the Wilson era (with a −24 rating by September 1969), the Labour Party continued to suffer from an image of disunity, which was to continue during the era of opposition between 1970 and 1974 (King and Wybrow 2001: 44). By November 1971, voter perceptions of unity for the Labour Party sunk to a low of only 13 percent (as against 74 percent for divided), and although their ratings improved to 37 percent unified against 46 percent divided (by October 1973), it was clear that they entered the General Election of 1974 undermined by perceptions of internal disunity (King and Wybrow 2001: 44).

Conclusion The aim of this chapter was to explore the conduct of the Labour Party in opposition to the Heath administration between 1970 and 1974. The chapter rests on two assumptions about opposition politics. First, to succeed, a party of opposition would normally need the incumbent government to showcase a level of vulnerability/failing that make them worthy of eviction, that is governing/economic incompetence, internal division and/or weak leadership. Then, second, if the governing party shows these tendencies, as the Heath administration did, then their vulnerability to eviction is dependent upon the ability of the opposition to exploit these limitations. To assess the Labour Party between 1970 and 1974, the chapter examined their opposition image/performance in relation to notions of change, that is, change in terms of their public face/or the party leadership; change in terms of public policy platform; and change in terms of their ability to project a more unified image. By analysing these three themes, the chapter has demonstrated that the Labour Party experienced difficulties in terms of projecting a positive impression of change in the opposition years of 1970–1974. Renewal in opposition did not involve a change in the public face of the Labour Party.

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Wilson did not wish to resign the party leadership and nor were his parliamentary colleagues willing to initiate a challenge to remove him. As such, Wilson would lead the Labour Party into his fourth and then fifth General Election campaigns in February and then October 1974, respectively. Renewal in opposition did not involve repositioning the Labour Party closer to the centre-ground of British politics—policy development tilted towards the left in relation to the economics of redistribution and their approach to industrial relations. Moreover, policy development vis-à-vis membership of the European Community seemed to be driven more by calculations associated with party management then principles. From this would emerge the solution of a referendum on continued membership as a means of addressing the enduring divide between pro- and anti-common market forces. That the governing Conservatives had their own divisions, with regard to the debates on membership, meant the two main parties almost cancelled each other out in terms of the negatives that flowed from their own rebelliousness. That both the Conservatives and the Labour Party were undermining, rather than enhancing, their appeal to voters is evident by comparing their combined vote shares in the General Elections of June 1970 and February 1974. When Wilson and the Labour Party lost office in June 1970, the combined Conservative and Labour Party return was 89.5 percent of the vote, with the Conservatives securing 13,145,123 votes (at 46.4 percent) and the Labour Party on 12,208,758 votes (and 43.1 percent) (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971). When Wilson led the Labour Party back into (minority) government in early 1974, the combined vote for the Conservatives and Labour was 75.1 percent, with the Conservatives securing 11,872,180 votes (at 37.9 percent) and the Labour Party on 11,645,616 votes (at 37.2 percent) (Butler and Kavanagh 1974). Voter dissatisfaction was contributing to the decline of the dominant two-party system and has to be placed within the context of the rise of the Liberals— from 2,117,035 votes or 7.5 percent in June 1970 to 6,059,519 or 19.3 percent in February 1974 (and an increase in seats from 6 to 14), and the growth in support for the Scottish National Party (SNP)—from 306,802 to 633,180 votes between June 1970 and February 1974 (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971; Butler and Kavanagh 1974). What is remarkable about the return to government of the Labour Party was they secured a lower vote base and vote share than the discredited Heath-led Conservatives, and their vote share regaining power was 5.9 percent lower

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(at 37.2 percent) than it was when they lost power 3.5  years earlier (at 43.1 percent) at the General Election of 1970.

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CHAPTER 14

Edward Heath: Leadership Competence and Capability Christopher Byrne, Nick Randall, and Kevin Theakston

Edward Heath’s performance as Prime Minister has rarely been celebrated. Gallup’s polling during his premiership revealed persistent public dissatisfaction with his performance (King and Wybrow 2001; Denver and Garnett 2012). After Heath’s dismissal by the electorate, most of his former Cabinet colleagues issued hostile or at best equivocal assessments of his leadership. Among the former was his successor as Conservative leader: ‘wrong, not just once but repeatedly’ was her verdict (Thatcher 1995: 195). Others who might have been expected to be more generous, such as his Chancellor, found it best to avoid any appraisal of Heath’s leadership

C. Byrne Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] N. Randall Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK e-mail: [email protected] K. Theakston (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_14

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(Barber 1996). The minority who undertook to defend his reputation were either terse—‘I like Ted Heath. I think he was a good Prime Minister’ (Pym 1984: 21)—or reliant upon counterfactuals: ‘Ted Heath would have been seen to be an outstanding Prime Minister’, wrote one faithful ally, ‘if he remained in power’ (Walker 1991: 121). The general assessment of those in the academy has also been negative. Surveys of academics (Theakston and Gill 2006, 2011) have ranked Heath amongst the worst of Britain’s post-war Prime Ministers. Those who have studied Heath in depth rarely demur from this judgement, but they do seek to account for Heath’s failures. Here three key themes emerge—that Heath’s personality contributed to his difficulties, that he made a number of tactical and strategic errors in office and that he was attempting to govern in challenging circumstances. However, such assessments have usually been arrived at without reference to any framework for evaluating leadership performance. Greenstein’s (2001) leadership style/skills model, has been applied to Heath as part of a broader comparative analysis of UK Prime Ministers (Theakston 2007) and more recently, both Heppell (2014) and Garnett (2015) have applied Bulpitt’s statecraft model to the Heath premiership. These recent systematic assessments of Heath are welcome, and this chapter seeks to contribute to this emerging, theoretically informed debate both on Heath’s premiership and on the performance of UK prime ministers in general. We approach Heath’s premiership via a critical reading of Stephen Skowronek’s historical institutionalist account of leadership in ‘political time’ (1993, 2011). For Skowronek, political time is defined by the rise and fall of ‘regimes’. A regime is understood as a set of ideas, values, policy paradigms and programmes, which are supported by a coalition of political interests and are associated with particular institutional supports. Each regime is defined by a cycle in which, as political support and authority for a regime accumulates or dissipates, the regime is established, maintained, encounters crisis and is eventually replaced. For Skowronek, the challenges of leadership differ according to where the regime is in this cycle of resilience and vulnerability. In addition, the attitudes of each leader towards the regime—whether they are affiliated or opposed—establishes a broad pattern of opportunities and constraints. These two dimensions allow Skowronek to distinguish between four distinct types of leaders (Table 14.1):

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Table 14.1 Skowronek’s typology of leaders, regimes and patterns of politics

Affiliated leader Resilient regime Articulation Vulnerable regime Disjunction

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Opposed leader Pre-emption Reconstruction

Affiliated leaders of a resilient regime pursue a politics of articulation. They are regime managers who aim to ensure that the regime continues to function well in changing times. Pre-emptive leaders aim to replace established commitments but in doing so galvanise political support for the status quo that frustrates their objectives. Disjunctive leaders are those who are affiliated to a failing regime and so encounter the challenges of trying to govern an increasingly dysfunctional system. Finally, reconstructive leaders are those who, by building a new coalition around a new governing framework, are able to administer the coup de grâce to a failing regime. As has been shown elsewhere (Byrne et al. 2017), this model can, with sensible adaptations, be applied to the UK premiership. It is also a model that, we have argued, can address some of the shortcomings of other approaches to the assessment of political leadership in the UK. Viewing prime ministers in political time allows us, unlike Greenstein’s focus on the personal qualities of leaders, to account for how the demands of political circumstances affect leadership effectiveness. Statecraft approaches, on the other hand, have recently been adapted to take better account of structural factors in the performance of statecraft tasks (Buller and James 2014). However, the political time approach invokes within and between category comparisons of the four types of leadership. This permits us to more systematically specify the structural constraints and the opportunities for agency characteristic of each type of leadership. The result, we submit, is an analysis, comparison and explanation of leadership performance that is better attuned to the interaction between structure and agency (Byrne and Theakston 2019). The chapter proceeds by the following sequence of steps. First, we classify Heath according to Skowronek’s typology. We examine Heath’s attitude towards the regime and show that Heath was a regime affiliate. We then examine the character of the regime. Here we argue that Heath took office at a time in which the regime was facing increasing enervation. It is on this basis that we classify Heath as a disjunctive Prime Minister. In the third section of the chapter, we examine how Heath responded to the

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dilemmas of disjunctive leadership through expectation management, the valorisation of technique and policy experimentation. We conclude by evaluating the state of the regime which Heath left behind, in terms of both the immediate scenario facing Harold Wilson in February 1974 and the longer-term path dependencies propelled by decisions taken by Heath in government.

Heath: Opponent or Affiliate of the Regime? Our first task is to establish Heath’s attitude towards the regime. Here we need to exercise caution. The objectives of politicians are frequently and easily misread. It often serves the interests of their opponents, inside and outside their own party, to misrepresent their position. Equally, members of the commentariat and academia are apt to arrive at conclusions by selective quotation from a limited range of public statements. Heath has frequently been misread, particularly in respect of the Selsdon Park meeting of the Shadow Cabinet in January 1970. Harold Wilson used reports of this conference to identify Heath with ‘Selsdon Man’: ‘a socio-political cave-dweller whose appearance marked a major shift in the political zeitgeist’ (Christie 2004: 135). Heath’s Conservative critics after 1972 recalled Selsdon Park as evidence of Heath’s betrayal of a challenge to the post-war consensus (see, e.g. Tebbit 1989). Yet, in our research we have been able to identify only three occasions between 1970 and 1974, where Heath actually referred to Selsdon Park in speeches or interviews (CPA, CCO, PPB 21, ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Speaking at a meeting in Springhead Hall, Springhead Road, Northfleet, Kent, on Friday, 13 March 1970’; CPA, CRD, PPB, 24, ‘The Prime Minister interviewed by Peter Hardiman Scott, Panorama 18 June 1970’; National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations 1973), and on each occasion Heath’s anodyne comments fail to warrant the mythology. This example serves to demonstrate the necessity of reviewing a wide range of Heath’s public statements to establish his position in relation to the regime. After all, Heath spent nearly five years and fought two general elections in opposition before entering Downing Street. He was then prime minister for nearly four years. Our analysis therefore proceeds on the basis of a review of 627 speeches, interviews, statements, press conferences and party political broadcasts delivered by Heath between 28 July 1965 and 4 March 1974, which are found in the Conservative Party

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archive at the Bodleian Library. These, taken together with the party’s principal policy statements and election manifestos during the same period, comprise 1.18 million words of text. Our starting point is to consider Heath’s stance as it emerged in opposition. This is summarised in Table 14.2.

Table 14.2  Heath’s attitude towards the regime, 1965–1970 Governing strategy Values

Policy goals

Return to honesty, courage and integrity in political leadership

Greater prosperity and resting upon a high wage, low-cost economy; Increased productivity; and control of inflation

Competition

Policy means

Removal of restrictive practices; trade union reform; improvement of quality of management; redeployment and retraining; reduction of tariffs where industries are inefficient; and access to larger market and sectoral cooperation provided by EEC Modernisation Enterprise Promotion of Reduction of individual and incentives corporate taxation Harnessing Individualism Wider ownership Measures to assist home academic, ownership including council business and house sales and capital grants scientific expertise for first-time buyers and in government promotion of occupational pensions Efficiency Reduction of waste Administrative reform of in public sector Whitehall; systems analysis; value engineering; and critical path control ‘One Nation’ Opportunity End to hardship and Improve social services by poverty directing resources to those most in need Equality Racial harmony and Control of Commonwealth prevention of immigration; additional discrimination funding for areas where civic against ethnic infrastructure is under pressure minorities due to immigration Nationalism Preservation of Scottish devolution; support Union and protection for reformists at Stormont; and of British interests maintenance of UK defence overseas, particularly commitments East of Suez as against instability part of five-power force.

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At this point in his career, Heath was fond of highlighting what he described in his 1966 conference speech as the ‘great divide’ between the parties. Accordingly, his public statements articulate a series of value commitments presented as intrinsic to his and his party’s stance. Commitments to free enterprise and competition enjoy a high priority: I was trained in private enterprise and I’ve had to earn my living in it. And so, as a party our objective, when we are the government, is to enable private enterprise to work and to work effectively. As a government we will encourage it, we want it to be both free and enterprising, and above all we want it to be competitive. Because we know that competition brings the best out of every one of us. (CPA, CRD, PPB, 014/1 ‘Speech by Edward Heath at Llandudno’, 13 May 1967)

Heath also believed a recovery in national fortunes would depend principally on the efforts of individuals. Accordingly, he promoted opportunity, incentives and choice for individuals. As ‘the party of free choice’ the ‘whole purpose of the style of Government on which we shall embark is to give the people of this country greater opportunities which they can use for themselves’ (CPA, CCO, PPB 23/1, ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Speaking at a Conservative Workers’ Briefing Conference at Church House, Westminster, on Friday, 22 May, 1970; and ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Transcript of Mr Heath’s opening remarks at his news conference launching the Conservative Election Manifesto at Conservative Central Office, on Tuesday, 26 May 1970’). Heath not only also possessed an occasional tendency to outbursts of ‘Leninist’ rhetoric (King 1975: 7). Some of his policy goals were also open to interpretation as radical departures from post-war practice. One example is his commitment to cut individual and corporate taxation and to reduce the size and responsibilities of the British state. Another is his promotion of a ‘property-owning democracy’ by sale of council houses and extension of occupational pensions. Taken together, these might lend themselves to identifying Heath as an agent of regime reconstruction. However, such commitments must be placed in their proper context. Firstly, had Heath been intent on regime reconstruction, we would have expected him to repudiate post-war governing practices. On the contrary, Heath repeatedly and proudly revisited his achievements as a member of the Eden, Macmillan and Home governments. Moreover, he

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advised fellow partisans to recall the record of the 1951–1964 governments as testimony of Conservative competence and credibility. He told Conservative candidates: We can point to our record in the past. We can show how in the years of Conservative prosperity we reduced taxes and increased spending on the social services at the same time. Not by magic, but by managing the economy so that people saved and greater wealth was created. (CPA, CCO, PPB 23/1, ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Text of a letter to all Conservative Candidates’)

Secondly, Heath’s value commitments must be seen in the context of his governing strategy and the wider ensemble of his policy objectives and policy means. Between 1964 and 1970, Heath did not identify fundamental and structural defects of the regime. Rather, he assigned primary responsibility for the nation’s difficulties to the quality of leadership provided by Wilson and the Labour government. On Heath’s account, Wilson’s perennial and chief concern was the partisan advantage of the Labour Party. Wilson’s addiction to gimmickry, such as the National Plan, delivered inertia and trivial government. The implications were clear. Had the Conservatives been in government, the nation would have been spared its travails. Furthermore, if the ‘lack of integrity and determination … that has gravely weakened our national life’ could be replaced by a new style of firm and frank leadership, there was every prospect of reinvigorating the regime (CPA, CCO, PPB 221, ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Speaking at the Portobello Town Hall, Edinburgh, at a Young Conservative Conference, 7 March, 1970’). Thirdly, to read Heath as an advocate of regime transformation demands we wilfully ignore the detail of his public statements. Despite Heath’s commitments to free enterprise, he maintained that ‘The Tory Party has never been laissez-faire, and isn’t laissez-faire at the moment’ (National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations 1965). While Heath dismissed Wilson’s National Economic Plan, he saw continued value in the planning apparatus established under Macmillan and did not foresee it as an impediment to liberation of the forces of competition (see, e.g. CPA, CRD, PPB, 012/3 ‘Interview with Mr. Edward Heath on the Programme “Focus”’ 16 November 1965). Rather, ‘Planning will take its proper place as an aid to the sound management of the economy and not as a substitute for it’ (Conservative Party 1968). Heath remained committed to the maintenance of full

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employment (see, CPA, CCO, PPB 21, ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Transcript of a television interview with Mr Robin Day on BBC1 on Tuesday 24 June, 1969’); and accepted the government’s responsibility to maintain economic demand (see, e.g. National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations 1965). While hostile to the state propping up declining industries, he believed it had to ‘enable private enterprise to adapt itself more quickly to changes in demand and methods of production’ (CPA, CRD, PPB 014/2, ‘Highfield Hall, Carshalton’) by policies to promote redeployment and retraining. Government would also remain responsible for ensuring prosperity was shared by all parts of the nation: We cannot tolerate the waste of human and economic resources which are brought about by their uneven use in different parts of the country. We refuse to condemn large parts of the United Kingdom to slow decline and decay, to dereliction and to persistent unemployment in pursuit of old fangled 19th century doctrines of laissez faire, and so we shall act. (Conservative Central Office 1969)

Nor did Heath envisage any significant redrawing of the boundaries of the mixed economy. He rejected the proposals for extensive privatisation presented by Nicholas Ridley’s policy group in 1968. Cuts in taxation and reductions in state responsibilities would not need any political anaesthetic since Heath had ‘a slimming pill to give Whitehall’ (CPA, CCO, PPB 012/1, ‘Extract from a speech by the Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, Leader of the Conservative Party and Candidate for Bexley at Newcastle on Tuesday, 22 March 1966’). That Labour had allowed the state to grow corpulent with excess taxation and public spending demonstrated the scope for straightforward economies. Reform of Whitehall and modern management techniques would free further resources painlessly. If increased prescription charges and the withdrawal of housing subsidies were necessary, they were nonetheless tolerable for the beneficiaries of post-war affluence. Indeed, Heath considered such policies an embodiment of the party’s ‘One Nation’ tradition. Better targeting of resources to those most in need would liberate those who continued to experience hardship and poverty. Such commitments were in the service of a governing strategy that sought to modernise rather than reconstruct the existing regime. Britain had become, ‘A society dedicated to the prevention of progress and the

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preservation of the status quo’ (CPA, CCO, PPB 21, ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Speaking at the Midland Hotel, Manchester, on Friday, 5 December 1969’). It is in this context that two of Heath’s most ambitious and controversial commitments should be understood. Industrial relations law had gone unreformed for 60 years and was the legacy of an epoch of mass unemployment, weak unions and victimisation in the workplace. Now it was imperative to ‘stop looking over our shoulders to Jarrow and the thirties’ (CPA, CCO, PPB 012/1, ‘Text of a speech by the Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley), Leader of the Opposition, at a Mass Meeting at the Guildhall, Southampton, on Saturday, 5 March, 1966’). Modernisation of the law would strengthen the responsible union leaders whom Heath had encountered as Minister of Labour and who would then act as a vanguard for efficiency. If management modernised its techniques too, then restrictive practices could be challenged, productivity increased and the trajectory set for a high-wage, low-cost economy. EEC membership also featured as part of this broader strategy of modernisation. This would restore a sense of national purpose and provide Europe with its rightful voice in world affairs. However, the primary benefit was that membership would foster the competition and dynamism necessary to deliver accelerating economic growth. British firms would gain access to larger export markets and new opportunities for cooperation across high-technology sectors. It is unfair to accuse Heath of misleading the nation over the implications that would follow for British sovereignty (see CPA, CCO, PPB 016, ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Speaking at the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Conference in Perth, on Saturday, 18 May, 1968; CPA, CCO, PPB 21, ‘The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath, MBE, MP (Bexley) Leader of the Opposition. Speaking at the Caird Hall, Dundee, on Tuesday, 9 September, 1969). However, the reconstructive potential of membership was certainly downplayed in favour of stressing its revivifying material impacts. On the threshold of the premiership, the limit of Heath’s radicalism was, to use Peter Hall’s terminology (1993), a second-order change. Heath was committed to broadly the same policy goals as his predecessors in Number 10. Where Heath differed was in the policy instruments he proposed for their realisation. Comparison with other voices in the Conservative Party serves to reinforce this conclusion. Where Heath was confident of reinvigorating the regime, Angus Maude, an early critic,

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believed the Conservatives were failing to recognise the extent of Britain’s malaise (Maude 1966). Where Heath’s ambitions focused on reversing Wilson’s reforms, others, like Lord Coleraine, inveighed against ‘the horrid hagiology of government by interferences and incantation’, represented by institutions like the National Economic Development Council (Lord Coleraine 1970: 113). But the contrast with Enoch Powell is the most revealing. Powell held a more pessimistic outlook than Heath. For example, during the 1970 General Election, Powell foresaw civil strife of ‘appalling dimensions’ as a consequence of mass immigration (Powell 1970a) and identified a series of enemies within intent on subverting the UK state and destroying its society (Powell 1970b). If Powell lacked a fully developed platform, he had nevertheless associated himself with a series of reconstructive commitments during the years of opposition. These included proposals to cut income tax in half by cuts in public expenditure of the order of £2855 million (Powell 1968). Powell endorsed denationalisation of the airlines, docks and telephone system, and he questioned the wisdom of government subsidies for socially deprived areas. Powell also doubted whether military commitments outside Europe and Britain’s overseas aid programme should be maintained.

Regime Vulnerability or Resilience (1970–1974)? No prime minister since the war, it has been argued, ‘has confronted such a combination of malign events’ as did Heath between 1970 and 1974 (Patten 2017: 135). As Campbell (1993: xix) put it: International and domestic factors in the fevered 1970s conspired to derail his Government. He was confronted by the collapse of the international financial system and massive global inflation, culminating in the 1973 ‘oil shock’; an irresponsible trade union movement at the height of its power, backed by an unscrupulously opportunist Opposition; Northern Ireland on the edge of civil war; plus a social climate disturbed by a whole range of fears and dislocations, from terrorism and rising crime through student revolt and violent demonstrations to coloured immigration, sexual permissiveness and decimalisation of the currency.

Similarly, Sandbrook (2010: 13) has described the period 1970–1974 as ‘caught between past and present’, with its political consensus ‘fragmenting under the pressure of social change, its economy struggling to cope with overseas competitors, [and] its culture torn between the

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comforts of nostalgia and the excitement of change’. In this confused and unsettled environment, Heath aimed to stabilise and rehabilitate a set of governing commitments rendered vulnerable by a structural crisis of the international economy and claims of overload and ungovernability (King 1976). In Skowronek’s model, disjunctive leaders face the challenge of trying to manage, maintain or rescue a failing regime in the context of mounting problems, policy failures, deteriorating government performance and diminishing support and authority. Do the regime’s ‘governing commitments’, as Skowronek (1993: 36) describes them, still ‘claim formidable political, organizational, and ideological support? Do they offer credible solutions or guides to the problems of the day? Or have they in the course of events become open to attack as failed and irrelevant responses to the nation’s problems?’ For Nichols and Myers (2010: 813–14), indicators of an ‘enervated’ or weakened regime include the emergence of ‘new cleaving issues and problems’, growing tensions within and the decreased cohesion of the regime’s governing coalition, the rise of ‘opposition elements’ calling into question and beginning a national debate about the regime’s established policies and its governing philosophy and competence, and the ‘advent of a crisis atmosphere’. In trying to make sense of the vulnerability or resilience of the ‘regime’ in a broad sense, the relatively short Heath government cannot be seen in isolation. Thus in terms of the periodisation of British policy regimes and of regime crisis and change, Middlemas (1979: 430, 459) talks about a ‘crisis of the state’ and symptoms of breakdown and instability in the system over the period 1964–1975, in a later study referring to a ‘mid-1970s crisis’ and ‘time of disjunctions … [and] disintegration’ (Middlemas 1991: 4–5). Beer (1982) traced the breakdown of ‘hubristic Keynesianism’, the problem of ‘pluralistic stagnation’ and the ‘political contradictions of collectivism’ back into the mid-1960s, setting the scene for the failures and ‘self-defeating politics’ of the 1970s. Studlar (2007: 8–12) describes 1970–1979 as a ‘transitional period of turmoil and confusion’ in the shift of post-war Britain’s political eras and orders from the collectivist consensus period of 1945–1970 to the neoliberal order after 1979 (though noting that several of the problems marking the ‘transitional era’ of the 1970s were already evident in the later 1960s). Bogdanor (1994: 359) dates the ‘paradigm change in which one dispensation gradually came to be succeeded by something quite different’ to the years following 1974 and the fall of Heath. In contrast Matthijs (2011: 31, 99) appears to date the

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tilting point between regime resilience and vulnerability more exactly to 1972 and the Heath U-turn, describing Conservative policy after 1972 as ‘crisis containment’ and dating the final disintegration of the post-war consensus to the period of the 1974–1979 Labour government. However, we would argue, with Campbell (1993: xix), that it is probably best to say that Heath was ‘caught at a moment of transition ... when the earth moved under his feet’. Similarly, Arthur (1996: 257–258) describes the UK as ‘going through a very difficult period of transition’ in the Heath years, with the government ‘overwhelmed by one damned problem after another—industrial relations, inflation, immigration and Ireland’. Events between 1970 and 1974 can perhaps be likened in that sense to a series of what seismologists label ‘foreshocks’ that may reflect a general increase in underlying stress in a region or cause stress changes resulting eventually in the ‘mainshock’ or major earthquake. Put another way, it was not that 1970 itself marked ‘a major break in British history’ (Harrison 2010: xv). Regime decomposition and failure was, rather, a process traceable in many respects from the late 1960s through to the end of the 1970s. This was a turbulent period of challenge, change, crisis and adjustment across a number of fronts (economic, political, social, cultural, ideological), affecting not just Britain but on a global scale (Black et al. 2013; Ferguson et al. 2010). Regime vulnerabilities manifested themselves in a number of ways in the Heath years. Public support for the Heath government was not particularly robust. Heath personally was not a popular leader—he was never an electoral asset to his party, and his approval ratings as Prime Minister (averaging 37 percent) were the lowest of any post-war Prime Minister until John Major. After a brief political honeymoon in 1970, for most of the period opinion polls showed a Labour lead over the Conservatives and voter dissatisfaction with the government’s record (Kavanagh 1996: 377–378). By-elections and local council elections gave evidence of the Liberal Party revival that proved so damaging to the Conservatives in February 1974, an election that marked a crack in the established two-­ party domination of the political system—the Labour/Conservative share of the vote falling from 89.4 percent in 1970 to 74.9 percent, with the Liberals increasing from 7.5 percent to 19.3 percent (gaining nearly four million more votes) and also a significant increase in the nationalists’ vote in Scotland. All this was expressive of growing disillusion with the two main governing parties during the 1970s. Exploiting popular anxieties over immigration (including the expulsion of the Ugandan Asians) as an

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insurgent party of the extreme right, the National Front saw membership growth and patchy electoral success in this period, particularly in some local contests (Taylor 1982). At the same time, changes in the social and electoral underpinnings of the wider party system were starting to become apparent, with evidence of a weakening of party identities and of the class-­ party nexus, the emergence of a more de-aligned electorate, and a shift in public attitudes on economic and welfare issues, and on attitudes towards the trade unions, over the course of the 1970s (Norris 1997). At a deeper level there seemed also to be a decline in the stabilising and supportive elements of the traditional ‘civic culture’: as Kavanagh (1980: 370) put it, ‘the traditional bonds of social class, party, and common nationality are waning, and with them the old restraints of hierarchy and deference’. Schoen (1977: 232–239) also noted a growing ‘general political disillusionment’ in Britain, starting in the late 1960s, including evidence of dissatisfaction with the political system, the failure of government to solve the problems facing the country, popular discontent with politicians and the major parties, falling confidence in party leaders, a growing gap between mass and elite opinion, and increasing public fears of the breakdown of traditional values and standards. The existing system and political machinery seemed increasingly remote, irrelevant and/or incompetent. Beer (1982: 119) suggested that the failure or inability of the political system to adapt to new expectations and attitudes undermined the legitimacy and effectiveness of government and the wider collectivist regime. Public concerns over law and order, rising crime and student protests fed into this general sense of social malaise and disarray, together with the seemingly out-of-control violence in Northern Ireland (with 480 deaths in 1972 alone, the highest figure in any year of the Troubles) and wider incidents of international terrorism. In disjunctive conditions, populist and maverick figures often serve as a focus for disaffection with the established regime and in the Heath years, as noted earlier, it was Enoch Powell who articulated an alternative Toryism and the need for a reconstructive solution to national malaise. However, he remained a divisive figure and isolated at the parliamentary level, more a ‘voice’ and a regular back-bench dissenter than a factional leader, though all the same something of a magnet for the disaffected at party grassroots level and in the wider electorate (Shepherd 1996: 406). But analysing Powell’s public appeal in this period, Schoen (1977: 40–41) found that the widespread support for his stance on immigration did not

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translate into support for his views on other key issues such as denationalisation or prices and incomes policy. The wider climate of intellectual opinion in the early 1970s was still supportive of the Keynesian consensus, backing high public spending and state intervention, even as the limitations and the problems with that policy paradigm were becoming apparent in practice. There was, however, no credible alternative available at that time, and a major shift in opinion had not yet occurred, unlike in the Thatcherite decade of the 1980s. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, press commentators like Peter Jay and Samuel Brittan were popularising monetarist ideas, but the free-market economic counter-revolution was still in its infancy in the years of the Heath government (Thompson 1996: 64–65). Whitehall and Treasury policy thinking remained broadly Keynesian (Kandiah 1995: 197). Apart from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and some followers of Enoch Powell, there was little interest in monetarist economics and explanations of inflation (Kavanagh 1996: 361). As Cairncross (1996: 125) put it, ‘monetarism’s time had not yet come’. Only a small minority of Conservatives were seriously interested in ‘consensus-busting’ at this time (Garnett 1994: 279) with political figures like Jock Bruce Gardyne and Nicholas Ridley, and economists like Alan Walters, talking about monetarism. Although they were to later dominate policymaking, in 1970 the ideas of the IEA ‘remained on the political fringe’ (Harrison 2010: 290), though the creation of the Selsdon Group in 1973 to call for a change of direction and to champion economic liberalism was a sign of growing dissatisfaction in Conservative circles, not just with particular decisions of the Heath government but the whole politics of consensus, corporatism and Keynesian economics (Cockett 1995: 212–213). There were other signs too that opponents of and campaigners against the policies and values of the collectivist Keynesian welfare state consensus were becoming more organised and influential. There was, for example, the appearance (from 1969 onwards) of the ‘Black Papers’ on education. Coinciding with the advent of the Heath government, Rhodes Boyson joined with Ralph Harris and Ross McWhirter to set up the ‘Constitutional Book Club’ in 1970, publishing pamphlets challenging ‘progressive thinking’ and making the case for capitalism and free enterprise and against the welfare state, nationalisation and the ‘socialistic’ approaches adopted by both main parties over the post-war period (Boyson 1970; Cockett 1995: 176–177). The failures and the fall of the Heath government, together with the course of events under the Labour government after 1974, seemed to vindicate these

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alternative ideas and to finally open the door to a politics of reconstruction under Margaret Thatcher. Trade union shop-floor militancy and strikes had been increasing since the late 1960s, but the ‘pitched battles’ (Taylor 1996: 170) and ‘open warfare’ (Porter 1996: 39) with the trade unions between 1970 and 1974 put a serious question mark against the post-war settlement between government, labour and capital (Middlemas 1990). A record number of working days were lost due to strikes and industrial action: in 1972 alone, over 23 million days were lost in stoppages and strikes, the highest figure since the 1926 General Strike. The government’s Industrial Relations Act aimed to stabilise industrial relations and reduce union conflict and strikes, but it instead had the opposite effect, provoking a confrontation with the TUC and even more union strife and stoppages. The unions rendered the Act unworkable, and it was in the context of the confrontations and disorder over its implementation and enforceability that media commentators started to ask whether Britain was becoming ‘ungovernable’ and to talk of ‘a major attack upon its constitutional principles and freedoms’ (Economist 1972; Sunday Times 1972). On a different front, the actions and defiance of councillors in Clay Cross (on housing finance and other issues) constituted the most sustained challenge by a local council to the authority of central government, parliament and the law for half a century (Mitchell 1974). In Opposition, the Conservatives had condemned Labour’s incomes policy, promising to restore free collective bargaining, but in the face of rising inflation and strikes and industrial action by the unions—and particularly after the bitter miners’ strike in early 1972, which led to a state of emergency, power cuts and a three-day week—the government was driven to introduce a statutory incomes policy. Through all the industrial conflict, however, Heath persistently and genuinely sought agreement with the unions and with business, to try and make a ‘corporate’ or ‘tripartite’ system of economic management work. But the problem was the ‘social partners’—the TUC and the union leadership on the one hand, the CBI representing business on the other—were unable or unwilling fully to cooperate, share responsibility and ‘deliver’. The second clash with the miners in 1973–1974 then dealt a final fatal blow to the government’s authority in the ‘who governs?’ election of February 1974. The international economic scene could hardly have been more difficult or volatile, with the breakdown of the stable international currency and financial system, based on fixed exchange rates, put together at

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Bretton Woods after the war; worldwide inflation and dramatically rising world commodity prices; and then the massively disruptive shock of the 1973–1974 oil crisis, when OPEC action following the Arab-Israeli war resulted in a quadrupling in the price of oil and cutbacks in production, further accelerating inflation and deepening recession. In this context, Britain was not uniquely challenged in the 1970s. Other countries also experienced a severe deterioration in economic performance, with a slowdown in growth rates and higher inflation and unemployment, signalling an end to the ‘golden years’ of the post-war boom (Coopey and Woodward 1996: 3). Inevitably, in many states this led to a major rethink of domestic policy regimes developed in the post-war period (Gamble 1988: 3). In Britain, the emergence of stagflation—simultaneously increasing unemployment and inflation—was the moment when ‘the traditional macro-­economic methods stopped working’ and the established Keynesian ‘conventional wisdom’ was fundamentally challenged (Bogdanor 1994: 359). The growing sense of regime crisis can also be seen in the tone and tenor of internal government deliberations on economic problems and policy. In the run up to the 1972 U-turn, there was the view that unemployment topping one million for the first time in 25 years was politically and socially unacceptable, and an impatient sense of the need for a major modernisation and reconstruction of British industry and what Heath called ‘our whole economic structure’ to tackle long-term problems of decline and meet the challenge of entry into Europe (Theakston and Connelly 2018: 205–206). By early 1974—against the background of the oil crisis and the pay policy struggle with the miners—the Whitehall language was of ‘economic life as we know it ... transformed’, ‘permanent damage of the most serious kind to the economy’ and ‘an unmanageable wage/price spiral’. Heath chaired a Number 10 meeting, where it was agreed there were two possible scenarios: ‘one in which it was possible to deal with the developing economic situation in a reasonably orderly manner, and another in which there was a major collapse of confidence which called for immediate and drastic action’ (Theakston and Connelly 2018: 233–234). There have been claims there was in fact something like a ‘collective nervous breakdown in the official machine’. From the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), Lord Rothschild minuted the prime minister with apocalyptic warnings about the dangers of ‘chaos, riots and anarchy’ and the ‘downfall of democracy’ (Hughes 2012: 199, 216). Meanwhile senior Treasury officials warned that ‘the country may face collapse’ and

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‘economic and social disaster’ (McIntosh 2006: 62, 68). The sense of ‘loss of control’ at the centre helped open the way to later ‘fundamental changes in economic management’ (Cairncross 1996: 137).

Heath and the Disjunctive Dilemma Heath’s response to the disjunctive dilemma with which he was presented was sui generis, which is to be expected, given the sui generis nature of every instance of political disjunction. However, Heath relied on some tried and tested means of resolving crises, and there are, therefore, parallels between the strategies and tactics he used, and those used by other disjunctive leaders before and since. These included the discursive articulation of crisis conditions, so as to reduce expectations surrounding his government; attempting to achieve otherwise incompatible policy objectives by valorising governing technique; and, adopting a highly pragmatic policy stance, which accounts for his government’s reputation as a frantically U-turning administration, even if Heath did start out with a coherent policy vision centred on winning EEC membership. Crisis Narratives and Expectation Management in Heath’s Political Discourse The ontological status of crises, as Hay and Smith (2013) have argued, is equivocal. Although it is possible to formulate objective measures of crises, perhaps referring to key economic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP) growth and rates of unemployment and inflation, or public opinion polling exploring ‘anti-political’ sentiment, the crucial fact is that crises are always discursively mediated or even constructed. Similarly, Jessop (2002) has noted in his analysis of the collapse of Keynesian welfarism and the emergence of the Schumpterian competition state that the ultimate consequences of crisis tendencies appearing within a particular political regime are determined by whether they are discursively articulated as a crisis within or of that regime. For this reason, political leaders naturally attempt to promulgate an understanding of the present that best serves their own interests and/or accords with their pre-existing world view. Disjunctive leaders in particular commonly display a tendency to discursively articulate a crisis within the existing political regime, partly as a way of explaining political disjunction but also as a way of handling the central disjunctive dilemma that

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necessarily demands most of their attention. The ‘impossible leadership situation’ of being affiliated to and therefore having to defend a failing political regime can be made less onerous if this framing becomes the dominant framing of the present, because it provides a ready-made excuse for any policy failures that happen in government (which are inevitable in disjunctive periods) and affords the government scope for ‘exceptional measures’. Although the crisis narrative in Heathite discourse was multifaceted, at its core was an image of an economic malaise, which, in the early years, was discursively articulated as part of the outgoing Labour government’s legacy, stemming as it did from tax rises and the devaluation of sterling. This passage from Heath’s speech to the 1970 Conservative Party conference sketches its broad outlines: We have found in government, as I warned the country we would, that at every turn we find limitations—limitations imposed on the nation in part by past events and in part by the failures of our predecessors: limitations of the economy, of heavy international indebtedness, of enormous and increasing public expenditure, of a high and damaging level of taxation: limitations of outmoded industrial relations and increasing losses through strikes: limitations of wildly excessive wage demands encouraged deliberately by the last Administration for its own political purposes: limitations of a stagnant economy and roaring inflation (Heath 1970).

Later on, with Heath installed as Prime Minister and with the ready-­ made excuse of an outgoing Labour government no longer at hand, the focus shifted onto underlying reasons for Britain’s long-term relative economic decline—mainly that other European countries and Japan had the ‘opportunity’ to redesign their industrial base from scratch after the Second World War, and that Britain was outside the new engine of European economic growth that was the European  Coal and  Steel  Community. This was framed as being particularly damaging due to the growing interconnectedness of countries and intensified global economic competition consequent upon the rise of major new economic powers such as West Germany, Japan and China. Then in the final few years of the Heath premiership, worsening international economic conditions beyond the government’s control came to the fore. This included a recognition that the US was proving increasingly incapable of performing the role of global hegemon (which Heath recognised the destabilising potential of at least as early as mid-1971) and the disastrous inflationary

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consequences of the 1973 Oil Shock (Kavanagh 1996). Heath used this image of a deteriorating world economy to dampen down expectations on his government and to buy time, plainly stating in the February 1974 Conservative Party manifesto that the new developments ‘will make us poorer as a nation’ but only until the panacea of North Sea Oil came on stream (Conservative Party 1974). However, the economy was just one facet of the crisis narrative running through Heathite discourse. Closely linked was a crisis centred around recalcitrant trade unions, with Heath making much of the fact that the outgoing Labour government had presided over an annual record of strikes in 1969 (which, as was mentioned earlier, was a dubious record the Heath government itself would go on to break), while other more distant facets of this crisis narrative included the threat to the territorial integrity of the UK in the form of Scottish nationalism and the growing Troubles in Northern Ireland, and an image of a breakdown of law and order, which Heath saw largely as a consequence of the profligate, overextended and ‘antiquated’ Keynesian welfare state (Heath 1968). These separate strands coalesced in Heathite discourse into an overarching crisis of governmental ‘overload’, referring to the fundamental inability of the government to achieve even its most basic objectives of economic expansion and social peace due to the over-encumbrancing of the state by Labour governments and Conservative ones reacting to Labour’s political advances, which badly undermined the Conservative Party’s hard-earned reputation for governing competence (Kavanagh 1987). Analysis of Heath’s speeches throughout this period using concordancing software serves to illustrate this point (see Table 14.3). A comparison of two corpora—one containing all of Heath’s speeches and election broadcasts as Prime Minister and the other containing all of his speeches and election broadcasts as Leader of the Opposition—revealed that keywords (and their synonyms) appearing much more frequently in the former when compared to the latter included ‘inflation’, ‘Ireland’, ‘oil’, ‘miners’, ‘world’, ‘Europe’ and ‘community’, which reflects the various crises Heath encountered in government and his attempts to diffuse them either by articulating them as beyond the control of national governments or by advocating membership of the EEC.  Conversely, ‘Labour’ and ‘Mr Wilson’ were keywords that appeared much less frequently in the former when compared to the latter, reflecting the fact that it became more difficult to blame the previous Wilson government for the crisis the further away from the 1970 General Election Heath got.

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Table 14.3  Twenty most frequent word-stems in Heath speeches, by period Leader of the Opposition Word government People Now Country Labour Britain Must Party One New Time Want Years Conservative Well Make British Last Believe Policy

Prime Minister Weighted % 1.50 0.74 0.62 0.60 0.58 0.56 0.54 0.48 0.48 0.45 0.42 0.41 0.40 0.40 0.38 0.36 0.35 0.35 0.33 0.32

Word Government People Now Community One Country New Time Must World Britain Years Europe Last Prices Believe British Policy Way Many

Weighted % 1.04 0.78 0.69 0.55 0.55 0.54 0.53 0.46 0.45 0.45 0.42 0.41 0.38 0.38 0.36 0.36 0.34 0.34 0.34 0.34

Note: Data generated in Nvivo using a word stop-list.

‘Less Government, and of a Better Quality’: Heath’s Valorisation of Technique The framing of crises by political leaders invariably also entails the discursive articulation of a way out of the crisis. For reconstructive leaders such as Attlee and Thatcher, this can involve the repudiation of the existing political regime as a whole. For disjunctive leaders this is not an option, so another way out of the crisis needs to be found. In Heath’s case this was provided in the first instance by a new approach to the administration of government, which painted him as a dynamic and modernising statesman closer in kind to a British Roosevelt or de Gaulle than any of the ‘caretaker’ Conservative Prime Ministers of the post-war period (Bogdanor 1996: 387). In some of Heath’s earlier speeches as Leader of the Opposition, this took the form of an emphasis on the unique ability of the Conservatives to understand how to govern the ‘free enterprise system’

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and Labour’s inability to, due to not knowing ‘what makes it tick’ (Heath 1966). Meanwhile, the need for a more conciliatory approach from all of the industrial partners was a key theme for Heath from the outset, but it became increasingly important after he took over the reins of power, as Britain’s economic and political malaise worsened. Heath urged the industrial partners to put aside partisan or sectional interests and act responsibly, and although there was a willingness evident early on during the Heath government to take ‘tough decisions’, this faded quickly. In particular, after the 1972 miners’ strike, Heath petitioned much more vociferously for ‘a more sensible way to settle our differences’ (CPA, CRD, PPB 273/5, ‘Ministerial Broadcast. The Prime Minister. 27 February 1972’), involving a great deal more consultation and cooperation between government, unions and employers, all of which was discursively framed in terms of the exigencies of a traditional ‘One Nation’ Conservatism. In broader perspective, this can be seen as part of a shift from ‘mechanical’ to ‘moral’ reform (Clarke 1978) under Heath: faced with the failure of his top-down governing strategies to deliver the expected economic, political and social changes, Heath increasingly defaulted to attempts at fostering change through exhortations for all parties concerned to adopt the correct values and attitudes in the hope that these might prove more effective. The basic proposition Heath put to the electorate was that what was needed in order to lift Britain out of its ongoing malaise was a more competent, less doctrinaire government willing to decentralise power where needed. The following passage closing the 1970 Conservative manifesto is emblematic of this way of thinking, and it also illustrates the ripple effects of crisis narratives (in this instance, the crisis of governmental overload) throughout Heathite discourse: [The election] is a choice between another five years of the kind of incompetent, doctrinaire Government we have had for nearly six years and a new and better style of Government. Faced with any problem, the instinctive Socialist reaction is to control, to restrict, and to tax. We aim to reduce the burden of taxation, and to extend individual choice, freedom and responsibility … government today is trying to do too much, managing too much, bringing too much to the centre for decision. We plan to clear away from Whitehall a great load of tasks which has accumulated under Socialism; to hand back responsibilities wherever we can to the individual, to the family, to private initiative, to the local authority, to the people.

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Heath’s presentation of himself as a ‘somersaulting moderniser’ (Hennessy 2000: 331) also led to a number of significant machinery of government changes. Far from being public relations gimmicks, these were rooted in a period of serious policy development while in opposition, and not only was the 1970 Conservative Party manifesto the most detailed one ever up until that point, there was also almost complete continuity of Cabinet portfolios between opposition and government, making the incoming Heath government perhaps the best prepared of any since the end of the Second World War (Hennessy 2000: 336). Heath’s Whitehall priorities upon entering government were threefold: to rationalise the departmental structure of government, creating a system of larger, ‘federal’ departments; to minimise the number of ‘lowest common denominator’ compromises between departments, which he thought undermined the government’s strategic vision; and to make the civil service more dynamic and efficient (Theakston 1996: 77). Unlike some of the Thatcherites making up the next Conservative government, Heath did not view the civil service as an enemy, seeing it instead as a crucial component of his programme for a modernised governmental structure and an instrument of his technocratic will. Nevertheless, his reforms to the civil service proved in the event to be rather modest. However, he achieved the first of these objectives by creating the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Environment, and the second by creating the aforementioned CPRS and Programme Analysis and Review (PAR). The thinking behind Heath’s machinery of government reorganisation was that it would eliminate unnecessary duplication across departments (and so economise on the cost of government), make it easier to develop effective strategies for implementing policies that had previously cut across several different departments and help resolve policy conflicts within a single unified line of management (Theakston 1996: 91). Heath’s approach to Cabinet has been described as ‘the traditional collective approach, but a sharpened version’ on the basis of his reforms to the Cabinet committee system and others such as the CPRS (Hennessy 2000: 337). He was diligent when it came to consulting Cabinet colleagues on issues of importance, even in fast-moving circumstances, but in the words of William Waldegrave (cited in Hennessy 2000: 344), he intended the Cabinet to be ‘a rational process for policy formation and analysis’, and he hoped that it would ‘fulfil its textbook role as a hierarchy of rational decision’ so that some of the seemingly intractable problems facing government could be rationally solved.

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The purpose of the CPRS was to deal with the long-standing lack of strategic thinking within government and the Cabinet’s preoccupation with ‘day-to-day’ matters. To this end, it provided policy advice from an ‘outsider’ perspective (Blackstone and Plowden 1988). Collective briefs produced by the CPRS were designed to offer ministers a ‘synoptic digest’ of the most pressing issues facing the government, pointing out drawbacks or weak spots in solutions arrived at using the traditional Whitehall machinery. Other policy reports focused on long-term, cross-cutting problems likely to affect the government’s ability to implement its policy vision, presenting ministers with studiously non-partisan and sometimes unwelcome takes on crucially important but ‘slow-burning’ issues such as Concorde, the emergence of information and communications technologies, London’s future as a hub for international finance and energy policy (Blackstone and Plowden 1988: 221). There is evidence that the CPRS performed a useful strategic function for the government, advising against certain ill-fated decisions and anticipating some of the major new governing challenges arising in the Heath years and after. For example, it advised against the 1972 bailout of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders on the grounds that to do so in the absence of significant improvements in managerial practice would badly undermine the government’s industrial strategy, and it successfully anticipated a major rise in oil prices and the chaos that would inevitably ensue for the economy and the public finances. It also advised Heath against the course of action he pursued in relation to the 1974 miners’ strike, arguing that the events in the Middle East made it legitimate for the government to grant a higher pay award than its incomes policy technically allowed (Campbell 1993: 324). However, the actual influence of the CPRS was tempered by a combination of a lack of resources, Whitehall recalcitrance and Heath’s own unwillingness to heed the advice of the body he created. Programme Analysis and Review, meanwhile, can be seen as a complement to the CPRS in that its purpose was to help tackle the problem of governmental overload and to bring public spending down by identifying and eliminating unnecessary governmental functions (Theakston 1996: 92). But it failed to have a noticeable impact due to a combination of Treasury and civil service suspicion and the effects of the short-lived ‘Barber Boom’ of 1972–1973, which in taking fiscal policy in a radically expansionary new direction undermined PAR’s entire rationale (Campbell 1993: 316).

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Rearranging Deckchairs: Policy Experimentation Under Heath Heath’s reputation as the ‘undisputed king of the U-turn’ (Bale 2011) is undoubtedly partly due to the Thatcherites’ self-serving rhetoric on the post-war consensus designed to bolster the narrative of a drastic post-1979 caesura in British politics, at which point the flaws of the Keynesian welfarist political regime Heath had signed-up to had been laid bare and a new ‘free market’ regime was instituted (Hay 2010). However, the policy record of the Heath government illustrates that such portrayals of governmental disarray were far from unfounded. What is significant about the series of U-turns performed by the Heath government, for present purposes, is that they were a response to the disjunctive dilemma it faced. It is fair to say that upon becoming Prime Minister, Heath did have a coherent policy vision. The machinery of government changes sketched earlier were a crucial part of this because—it was argued—they would reduce the cost of government and, more importantly, help deal with the problem of governmental overload but more important still was Britain’s entry into the EEC. Heath saw EEC entry, combined with some protoThatcherite reforms to industrial relations, taxation and social policy, as a way not only of resolving Britain’s increasingly dire economic problems but also of finding Britain a new role in the world after empire. In economic terms, the main benefit of EEC membership would be to expose British industry to intensified competition—providing it with the incentive to modernise—and to facilitate that modernisation by means of technological cooperation through EU institutions and the opening up of European markets, which would enable greater economies of scale for British firms (Young 1996: 259). In terms of Britain’s place in the world, Heath was an advocate of EEC entry not just because of a deep-seated Europhilia on his part, rooted in his time spent on the continent prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, or his desire to avoid a repeat of the latter, but primarily because of the utility of EEC membership for the British national interest (Young 1996: 259). Heath thought of post-war and post-empire Britain as a ‘middle power’ (Heath 1973), but one that could continue to play an important role in a world of superpower rivalry through the EEC, partly because an economically resurgent UK would strengthen old ties to the Commonwealth and cement the Atlantic alliance but also because of incipient moves towards a common European foreign and defence policy. However, EEC membership failed to produce any of the intended benefits, at least in the short term. For the first several years of membership,

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higher food prices under the CAP, the hit to the public finances because of the loss of earnings from external tariffs and the failure of British industry to adapt quickly to intensified competition from Europe—not to mention a major downturn in the world economy after 1973—meant that Europe failed to alleviate any of Heath’s most pressing domestic problems (Young 1996: 281). It is in this context that Heath’s policy experimentation, and all that entailed in terms of contradicting many of his earlier public pronouncements and much of what was in the 1970 Conservative Party manifesto, has to be considered. Heath performed a series of major U-turns in response to events. Firstly, the ‘lame ducks’ of Rolls-Royce and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders were rescued despite Heath warning at the 1970 Conservative Party conference that: If [private sector firms] go their own way and accede to irresponsible wage demands which damage their own firms and create a loss of jobs for those who work in them, then the Government are certainly not going to step in and rescue them from the consequences of their own actions. (Heath 1970)

Secondly, Heath reversed his earlier objections to state-directed economic planning and regional development with the creation in March 1972 of the Industrial Development Executive and the 1972 Industry Act. Thirdly, he abandoned his initial ‘hands-off’ approach to industrial relations by adopting a policy of tripartism, following defeat at the hands of the striking miners in 1972. Fourthly, his government adopted a statutory prices and incomes policy, following the failure of tripartism—this was perhaps the starkest of all the U-turns, with the 1970 Conservative manifesto stating that ‘Labour’s compulsory wage control was a failure and we will not repeat it’. Then, fifthly, the Heath government U-turned on its stated intention to reduce public expenditure with the ‘Barber Boom’ (which fell victim to another U-turn in late 1973) (Ball 1996: 328). The most important consequence of the series of U-turns—which stood in such stark contrast to Heath’s approach to opposition, characterised by careful thought and meticulous planning—was that it put paid to any semblance of a coherent policy vision undergirding the Heath government. However, what neither it nor Heath’s Europe policy did was turn Heath into an opponent of the existing political regime. Heath’s overriding objectives were always full employment and social peace, and although he had ambitious designs in Europe and was willing to U-turn when under

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pressure, he never went beyond being an advocate of a ‘better consensus’ (Hennessy 2000: 336). After the miners rejected the November 1973 pay offer, Heath began to articulate the scale of the difficulties facing the nation, with the Conservatives’ February 1974 manifesto describing the situation as the gravest crisis since the war. Sacrifices would be needed, and no party could be expected to deliver improved standards of living (CPA, CRD, PPB 34/1, ‘Election Forum. The Rt. Hon. Edward Heath. Leader of the Conservative Party. 14 February, 1974’), but despite such foreboding, Heath never endorsed ‘third order’ change, that is, while he did countenance significant change in terms of policy instruments, he at no point indicated that he thought the prevailing policy paradigm had become obsolete (Hall 1993).

Evaluating Heath’s Prime Ministerial Performance If we are to assess Heath’s performance as a disjunctive leader, it is important to not only evaluate the state of the political regime as Heath left it in 1974 but also look beyond the electoral horizon to which statecraft assessments are typically fixed and also consider the medium- and long-term implications of Heath’s actions for the regime, identifying the path-­ dependent processes he set in motion and which his successors, both disjunctive and reconstructive, would be forced to contend with. One key lesson of the Heath premiership is clearly that appeals to governing technique as a way out of crises can only get political leaders so far, and in some instances, it can be actively counterproductive. Heath’s technocratic approach to government not only invited ridicule (e.g. in the form of Private Eye’s regular ‘HeathCo’ series, depicting Heath as a grumpy managing director of a small firm prone to management- speak) (Sandbrook 2010), it also drew the ire of major intra-party rivals such as Powell (Hennessy 2000: 349), and singularly failed to solve any of the major governing challenges of the time. Although the CPRS, with its remit to ‘think the unthinkable’, did identify some of the threats to the regime, it proved rather better at scaring ministers than promoting policies capable of effecting meaningful change (Davis 2007: 127), and straightforward appeals for key interests to act responsibly in a context of major economic and political upheaval amounted to little more than wishful thinking. Meanwhile, poor self-promotion and lack of political capital with the party and the media cost Heath particularly dearly because of the character

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of his U-turns and his poor management of expectations. Where Heath’s U-turns are concerned, it is easy to overlook that in several cases resistance to changing course was anticipated at the time to have the potential to destabilise the regime even further. For example, the bailout of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders had followed warnings from the Chief Constable of Glasgow that he could not guarantee public order in the event of closure of the yards, and capitulation to the miners in 1972 had come after the West Midlands police had feared serious injuries or even deaths with the mass picketing at Saltley Gate. Doubtless, these reversals would have been difficult to sell to his party and the public in any circumstance, but they were made considerably more so because Heath had so clearly and trenchantly set out his positions before reversing course completely. A more successful disjunctive leader would have been more guarded in the commitments he made and the expectations he encouraged. A successful disjunctive leader also frustrates reconstructive appeals emerging within their own or other parties. Here, Heath’s record was mixed. It should be noted first of all that, despite the difficulties encountered by his government, many shared his understanding of this as a crisis within rather than of the regime. Neo-corporatism, incomes policies and Keynesian demand management continued to have their adherents after February 1974. Indeed, on their return to government, the leadership of the Labour Party made its own attempt to stabilise and rehabilitate the regime despite the misgivings of the left of the party. When necessary, Heath could be adept at anticipating and bypassing opposition. For example, opposition to the 1972 Industry Act was forestalled by preparing it in secret and then dismissing the DTI’s free-market junior ministers. As noted earlier, reconstructive ideas did gain some ground in the Conservative Party. But, despite the efforts of Powell, the IEA and some intra-party groups (Grant 2010: 135), this diagnosis did not gain a breakthrough before the Conservatives left office. Reconstructive ideas were not voiced in Heath’s Cabinet. Although Heath was a dominant Prime Minister, the silence of Thatcher and Joseph in this respect owed more to their own agency than to Heath’s. Many back-bench neoliberals also chose not to publicly mobilise against Heath’s U-turns. For example, many persuaded themselves that the introduction of an incomes policy would be ‘a breathing space, during which the money supply could be dealt with, to be succeeded by a return to “the market”’ (Dorey 1995: 80). Heath’s actions in office, however, ultimately undermined support for the regime in the Conservative Party. The circumstances in which the

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Heath government fell validated those who had expressed misgivings about incomes policies and neo-corporatism, and encouraged reassessment amongst those who had not. Skowronek (1993: 40) notes that disjunctive leaders tend to become ‘the foils for reconstructive leadership, the indispensable premise upon which traditional regime opponents generate the authority to repudiate the establishment wholesale’. This was to be Heath’s fate. As Cowley and Bailey (2000) have shown, ideological hostility to Heath’s position played a significant role in the outcome of the party’s 1975 leadership election—see also Chap. 16. Although Thatcher was circumspect in her promotion of reconstructive politics while Leader of the Opposition, the way was open to construct a narrative in which the failures of office were traced back to Heath’s ‘betrayal’ of the Selsdon manifesto and used to mobilise support for the anti-statist, free-market reconstructive politics pursued by his successor (see, e.g. Kerr 2005). Having come to power and encountered a regime manifesting increasing signs of enervation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that, in February 1974, Heath left a regime that had been further destabilised. As we saw earlier, even Heath himself acknowledged the bleak prospects the nation faced in early 1974. As Jeffreys (2002) notes, the atmosphere of crisis anticipated by many was absent during both the three-day week and the February 1974 election. Nevertheless, the nation’s mood had clearly shifted since 1970. The belief that Britain was drifting towards ungovernability that had emerged in the late 1960s had gained further ground by the end of Heath’s premiership. Under the headline ‘Is everybody going mad?’ one national newspaper detected ‘the anxious feeling that this country is drifting—and drifting fast—towards national breakdown. And that nobody is doing a blind bit about it. Except to make it worse’ (Daily Mirror, 1973). Popular attitudes and political behaviour confirm this sense of malaise. For example, opinion polling conducted for the Royal Commission on the Constitution revealed that 49 percent of those questioned felt that the British political system needed major improvements (Royal Commission on the Constitution 1973: 14). As noted earlier, faith in both the established political parties collapsed in February 1974, to the electoral benefit of the Liberals and the nationalist parties. Furthermore, Heath’s mounting fears about the threat of subversion (Aldrich and Cormac 2016) came to be shared more widely. ‘Patriotic’ vigilante groups like ‘Unison Committee for Action’ and ‘Great Britain 75’ formed in the later stages of the Heath government to maintain civil order (see BBC 2012; Bloom

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2010: 383). Some even entertained the possibility that the nation’s trajectory would eventually deliver it into the hands of the military (see Cosgrave 1973). However, significant as this burgeoning sense of crisis was, we must also consider the status of specific regime vulnerabilities. Heath was closely involved in developing responses in virtually all of these areas, and it is here that a more complex picture of Heath’s performance emerges. In the economic sphere, Heath left the nation in recession with inflation, borrowing, the money supply and public expenditure all at higher levels than he inherited. Only unemployment remained (by later standards) low. Many of the government’s economic difficulties originated in a structural crisis in the wider international economy. As Hall records, Heath’s premiership coincided with the beginning of the end of the Keynesian era in which such ‘policies proved increasingly inadequate to the economic challenges facing the nation and more productive of political problems than solutions’ (Hall 1986: 93–94). However, even allowing for these constraints, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Heath’s actions frequently exacerbated these problems. For example, the relaxation of monetary policy during Heath’s ‘dash for growth’ saw lending funnelled into property speculation. When this property bubble burst at the end of 1973, it in turn triggered a crisis in the secondary banking sector, leading to Britain’s first bank crisis since 1866. Such developments also drew attention to an increasing number of cases, including Vehicle and General and Lonrho, where rapacious members of the political and economic elite were seen to have mismanaged their businesses (see Clarke 1981). Having argued that business should be ‘free and enterprising’, Heath was then forced to appeal to business to present its more acceptable face. If anything, Heath was fortunate to escape some of the economic consequences of his actions. His successors were often not so lucky. For example, the threshold clause in Stage III of Heath’s incomes policy contributed to further substantial wage inflation in the first year of the Wilson government. Similarly, the decision to float the pound initially delivered an ‘Indian Summer’ (Hirowatari 2015: 77). However, a floating rate regime diminished the capacity of the Treasury to defend sterling and enhanced the power of market sentiment, as Denis Healey was to discover during the 1976 IMF crisis. EEC membership has been seen by some as Heath’s greatest achievement in a noticeably narrow field (Hurd 1979: 64; Ziegler 2010), although the 2016 referendum result must now qualify even that assessment. Heath cannot be blamed for the subsequent trajectory of integration that led to

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Britain’s departure. However, he bears some responsibility for helping entrench the British political elite’s preference for assuming, rather than testing, the existence of a pro-integration ‘permissive consensus’ among the public. It is certainly the case that the EEC was a source of dissatisfaction with Heath. In the February 1974 British Election Study, 53.9 percent of respondents were sorry that Britain had joined the EEC and only 11.5 percent endorsed staying in on the terms that Heath had negotiated. Yet, as we noted earlier, Heath regarded EEC membership as essential to modernisation of the British economy and the resilience of the regime. Arguably, he secured the former prize, but not speedily enough to bolster the latter. As the 1971 White Paper acknowledged, ‘entry would not, of course, of itself bring about some automatic improvement in our performance’ (HMSO 1971: 12). Having only been a member for a year, and with transitional arrangements that would not expire until the end of 1977, membership could scarcely be expected to have had any significant impact, benign or malign, on the regime by February 1974. Nevertheless, recent studies have suggested that EEC membership did have a positive economic impact and laid the basis for improvements in Britain’s relative economic performance. One study has calculated that, by 1978, membership had generated a 4.8 percent increase in GDP per capita (Campos et al. 2014: 36). However, such benefits were not of an order that could prevent the dysfunctions of the regime from economic collapse under Heath’s successors. Rather, the principal beneficiary proved to be Heath’s reconstructive successor since, ‘without EU membership, Mrs Thatcher’s reforms would have been much less effective’ (Campos and Coricelli 2017: 69). Heath’s responses to the territorial vulnerabilities of the regime also defy a simplistic assessment. Heath inherited a deteriorating situation in Northern Ireland that was exacerbated by the introduction of internment. Soon, the government was literally staring into the abyss. As the minutes of a meeting held at Downing Street days after Bloody Sunday record, ‘there seemed to be a real possibility of a major Civil War, affecting both North and South’ (CAB/9/R/238/7). In the context of this crisis, a number of regime-changing options were actively considered. In April 1971, Heath and his senior civil servants had considered withdrawal from Northern Ireland, ‘in effect leaving Northern Ireland to work out its own destiny either in independence or in fusion with the rest of Ireland’ (TNA,

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PREM 15/611). Alec Douglas-Home proposed that the government should ‘start to push’ the Unionist community towards reunification (Theakston 2010: 172). The Cabinet contemplated repartition of the border. However, the Heath government instead used the introduction of direct rule to buy time. This breathing space was then used to negotiate a deal to establish a power-sharing administration in Belfast and recognise the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic. As Bulpitt (2008) argues, this was an attempt to re-establish the old regime of the ‘dual polity’ by broadening the local elites in government at Stormont. That the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was recognised as ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’ shows that Heath’s general approach was a reasonable one. Yet if Heath was in possession of a workable solution, he was a Prime Minister, once again, at the wrong point in political time. Much attention has focused on Heath’s pressure on Faulkner to accept a Council of Ireland, withdrawing Whitelaw to Westminster, and the decision to call an early election. But the fundamental obstacle to the prospects of Sunningdale was one that Heath could do little to address. As Hennessey (2015) recognises, it was the Republicans’ refusal to accept the principle of consent and their commitment to the armed struggle that stymied the prospects of a stable settlement for the next two decades. The more immediate cost for Heath of Sunningdale was a further fragmentation in the coalition supporting the regime. Anti-Sunningdale Unionists won all but one of the Northern Irish seats in February 1974 and refused the Conservative whip. Had Heath been able to rely on their support, the Conservatives would have constituted the largest party in the new Parliament. If Heath’s agency in Northern Ireland served to buy time for the established territorial regime, he was less successful elsewhere in the Celtic periphery. Bulpitt notes how, Northern Ireland aside, peripheral nationalism presented little threat while Heath was in office. The SNP had advanced at the 1970 election, winning its first parliamentary seat outside a by-election. However, its performance fell below the expectations that had been generated at the time of the Hamilton by-election. This perceived SNP under-performance, combined with the evident lack of enthusiasm within the Conservative Party (Mitchell 1990), had allowed Heath to ignore proposals for Scottish devolution. However, Heath’s inability to stabilise vulnerabilities elsewhere in the regime served to promote Scottish nationalism. In particular, in a context where North Sea oil was to play a

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greater role in the UK’s economic fortunes, the SNP were delivered a potent basis for electoral mobilisation. They exploited this in February 1974 by gaining six seats followed by further gains in October, leaving the union less resilient than when Heath had taken office. Yet within this overall picture it is easy to overlook that Heath managed with credibility some sources of regime vulnerability. This, we would argue, is the case with immigration. It was ‘a period in which anti-­ immigration sentiment reached near-hysterical levels, and the government faced restrictionist pressure more intense than that faced by any British Prime Minister, before or since’ (Hansen 2000: 179). Yet, unlike some of his disjunctive counterparts, Heath never adopted the policies recommended to him by his populist critics. Similarly, where other disjunctive leaders have brought the same populist critics into government, there was to be no way back for Powell under Heath once he had been cast into the wilderness. Although the 1971 Immigration Act tightened immigration controls, Heath succeeded in maintaining the bipartisan operational code that had underpinned policy in this area (Bulpitt 1986). He maintained the consensus that such controls on immigration must be accompanied by efforts to reduce racism and deprivation. Finally, Heath eschewed the temptations of playing the race card for electoral advantage. In particular, he ensured that Britain fulfilled its moral obligations to British passport holders expelled from Uganda, and the boost which the far-right gained in the aftermath of the crisis was small and temporary. In the end, Heath’s attempts to resolve the disjunctive dilemma of 1970s’ Britain failed. Fundamentally, this was a result of the ‘impossible leadership situation’—being an affiliate of an exceptionally vulnerable political regime. However, political leaders enjoy considerable scope for agency and action, even in periods of disjunction. The preceding analysis has highlighted some of the ways in which Heath mishandled the disjunctive dilemma, but Heath did also enjoy some successes in managing the regime he inherited. Some of his decisions had benefits his successors were able to reap, and Heath was also able to identify solutions that would prosper in better political times. Furthermore, although he left a regime substantially weakened in many respects, it was Callaghan who was to have the misfortune of governing when, as it were, the music stopped and the political regime of Keynesian welfarism reached its highest degree of entropy.

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CHAPTER 15

Who Governs? The General Election Defeats of 1974 Andrew S. Roe-Crines

The aim of this chapter is to consider the performance of the Conservative Party in the General Elections of 1974. Having secured 13,145,123 votes on a 46.4 percent vote share at the General Election of June 1970 (which provided them with 330 parliamentary seats), the Conservative Party would fall to 11,872,180 votes (a 37.9 percent vote share and 297 parliamentary seats) at the General Election of February 1974 (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971; Butler and Kavanagh 1974). A further erosion in the Conservative vote would occur at the General Election of October 1974, as they fell to 277 parliamentary seats on a 35.8 percent vote share and 10,464,817 votes (Butler and Kavanagh 1975). In parliamentary terms, their respective electoral reversals were marginal, that is, the Labour Party entered government as a minority administration in March 1974 and then with a majority of three after the October General Election. This reflected the fact that voters were displaying their scepticism towards the two main parties. The combined Conservative-Labour vote at the General

A. S. Roe-Crines (*) University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_15

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Election of February 1974 was 75.1 percent as compared to their combined return of 89.5 percent at the General Election of June 1970, and Labour actually regained office on a lower vote share (37.9 percent) than they had secured in losing the General Election of 1970 (43.1 percent) (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971; Butler and Kavanagh 1974). The rise of the Liberals from 2,117,035 votes or 7.5 percent in June 1970, to 6,059,519 or 19.3 percent in February 1974 (see Lemieux 1977; Alt et al. 1977), created a third-party vote twice the size of any that had returned since the General Election of 1929 (Butler and Kavanagh 1974: 15). It would act as a stimulus for the debates around the rise of multiparty politics in Britain (Berrington 1979). The perception that the dynamics of party competition and parliamentary arithmetic was changing was felt within Conservatives’ circles from March 1974 onwards. For example, based on the evidence from national polling and their own internal polling, the Conservative Party Chair, William Whitelaw, lamented that ‘the nation is in one of its coalition moods’ (CPA, LCC 1/3/2/110-113 ‘The Liberals’, 28 June 1974). That Whitelaw was discussing these issues within a shadow Cabinet meeting in June 1974 was a source of frustration and anger for Conservatives. That is because the loss of office was not only unnecessary but also unexpected. It was unnecessary because having won the General Election of June 1970, there was no need to face the electorate until June 1975 (Sandbrook 2010: 611–645). It was unexpected because despite the governing difficulties that the Conservatives had been experiencing over the previous 3.5 years in office, any doubts about their governing competence were not being translated into concrete support for the Labour opposition. As Ziegler observed ‘it was taken for granted by almost everyone that the Conservatives would win’ (Ziegler 2010: 432). After all, within the three-week campaigning period—between February 7 and February 28—a total of 26 opinion polls were conducted, and the Conservatives held a lead in all but one of them, including one lead of 9 percentage points. Of the final opinion polls, two gave them a 2 percentage-­point lead; one gave them a 3 percentage-point lead; two gave them a 4 percentage-point lead; and one gave them a 1 percentage-point lead (Butler and Kavanagh 1974: 95). This chapter seeks to address the following dilemmas: first, how and why did the Conservatives decide to call and then lose the General Election of February 1974 and, second, how and why did they fail to regain office at the General Election of October 1974. By analysing these two

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dilemmas, we can highlight the mistakes that Heath made, which would increase demands within the Conservative Party for a change in the party leadership on the basis that he was an electoral liability (Fisher 1977: 147–173; Heppell 2008: 51–53).

The General Election of February 1974 Heath had not wanted to call an early General Election. In his memoirs he would reflect that: ‘I always regarded the election as nothing better than a grim necessity’ (Heath 1998: 512). The vast majority of Prime Ministers prefer to choose the date when they return to the country for a renewed mandate. This is because it gives them an advantage over their opposition parties in being able to pick a moment that is most fortuitous to producing an increased majority. Moreover, Prime Ministers as a general rule prefer not to call General Elections during the winter as the longer nights and colder climates may risk (a) demotivating activists who go canvassing and (b) a reducing turnout of supporters. The Prime Minister of the day also risks all when they go to the country, especially prematurely. Heath was made well aware of what those risks were. Earlier in the Parliament, Conservative Central Office and Research Department had given considerable thought to possible General Election dates prior to the necessary deadline of June 1975. Within their deliberations was the recommendation that a ‘snap’ General Election would not be advisable, and that one fought on a single issue could produce a ‘disturbing result’, as the ‘electorate or significant parts of it will not decide to vote about something else’ (CPA, SC/73/17, Memo by Michael Fraser, ‘Strategic Situation in 1973’, 14 February 1973). The demands of being in office had left them less well prepared than they had been for the General Election in terms of protecting their own marginals and in terms of targeting seats that they could gain (see, e.g. CPA, CCO, 20/8/16, ‘Letter from Michael Fraser to Edward Heath’, 26 May 1972). It is also worth recalling that in the aftermath of winning power, Conservative strategists had calculated that in order to regain power at the General Election in June 1975, they ‘needed unemployment under half a million and inflation under six percent’ (CPA, CCO 500/24/278, ‘Report on the 1970 General Election’, 17 July 1970). On both indicators, the Heath administration was clearly failing (as indicated in Chap. 5 by James Silverwood, unemployment was around 946,000 and inflation was at 8.4 percent at the end of 1973), so there were clearly good reasons to remain in office

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and wait (hope) for these indicators to improve by June 1975 (for the economic policy record of the Conservatives under Heath, see Wade 2013). Given these concerns about holding an earlier than necessary General Election, then, the obvious question is what happened to make Heath feel as if he had no other option than go to the electorate in February 1974? Ultimately, the decision to hold an early General Election was a response to the breakdown in negotiations with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in the winter of 1973–1974 (on the Heath government and the Trade Unions, see Seldon 1988; Taylor 1996). Having been left humiliated by the Miners’ Strike of early 1972, which was resolved after the Heath administration broke their own informal wage restraint policy (Phillips 2006), the Cabinet was determined that they should not back down again—as Ball argues, a ‘second surrender to the NUM was out of the question’ (Ball 1996: 345). The NUM went on an overtime ban in November 1973 as a response to the pay award offered by the National Coal Board. With their action coinciding with the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East and the OPEC initiating increases in oil crisis, the Heath administration was not well positioned to withstand the impending energy crisis. Diminishing coal supplies and electricity power cuts led to the imposition of the three-day week (Dorey 1995: 65–91). Neither of the options for Heath looked that attractive politically. The first avenue out of this national crisis, which was already undermining the perception of the government as being competent, was for Heath to do whatever was necessary to get the miners to end their action. Such a step might be deemed to be unacceptable amongst some on the Conservative backbenchers, and it would create an image of governing weakness. The second avenue that Heath could pursue was to call a General Election and, having secured a new (and potentially) larger parliamentary majority, argue that the second Heath administration had been granted a mandate to withstand the demands of the Miners, thus compelling them to back down (Dorey 1995: 65–91). However, although Heath and the Cabinet reached what Kavanagh calls their ‘fatal decision’ in February 1974, rumours of a General Election, as a way out of the industrial relations impasse, had been circulating within the print media for weeks (see, e.g. Greig 1974; Hatfield 1974, Clark 1974a). Rumours focused on a possible General Election date of February 7, and for this to occur, Heath and his Cabinet would have to make their decision to dissolve Parliament by January 17. If Heath and the Cabinet had made their decision before January 17, then they would have launched

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the General Election campaign against the miners’ overtime ban, but after that date had passed, the NUM decided to call for a full strike (Kavanagh 1996: 362–363). Heath had been leading a Cabinet that remained unsure of which avenue to pursue (Butler and Kavanagh 1974: 35). For example, Peter Walker (President of the Board of Trade; 1972–1974) felt that the argument that the miners constituted a special case was bogus and had favoured an earlier General Election (Walker 1991: 125). In contrast, the Employment Secretary, William Whitelaw, attempted to persuade his Cabinet colleagues that when placed within the context of the oil price rise, the miners constituted a special case, and as such, he was opposed to a General Election (Whitelaw 1991: 123–132). Lord Carrington, Conservative Party Chair (1972–1974), would later reflect that Heath was correct in deciding to call a General Election, given the circumstances that he faced, but that he had delayed too long in reaching that decision (Carrington 1988: 264–266). What made Heath delay his decision for so long? Was it a sign of weakness, that is, was Heath ‘dithering’ because having considered the possibility of holding a General Election, he feared he might lose? (Ziegler 2010: 423). Or was it a sign of arrogance, that is, why rush into a General Election to solve the problem when given his abilities at negotiation and persuasion, Heath would be able to secure a compromise solution with the NUM—a position which Taylor describes as ‘self-confidence bordering on delusion’? (Taylor 2005: 97). In his memoirs Heath rationalised his decision on the following grounds. He recalled that the NUM had ‘decided to hold a ballot on an all-out strike’ and ‘asked union members whether they supported the line of the executive’ (Heath 1998: 511). Heath regarded this as direct challenge to his political authority. Moreover, given ‘more than 80 per cent of those voting [wanted] a complete stoppage’ from 4 February, he believed he had ‘no further room for manoeuvre’ in finding a negotiated settlement with them (Heath 1998: 511). As a consequence, he concluded that ‘there was now only one possible course of action’, and that was to ask ‘the British people to raise “the truth and familiar voice of Britain—the voice of moderation and courage”’ (Heath 1998: 511). Heath delivered a Prime Ministerial broadcast to the nation to justify the need for holding a General Election: ‘do you want a strong Government which has clear authority for the future to take decisions which will be needed?’ (TNA: PRO, PREM 15/2128, ‘Text of Ministerial Broadcast’, 7 February 1974). By framing the question in this manner, Heath shifted

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the decision of how to govern onto the voters. Put simply, this strategy sought the support of the British people in his government and their broader economic strategy, and he continued by asking ‘do you want Parliament and the elected Government to continue to fight strenuously against inflation?’ (TNA: PRO, PREM 15/2128, ‘Text of Ministerial Broadcast’, 7 February 1974). Here Heath was arguing that inflation was the key issue that needed to be addressed rather than the traditional fight against unemployment. Arguably this represented an emphasis upon fiscal responsibility from which Heath was seeking a new mandate. He then negatively posed the alternative, saying ‘or do you want them to abandon the struggle against rising prices under pressure from one particularly powerful group of workers?’ (TNA: PRO, PREM 15/2128, ‘Text of Ministerial Broadcast’, 7 February 1974). By legitimising an early General Election in this way, Heath was attempting to frame the problems facing Britain as a clash of ideas whilst presenting himself as the solution: • ‘this time of strife has got to stop. Only you can stop it. It’s time for you to speak—with your vote’; • ‘it’s time for you to say to the extremists, the militants, and the plain and simply misguided: we’ve had enough’; • ‘it’s time for your voice to be heard—the voice of the moderate and reasonable people of Britain: the voice of the majority’; • ‘there’s a lot to be done. For heaven’s sake, let’s get on with it’. (TNA: PRO, PREM 15/2128, ‘Text of Ministerial Broadcast’, 7 February 1974) The sense of this as a ‘crisis’ General Election (Sandbrook 2010: 611) was also reflected in the title of the manifesto—Firm Action for a Fair Britain (Conservative Party 1974a)—which appeared to promise a decisive response to the problems facing the country in the event the Conservatives were returned with a renewed majority. The central message of the manifesto was that the Labour Party had been assimilated by ‘a small group of power-­ hungry trade union leaders’ and that they had become ‘committed to a left-­wing programme more dangerous and more extreme than ever before in its history’, and Labour were a ‘major national disaster’. These points sought to frame Labour as an even greater danger to the country than they had been historically, that their policies were ‘very vague and woolly’ (Sandbrook 2010: 611). The political difficulties

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associated with the leftish-shift with the Labour Party in opposition—see Chap. 13—also motivated some Conservatives into thinking an early General Election could be advantageous. Indeed, Douglas Hurd argued in a paper to Heath that given the economy was unlikely to improve, it would be prudent to take advantage of Labour’s problems with an early General Election, especially as the Heath administration would likely face growing difficulties were it to continue. As such, ‘there is therefore, in our view, a strong argument for a change of approach’ in their strategic planning, that is, despite their earlier doubts, seeking a new mandate might be the best way forward (Hurd 1979: 120). Seeking a renewed mandate against the back drop of the so-called three-­day week was not what they would have planned. The quadrupling of oil prices following the Yom Kippur War between Israel and oil-producing states had, in turn, led to rising food prices, statutory prices and incomes policy, power shortages and ultimately a wholesale re-evaluation of the so-called Keynesian consensus that had informed economic policy since the end of the Second World War (Sandbrook 2010). Heath would reflect that the ‘oil crisis was a highly unwelcome disruption to our foreign policy’, but it was also the primary cause of the problematic domestic environment, as it led the NUM to ‘put in a pay claim which would have meant increases of up to 50 per cent for some workers’ (Heath 1998: 503). It is also worth noting that a further significant issue Heath faced during the campaign concerned the calls from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) for Heath to repeal the divisive Industrial Relations Act. This was because the Act had reframed the relationship between government, employers and Unions to such an extent that it ‘sullied every relationship between employers and unions at national level’ (Clark 1974b: 28). This made seeking negotiated improvements in working conditions problematic, thereby risking increases in strike action. Whilst Heath contended that this was simply the personal view of its Director-General, Campbell Anderson, it nevertheless impacted upon the Conservative Party campaign in a negative way, given it enabled Labour to argue the intervention validated their view that the Act was problematic (for a detailed discussion on the failure of the Industrial Relations Act, see Moran 1977). The difficulties for Heath in securing re-election were not confined to industrial unrest. Another problematic issue concerned membership of the European Community. The electoral offer of a referendum on continued membership that the Wilson Labour opposition was moving towards created an opportunity for Heath’s nemesis, Powell, to undermine his chances

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of re-election (Shepherd 1996: 433–436). An implacable opponent of membership, aligned to his warnings over immigration and threats to British national identity, led Powell to ask voters whether the UK should ‘remain a democratic nation or whether it will become one province in a new Europe super-state’, from which Powell concluded that it was a ‘national duty’ for the voters to send a message to those who undermined Parliament’s ability to ‘make the laws and impose the taxes of the country’ (Butler and Kavanagh 1974: 103). Instructing voters to endorse the Labour opposition, as they had created a route map to exiting the European Community, meant that the influence of Powell upon the Heath era continued to the end (Sandbrook 2010: 611; see Chap. 12 for a detailed discussion on the Heath-Powell relationship). On Powell’s decision to not stand as Conservative candidate, Heath bemoaned the fact that ‘he did not even have the decency to warn the officers of his association or his agent in advance of his decision to abandon them’ (Heath 1998: 512). The cumulative impact of the difficult economic and industrial relations environment, compounded by the intervention of Powell on the European issue, made it a problematic campaign for the Conservatives. The outcome of the voters to the ‘who governs’ presented to them by Heath was inconclusive. Needing 318 parliamentary seats for a majority in the 635 strong Parliament (the redrawing of the boundaries facilitated an increase from the 630 strong 1970 Parliament), the Conservatives were short on 297 (down from 330), and the Labour Party were up from 287 to 3011 (Butler and Kavanagh 1974). It was an outcome that left Heath, as the incumbent Prime Minister with the ‘choice of either immediately conceding defeat, and thus tendering his resignation forthwith, or seeking a deal with one or more of the smaller parties’, and ‘Heath pursued the latter option’ (Dorey 2009: 28). Given the Conservatives had secured the most votes—from 11, 872,180 to 11,645,616—this appeared a legitimate strategy. In his discussions with the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, Heath rationalised why seeking an arrangement between the two parties could be justified. First, it was feasible, given that Wilson had made it clear that whilst the Labour Party were willing to form a minority administration (on 301 parliamentary seats, they would be short by 17 of a majority), they were not willing to enter into any coalition or understanding with any other parties. As an 1  King felt that ‘the Conservatives not only lost the February 1974 election but suffered one of the most dramatic reversals in British electoral history’ (King 1985: 99).

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alternative to that, a Con-Lib arrangement (297 Conservative parliamentary seats plus the 14 Liberal seats2) would take them to 311, and with the 7 Ulster Unionists likely to back the Conservatives, this could create an administration that could govern (TNA PRO PREM 15/2069, ‘Note for the Record’ [Heath meeting with Thorpe], 2 March 1974). Second, not only was it feasible but Heath argued that it was not only his ‘overriding duty’ to explore this option, as it was in the ‘national interest’, but it was clear it would ‘represent the desires of the substantial number of voters to not have a socialist government’ (TNA PRO PREM 15/2069, ‘Note for the Record’ [Heath meeting with Thorpe], 2 March 1974). Third, it would be ‘possible’ for them to ‘construct a programme’, given that in ‘two major respects’, that is, membership of the European Community and inflation, ‘the policies of the two parties were both alike and both differed from those of the Labour Party’ (TNA PRO PREM 15/2069, ‘Note for the Record’ [Heath meeting with Thorpe], 2 March 1974). However, the ability of Heath to make an arrangement with Thorpe and the Liberals floundered on the issue of electoral reform and Heath’s failure to secure a means of remaining in power led to the Labour Party entering office as a minority administration (TNA PRO PREM 16/231 ‘Events leading to the resignation of Mr Heath’s Administration’ 16 March 1974). It is worth noting that the Conservatives did not seem prepared for the possibility of having to engage in negotiations with the Liberals in order to remain in power. In mid-1973 their response to the improving electoral position of the Liberals was remarkably complacent, with this being dismissed as little more than ‘the mid-term expression of disappointment’ (CPA, SC 14/74/29-31, 26 July 1973). From polling 8 percent in October 1972, the Liberals had doubled their projected vote to 17 percent by July 1973, with that increasing to 28 percent by August 1973 (King and Wybrow 2001: 11). Despite their continuing progress, Chancellor Anthony Barber remained confident that they would be stalled and that ‘he didn’t believe they would hold the balance, or anything like that’ (Hetherington Papers, Meeting with Anthony Barber’, 15 November 1973). Throughout the whole of 1973, the Conservatives appeared to adhere to the view that the Liberals were a ‘paper tiger’ offering ‘quack remedies’ (CPA, CCO, CRD, 500/25/8 ‘Liberal Policy Brief’, 1 April 1973). 2  The Liberal vote was up from 2,117,035 votes or 7.5 percent from June 1970 to 6,059,519 or 19.3 percent (Butler and Kavanagh 1974).

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Despite these assumptions, Heath was moving, within 48 hours of the outcome of the General Election, towards attempting to form some form of coalition arrangement with the Liberals, which he felt was preferable to trying to operate as a minority administration (CAB 128/53, Cabinet Conclusions, 1 March 1974, 5.45 pm). However, within both the Cabinet and his own parliamentary ranks, there were real doubts about this course of action. Those doubts were not necessarily influenced by left-right categorisations. The Heathite sympathising Whitelaw later reflected that in the circumstances a ‘proposed coalition would have been regarded as wrong on principle by the British people’ (Whitelaw 1991: 135), whilst Lord Carrington, who was at the time open minded to the ideas, later admitted that it would not have been ‘politically healthy or wise’ (Carrington 1988: 267). From the backbenchers, the view of Kenneth Lewis was ‘just tell that man to stop messing about. We have lost an election, we cannot form a government, we have been defeated and we must go with dignity’ (Ziegler 2010: 441). The issue of electoral reform was to be critical in the tentative negotiations that took place with the Liberals. Thatcher took the view that ‘horse trading’ like this was ‘making us look ridiculous’, and the electorate would view Heath as a ‘bad loser’ if he continued to engage in such manoeuvres3 (Thatcher 1995: 239). Other cabinet sceptics included Maurice Macmillan and Keith Joseph, the latter of whom claimed that Heath needed to step down on the grounds of ‘constitutional propriety’ in seeking to hold onto office (MS Hailsham, 1/1/8, Diary, 1 March 1974). With the Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins, informing Heath and the Cabinet that the number of Conservatives planning to oppose an arrangement with the Liberals that would involve a Speakers Conference on Electoral Reform, was around 50 plus4 (MS Hailsham, 1/1/8, Diary 2 and 3 March 1974), the Cabinet moved towards accepting that the longer-term electoral costs to the Conservatives of electoral reform were more important than the short-term gain on holding onto office (CAB 15/2069/16, Cabinet Conclusion, 4 March 1974). Fearful of the negative connotations of ‘hanging on’ and how this might make the Conservatives looked desperate and unprincipled, the decision to resign 3  Bogdanor argued that it ‘was at this point that her hostility to Heath as a traitor to Conservatism crystallised’, as Heath was ‘prepared to sacrifice any chance of the Conservatives ever again achieving an overall majority on their own for the mere temporary renewal of power’ (Bogdanor 1996: 373). 4  Prior recalls that had Heath attempted to pursue this further, the Conservative Party would have ‘split’ (Prior 1986: 95).

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was reached (TNA: PRO PREM 16/231/6, ‘The Resignation of Mr. Heath’, 16 March 1974). That feat seemed justified, given that Heath had been christened the ‘squatter in No 10 Downing Street’ (The Spectator 1974).

The General Election of October 1974 Having called an unnecessary General Election and then having failed to win, the political authority of Heath was badly damaged. Cecil Parkinson recalled how Heath seemed ‘almost physically diminished’ by the impact of defeat and as a consequence ‘one just felt sorry for this desolate and lonely figure’ (Parkinson 1992: 48). McManus argues that Heath was disappointed in himself for his own mistakes—he argues that Heath ‘blamed himself for his failure to communicate effectively the necessary facts and arguments to the people, for his procrastination about calling the election, and for his failure to spare the nation’ (McManus 2016: 153). Despite this, Heath did not consider resigning the leadership of the Conservative Party, despite the fact that he had now led them into two electoral reversals out of three in a 7.5-year period. He rationalised that losing 8.5 percent of the Conservative vote and 1,272,943 votes was not a resigning matter. He concluded that no other leading Conservative was better positioned than him to lead them into a General Election, which, given the inconclusive outcome of the February contest, was likely to occur sooner rather than later (Ziegler 2010: 443–469). What was more problematic was that even though it may have been in the interests of the Conservative Party to have a new leader for that imminent General Election if he would resign, they had no means by which to remove him. The architects of the new democratic leadership election rules of 1965 had deliberately avoided a challenger provision or confidence procedure on the basis that they assumed that a failing party leader would voluntarily step aside (Fisher 1977: 147–148). Ziegler provides an interesting interpretation of the interaction between the inevitability of a General Election shortly and the lack of a procedural mechanism for the Conservatives to utilise—he describes Heath being paradoxically both ‘weak’ and ‘impregnable’ (Ziegler 2010: 448). As he entered his second spell as Leader of the Opposition, it was also necessary for Heath to demonstrate that the Conservatives were a credible government in waiting. As such, Heath would recall in his memoirs that ‘as soon as the February election was over, we had started work on the

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policies which would feature in our next manifesto’ (Heath 1998: 523). Yet Heath seemed incapable of acknowledging or addressing the fact that one of the biggest obstacles to the Conservatives regaining office was him, that is, his image was tainted, and given the memory of his premiership lingered as one of defeats, divisions and a failed crisis election, it was difficult for the Conservatives to repackage him as an emotionally intelligent leader who understood the concerns of voters. Conservative strategists had long understood that his inability to show empathy or emotions acted as a barrier between himself and the voters. His style of communication remained cool, detached and ridged when talking to voters through broadcast media. This had been a problem for the duration of his tenure as leader of the Conservative Party, and strategists had long worried about his ‘stiff, odd, tense and humourless’ public persona’ (Campbell 1993: 189; see also Ziegler 2010: 184–188; 231–232; and for an illustration of discussions on how to improve his public image during his first tenure as Leader of the Opposition, see CPA CCO 20/8/10, ‘How to Show Mr Heath as he really is’, 12 June 1967). In the period between the February and October 1974 General Elections, there was no evidence from the opinion polls of any improvement in the image of Heath. On the question of whether he ‘is or is not proving to be a good leader’, those that thought that he was went down— from 38 percent in April 1974 to 32 percent by October 1974—and those that thought he was not went up—from 48 percent in April 1974 to 53 percent by October 1974. His second tenure as Leader of the Opposition began with a −10 for leadership satisfaction, and by the time of the General Election of October 1974, his efforts had converted a −10 percentage score into a −21 percentage score (King and Wybrow 2001: 207). These findings were replicated in terms of the projected vote: at the time of the General Election of February 1974, the Conservatives were on 39 percent to Labour on 37 percent; by June 1974 the Conservatives were down to 35 percent and Labour up to 44 percent; and by the time Wilson called the General Election of October 1974, the Conservatives were still trailing the Labour Party (by 6 percentage points), with the Conservatives on 36 percent and the Labour Party on 42 percent, (King and Wybrow 2001: 11–12). It is also worth noting that the Conservatives were in retreat on the following question throughout 1974: ‘which party do you think can best handle the problems of the current economic situation?’—at the time of General Election of February 1974, the Conservatives held a small lead over Labour (from 35 percent to –32 percent), but as they approached the

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General Election of October 1974, the Labour response had remained more or less stable (at 31 percent), whereas the Conservative had fallen 7 percentage points, and with them on 28 percent they now trailed Labour by 3 percentage points (King and Wybrow 2001: 58). Throughout the period between March 1974 and October 1974, there was, therefore, little evidence to suggest that the Conservatives would be capable of winning a parliamentary majority—that is, 318 seats—at the General Election (they would need to make 21 gains to do so). Given this evidence and the possibility of another hung Parliament, the Conservatives were considering other options to ensure they could gain access to power. The complacency that they had shown towards the Liberals in the last Parliament would have to be addressed. The importance that they would now attach to the Liberals is evident from the interventions of Ian Gilmour, who was shadow Secretary of State for Defence in the Heath shadow Cabinet. He emphasised to Heath shortly after losing office that ‘the need for good relations with the minor parties is unlikely to be confined to this Parliament’, before adding that ‘almost the only chance of our avoiding defeat in the summer would be to make a limited electoral pact with the Liberals’ (CPA, CCO, 20/2/7 ‘Ian Gilmour to Edward Heath’, 26 March 1974). As Gilmour continued to use the print media as a means of mapping out the future options for the Conservatives, including that need to appeal to Liberals (Gilmour 1974a, 1974b, 1974c), the complexities and risks associated with this were being identified. Backbencher Nigel Lawson was concerned to make sure that the Conservatives were clear on arrangements with the Liberals that would be beneficial and those that would be harmful. He informed Carrington, as Party Chair, that there were legitimate grounds for discussing some form of limited pact with the Liberals in 67 constituencies (CPA, CCO, 20/2/7 ‘Letter from Lawson to Carrington’, 24 May 1974). Lawson argued that this could lead to gains for the Conservatives totalling 31 seats and gains for the Liberals totalling 36 seats. He suggested that the short-term gain to the Liberals in terms of their parliamentary representation (enabling them to have potentially 50 seats) might act as a means of stalling the issue of electoral reform. Meanwhile the gains that the Conservatives would secure from the pact would provide them with a majority, that is, if they hold all of their 297 current seats, it would take them past the majority figure of 318 seats, whilst the 67 losses that the Labour Party would suffer would pull them back down to 234 seats. The longer-­term value of this was clear to Lawson:

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‘having used an electoral pact to gain an overall majority, we might then revoke the pact at the next election and annihilate the Liberals’ (CPA, CCO, 20/2/7 ‘Letter from Lawson to Carrington’, 24 May 1974). Neither Carrington nor Heath was convinced by the calculations that Lawson had constructed. They were of course built on the assumption that votes for parties would simply transfer across as a block, which was not a legitimate assumption to make.5 Heath feared that the translation of votes on block would not work in a uniform way and as such, ‘there was a real danger of creating a Conservative minority government through giving away seats to the Liberals’ (CPA, SC 74/2-27, 1 April 1974). Carrington also worried about how an electoral pact could be presented to voters, arguing that this is ‘too sophisticated for the public to understand’ (CPA, SC 74/4, 1 July 1974). How it would be viewed by Conservative activists was also a consideration, especially given the assumption that they would ‘still regard office as a prize they have no wish to share with others’ (Ramsden 1996: 386). However, given the evidence from the opinion polls throughout the summer of 1974, the Conservatives continued to fret about their ability to win an outright parliamentary majority (CPA, CCO, 180/34/2/9 ‘Third Post Election Survey: Summary and Analysis, 13 August 1974). As a consequence, Heath moved towards a strategy that tried to convince voters that national unity was more important than single-party rule (Behrens 1980: 27–28). If he was able to do this then he contended it might be possible for Heath to return to Number 10 as a unifying figure, with the Conservatives as the largest player. Furthermore, the hostility that existed with the Labour ranks towards co-operation made Heath certain that it would be impossible for Wilson (and any alternative figure within the 5  An example of this would be the seat of Lewisham West. The Conservatives had lost this seat at the General Election of February 1974 with 18,716 votes compared to Labour’s 21,118 votes. The Liberals had come third on 7974 votes. The electoral pact suggested would assume that if the Liberals did not stand then enough of the freed up Liberal vote would transfer across to the Conservatives for them to regain the constituency (i.e. the combined Conservative and Liberal vote would take them to 26,690 votes). However, if the Liberal vote fragmented with 60 percent of them breaking for the Conservatives (i.e. 4784) and 40 percent of them for Labour (i.e. 3189), then the pact would fail, with Labour winning the constituency with 24,307 votes to the Conservatives on 23,500 votes. In the General Election of October 1974, both the Liberals and Conservatives stood and both saw their vote shrink—the Conservatives down to 15,573 from 18,716 votes and the Liberals down to 5952 from 7974 votes, whilst the Labour vote was stable, down from 21,118 to 21,102 (Butler and Kavanagh 1974, 1975).

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Labour Party) either to lead them into a coalition or to lead up a government of national unity (CPA, SC, 74/2-27, 1 July 1974). Ultimately, this ploy became a part of the manifesto, when Wilson decided (on September 18) to call a General Election, which was to be on October 10 (Pimlott 1992: 643). The Conservative Party manifesto stated that: it is our objective to win a clear majority, but we will use that majority above all to unite the nation, we will consult and confer with the leaders of other parties, we will invite people from outside the ranks of our own party to join us in overcoming Britain’s difficulties. (Conservative Party 1974b)

Heath defended this position in his memoirs, arguing that: this was a difficult concept to put across, as cynics were bound to say that it was forced out of us by the expectation of defeat. It would have held good, however, whether we had formed a minority government or won a landslide victory. (Heath 1998: 524)

How viable was the idea of some form of national unity government? One problem was that there was voter scepticism about the sincerity of the offer by the Conservatives. Some voters felt that it might be a ‘trick’, that is, the Conservatives were using the rhetoric of ‘national unity’ to actually secure partisan advantage (Butler and Kavanagh 1975: 261). Wilson sought to stimulate those doubts dismissing Heath’s plan as a recipe for ‘Con policies, Con leadership by a Con party for a Con trick’ (Pimlott 1992: 646). But the main problem was the idea of Heath as the Prime Minister of a national unity administration. How plausible was it for him to present himself as a candidate for consensus or unity in the General Election of October when he had presented himself as a candidate or conviction and confrontation in the ‘Who Governs’ General Election of February 1974—a change in style and role may not fool voters (Wood 1974). Press speculation developed, which suggested that a government of national unity might be a viable option, but that Heath might need to be sacrificed by the Conservatives to aid this prospect. Shortly before polling day, the Guardian reported that:

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Tory strategists say that Mr Edward Heath may be on the point of declaring unambiguously that if elected with a majority he will seek to form a coalition of parties to lead the country through the crisis. According to his aides Mr Heath would be prepared to stand down were his leadership to be the obstacle to the formation of a coalition. (Guardian 1974)

This suggestion illustrated the depth to which Heath’s leadership was being questioned (Garnett 2012: 94–95). Irrespective of how well it was viewed within his own ranks, Heath continued to push this position— indeed, his final message to Conservative activists before polling day was unambiguous as he argued, ‘the real hope of the British people in this situation is that a National Coalition government, involving all the parties, should be formed’ (Heath 1974). Heath would be denied his opportunity as Wilson and the Labour Party were able to win a small parliamentary majority of three. The outcome of the General Election of October 1974 left the Conservatives in an even worse position. Their vote share fell further from 37.9 percent to 35.8 percent and their return fell from 11,872,180 votes to 10,464,817 votes. In parliamentary terms, this resulted in a further 20 seats being lost (Butler and Kavanagh 1974, 1975).

Conclusion In his study of the Conservative Party, Alan Clark described 1974 as the ‘year of blunder’ and the miscalculations that Heath had made contributed to an increasing sense of indiscipline and discontent within the parliamentary ranks (see Clark 1998: 435–452). What was worrying was that this increase was coming on the back of the 1970-1974 period in which back-bench rebellion rates had already increased significantly as compared to the Conservative administrations of 1951–1964, notably the 1951–1959 Parliaments (see Norton 1978; see also Franklin et  al. 1986). With the conflict between the one nation left and the economic liberal right escalating throughout the Heath era, we can argue that his inability to manage that divide effectively represented a failure of party management. Coming as it did on the back of the governing failures of period from 1970 to 1974, this explains why his reputation was to be so sullied amongst Conservatives as well as voters (Fry 2005: 211; on how Heath mismanaged his powers of appointment as a tool of party management, see Heppell and Hill 2015).

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It was the response of Heath to their second electoral defeat inside eight months that irritated his eventual successor the most (Ziegler 2010: 470–473). As Heath mapped out how the Conservative campaign had worked well as a containment exercise, Thatcher concluded that Heath ‘was too defensive of his own past record to see that a fundamental change of policies was needed’, and that ‘everyone except Ted knew that the main problem was the fact that he was still leader’ (Thatcher 1995: 261, 263). However, despite holding the leadership of the Conservative Party for nearly a decade, and having lost three elections out of four inside eight years, Heath was simply unwilling to resign. And yet there had been a desire to remove Heath from the leadership of the Conservative Party amongst some backbenchers that predated their removal from office at the General Election of February 1974. Back in December 1972, one backbencher, John Wells, wrote to Heath’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS), Tim Kitson, and said that Heath is: ‘no doubt completely indifferent to what I think and he is unlikely to mend his ways. All I can do is to play as active a part as I can in any moves to get rid of him’ (Heath Papers, 3 1/17, ‘Letter from John Wells to Tim Kitson’, 30 December 1972). A similar warning came from another Conservative parliamentarian, David Mudd, who wrote to Heath in September 1973 saying that there was a group of 20-plus Conservative backbenchers who planned to make ‘moves for a change of leadership’ (Heath Papers, 3 1/17, ‘Letter from David Mudd to Edward Heath’, 25 September 1973). Given that there was no provision for a challenge to Heath under the existing leadership election rules that the Conservative Party were utilising, these letters acted as a warning that pressure might be mounting for a rethink on those rules. The desire for change was to increase once Heath had led the Conservatives into the unnecessary General Election of February 1974. In opposition, Heath was unmoved by the warnings about his leadership from Francis Pym (his former Chief Whip in office and now a member of his shadow Cabinet). Pym wrote to him speaking of the ‘crisis of confidence’ that existed within the parliamentary Conservative Party, adding that: ‘I have indicated my anxieties about the way the party is being run … I know from what others have said that I am not alone in this view’ (Heath Papers, 3 1/9, ‘Letter to Edward Heath’, 11 June 1974). In the aftermath of the General Election of 1974, with the Conservative Party procedurally incapable of removing, he was advised by many friends to resign. For example, Kenneth Baker, his parliamentary private secretary, warned him:

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you had better resign now as leader if you don’t want to be hurt, there are many people in the party who are out to destroy you—the malicious, the malcontents, the sacked, the ignored and overlooked, are all blaming you. (Baker 1993: 43–44)

Bibliography Archives Conservative Party Archives. Bodleian Library: University of Oxford. Edward Heath Papers. Bodleian Library: University of Oxford. Alastair Hetherington Papers. London School of Economics. Churchill Archives. Churchill College: University of Cambridge. Cabinet Papers. The National Archives.

Published Primary Sources Conservative Party. (1974a). Firm Action for a Fair Britain: Conservative Party General Election Manifesto. London: The Conservative Party. Conservative Party. (1974b). Putting Britain First: Conservative Party General Election Manifesto. London: The Conservative Party.

Speeches and Press Conferences Heath, E. (1974). Press Conference, 7 October.

Newspapers

and

Periodicals

Clark, C. (1974a). Mr Heath calls ministers to Chequers amid speculation on early poll. The Times, 14 January. Greig, G. (1974). Ministers urge snap election. Daily Mail, 5 January. Gilmour, I. (1974a). The Tory dilemma that followed the election. The Times, 2 May. Gilmour, I. (1974b). How Mr Heath could establish industrial harmony. The Times, 3 May. Gilmour, I. (1974c). Nation before Party is the Conservative Promise. The Times, 4 May. Guardian. (1974). Exclusive Article to the Guardian. 2 October.

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Hatfield, M. (1974). Speculation grows on prospect of an election. The Times, 5 January. The Spectator. (1974). Exit the Squatter. 9 March. Wood, D. (1974). Mr Heath changes style and role. The Times, 23 September.

Memoirs and Diaries Baker, K. (1993). The Turbulent Years: My Life in Politics. London: Faber and Faber. Carrington, P. (1988). Reflect on Things Past: The Memoirs of Lord Carrington. London: Collins. Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life: My Autobiography. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Parkinson, C. (1992). Right at the Centre. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Prior, J. (1986). A Balance of Power. London: Hamish Hamilton. Thatcher, M. (1995). The Path to Power. London: Harper Collins. Walker, P. (1991). Staying Power. London: Bloomsbury. Whitelaw, W. (1991). The Whitelaw Memoirs. London: Aurum.

Books, Chapters

and

Articles

Alt, J., Crewe, I., & Särlvik, B. (1977). Angels in Plastic: The Liberal Surge in 1974. Political Studies, 25(3), 343–368. Ball, S. (1996). The Conservative Party and the Heath Government. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970–1974: A Reappraisal. Harlow: Longman. Behrens, R. (1980). The Conservative Party from Heath to Thatcher. London: Saxon House. Berrington, H. (1979). Towards a Multi-Party Britain? West European Politics, 2(1), 29–52. Bogdanor, V. (1996). The fall of Heath and the End of the Post War Settlement’. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970-1974: A Reappraisal. Harlow: Longman. Butler, D., & Pinto-Duschinsky, M. (1971). The British General Election of 1970. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1974). The British General Election of February 1974. London: Macmillan. Butler, D., & Kavanagh, D. (1975). The British General Election of October 1974. London: Macmillan. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Pimlico. Clark, A. (1998). The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State 1922-1997. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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Clark, G. (1974b). The Inevitable Election. In The Times Guide to the House of Commons 1974. London: Times Newspapers Limited. Dorey, P. (1995). The Conservative Party and the Trade Unions. London: Routledge. Dorey, P. (2009). Asking Too Much and Offering Too Little? The ConservativeLiberal Coalition Talks of 1-4 March 1974. Journal of Liberal History, 61, 28–37. Fisher, N. (1977). The Tory Leaders: Their Struggle for Power. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Franklin, M., Baxter, A., & Jordan, M. (1986). Who were the Rebels? Dissent in the House of Commons 1970–74. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 11(2), 143–159. Fry, G. (2005). The Politics of Decline: An Interpretation of British Politics from the 1940s to the 1970s. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Garnett, M. (2012). Edward Heath, 1965-70 and 1974-5. In T. Heppell (Ed.), Leaders of the Opposition from Churchill to Cameron. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Heppell, T. (2008). Choosing the Tory Leader: Conservative Party Leadership Elections from Heath to Cameron. London: I. B. Taurus. Heppell, T., & Hill, M. (2015). The Prime Ministerial Powers of Patronage: Ministerial Appointments and Dismissals under Edward Heath. Contemporary British History, 29(4), 464–485. Hurd, D. (1979). An End to Promises: Sketch of a Government 1970-1974. London: Collins. Kavanagh, D. (1996). The Fatal Choice: The Calling of the February 1974 Election. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970-1974: A Reappraisal. Harlow: Longman. King, A. (1985). The British Prime Minister. London: Macmillan. King, A., & Wybrow, R. (2001). British Political Opinion 1937-2000: The Gallup Polls. London: Politicos. Lemieux, P. H. (1977). Political Issues and Liberal Support in the February 1974 General Election. Political Studies, 25(3), 223–242. McManus, M. (2016). Edward Heath: A Singular Life. London: Elliott and Thompson. Moran, M. (1977). Politics of Industrial Relations: The Origins, Life and Death of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. London: Macmillan. Norton, P. (1978). Conservative Dissidents: Dissent Within the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1970– 1974. London: Temple Smith. Phillips, J. (2006). The 1972 Miners’ Strike: Popular Agency and Industrial Politics in Britain. Contemporary British History, 20(2), 187–207. Pimlott, B. (1992). Harold Wilson. London: Harper Collins. Ramsden, J. (1996). Winds of Change: Macmillan to Heath. London: Longman.

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Sandbrook, D. (2010). State of Emergency: The Way We Were, 1970-1974. London: Allen Lane. Seldon, A. (1988). The Trade Unions and Fall of the Heath Government. Contemporary Record, 2(1), 36–46. Shepherd, R. (1996). Enoch Powell: A Biography. London: Pimlico. Taylor, A. (2005). The NUM and British Politics, Volume 2, 1969-1995. Aldershot: Ashgate. Taylor, R. (1996). The Heath Government and Industrial Relations: Myth and Reality. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government, 1970–1974: A Reappraisal. London: Longman. Wade, R. (2013). Conservative Economic Policy: From Heath in Opposition to Cameron in Coalition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ziegler, P. (2010). Edward Heath. London: Harper Press.

CHAPTER 16

The Conservative Party Leadership Election of 1975 Emily Stacey

The aim of this chapter is to identify how Edward Heath was removed from the leadership of the Conservative Party. This chapter is split into the following sections, covering the period between the party losing the General Election of October 1974 and the Conservative Party leadership election of February 1975. First, it considers how, in order to replace Heath, moves initiated from within the 1922 Executive Committee of Conservative backbenchers led to a change in their leadership procedures, so as to permit a challenge. Second, it identifies how, having created the rules to permit a challenge, there was a lack of viable candidates available to challenge Heath because, for a variety of reasons, Edward du Cann, William Whitelaw and Keith Joseph decided not to stand against him. Third, it explains how and why Margaret Thatcher decided to challenge Heath. Finally, this chapter profiles the campaigning period and the ballots, as a means of identifying why Heath was defeated and why Thatcher was selected as his replacement.

E. Stacey (*) Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_16

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Changing the Rules to Permit a Challenge As was emphasised in Chap. 15, the period between losing the General Elections of February and October 1974 began the process of solidifying opposition within the parliamentary Conservative Party towards Heath remaining as their leader. As a young backbencher, Norman Lamont recalled why so many Conservative parliamentarians thought a change was needed: Inflation was very badly out of control—well into double figures. Unemployment was massively high. There were a huge number of strikes. Britain was known as ‘the sick man of Europe’—it was legendary the poor performance of the British economy. During Heath’s period we had had the appalling Miners’ Strike and electricity to business was rationed to three days a week. There were two elections in 1974 but Heath lost them both. He lost decisively the second time, so all this chaos was blamed on Heath. (Lamont Interview, 2005)

In the aftermath of the General Election of October 1974, the 1922 Executive Committee of Conservative backbenchers requested that Heath resign (Watkins 1998: 187–188). That request was made by their Chair, du Cann, with whom Heath had a relationship based around mutual distrust (Ziegler 2010: 354–355). In opposition, Heath had dismissed du Cann as Party Chair in 1967, and then overlooked him when considering ministerial positions once they entered office in 1970. It was rumoured that Heath disliked du Cann because (a) he had not been supportive of him over Resale Price Maintenance when he was President of the Board of Trade (1963–1964), and because he had voted for Maudling in the Conservative Party leadership election of 1965 (see, Wright 1970: 387; Clark 1998: 457). Once du Cann realised that he would not secure ministerial advancement in the Heath era—(even though the Chief Whip, Francis Pym did recommend Heath appoint du Cann in 1971, TNA, PRO PREM, ‘Chief Whip Letter to Prime Minister’, 5/529, 22 October 1971)—he had rebuilt his influence by seeking the chair of the 1922 Executive Committee (Clarke 1972). The suspicion was that he was seeking to undermine Heath with the intention of then securing the leadership of the Conservative Party for himself (Clark 1998: 457). Having refused to agree to the demands of du Cann and the 1922 Executive Committee, Heath had to deal with their supplementary requests, that is, if he would not resign, then the rules governing

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leadership elections within the Conservative Party should be reconsidered so that a challenger provision (or a confidence motion procedure), could be introduced (Stark 1996: 27). Heath attempted to dispute the authority of du Cann to deliver this message on behalf of the 1922 Executive Committee. He implied that du Cann was speaking on behalf of the parliamentary Conservative Party, as constituted after the General Election of February 1974, but that he did not speak for the newly elected parliamentary Conservative Party in October 1974. Without irony, Heath suggested that the officers for the 1922 for the new parliamentary term should be elected first—but the logic of this argument rested on the ability of Heath and his supporters to use the new executive elections to secure a more proHeath executive (Fisher 1977: 149–151). When du Cann was re-elected in early November 1974,1 and the remainder of the officers of the previous Parliament were re-elected, this undermined Heath’s claim that they were unrepresentative of the backbenchers (Ramsden 1996: 438). As a consequence, Heath was forced to accept that the rules governing leadership selection within the Conservative Party would have to be reconsidered (Blake 1998: 318). A committee was set up, under the chairmanship of Alec DouglasHome, and by December 1974, they had completed their deliberations. They recommended that an annual election for the leadership of the Conservative Party should be created, and if no one stood against the incumbent, then they would be re-elected unopposed. Challenges2 to the incumbent would be permitted in the first three to six months of a new Parliament (a move designed to facilitate the removal of a leader who had been defeated in a General Election) or within the first 28 days of a new parliamentary session (CPA, 6/2/11 ‘Procedure for the Selection of the Leader of the Conservative Party’, 10 December 1974). Critically, the committee concluded that the 50 percent plus 15 percent margin required for victory rule (from the 1965 procedures, see Chap. 2) should apply to all of Conservative parliamentarians (those eligible to vote, and not just to those who actually voted). This was hugely helpful to those wanting to 1  When Heath offered du Cann a position in the newly constructed shadow Cabinet, du Cann interpreted this as an attempt to ‘neutralise me’ (du Cann 1995: 204) and refused the offer. Heath later accused du Cann of ‘undermining my attempt to unify the party’ (Heath 1998: 529). 2  To launch a challenge, the challenger would only need the support of a proposer and a seconder (CPA, 6/2/11 ‘Procedure for the Selection of the Leader of the Conservative Party’, 10 December 1974).

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eject Heath, as the actual number of parliamentarians whose support he needed to retain would be higher if calculated from the whole of the parliamentary party rather than just those who had actually voted, that is, abstentions would matter, and they would hurt him as the incumbent (Shepherd 1991: 168; Bogdanor 1994: 87; Stark 1996: 28–29; Watkins 1998: 189; Heppell 2008: 55–56; Quinn 2012: 37). The new procedures—known as ‘Alec’s revenge’, given the suggestion that the Heathites attempted to push Douglas-Home out a decade earlier (Ramsden 1996: 440)—clearly did nothing to help Heath if a challenge was forthcoming, and in his memoirs, he was very critical of how they were formulated (Heath 1998: 530). The critics of Heath had pushed for reform with the intention of evicting him from the leadership of the Conservative Party—all they needed was a candidate to challenge him.

The Lack of a Viable Challenger In his study on the Conservative Party in the opposition years of 1974 and 1979, Behrens notes that there was a ‘dearth of likely leaders’ in the Conservative Party (Behrens 1980: 37). The two candidates whom Heath defeated in the leadership election of 1965 were both non-contenders this time. Enoch Powell was not available to stand, as he was no longer a member of the parliamentary Conservative Party and his conduct in the interim period would have made him an unacceptable choice anyway (see, Shepherd 1996). Reginald Maudling may still have been eligible to stand, but his resignation as Home Secretary in 1972—after press speculation about his business activities—invalidated him as a viable option (Baston 2004). As a consequence, press attention was initially concentrated around the following three possible contenders: du Cann, Whitelaw and Joseph. All three managed to make themselves unavailable as potential challengers, while the 1922 Executive Committee was working on creating rules that would permit a challenge to be made. Although it was initially assumed that du Cann was using his position at Chair of the 1922 Executive Committee of Backbenchers to oust Heath and manoeuvre himself into the party leadership, he ultimately decided not to stand. In his memoirs, he admitted that he was being encouraged by backbenchers to stand (du Cann 1995: 205). What appeared to have undermined him as a viable candidate, however, was the suggestion that his business dealings could cause embarrassment to the Conservatives should he secure the party leadership (Fisher 1977: 160–165).

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It was thought that Whitelaw, who had served as Leader of the House of Commons, Northern Ireland Secretary and Employment Secretary in the Heath administration, could be a viable successor because of his reputation as a unifier and the perception that he had been a competent minister (Garnett and Aitken 2002). However, although Whitelaw had ambitions to lead, he was too loyal (or calculating) to formally challenge Heath himself. He rationalised that his chances would be best served by someone else challenging Heath and causing his resignation, whereupon Whitelaw would stand in the second ballot as a unity candidate (Clark 1998: 454–455). Of the three rumoured challengers, it was thought that Keith Joseph, Secretary of State for Social Services in the Heath administration, was the most intriguing (Denham and Garnett 2001: 226–320). Despite remaining on the Conservative frontbench and staying as a member of the Heath shadow Cabinet, Joseph used the period of opposition between March and October 1974 to make the case for ideological renewal and policy change. In doing so, the problematic working relationship that existed between Heath and Joseph went from being an ‘open secret’ into ‘open warfare’ (Ziegler 2010: 452), as Joseph used the formation of the Centre for Policy Studies as ‘an intellectual springboard for a determined challenge’ to Heath’s leadership (Campbell 1993: 627). As Joseph sought to promote his revived vision of Conservative ideology, he made a series of speeches throughout 1974 that were designed to make the case for a monetarist approach in terms of economic reform— see Joseph 1974a, 1974b. As he mapped out his vision—attacking the power of the trade union movement and identifying the consequences of excessive public spending—he not only argued that ‘inflation is threatening to destroy our society’ (Joseph 1974b), but also admitted (in June 1974) that: ‘I am perfectly clear in my eyes mind that Conservative governments have erred badly. I am not alone among my colleagues in thinking this, though we are a minority’ (Joseph 1974a). Joseph was correct in his analysis that his views lacked real support within the shadow Cabinet (see as evidence the minutes of the Steering Committee meeting of July 1974: CPA, LSC, 74/14, 15 July 1974). Thatcher was an exception in that she was a member of the shadow Cabinet who supported the analysis that Joseph was advancing. She recalled how these speeches ‘infuriated Ted and the Party establishment’ since Joseph ‘lumped together the mistakes of Conservative and Labour Governments, talking about the 30 years of socialistic fashions’ (Thatcher

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1995: 253). As his parliamentary private secretary, Kenneth Baker recalled that Heath was disappointed in how Joseph was behaving (Baker 1993: 42), whilst shadow Cabinet member, Michael Heseltine, remembers being concerned about the damage to the unity of the Conservative Party that was being caused by the ‘brutality’ of the conflict between them (Heseltine 2000: 157). From the conservative one-nation left, Maudling concluded that the doctrine that Joseph was seeking to advance was ‘divorced from reality’, adding that he personally felt that Joseph was a ‘nutty as a fruitcake’ (Maudling, 1978: 209). By late summer 1974, members of the shadow Cabinet were being asked to persuade Joseph to desist from further criticisms of the record of former Conservative administrations (Prior 1986: 97; Howe 1994: 87). Somewhat foolishly, Thatcher was also asked to get Joseph to ‘tone down’ one of his speeches, although Thatcher took pride in recalling that ‘I made no suggestions for changes’ (Thatcher 1995: 255). Although Joseph was able to generate considerable press attention for his ideological and policy interventions, the fact was that he had many weaknesses that made him unfit to lead the Conservatives in opposition, let alone be Prime Minister (which he would later admit himself, Denham and Garnett 2001: 277). Geoffrey Howe implied worries about Joseph’s political judgement: he was felt to be a slow decision-maker, and there were doubts about his ability to cope with pressure (Howe 1994: 89–90; see also Evans 1997: 10; Vinen 2009: 66). In an off-the-record meeting with Hugo Young in July 1974, Lord Hailsham commented that ‘the only man with vision is Joseph, but he lacks the strength and character to lead, let alone beat Ted’ (Trewin 2008: 38). Norman Tebbit, who sympathised with the causes that Joseph was advancing and would later become widely associated with the politics of Thatcherism, expressed similar doubts, and noted that Joseph lacked the ‘indefinable quality takes makes for a national political leader’ (Tebbit 1988: 177). Adam Ridley, who served as economic policy advisor to the Conservatives in opposition between 1974 and 1979, confirmed the validity validity of these assertions as he recalled how Joseph ‘was charming, but flawed in policy and didn’t follow through on his convictions’ (Ridley Interview, 2015). Ultimately, however, it was Joseph himself who ended his chances of emerging as the next leader of the Conservative Party. This was due to the controversy that he generated by a speech that he delivered in Birmingham in October 1974; shortly after the General Election defeat of earlier that

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month (Denham and Garnett 2001: 265–75), where Joseph attacked the ‘permissive society, arguing that: The balance of our population, our human stock is threatened. A recent article in Poverty, published by the Child Poverty Action Group, showed that a high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world and bring them up. They are born to mother who were first pregnant in adolescence in social classes four and five. Many of these girls are unmarried, many are deserted or divorced or soon will be. Some are of low intelligence, most of low educational attainment. They are unlikely to be able to give children the stable emotional background, the consistent combination of love and firmness which are more important than riches. They are producing problem children, the future unmarried mothers, delinquents, denizens of our borstals, sub-normal educational establishments, prisons, hostels for drifters. Yet these mothers, the under-twenties in many cases, single parents, from classes four and five, are now producing a third of all births. A high proportion of these births are a tragedy for the mother, the child and for us. (Joseph 1974c)

Having identified what was the primary cause of the cycle of social deprivation, Joseph asked: Yet what shall we do? If we do nothing, the nation moves towards degeneration, however much resources we pour into preventative work and the over-­ burdened educational system. It is all the more serious when we think of the loss of people with talent and initiative through emigration as our semi-­ socialism deprives them of adequate opportunities, rewards and satisfactions. Yet proposals to extend birth-control facilities to these classes of people, particularly the young unmarried girls, the potential young unmarried mothers, evokes entirely understandable moral opposition. Is it not condoning immorality? I suppose it is. But which is the lesser evil, until we are able to re-­moralize whole groups and classes of people, undoing the harm done when already weak restraints on strong instincts are further weakened by permissiveness in television, in films, on bookstalls? (Joseph 1974c)

He concluded with what amounted to a call to action from social conservatives, arguing that: This could be a watershed in our national existence. Are we to move towards moral decline reflected and intensified by economic decline, by the corrosive

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effects of inflation? Or can we re-moralize our national life, of which the economy is an integral part? It is up to us, to people like you and me. (Joseph 1974c)

As Vinen observes, ‘this was an argument with something to offend everyone’, as those on the left were ‘shocked by its eugenicism’, whilst those on the right were ‘shocked by the vision of comprehensive schools handing out contraceptives to retarded teenagers’ (Vinen 2009: 67). Even ideological sympathisers, like Airey Neave, who later became Thatcher’s campaign manager, thought that Joseph had been ‘very tactless’, given that he had appeared to recommend that ‘family planning be particularly applied to one-parent families’ (Moore 2013: 271). Ronald Miller, who was a speech-­writer to Heath and later to Thatcher, recalled how the Birmingham speech ‘seemed to indicate a lack of popular touch’ on behalf of Joseph (Millar 1993: 223). As the media frenzy escalated, Joseph came to accept that he had fatally damaged his chances of succeeding Heath, admitting that: ‘I may have damaged—things which I rather deeply believed’ (Halcrow 1989: 86–87). Joseph informed Thatcher: ‘I am sorry, I just can’t run. Ever since I made that speech the press have been outside the house. They have been merciless. Helen (his wife) can’t take it and I have decided that I just can’t stand’. At this, Thatcher replied: ‘Look, Keith, if you’re not going to stand, I will, because someone who represents our viewpoint has to stand’ (Thatcher 1995: 266).

The Accidental Candidate? Thatcher Challenges Heath Joseph delivered his Birmingham speech nine days after the Conservatives had lost the General Election of October 1974, and before the Conservatives had confirmed the change in their leadership election rules that would actually permit a formal challenge to Heath could take place. On the evening of the General Election of October 1974, however, Thatcher had given unambiguous answers in television interviews regarding Heath and the leadership. She told the BBC that she did not want to see an ‘immediate contest for the leadership’ (Thatcher 1974a). She reinforced that message in an interview for ITV, as she suggested that even if a leadership election was in the offing, you could ‘cross my name off the list’ of possible challengers (Thatcher 1974b).

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What was motivating Thatcher in providing these responses is open to interpretation. It could be that her comments were genuine, that is, she did not plan to stand herself and was expected to support Joseph, and she did not expect an immediate contest because it was impossible unless Heath resigned, which seemed unlikely (Denham and Garnett 2001: 275). Exploiting Anti-Heath Sentiment The perception being created in late 1974 and early 1975 was this: the procedures for electing the leader of the Conservative Party were being reformed to aid the chances of a credible challenge to Heath, and yet the best candidate that his critics could find was Thatcher3 (Wickham-Jones 1997: 75). After all, in the immediate aftermath of the General Election of October 1974, the odds on who should replace Heath was led by Whitelaw (who was 5 to 1 odds on) with Joseph 7 to 2—Thatcher was quoted as a 50 to 1 outsider, and yet she was now the best candidate available to the enemies of Heath to back (Denham and Garnett 2001: 278). Upon hearing her decision to challenge Heath, her husband, Denis, told her ‘you must be out of your mind’ as ‘you haven’t got a hope’4 (Thatcher 1995: 266). Despite Heath’s clear limitations, he was still expected to defeat Thatcher, as he had retained the support of constituency chairs and no newspaper was initially willing to back Thatcher as an alternative to Heath (Campbell 1993: 671). As Tebbit admitted upon joining her campaign, there was ‘big hill to climb to persuade colleagues’ to back her (Tebbit Interview, 2015). Indeed, on her motivation to stand, Thatcher accepted that it was ‘most unlikely that I would win’, but she felt that by entering the contest, she could ‘draw in other stronger candidates’ (Thatcher 1995: 267). Thatcher was a far stronger candidate than was initially understood, and she was to benefit from the weaknesses and complacency associated with the Heath campaign. Let us consider that latter issue first. Given his electoral record and the failures associated with his administration, the argument that Heath deserved to continue was a difficult one to make. 3  It is interesting to note the different recollections that Thatcher and Heath have of her, informing him of her decision to stand against him for the leadership of the Conservative Party. In his memoirs Heath claims that he thanked her for telling him in advance of her intentions (Heath 1998: 530), whilst Thatcher recalls how ‘he looked at me coldly, turned his back, shrugged his shoulders and said “if you must”’ (Thatcher 1995: 267). 4  Fowler would recall how the initial reaction amongst parliamentary colleagues to the prospect of Thatcher winning was one of incredulity.

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This was especially true given the volume of enemies that Heath had accumulated in his decade-long tenure as leader of the Conservative Party. A certain irony exists in that the Thatcher campaign would be mobilised by du Cann and Airey Neave. As was mentioned earlier in this chapter, du Cann had a problematic working relationship with Heath, and the same applied with regard to Neave and Heath. Vinen argues that Neave ‘nurtured a bitter dislike of Heath’, after he had been previously told that ‘his poor health made it impossible for him to hope for further [ministerial] preferment’ (Vinen 2009: 71), and Tebbit identified how ‘the feeling was mutual’ as ‘Heath greatly disliked’ Neave (Tebbit 2005: 110). The advantage that Neave had in mobilising support against Heath was the volume of Conservative parliamentarians whom Heath had alienated. In office, Heath had misused his powers of patronage as a means of party management. His ministerial ranks were unrepresentative of the ideological balance of forces within the parliamentary Conservative Party when formed in 1970, that is, moderate/centrist loyalists were disproportionately likely to hold ministerial office, and those on the parliamentary right were disproportionately located on the backbenches (Searing 1994: 350; Heath was also reluctant to engage in reshuffles and promotions once in office, Ball 1996: 342). Campbell then concludes that once appointed to the frontbench, ‘you generally stayed in’ and, more significantly, ‘once overlooked your chances of advancement were small’, but the consequence was a ‘dangerously high proportion of his MPs [being left] disappointed’ (Campbell 1993: 518–519; see also Norton 1978; Heppell and Hill 2015). As a consequence, Campbell argues that it is ‘easy in retrospect to trace the parliamentary party’s rejection of Heath back well before 1974–5’ (Campbell 1993: 510), whilst Norton observes that the first ballot of the Conservative Party leadership election of 1975 was the ‘pulling together’ of all of Heath’s ‘critics’ (Norton 1980: 339). However, it was not simply the case that Heath had numerous enemies who wanted him replaced. He also failed to effectively mobilise those who may have been sympathetic to his type of Conservatism (Shepherd 1991: 168–169). His campaign was lacklustre and, as Vinen observes, ‘no one really knew who ran [his] campaign: the main suspects—Kenneth Baker, Tim Kitson and Peter Walker—[have] all denied that they had been campaign manager’ (Vinen 2009: 72). Additionally, it seemed that Heath had fallen into an ‘innate sulkiness’, following his defeat in the two previous general elections, along with the news of Thatcher’s challenge for the leadership (Vinen 2009: 72). As a result, rather than actively attempting

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to win over the Conservative vote, his ‘belated attempts at seduction were so clumsy and blatantly insincere that they probably lost him votes5’ (Vinen 2009: 72). Moore also observes that by late 1974 and early 1975, Heath was ‘a hopeless campaigner, resenting the very idea and, even more than in the past, extremely bad at effecting interest in people’ (Moore 2013: 286–287). A number of Tory backbenchers, in particular, were unimpressed by sudden lunch and dinner invites that came their way, provoking them to ask themselves, ‘why haven’t we been asked over the last five years?’ (Moore 2013: 286–287). A ‘natural awkwardness’ in such situations, along with his resentment to his colleague in the form of Thatcher due to her gender, did not add to his appeal (Moore 2013: 286–287). A Pro-Thatcher Perspective? Having identified the failings of the Heath campaign, it is important to identify the advantages that Thatcher possessed when initiating her challenge. The first advantage of her candidature was that she had a very strong campaign team around her. This was achieved through Neave. Once it became clear that Thatcher would stand, Neave approached her to ask who was leading her campaign. When she admitted ‘I don’t really have a campaign’, Neave decided, ‘I think I had better do it for you’, and Thatcher ‘agreed with enthusiasm’ (Thatcher 1995: 272). Neave had initially been coordinating plans for du Cann to challenge Heath once the rules permitted. In reality, Neave was willing to support any candidate that had a serious chance of replacing Heath. Neave simply transferred the campaign infrastructure that he had been constructing for a du Cann candidature across to Thatcher (Fisher 1977: 163; Wickham-Jones 1997: 81). As Tebbit recalls, the Thatcher campaign ‘team set about rallying and canvassing support’, which was ‘done with extraordinary thoroughness and great secrecy’ (Tebbit 2005: 110). Biographers of Thatcher emphasise the importance of Neave to the rise of Thatcher. For example, Aitken argues that her ‘leadership prospects were transformed’ with his organisational backing, meaning that she was ‘now a serious runner’ with ‘credible supporters, organizers and voters’ 5  During his leadership tenure, Heath developed a reputation for being ‘rude’ to his own parliamentarians and for being an ineffective communicator with those whose support he needed to retain (Fisher 1977: 132-133; see also Norton 1978: 228-230; Behrens 1980: 31-32).

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(Aitken 2013: 169). Additionally, Moore argues that she took on board Neave’s advice, for example ‘avoiding media interviews until the very late stages’ and ‘seeing all MPs who want to see her’ (Moore 2013: 286). One example of how Neave was drawing supporters to the Thatcher challenge was Tebbit, who admitted that ‘it was Airey who first persuaded me that we should elect Margaret as leader’ (Tebbit Interview, 2015). The second advantage of her candidature was that her political stock was rising at the very point of the campaigning period (by that we mean both the formal campaigning period once the new rules were agreed upon in December 1974, and through to the actual ballots of February 1975, but also also the informal period after the General Election of October 1974). After the General Election defeat of October 1974, Thatcher was moved from being shadow Environment Secretary to the position of shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Although nominally number two in that portfolio to the Shadow Chancellor, Robert Carr, Thatcher managed to turn this into an opportunity. Her performances in Parliament, when opposing the Wilson administration’s Finance Bill, were widely praised (Behrens 1980: 39). Here she was able to demonstrate her ‘ability to master detail’ (Moore 2013: 286) and her ‘marshalling of facts and figures within a clear framework of argument’ (Harris 2013: 108). This was conducted right in front of her electorate in the forthcoming leadership ballot, and Neave knew how important this could be in garnering support. Thatcher recalled how Neave would concentrated on the specifics of campaigning tactics, telling her ‘to leave it to him and to concentrate on my work on the Finance Bill’ (Thatcher 1995: 272). As she demonstrated her intellectual and parliamentary prowess in duals with the combative Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey (who would later describe her as ‘exceptionally able’ and a ‘formidable opponent’6, Healey 1990: 487), she was making a ‘lot of converts’ according to Ridley (1991: 9). Even those aligned to the Conservative left acknowledged as much. Prior recalls that her ‘stature’ was ‘enhanced’ (Prior 1986: 99) by her parliamentary performances, and Francis Pym acknowledged that ‘amidst the shambles and doubts of that time, here was one person who could articulate a point of 6  Crines et al. (Crines et al. 2016: 23) would argue that it was during these parliamentary exchanges that Thatcher delivered ‘one of her best ever parliamentary rejoinders’, as she said of Healey, who had been ridiculing her: ‘some Chancellors are macro-economic. Other Chancellors are fiscal. This one is just plain cheap’ (HC Deb, Vol. 884, Col. 1553-4, 22 January 1975).

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view with conviction’ (Pym 1984: 9). Of its significance, Heseltine argues that: ‘She created an impact on those on the committee and the floor of the House at the first stage, which gave her the opening to become the favourite of the right wing of the party’ (Heseltine Interview, 2015). This is a view that Lamont endorses as he recalls how: I think at that point people were getting an inkling about the sort of things Thatcher believed in. She spelt out very clearly her opposition to government borrowing or her dislike of it. I remember her slating Harold Lever ‘all you know is how to borrow, borrow, borrow’. Those sort of lines stuck in people’s minds. (Lamont Interview, 2015)

This was tied into the third advantage of her candidature: that is, Thatcher could offer not just a new public face for the Conservative Party but also a new direction for Conservatism. Neave argued that not only was she a ‘formidable’ House of Commons performer and was ‘undoubtedly the person the Labour Party fears most’, but that she ‘represents a break with the past’ (McKie 1975). That change, which was key to her appeal, key to her appeal was something she recognised in the aftermath of annexing the leadership of the Conservative Party. Speaking to the Daily Mail in February 1975, she stated that ‘after ten years in which our vote had slumped and we had become a losing party there HAD to be a change’ (Shrimsley 1975). As Carrington argues, Thatcher had simply captured how there was a ‘mood’ within the Conservative Party for a ‘new direction’ (Carrington 1988: 275). What Thatcher was tapping into was the concern within the Conservative Party about the prevailing political climate, as the politics of consensus was increasingly becoming associated with the politics of decline (Pemberton 2001). Perceptions of relative economic decline had gained traction within British politics from the latter part of the Macmillan administration onwards (Tomlinson 1996), and the economic modernisation strategies of the Wilson era had failed to reverse the decline. Those on the right were, in effect, arguing that Heath needed to be removed because the Conservatives had the right policy solutions in place to reverse the decline in the 1970 General Election manifesto, but Heath lacked the commitment to implement that long-term agenda (Holmes 1997). Thatcher was thereby presenting herself as a candidate willing to make that case in the knowledge of what it implied, that is, political methods based on ‘conviction and confrontation’ rather than ‘compromise and

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consensus’ (Evans 1997: 47). Her approach would provide the basis for a ‘dramatic programme, calculated to stir the imagination’, which would ‘seize the political initiative’ (Turner 1995: 194). Conservative parliamentarians were attracted to Thatcher, as they could sense how her agenda could appeal to those sections of the electorate who had become disenchanted with the methods and approaches used by previous governments (of both persuasions in the 1960s and 1970s). With Kavanagh identifying how the electorate was becoming more conservative after 1974, it was possible for Thatcher to construct her new political constituency, that is, middle-class, self-employed businessmen and the petit bourgeois (Kavanagh 1987: 299–300). It is also worth emphasising how Thatcher thought that the directionless Heathite Conservatives had contributed to a crisis of morale. She used the campaigning period to demonstrate how she believed she could rectify this failing: There is a widespread feeling in the country that the Conservative Party has not defended these ideals explicitly and toughly enough, so that Britain is set on a course towards inevitable Socialist mediocrity. That course must not only be halted, it must be reversed. The action by the Tory Party to carry out that reversal must begin now, while we are in opposition and have time to look at our policies afresh before the next election. That will be a priority task. (Thatcher 1975)

When Conservative parliamentarians began voting to determine whether Heath should remain as their party leader, it was actually a threeway contest. Although the print media attention was on the Heath versus Thatcher contest, there was a third candidate—Hugh Fraser. He was not a serious contender, as Vinen observes he ‘had no senior ministerial experience, no reputation for sound political judgment’ and illustrated the ‘weakness of old-style Tories’ (Vinen 2009: 69). Although Fraser was expected to make a very poor showing in terms of votes cast, his presence could have been significant. The Heathites were said to have welcomed the presence of Fraser alongside Thatcher on the ballot, as it would split the right-wing anti-Heath vote, thus suppressing the likely Thatcher vote as opposed to the likely Heath vote (Gilmour and Garnett 1998: 296). Although Heath was personally ‘pessimistic’ (Millar 1993: 224), his campaign was predicting that he would win a comfortable first ballot lead— their calculations told them that they had 129 definite backers, and they estimated that they might secure an additional 15 votes, so they predicted

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a return of around 144 votes (from the 277 strong Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP)) (Campbell 1993: 671; Ramsden 1996: 450). However, the Thatcher campaign team was estimating that support for Heath had approximately 80 backers and Thatcher had 120 backers with the remaining 70 plus Conservative parliamentarians up for grabs (Thatcher 1995: 274; Ramsden 1996: 449). However, Neave deliberately underestimated how well Thatcher was doing and created the impression that Heath might well be on course for victory (Gilmour and Garnett 1998: 297). Neave did this so as (a) to make that those on the right voted for Thatcher and not Fraser, and (b) to incentivise one-nation Conservatives who wanted Whitelaw to succeed Thatcher to realise that they could only get to a second ballot for Whitelaw to enter, if Heath was defeated, so they needed to lend their vote to Thatcher in the first ballot (Wickham-Jones 1997: 81) (Table 16.1). The strategy worked. Heath was forced out of the leadership of the Conservative Party, and came second to Thatcher by 130 (47.1 percent) to 119 votes (43.1 percent). If the objective was to remove Heath and create an open field for other candidates to enter the fray, then Thatcher had succeeded. The question now was whether she could actually exploit the momentum that she had to win the leadership against the new candidates who had emerged now that Heath had been removed. If the Thatcher vote did comprise Whitelaw supporters who had lent their vote to Thatcher to evict Heath, then if Whitelaw could garner all of the Heath voters plus those Table 16.1 Candidate support in the Conservative Party Leadership election ballots of 1975

Candidate First Ballot Margaret Thatcher Edward Heath Hugh Fraser Abstentions Second Ballot Margaret Thatcher William Whitelaw James Prior Geoffrey Howe John Peyton Abstentions

Votes

Percentage

130

47.1

119 16 10

43.1 5.8 4.0

146

52.9

79 19 19 11 2

28.6 6.9 6.9 4.0 0.7

Source: Heppell 2008: 62–63.

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tactical voters, then the Thatcher-Whitelaw ballot could be very competitive. However, what undermined Whitelaw was the fact that a number of new candidates joined the contest now that Heath was removed. Ironically the Thatcher vote went up from 130 to 146—the increase in her vote equating Thatcher’s first round return of 130 plus that of Fraser on 16. That left 129 votes, that is, Heath’s 119 votes plus 10 abstentions, but Whitelaw could only secure the backing of 79, with Howe and Prior securing 19 votes each, John Peyton 10 votes and two abstentions (Heppell 2008: 63).

Conclusion: Peasants’ Revolt or Religious War? That Thatcher was the new leader of the Conservative Party was viewed at the time as an unexpected outcome. She certainly did not conform to the type of leader that the Conservatives had been choosing via the undemocratic system of leadership selection known as ‘the magic circle’ up until 1965 (Fisher 1977; Shepherd 1991; Bogdanor 1994). That Heath was removed, once the Conservatives had created the means to do this, should not have been viewed as unexpected. He was clearly vulnerable to eviction, once that option was made available, due to the fact that his electoral record was poor and his governmental legacy was unconvincing. His vulnerability was increased by the fact that the new procedures would be based on all Conservative parliamentarians and not just those voting, meaning that the threshold for winning was higher than might have been the case. Heath also compounded his difficulties in holding onto office by running a complacent campaign, although it has to be said that his campaign’s ability to persuade Conservatives to continue to back Heath was undermined by the volume of enemies that had been accumulated over his decade-long leadership tenure. Thatcher was also a fortunate challenger. She was fortunate that the talent pool to select a non-Heath challenger from was so shallow. She was fortunate that Whitelaw was too loyal to challenge himself directly. She was fortunate that Joseph discredited himself with a misjudged speech in Birmingham, which derailed him before the campaign had even begun (and before the new leadership election rules had been determined). She was fortunate that the chances of a du Cann candidature were snuffed out by concerns about his business dealings. She was also fortunate that she was able to inherit the campaign infrastructure that Neave was constructing in coordinate the removal of Heath. That the maverick Fraser was the only other alternative to her or Heath in the first ballot was fortunate, as

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it enabled her to mobilise anti-Heath sentiment around her. She may have been fortunate in these regards, but she made the most of her good fortune—for example, the excellence of her parliamentary interventions when opposing Healey was widely acknowledged and helped to establish that she had the intellectual abilities needed to lead. In late 1974 and early 1975, Thatcher propelled herself to victory due to her determination, desire and her relentless commitment to hard work, as Harris concludes: In the heat of the battle she turned out not to be frail at all … She showed that her single greatest quality was courage … She suddenly acquired the status of a heroine for the Tory men who had for so long skulked, grumbled and plotted but failed to strike. More than any General Election she fought, the leadership election that propelled Margaret Thatcher to the head of the Tory Party was a raw and ruthless struggle rarely matched in British politics. (Harris 2013: 94)

Over and beyond these considerations we need to acknowledge the fact that political science academic literature suggests that the outcome can be explained by one of two alternative perspectives, that is, it was the ‘peasants’ revolt’ or a ‘religious war’. The peasants’ revolt implies that ‘electing Margaret had simply been the most effective way of getting rid of Ted’ (Critchley and Halcrow 1998: 60). Those that propelled her into the leadership of the Conservative Party were primarily located on the backbenches, but their motives were not ideological—as Crewe and Searing imply they backed her, even after Heath had withdrawn, even though they ‘had no idea that she was about to hatch a new ideology and behind it march the party off to the right’ (Crewe and Searing 1988: 371). Cowley and Bailey (2000) challenge the non-ideological perspective and suggest that the motives of those who voted for Thatcher were ideological, that is, those of the backbenchers who voted for Thatcher against Heath, and against Whitelaw and others, did so knowing that she was offering a change of ideological direction. They imply that the right was disproportionately likely to back Thatcher and the left was disproportionately likely to back Heath and then Whitelaw. As such, Tebbit offers the following insight into the events of 1974–1975: But a revolution, in all but the bloodiest sense, it certainly was. It represented a complete up-ending of prevailing assumptions. It marked a total defeat for the existing party hierarchy. It was the work of a very few bold men—and one bold woman—who risked all, and won. (Tebbit 2005: 93)

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Bibliography Archives Conservative Party Archives. Bodleian Library: University of Oxford. Cabinet Papers. The National Archives.

Published Primary Sources House of Commons Parliamentary Debates (HC Deb).

Interviews Lord Heseltine (2015) Lord Lamont (2015) Adam Ridley (2015) Lord Tebbit (2015)

Speeches

and

Television Interviews

Joseph, K. (1974a). Speech at Upminster, 22 June, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110604. Joseph, K. (1974b). Speech at Preston, 5 September, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110607. Joseph, K. (1974c). Speech at Edgbaston, 19 October, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/101830. Thatcher, M. (1974a). TV Interview for BBC, 11 October, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102062. Thatcher, M. (1974b). Interview for ITN Evening News, 11 October, https:// www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102063. Thatcher, M. (1975). Radio Interview for ITN, 31 January, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102602.

Newspapers

and

Periodicals

Clarke, G. (1972). du Cann to seek 1922 Chair. The Times, 15 November. McKie, D. (1975). Gareth Parry on Neave and David McKie on the Thatcher press circus. The Guardian, 12 February. Shrimsley, A. (1975). After three weeks of campaigning and celebration, now she has time to talk. And, of course, she talks to the Mail. Daily Mail, 17 February.

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Memoirs

and

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Diaries

Baker, K. (1993). The Turbulent Years: My Life in Politics. London: Faber and Faber. Carrington, P. (1988). Reflect on Things Past: The Memoirs of Lord Carrington. London: Collins. du Cann, E. (1995). Two Lives: The Political and Business Careers of Edward du Cann/ Upton upon Thames: Images. Healey, D. (1990). The Time of My Life. London: Michael Joseph. Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life: My Autobiography. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Heseltine, M. (2000). Life in the Jungle. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Howe, G. (1994). Conflict of Loyalty. London: Macmillan. Millar, R. (1993). A View from the Wings. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Pym, F. (1984). The Politics of Consent. London: Hamish Hamilton. Prior, J. (1986). A Balance of Power. London: Hamish Hamilton. Tebbit, N. (1988). Upwardly Mobile: An Autobiography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Thatcher, M. (1995). A Path to Power. London: Harper Press.

Books, Chapters and Articles Aitken, J. (2013). Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality. London: Bloomsbury. Ball, S. (1996). The Conservative Party and the Heath Government. In S. Ball & A. Seldon (Eds.), The Heath Government 1970–1974: A Reappraisal. Harlow: Longman. Baston, L. (2004). Reggie: The Life of Reginald Maudling. Stroud: Sutton. Behrens, R. (1980). The Conservative Party from Heath to Thatcher: Policies and Politics 1974 to 1979. London: Saxon House. Blake, R. (1998). The Conservative Party from Peel to Major. London: Arrow. Bogdanor, V. (1994). The Selection of the Party Leader. In A. Seldon & A. Ball (Eds.), Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campbell, J. (1993). Edward Heath: A Biography. London: Pimlico. Clark, A. (1998). The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State 1922–1997. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Cowley, P., & Bailey, M. (2000). Peasants’ Uprising or Religious War? Re-examining the 1975 Conservative Leadership Contest. British Journal of Political Science, 30(4), 599–629. Crewe, I., & Searing, D. (1988). Ideological Change in the British Conservative Party. American Political Science Review, 82(2), 361–384.

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Crines, A., Heppell, T., & Dorey, P. (2016). The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Critchley, J., & Halcrow, M. (1998). Collapse of the Stout Party: The Decline and Fall of the Tories. London: Indigo. Denham, A., & Garnett, M. (2001). Keith Joseph. London: Acumen. Evans, E. (1997). Thatcher and Thatcherism. London: Routledge. Fisher, N. (1977). The Tory Leaders: Their Struggle for Power. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Garnett, M., & Aitken, I. (2002). Splendid, Splendid! The Authorised Biography of William Whitelaw. London: Jonathan Cape. Gilmour, I., & Garnett, M. (1998). Whatever Happened to the Tories: The Conservative Party since 1945. London: Fourth Estate. Halcrow, M. (1989). Keith Joseph: A Single Mind. London: Macmillan. Harris, R. (2013). Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher. London: Bantam Press. Heppell, T. (2008). Choosing the Tory Leader: Conservative Party Leadership Elections from Heath to Cameron. London: I. B. Taurus. Heppell, T., & Hill, M. (2015). The Prime Ministerial Powers of Patronage: Ministerial Appointments and Dismissals under Edward Heath. Contemporary British History, 29(4), 464–485. Holmes, M. (1997). The Failure of the Heath Government. London: Macmillan. Kavanagh, D. (1987). Thatcherism and British Politics: The End of Consensus? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maudling, R. (1979). Memoirs. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. Moore, C. (2013). Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography: Volume One: Not for Turning. London: Penguin. Norton, P. (1978). Conservative Dissidents: Dissent Within the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1970–1974. London: Temple Smith. Norton, P. (1980). The Changing Face on the British House of Commons in the 1970s. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 5(3), 333–357. Pemberton, H. (2001). A Taxing Task: Combating Britain’s Relative Economic Decline in the 1960s. Twentieth Century British History, 12(3), 354–375. Quinn, T. (2012). Electing and Ejecting Party Leaders in Britain. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Ramsden, J. (1996). The Winds of Change: Macmillan and Heath 1957–1975. London: Longman. Searing, D. (1994). Westminster’s World: Understanding Political Roles. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stark, L. (1996). Choosing a Leader: Party Leadership Contests in Britain from Macmillan to Blair. London: Macmillan. Shepherd, R. (1991). The Power Brokers: The Tory Party and its Leaders. London: Hutchinson.

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Shepherd, R. (1996). Enoch Powell. London: Pimlico. Tebbit, N. (2005). On the inner culture of the Tories. In R. Subroto & J. Clarke (Eds.), Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it happened and what it meant. London: Continuum. Tomlinson, J. (1996). Inventing ‘Decline’: The Falling Behind of the British Economy in the Postwar Years. The Economic History Review, 49(4), 731–757. Trewin, I. (2008). The Hugo Young Papers: Thirty Years of British Politics—Off the Record. London: Penguin. Turner, J. (1995). A Land Fit for Tories to Live in: The Political Ecology of the British Conservative Party, 1944-94. Contemporary European History, 4(2), 189–208. Watkins, A. (1998). The Road to Number 10: From Bonar Law to Tony Blair. London: Duckworth. Wickham-Jones, M. (1997). Right Turn: A Revisionist Account of the 1975 Conservative Party Leadership Election. Twentieth Century British History, 8(1), 74–89. Wright, E. (1970). The Future of Conservatism. Political Quarterly, 41(4), 387–398. Vinen, R. (2009). Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the Thatcher Era. London: Simon and Schuster. Ziegler, P. (2010). Edward Heath. London: Harper Press.

CHAPTER 17

Margaret Thatcher and the Heath Premiership: Recent History Re-written Antony Mullen

Our understanding of continuity and change within post-war British politics has been defined in the work of political historians and political scientists by the theory of post-war consensus. The theory rests on the assumption that the Conservative administrations of 1951–1964 made an accommodation with the socially democratic-inspired policy platform that they inherited from the Attlee administrations of 1945–1951. The leading advocates of the theory of post-war consensus (Addison 1975, 1993; Kavanagh 1992; Kavanagh and Morris 1994; Dutton 1997) that the transition from the Labour to Conservative governments in 1951 would lead to the establishment of an elite-level consensus around the following policy pillars: (1) A belief in a mixed economy thus promoting (Labour) or accepting (Conservative) the public ownership of core industries. (2) A commitment to ensuring full employment thus justifying the use of Keynesian demand management techniques.

A. Mullen (*) The Thatcher Network, Durham, UK © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_17

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(3) A belief in active and interventionist government based on the idea of the state seeking to flatten out societal inequalities. (4) A conciliatory approach to the trade union movement in terms of governing approaches towards industrial relations. (5) The promotion of the welfare state as a universal right. (6) A foreign policy approach characterised by membership of the Atlantic alliance and maintaining Britain as a nuclear power; and the transition from Empire to Commonwealth (Kavanagh and Morris 1994). Consensus advocates argue that although the two main political parties disagreed on priorities and specifics, their frontbenchers (i.e. those that occupied ministerial office when their parties were in power), fought out their differences within the context of a framework of common assumptions about the management of the economy and the role of the state. One of the ways in which that supposed policy continuity was captured was by the term ‘Butskellism’ (coined by the Economist in 1954), which was based on the limited economy policy change between the approach of the outgoing Labour Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell, and the incoming Conservative Chancellor, R.  A. Butler (Rose 1961; Boxer 2010; for a challenge to the notion of Butskellism, see Kelly 2002; Rollings 1994). Although the theory of post-war consensus has been subjected to critiques (see Pimlott 1988; Jones and Kandiah 1996; Kerr 2001) and reappraisals (see Fraser 2000; Toye 2013; Blackburn 2018), it remains a key determinant through which we understand and interpret post-war British politics. If the consensus thesis helps us to understand policy trajectory in post-war British politics after 1945, then consensus thesis advocates argue that that policy continuity was ended by the onset of Thatcherism. Specifically, they identify how the pillars of consensus were either directly challenged or modified or refocused. Consider the following: (1) The shift away from the mixed economy as evidenced by the politics of privatisation. (2) The abandonment of the commitment of the state to provide for full employment alongside a shift from Keynesianism and towards monetarism. (3) The removal of a conciliatory approach towards the trade unions as industrial relations became characterised by confrontation, as Thatcher viewed the trade unions as an obstacle to the effective functioning of a free-market economy.

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(4) A scepticism towards governmental intervention within the economy, given the Thatcherite assumption of the inevitability of inequality and their desire to reduce public expenditure and a limited state. (5) A challenge with regard to the welfare state and a shift away from the principles of it as a universal right and towards seeing it as a safety net. (6) A foreign policy approach remained essentially in place, but the Thatcher era was characterised by a particularly strong emphasis on the Atlantic Alliance (Kavanagh and Morris 1994). This long-standing narrative account of post-war British political history sees the onset of Thatcherism as a critical turning point, that is, 1979 sees the displacement of the period of social democratic consensus politics with the conviction politics of Thatcherism.te. This notion of a bold and radical movement replacing a tired approach lends itself to the creation of a ‘conventional storyline’ of political development, as political historians attempted to ‘portray the Thatcher governments as radical’ (Kerr 2001: 1–2). That portrayal of the Thatcher premiership of 1979–1990 as being radical was based on the narrative that a break was being made with objectives of previous post-war governments. Significantly, for Thatcher and her Thatcherite acolytes, this necessitated delegitimising the efforts (and competency) of previous post-war Conservative administrations and first in line for their critique was the Heath premiership of 1970–1974. As Hilton et  al. have identified, however, the establishment of the neoliberal displacement narrative, which has been embraced into conventional historical accounts of the 1980s, is based on retelling a story of post-war Britain, influenced by the narratives of the Thatcher premiership itself (Hilton et al. 2017: 147). The aim of this chapter is to identify the importance of narrative to our understanding of political change. The term narrative embraces notions of storytelling or of giving an account, which constructs the official, or accepted, or correct version of history for a particular political period. The chapter considers recent contributions to political history, concerning the politics of Thatcherism, which have analysed the significance of narrative. It considers their attempts to advance the ways that narrative theory can be applied to the study of Thatcherism in the context of ongoing debates about challenging established historical accounts. Moreover, in examining the relationship between Thatcherism and narrative, the chapter explores

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the place of the Heath government, in which Thatcher had served, within the narrative account of the end of consensus thesis, designed and promoted by those sympathetic to the Thatcherite project. Before doing so, however, the chapter provides an overview of the existing academic perspectives on Thatcherism.

Consensus Politics and Alternative Perspectives on Thatcherism After the Conservative Party won power by winning the General Election of 1979, it was able to implement a conviction-driven, consensus-ending agenda, which is now widely recognised as  Thatcherism. The impact of Thatcherism—upon politics, the economy and wider society - was considerable, and excellent reappraisals have been offered by Vinen (2009); Jackson and Saunders (2012); and Farrell and Hay (2014) (see also on the legacy of Thatcherism, Mullen et al. 2020). With the extant academic literature, the consensus perspective is but one of a number of different perspectives on Thatcherism.1 In addition to the consensus perspective are the following: first, there are the economically driven perspectives. These suggest that Thatcherism was a modernisation strategy constructed to address the stagnation that characterised the British economy in the 1960s and 1970s. It was based on the idea that reversing economic decline would necessitate tackling the trade union problem: that is, the failure of consensus era corporatist solutions for addressing the fundamental incompatibility between the interests of labour and capital. The solution to the problem was to advance the causes of capital relative to labour to establish a more flexible and non-­ unionised workforce—a workforce segmented into a high-skill high-paid segment alongside a low-skilled, low-paid segment (Jessop et  al. 1988; Taylor 1989). Second, there are the ideologically driven perspectives. These imply that Thatcher and Thatcherites were interested in securing ideological hegemony within British politics so as to constrain any successor administration to govern on the political and economic terrain that they had established. Their ideological project was based upon:

1  Reviews of the academic literature on Thatcherism are provided by Jessop et al. (1988: 22–51); Evans and Taylor (1996: 219–246); and Hay (2007).

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an ideological amalgamation of economic liberalism or neo-liberalism as advanced by economic dries and neo-conservatism as promoted by social conservatives. Neo-conservatism was motivated by three main concerns: issues relating to authority and the maintenance of law and order; issues relating to the importance of tradition, the sanctity of marriage and the centrality of the family within the context of wider morality-based considerations; and issues relating to the preservation of national identity from internal and external threats. Critically, neo-conservatism rejected the parameters of the 1960s sexual revolution and the liberalisation of abortion, divorce and homosexuality. they suggested that a correlation existed between liberal demands for sexual liberation (for example the contraceptive pill), progressive attacks on marriage, motherhood and the family, and increased divorce rates, single parenthood, social disorder, juvenile delinquency and welfare dependency. Neo-conservatism could be reactionary in tone. They were known for their opposition to homosexual rights; freedom of contraception; and abortion; but were supportive of the family; capital and corporal punishment; and censorship. Neo-conservatism was also characterised by a desire to protect, preserve and promote British national identity, and it was this that fuelled their rejection of devolution; their scepticism about the growth of multiculturalism, and their strong rhetoric on immigration (thus fuelling claims of populism within Thatcherite thinking and also links to Powellism). Neo-conservative thinking contributed to hostility towards further integration within Europe and a strong desire to protect British national sovereignty. (Crines et al. 2016: 3–4; see also Gamble 1988; Durham 1991; Lynch 1999; Buller 2000)

Third, alongside the economic and ideologically driven perspectives of what was driving Thatcherism comes the personality-driven perspective. This acknowledges the centrality of the persona of Thatcher herself to the construction and presentation of the agenda that had an -ism added to the end of her name. Although this perspective tends to get overshadowed within the academic literature, Thatcher did come to personify a set of ideas and an approach to governing that would dominate British politics in the period between 1979 and 1990—how effective would those economically and ideologically motivated ideas have been without her leadership to provide them with coherence and to mobilise support for them? (Riddell 1989; see also Minogue and Biddiss 1987). Fourth, complementing the economic, ideological and personality-­ driven perspectives on Thatcherism comes the electorally driven perspective associated with statecraft (Bulpitt 1986: 19–39). Jim  Bulpitt acknowledged that there was  an ideological objective at the heart of

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Thatcherism. However, he also argued that this was not the primary driver of the Thatcherites’ policy agenda (and within this, their attack on consensus politics). Their primary driver was electoral, that is, intended to showcase to the electorate that they were worthy of re-election which required them to demonstrate economic competence, and this constituted the best way of reversing economic decline (Bulpitt 1986). To enable them to showcase their governing competence necessitated an approach based on ‘depoliticisation’ (Flinders and Buller 2006) and the ‘need to depoliticise contentious issues by placing responsibility for decision-making ‘at one remove’ from government (Crines et al. 2016: 7). On how this applied to Thatcherism, Andrew Crines et al. note the following example: Thatcherites felt that wage determination was a politicised and intensified conflict between the trade unions and government, and by doing so, increased perceptions of governing incompetence. Thatcherite policy solutions, such as eschewing formal incomes policy, reforming trade unions via extensive legislation, and pursuing privatisation, were all designed to take government out of Labour disputes. (Crines et al. 2016: 7)

The fifth perspective is the aforementioned consensus-ending perspective, explored within the introduction to this chapter. This acknowledges that as Conservative Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990, Thatcher would become well known for her attacks on consensus-style politics. She viewed consensus as being driven by compromise and a lack of principle, and she came to believe the post-war Conservative Party had ‘retreated gracefully’ in the face of the supposedly ‘inevitable advance’ of socialism (Thatcher 1993: 104). Her whole approach to politics was conviction driven not consensus seeking, as evidenced from her tendency towards divisive labelling, for example, within the Conservatives, members were either with the Thatcherite ‘dries’ (‘one of us’) or against and aligned to the One-Nation-inspired/interventionist ‘wets’. Meanwhile,  the trade unions were viewed as a destructive, undemocratic and illegitimate obstacle to the functioning of the free market  and described  as the ‘enemy within’ (Young 1990; Dorey 1995). That Conservative elites, such as Thatcher, believed that consensus was a discredited term for a discredited era was becoming evident from the beginning of her tenure as Leader of the Conservative Party in 1975. When the newly formed Thatcher Shadow Cabinet of 1975 set about their work in opposition, it was clear that ‘consensus’ was part of their thinking.

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Keith Joseph presented his Shadow Cabinet colleagues with a policy paper in which he identified the negative effects to the British economy (and the Conservatives electorally) of having acquiesced to the politics of consensus (Thatcher MSS 2/6/1/156, Keith Joseph ‘Notes Towards the Definition of Policy’, 4 April 1975). Angus Maude identified the necessity of challenging consensus, as he informed the Shadow Cabinet that ‘consensus began to move towards socialism in 1960 to 1962’ (Hailsham MSS, 1/1/10, ‘Lord Hailsham notes on a meeting of the Shadow Cabinet, 11 April 1975). When commenting upon the ideas that Joseph was espousing in terms of future policy, Howe noted that the Joseph diagnosis did represent a ‘departure from consensus’, but that it did not differ significantly from what the Conservatives had advanced in their manifesto at the General Election of 1970. Howe argued, however, that when they attempted to initiate it in the first 18  months (prior to the infamous U-turns), they ‘failed’ to ‘explain it’ and its ‘possibilities’. Somewhat intriguingly, Thatcher concluded the 1970 Selsdon agenda when entering office by saying: ‘all our policies were right, [but] all your presentation was wrong’ (Hailsham MSS, 1/1/10, ‘Lord Hailsham notes on a meeting of the Shadow Cabinet, 11 April 1975). What is critical, however, is this: Although discussing consensus politics as being part of the problem, what this chapter demonstrates is that it remained a term that Thatcher tended to avoid utilising within her rhetoric whilst in opposition, and that she would not go on to exploit it more openly until the run up to General Election campaign of 1983. However, with the General Election of 1979 on the horizon, the fact that her agenda might be ideologically distinctive was noted. For example, in what was one of the earliest attempts to define Thatcherism, Stuart Hall put forward arguments that would be consistent with both the consensus-­ busting and ideologically driven perspectives. Writing in Marxism Today in January 1979, Hall argued that Thatcher(ism) was aiming for the ‘destruction of consensus’ or, at least, the destruction of a consensus based upon the principles of social democracy, and that this included ‘the “creeping socialism” and apologetic “state collectivism”’ of the Heath wing’ of the Conservative Party2 (Hall 1979: 16). Writing again in Marxism Today in February 1980, Hall concluded that Thatcherism was ‘qualitatively new’ in British politics. She was advancing the ‘radical right’ agenda further 2  In February 1980, Hall appeared to contradict himself when he argued that elements of Thatcherism’s radicalism were identifiable in the Heath programme of 1970 (Hall 1980: 26).

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than Heath government  even contemplated, as her administration set about ‘condensing a wide range of social and political issues and themes under the social market philosophy’ (Hall 1980: 26). What Hall proposed, in the second of these two essays, was that Thatcherism brought together multiple strands of existing right-wing ideological positions and ideas from within the Conservative Party and presented them, for the first time, under a single banner. In doing so, Hall was hinting at how certain tenets within Thatcherism were already part of the political thought within the Conservative Party, but that they were being brought into the mainstream (having been briefly there, e.g. in the late opposition/early government period of the Heath leadership tenure). Later in the decade, Andrew Gamble would reflect upon how Thatcherism brought together different ideological strands—neoliberal and neo-­ conservative—in his seminal study on Thatcherism entitled The Free Economy and the Strong State (Gamble 1988). In this, Gamble presented what he regarded as a conundrum at the heart of understanding Thatcherism. He stated: ‘the key problem is to decide what gives it coherence’ (Gamble 1988: 23). It is this conundrum of identifying from what source or by what means Thatcherism managed to present itself and exist as a coherent project despite the potential for explicit ideological contradiction that this chapter attempts to address. In doing so, it argues that Thatcherism was heavily reliant upon a narrative framework in order to maintain coherence. To demonstrate this, the chapter outlines the principles of the narrative framework to which Thatcherism conforms. It then uses archival evidence to highlight the key moments within the development of how Thatcher would rely on this narrative relating to the idea of consensus. It does this by examining the political career of Thatcher in the following stages: first, as a backbench  Member of  Parliament and as a member of the Heath Shadow Cabinet in the late 1960s; second, her period as a Cabinet Minister in the Heath government 1970–1974; third; her tenure as Leader of the Opposition between 1975 and 1979; and, finally, as Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990. In doing so, the chapter also reflects upon the place of the Heath premiership within this narrative and how it is, either implicitly or explicitly, implicated as conforming to, or being part of, the consensus against which Thatcherism (eventually) defined itself.

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Thatcherism and the Consensus Politics Narrative Recent studies of Thatcherism by Robert  Saunders (2012) and Sally Abernethy (2018) have both highlighted the relationship that exists between Thatcherism and narrative. While both scholarly contributions are illuminating and valuable in many ways, neither give a full definition as to what exactly narrative is intended to mean in relation to Thatcherism.3 Abernethy uses narrative to refer to ‘how Thatcherism was packaged and presented to the electorate’ (2018: 2), while Saunders argues that Thatcher ‘offered a specific interpretation of the seventies that privileged particular responses’, which became a ‘hegemonic narrative’ (2012: 25). Both these statements are true, but more can be gained by considering narrative structures in greater depth rather than using the term to refer simply to an historical account or version of events. Hayden White has rejected the notion that a narrative account of history can be a ‘neutral medium’, and he asserts that ‘narrative is an expression in discourse of a distinct mode of experiencing and thinking about the world, its structures, and its processes’ (White 2010: 274). Drawing upon the work of structuralist historian Fernand Braudel, who first systematically argued that narrative led to a dramatistic perspective on historical events, White argued that the ideological function of narrative resulted in the ‘transformation of history into spectacle’ (White 2010: 275). White concluded that to narrate an account of the past is to present a sequence of events as if a ‘theatrical production’ over which the narrator has control (White 2010: 275). As such, to White, to narrate history is to transform facts into a story in which historical events, agents and agencies are all characterised in much the same way as fiction (White 2010: 290). Historical events are, in this sense, utilised in a process of storytelling intended to shape and influence how others understand both what preceded the current moment and the circumstances through which it came into being. Narratives do not, however, amount to simply accounts of how events unfolded. The Thatcher narrative was a spectacle intended to frame the crisis of the 1970s—in the mind of the onlooking electorate—not simply as economic, but as a crisis of national identity. The notion, proposed by Thatcher, that the permissive society represented a regrettable break with British values also implied a crisis of historical narrative. That is to say that 3

 This is also true of earlier work of Hay (1996), see also Hay (2010).

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she and her supporters wanted to establish that what happened during the 1960s and 1970s was not just presented as a departure from British values but a disruption to the equilibrium of British history. In this context it is worth reflecting upon the work of Frederick  Mayer on Martin Luther King Jr in Narrative Politics (Mayer 2014). Here Mayer considered the narrative techniques used in the infamous ‘I have a dream’ speech, in which King quoted the opening of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and framed the America of the early 1960s as one which has ‘failed to live up to its true character’, as described by Lincoln (Mayer 2014: 1). At that point in his story, though, Mayer says that King took ‘a dramatic turn’ and his ‘narrative pivoted from a tragic past to a triumphant dream of the future’ (Mayer 2014: 1). There are many differences between King and Thatcher. For example, they had markedly different politics; they addressed different audiences with different ambitions; and the King narrative is contained within a single speech, while the Thatcher narrative was drawn out over several years, across a series of speeches, interviews and so on. Despite that, though, Thatcher—in much the same way as King—presented the idea of the nation not living up to its true character in recent years in order to assert a vision of how that true character could be reinstated. In this sense, she, like King, also looked to the future—presenting her own political vision as a means of restoring the nation’s true character and correcting the course of history. Both these narratives—of an America that has denied its black citizens liberty and of a Britain that has become too permissive and caught up in consensus—can be understood in relation to the same basic narrative structure. In Tzvetan Todorov’s Introduction to Poetics (1981), he proposes that narratives are structured along the lines of equilibrium, disequilibrium and re-established equilibrium. He says of this model: An ideal narrative begins with a stable situation that some force will perturb. From which results a state of disequilibrium; by the action of a force directed in a converse direction, the equilibrium is re-established; the second equilibrium is quite similar to the first, but the two are not identical. Consequently, there are two types of episodes in narrative: those that describe a state (of equilibrium or of disequilibrium) and those that describe the transition from one state to the other. (Todorov 1981: 51)

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What he describes here is an initial state of order being interrupted by an event or change of circumstances significant enough to destabilise it. There is a subsequent point at which the period of disorder is ended and resolved, after which a state of order is returned. Crucially, though, what emerges in the final phase of this process is not the same as the initial state of order. The disruption to the initial equilibrium, and the means by which it was dealt with, is reflected in the nature of re-established order. For Dominic Strinati, narrative is, therefore, ‘the story of how this disruption arises, how it is dealt with and how order is restored’ (Strinati 2000: 29). It is this theoretical model which best highlights how and why Thatcherism should be understood as reliant upon a historical narrative framework to achieve a sense of coherence. Thatcher, as narrator, situated herself at the tipping point between disequilibrium and re-established equilibrium, emphasising the former and promising the latter. Her Victorian values and the lessons of thriftiness harked back to a time when, in her view, Britain was true to itself (i.e. in Todorov’s model, the initial period of equilibrium). The period which followed, which Thatcher deemed the permissive society, was presented as a moment of crisis in which these British values were lost. Thatcher presented the Conservatives under her leadership as the opportunity to reverse the decline and to restore those lost values. Positioning herself as the narrator of this apparent moment of crisis in which British values had been lost also allowed Thatcher to appear dominant within the narrative as well as informed about the cause and effect plot. That is to say, she framed herself as best placed to resolve the crisis because she was different to those who had caused it. What is significant here though is that, while this is a narrative, it is not a resolved one. Thatcher would not have benefited from telling the full story. She benefited from promoting the idea that the period of disequilibrium was ongoing, but that she could bring it to an end. To say this though is to speak in broad, general terms. To demonstrate exactly how Thatcherism relied upon a narrative framework, and to consider why this is relevant to the Heath government, the second half of this chapter documents the emergence of the anti-consensus politics element of Thatcher’s account of recent history. By carefully tracing the development of her anti-consensus rhetoric in the period from 1968 to the end of her premiership, using the archival evidence available, we can see that her criticism of the so-called consensus is not fully articulated until the run-up to the general election of 1983. That the United Kingdom had suffered because of ‘consensus’ politics was not a view that Thatcher

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expressed at the time of the so-called consensus, but one which she retrospectively applied in her narrativisation of the period—and it was necessary to present Heath and his government as part of this failed consensus. Having been elected to Parliament at the General Election of 1959, Thatcher spent only two years on the parliamentary backbenches (1959–1961) before she was promoted to a junior ministerial post within the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Harris 2013: 55–57). In her three years in this post before the defeat that the Conservative Party suffered at the General Election of 1964, she impressed both her Conservative colleagues and her Labour opponents with her administrative competence and parliamentary ability (Harris 2013: 58). In opposition she became the Conservative spokesperson on Housing between 1964 and 1966, before working with the Shadow Treasury team between 1966 and 1967. Her effectiveness made it inevitable that she would be elevated to the Heath Shadow Cabinet. Although her entry into the shadow Cabinet was with one of the less prestigious portfolios—fuel and power—her promotion demonstrated how she  had become a ‘well-­ respected’ figure within the parliamentary party (Moore 2013: 189). A further indication of her growing status with the Heath frontbench team was the fact that she was selected by Heath to deliver a lecture to the Conservative Politics Centre in 1968, on the theme of ‘what’s wrong with politics?’ The speech was significant within the context of the views that she expressed in relation to the role of the state, taxation and prices, and incomes policy (Thatcher 1968). However, whilst Thatcher had used this opportunity in opposition to identify her commitment to ideas that would be consistent with the politics of what was to become defined as Thatcherism, that speech did not explicitly focus in on critiquing the notion of consensus politics. Intriguingly, and on the contrary,  she said that ‘we have not suffered the fate’ of consensus (Thatcher 1968). Furthermore, during her time as Secretary of State for Education and Science between 1970 and 1974, Thatcher did not publicly—or privately (as far as the available archival material reveals)—devote much of her time to criticising the idea of a consensus. For all that she would later become critical of a post-war consensus existing during this time, there is no evidence of her raising concerns about it or even discussing the concept at the time of its apparent existence. Indeed, during her period in the Department for Education and Science, she continued implementing Labour policies. She continued, for example, the roll out of comprehensive schools; she extended the cuts to free school milk which Labour first

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initiated; and she overturned the Conservative policy to close the Open University and favoured Labour’s policy of continuing to fund it (on Thatcher as Education Secretary, see Moore 2013: 211–228). To compound this, Thatcher remained silent on the issue of consensus politics when she challenged Heath for the leadership of the Conservative Party (on her challenge, see Cowley and Bailey 2000; Heppell 2008: 51–70). During that leadership election, Thatcher, although seeking to argue that she would be a more effective Leader of the Conservative Party, did not attempt to associate Heath personally with a failed consensus.4 As Leader of the Opposition, Thatcher could be seen as attempting to distinguish herself from an era of consensus, by using very soft, only mildly critical language talking, for example, about consensus going as far as it could and now looking to have a bigger slice of the cake (Thatcher 1979). This, however, only occurred outside of the House of Commons. She never referred to the post-war consensus in parliamentary debates. By contrast, Prime Minister James Callaghan did, with positive connotations, but Thatcher never challenged him on this. On 24 February 1979, she gave a speech to a conference of Conservative European Candidates, which was off the record and not attended by journalists. Her speech was given from a series of brief notes rather than written out in full. The archive contains these notes, and one of the points she made on the night was summarised, in those notes, as ‘need for conviction—not consensus’ (Thatcher 1979). During the Conservatives’ period in opposition under Thatcher, then, she may have privately been critical of consensus, but she did not challenge it publicly. There are two possible reasons for this. The first, as Heppell (2014) states in The Tories, is that  the scepticism surrounding her leadership meant that she took a conciliatory approach  among  Conservative MPs when she became their leader. The second, as Emily Stacey’s (2017) research suggests, is that Thatcher was more focused, as Leader of the Opposition, on developing her image as a leader—that is to say, she had to prove she could offer an alternative before she could say with any authority that an alternative was needed. 4  On the contrary she tells World in Action that she wants Heath to want to be part of her cabinet (Thatcher 1978). This interview is, however, better remembered for her declaration that the United Kingdom was ‘rather swamped by people with a different culture’—though, as the editorial comment which accompanies the archival manuscript states, it was reported that Thatcher had said the United Kingdom was ‘rather swamped by people of a different culture’ (Thatcher 1978, emphasis added).

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However, while Thatcher was not critical of a post-war consensus during her time in the Heath government, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) (which Thatcher helped establish in 1974) certainly was. There is archival evidence to demonstrate that some of what CPS figures like Alfred Sherman said in private—such as that the consensus was based on a misunderstanding of the economist John Maynard Keynes—was later repeated in public by Thatcher and her allies.5 Thatcher, then, was silent on the issue in public, but in private, her associates within the CPS were creating an anti-consensus rhetoric that Thatcher would later adopt. Over the course of her first government, Thatcher initially continued the mild approach about criticising the notion of consensus. The first explicitly critical intervention on the subject, during this period, came not from Thatcher but from Nigel Lawson. In ‘The New Conservatism’, a 1980 lecture to the Bow Group which was published as a pamphlet by the CPS later in the same year, Lawson dismissed the post-war consensus as a period of failed Keynesian economics (Lawson 1980). The following year, in a radio interview with the BBC, Thatcher was told that Heath had urged her government—via the media—to return to consensus policies. Rather than challenge Heath’s assertion  with the certainty and force of Lawson’s lecture, Thatcher gave a vague response in which she did not give a direct answer to Heath’s proposal but claimed not to know exactly what people meant by consensus (Thatcher 1981a). However, within a month—in time for her Robert Menzies Lecture at Monash University— Thatcher concluded that consensus was ‘the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-­ one believes’ (Thatcher 1981b). This stark change in tone may have been a consequence of the fact that Thatcher was speaking to a small, foreign audience rather than a domestic one. However, the next day the BBC, which had been following her international trip, picked up the comment and asked if it was aimed at her predecessor. Thatcher denied this and said she was referring to another Commonwealth leader, whom she would not name, and not Heath (Thatcher 1981a). 5  See, for example, the 1976 document produced by Sherman, to mark the CPS’ second birthday, which states: ‘a good deal of our work has related to questioning the post-war consensus, based on a misunderstanding of Keynes, which must carry much of the blame for our inflationary regression and stagnation’ ((Sherman MSS, Royal Holloway Library, Box 7, ‘Note on the role of CPS (Out Second Birthday Party. Two Candles to Shed Light”) [trailblazers not a private army]’, 20 May 1976).

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If most of her first term was one in which Thatcher did not explicitly criticise the idea of a consensus, then the General Election campaign of 1983 represented a tipping point. That election campaign marked a notable shift to a much more publicly and explicitly critical position on consensus politics. In a series of print and broadcast interviews over a period of five months leading up to the General Election, Thatcher intensified her anti-consensus rhetoric. This directly corresponds to what Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders (2012) refer to as the beginning of ‘High Thatcherism’, and Heppell makes a similar point in The Tories about Thatcher’s second term in office being the point at which she abandoned a conciliatory approach and became more markedly ‘Thatcherite’ (Heppell 2014: 80). Among the comments she made in these interviews was the suggestion that consensus is ‘not right for the British character’, deploying a discourse about British renewal, and claiming  that she would liberate the ‘true’ nature of the nation (Thatcher 1983a). When asked in another interview what she intended to replace ‘consensus’ politics with, she responded ‘with freedom and responsibility’ (Thatcher 1983b). This phrase encapsulates succinctly the contradictory nature of Thatcherism, with the liberal idea of freedom twinned with the more authoritarian idea of responsibility which—in her mind—also meant a responsibility to the nation. Here we can see, in practice, how Thatcher is indebted to Quintin Hogg in the way that James Freeman (2017) describes. Freeman identified in Thatcher’s rhetoric an intentional conflation of socialism and left-­ wing economic ideas with a perceived moral crisis, both of which she attributed to the so-called permissive society. It is, he says, through this conflation of economic and moral decline (for which neoliberal ideas were proposed as a solution, to the former at least) that neoliberalism became linked with the New Right. However, Freeman also writes that, in January 1970, Hogg gave a speech at the Selsdon Park Hotel in which ‘the definition of freedom’ was manipulated to ‘stress its reliance on authority and morality’. This rhetorical conflation of freedom with authority, Freeman concludes, was used by Thatcher but invented by Hogg (Freeman 2017). After the General Election of 1983, Thatcher became more comfortable with critiquing consensus politics in her public interventions, and there are several key moments worth highlighting because of their significance to the development of her overall narrative. The first substantial intervention was a BBC Radio 3 interview, which took place in 1985. In the interview, Michael Charlton proposed that Thatcher’s government

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had abandoned consensus which, he said, ‘was for full employment’ (quoted in Thatcher 1985). In response, Thatcher—who had said in 1968 that she did not believe a consensus existed in Britain—implied that governments that value free societies would not embrace consensus or aim for full employment, and only Communist Russia would have such a mentality. She said that consensus politics was directly responsible for the Winter of Discontent and that the trade unions had been running the country rather than the government. She went further than she ever previously had, though, by going on to describe the nature of consensus politics as un-British, claiming that consensus politicians are weak and incapable of taking tough decisions, and that—during the consensus era—British voters were crying out for a strong leader to rescue them and restore their freedom (Thatcher 1985). Implicated in this period of failed consensus that Thatcher outlined, though not explicitly, was the Heath government. By 1986, we can detect movement in the position on the kind of model trajectory, like Todorov’s, according to which Thatcher was narrating, that is, from the tipping point between disequilibrium and re-established equilibrium, firmly into the territory of the latter. In March of that year, she told the Conservative Central Council that Britain had been transformed—and that this was not because of consensus, but because of decisive leadership (Thatcher 1986). In April 1987, she highlighted that her policy agenda—once ‘derided, criticised and frowned upon’—had taken hold. This agenda, she says, emerged because she and Keith Joseph set out to ‘do justice to the British character’, and she identified, again, her values of liberty and enterprise as intrinsic to the nation’s heritage (Thatcher 1987a). A few months later, following the General Election of 1987, she reflected upon Thatcherism’s defeat of the Alliance’s call for a return to consensus politics and argued that ‘we are a successful party leading a successful nation’ (Thatcher 1987b). That Thatcher’s narrative shifted from one which looked forward to a period of re-established equilibrium to occupying this position is reinforced by the Conservative’s 1987 General Election manifesto, which spoke of the ‘British revival’ and argued that ‘a Conservative dream is at last becoming a reality’6 (Conservative Party 1987). This rhetoric about a return to greatness and the restoration of a successful nation was only 6  Their manifesto emphasised how, back in 1979, Britain was described as ‘ungovernable’ and was in the grip of an ‘incurable British disease’, meaning that it was ‘heading for irreversible decline’. It also boasted of how Thatcher had demonstrated that ‘the people were not

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effective because, for years beforehand, the Conservatives had emphasised that ‘true’ Britishness had been lost or abandoned. While Heath was not mentioned directly in this criticism, the distinction made between Thatcher and her predecessors, combined with the fact that she was aware of Heath’s desire for her to return to consensus politics, indicates Thatcher’s willingness to retrospectively frame the Heath government as somehow complicit in the failed leadership she described in the later part of her premiership.

Conclusion Throughout the period over which Thatcher’s anti-consensus rhetoric developed from subtle criticism to its most explicit, her position on the notion of a post-war consensus and what this was or meant was inconsistent. What this chapter argues is substantially at variance with the ideas of those scholars like Smith (2013) who have it that Thatcher was always anti-consensus. What I have argued here is that to frame her in this way—even when this framing is critical, as in Smith’s case—is to reinforce Thatcher’s narrative about herself, rather than to expose the reality of her development into an anti-consensus, conviction politician (which was for electioneering purposes and, above all else, successful). She was not a vocal critic of any such consensus during her time as a backbench parliamentarian and, more significantly in the context of this chapter, nor was she when serving in the Heath government. Her time as Leader of the Opposition was also not one which saw a sudden pivot to an anti-consensus position but, during this time, it is clear (judging by the archival evidence) that the CPS think tank was beginning to develop the anti-consensus rhetoric which Thatcher eventually adopted in the run up to the 1983 General Election  and beyond. This intensified anti-consensus attack suggested that the idea of consensus politics was somehow un-British, and Thatcher’s politics, by contrast, was truly British. The development and eventual deployment of this anti-consensus rhetoric, retrospectively applied to the Heath government and, indeed, to Heath himself, gives a clear indication that this was a consciously developed narrative used, initially, for electioneering purposes but which has since fed into a broader sense of Thatcher being a ungovernable, the disease was not incurable, the decline has been reversed’ (The Conservative Party 1987).

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conviction, not consensus politician. Unsurprisingly, Heath was resentful at what he regarded as an ‘absurd caricature’ of the administration that he led between 1970 and 1974 (Heath 1998: 576). The chapter had two principle aims: first, to give greater consideration to the relationship between Thatcherism and narrative than has been offered in other studies concerned with this relationship and, second, to examine how the specific (subjective and politicised) narrative about the post-war consensus articulated by Thatcher framed Heath and the Heath premiership. To see Thatcherism as reliant upon a narrative framework enables us to see more precisely how Thatcher used her principles and mobilised a historical account of British history, which she said had, in recent years, lost its way. The Thatcherite narrative, in this sense, was a call to arms to restore Britain to its former glory and rescue it from an ostensible moment of crisis, linking—as Freeman notes—a decline in the economy with a sense of moral decline. While it is reasonable to suggest that many political figures deploy narratives in some way, Thatcher’s was unique/significant in the following two ways. First, it was unique in that it provided a highly politicised historical account of the nation’s recent history as a means of framing her own values, as well as the extent to which this politicised history has been absorbed into and shaped mainstream history (as Hilton et al., have demonstrated). Second, it is significant in terms of our thinking about Thatcherism, because to view it from a perspective of narrative theory provides a possible solution to the problem that Gamble (1988) identified: what makes a contradictory set of ideas coherent? As I have demonstrated here, and as others like Stephen Farrall (2017) have suggested, the ideological contradictions of Thatcherism are made coherent or, at least, sufficiently masked to appear coherent through how they were framed in Thatcher’s storytelling.

Bibliography Archives Lord Hailsham, Churchill Archives Centre: University of Cambridge. The Sir Alfred Sherman Papers. Royal Holloway: University of London. Margaret Thatcher Papers. Churchill Archives Centre: University of Cambridge.

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Published Primary Sources Conservative Party. (1987). The Next Moves Forward, The 1987 Conservative Party General Election Manifesto. London: The Conservative Party.

Speeches, Interviews and Press Conferences Lawson, N. (1980). The New Conservatism: Lecture to the Bow Group. London, August 4. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/ 109505. Thatcher, M. (1968). Conservative Political Centre (CPC) Lecture: ‘What’s wrong with politics?’ Blackpool, October 11. Retrieved from https://www. margaretthatcher.org/document/101632. Thatcher, M. (1978). TV Interview for Granada World in Action. London, January 27. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103485. Thatcher, M. (1979). Speech at Conservative European Candidates’ Conference. London, February 24. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/103955. Thatcher, M. (1981a). Press Conference for British Press. Melbourne, October 7. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104713. Thatcher, M. (1981b). Speech at Monash University (1981 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture). Melbourne, October 6. Retrieved from www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/104712. Thatcher, M. (1983a). Radio Interview for BBC Radio 4 Analysis. London, March 30. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105126. Thatcher, M. (1983b). Interview for Observer: 4th anniversary as PM. London, April 11. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/ 105127. Thatcher, M. (1985). Radio Interview for BBC Radio 3. London, December 17. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105934. Thatcher, M. (1986). Speech to Conservative Central Council. Felixstowe, March 15. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106348. Thatcher, M. (1987a). Speech at Institute of Economic Affairs 30th Anniversary dinner. London, April 7. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/106791. Thatcher, M. (1987b). Speech to Conservative Party Conference. Blackpool, October 9. Retrieved from https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/ 106941.

Periodicals Hall, S. (1979). The Great Moving Right Show. Marxism Today, January, pp. 14–20. Hall, S. (1980). Thatcherism – A New Stage? Marxism Today, February, pp. 26–28.

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Memoirs Heath, E. (1998). The Course of My Life: My Autobiography. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Thatcher, M. (1993). The Downing Street Years. London: Harper Collins.

Books, Chapters, Articles

and

Conference Presentations

Abernethy, S. (2018). Let Us Be Cool, Calm – And Elected: Conservative Party Strategy and Political Narrative Prior to the 1983 General Election. Contemporary British History, 32(3), 385–407. Addison, P. (1975). The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War. London: Cape. Addison, P. (1993). Consensus Revisited. Twentieth Century British History, 4(1), 91–94. Blackburn, D. (2018). Reassessing Britain’s ‘Post-war Consensus’: The Politics of Reason 1945–1979. British Politics, 13(2), 195–214. Bulpitt, J. (1986). The Discipline of the New Democracy: Mrs Thatcher’s Domestic Statecraft. Political Studies, 34(1), 19–39. Boxer, A. (2010). The Establishment of the Post-War Consensus 1945–64. History Review, 66(March), 38–43. Buller, J. (2000). National Statecraft and European Integration: The Conservative Government and the European Union 1979–97. London: Pinter. Cowley, P., & Bailey, M. (2000). Peasants’ Uprising Or Religious War? Re-examining the 1975 Conservative Leadership Contest. British Journal of Political Science, 30(4), 599–629. Crines, A., Heppell, T., & Dorey, P. (2016). The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Dorey, P. (1995). The Conservative Party and the Trade Unions. London: Routledge. Dutton, D. (1997). British Politics Since 1945: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Consensus. London: Blackwell. Durham, M. (1991). Sex and Politics. The Family and Morality in the Thatcher Years. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Evans, B., & Taylor, A. (1996). From Salisbury to Major: Continuity and Change in Conservative Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Farrall, S. (2017). Was Thatcherism Just About Neo-Liberalism? Exploring the Criminal Justice System Since the 1980s. Rethinking British Neoliberalism. University College London, September 11. Farrell, S., & Hay, C. (2014). The Legacy of Thatcherism: Assessing and Exploring Thatcherite Social and Economic Policies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flinders, M., & Buller, J. (2006). Depoliticisation: Principles, Tactics, Tools. British Politics, 1(1), 293–318.

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Fraser, D. (2000). The Post-War Consensus: A Debate Not Long Enough? Parliamentary Affairs, 53(2), 347–362. Freeman, J. (2017). The Permissive and Lawless Society Is a By-Product of Socialism: Selsdon Man, Morality and Neoliberalism’s Route into Conservatism. Rethinking British Neoliberalism. University College London, September 11. Gamble, A. (1988). The Free Economy and the Strong State. London: Macmillan. Harris, R. (2013). Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher. London: Bantam Press. Hay, C. (1996). Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the Winter of Discontent. Sociology, 30(2), 253–277. Hay, C. (2007). Whatever Happened to Thatcherism? Political Studies Review, 5(2), 183–201. Hay, C. (2010). Chronicles of a Death Foretold: The Winter of Discontent and Construction of the Crisis of British Keynesianism. Parliamentary Affairs, 63(3), 446–470. Heppell, T. (2008). Choosing the Tory Leader: Conservative Party Leadership Elections from Heath to Cameron. London: I. B. Taurus. Heppell, T. (2014). The Tories: From Winston Churchill to David Cameron. London: Bloomsbury. Hilton, M., Moores, C., & Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, F. (2017). New Times Revisited: Britain in the 1980s. Contemporary British History, 31(2), 145–165. Jackson, B., & Saunders, R. (Eds.). (2012). Making Thatcher’s Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jessop, B., Bonnett, K., Bromley, S., & Ling, T. (1988). Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations. Cambridge: Polity. Jones, H., & Kandiah, M. (Eds.). (1996). The Myth of Consensus: New Views on British History 1945–1964. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Kavanagh, D. (1992). The Post-war Consensus. Twentieth Century British History, 3(2), 175–190. Kavanagh, D., & Morris, P. (1994). Consensus Politics from Attlee to Major. Oxford: Blackwell. Kelly, S. (2002). The Myth of Mr Butskell: The Politics of British Economic Policy 1950–55. London: Ashgate. Kerr, P. (2001). Post-war British Politics: From Conflict to Consensus. London: Routledge. Lynch, P. (1999). The Politics of Nationhood: Nationhood, Sovereignty and Conservative Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Mayer, F.  W. (2014). Narrative Politics: Stories and Collective Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Minogue, K., & Biddiss, M. (1987). Thatcherism: Personality and Politics. London: Macmillan. Moore, C. (2013). Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume One: Not for Turning. London: Allen Lane.

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Mullen, A., Farrall, S., & Jeffery, D. (Eds.). (2020). Thatcherism in the 21s Century: The Social and Cultural Legacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Pimlott, B. (1988). Is the Post-war Consensus a Myth? Contemporary Record, 2(6), 12–14. Riddell, P. (1989). The Thatcher Decade: How Britain Has Changed During the 1980s. Oxford: Blackwell. Rollings, N. (1994). Poor Mr Butskell: A Short Life, Wrecked by Schizophrenia? Twentieth Century British History, 5(2), 183–205. Rose, R. (1961). Tensions in Conservative Philosophy. Political Quarterly, 32(3), 275–283. Saunders, R. (2012). Crisis? What Crisis? Thatcherism and the Seventies. In B.  Jackson & R.  Saunders (Eds.), Making Thatcher’s Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, M. (2013). Margaret Thatcher’s Rejection of Consensus Was Symptomatic of an Anti-democratic Tendency in a Political System Dominated by the Executive. British Politics and Policy, April 25. Retrieved from https://blogs. lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/margaret-thatcher-and-the-rejection-of-consensus-a-rejection-of-democracy/http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/ margaret-thatcher-and-the-rejection-of-consensus-a-rejection-of-democracy/. Stacey, E. (2017). ‘I feel I have been accepted as a leader in the international sphere’: Margaret Thatcher’s North American Tour, September 1975. Thatcher and Thatcherism: New Critical Perspectives, Durham University, 19–20 January. Strinati, D. (2000). An Introduction to Studying Popular Culture. Abingdon: Routledge. Taylor, P. (1989). Britain’s Changing Role in the World Economy. In J. Mohan (Ed.), The Political Geography of Contemporary Britain. London: Macmillan. Todorov, T. [1969] (1981). Introduction to Poetics (R.  Howard, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Toye, R. (2013). From Consensus to Common Ground: The Rhetoric of the Post-war Settlement and its Collapse. Journal of Contemporary History, 48(1), 3–23. Vinen, R. (2009). Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the 1980s. London: Simon and Schuster. White, H. (2010). Storytelling: Historical and Ideological. In R. Doran (Ed.), The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature and Theory 1957–2007. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Young, H. (1990). One of Us. London: Pan Books.

CHAPTER 18

The Heath Premiership: A Transitional Era? Timothy Heppell and Andrew S. Roe-Crines

The introduction to this book identified how the Heath premiership has been subjected to two competing perspectives. It has been defined as either a governing failure—see, for example, Bruce-Gardyne (1974), Holmes (1982, 1997)), or it has been defined by a contingencies or circumstances-­ based perspective—see, for example, Ball and Seldon (1996). We wanted to reassess the Heath premiership and how it should be considered. We did so for the following reasons. First, we have reached the 50th anniversary of the General Election of June 1970 that ushered in the Heath premiership, and that landmark was a reason for reassessment. Second, and most importantly, the exiting of the UK from the European Union in January 2020 has reversed the most important achievement associated with the Heath premiership.

T. Heppell (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] A. S. Roe-Crines University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2_18

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The Heath Premiership: A Failure of Statecraft To help the process of reassessing the Heath premiership, the introduction identified the value of using the statecraft model, as advanced by Bulpitt (1986; see also Stevens 2002; Buller 1999, 2000; Hickson 2005a; Taylor 2005; Buller and James 2012). We did so because we believed the dimensions identified within the statecraft model—(1) a winning electoral strategy, (2) evidence of governing competence, (3) political argument hegemony, (4) effective party management and then (5) another winning electoral strategy—would help to provide a clear structure for the chapters within our reassessment. The dimensions of the statecraft model embrace not only governing performance in office but also party performance in both government and opposition. Thus, the statecraft model enabled us to assess Heath as a political leader in terms of his role as leader of the Conservative Party (between 1965 and 1975), as well as the performance of his government whilst he was Prime Minister between 1970 and 1974. In terms of the Heath era in Conservative politics, our findings can be summarised as follows. First, with regard to the first dimension of statecraft, although the Conservative Party was rejected by the electorate at the General Election of March 1966—shortly after Heath had won the leadership of the Conservative Party (Butler and King 1966)—we can say that they were successful at this dimension. After all, they were returned to office at the General Election of June 1970 on a public policy platform that differed from their approach when in office between 1951 and 1964 (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971; Garnett 2005, 2012, 2015; Bale 2012). Second, when we consider governing competence, we cannot construct an argument in which we can legitimately claim that they demonstrated this (Garnett 2015). We cannot dispute that the objective of gaining entry into the European Communities was secured or that this was a substantive achievement (Kitzinger 1973; Lord 1993). However, that achievement has become tainted by historical developments there­ after. This can be viewed from a national perspective.  The UK would forge a problematic relationship within Europe—the accusation would be that the UK was ‘semi-detached’, ‘awkward’, ‘reluctant’, ‘on the side-lines’ or a ‘stranger in Europe’—(see, e.g. George 1992, 1994; Baker and Seawright 1998; Gowland and Turner 1999; Daddow 2004; Gifford 2008; Wall 2008; Gowland et  al. 2010; Baker and Schnapper 2015; Gifford and Tournier-­Sol 2015). This can also be viewed from

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a Conservative perspective. Not only did Heath fail to educate the electorate on the case for Europe, but he failed to educate his own party. They evolved from a party of pro-Europeanism under him in the 1960s and the 1970s to a party of Euroscepticism by the 1990s and 2000s, with that process of change being strongly influenced by the thinking of Thatcher as his successor1 (Smith 2018; Fontana and Parsons 2015; see also Turner 2000 and Crowson 2007). Beyond that the picture with regard to the Heath premiership and governing competence is predominantly negative. In saying this, we acknowledge the work of Kavanagh on the Heath premiership and what constitutes success or failure in governing terms (Kavanagh 1996). Kavanagh suggests the following criteria provide us with the ability to determine governing success or failure (i.e. competence or incompetence): (1) fulfilling manifesto promises, (2) achieving intended outcomes and (3) introducing policies which survive the lifetime of the government (Kavanagh 1996: 362–363). Against these criteria the Heath premiership cannot be deemed a success and nor can it be defined as being competent. They did deliver on many of their aims in terms of passing legislation—for example entering the European Communities; the Industrial Relations Act; reforming taxation and housing finance. However, these are entirely undone by the failure of the Heath premiership to secure their intended outcomes, for example, just because you legislate to pass the Industrial Relations Act does not mean it will succeed (Moran 1977; Warner 2019). Not only was their approach to industrial relations perceived to have failed (with a record number of working days lost to strike action), but their actual record in terms of wider economic performance was questionable in relation to inflation, the Balance of Payments deficit and unemployment (Kavanagh 1996: 362; see also Seldon 1988; Phillips 2006, 2007; Wade 2013). Furthermore, the Heath premiership, with the exception of 1  The labels used to define Conservative parliamentarians over Europe would change over time, as the question(s) with regard to Europe evolved. Those with reservations were labelled as anti-Marketeers in the 1960s and 1970s. The term Euroscepticism only really gained traction in the 1990s. What united anti-Marketeers and Eurosceptics was their concern about the validity of the supposed benefits flowing from economic integration and political multilateralism. They viewed this as the surrendering of sovereignty over to a supranational body which they could not control. Those on the pro-European wing of the Conservative Party were pro-Marketeers in the 1970s, and they held a con-federalist position, that is, the pooling of sovereignty inside an integrated Europe would create economic gains (Crowson 2007: 105-126; Heppell et al. 2017: 764-768).

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Europe,2 would see many of their legislative achievements undone by the successor Labour administration of 1974–1979, be that in industrial relations, housing finance or local government, for example (Kavanagh 1996: 362; on the 1974 to 1979 Labour administrations, see Holmes 1985; Harmon 1997; Hickson and Seldon 2004; Hickson 2005b and Shepherd 2013). Third, when we consider the statecraft criteria of political argument hegemony, we cannot really construct a defence for the Heath premiership. By political argument hegemony, Bulpitt meant demonstrating to the electorate that you were  winning the battle of ideas, that is, your approach to policy solving was superior than the approach of your political opponents. This dimension of statecraft is closely aligned to the second dimension in that a governing party that is able to demonstrate competence in office is likely to secure political argument hegemony and push the ideas of their political opponents to the margins. One way of determining this is to track the opinion polling data from the era. In September 1970—just three months after entering power—voters were asked ‘which party do you think can best handle the problems of the present economic situation’.  The Conservatives led Labour by 44 percent to 29 percent, with the remaining 27 percent either claiming it was the Liberals or they  did not know. The lead that they held over Labour would decline significantly under the demands of office—for example, by September 1973, the Conservatives had fallen to 24 percent (down 20 percent from three years earlier), and Labour had also fallen (down 8 percent to 29 percent) as the ‘don’t knows’ and ‘others’ increased from 27 to 47 percent. At the onset of the General Election of October 1974, the Conservatives continued to lag behind the Labour Party on this critical question. Whilst Labour were on 31 percent, the Conservatives were on 28 percent and the remainder amounted to 41 percent who could not endorse either of the two main parties (King and Wybrow 2001: 58). When narrowing down the focus to specific issues, a similar pattern would emerge of voters having increasing doubts about the solutions being offered by the Conservatives. On the issue of inflation/prices and the cost of living, the Conservatives had entered office with a lead over the Labour Party—led by 40 percent to 29  in September 1970 with 31 2  European membership was briefly threatened by the commitment of the incoming Wilson administration to hold a referendum on continued membership. This was overcome by 67–33 percent in 1975 (see Butler and Kitzinger 1976; see also Saunders 2018).

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percent either others or ‘don’t know’. However, the Conservatives were behind the Labour Party on this issue at both the General Election of February 1974 (behind on 31 percent to Labour on 36 percent) and the General Election of October 1974 (Conservatives 26 percent, Labour 37 percent) (King and Wybrow 2001: 60). On unemployment, pollsters did not ask for a party of preference when the Conservatives entered office, but as the rate of unemployment increased, so they began to do so. At the time of the General Election of February 1974, voters thought that the Labour Party was the strongest on this issue (led by 38 percent to 33 percent) and their lead on this issue was stronger still by the General Election of October 1974 (led by 43 percent to 24 percent) (King and Wybrow 2001: 66). On healthcare, the Conservatives would trail at 36 percent to that of Labour Party at 42 percent (with 22 percent others or ‘don’t know’) shortly after the onset of the Heath premiership (in September 1970), and that deficit would increase over the course of the next four years. At the time of the General Election of October 1974, the Labour lead had increased to 20 percentage points—Labour were up to 44 percent (an increase of just 2 percent) but the Conservatives had declined by 12 percentage points to 24 percent (from 36 percent) (King and Wybrow 2001: 74). On the challenges associated with industrial relations, voter faith in the Conservatives would diminish significantly over the course of the Heath era. Shortly after entering office (in September 1970), voters thought the Conservatives were better equipped than the Labour Party to manage strikes and industrial disputes (Conservatives on 37 percent; the Labour Party on 32 percent and others/‘don’t know’ on 31 percent). By the time of the General Election of October 1974, the Conservatives were on 20 percent; the Labour Party on 53 percent (and 27 percent were either other or ‘don’t know’) (King and Wybrow 2001: 87). When we pull the opinion polling evidence  together,  it is clear that voter scepticism with regard to the Conservatives was gradually increasing, which suggests that they were failing in the statecraft dimension of political argument hegemony. When we consider the fourth dimension of statecraft—that of party management—this is another problematic issue in the Heath era. One plus point in the Heath era was that he did lead a relatively cohesive Cabinet and ministerial team, and one which avoided the divisiveness associated with big name Cabinet resignations. However, this positive was possibly a by-product of Heath’s approach to patronage (Ball 1996). Whereas traditionally prime ministers would seek balances that would aid

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party management—ideological balance to limit the scale of back-bench dissent—Heath would construct a Cabinet and ministerial team on the basis of expertise, competence and loyalty (Norton 1978; Ball 1996; see also Alderman 1976 and Allen and Ward 2009). Significant figures within the Conservative parliamentary ranks who were aligned to the right wing were deliberately excluded from office—Edward du Cann, Angus Maude and of course (but understandably) Enoch Powell—all of whom would land up causing Heath considerable difficulties from the backbenchers (Heppell and Hill 2015). If the so-called Heathmen (plus Thatcher) (Roth 1971) were located within the ministerial ranks, then the enemies of Heath were positioned on the backbenchers. Without the lubrication of reshuffles and the possibility of ministerial advancement (Heath did not engage in as many reshuffles as some Prime Ministers), the traditional incentives to remain loyal (in legislative terms) were not as strong under Heath as they had been under previous Conservative Prime Ministers (Ball 1996; Heppell and Hill 2015). This would result in an increasingly rebellious parliamentary party, for example, whereas the four-year Parliament of 1955–1959 had a Conservative rebellion rate of 1.4 percent, the Parliament of 1970–1974 had a Conservative rebellion rate of approaching 19 percent (Finer et al. 1961; Norton 1978: 208; see also Franklin et al. 1986; Piper 1991; Seldon and Sanklecha 2004). These divisions within the Conservative Party were at their most severe over the legislative passage of the European Communities Act (Norton 2011) and would dominate the political coverage (television and print media) of the Heath premiership in the 1971–1972 period. This fact, added to the status of Powell as a constant and high-­ profile critic of Heath, would ensure that those divisions remained in the public eye (Critchley 1973). Showcasing their differences to the electorate would have consequences. Just before Heath replaced Home as leader of the Conservative Party (in May 1965), 51 percent of voters viewed the Conservatives as unified as opposed to 29 percent who viewed them as divided, with 20 percent of voters offering ‘don’t know’ as their response to the pollsters. By the endgame of the Heath era in February 1975, those figures had been reversed—32 percent saw them as united, 52 percent saw them as divided and 16 percent answered ‘don’t know’ (King and Wybrow 2001: 37). Statecraft is a cyclical model—the leadership construct a winning electoral strategy in order to acquire power, they then demonstrate governing competence when in office to gain dominance  of elite debate (political

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argument hegemony) and they underpin that with effective internal party management. The ultimate proof of the success of their statecraft strategy is that not only do they get from opposition and back into government (dimension one), but their success in office (dimensions two, three and four) ensures that they secure re-election (dimension five). Although the Heathite statecraft strategy was successful at dimension one—getting from opposition and into government—it was a failure in terms of governing competence, political argument hegemony and party management (dimensions two, three and four). As a consequence—and despite the difficulties that were being experienced by the Labour Party in opposition— the Conservatives would fail to secure re-election in the General Election of February 1974—dimension five (Butler and Kavanagh 1974). Using the statecraft model provides  us with the basis for suggesting that the failure interpretation of the Heath premiership does carry validity. However, it is also clear from the chapters within this book, that the argument that the Heath era was (no italics) characterised by difficult circumstances, also carries some validity. As such, with both perspectives carrying with them some justification, what we wanted to do was to show how the Heath premiership could be seen—alongside the critical and contingencies perspective—from a transitional perspective.

The Heath Era: Evidence That It Was Era of Transition The remainder of the conclusion seeks to position the Heath era—both the Conservative Party under his leadership between 1965 and 1975 and the government of 1970–1974—within the context of it being a transitional period. This perspective enables us to acknowledge the perceptions of failure associated with the Heath premiership and the difficult circumstances that they faced. We will split our arguments into the following: first, party political reasons covering how the Heath leadership tenure was a transitional era and, second, governing perspectives on how the Heath premiership can be viewed from a transitional perspective. In making the argument that the Heath leadership tenure coincided with significant transitions in terms of party politics, this relates to both the changing intra- and inter-party dynamics. Let us consider the intra-party arguments first. The Conservative Party of the mid-to-late 1970s, after Thatcher succeeded Heath, differed significantly from the Conservative

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Party that Heath inherited in the mid-1960s. The Conservatives had the following three cultural or doctrinal norms: (1) They had historically placed a considerable premium on unity, both behaviourally in Parliament and also attitudinally in terms of their conduct in the media. This was because they feared that divided parties could not be successful at winning General Elections or in demonstrating governing effectiveness. (2) They had traditionally emphasised the importance of showcasing loyalty to their leaders. This helped them in demonstrating strong and effective leadership in order to strengthen the electoral prospects of the Conservative Party. (3) They had emphasised how their electoral success had been predicated on their ‘appetite for power’ and being non-ideological. This reflected their claim that the interaction between the ethos of the Conservative Party and the ideological doctrines of Conservatism was clear, that is, they prioritised being in office, and being ideologically pragmatic and adaptable was key to their historical success (Ramsden 1999; see also Rose, 1964; Norton and Aughey 1981; Barnes 1993; Heppell and Hill 2005). Although some scepticism could be expressed about the validity of these claims—oft made by Conservatives for self-interested reasons—if we do accept their validity pre-1965, then these norms were being challenged between 1965 and 1975. On the first norm of internal party unity, our conclusion has already emphasised how the rebellion rate escalated significantly in the Heath era, relative to the rebellion rates experienced by the Conservatives in the pre-Heath era. However, what substantiates our claim that the Heath era was a transitional era within the Conservative Party is that an increased rebellion rate was to become their new normal. If the rebellion rates of the 1951–1964 period oscillated between 1 percent and approaching 12 percent, the rates were higher in the period between 1979 and 1997—12 percent between 1979 and 1983; 16 percent between 1983 and 1987; 12 percent between 1987 and 1992 and 13 percent between 1992 and 1997—and increased further in the Cameron era (at 28 percent) (Cowley and Norton 1999: 86; see Cowley et al. 2016: 108–109). The Heath era also coincided with significant  changes in relation to how they selected their leaders. The organisational changes that created

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internal democracy—for vacancies in 1965 and for challenges in 1974–75— represented a significant watershed within the history of the Conservative Party. Or to put it another way, had the magic circle remained in place, it is unlikely Thatcher would have become their leader. The means by which Heath was forcibly evicted from the party leadership in early 1975, demonstrated that challenging the incumbent, a new option for Conservative parliamentarians, could result in a change of leader. This carried implications for the old maxim that loyalty was their secret weapon. Could they really claim this after Thatcher acquired the leadership via an act of disloyalty? (see, e.g. Fisher 1977; Shepherd 1991; Bogdanor 1994; Stark 1996; Heppell 2008; Quinn 2012). Thereafter attempts to unseat the incumbent would become a norm—Thatcher was challenged in 1989 and 1990, John Major had to secure re-election in 1995, Iain Duncan Smith was removed by a confidence motion in October 2003 and Theresa May survived a confidence motion in December 2018. These developments question the validity of the loyalty to the leader claim (Quinn 2012: 97–130; see also Jeffery et al. forthcoming). The Heath era also coincided with the Conservative Party beginning the protracted process of transitioning from being a one-nation party (dominated and led by the apostles of consensus) and towards being an economically liberal-free market party (to be driven by a conviction style of politics associated with Thatcher and the Thatcherites) (Gamble 1988; Fry 2005). The era of opposition under Heath was characterised by the modernisation of their policy platform. The policy review process that would culminate in the construction of the Selsdon agenda would, with its perceived emphasis on tax cuts, trade union reform, law and order, immigration control and pensions reform, take a significant hold over ‘the psyche of Conservatives over the next two decades’ (Heppell 2014: 47). Although those on the Heathite wing of the Conservative Party would imply that Selsdon was overstated, those on the economically liberal wing believed that the shift had been agreed upon and would be implemented. Opposition can thus be seen as the period when the Conservatives engaged in a process of ideological realignment, within which the shift to the market, was part of a wider challenge to the one-nation statecraft strategy that the Conservatives had been deploying in the post-war era (Taylor 2005). The Heath era can also be viewed as a transitional era in terms of inter-­ party politics. The following assumptions about inter-party competition existed in the pre-Heath era:

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(1) The scale of the joint vote of the Conservative and Labour parties in General Elections had created a two-party system characterised by strong levels of partisan alignment or party loyalty. (2) The driver of voter choice was the class cleavage within British society, as voters identified with parties on the basis of class alignment. (3) The consensus thesis was reflective of the ideological convergence between the frontbenches of the two main parties as demonstrated in their policy agendas/manifestos. Let us consider the impact of the Heath era on these assumptions. First, it is clear that the General Elections of 1974 represent a significant juncture in terms of the decline of two-party politics in the UK (Drucker 1979; Quinn 2013)3 and the process of partisan dealignment (Crewe et al. 1977; Crewe 1983; Särlvik and Crewe 1983). In the General Elections of 1950–1964, the combined Conservative and Labour vote was  as follows:  1950 (89.6 percent), 1951 (96.8 percent), 1955 (96.1 percent), 1959 (93.2 percent) and 1964 (87.4 percent) (Denver et  al. 2012: 11). Although the combined two-party vote had declined between 1959 and 1964 to 87.4 percent, and it would increase slightly to 89.7 percent and 89.4 percent respectively at the General Elections of 1966 and 1970.  It then  dropped significantly in the two General Elections of 1974—registering 75.0 percent exactly in both ballots (Denver et  al. 2012: 11). In every General Election between 1945 and 1970, the largest party secured a percentage return between a low of 44.1 percent (the Labour Party in 1964) and a high of 49.4 (the Conservatives in 1955). After the Conservatives lost with 39.7 percent of the vote at the General Election of 1945, the losing party in every General Election between 1950 and 1970 was able to pass the 40 percent threshold even in defeat.  At  the height of the two-party dominance  era, the Labour Party would lose the General Election of 1951 at 48.8 percent of the vote (0.8 percent more than the victorious Conservatives who won a narrow parliamentary majority of 17), and the lowest losing performance of this era was the 41.9 percent when the Conservatives lost the General Election of 1966 (Denver et al. 2012: 11). The General Elections of 1974 saw a significant reduction in the vote for both of the two main parties. The February 1974 General Election 3  The ongoing validity of the two-party argument has been made by Lynch and Garner (2005) and Lynch (2007).

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resulted in Labour entering office as a minority government on 37.2 percent with the Conservative losing office in 37.9 percent of the vote (Denver et al. 2012: 11). Both parties secured below 40 percent of the vote again in the General Election of October  1974—with the Labour Party securing a majority of 3 on 39.3 percent and the Conservatives losing again on 35.7 percent (Denver et al. 2012: 11). Although the General Election of 2017 would see both parties pass the 40 percent threshold— with the Conservatives on 42.4 percent and the Labour Party on 40 percent (Prosser 2018) the period between 1979 and 2015 in electoral terms would be characterised by the following. The range of the largest party’s share would fall to between 35.2 (Labour in 2005) and 43.9 percent (the Conservatives in 1979), significantly lower the range of 44.1–49.4 percent in the 1945–1970 period. The range of the vote for the second-place party also was significantly lower. The range for the 1945–1970 period was 39.7 percent (the Conservatives in 1945) to 48.8 percent (the Labour Party in 1951) compared favourably to the 1979–2015 period, when the highest losing vote share was 36.9 percent for the Labour Party in 1979 and the lowest losing vote share was 27.6 percent in 1983 (Denver et al. 2012: 11). Second, the era of 1945 to 1974 was not just the era of partisan alignment, it was also the era of class,  alignment (Butler and Stokes 1974; Denver 2007). The Heath era, however, would coincide with a shift away from the two-party system’s positional-based explanations for voter choice—based around both partisan and class alignment4—and towards what one based on relative perceptions of the governing competence of the two main parties, with perceptions of competence embracing perceptions of leadership capability (Clarke et al. 2004, 2009; Denver 2005; see also Green 2007; Green and Jennings 2011, 2012). As party identification became increasingly shaped more by perceptions of competence than by traditional partisanship, so political campaigning evolved—a shift occurred as parties began to emphasise their leaders at the expense of the party and/ or policy (Denver 2005; Langer 2007, 2011). The Heath era coincided with and contributed to this change from positional to valance politics. For example, the General Election campaign of 1970—the culmination of the Conservatives strategy for regaining power—placed a considerable 4  Academics would debate whether a decline in class-based partisanship had occurred (Crewe et al. 1977; Särlvik and Crewe 1983; Franklin 1985) or whether it was trendless and fluctuating (see Heath et al. 1985) throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but the evidence that a decline did occur is now widely acknowledged (see Evans and Tilley 2012).

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focus around Heath as leader and his credentials as an alternative Prime Minister to Wilson (Ziegler 2010: 219). Running parallel to the increasing focus that the Conservative Party placed on Heath as their means of showcasing their competence was the increasing focus that the print media placed on him as leader as opposed to other leading figures within the Conservative front bench—as the Nuffield election series concluded it was a campaign characterised by ‘highly personalised coverage’ (Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky 1971: 343–345). Third, alongside partisan and class alignment/dealignment we also need to consider the processes of ideological divergence between the two main parties in this era (Crewe 1983). When considering the significance of the General Elections of 1974, Quinn noted the following. First, that in the period up to 1970 ‘the ideological distance between the two main parties was fairly small’, as this was the era of ‘policy convergence, albeit significantly to the left of the political spectrum’ as ‘the major parties agreed on the general framework of Keynesian demand management, full employment, corporatism, a mixed economy and the welfare state’ (Quinn 2013: 385). Second, the General Elections of 1974, however, represented a ‘watershed’ which ushered in a ‘new era of ideological polarisation … [as] … Labour shifted sharply to the left and later the Conservatives moved to the right’ (Quinn 2013: 385). We can relate this shift back to our first point about the declining combined support for the two main parties. Between 1950 and 1970, the vote share for the Liberals oscillated between a high of 11.3 percent at the General Election of 1964 (their only vote share in double figures) and a low of 2.5 percent at the General Election of 1951 (Cook 2010: 331). At the General Elections of 1974, the Liberal vote shot up to 19.3 and 18.3 percent respectively (Cook 2010: 331). Between the General Election of 1979 and the successor party, the Liberal Democrats entering the coalition government created after the General Election of 2010 (the Liberal Democrats were formed in 1988 after the merger of the Liberals with the Social Democratic Party, see Crewe and King 1995), the third party oscillated between a low of 13.8 percent at the General Election of 1979 and a high of 25.4 percent for the Social Democratic Party (SDP)/Liberal Alliance at the General Election of 1983. In four of those General Elections, that is, 1983, 1987, 2005 and 2010, they secured a vote share above 22 percent (Cook 2010: 331). The explanation as to why third-party support increased so much between 1970 and 1983 is clear. Policy and ideological divergence had created political space in the ‘vacated centre’, that is, ‘as the major parties move to

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the right and left’, so the Liberals and their successors were able to between 1979 and 1992 to ‘fill the vacated centre and flourish by attracting unhappy moderates with nowhere else to go’ (Nagel and Wlezien 2010: 283). Alongside the arguments that the Heath era was a transitional era in terms of intra- and inter-party politics, we also have to acknowledge that the Heath era was also a transitional era in terms of approaches to governing. The dominant explanatory framework for post-war British politics— the theory of consensus—embraced an approach to governing that covered (1) domestic economic/industrial relations and social policy and (2) foreign policy (Addison 1975, 1993; Kavanagh 1992; Kavanagh and Morris 1994; Dutton 1997). It is clear that the Heath premiership did represent an attempt to alter some of the assumptions of the consensus era in the domestic sphere, that is, the belief in the mixed economy and acceptance of the nationalisations inherited from the Attlee era, the commitment to full employment, a belief in an interventionist and active government, a conciliatory approach towards the trade unions and the advancement of the welfare state as a universal right. The aim of the Heath administration, when entering power, was to modernise the British economy, that is, to create economic growth by promoting competition and encouraging greater efficiencies, alongside lowering taxation and public expenditure, and reducing intervention in the economy (Holmes 1982, 1997). However, when we consider this in terms of motive, Hennessy implies that Heath differed from Thatcher in the sense that whilst she was motivated by ideological intent, Heath was driven more by pragmatic considerations. That is to say that Heath considered alternative approaches to policy because he thought this would ‘breathe new life, economic vitality especially, into the post-war settlement’, and when they did not show signs of working, he retreated from them (Hennessy 2000: 356). As such, Hennessy argues that Heath was not ‘so much a compulsive U-turner but more of a somersaulting moderniser’, that is, he was ‘prepared to execute great leaps of policy for the purpose of continuing to move more effectively in the direction’ of securing full employment and seeking a workable arrangement vis-à-vis industrial relations (Hennessy 2000: 336). The real distinction between Heath and Thatcher lies here—Thatcher could tolerate the significant increases in unemployment that would be the consequence of that type of economic reform, whereas Heath could not. Furthermore, whereas Thatcher viewed the trade unions and illegitimate

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and destructive, Heath viewed their conduct as destructive, but he did not view them as illegitimate (see Dorey 1995). Therefore, the Heath premiership represented an attempt to resuscitate a regime, that having been established in the Attlee era of 1945–1951 and having been maintained in the era of one-nation Conservative governance between 1951 and 1964, was encountering crises from the Wilson era of 1964–1970 onwards (Middlemas 1990). In this context our assumption that it should be viewed as a transitional era is supported by the work of Skowronek (1993, 2011), that is, not only was Heath a disjunctive political leader attempting to hold up a vulnerable regime under threat, but he acted as a prelude for the reconstructive leadership that Thatcher would later provide (see also Theakston et  al. 2020). What is also key in the domestic policy sphere is the extent to which the Heath premiership— whilst seeking policy solutions to the crisis of the existing regime—acted as a policy learning exercise for Thatcher and the Thatcherites (see, e.g. Hall 1993). The chapters within this edited book showcase the extent to which lessons were learnt in terms of industrial relations policy, and the extent to which continuities can be detected between the Heath and Thatcherite eras with regard to economic and social policy as the basis of the domestic policy consensus was unpicked (Middlemas 1991). The Heath premiership made a ‘critical’ contribution to the eventual emergence of Thatcherism later on, acting as it did a transmission belt between two eras of Conservatism (Gamble 1988: 69, 73). As Seldon concludes, the Heath era simultaneously: promoted elements of both the old and new worlds and was trapped uneasily as one paradigm was beginning to lose its hold, but the other model had yet to secure intellectual credibility or popular backing. (Seldon 1996: 1)

The Heath premiership was  not solely transitional in terms of the domestic policy dimensions of the consensus thesis, it was also transitional in the external policy dimensions of the consensus thesis. One of the limitations of the consensus thesis is its inability to capture the emerging rupture within British politics over the European question(s). The foreign policy emphasises the Atlantic alliance; the position of Britain as a nuclear power; and the retreat from Empire as the areas in which a consensus was said to exist between the governing elites on both the Labour and Conservative frontbenchers in the period between 1945 and the 1970s

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(Addison 1975, 1993; Kavanagh 1992; Kavanagh and Morris 1994; Dutton 1997). The issue of Europe would threaten the unity of both main parties and their claims to governing competence—as both the Macmillan and Wilson administrations would see their attempts at entry rebuffed in 1963 and 1967, respectively. Seeking and securing entry was the greatest achievement of the Heath premiership. Not only did he secure an achievement that two previous prime ministers had attempted and failed, but it was an achievement that modified the parameters of Britain’s external relations and it  would help to modernise the British economy (Kitzinger 1973; Lord 1993). Entry was a significant transition that was secured in the Heath era— and not one fully captured by the consensus thesis—but Europe became an increasingly contentious issue within contemporary British Conservatism, thus undermining his achievement as a policy legacy (Turner 2000; Crowson 2007). Moreover, if the greatest achievement of Heath as a Conservative Prime Minister was securing entry into Europe, then his historical legacy is somewhat undone by the fact that the dynamics that would culminate in Brexit were forged within the Conservative Party. Over the decades that followed, the benefits of further integration, and ultimately membership itself, began to be questioned within Conservative circles, as Euroscepticism became the dominant strand of opinion amongst parliamentarians from the 1990s onwards (see, e.g. Heppell 2002, 2013; Heppell et al. 2017). The decision to call a referendum on continued membership was taken to solve the electoral threat to the Conservatives emanating from their right in the shape of the UK Independence Party—UKIP (Ford and Goodwin 2014; Goodwin and Milazzo 2015) and to solve the divide within their own parliamentary ranks (Lynch and Whittaker 2013a, 2013b). The decision of voters to leave the European Union was not at the behest of Labour or Liberal Democrat voters (Labour voters split 33 percent leave and 67 percent remain and Liberal Democrat voters split 27 percent leave and 73 percent remain), whereas a majority of Conservative voters endorsed leave (by 54 percent to 46 percent, with UKIP voters being 100 percent behind leave (Curtice 2017a, 2017b; see also Glencross 2016; Clarke et al. 2017; see also Heppell 2019). Given that his policy legacy in other respects was so threadbare, the historical reputation of Heath as a Prime Minister of significance was predicated on remaining within the European Union and the European Union

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being regarded positively. We reach the 50th anniversary of the onset of the Heath premiership as we leave the European Union. As such, the transitional Heath era of British politics—be that as a leader of the Conservative Party between 1965 and 1975 or as Prime Minister between 1970 and 1974—is now going to be primarily defined by the fact that he led the only administration since 1945 to be removed from office by the voters at the first opportunity.

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Index1

A Aims of Industry, 78 Apollo programme, 74

311, 355, 356, 359, 362, 363n2, 369, 370, 422, 427, 431, 432 Butler, Rab, 23–29, 78, 267, 400

B Balance of Payments, 64, 66, 77, 104, 105, 107, 109, 215, 296, 423 Baldwin, Stanley, 72 BBC, 71, 74, 344, 384 Benn, Tony, 44, 69, 82, 294, 301, 304, 308 Berkeley, Humphry, 69, 78, 278 Billericay, 79 Boyle, Sir Edward, 26, 49, 52, 72, 148 Bridgewater by-election, 65 Brown, George, 75, 83, 301 Butler, David, 3, 4, 8, 9, 19–21, 29, 30, 45–47, 49, 85, 242, 243, 250, 252, 264, 282, 293–295,

C Callaghan, James, 1, 9, 78, 150, 161, 190, 191, 197, 297, 305, 308, 348, 411 Campaign, 76 Castle, Barbara, 75, 85, 160, 169, 211, 294n1, 297 Charlton, Jack, 69 Commonwealth Immigration Act, 73, 279 Community Relations Commission, 73 Conservative Research Department (CRD), 28–30, 78, 81, 142, 146–148, 150, 152, 154–156, 159, 214, 232, 241, 245, 247, 251, 267, 320, 322–324, 337, 342, 363

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2021 A. S. Roe-Crines, T. Heppell (eds.), Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53673-2

443

444 

INDEX

Coronation Street, 73 Cromer, Lord, 78 Crosland, Tony, 67, 179, 302, 304, 309 Crossman, Richard, 156, 158, 159, 171 D Daily Mirror, The, 344 Devon, 225 Douglas, James, 29, 30, 81, 231 E Economist, The, 70–72, 83, 252, 253, 400 Eggs, 72, 75 Evans, Harold, 71 F Foot, Michael, 82, 301, 302, 304, 308 Francis, Richard, 74 Fraser, Sir Michael, 30, 64, 65, 81, 150, 357 G Gale, George, 79 Glasgow, 168n2, 177, 343 Gravesend, 78 H Hall, Ron, 77 Harman, Nicholas, 78 Harris, John, 67 Hattersley, Roy, 82, 309 Healey, Denis, 295, 302, 308, 345, 388, 388n5, 393 Hurd, Douglas, 68, 70, 72, 80, 83, 211, 217, 227, 228, 231, 244, 245, 250, 345, 361

I Isaacs, Jeremy, 71 ITV, 71, 74, 384 J Janner, Barnett, 66 Jenkins, Hugh, 66 Jenkins, Roy, 67, 69, 77, 300, 301, 303, 306, 308, 308n2, 309 K Kearton, Lord, 78 Kingsley, David, 65, 81 L Labour Party, 1, 11, 12n7, 13, 44, 47, 117, 127, 131, 135, 146, 150, 158, 166, 242, 293–311, 323, 343, 355, 360–363, 366, 367, 369, 370, 389, 424, 425, 427, 430, 431 Leather, Sir Edwin, 79 Liberal Party, 70, 73, 328 Liberal Research Department, 66 Lloyd, Selwyn, 31, 72 Lockwood, Betty, 82 M Macleod, Iain, 22–24, 26–28, 31n1, 34, 35, 49, 52, 78, 108, 145, 150, 151, 267, 271, 275, 276 Macmillan, Harold, 1, 19–27, 42, 49, 51, 55, 72, 93, 123, 128, 214, 248, 253, 266, 268, 271, 273, 282, 298, 322, 323, 389 Manifestoes, 5, 10, 45, 52, 64, 68, 69, 82, 89, 103, 104, 124, 126, 147, 148, 153–155, 157, 159, 161,

 INDEX 

174, 242, 243, 280, 304, 321, 335, 337, 338, 341, 342, 344, 360, 366, 369, 389, 405, 414, 414n6, 423, 430 Maudling, Reginald, 21, 24–36, 34n3, 71, 147, 190–192, 195, 199, 214, 231, 246, 271, 272, 378, 380, 382 McKenzie, Robert, 46, 78, 79, 239, 240 Mellish, Bob, 81, 82, 297 Monty Python, 79 Moonman, Eric, 66 N National Executive Committee (NEC), 65, 67, 68, 304, 308 News of the World, The, 64 Nicholas, Harry, 75, 81 Nixon, Richard, 67 P Panorama, 78, 320 Patten, Chris, 73, 242, 251, 326 Peart, Fred, 67, 85, 301 Peru, 84 Political Quarterly, 80 Polls/Polling/Pollsters, 44, 46, 47, 55, 63, 66, 67, 72, 74–83, 85, 199, 200, 230, 231, 236, 264, 289, 294n1, 295, 301, 302, 317, 328, 333, 344, 356, 363, 366, 368–370, 424–426 Powell, Enoch, 13, 21, 24, 27, 31, 32, 42, 47–50, 52, 54–56, 75, 77, 81, 83, 142, 145, 147, 148, 224, 229, 251, 261–289, 326, 329, 330, 342, 343, 348, 361, 362, 380, 426 Preston, Peter, 85

445

R Race Relations Act, 73 Roth, Andrew, 29, 32, 33, 67, 213, 246, 266, 426 S Savoy, the, 78 Selsdon Man, 5n2, 53, 56, 68, 69, 149, 242, 320 Sewill, Brendan, 63n2, 77, 77n113, 78n117, 81, 84, 146–148, 150, 152, 156, 241, 242, 273 Sharples, Ena, 73 South Africa, 66, 276 Stebbings, Oliver, 73 Sunday Times, the, 71, 76, 77, 84 T Television, 8, 64, 70, 72–75, 78, 141, 273, 324, 383, 384, 426 Thatcher, Margaret, 1, 4, 7, 14, 34, 43, 56, 88, 90, 92, 98–103, 109, 123, 130–133, 135, 136, 143, 149–151, 154, 159–161, 205, 211, 218, 220, 236, 240, 241, 262, 269, 277, 285, 317, 331, 336, 343, 344, 364, 371, 377, 381, 382, 384–393, 400–416, 411n4, 414n6, 426, 427, 429, 433, 434 Thorndike, Sybil, 69 Thorpe, Jeremy, 63n1, 67, 71, 76, 79, 197, 297, 362, 363 Tribune, 76, 82 Tucker, Geoffrey, 74, 74n84, 245 W Wakes weeks, 66 Walden, Brian, 66

446 

INDEX

West Germany, 77, 334 Wigg, George, 66 Wilson, Harold, 1, 2, 5n2, 9, 20, 30, 33, 35, 43–47, 51–55, 54n4, 63n1, 64, 66–73, 75, 77–79, 81, 83–85, 102, 149, 159, 161, 169, 189, 197, 202–204, 211, 242, 251, 252, 268, 271, 272, 274, 285, 295–311, 320, 323, 326, 335,

345, 362, 366, 368–370, 388, 389, 424n2, 432, 434, 435 Wolverhampton, 83, 262, 286 Wood, David, 80, 85, 279, 281, 369 World Cup, 66, 69, 71, 73, 77 Y Young, Hugo, 54, 65n11, 70, 213, 218, 382