Edward Heath

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  The imperial premiership

  The role of the modern Prime Minister in foreign policy making, 1964–2015

  • Sam Goodman(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Manchester University Press

    (Publisher)

  2Ted Heath, 1970–74

  Edward Heath was an established figure in both the Conservative Party and in government long before he became Prime Minister on 19 July 1970. Under the premierships of Eden, Macmillan and Douglas-Home, he had spent thirteen of the twenty years prior to 1970 in Government rising through the ranks. During this period he had a first-hand apprenticeship in foreign policy.

  Serving as Chief Whip to Anthony Eden, he witnessed close up the folly and mistakes of the Suez Crisis. He only managed to stay out of the controversy due to the parliamentary convention that Government Whips cannot speak in the House of Commons.

  Heath played a pinnacle role in the selection of Eden's successor, Harold Macmillan in January 1957. He reported on the opinions of the majority of Conservative backbench MPs, which largely favoured Macmillan. This helped him secure the party leadership's backing. Macmillan never forgot Heath's support and the two became close under his premiership, sharing a common interest in reassessing the United Kingdom's relationship with Europe.

  In 1960 Macmillan appointed Heath to Lord Privy Seal with special responsibility for negotiating Britain's entry into the European Economic Community. Over the next few years he led in depth discussions with a number of European and Commonwealth Heads of State; these negotiations and experiences would shape his later premiership. In his memoirs, Heath writes that in February 1963 it was calculated that during eighteen months of negotiations he had made twenty-seven visits to Brussels, eleven to Paris, and twenty-seven to other countries, covering a total of 50,000 miles in all.1

  Despite his efforts and that of Macmillan's, on 29 January 1963 French President Charles De Gaulle publicly vetoed Britain's membership application in a state address. The veto damaged Britain's standing in the world and Heath's within the Conservative Party, ensuring that when an ill Macmillan stepped down from the premiership in October 1963, he was not a contender to succeed him. Instead the Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home succeeded him despite being a hereditary peer. This was highly controversial at the time with many considering it cronyism. Under Douglas-Home, Heath received little of the patronage that he had enjoyed under both Macmillan and Eden. Outside of the Prime Minister's inner circle he was appointed President of the Board of Trade.

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  The Heath Government 1970-74

  A Reappraisal

  • Stuart Ball, A. Seldon(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter One The Heath government in history Anthony Seldon

  The Heath government was in office from June 1970 to February 1974 during the main turning point in postwar British history. Five years before it came to power, the Labour government of Harold Wilson set up a Prices and Incomes Board, Tony Crosland’s circular on secondary schooling sought to give comprehensive schools a decisive push and kill off grammar schools, and the National Plan was published. In this ‘old’ world, the state was seen as having a major role as monopoly supplier of many goods and services, trade unions were lauded and powerful, and the pursuit of equality was regarded as a core objective of government. Five years after Heath’s government fell from power, Mrs Thatcher was in Downing Street in 1979, and a new world was shortly to unfold where government itself was no longer considered to be benign, priority was given to boosting private provision at the expense of the collective, and a vast expansion of unemployment and even poverty was openly tolerated. The Heath government is intriguing in part because it promoted elements of both the old and the 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. The government’s predicament moreover was compounded as it was in office at a time of unusual unrest and turbulence, both domestically and internationally. Two events in particular occurred in 1973: the ending of the Bretton Woods system, and the first great oil shock, both having profound and lasting repercussions.

  Rival Interpretations

  The government is fascinating also because it has become such a battleground of rival views and interpretations. Historical assessment of Heath’s government has been clouded by a number of factors. The government’s most decisive and long-lasting initiative was taking Britain into the European Economic Community (EEC). But opinion is sharply divided on whether it was a wise and necessary move, and whether membership benefited Britain. The second difficulty stems from the impact of Thatcherism, the apparent success of which in the 1980s made Heath’s government look wrong-headed and indecisive. Third, the government changed course in several areas mid-term; were those switches wise pragmatism, inevitable, or unprincipled weakness? Finally, Heath as Prime Minister was unusually single-minded: was this very personal style of leadership responsible for the apparent inconsistencies and floundering, or did it result in the government achieving as much as it did in very volatile and difficult circumstances? Four main interpretations of the government present themselves.

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  The Prime Ministers

  Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson

  • Steve Richards(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Atlantic Books

    (Publisher)

  2

  Edward Heath

  Few leaders were better prepared for the tasks of leadership than Edward Heath by the time he became prime minister in 1970. Heath had flourished in the intense student politics of Oxford University in the 1930s. As a student he had travelled widely in Europe. While rising to the top in politics, his ministerial responsibilities included a demanding negotiation to join the Common Market under the leadership of Harold Macmillan, a test of any potential leader’s stamina and durability. In addition, Heath had been an energetic and reforming Cabinet minister at a point when a tired Conservative government lacked momentum. Earlier, he had been chief whip at a highly sensitive and traumatic period, giving him a developed sense of how the parliamentary party behaved and how to make it behave. He was also the first leader of the Conservative Party to be elected by MPs, an authority-enhancing act of democratic engagement.

  This was quite a CV for leadership, compared with most other modern prime ministers. Yet, as prime minister, Heath endured a traumatic, dark and brief tenure at Number Ten. His political career ended in terrible failure and a long sulk, as he observed his successor transform the Conservative Party and win landslide elections. How to explain the mismatch between Heath’s considerable qualities and mighty qualifications for leadership with the hell that erupted around him soon after he became prime minister?

  Such was the enduring sense of failure associated with Heath, his fall and his subsequent transparent grumpiness that these qualities are easily overlooked. They might even seem to relate to an entirely different figure than the one who ruled in troubled times, called an early election and lost. But before being elected leader in 1965, Heath had been an unusually self-confident Cabinet minister. Even more unusual, he left his Cabinet posts with greater self-confidence than he had when he arrived. He made a practical impact, implementing some radical changes with a wilful resolution and buttressed by a clear ‘one nation’ philosophy. Indeed, Heath was the last ‘one nation’ Conservative to lead his party. David Cameron claimed to come from the same tradition, and probably genuinely thought he was, but he was much closer to the Thatcherite model. Heath’s politics lay well to the left of Cameron’s. Although Heath was never as popular as Harold Macmillan, or acquired the same variety of ministerial roles as Rab Butler, who never made it to the top, his career before he became leader comes closest to offering a precise definition of what it was to be a ‘one nation’ Tory – another of British politics’ overused and imprecise terms.

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  The Powers Behind the Prime Minister

  The Hidden Influence of Number Ten (Text Only)

  • Dennis Kavanagh, Anthony Seldon(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • HarperCollins

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER THREE Edward Heath (1970–1974)

  THE HEATH GOVERNMENT came to office in June 1970 as probably the best prepared of any in postwar history until Tony Blair’s in 1997. Like Blair too, Ted Heath also sought to ‘modernise’ British government. Unlike his Labour counterpart, however, Heath had long experience at the centre of decision making. He had been Chief Whip under Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, part of the old ‘magic circle’, and handled big issues such as Europe in 1961–3 under Macmillan, and the abolition of resale price maintenance (RPM) in 1963–64 under Home. He was the first Conservative leader to be educated at a grammar school and the first, in 1965, to be elected in a competitive election. Heath had a keen interest in policy. Under Home’s leadership in opposition he had chaired an ambitious policy review, and as leader after 1965 he retained the key post himself.

  Like Harold Wilson, Heath spoke about the need for the modernisation of British industry. He regarded this development as essential to meet the challenge of competing with Europe. Heath also promised to run his government in conscious reaction to that of his immediate predecessor, Wilson. In his foreword to the 1970 election manifesto he criticised ‘government by gimmick’. As opposition leader he insisted on shadow ministers speaking to their brief and sticking to their last, a cause of tension for Enoch Powell, who liked to range broadly. Enoch Powell’s famous and fateful ‘rivers of blood’ speech on immigration in 1968 trespassed on the territory of the Home Office and gave Heath his opportunity to dismiss his right-wing foe from the Shadow Cabinet: had he not, four senior colleagues, Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham), Edward Boyle, Lord Carrington and Iain Macleod would themselves have resigned.

  Heath’s government achieved Britain’s entry to the European Community, the culmination of a personal crusade for the Prime Minister. But the government was challenged by industrial relations disputes, a breakdown of order in Northern Ireland which led to the imposition of direct rule on the province from London, and the bitter reaction to the introduction of far-reaching statutory controls over prices and incomes. Little of this, or the massive rise in the price of raw materials or the quadrupling of oil prices in October 1973, had been anticipated in 1970. Heath’s plan to call a general election on the back of economic prosperity was in ruins. At the end of his tenure as Prime Minister, Heath was exhorting the electorate to prepare for sacrifice.

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  God In Number 10

  The Personal Faith of the Prime Ministers, Balfour to Blair

  • Mark Vickers(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • SPCK Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Edward Heath (1970–1974)

  ‘Coming through the valley of bewilderment’

  Edward Richard George Heath1 was born at St Peter’s-in-Thanet, close to the Kentish coastal town of Broadstairs, on 9 July 1916. He was educated at Chatham House Grammar School, Ramsgate, and Balliol College, Oxford.

  After service with the Royal Artillery during the Second World War and a variety of positions subsequently, Heath won Bexley for the Conservatives in 1950. He remained an MP until his retirement in 2001. Boundary changes led to the seat being renamed Sidcup in February 1974 and Old Bexley and Sidcup in 1983.

  Heath served in the Whips’ Office between 1951 and 1959. As Chief Whip from 1956, he helped restore party unity after the Suez crisis. Briefly Minister of Labour, Heath was appointed Lord Privy Seal in 1960, speaking on foreign affairs in the Commons. Entrusted with responsibility for negotiating UK membership of the EEC, Heath was passionately committed to joining as a means of avoiding future conflict and advancing national interests. Veto of the application by the French President, Charles de Gaulle, in no way reflected badly on Heath, and Douglas-Home appointed him President of the Board of Trade in 1963. When the Conservatives lost the 1964 general election he became Shadow Chancellor, organizing an effective campaign against the 1965 Finance Bill.

  When Conservative MPs elected their party leader for the first time on 27 July 1965, Heath, the meritocratic modernizer, succeeded the aristocrat, Douglas-Home. It did not provide the immediate fillip the Tories hoped for; they were decisively defeated by Harold Wilson’s Labour Party in the 1966 general election. Despite the government’s economic difficulties, Heath’s period as leader of the Opposition was an unhappy time, in which he was frequently outwitted by Wilson on the floor of the Commons. However, he led the Conservatives to a surprise 30-seat majority victory in the election on 18 June 1970 and was appointed Prime Minister the following day.

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  Leadership and Uncertainty Management in Politics

  Leaders, Followers and Constraints in Western Democracies

  • François Vergniolle De Chantal, Agnès Alexandre-Collier, Agnès Alexandre-Collier(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  But history only retains his failures and broken promises. Minor leaders tend to be cast aside by historians but those tragic figures of failure shed an original light on the question of leadership and help to better understand the complex mechanisms at work between a leader and his followers. As party leader or national leader, Heath confused his followers and dismayed people inside his party. He always stood between two opposite trends and always hesitated between two political personalities. Torn between a moderate progressive form of Conservatism and a more aggressive free market approach or torn between the status of the tough moderniser and the cautious man of consensus, in power Heath never really found his true self (Blake, 1985: 299; Campbell, 1993: xix). This chapter focuses on this instability at the heart of Heath’s leadership and posits that all the difficulties and failures of his leadership stem from this division at the heart of his political identity and his incapacity thereof to project a coherent and clear image to his followers. Stephen Skowronek’s theory of leadership 1 provides a useful framework to guide our analysis and will better highlight the structural contradiction of Heath’s political nature (Skowronek, 1993). Repudiation and emancipation: Edward Heath, the man of change In 1965, for the first time in its history, the Conservative party organised elections to choose its leader and Edward Heath became the first leader ever to be democratically elected at the head of the Conservative party. Compared with Reginald Maudling, his main contestant, Edward Heath stood out as a peculiar figure for he did not have the traditional Conservative profile: at 49, he was still a bachelor; he came from a modest background and had been educated in a grammar school. Politically speaking, Conservative MPs did not know much about him and his political stance. Two points nonetheless had singled him out from his colleagues

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  Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath

  • Andrew S. Roe-Crines, Timothy Heppell, Andrew S. Roe-Crines, Timothy Heppell(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  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 being regarded positively. We reach the 50th anniversary of the onset of the Heath premiership as we leave the European Union

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  Half In, Half Out

  Prime Ministers on Europe

  • Andrew Adonis(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Biteback Publishing

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 7

  Edward Heath

  MICHAEL McMANUS

  There was a deep-seated belief that, if the rest of Europe could solve its problems on its own, it would no longer be likely to interfere with us in Britain. Alas, this proved to be illusory.’

  EDWARD HEATH, C. 1990

  M emories of the perpetually dyspeptic-looking countenance of the senescent Sir Edward Heath help to explain why negative perceptions of him remain stubbornly in place. What he always regarded as his greatest achievement – UK membership of the European Union – became an increasingly poisoned chalice, as his party slowly lost faith in Europe. To a younger generation within his own party – the party he had joined in the 1930s and never deserted until his death in 2005 – he seemed like an angry old dinosaur.

  Heath’s views originated not only in the scarred, burning battlefields of war during the mainland campaign of 1944–45, but years earlier, during the remarkable experiences he had before the Second World War had broken out. He had witnessed at first hand one of the Nuremberg rallies; visited Spain at the height of its bitter Civil War; and then campaigned against the pro-appeasement Conservative candidate in the Oxford by-election of 1938.

  Heath spent much of the summer of 1937 in Germany and Austria, including a particularly agreeable time as the guest of a retired professor of English, close to the Bavarian Alps. While there, he received an unexpected invitation to join a British delegation at a Nuremberg rally. In his 1977 memoir, Travels, Heath recalled those formative experiences:

  Professor Winckler and I talked continuously about the Nazi Party philosophy and Hitler’s intentions during our long walks through the forests or when we were climbing the mountains. Neither of us had any doubt about the nature of the regime and its lack of freedom. What we perhaps did not realise was the extent to which it was already militarily committed to aggression in Europe. That was soon to become evident at Nuremberg … All the voices protesting Germany’s innocence of any ill intent were stilled in my mind as I watched this demonstration of what could only be aggressive power … The finale of the Rally was a party at which Himmler was to be the host … I remember him for his soft, wet, flabby handshake. Goebbels was there, his pinched face white and sweating – evil personified.

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  Clear Blue Water?

  The Conservative Party and the Welfare State since 1940

  • Page, Robert M.(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Policy Press

    (Publisher)

  In his assessment of social policy under the Heath government, Lowe (1996) argues that there was ‘insufficient ruthlessness in the determination of priorities’ (p 214). This reflected the underlying tension that still existed between One Nation and neo-liberal Conservatives with regard to the welfare state. The former accepted the need for `modernisation’ but were wary of adopting measures that would alienate Conservative-inclined voters who valued the security that the welfare state had delivered. In contrast, the latter contended that urgent action was needed to counter what had become an ever more costly, egalitarian, aspirational-sapping, dependency-inducing institution. This tension was to be resolved more decisively in a neo-liberal direction during the Thatcher era (1975-90).

  The Heath government (1970-74): the wider political context

  It is important to remember, as was noted previously, that focusing on social policy developments during any political era, not least Heath’s tenure, runs the risk of overstating the importance of this particular area of government activity. It is noticeable, for example, that social policy developments have not featured prominently in many ‘holistic’ assessments of the Heath government. Economic issues, trade union reform and unrest, entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) and developments in Northern Ireland have attracted far greater attention. In the light of subsequent developments in the Thatcher and Major eras, it is useful in particular to refer to some of the key economic and industrial developments that occurred during the era of Heath government, not least because of the spill-over effects in relation to social policy.

  In the initial phase of the Heath administration, the ‘quiet’ modern technocratic revolution that was put in place in relation to industrial policy and trade union reform was warmly received by neo-liberal-inclined Conservatives. Heath’s decision to ‘put together an assertively free-market team’ (Campbell, 1993, p 302) at the Department of Technology (Geoffrey Rippon, Sir John Eden and Nicholas Ridley) was seen by anti-collectivists as a sign that the new government was ‘set to embark’ on a ‘privatisation programme and the dismantling of the socialist state’ (Ridley, 1991, p 4). Their optimism proved to be short-lived. The reshuffle that followed the untimely death of Macleod in July 1970 saw Rippon become Chancellor of The Duchy of Lancaster in order that he could oversee Britain’s membership of the Common Market. He was replaced at the Department of Energy by an ‘instinctive interventionist’ (Campbell, 1993, p 302) John Davies, (a newly elected MP and former Director-General of the CBI who was soon to preside over a new ‘super-ministry’ – the Department of Trade and Industry).50

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  The Worm in the Apple

  A History of the Conservative Party and Europe from Churchill to Cameron

  • Christopher Tugendhat(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Haus Publishing

    (Publisher)

  To a degree that was extremely rare among his British contemporaries, Heath shared the dream of men like Monnet and Spaak of building, by means of the EEC, a European edifice that would make war impossible among Europeans and safeguard democracy against fascism as well as communism. He wanted Britain to be part of that edifice and saw it as a means by which British influence in Europe and the world could be increased, just as French leaders saw it as a vehicle for extending French influence. Though a good friend of the United States, he was untouched by the self-delusion and sentimentality with which other British prime ministers tended to view ‘the special relationship’. He believed that Britain’s strongest foreign policy relationship should be with the EEC and its members. In domestic politics he saw EEC membership and the economic opportunities that went with it as an integral part of his programme for modernising Britain.

  In the first statement of policy issued under his leadership, he made his intentions clear: ‘When the present difficulties and uncertainties in Europe are resolved, we believe it would be right to take the first favourable opportunity to join the Community and to assist others who wish, in the Commonwealth and EFTA, to seek closer association with it.’3

  When making this pledge, Heath knew, and the party knew, that he had no hope of delivering on it for some years to come. It was universally expected that whenever Wilson chose to call another election the country would confirm its 1964 decision by giving him the increased majority he needed. In March 1966 it duly did so, returning Labour with an overall majority of ninety-eight. Thereafter, Heath’s role was to settle in for a whole Parliament of opposition and to prepare for a do-or-die bid for the premiership in 1970 or 1971. He would, he knew, be out if he lost again.

  During those years, Europe was by no means the most divisive issue within the Conservative Party. Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence and the racial tensions following Commonwealth immigration into Britain aroused stronger feelings. In November 1965, the white minority government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), having refused to cooperate with the British government’s plans to transfer power to the black majority, declared itself independent. The British government responded by imposing sanctions and seeking to isolate it from the international community, a decision that split the Conservative Party at every level. Heath tried to bridge the divide by instructing the party to abstain on a key vote to impose oil sanctions, only to find eighty-one of his followers going their own way – fifty opposing sanctions and thirty-one supporting them. In the constituencies, support for the rebel regime – ‘our kith and kin’ – was overwhelming. The row rumbled on throughout Heath’s time in office, undermining his position with the right wing of the party.

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