The Path to Power m-2
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This was the situation which I inherited as Leader. Ted had impaled the Party on an extremely painful hook from which it would be my unenviable task to set it free. As an instinctive Unionist, I disliked the devolution commitment. But I realized that so much capital had by now been invested in it that I could not change the policy immediately. Had I done so, there would have been resignations which I simply could not afford. For the moment I would have to live with the commitment.
I asked Willie Whitelaw to chair a devolution policy group. In the Shadow Cabinet we duly discussed Willie’s proposals for a directly elected Assembly and agreed them, though without committing ourselves one way or the other to proportional representation.[42] Many of the Tory devolutionists wanted PR, fearing a future SNP victory in Scotland under the first-past-the-post electoral system and not being averse perhaps to the prospect of coalition politics, north or south of the border. On this I would not budge.
At the Scottish Party Conference in Dundee in May 1975 I repeated the commitment to a directly elected Assembly as briefly as I decently could. Talking to people at the Conference brought home more clearly than ever the fact that there were some Scottish Tories who bitterly disagreed with their leaders about the whole question. My unease grew — and so did that of other people. During the summer, English Tory MPs began to express doubts about Scottish devolution, partly because of its implications for the Union but also on sound tactical grounds. Scotland would be vastly over-represented in the Westminster Parliament if it had an Assembly as well as its present (somewhat generous) quota of MPs. Moreover, Labour was itself hopelessly divided over devolution, and it was clear that the tactical balance of advantage had swung away from proclaiming its virtues towards using it as an issue on which to embarrass the Government. I held a series of meetings with backbenchers. Their worries both echoed and increased mine. By the end of 1975 opinion on the backbenches was strongly against devolution. At the same time Alick Buchanan-Smith and Malcolm Rifkind, getting ever more out of touch, were flirting with the idea of a separate Scottish executive. That went yet further beyond the Home proposals and took us well into Labour territory.
The Government’s White Paper which proposed directly elected Assemblies for both Scotland and Wales was published in November. But the Shadow Cabinet was deeply divided as to how to deal with it. In the run-up to the debate on the White Paper in January 1976 Alick Buchanan-Smith and Ian Gilmour pressed for mention of the Conservative commitment to an Assembly in the wording of our Amendment, while the anti-devolutionists argued that if we avoided restating the commitment, abstentions from Labour opponents of devolution might give us victory. For the present, I bowed to Alick Buchanan-Smith’s line.
The arguments continued in 1976. Julian Amery and Maurice Macmillan proved effective leaders of the anti-devolution Tory camp. Willie devised a formula around which it was hoped the Party could unite, which I used at the Scottish Party Conference in Perth in May, repeating support for a directly elected Scottish Assembly, but making it clear that we would oppose any scheme based upon the Government’s White Paper. I added, for good measure: ‘I could not support an Assembly — none of us could support an Assembly — if we thought it was likely to jeopardize the Union.’ The Perth speech was well received, but of course it did not resolve the Party dispute.
I now began to harden our opposition. In November, when the Bill was published, I had dinner with a constitutional lawyer, Professor Yardley of Birmingham, to discuss its details. I also saw a good deal of the constitutional scholar Nevil Johnson. The more I heard and the more closely I read the Bill, the more dangerous it appeared to the Union. It was a prescription for bureaucracy and wrangling, and the idea that it would appease those Scots who wanted independence was becoming ever more absurd. Moreover, a private poll conducted for the Party in November 1976 confirmed my suspicion of the electoral arguments for devolution. Scottish opinion was highly fragmented: the Government’s devolution plans had only 22 per cent support less than our own (26 per cent), and less even than ‘no change’ (23 per cent). Only 14 per cent favoured independence. A far-reaching constitutional change required much more public support than that.
In November/December 1976, with the Bill about to come before the House for Second Reading, there were four long discussions in Shadow Cabinet about whether or not to impose a three-line whip against it. Our position could be fudged no longer. In addition to the overwhelming majority of our backbenchers, most Shadow ministers were by now opposed to devolution, at least on any lines similar to those contained in the White Paper. But there was a rooted belief among its supporters that devolution was the only way of heading off independence, and even some of those who disliked it intensely were wary of appearing to be anti-Scottish or of being seen to overrule the Scottish Tory leaders. In the end, however, in a marathon meeting ending in the early hours of Thursday 2 December we decided — with a significant dissenting minority including Alick Buchanan-Smith — that we would oppose the Bill on a three-line whip.
I had no illusion that this could be done without some resignations. I wanted to minimize them, but not at the expense of failing to lance the devolution boil. The morning after the Shadow Cabinet meeting Malcolm Rifkind, George Younger, John Corrie, Hector Munro, Hamish Gray and Russell Fairgrieve (Scottish Party Chairman) came to see me, saying that Alick Buchanan-Smith must be given a special dispensation to abstain in the vote or else all six of them would resign from their front-bench posts. I could not agree to this. To my irritation, what was said at the meeting appeared in the next morning’s Financial Times. The Tory Reform Group, which represented the left of the Party — when it was set up I had written in assumed innocence to Robert Carr, one of its founders, to ask precisely what it thought it was going to ‘reform’ — described us as ‘set to commit electoral suicide in Scotland’. The backbenchers felt very differently. There were loud cheers when the whipping decision was announced at the 1922 Committee that evening. It was, of course, no surprise when Ted Heath popped up four days later in Glasgow to say that he himself would not vote against the Bill. Alick Buchanan-Smith duly resigned as Shadow Scottish Secretary, along with Malcolm Rifkind. Four other front benchers wanted to go, but I refused their resignations and even allowed one of them to speak against our line in the debate and vote with the Government. No Party leader could have done more. To replace Alick Buchanan-Smith I moved Teddy Taylor, whose robust patriotism and soundness had long impressed me, from Trade to become Shadow Scottish Secretary.
It is generally an unnerving experience to have to speak from the front bench when you know that the debate, and in all probability the vote, will expose divisions on your own side. But the speech I had to give on Monday 13 December at the Bill’s Second Reading debate was exactly the sort of forensic operation that I enjoyed. I said as little as possible about our proposals, making only minimal reference to our residual commitment to an Assembly in Scotland, and saying a great deal about the internal contradictions and inconsistencies of the legislation. At the end of the debate twenty-seven Conservatives, including Ted Heath and Peter Walker, abstained. Five voted with the Government, including Alick Buchanan-Smith, Malcolm Rifkind and Hamish Gray. But Labour were also divided: twenty-nine Labour MPs abstained and ten voted with us. The forty-five-vote majority at Second Reading thus concealed great unhappiness on the Labour side as well as our own over the issue, which was to resurface. In the course of the debate the Prime Minister hinted that the Government would concede a referendum in Scotland and Wales — a commitment that in the end proved fatal to the whole devolution enterprise.
Francis Pym had by now taken over from Willie the task of front-bench spokesman on devolution. But he held radically different views from Teddy Taylor about how to treat the Bill, Francis wanting to make it ‘workable’ and Teddy wanting to bury it. In the end burial was its fate, as the Government’s guillotine motion was defeated by a majority of twenty-nine (with twenty-two Labour MPs voting with us) in February 1977. Sudd
enly the Government found itself deprived of Nationalist support, which in practice had given it a working majority while devolution was in the offing. Though Labour was to introduce new devolution legislation later in the year, their immediate prospects were encouragingly grim.
Precisely what would happen now was far from clear. On Thursday 17 March 1977 the Government refused to contest our motion to adjourn the House following a debate on public expenditure, for fear of a defection of left-wing Labour MPs. I promptly described this almost unheard-of breach of orderly procedure as ‘defeat with dishonour’. We tabled, as we had to, a Motion of No Confidence in the Government. If it succeeded, there would be a general election. In spite of my natural caution, I thought that it would. I used the speech I made to the Central Council at Torquay that Saturday to put the Party on the alert for an imminent campaign.
These were days of intense manoeuvring between the parties and their Whips. But I refused to engage in it. David Steel, the Liberal Party Leader, had already indicated that he might be prepared to keep Labour in power if the terms and conditions were judged right. Legislation for direct elections to the European Assembly on a proportional representation basis, ‘industrial democracy’ and tax reform were the topics publicly mentioned, but no one believed that the Liberals’ decision as to whether or not to support the Labour Government would be determined by secondary issues. For the Liberals there were two large questions they had to answer. Would they be blamed for keeping an unpopular Government in power? Or would they be credited with moderating its policies? I did not myself believe that they would sign up to a pact with the Government — certainly not unless there was a formal coalition with several Liberals as Cabinet ministers, which it was difficult to imagine the left of the Labour Party being prepared to tolerate.
In fact, my calculation of the political equation was broadly correct; but I left out the crucial element of vanity. Although the Lib-Lab Pact did the Liberals a good deal of harm, while doing Jim Callaghan no end of good, it did allow Liberal Party spokesmen the thrilling illusion that they were important.
After the vote on the Opposition Motion of No Confidence I was attacked in some quarters for not having been prepared to offer some kind of deal to the Liberals. But I was untempted by this beforehand and unrepentant afterwards. The undignified attempts to gain Liberal support for a minority Conservative Government after the February 1974 defeat conclusively showed the dangers. Moreover, it would be hard enough to drag the left wing of the Conservative Party and sections of the present Shadow Cabinet into supporting the measures which I knew would be required in government to set Britain right, without the burden of arrangements with the irresponsible eccentrics of the Liberal Party.
There was, of course, even less prospect of winning the support of the Nationalist parties, now that we had turned our back on devolution. The conservative-minded Ulster Unionists should have supported us. In Airey Neave and me they knew that they had strong supporters of the Union. Their demand for extra parliamentary seats at Westminster to make up for the Province’s under-representation was likely to be supported by any Government, because the case on grounds of equity was so strong. But the Unionists’ general resentment of the Heath Government’s abolition of Stormont — the devolved government that ran Ulster from 1920 to 1972, which they had dominated — and the personal bitterness of Enoch Powell, who was now representing South Down for the Unionists, meant that we could not in practice rely on their support.
In fact, there was very little that could be done by us to influence the vote. The minority parties would decide where they stood according to whether they thought that a general election was in their interests or not. In assessing that, each would look to the opinion polls. These suggested that a Conservative Government with an overall majority would be elected, which would greatly reduce the ability of a few disparate individuals to influence Government policy.
I was told some hours before I was due to propose the No Confidence Motion in the House that the Liberals would support the Government. I was astonished that they had signed up to such a bad deal. The pact would apparently last initially for the rest of the parliamentary session. The Liberals would not be members of the Government, but would liaise with individual ministers and send representatives to a joint consultative committee chaired by Michael Foot, the Leader of the House. The Government gave undertakings on direct elections to the European Assembly and devolution (accepting free votes on PR), promised to find time for a Liberal Bill on homelessness and agreed to limit the scope of planned legislation on local authority direct-labour organizations. It was a lacklustre shopping list. But, knowing that we were looking at certain defeat, with all the recriminations which would follow from the press and our supporters, it drained me of inspiration.
Angus Maude had helped me with the drafting of the speech. We decided to make it very short. In fact, it was too short. Moreover, it had been drafted when it seemed that we might be facing an immediate general election, so that positive statements of our policies had appeared preferable to detailed attacks on the Government’s. It received the worst press of any speech I have given. Of course, if I had read out the Westminster telephone directory and we had won at the end of the day no one would have bothered. But in politics, as in life, the ‘ifs’ offer no consolation. As I drove back to Flood Street later that night it was not my poor reception in the House or even the Government’s majority of twenty-four which most depressed me. It was the fact that after all our efforts the chance to begin turning Britain round seemed no nearer than before.
CHAPTER X
Détente or Defeat?
Foreign policy and visits 1975–1979
EUROPE
The first major political challenge I faced on becoming Leader was the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community, promised by Labour in Opposition as a way of keeping their party together. For a number of reasons I would have preferred a challenge on some other topic. Europe was very much Ted’s issue. He considered that his greatest achievement was to take Britain into the EEC and, now that he had lost the leadership, it was only natural that he would engage even more passion in the cause. As had become evident during the leadership campaign, there was some suspicion that I was less enthusiastic. Compared with Ted, perhaps, that was true. But I did genuinely believe that it would be foolish to leave the Community; I thought it provided an economic bond with other Western European countries, which was of strategic significance; and above all I welcomed the larger opportunities for trade which membership gave. I did not, however, see the European issue as a touchstone for everything else. Although I thought it best for Britain to stay inside the Community and make the best we could of it, I could equally well understand others who, on balance, took a contrary view. It did not seem to me that high-flown rhetoric about Britain’s European destiny, let alone European identity, was really to the point, though I had on occasion to employ a little on public platforms. For all these reasons, I was more than happy for Ted to take the leading public role on our side in the referendum campaign and for Willie to be the Conservative Vice-President of ‘Britain in Europe’ — the ‘Yes’ campaign organization which was set up in cooperation with pro-European Labour MPs and the Liberals, and of which Con O’Neill and later Roy Jenkins was President.
This arrangement had two advantages and two disadvantages. The advantages were that, though I would make some high-profile public appearances at the beginning and end of the campaign, I would have time for other things; and secondly, that the most committed Europeans of the Party would be able to throw all their energies into the front line. The two disadvantages, which perhaps I should have foreseen, were that Ted’s appetite for a return to power would be whetted, and that the forces inside and outside the Conservative Party which were determined to get rid of me would seek to use the all-party coalition campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote as the nucleus of a movement for a coalition of the ‘centre’.
I also faced a
further unexpected intellectual difficulty. The position I inherited from Ted was that of outright opposition to the whole idea of a referendum on the grounds that it was an unconstitutional and un-British practice. There was no time to change this even if I had wanted to; only a fortnight after my accession to the leadership, the Government published its Referendum White Paper. It was, moreover, a rich source of party political advantage to attack the referendum as a constitutional monstrosity devised simply to keep the Labour Cabinet together. I was, however, uneasy. First, there was the obvious practical point that if, whatever protests the Conservative Opposition made, we were to have a referendum anyway, we would soon have to take it seriously — and be seen to do so — if we wanted to secure the right result. Secondly, and only vaguely as yet, I thought that it might be necessary at some time in the future to call for a referendum when a single issue divided the nation but not the parties, making a general election an inappropriate instrument for settling it. Similarly, a Conservative Opposition might seek one if a far-left government, supported by militant trade unions, sought to challenge fundamental freedoms under the cloak of constitutional convention.
I decided to read up all there was on the subject. The idea of a referendum had quite a long pedigree in British politics. From the 1890s to the 1930s it had variously been advanced — sometimes by Conservative Leaders — in connection with Irish Home Rule, the powers of the House of Lords, and the imposition of food tariffs. In 1945 Churchill had mooted the possibility of a referendum on extending the life of Parliament until Japan was defeated. In none of these cases had a referendum in fact been held. But it was clearly wrong to treat the case for it anything other than seriously. I was particularly taken with the assertion in the revised eighth edition of Dicey’s The Law of the Constitution that: ‘The referendum is the people’s veto; the nation is sovereign and may well decree that the constitution shall not be changed without the direct sanction of the nation.’