Public Servant, Secret Agent

by Paul Routledge

  The Tories gave their full support to getting this legislation through, before turning to their own political crisis. The Home Committee finally reported in the week before Christmas 1974. It proposed radical reforms, beginning with a requirement that when in Opposition the party leader should be subject to re-election at the start of every parliamentary year. Potential challengers would need only two nominations. This was the answer to Heath’s critics who said the leadership was ‘a leasehold, not a freehold’. New methods of consulting the party in the country were also proposed, though the franchise would still be restricted to MPs. More significantly, Home proposed a three-ballot process. To win in the first ballot, a candidate would have to secure an absolute majority plus a 15 per cent margin of all those eligible to vote. This was a critical raising of the fence from the rules promulgated in 1965, which required only an absolute majority plus 15 per cent of those voting. Heath would not only have to secure 139 votes from the electorate of 278, he would have to garner forty-two votes more than his nearest rival. Senior Tories not involved in the reform committee immediately realised that the Home reform could cripple Heath in the first ballot. It signalled that a candidate could be denied victory by large-scale abstentions, and increased the odds on a second or third ballot. And if no one won in the first round, other candidates could enter the race in a ballot held a week later, a provision promptly dubbed the ‘Cowards’ Charter’, because it enabled a vacillating would-be leader to wait until Heath was mortally wounded before entering the fray. If the contest went to a third ballot, it would be decided by a single transferable vote. The new rules made it much harder for Heath to sustain his position and the Thatcher camp determined to exploit them to the hilt.

  In December Neave held a party for Thatcher in his flat in Westminster Gardens, inviting new MPs to meet her. He was not a natural schmoozer, but he could stage a discreet cocktail party as well as the next politician, if not better. Thatcher was still far from being the preferred candidate, but her readiness to take on Heath where others had wavered (including Willie Whitelaw, also approached by Neave at one stage) gradually began to impress back-benchers, particularly the ‘anybody but Ted’ brigade. It was a tense period in public life. On Sunday 22 December, the Provisionals returned to the attack, this time aimed at Heath’s home in Wilton Street. A bomb, thrown from a passing car, exploded on the first-floor balcony of a room where he often worked. It caused serious damage but Heath was not in the house. At the time of the outrage, he was driving home over Vauxhall Bridge after conducting a carol concert in Broadstairs. He did not allow the terrorist attack to prevent a planned visit to Ulster the next day, when he reaffirmed his belief that a majority of people in Northern Ireland wanted power-sharing.

  Margaret and Denis Thatcher spent that Christmas with William Deedes, ex-Tory minister and influential editor of the Daily Telegraph, sometimes known as the house journal of the Conservative Party, at his country home in Lamberhurst, Kent. Over the New Year, she wrote to Neave, inviting him and Diana to lunch at the family home in Flood Street, Chelsea. The lunch took place on 9 January and confirmed Neave’s role as campaign manager. Her initial choice, the well-meaning but ineffectual MP Fergus Montgomery, was about to embark on an extended tour of apartheid South Africa, and would miss the first ballot. Her future was in Neave’s hands. Five days later, Nigel Fisher told Neave that du Cann would definitely not be a candidate. Fisher also relinquished his role to Neave. The next day, 15 January, the ‘du Cann group’ held a meeting in Committee Room J in the Commons, chaired by Neave. He proposed that all twenty-five MPs present should turn themselves over to Thatcher en bloc. Fifteen immediately pledged themselves. Neave continued to entertain MPs over a glass of claret, often in the Westminster room of Robin Cooke, MP for Bristol West, when Thatcher would outline her general attitude to Tory policy. On Neave’s advice, she avoided sharp definition but encouraged MPs to speak up on issues where they thought Heath was taking the party in the wrong direction. She was studiously ambivalent on Europe, which garnered an appreciable measure of support from MPs who were either anti-EEC in principle or felt that the party leader was too much of a Euro-enthusiast. She played down her pro-hanging, anti-U-turn policies, sticking to the theme of a ‘listening leadership’. Neave’s strategy has been described as ‘a skilful ruse’ to present Thatcher as something she essentially was not, but it worked. MPs became more comfortable with the idea of voting for a woman who could oust Heath.

  The Home reforms were finally approved by the 1922 Committee on 16 January, and two days later Thatcher spoke in her Finchley constituency, explaining her decision to stand. The following day, Sunday 19 January, Neave, Shelton, Thatcher and Joseph met at Flood Street for the first of a series of weekly conferences. This ‘gang of four’ laid out the strategy. It would consist of a discreet but all-out assault on the parliamentary party. Every MP would be contacted and spoken to. There were no no-go areas. Neave’s key contribution was his psy-ops style. Basically, he lied about the support building up for Thatcher in order to panic hesitant MPs into backing her. He would ‘do the rounds’ of Westminster, relaying black propaganda that Margaret was doing well, but nowhere near well enough to guarantee that Heath would fall, and that a second ballot would come about. His own canvass returns demonstrated that this was not true, but the device worked. Heath’s biographer also speaks of ‘Neave’s role as the cunning master of undercover operations’.12

  Events played into Thatcher’s hands in her first week of campaigning. On 21 January, she addressed a lunch of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, and made an impressive showing with a set-piece speech on her political credo, followed up by questions and answers. Neave’s canvass showed her pulling ahead, with sixty-nine committed votes to forty-three for Heath. The next day, she shone in the Commons chamber. In a debate on the Finance Bill, Chancellor Denis Healey savaged Thatcher as ‘La Pasionaria of Privilege’, and sat down thinking he had demolished her. It was a neat thrust, comparing her to the Communist heroine of the Spanish Civil War, and it cheered the government benches. But, winding up for the Opposition, Thatcher cut the old bully to pieces. She had hoped to have said he had done himself less than justice. On the contrary, he had done himself ample justice. ‘Some Chancellors are micro-economic. Some Chancellors are fiscal. This one is just plain cheap.’ This contemptuous sally delighted her own side and dismayed the government benches. Few, if any, Tory grandees had been able to take Healey down a peg or two, yet she had achieved it. The brilliance of her performance swiftly reflected in Neave’s canvass returns. Thatcher was now leading by ninety-five to sixty-six. The following morning, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme reported that Thatcher was in the lead. This was the last thing Neave wanted. His strategy was based on underplaying her promises of support to bring over the waverers.

  However, a new contender emerged from the wings, or at any rate from the right wing: Hugh Fraser, MP for Stafford and Stone. Fraser, an aristocratic Scot, stood on a platform of ‘traditional Tory values’ and could have posed problems by taking right-wing votes from Thatcher. However, his candidature was seen as dotty rather than dangerous. Neave’s headcount showed he had the support of only nine MPs. When nominations for the first ballot closed on 30 January, Heath, Thatcher and Fraser were the only candidates. Polling day was set for 4 February.

  In a speech in Finchley on 31 January, Thatcher reaffirmed her political beliefs: concern for individual freedom; opposition to excessive state power; reward for the thrifty and hard-working, and the right to pass on those gains to their children; diversity of choice and defence of private property against the socialist state; and the right of a man to work without oppression by either employer or trade union boss. It was a litany to which Neave could say ‘amen’. He had propounded it from the hustings for a quarter of a century. They thought alike. His own view of her later found its way into a collection of tributes put together by Tricia Murray, barrister wife of the broadcaster Pete Murray. Neave rated Thatcher as the most g
ifted politician in the Conservative Party and perhaps the most gifted politician for twenty-five years. ‘She’s the first real idealist politician for a long time,’ he argued. ‘Macmillan might have been the last in the Conservative Party – there may have been others on the other side of the House but Margaret is a philosopher as well as a politician.’ He praised her approachability, compassion, patience, balance and her clear understanding of the opinions of men and women in the street. Thatcher was serious by nature and a great patriot, very concerned about the future of her country. But there was also a humorous side of her ‘and off duty she can be very amusing and has the ability to laugh at herself’. Asked to single out one predominant characteristic, he replied, ‘I would choose her great personal courage. It may be that she has many frightening experiences to come but the thing she will never lack is courage. That is her great quality. She is outspoken by nature and is essentially a fighter and nobody should be surprised if she tells the country a few home truths.’13 That was the leader he was confident of surreptitiously giving the country. As she left Westminster to speak in Finchley, Neave gave her the latest canvass: she had forged even further ahead, with 120 promised votes, against eighty-four for Heath and Fraser still stuck on nine.

  Heath was as good as finished but Neave and Shelton were not satisfied with crushing him in the first ballot. A second ballot would bring in other big-hitters – Willie Whitelaw, James Prior and Geoffrey Howe – who were initially backing Heath but ready to take advantage of the ‘Cowards’ Charter’ and declare themselves as rightful heirs. If she was to beat them, Thatcher had to establish an unassailable lead in the first ballot, so that the other heavyweights would look like challengers to her. Here, Heath’s campaign team came unwittingly to her aid. In conversations with the leader’s head-counters, a number of MPs had pledged themselves to support the leader while privately agreeing with Neave to support Thatcher. Their actions inflated the Heath camp’s figures of support, in turn leading to overconfidence and complacency. It was put about that Heath was well ahead and would win easily in the first ballot. This smugness had the unintended effect of persuading a considerable number of MPs who did not like Thatcher but who calculated that a vote for her would oust Heath and give them a chance to elect Whitelaw (or another Heathite figure) to vote for her. ‘In this way,’ observed John Campbell ‘Heath’s managers played into Neave’s hands.’14

  Neave began to step up his insidious campaign of disinformation, continuing to make his discreet rounds of the Commons with the seductive message that Thatcher was doing well, but not well enough to defeat Heath. Throughout the campaign, he never disclosed his figures, but he used those of the other side to support his case that conflicting canvass returns made it imperative for all anti-Heath votes to be channelled in support of Thatcher. Abstention would not suffice. This was far from the truth. Not only was she well ahead, but the new leadership rules put an extra premium on abstentions. Nonetheless, in the closing stages of the week, Heath staged a remarkable rally. Buoyed by the support of Lord Home, an immensely popular figure in the party, by a large majority in a write-in poll of Tory peers, by a Daily Express poll that gave him the backing of 70 per cent of Conservative voters and a strongly supportive canvass of the Conservative National Union, on the eve of the election Heath pulled back to level with Thatcher on 122 votes each, with Fraser still trailing with nine. A further twenty-three said they intended to abstain, or would not disclose their intentions. Neave and Shelton took stock and agreed not to tell Thatcher how finely things were balanced until the morning of the poll. Instead, Neave engaged in a last-minute exercise of black propaganda. He went on a final tour of the Commons, looking a worried man and telling MPs that Thatcher could be sure of only seventy votes. This blatant fib was designed to jolt the irresolute into action. The true figure was 120 and he whispered to one Labour MP, ‘I’d put your money on the filly, Tam, if I were you.’ It was a high-risk strategy, as his confidant Patrick Cosgrave later recalled. ‘Since pessimism is the most dangerous mood of all to project in a political struggle, this was Neave’s most daring move so far,’ he said. ‘It was also his most successful.’15 John Campbell further calculated: ‘Neave’s stratagem may have conned as many as forty Tory MPs into voting for a result they did not want.’16 Critically, a group of around thirty centre-left MPs led by Sir John Rodgers and Sir Paul Bryan, who had intended to abstain, swung behind Thatcher at the eleventh hour so that Heath would not get the extra 15 per cent margin to stay in power. Another likely victim of Neave’s ploy was no other than Michael Heseltine. Norman Tebbit has asserted that he and John Nott persuaded Heseltine to vote for Thatcher in order to boost the chances of his preferred candidate, Willie Whitelaw, in a second ballot. Heseltine, who became Thatcher’s bitterest enemy, has always refused to admit for whom he voted, a signal in itself that he did not support Heath.

  With the exception of the Daily Mail, the newspapers fell for Neave’s deception. As MPs went to vote on the morning of 4 February, the London Evening Standard headline read: ‘Ted Forges Ahead.’ Most of the press, recorded Campbell, ‘misled both by the overconfidence of the Heath camp on the one hand and Airey Neave’s deliberate underplaying of the challenger’s support on the other, still expected him to win.’17 Even on the most pessimistic of assessments, Thatcher was in with a chance. Her adroit performance and Neave’s machinations had ensured that Heath would be denied victory in the first round. Polling took place in Committee Room 14 at the Commons. Peter Walker had erroneously advised Heath that he would secure between 138 and 144 votes. One hundred and thirty-nine would be enough. Nicholas Fairbairn, the flamboyant MP for Kinross and West Perthshire, was the first to vote, emerging to trumpet his support for Thatcher. As the 3.30 p.m. deadline for voting neared, Thatcher left the committee stage debate on the Finance Bill and went to Neave’s room to await the outcome. Shelton attended the count but his face gave nothing away as he appeared in the noisy committee room corridor where MPs were waiting for the result. He told Neave the figures: Thatcher 130. Heath 119. Fraser 16. There were six abstentions and five spoilt papers. Neave went to his room and told her (as Thatcher herself later recollected, ‘softly, but with a twinkle in his eye’: ‘It’s good news. You’re ahead in the poll. There will be a second ballot. You got 130 votes.’ She was overjoyed. It was time for the champagne party, followed by a council of war in Neave’s flat that evening. The defeated leader, closeted with his campaign managers and Lord Aldington, a close friend, prepared a resignation statement. ‘So, we got it all wrong,’ said Heath. Robert Carr, the former Employment Secretary with no ambitions to lead his party, took over as a caretaker, and the second ballot was fixed for 11 February.

  Quite so, as the commentators observed. It was not over yet, however. Willie Whitelaw, a more acceptable Heathite figure, now entered the lists, as did Geoffrey Howe, the urbane former Solicitor General and Prices and Incomes Secretary in Heath’s government, James Prior and John Peyton, ex-Transport Minister and Shadow Leader of the House. Neave’s mixed bag of supporters, greatly enlarged by Thatcher’s remarkable achievement, was prey to fresh fears: Whitelaw was hugely respected in the party and could genuinely offer himself as the unifying candidate, while Howe’s right-wing views on economic affairs might take votes from Thatcher’s natural constituency. Her support could haemorrhage away to both of them. Prior and Peyton were not regarded as a serious threat: in Prior’s case, not even by the candidate himself. Neave calculated that as many as forty MPs had voted for Thatcher solely to ensure a second round in which they would switch to a more acceptable contender. Yet his initial canvass was encouraging. Thatcher had ninety-nine votes, against forty-one for Whitelaw with the others trailing far behind. By 6 February, the closing date for nominations, her headcount had gone up by seven, and Whitelaw’s by five. The trend was good. Thatcher was now ‘the man to beat’. Thanks in substantial measure to Neave’s scheming in the first round, she was transformed from stalking horse to front-runner.


  One issue worried Neave: Europe. Thatcher was struggling to wax even lukewarm about the EEC, British membership of which was the subject of a national referendum called by Harold Wilson. It was big news, and Neave, a pro-European himself, encouraged her to make a clear statement of policy that would reassure like-minded MPs who had backed Heath in the first ballot. She did so, paying tribute to Heath’s pioneering sagacity in taking the UK into the EEC, and promising to pick up the torch he had laid down. ‘The commitment to European partnership is one which I fully share,’ she maintained. Neave further encouraged her to behave as if she was the leader in waiting, and Thatcher’s rousing performance at the weekend conference of the Young Conservatives won her headlines, while Whitelaw made a fool of himself by putting on a pinafore and washing dishes for the photographers. The distinction was clear. Maggie was ‘the real man’. In the second round, Neave’s dirty tricks proved unnecessary. By the eve of poll, his canvass now showed Thatcher on 137 – only two short of outright victory – and Whitelaw on seventy-eight. Howe had nineteen, Prior eleven and Peyton nine. Nine had not made up their minds, but could opt for her. Thirteen others would not disclose their intentions. It was all over bar the tears, of which there were many. On polling day, Thatcher again broke off from her work on the Finance Bill to await the result in Neave’s room. He came in shortly after four o’clock to tell her: ‘It’s all right. You are now Leader of the Opposition.’ His arithmetic had again been uncannily accurate. Thatcher took 146 votes, to Whitelaw’s seventy-nine. Howe and Prior both secured seventeen votes, while Peyton got eleven. Two MPs either abstained or spoilt their papers. It was a remarkable achievement, substantially traceable to Airey Neave’s skill, determination and black arts. The new leader staged a press conference in the Grand Committee Room of historic Westminster Hall. ‘To me it is like a dream that the next name in the lists after Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Edward Heath is Margaret Thatcher. Each has brought his own style of leadership and stamp of greatness to his task. I shall take on the work with humility and dedication.’