He expected a ‘knife edge’ outcome and so it was. The results gave Labour 301 seats and Conservatives 297. The Liberals won fourteen, a poor return for their six million votes. Ulster Unionist parties returned eleven MPs and there were seven Scottish Nationalists. There was ‘no overall majority for anyone. The worst possible result.’22 Neave had got home comfortably with a slightly improved majority of 13,743. However, his share of the vote was down – both the big-party candidates had lost votes to the Liberal.
Heath did not quit No. 10 without a fight. Over the weekend of 1–3 March, the cabinet discussed offering the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, a junior partnership in a coalition of moderates, in return for an undertaking to look at the Liberals’ perennial demand for proportional representation. Only two voices were raised in dissent – the Social Services Secretary, Keith Joseph, and Margaret Thatcher. A large part of the Liberal vote came from disaffected Tories, she claimed. They should not ‘sell [the] constitution for a mess of pottage [but] keep our integrity’.23
Neave agreed. ‘No future in the Liberals, who cannot be trusted,’ he wrote in his diary when he heard on Saturday that Thorpe had gone to Downing Street. ‘I thought from the start that E. Heath would have been better to resign.’24 The bargaining soon collapsed. At 6.25 on Monday 4 March, Heath went to Buckingham Palace and offered his resignation to the Queen. She now asked Harold Wilson to form an administration – his third.
Heath’s manner of leaving office did nothing to enhance his standing with the doubters. The chances were, though, that Wilson’s government would be unable to survive for long and that another election was only months away. The thought of a disruptive leadership contest, when there was no obvious replacement in sight, persuaded many it was better to leave Heath where he was. But positive forces were also in play. Even after an ill-judged and poorly fought election, he still inspired confidence and loyalty, both in his front-bench camarilla and among Tory officials outside parliament. The ticking bomb had been handed to Labour. There was a good chance it would soon go off, leaving Ted and the Tories to resume power in what would surely be improved circumstances.
Heath’s problem lay with the backbenchers, and already a cohort was forming to hasten his early departure. Leading the charge was Airey’s old wartime comrade Hugh Fraser, who invited him to a conspiratorial dinner at his house in Campden Hill Square, Holland Park. Diana urged caution, counselling him to be ‘more reticent’ on the subject of the leader and worrying that there would be ‘wild talk’ at supper.25 Airey countered that ‘I am the one who keeps Hugh in check.’ In fact, the table talk chez Fraser was sober and restrained. Neave noted with a touch of regret the absence of his host’s wife, the writer Antonia (‘much too grand for politicians … beautiful and arrogant like Lady Glencora Palliser’). Present were Edward du Cann, chairman of the 1922 Committee, Nicholas Ridley and Philip Goodhart. They decided that ‘Heath would not go’ and expected an election in the summer which ‘may be impossible to save’.26 Some sort of informal alliance seems to have been created, for they decided to ‘invite Willie Whitelaw next time to our “club”, we none of us having anything to lose by being outspoken.’
They were, for the time being at least, political allies and an eclectic bunch. Du Cann, saturnine and evasive, was a man of the moment, a Rolls-Royce-driving City slicker whose business affairs often carried a whiff of dodginess. Fraser was as straight as a die, but disgruntled after a political career that had prospered under Macmillan and Douglas-Home, but hit the buffers with the advent of Heath, and he belonged, it seemed, to the past. Ridley was an aristocratic Old Etonian free-marketeer, a chain smoker with a caustic tongue who did not mind making enemies, and at the time (though he changed his opinion radically later) pro-European. Goodhart came from a wealthy American banking family, brimmed with ideas and was a staunch anti-Communist. As Neave’s remark suggested, there was little chance of patronage or preferment to lure them into line and they could afford to play the maverick.
Neave was now in a good place from which to exercise some influence in the leadership drama. A few days before – to his delight and surprise – he had been elected to the eighteen-member Executive of the 1922 Committee, which brought together all Tory backbenchers and acted as a forum in which they could make their views known to the party leadership. His voice in party affairs was henceforth amplified, and his new standing is reflected in the tone of his diaries. The references to jacking it all in dwindle, the mood lightens and there is a growing sense that he is enjoying a time in which things are at last going his way.
As spring turned to summer, the nascent conspiracy continued to coalesce. On 13 June, the five dined together with others at the home of Sir David Renton QC, a distinguished lawyer-politician. Continued dissatisfaction with Heath was such that they agreed ‘we might have to take action if things blew up. Edward [du Cann] would have to tell Heath that the party would not support him. People do not think we have yet reached this point but I think we soon shall. The difficulty is Heath will fight.’27
That meant it would need another crisis before the challenge could be made. In the meantime, Neave watched his leader closely, noting his actions and moods dispassionately, shrewdly and, it must be said, fairly. Someone as scrupulously polite as Neave could never quite forgive Ted his chronic bad manners. Yet he did not write him off and there is no expression of real dislike, let alone hatred, even when he recorded his conviction – undoubtedly correct – that he could expect no honours while Heath was in charge.28 After seeing him in the House on Budget day, he wrote, ‘He looks red, much fatter and depressed. I feel sorry for him.’29 There were flashes of insight into this most complex among his contemporaries. He was an autocrat but ‘seems as afraid of everyone as they are of him’.30 There was still hope for him if he could only learn to communicate with the back benches and be ‘made to understand that he will lose another election if he does not lose his curt attitude. But can he do it?’
The answer, it became clear, was no. In May, the Neaves threw a party at Westminster Gardens for some of the new intake of Tory MPs. When Airey mentioned it to Kenneth Baker, Heath’s PPS, he asked him whether his boss had been invited. Caught on the hop, Neave replied they were planning another party after Whitsun to which Ted would of course be asked.31 Diana saw the event as an opportunity to further her quiet campaign to put more wind in Airey’s gently filling sails. There was no harm in seeking a fair breeze, from no matter what direction. ‘Plans being made for invitations for 2 July,’ he wrote. ‘Diana has ambitions to make us popular with the Establishment!’32
On the previous day, the pair had set off to Oddbins and bought eighteen bottles of champagne for the thirty-eight acceptees. As well as the new members and their wives (there was only one woman in the intake, Lynda Chalker, and she seems not to have been present), there was a sprinkling of party brass, including the former Solicitor General Geoffrey Howe and his wife Elspeth, and the Deputy Chief Whip, Bernard Weatherill, usually referred to as ‘Jack’. Marigold and her husband Richard, Patrick and Joy Robilliard were drafted in to serve the drinks. Heath turned up at the flat at 7 p.m., along with a crush of other guests. Airey wrote that he was ‘very frosty for the first 10 minutes. I had a job to get him to talk to anyone. I started with George Gardiner and wife, then Patrick Mayhew and others … the party went quite well and they drank 16 botts of champagne … Heath seems rather pathetic but cheered up after the champagne.’33
Diana also recorded the event in a very rare journal entry. She was not feeling well but had arranged the flowers, cut from the garden at Ashbury, and bought the food herself. ‘Ted … was a bit sticky to start with,’ she wrote. ‘However, he took Marigold’s glass of champagne which she had just got for herself and cheered up after several more. Airey and I worked hard introducing all the members’ wives and in some cases the members who had never spoken to him before. It is certainly not his métier to do this sort of thing, but it was pretty important to him as he needs their s
upport. I cannot make up my mind whether he realises this.’34
Airey and Diana were used to Heath’s ways. They thought he had done fairly well by his standards. Not so Marigold. Her recollection was that he ‘held out his champagne glass … to any passing bottle … When we got to him there was never a word. He never said anything. He was extraordinarily rude [and] he was even ruder to the poor young MPs who he was there to meet up with.’35
The party produced a strange example of Ted’s usually carefully concealed sense of humour. Among the guests was Winston Churchill, grandson of the great man. Heath asked him what he was doing at the party. Churchill replied with the same question and got the puzzling response ‘I am the chief fornicator.’ Neave repeated the exchange to Nigel Fisher, his host at a lunch party the following day. ‘That’s palpably untrue,’ he said to laughter.36 After the party, a bouquet arrived for Diana signed ‘Love from the Führer’. Airey remarked to Kenneth Baker that it seemed that Heath did in fact have a sense of humour. It soon emerged that the flowers were actually sent by Richard Webb, Marigold’s husband. Two weeks later Heath had still not bothered to thank Diana.37
Labour had solved the miners’ dispute by the simple means of paying them what they asked. It was clear, though, that sooner or later Wilson would have to go to the country again to seek a working majority. A long hiatus did not mean security for Heath. Neave wrote on 25 July that the leader’s position ‘is steadily deteriorating’. Endless speculation buzzed about a successor, and to his eyes ‘it seems that Margaret Thatcher has a chance.’ Neave saw her main rival as Keith Joseph, increasingly her ideological soulmate, whose prospects were damaged by his penchant for ill-timed and needlessly outspoken speeches. There were several other possibles. The names of Ian Gilmour, Willie Whitelaw and even the colourless former Home Secretary Robert Carr were all floated around dinner tables that summer.
In the uncertain atmosphere, Neave was anxious that they should be prepared for all eventualities, urging du Cann to convene the 1922 Executive during the summer recess if necessary. ‘If there were any question of the leadership, we should be ready to act,’ he wrote. ‘Many would be glad to do anything to drop Heath. It is nonetheless important not to damage our election chances. If there is no election in the autumn, we must take things into our own hands.’38
But there was a general election. On 17 September, Wilson announced that he was going to the country on 10 October. Once again the Neaves trekked back and forth across the constituency addressing any gathering, no matter how small, in village halls, schools and shopping centres. ‘Plenty of apathy, it seems,’ he wrote after a day which finished with him addressing a handful of the curious from the war memorial in the village of Brightwell.39
It was hardly surprising. Everyone was sick of elections, the leaders included. It was the fourth time Wilson and Heath had faced each other in nine years. Labour’s main message was that the ‘social contract’ between government and unions was working, while the Conservatives offered only more confrontation. Heath derided the arrangement as a ‘political protection racket’. The Conservative manifesto instead offered a high-minded but vague-sounding commitment to national unity. They would not govern in a ‘narrow partisan spirit’ but reach out to the ‘leaders of other parties, and with the leaders of the great interests in the nation … to join with us in overcoming Britain’s difficulties.’40 Neave had thought from the outset that ‘our main problem will be the unpopularity (esp. with Conservatives) of our leader.’41 But as the campaign progressed, Heath found new reserves of energy and seemed unusually cheerful and relaxed.
When the results came in, he had done unexpectedly well. The Tory share of the vote was within 4 per cent of Labour’s, but Wilson was home with a majority of three. It was tiny, but in the circumstances Neave felt that ‘it surely means that Labour is in power for three or four years.’42 Ted had fought four elections and lost three of them. No one except himself could justify his unchallenged continuance as party leader.
* Edward du Cann (1924–2017), educated Colet Court, Woodbridge School and St John’s College, Oxford; Conservative MP for Taunton, 1956–87; Chairman of the Conservative Party, 1965–67; Chairman of the 1922 Committee, 1972–84; knighted, 1985.
† Helene Middleweek (1949–), educated Wolverhampton Girls’ High School and Newnham College, Cambridge; Labour MP for Welwyn and Hatfield, 1974–79; created Baroness Hayman, 1996; Lord Speaker of the House of Lords, 2006–11.
11
The Arithmetic of Victory
On Saturday 12 October 1974, two days after the defeat, Neave rang around some of his 1922 Executive colleagues to discuss the next move. They agreed that the main reason they had lost was ‘E. Heath’s unpopularity’. The eighteen-member Executive was due to meet two days later, on Monday 14 October. ‘We felt [it] would probably be unanimous that he should go as soon as possible.’ He repeated this view to a BBC journalist who rang, saying that ‘Heath should announce his resignation,’ but cautioning that ‘time should elapse before the election of a leader took place.’ Neave was only saying what even Heath’s closest friends were advising him. On Sunday, he called Sara Morrison, the spirited vice-chair of the party and the nearest thing Ted had to a female friend and confidante, who told him ‘she had tried to get Heath to resign on Friday afternoon [i.e. the day the results were announced] and to offer to stand down during the [leadership] election.’1 He added, ‘I doubt if she has such influence with him but who has?’
A further complication was that ‘there are certainly people pressing him to stay but the majority are against this and it will seriously split the party if he did.’ The Sunday papers frothed with speculation about replacements and Neave was ‘rather annoyed at the way that the Press and Television are trying to elect our leader for us’. He noted that among the newspaper comment there was ‘some possibility of an official bandwagon for Willie Whitelaw’. Back in June, after the first defeat of the year, he had mused about Heath standing down ‘in favour of Whitelaw’ but had since come to regard him as an implausible candidate.2 ‘There will be no support for this,’ he wrote. ‘Most think he could not cope at the Dispatch Box. He is far too bumbling.’
That left Keith Joseph as favourite, but his temperament was also suspect. Neave had been told by Jack Weatherill that he was ‘liable to nervous breakdowns’. In the same entry, Neave wrote, ‘It looks as though Margaret Thatcher will not stand this time. She thinks the country is not ready for a woman prime minister but I think they soon will be.’ Before the election, on BBC radio’s Any Questions?, she had claimed she did ‘not think the country is ready to have a woman leader,’ and would not be for ten years. On the day after it, she told the London Evening News, ‘You can cross my name off the list. I just don’t think I am right for it.’
It is highly unlikely that this was her sincere belief. But whether out of conviction that he was the best man for the job, or because she believed her chances were too slim, she now committed to backing Keith Joseph. Progress required surmounting the formidable obstacle of Heath’s determination to cling to office, which showed no signs of crumbling, despite the continued entreaties of several friends, among them Toby Aldington, with whom he spent the weekend.*
The press had got wind of the Monday-morning meeting of the 1922 Executive, scheduled at du Cann’s house in Lord North Street, and were camped outside when Neave turned up at 11.45. While expressing mild annoyance, he seems to have relished the attention. He was ‘photographed several times. A few reporters actually knew my name.’3 From now on, he would increasingly be identified with the defenestration process under way – and the enthronement that followed.
There was a high degree of unanimity at the meeting. They agreed that parliament was likely to last at least three years under a Labour, or possibly a national, government. ‘All thought Heath should go’, but with different views on when. Neave was for an early departure, ‘preferably after the debate on the Queen’s speech’, which was due in a fortnig
ht’s time. The only dissonant note was struck by du Cann, who ‘thought Heath should stay two years’. This surprising attitude, Neave speculated, was perhaps because du Cann had ‘thoughts of the job’.
Du Cann now had to relay the views of the Executive to Heath and the Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins, and tell them that a full meeting of the 1922 Committee would be held in eight days’ time. This, some thought, might prompt him to resign beforehand. Du Cann was due to report back the following day with Heath’s response. It was agreed that in order to give the press the slip, they would reconvene in secret in the boardroom of Keyser Ullmann (of which du Cann was chairman), in Milk Street in the City of London.
The gathering provided some light relief as a comic example of inept plotting, and those who attended it would be dubbed the ‘Milk Street Mafia’. The attendees arrived undetected and du Cann relayed Heath’s predictable reaction. As Neave reported it, he had ‘made no comment as he [du Cann] told him our opinion that he should resign!! We are being snubbed again.’4 Heath regarded du Cann not as the elected shop steward of Tory backbenchers, but as an enemy who was abusing his position to undermine the leader. The Executive in general he believed to be dominated by right-wing opponents. While the robust tendency was well represented, there were also a fair few from the liberal wing of the party: the likes of Nigel Fisher, an opponent of capital punishment, supporter of homosexual law reform and opponent of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act to restrict immigration.† Fisher joined Neave, Angus Maude‡ and Neil Marten§ in calling for a meeting of the full 1922 Committee the following week, to maintain the pressure on Heath. However, the majority of the Executive were against it and a date of 31 October was fixed. In the meantime, du Cann composed a letter on the Executive’s behalf telling Heath it was ‘in the best interest of the party that he should state his intention’.
The Man Who Was Saturday Page 23