The Path to Power

feel, perhaps only in some vague way, that it is ‘time for a change’. Later in the autumn of 1962 the Government ran into squalls of a different kind. The Vassall spy case, the flight of Philby to the Soviet Union, confirming suspicions that he had been a KGB double-agent since the 1930s, and in the summer of 1963 the Profumo scandal — all served to enmesh the Government in rumours of sleaze and incompetence. These might have been shrugged off by a government in robust health. But the significance attached to these embarrassments was the greater because of the general malaise.

Europe was one of the main reasons for that malaise. In October 1961 Ted Heath had been entrusted by Harold Macmillan with the difficult negotiations for British membership of the European Economic Community. Not least because of Ted’s tenacity and dedication, most of the problems, such as what to do about Britain’s agriculture and about trade links with the Commonwealth, seemed eminently soluble. Then in January 1963 General de Gaulle vetoed our entry. No great popular passions about Europe were aroused at this time in Britain. There was a general sense, which I shared, that in the past we had underrated the potential advantage to Britain of access to the Common Market, that neither the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) nor our links with the Common wealth and the United States offered us the trading future we needed, and that the time was right for us to join the EEC. I was an active member of the European Union of Women — an organization founded in Austria in 1953 to promote European integration — and sat on its ‘Judicial Panel’ which debated issues relating to law and the family. But I saw the EEC as essentially a trading framework — a Common Market — and neither shared nor took very seriously the idealistic rhetoric with which ‘Europe’ was already being dressed in some quarters. In fact, it is now clear to me that General de Gaulle was much more perceptive than we were at this time when, to our great chagrin and near universal condemnation, he noted:

England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones… In short, the nature, the structure, the very situation that are England’s differ profoundly from those of the Continentals…

But he also said:

If the Brussels negotiations were shortly not to succeed, nothing would prevent the conclusion between the Common Market and Great Britain of an accord of association designed to safeguard exchanges, and nothing would prevent close relations between England and France from being maintained, nor the pursuit and development of their direct cooperation in all kinds of fields…

It is evident that if this is what de Gaulle was indeed offering, it would have been a better reflection of British interests than the terms of British membership that were eventually agreed a decade later. We may have missed the best European bus that ever came along. At the time, however, so much political capital had been invested by Harold Macmillan in the European venture that its undignified collapse deprived our foreign policy of its main current objective and contributed to the impression that the Government had lost its sense of direction.

The Labour Party had suffered a tragedy when Hugh Gaitskell died young in January 1963. Harold Wilson was elected as Leader. Though lacking the respect which Gaitskell had won, Wilson was in himself a new and deadly threat to the Government. He was a formidable parliamentary debater with a rapier wit. He knew how to flatter the press to excellent effect. He could coin the kind of ambiguous phrase to keep Labour united (e.g. ‘planned growth of incomes’ rather than ‘incomes policy’), and he could get under Harold Macmillan’s skin in a way Hugh Gaitskell never could. While Gaitskell was more of a statesman than Wilson, Wilson was an infinitely more accomplished politician.

As a result of all these factors, the Conservatives’ standing in the polls fell alarmingly as the dismal course of 1963 unfolded. In July Labour were some 20 per cent ahead. In early October at the Labour Party Conference Harold Wilson’s brilliant but shallow speech about the ‘white heat’ of scientific revolution caught the imagination of the country, or at least of the commentators. And then just a few days later — a bombshell — a resignation statement from Harold Macmillan’s hospital bed was read out by Alec Douglas-Home to the Party Conference at Blackpool, which was immediately transformed into a kind of gladiatorial combat by the leadership candidates.

This made Blackpool the most exciting Tory Conference anyone has ever witnessed. There was an atmosphere of ‘buzz, buzz, buzz’ as the contenders — at first Rab Butler and Quintin Hogg — and their supporters manoeuvred for advantage. As a junior minister, I was very much on the outside of even the outer ring of the magic circle. But I felt that the victory was Rab’s for the taking. He was a statesman of vast experience and some vision who had missed the leadership by a whisker six years before. Quintin Hogg, or as he still was and later became Lord Hailsham, had more flair and great powers of oratory, but also a reputation at that time for erratic judgement. In brief, Rab failed to grasp the opportunity which was there, making a pedestrian speech at the final rally; while Quintin grabbed and ran off with an opportunity that had never existed in the first place. So when the politicians entrained for London that Saturday, the contest was still undecided.

But the real battle for the Conservative leadership — if a military metaphor can be applied to the subtle processes by which Tory leaders at that time ‘emerged’ — was taking place elsewhere. The subtlest process of all was the way in which Harold Macmillan let it be known that he favoured Hogg over Butler, thus stopping any bandwagon for the latter and preparing the ground for the ‘emergence’ of Alec Douglas-Home. Iain Macleod was to write devastatingly in the Spectator about the way in which the magic circle of the Party ignored Butler and at Macmillan’s behest engineered this. I admired Iain Macleod, as I did Enoch Powell, both of whom subsequently refused to serve in the new Prime Minister’s Cabinet. But I did not agree with their criticisms either of the process or of the choice. I thought at the time there was something to be said for avoiding the public divisions in the Party which open elections would necessitate. I am not in general a believer in changing customs and conventions simply because rationalizing critics demand it. The way in which a Party Leader is chosen seemed to me of much less importance than whether the right person came out on top — and I thought that the right person had come out on top.

The Monday following the Conference I received a phone call from the Whips’ Office to gauge my views on the leadership. I first told them that I would support Rab over Quintin, because he was simply the more qualified of the two. I was then asked my view of Alec. This opened up a possibility I had not envisaged. ‘Is it constitutionally possible?’ I asked. Assured that it was, I did not hesitate. I replied: ‘Then I am strongly in favour of Alec.’

My only reservation, which I expressed at the time, was that there was something dubious about assuming the result of an election — Alec would have to disclaim his peerage and fight a by-election — when asking the monarch to choose a Prime Minister. But I also said that I left that question for others better qualified to consider. In retrospect, though, I would have to add one other qualification. Events in fact showed that the magic circle no longer provided the legitimacy for the men who emerged. It was a handicap to Alec as Prime Minister. By the time a new system was announced I too had come to see the need for it.

My admiration for Alec Douglas-Home was not the result of a recent conversion. When he became Foreign Secretary in June i960 I had expressed doubts to Bettie Harvie-Anderson (MP for Renfrewshire East). I thought that there surely ought to be a suitable candidate for the post among the ministers in the Commons. Moreover, Anthony Eden had, I recalled, ostensibly refused to give the Foreign Secretaryship to Lord Salisbury on these grounds. But Betty told me that Alec was quite outstanding and deserved the job. So I decided to read the new Foreign Secretary’s first speech in Hansard. It was a masterly survey of East-West relations, which emphasized the need for deterrence as well as negotiation with the Soviets and stressed the importance of our relationship with the United States. Alec now and later managed, most unusually, to combine skill in diplomacy with clarity of vision. He exhibited none of those tendencies, so characteristic of those who aspire to be Foreign Secretary, towards regarding the processes of negotiation as an end in themselves. Yet he had the charm, polish and eye for detail of the perfect negotiator.

Moreover, Alec Douglas-Home was a manifestly good man — and goodness is not to be underrated as a qualification for those considered for powerful positions. He was also in the best possible way ‘classless’. You always felt that he treated you not as a category but as a person. And he actually listened — as I found when I took up with him the vexed question of the widowed mothers’ allowance.

But the press were cruelly, ruthlessly and almost unanimously against him. He was easy to caricature as