an out-of-touch aristocrat, a throwback to the worst sort of reactionary Toryism. Inverted snobbery was always to my mind even more distasteful than the straightforward self-important kind. By 1964 British society had entered a sick phase of liberal conformism passing as individual self-expression. Only progressive ideas and people were worthy of respect by an increasingly self-conscious and self-confident media class. And how they laughed when Alec said self-deprecatingly that he used matchsticks to work out economic concepts. What a contrast with the economic models with which the technically brilliant mind of Harold Wilson was familiar. No one stopped to question whether the weaknesses of the British economy were fundamentally simple and only superficially complex. In fact, if politicians had been compelled to use more honest language and simple illustrations to ensure that people understood their policies, we might well have avoided Britain’s slither into relative decline.
For all that — in spite of the media criticism, in spite of the chaotic end of the Macmillan Government, in spite of the correct but appallingly timed abolition of Retail Price Maintenance which so offended small-business support for the Conservatives — we very nearly won the 1964 general election. This recovery was not because of any economic improvement, for inflation worsened and the balance of payments deficit yawned. Nor was it because of our 1964 manifesto, with its heavy emphasis on corporatism as the way out of the country’s economic problems — territory on which the socialists were bound to be more convincing. In part it was because the closer one looked at the Labour Party’s programme and its Leader, the less substantial they seemed. But mainly the credit for our political recovery should go to Alec. It is ironic that he had already been cast in the role of scapegoat for the defeat many thought inevitable.
There had been some press speculation that I might not hold Finchley. The Liberals, never reticent in talking up their chances, began predicting another Orpington. They had secured a tight grip on the old Finchley council, though in May 1964 they had done rather less well in the elections for the new Barnet borough council. The Golf Club scandal kept rumbling on. The Liberals’ new, energetic candidate, John Pardoe, campaigned principally on local issues while I mainly stuck to national ones — above all, how to secure prosperity without inflation. The Party asked me to speak in a number of constituencies in and around London. I answered attacks on the Government’s record on pensions and benefits at a noisy, hostile meeting of women at Bethnal Green. I wrote in an article in the
But it was understood by Conservative Central Office that most of my effort should go into Finchley. It was my usual schedule of campaigning — daily canvassing, answering letters and a full programme of visits and public meetings, at which it seemed to me that not only did the numbers grow but also my support. I am always anxious on election day; but in 1964 my anxieties were, in spite of the predictions of my defeat at the start of the campaign, much greater for the Party nationally than for me in Finchley.
The results bore this out. I found myself with a majority over John Pardoe of almost 9,000. But I had seen the last of the Ministry at John Adam Street, for Labour had secured an overall majority of four seats. Thirteen years of Conservative Government were over and a period of fundamental rethinking of Conservative philosophy was about to begin — alas, not for the last time.
CHAPTER V
A World of Shadows
CHANGING THE PIANIST
The Conservative Party has never been slow to shoot the pianist as a substitute for changing its tune. So it proved in the wake of our narrow 1964 election defeat. Anyone seriously thinking about the way forward for Conservatism would have started by examining whether the established tendency to fight on socialist ground with corporatist weapons had not something to do with the Party’s predicament. Then and only then — after a more or less inevitable second election defeat, for there was a general sense in the country that Labour needed a larger working majority if it were to carry out its programme — would have been the time to consider a leadership change. I had hoped and indeed naively expected that the Party would soldier on under Alec Douglas-Home. I later heard that the supporters of Ted Heath and others anxious to oust Alec had been busy behind the scenes; but I never ventured into the Smoking Room and so I was unaware of these mysterious cabals until it was too late. I was stunned and upset when Alec told the 1922 Committee that he intended to stand down to make way for someone else; I was all the more distressed by his evident unhappiness. I kept on saying to people, ‘Why didn’t he let his supporters know? We might have been able to help.’
Reggie Maudling and Ted Heath were generally accepted as the only two figures in serious contention for the leadership, which for the first time would be decided by a ballot of MPs. Iain Macleod was considered too left wing and by many, in Lord Salisbury’s jibe, as ‘too clever by half’. Enoch Powell, who did indeed put his name forward, had no large following at this time. Of the two serious contenders, Reggie Maudling was thought to have the better chance. Although his performance as Chancellor of the Exchequer had incurred serious and in some ways justified criticism, there was no doubting Reggie’s experience, brilliant intellect and command of the House. His main weakness, which grew more evident in later years, was a certain laziness — something which is a frequent temptation to those who know that they are naturally and effortlessly cleverer than those around them.
Ted had a very different character. He too had a very well organized mind. He was methodical, forceful and, at least on the one question which mattered to him above all others — Europe — a man of unyielding determination. As Shadow Chancellor he had the opportunity to demonstrate his capabilities in attacking the 1965 Finance Bill, which in those days was taken on the floor of the House. Ted was regarded as being somewhat to the right of Reggie, but they were both essentially centrists in Party terms. Something could be made of the different approaches they took to Europe, with Reggie regarding EFTA more favourably and Ted convinced that membership of the EEC was essential. But their attitudes to specific policies hardly affected the question of which to support.
I did not start with any particularly strong views on the matter. I knew both of them — Reggie Maudling as a neighbouring MP for Barnet and Ted Heath over a longer period when we were candidates for Kent constituencies. At this time I knew Reggie better. I liked his combination of laid-back charm and acute intellect. My acquaintanceship with Ted, though there was none of that bitter hostility which would develop in later years, had never risked developing into friendship. Although we came from not dissimilar backgrounds, neither of us having enjoyed the educational and social advantages of the traditional Tory politician, we were totally different sorts of people. Ted, of course, had fought with distinction in the war while I was a student at Somerville. He had been part of that generation which had been ineradicably affected by the rise of Nazism and fascism and the question of appeasement in the 1930s. So, of course, was I; but rather differently. Ted, to my mind, had swallowed a good deal of the fashionable interpretation of what had gone wrong in the world between the wars. For him, I imagine, as for many others who were to become passionate advocates of all things European, the evil genius of those times was nationalism. Consequently, Britain now had a duty to help create a Europe-wide structure which would supplant the nation state, provide an alternative focus for loyalties and so prevent war. For me, such grandiose visions had little appeal. I saw the principal cause of the conflict as being the appeasement of dictators — something which Ted himself had courageously opposed at Oxford — and I saw the principal victor of the conflict, whose health was itself the best guarantee of peace, as being the spirit and unity of the English-speaking world. Ted’s character seemed to me in many ways admirable. But he was not charming — nor, to be fair, did he set out to be. He was probably more at ease talking to men than women. But it was not just women who found him difficult to get on with. I felt that though I had known him for years, there was a sense in which I did not know him at all. Perhaps I never would. I was not conscious at this time of any hostility, simply of a lack of human warmth. I did not either then or later regard amiability as an indispensable or even particularly important attribute of leadership. Yet, all things considered, I thought that I would vote for Reggie Maudling.
