the Lord Chancellor in waiting. Francis Pym stayed on at Agriculture, though a few months later he had to give this up on health grounds. My old friend Patrick Jenkin I kept at Energy. Norman St John-Stevas, whom I had got to know from my days at the Department of Education and who was both a lively wit and one of my few open supporters on the second ballot of the leadership election, shadowed Education. Norman Fowler, a former journalist and a Member for the politically crucial West Midlands, came in as Shadow Social Services Secretary. I had no clear view about where precisely any of these stood in relation to the balance of opinion between left and right of the Party. But in appointing Tim Raison as Shadow Environment Secretary I knew that I was promoting someone associated with the left of centre, but who was tough-minded, thoughtful and knowledgeable about social policy in general. I believed he would be an asset. Two offers of Shadow Cabinet posts were turned down — one to John Biffen, who would in fact join later, and the other to Edward du Cann, whose early campaign team had provided the nucleus of mine. Edward stayed on as Chairman of the 1922 Committee, which was probably far more useful to me.
The next day (Tuesday) I had some less pleasant business to transact. At 10.30 Peter Walker came in. We had known each other since he had succeeded me as candidate for Dartford. But those days were long gone and there was no personal warmth between us. He had been one of the most effective members of Ted’s inner circle, and he opposed with vigour and eloquence the approach which Keith and I were committed to adopt. He clearly had to go. I found it a distasteful business breaking such news; over the years it was one of the things I most dreaded. But at least Peter can hardly have expected anything else. He became a consistent critic on the backbenches.
I confirmed in a discussion with Geoffrey Rippon, who now came into my room, that he did not wish to serve: that suited us both. I then saw Nicholas Scott, who had shadowed Housing. He too was on the left of the Party. The conversation was made slightly easier by the fact that I had absorbed the Housing portfolio into the wider Environment one. His job had been shot from under him.
I left to last the interview with Robert Carr. I told him that I had given the Shadow Foreign Secretary post to Reggie Maudling, which he presumably knew already. Perhaps he had just bid too high, or perhaps he might have been persuaded to stay in another capacity. But I was not keen to have another strong opponent in any position on the team. So I made it clear that I could not ask him to be in the Shadow Cabinet. After a difficult few minutes he left and told the press of his worries about ‘those people who seem to think [monetary policy] is some automatic mechanism’. Not too many guesses were required about who ‘those people’ were.
The published Shadow Cabinet list (to which Peter Thorneycroft as Party Chairman and Angus Maude as Chairman of the Conservative Research Department would later be added) was rightly seen as a compromise. As such, it annoyed the left of the Party who disliked my dropping of Robert Carr, Peter Walker and Nicholas Scott: it also disappointed the right who worried about Reggie Maudling’s return, the fact that Geoffrey and not Keith was Shadow Chancellor and the lack of any new right-wing faces from the backbenches. In fact, given the fragility as yet of my position and the need to express a balance of opinion in the Shadow Cabinet to bring the Party together, it was a relatively successful operation. It created a Treasury team that shared my and Keith’s views on the free- market economy, shifted the balance of opinion within the Shadow Cabinet as a whole somewhat in my direction, and yet gave grounds for loyalty to those I had retained from Ted’s regime. I felt I could expect support (within limits) from such a team, but I knew I could not assume agreement — even on basic principles.
MACHINE POLITICS
It is said that when Ted Heath was offered a Junior Whip’s job in 1950, he asked the advice of Lord Swinton, the Tory Party’s elder statesman, as to whether he should accept it. ‘Get in on the machine — at however squalid a level,’ said Lord Swinton. Ted had taken this advice to heart, and I, in my still vulnerable position as head of the machine, could not afford to neglect it. So I set out to get some control of it.
Airey Neave and I decided that there would have to be changes at Conservative Central Office. Constitutionally, Central Office is the Leader of the Party’s office: events during the leadership campaign had convinced me that it would be very difficult for some of those there to act in that capacity under me.
At Central Office I wanted as Chairman an effective administrator, one preferably with business connections, who would be loyal to me. I had always admired Peter Thorneycroft and in retrospect I thought that his courageous resignation on the issue of public expenditure in 1958 had signalled a wrong turning for the post- war Conservative Party. As part of that older generation which had been leading the Party when I first entered Parliament, and as chairman of several large companies, Peter seemed to me to fit the bill. But how to persuade him? It turned out that Willie Whitelaw was related to him, and Willie persuaded him to take the job. It would have taxed the energy of a much younger man, for the Party Chairman has to keep up morale even in the lowest periods, of which there would be several. Peter had the added problem that at this stage most of the Party in the country accepted my leadership only on sufferance. This would gradually change after the 1975 Party Conference. But it took a good deal longer — and some painful and controversial personnel changes — before I felt that the leading figures at Central Office had any real commitment to me. Peter gradually replaced them with loyalists; I never enquired how.
Alistair McAlpine’s arrival as Party Treasurer certainly helped. The existing Treasurers, Lords Ashdown and Chelmer, told me that they had decided to resign. Airey Neave had suggested that Alistair, who had been Treasurer for ‘Britain in Europe’ during the referendum campaign, had the personality, energy and connections to do the job. He was right. Although a staunch Tory from a family of Tories, Alistair had to turn himself into something of a politician overnight. I told him that he would have to give up his German Mercedes for a British Jaguar and he immediately complied. But I had not prepared him for the host of minor but irritating examples of obstructive behaviour which confronted him at Central Office, nor for the great difficulties he would encounter in trying to persuade businessmen that in spite of the years of Heathite corporatism we were still a free-enterprise Party worth supporting.
Some people expected me to make even more substantial changes at the Conservative Research Department. The CRD was in theory a department of Central Office, but largely because of its geographical separateness (in Old Queen Street) and its intellectually distinguished past, it had a specially important role, particularly in Opposition. In a sense, the Centre for Policy Studies had been set up as an alternative to the Research Department. Now that I was Leader, however, the CRD and the CPS would have to work together. The Director of the Research Department, Chris Patten, I knew to be on the left of the Party. Much bitterness and rivalry had built up between the CRD and the CPS. In the eyes of many on the right it was precisely the consensus-oriented, generalist approach epitomized by the CRD which had left us directionless and — in the words of Keith Joseph — ‘stranded on the middle ground’. I decided to replace Ian Gilmour with Angus Maude as Chairman of the Research Department, who would work with Keith on policy, but leave Chris Patten as Director and Adam Ridley, Ted’s former economic adviser, as his deputy. These were good decisions. I came to have a high regard for the work of the department, particularly when it was fulfilling its role as Secretariat to the Shadow Cabinet rather than devising policy. Even though there were occasional squalls, the CRD moved further and further in the direction that Keith and I were taking.
Meanwhile, Airey Neave and I had to assemble a small personal staff who would run my office. The day after the leadership election result I met the secretaries who had worked for Ted. They were clearly upset, and I detected some hostility. This was quite understandable; indeed, I thought it a tribute to their loyalty. But I asked them to stay on if they felt able to, and most of them did, for a time at least. In those days the Leader of the Opposition had the present Home Secretary’s office in the House. There was one large room with a small ante- room for two secretaries, and some other small rooms upstairs. There was not enough space, and as summer approached it all became very hot and airless. (It was only later in the summer of 1976 that we moved into the rather more spacious accommodation previously used as the flat of the Serjeant-at-Arms, where the secretaries I had inherited from Ted were joined by my lively and reliable constituency secretary Alison Ward.)
A flood of letters followed my becoming Leader, sometimes 800 a day. Girls would come across from Central Office to help sort out the post, but usually this was the task of my four secretaries, who sat on the floor in the main room opening envelopes and categorizing the letters. They did their best, but it was hopelessly unsystematic. Then Alistair McAlpine suggested that I ask David Wolfson to take charge of the correspondence
