The Path to Power

section. Alistair thought that if David, as the man responsible for the mail-order section of Great Universal Stores, could not bring order out of this chaos no one could. In fact, both in Opposition and then at 10 Downing Street David’s talents were put to a good deal wider use than sorting the mail: he gave insights into what business was thinking, provided important contacts and proved particularly adept at smoothing ruffled political feathers.

But I also needed a full-time head of my office, who had to be industrious, dependable and, with the number of speeches, articles and letters to draft, above all literate. It was my old friend and colleague, providentially translated to the editorship of the Daily Telegraph, Bill Deedes who suggested Richard Ryder, then working on Peterborough, the Telegraph’s respectable gossip column. Richard joined me at the end of April — to begin work alongside Caroline Stephens, one of the secretaries I inherited from Ted, who would later become Caroline Ryder.

Richard Ryder ran this small office very effectively on a shoestring. It was a happy ship, and some entertaining characters served on their way to better things. Matthew Parris, who was in charge of replying to my correspondence, showed a talent for the sketch-writing he was later to perform for The Times when, on the eve of the 1979 election campaign, answering an aggrieved letter from a woman rejecting our policy of selling council houses and simultaneously complaining about what was wrong with her own, he told her that she was fortunate to have been given a home paid for by the rest of us out of taxation. Like Queen Victoria, I was not amused — especially when the Daily Mirror published the letter at the very beginning of the campaign. But Matthew survived.

A month after Richard’s arrival Gordon Reece, on secondment from EMI for a year, joined my full-time staff to help in dealing with the press and much else. Gordon was a Godsend. An ebullient former TV producer whose good humour never failed, he was able to jolly me along to accept things I would have rejected from other people. His view was that in getting my message across we must not concentrate simply on heavyweight newspapers, The Times and the Daily Telegraph, but be just as concerned about the mid-market populars, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express and — the real revolution — about the Sun and the News of the World. Moreover, he believed that even newspapers which supported the Labour Party in their editorial line would be prepared to give us fair treatment if we made a real attempt to provide them with interesting copy. He was right on both counts. The Sun and the News of the World were crucial in communicating Conservative values to traditionally non-Conservative voters. The left wing Sunday Mirror also gave me fair and full coverage, however critical the comments. Gordon regularly talked to the editors. But he also persuaded me that the person they really wanted to see and hear from was me. So, whatever the other demands on my diary, when Gordon said that we must have lunch with such-and-such an editor, that was the priority.

Gordon also performed another invaluable service. Every politician has to decide how much he or she is prepared to change manner and appearance for the sake of the media. It may sound grittily honourable to refuse to make any concessions, but such an attitude in a public figure is most likely to betray a lack of seriousness about winning power or even, paradoxically, the pride that apes humility. When Gordon suggested some changes in my style of hair and clothes in order to make a better impression, he was calling upon his experience in television. ‘Avoid lots of jewellery near the face. Edges look good on television. Watch out for background colours which clash with your outfit.’ It was quite an education.

There was also the matter of my voice. In the House of Commons one has to speak over the din to get a hearing. This is more difficult the higher the pitch of one’s voice, because in increasing its volume one automatically goes up the register. This poses an obvious problem for most women. Somehow one has to learn to project the voice without shrieking. Even outside the House, when addressing an audience my voice was naturally high-pitched, which can easily become grating. I had been told about this in earlier years and had deliberately tried to lower its tone. The result, unfortunately, whatever improvement there may have been for the audience, was to give me a sore throat — an even greater problem for a regular public speaker. Gordon found me an expert who knew that the first thing to do was to get your breathing right, and then to speak not from the back of the throat but from the front of the mouth. She was a genius. Her sympathetic understanding for my difficulties, which was a great help, was only matched by that for her ailing cat. Unfortunately, the cat would sometimes fall sick just before my lesson and force its cancellation. Fortunately, I too like cats. And so we finished the course.

On one occasion Gordon took me to meet Sir Laurence Olivier to see whether he had any tips which might be useful. He was quite complimentary, telling me that I had a good gaze out to the audience, which was important, and that my voice was perfectly all right, which — no thanks to the cat — it now probably was. Above all, he understood the difference between speaking someone else’s script and climbing into someone else’s character, and delivering a speech reflecting one’s own views and projecting one’s own personality. Indeed, as a result of our conversation, I became interested in the differences as well as the similarities between the techniques of the political speaker and the actor. For example, I was later told that most stage actors would rather hear an audience’s reaction without seeing the audience, buried in the gloom. But I always insisted that from any public platform I must be able to see as well as hear how my words were being received. I could then speed up, or slow down, or throw in what we later came to call a ‘clap line’ (i.e. a line which had previously got loud applause) if the speech seemed to be going over badly. So Gordon would always try to ensure that even in a darkened hall I could see the front rows of the audience when I spoke.

Getting all these things right took me several months. But all in all the general system never let me down. The real political tests of Opposition Leadership, however, still lay ahead.

SHACKLES OF THE RECENT PAST

My first real experience of the public aspects of being Leader of the Opposition came when I visited Scotland on Friday 21 February. From the time that I stepped off the aircraft at Edinburgh Airport, where a waggish piper played ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’, I received an enthusiastic Scottish welcome. Everywhere huge crowds turned out to see me. My planned walkabout in the centre of Edinburgh had to be abandoned altogether. Several hundred people had been expected, but 3,000 packed into the arcade of the St James’s Centre near Princes Street and there were only half a dozen policemen trying in vain to hold them back. Several women fainted and others were in tears. There was a real risk of tragedy as crowds were forced against the shop windows. It was impossible to go on and I had to take refuge in a jeweller’s shop, where I saw an opal (my birthstone) that I later had made into a ring. The occasion was a demonstration both to the police and to me that from now on there could be nothing amateurish about the way in which the logistics of my visits were organized.

I could always be sure of a friendly reception from grassroots Scottish Tories, whose embattled position seems to sharpen their zeal. More generally, however, the honeymoon did not last long and ordinary political life resumed with a vengeance. The opinion polls, which in February had given the Conservatives a 4 percentage point lead over Labour, showed a 2 per cent Labour lead just a month later — not statistically significant perhaps, but a check on any premature tendency to euphoria. It also soon became clear that powerful elements in the Party were out to make trouble for me. In early April Harold Macmillan and Ted Heath made speeches to a conference of Young Conservatives, warning against shifting the Conservative Party to the right. The European referendum campaign placed the focus on European issues, and this in turn gave a fillip to advocates of coalition government. All this created more difficulties for me.

My first major parliamentary performance in which I crossed swords with Harold Wilson, in a debate on the economy on Thursday 22 May, was heavily and justly criticized for not spelling out convincingly the Conservative alternative. The difficulty was that at this point we had no credible alternative to offer. Imprisoned by the requirement of defending the indefensible record of the Heath Government, we were unable as yet to break through to a proper free-market alternative.

Even so, however, on this and several other occasions I did not make a good speech. Leading for the Opposition in set-piece debates, one is not able to make a wide-ranging speech on the basis of a few notes, something which I was good at and liked. A front-bench speech has to be a fully prepared text, available to the press. But at the same time it has to be very different from the kind of texted speech that is appropriate to a large