organizers considered extreme lengths by spending my time talking to people down in the body of the hall when I was expected to be up on the platform.
In between receptions and visits to the debates I would go in to see how the speech-writers were proceeding. Adam Ridley helped with the economics. Angus Maude, who like Woodrow had the journalist’s knack of making material bright and interesting simply by reordering it, also came in from time to time. Richard Ryder was the keeper of the text. Gordon Reece’s expertise was in coaching me on how to deliver it, seeing for example that I did not cut short applause after a clap line by moving on too quickly — a perennial temptation for a speaker who is inexperienced or lacks confidence.
But by Wednesday it was clear to me that none of those working away in my suite was what in the jargon is known as a ‘wordsmith’. We had the structure, the ideas and even the foundations for some good jokes. But we needed someone with a feel for the words
Earlier on Thursday evening, when I was reading through the latest draft, I had been called to the telephone to speak to Willie Whitelaw. Willie told me that Ted had arrived and was staying at the same hotel (the Imperial). His suite was a couple of floors below mine. For several months a number of Ted’s friends had been urging him to bury the hatchet. Willie, doubtless prompted by them, thought that this would be a perfect time for a reconciliation. He explained to me that pride was involved in these matters and Ted could not really come and see me. Would I therefore come and see him? I replied at once that of course I would. Willie said that that was ‘absolutely splendid’ and that he would ring me back to confirm. Meanwhile, I plunged back into the draft. About an hour and a half went by with no telephone call. Since it was now about 10 o’clock and there was still much to do on my speech, I thought that we must really get on with our ‘reconciliation’. So I rang Willie and asked what was happening. I was then told that Ted had had second thoughts. The hatchet would evidently remain unburied.
The Winter Gardens is a grand popular palace in the self-confident style of the mid-Victorians when Blackpool really blossomed into a seaside resort. It has cafes, restaurants, bars, a theatre and the Empress Ballroom where the main proceedings of the Tory Conference took place. ‘Ballroom’ scarcely does justice to the ornate and opulent splendour of the vast hall with its high ceilings, ample balcony, gilt, stucco and red plush. It has warmth and atmosphere that seem to welcome a speaker, and I always preferred it to the cold and clinical neatness of more modern conference facilities. The climax of the Conservative Conference creates a special electricity at Blackpool. For my part, though I had had almost no sleep, I was confident of my text and resolved to put everything into its delivery.
The speech had two main purposes. First, it was to contain a conclusive indictment not just of Labour policies or even the Labour Government, but rather of the whole socialist approach which was destructive of freedom. Secondly, I would use it to spell out a Conservative vision that did not merely employ phrases like ‘the free market’ and ‘personal independence’ for form’s sake, but took them seriously as the foundation of future policy. Reading it through almost twenty years later, there is nothing substantial that I would change — least of all the section about my personal creed and convictions.
Let me give you my vision: a man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master — these are the British inheritance… We must get private enterprise back on the road to recovery — not merely to give people more of their own money to spend as they choose, but to have more money to help the old and the sick and the handicapped… I believe that, just as each of us has an obligation to make the best of his talents, so governments have an obligation to create the framework within which we can do so… We can go on as we have been doing, we can continue down. Or we can stop and with a decisive act of will we can say ‘Enough’.
I was relieved when, as I got into my speech, I began to be interrupted by applause and cheers. Fun is often poked at the stage-management of Conservative Conferences. But one can distinguish, if one has a mind to do so, between support which is genuine and that which is contrived. This struck me as genuine. It was also quite unlike any reception I had ever had myself and, so the commentators said, quite unlike the Conferences of recent years. I had apparently struck a chord, not so much by the way I delivered the speech as by the self-confident Conservative sentiments it expressed. The representatives on the floor were hearing their own opinions expressed from the platform and they responded with great enthusiasm. I picked up some of their excitement in turn. On both the floor and the platform there was a sense that something new was happening.
But would it play outside the Empress Ballroom? I hoped, and in my heart believed, that the
By the end of that first year as Leader of the Opposition I felt that I had found my feet. I still had difficulties adjusting to my new role in the House of Commons. But I had established a good
I had also settled into a new domestic routine. Denis had officially retired from Burmah, though his other business interests kept him fully occupied. The twins, now aged twenty-two, were living very much their own lives: Carol was finishing her training as a solicitor and would take a job as a journalist in Australia in 1977; Mark was continuing his accountancy training. Flood Street remained our London home. I would entertain there or, during the week when the House was sitting, in my room at the House of Commons.
A fortnight after the Party Conference we moved into the old dower flat in Scotney Castle at Lamberhurst (we had stayed in the village after selling ‘The Mount’, renting a flat at Court Lodge in the interim). Our friend Thelma Cazalet-Keir, a former MP who also had a flat there, often gave lunch parties and seemed to know everyone for miles around. My old friend Edward Boyle had a house not far away. Other neighbours were the Longfords, Edward Crankshaw (the historian of the Habsburgs) and Malcolm Muggeridge. But it was around Thelma Cazalet-Keir’s table that the most stimulating discussions occurred. It was a break from the intense, hothouse atmosphere of Westminster party politics. I would often come away determined to find out more about some topic or widen my reading. For example, in the course of a discussion of communism, Malcolm Muggeridge said that its whole mentality was spelt out in Dostoevsky’s
Our first Christmas at Scotney passed pleasantly enough. But I had no doubt that 1976 would be a testing year. Britain was in the grip of a serious economic crisis that in due course would draw the International Monetary Fund (IMF) into a direct role in running the British economy. The Labour Government was ill-equipped to deal with this, not least because it was on the verge of losing its already slim parliamentary majority. But we on the Conservative benches had difficulties in turning this situation to our advantage, notably because the trade unions were seen by people as all-powerful. So we were constantly put at a disadvantage by the question: How would
On top of this there had been widespread criticism of the performance of the Shadow Cabinet, including of course my own, and I decided that some changes were necessary. I reshuffled the pack on 15 January 1976. Reshuffles in Opposition had strong elements of farce. The layout of the Leader of the Opposition’s suite of rooms in the Commons was such that it was almost impossible to manage the entrances and exits of fortunate and unfortunate colleagues with suitable delicacy. Embarrassing encounters were inevitable. But on this occasion there was not too much blood on the carpet.
I was delighted that John Biffen was now prepared to join the Shadow Cabinet as Energy spokesman. He had been perhaps the most eloquent and effective critic on the backbenches at the time of the Heath Government U-turn and I welcomed his presence. If the promotion of John Biffen demonstrated that we were serious about correcting the corporatist mistakes of the past, so the promotion of Douglas Hurd, one of Ted’s closest aides, to be Party spokesman on Europe, showed that whatever Ted himself might feel I had no grudges against those who had served him. I made Willie Shadow Home Secretary in place of Ian Gilmour, whom I moved to Defence where he proved an extremely robust and effective Shadow spokesman; if he had limited himself to that, life would have
