Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (16 page)

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.

Opposition 1964–1970

T
HE
C
ONSERVATIVE
P
ARTY
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 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; 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. Reggie 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 his experience, brilliant intellect and command of the House. His main weakness 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 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 knew Reggie as a neighbouring MP for Barnet and I liked his combination of laid-back charm and acute intellect. 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. 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.

It was Keith Joseph who persuaded me to change my mind. By now Keith was a friend. We worked together, though with him very much as the senior partner, on pensions policy in 1964–65. Like everyone else who came to know him, I was deeply impressed by the quality of his mind and the depth of his compassion. Keith had gone into politics for the same reason that many on the left had done so – he wanted to improve the lot of ordinary people, particularly those he saw living deprived, unfulfilled lives. Many jokes would be made – and the best of them by Keith himself – about the way in which he changed his mind and reversed his policies on matters ranging from housing to health to social benefits. But the common thread was his relentless search for the right answer to the practical problems of human suffering. So I took him very seriously when he telephoned to say that while he knew I was currently intending to vote for Reggie, I should think again. Keith understood Reggie’s weaknesses. But it was Ted’s strengths that he wanted to speak about. He summed them up:
‘Ted has a passion to get Britain right.’ And, of course, so did Keith, and so did I.

This was decisive for me. To the disappointment of Reggie Maudling and his PPS, Neil Marten, I told them that Ted Heath would be getting my vote. Sufficient numbers thought similarly. Ted emerged with a clear majority on the first ballot, Reggie withdrawing to make a second ballot unnecessary.

I was not displeased to be given a different portfolio by the new Leader, exchanging my role as Shadow spokesman on Pensions for that of Housing and Land under my old boss, John Boyd-Carpenter. I would always regard my knowledge of the Social Security system as one of the most important aspects of what turned out to be my training to become Prime Minister. Now that we were in Opposition, however, it was not easy to oppose the large pension and benefit increases which the Labour Government was making: only later would the full financial implications of this spending spree become evident. So it was a relief to me to be moved to Housing and Land.

As was widely expected, Harold Wilson called an early snap election at the end of March 1966. The result – a Conservative rout and an overall Labour majority of ninety-seven – was equally expected. We fought an uninspiring campaign on the basis of a flimsy manifesto entitled
Action not Words
, which accurately summed up Ted’s impact on politics. This was widely seen as a completion of Wilson’s 1964 victory, and Ted was not blamed. I was not displeased to keep a healthy majority of 9,464, this time over the Labour Party which had beaten the Liberals into third place. But it was a depressing time. Denis knew my mood and went out to buy me an eternity ring to cheer me up.

I received a further fillip when Ted Heath made me Treasury spokesman on Tax under the Shadow Chancellor, Iain Macleod. There had been some speculation in the press that I would be promoted to the Shadow Cabinet myself. But I was not expecting it. I now know, having read Jim Prior’s memoirs,
*
that I was indeed considered but that Ted, rather presciently, decided against it because if they got me in ‘they would never get [me] out again’. As a tax lawyer I already knew my way around my new brief. Although I had no formal training in economic theory, I felt naturally at ease with the concepts and I had always had strong convictions about the
way in which public money should be handled. As I had found when junior minister responsible for pensions, I was lucky enough to have the sort of mind to grasp technical detail and understand quite complex figuring fairly easily. None of which meant, however, that I could afford to relax.

I not only felt well-suited to my new job: it was also an exciting time to begin it. The incoherence and irresponsibility of socialist economic management had become apparent. The optimistic projections of George Brown’s National Plan, published in September 1965, were an albatross to hang around Labour’s neck, as forecasts of economic growth were not met. Labour’s pre-election promises of ‘no severe increases in taxation’ were broken with the announcement in the budget of May 1966 that a new Selective Employment Tax (SET) would be introduced, in effect a payroll tax falling particularly heavily on service industries: it was a major part of my brief to oppose it. The Labour Government’s reliance on its alleged special relationship with the trade unions to secure voluntary incomes restraint as a means of controlling inflation had already lost credibility with the failure of the Government-TUC joint
Declaration of Intent
, which had first been proclaimed amid fanfares in December 1964. In July 1966 the ‘voluntary’ approach was jettisoned. It was announced that there would be a six months’ wage freeze followed by six months of ‘severe restraint’. Prices would be frozen for a year, and a plea was made for limits to be applied to dividends over the same period. The National Board of Prices and Incomes, which Labour had established, was given powers to require one month’s advance notification of any price and wage increases and powers to delay increases by Order in Council for up to three months. The Government might take power to direct that specified price and wage increases should not be made. Fighting this policy in general and, under Iain Macleod’s leadership, opposing the ‘Standstill orders’ which came before the House of Commons, were the other important aspects of my brief.

In preparing myself for my first major Commons speech in my new role, I got out from the House of Commons Library every budget speech and Finance Bill since the war and read them. I was thus able to demonstrate to a somewhat bemused Jim Callaghan, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Jack Diamond, his Chief Secretary, that this was the only budget which had failed to make even a minor concession in the social services area. Then I sank my teeth into the SET. It was riddled with absurdities which I took great pleasure in exposing. The attempt to distinguish between manufacturing and service industries, shifting the
tax burden onto the second and handing the money back as subsidies to the first, was a demonstrably inefficient, anomaly-ridden procedure. As I put it in the House: ‘Whatever the payroll tax is, it is thoroughly bad administration … I only wish that Gilbert and Sullivan were alive today so that we could have an opera about it.’

Our side of the House liked it. I got a good press, the
Daily Telegraph
observing that ‘it has taken a woman … to slam the faces of the Government’s Treasury ministers in the mud and then stamp on them’. Iain Macleod himself wrote some generous lines about the performance in another paper.

He did the same after my speech that autumn to the Party Conference in Blackpool. I put a special effort into it – though the nine hours of work I did would have seemed culpable idleness compared with the time I took for Conference speechwriting as Party Leader. That autumn, however, I spoke from notes, which gives extra spontaneity and the flexibility to insert a joke or jibe on the spur of the moment. Although the debate I was answering was on taxation, the cheers came in response to what I said about the way in which the Government was undermining the rule of law by the arbitrary powers it had taken through incomes policy and tax policy. With more than a touch of hyperbole, it must be admitted, I said: ‘All this is fundamentally wrong for Britain. It is a step not merely towards socialism but towards communism.’ The new and still left-of-centre
Sun
noted: ‘A Fiery Blonde Warns of the Road to Ruin’.

In October 1967 Ted made me front-bench spokesman on Fuel and Power and a member of the Shadow Cabinet. It may be that my House of Commons performances and perhaps Iain Macleod’s recommendation overcame any temperamental reluctance on Ted’s part. My first task was to read through all the evidence given to the inquiry about the causes of the terrible Aberfan disaster the previous year, when 116 children and 28 adults were killed by a slag tip which slipped onto a Welsh mining village. Many of the parents of the victims were in the gallery for the debate, and I felt for them. Very serious criticisms had been made of the National Coal Board and as a result someone, I thought, should have resigned, though I held back from stating this conclusion with complete clarity in my first speech to the House as Shadow spokesman. What was revealed by the report made me realize how very easy it is in any large organization to assume that someone else has taken the requisite action and will assume responsibility. This is a problem which, as later tragedies have demonstrated, industrial civilization has yet to solve.

Outside the House, my main interest was in trying to find a framework for privatization of electricity generation. To this end I visited power stations and sought all the advice I could from business contacts. But it turned out to be a fruitless enterprise, and I had not come up with what I considered acceptable answers by the time my portfolio was changed again – to Transport – in October 1968. Parliament had just passed a major Transport Bill reorganizing the railways, nationalizing the bus companies, setting up a new National Freight Authority – in effect, implementing most of the Government’s transport programme in one measure. I argued our case against nationalization of the ports. But, all in all, Transport proved a brief with limited possibilities.

As a member of the Shadow Cabinet I attended its weekly discussions, usually on a Wednesday, in Ted’s room in the House. Discussion was generally not very stimulating. We would begin by looking ahead to the parliamentary business for the week and agreeing who was to speak and on what line. There might be a paper from a colleague which he would introduce. But, doubtless because we knew that there were large divisions between us, particularly on economic policy, issues of principle were not usually openly debated.

For my part, I did not make a particularly important contribution to Shadow Cabinet. Nor was I asked to do so. For Ted and perhaps others I was principally there as the statutory woman whose main task was to explain what ‘women’ – Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbara Cartland, Esther Rantzen, Stella Rimington and all the rest of our uniform, undifferentiated sex – were likely to think and want on troublesome issues. I had, of course, great affection for Alec Douglas-Home, then Shadow Foreign Secretary, and got on perfectly well with most of my colleagues, but I had only three real friends around the table – Keith Joseph, Peter Thomas and Edward Boyle. And Edward by now was very much on the opposite wing of the Party from me.