Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography (26 page)

The following Wednesday, 30 January, with the strike ballot still pending, an emergency Cabinet was called. Ted told us that the Pay Board’s report on relativities had now been received. The question was whether we should accept the report and set up new machinery to investigate ‘relativities’ claims. The miners had always claimed to be demanding an improvement in their relative pay – hence their rejection of Ted’s ‘unsocial hours’ provision, which applied to
all
shift workers. The Pay Board report might provide a basis for them to settle within the incomes policy – all the more so because it specifically endorsed the idea that changes in the relative importance of an industry due to ‘external events’ could also be taken into account when deciding pay. The rapidly rising price of oil was just such an ‘external event’.

We felt that the Government had no choice but to set up the relativities machinery. Not to do so – having commissioned the relativities report in the first place – would make it seem as if we were actively trying to prevent a settlement with the miners. And with an election now likely we had to consider public opinion at every step.

An election became all but certain when, on Tuesday 5 February, we learned that 81 per cent of those voting in the NUM ballot had supported a strike. Election speculation reached fever pitch from which there was no going back. Ted told us at Cabinet two days later that he had decided to go to the country. The general election would take place on Thursday 28 February.

Willie proposed formally to refer the miners’ claim to the Pay Board for a relativities study. He couched his argument for this course entirely in
terms of it giving us something to say during the election in reply to the inevitable question: How will you solve the miners’ dispute if you win? Cabinet then made the fateful decision to agree to Willie’s proposal.

Because of the emergency nature of the election, I had not been involved in the early drafts of even the education section of the manifesto, which was now published within days. There was little new to say, and the dominant theme of the document – the need for firm and fair government at a time of crisis – was clear and stark. The main new pledge was to change the system whereby Social Security benefits were paid to strikers’ families.

During most of the campaign I was reasonably confident that we would win. Conservative supporters who had been alienated by the U-turns started drifting back to us. Indeed, their very frustrations at what they saw as our past weaknesses made them all the more determined to back us now that we had decided, as they saw it, to stand up to trade union militancy. Harold Wilson set out Labour’s approach in the context of a ‘social contract’ with the unions. Those who longed for a quiet life could be expected to be seduced by that. But I felt that if we could stick to the central issue summed up by the phrase ‘Who governs?’ we would win the argument, and with it the election.

I felt victory – almost tangibly – slip away from us in the last week. I just could not believe it when I heard on the radio of the leak of evidence taken by the Pay Board which purported to show that the miners could have been paid more within Stage 3, with the implication that the whole general election was unnecessary. The Government’s attempts to deny this – and there did indeed turn out to have been a miscalculation – were stumbling and failed to carry conviction. From now on it was relentlessly downhill.

Two days later, Enoch Powell urged people to vote Labour in order to secure a referendum on the Common Market. I could understand the logic of his position, which was that membership of the Common Market had abrogated British sovereignty and that the supreme issue in politics was therefore how to restore it. But what shocked me was his manner of doing it – announcing only on the day the election was called that he would not be contesting his Wolverhampton seat and then dropping this bombshell at the end of the campaign. It seemed to me that to betray one’s local supporters and constituency workers in this way was heartless. I suspect that Enoch’s decision had a crucial effect.

Then three days later there was another blow. Campbell Adamson, the Director-General of the CBI, publicly called for the repeal of the Industrial
Relations Act. It was all too typical of the way in which Britain’s industrial leaders were full of bravado before battle was joined, but lacked the stomach for a fight.

By polling day my optimism had been replaced by unease.

That sentiment grew as I heard from Finchley and elsewhere around the country of a surprisingly heavy turn-out of voters to the polls that morning. I would have liked to think that these were all angry Conservatives, coming out to demonstrate their refusal to be blackmailed by trade union power. But it seemed more likely that they were voters from the Labour-dominated council estates who had come out to teach the Tories a lesson.

The results quickly showed that we had nothing to be cheerful about. We lost thirty-three seats. It would be a hung Parliament. Labour had become the largest party with 301 seats – seventeen short of a majority; we were down to 296, though with a slightly higher percentage of the vote than Labour; the Liberals had gained almost 20 per cent of the vote with fourteen seats, and smaller parties, including the Ulster Unionists, held twenty-three. My own majority in Finchley was down from 11,000 to 6,000, though some of that decline was the result of boundary changes in the constituency.

On Friday afternoon we met, a tired and downcast fag-end of a Cabinet, to be asked by Ted Heath for our reactions as to what should now be done. There were a number of options. Ted could advise the Queen to send for Harold Wilson as the leader of the largest single party. Or the Government could face Parliament and see whether it could command support for its programme. Or he could try to do a deal with the smaller parties for a programme designed to cope with the nation’s immediate difficulties. Having alienated the Ulster Unionists through our Northern Ireland policy, this in effect meant a deal with the Liberals – though even that would not have given us a majority. There was little doubt from the way Ted spoke that this was the course he favoured.

My own instinctive feeling was that the party with the largest number of seats in the House of Commons was justified in expecting that they would be called to try to form a government. But Ted argued that with the Conservatives having won the largest number of votes, he was duty bound to explore the possibility of coalition. So he offered the Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe a place in a coalition government and promised a Speaker’s conference on electoral reform. Thorpe went away to consult his party. Although I wanted to remain Secretary of State for Education, I
did not want to do so at the expense of the Conservative Party’s never forming a majority government again. Yet that is what the introduction of proportional representation, which the Liberals would be demanding, might amount to. I was also conscious that this horse-trading was making us look ridiculous. The British dislike nothing more than a bad loser. It was time to go.

When we met again on Monday morning Ted gave us a full account of his discussions with the Liberals. They had not been willing to go along with what Jeremy Thorpe wanted. A formal reply from him was still awaited. But it now seemed almost certain that Ted would have to tender his resignation. The final Cabinet was held at 4.45 that afternoon. By now Jeremy Thorpe’s reply had been received. From what Ted said, there were clues that his mind was already turning to the idea of a National Government of all parties, something which would increasingly attract him. It did not, of course, attract me at all. In any case, the Liberals were not going to join a coalition government with us. There was nothing more to say.

I left Downing Street, sad but with some sense of relief. I had given little thought to the future. But I knew in my heart that it was time not just for a change in government but for a change in the Conservative Party.

The October 1974 general election and the campaign for the Tory Leadership

I
T IS NEVER EASY
to go from government to opposition. But for several reasons it was particularly problematical for the Conservatives led by Ted Heath. First, of course, we had up until almost the last moment expected to win. Whatever the shortcomings of our Government’s economic strategy, every department had its own policy programme stretching well into the future. This now had to be abandoned for the rigours of Opposition. Secondly, Ted himself desperately wanted to continue as Prime Minister. He had been unceremoniously ejected from 10 Downing Street and for some months had to take refuge in the flat of his old friend and PPS Tim Kitson, having no home of his own – from which years later I drew the resolution that when my time came to depart I would at least have a house to go to. Ted’s passionate desire to return as Prime Minister lay behind much of the talk of coalitions and Governments of National Unity which came to disquiet the Party. The more that the Tory Party moved away from Ted’s own vision, the more he wanted to see it tamed by coalition. Thirdly, and worst of all perhaps, the poisoned legacy of our U-turns was that we had no firm principles, let alone much of a record, on which to base our arguments. And in Opposition argument is everything.

I was glad that Ted did not ask me to cover my old department at Education but gave me the Environment portfolio instead. I was convinced that both rates and housing – particularly the latter – were issues which had contributed to our defeat. The task of devising and presenting sound and popular policies in these areas appealed to me.

There were rumblings about Ted’s own position, though that is what they largely remained. This was partly because most of us expected an early general election to be called in order to give Labour a working majority, and it hardly seemed sensible to change leaders now. But there were other reasons. Ted still inspired nervousness, even fear among many of his colleagues. In a sense, even the U-turns contributed to the aura around him. For he had single-handedly reversed Conservative policies and had gone far, with his lieutenants, in reshaping the Conservative Party. Paradoxically too, both those committed to Ted’s approach and those – like Keith and me and many on the backbenches – who thought very differently agreed that the vote-buying policies which the Labour Party was now pursuing would inevitably lead to economic collapse. Just what the political consequences of that would be was uncertain. But there were many Tory wishful thinkers who thought that it might result in the Conservative Party somehow returning to power with a ‘doctor’s mandate’. And Ted had no doubt of his own medical credentials.

He did not, though, make the concessions to his critics in the Party which would have been required. He might have provided effectively against future threats to his position if he had changed his approach in a number of ways. He might have shown at least some willingness to admit and learn from the Government’s mistakes. He might have invited talented backbench critics to join him as Shadow spokesmen and contribute to the rethinking of policy. He might have changed the overall complexion of the Shadow Cabinet to make it more representative of parliamentary opinion.

But he did none of these things. He replaced Tony Barber – who announced that he intended to leave the Commons though he would stay on for the present in the Shadow Cabinet without portfolio – with Robert Carr, who was even more committed to the interventionist approach that had got us into so much trouble. He promoted to the Shadow Cabinet during the year those MPs like Michael Heseltine and Paul Channon who were seen as his acolytes, and were unrepresentative of backbench opinion of the time. Only John Davies and Joe Godber, neither of whom was ideologically distinct, were dropped. Above all, he set his face against any policy rethinking that would imply that his Government’s economic and industrial policy had been seriously flawed. When Keith Joseph was not made Shadow Chancellor, he said he wanted no portfolio but rather to concentrate on research for new policies – something which would prove as dangerous to Ted as it was fruitful for the Party. Otherwise, these
were depressing signals of ‘more of the same’ when the electorate had clearly demonstrated a desire for something different. Added to this, the important Steering Committee of Shadow Ministers was formed even more in Ted’s image. I was not invited to join it, and of its members only Keith and perhaps Geoffrey Howe were likely to oppose Ted’s wishes.

Between the February and October 1974 elections most of my time was taken up with work on housing and the rates. I had an effective housing policy group of MPs working with me. Hugh Rossi, a friend and neighbouring MP, was a great housing expert, with experience of local government. Michael Latham and John Stanley were well versed in the building industry. The brilliant Nigel Lawson, newly elected, always had his own ideas. We also had the help of people from the building societies and construction industry. It was a lively group which I enjoyed chairing.