Heath had told his future constituents that ‘there is still a suspicion of our party in the minds of the people’. That suspicion, he privately believed, had more than a little justification. The country was growing tired of Labour, he told Professor Winckler at the end of 1947, ‘but there is not yet, I regret to say, a very great revival of trust in the Conservatives. The Conservatives have still a lot of hard thinking to do about our present problems.’21
He regretted greatly that he was not himself in a position to contribute much to that process. He joined the Coningsby Club, a dining society where some of the more liberal Tories foregathered, but though this put him in touch with current thinking it was no substitute for joining in the policy making. Though he felt that the Labour Party was trying to do too much too fast, and was particularly sceptical about its belief that nationalisation was a panacea for all Britain’s social and economic woes, he accepted that much of what it was doing was necessary and desirable. He openly supported the nationalisation of the Bank of England and privately felt that it was inevitable that the coal industry too should come under public ownership. The Tory Party’s efforts to bring its policies up to date seemed to him belated but eminently desirable. He wholeheartedly backed Butler’s Industrial Charter, which for the first time in Tory circles accepted that the trade unions were a vital and desirable part of society and should be worked with rather than treated as enemies. He was a one-nation Conservative before the term had gained – or regained – popular acceptance, and he made it plain to the voters of Bexley that these were his views.
The voters of Bexley liked what he said and seemed prepared to believe him when he rejected Ashley Bramall’s claim that the Tories were bent on restoring a high level of unemployment as a means of curbing the just demands of Labour. But when the general election was called for 23 February 1950, it was anyone’s guess who would win at Bexley. Everyone accepted that the Tories had gained ground since their disaster of 1945, but would Bexley necessarily follow the national trend and, even if it did, would the swing be sufficient to wipe out Bramall’s majority? Heath had come in for his fair share of heckling and abuse at the innumerable meetings he addressed. ‘Your candidate was born in Kent,’ one local chairman had announced. No particular enthusiasm was evoked by this revelation. ‘He was educated in Kent!’ the chairman went on. Still the response was muted. ‘And he lives in Kent!’ the chairman concluded. ‘And for all I bloody well care, he can die in Kent!’ shouted a Labour supporter from the back. On the whole most of the meetings had gone well, but so too had Bramall’s. There was a Liberal candidate in the field who nobody thought would win but who was expected to poll a few thousand votes. At whose expense would those votes be cast? More satisfactorily from the point of view of the Tories, there was also a Communist standing: any votes he garnered could only come at the expense of Labour. By the early afternoon of polling day Heath was reasonably hopeful, but the flow of Labour voters on their way back from work disquieted him and by the time the count began neither Heath nor Bramall would have put money on their prospects. As the count went on it became obvious that it was going to be a desperately close-run thing. Finally the result was announced: both the leading candidates had secured between 25,000 and 26,000 votes; Heath led by a mere 166. The Communist had polled 481 votes, thus losing the election for Labour. ‘In the next election if you have any trouble finding money for your deposit I’ll look after that,’ a grateful Heath told him. ‘You must stand again. It’s your right to stand.’22
Bramall demanded a recount. It took place and Heath’s majority shrank still further to a mere 133. A request for a further recount was lodged but refused unless the Labour candidate was prepared to meet the cost himself. This Bramall refused to do and the result was confirmed. Edward Heath at the age of 33 was Member of Parliament for Bexley. He would be joining a party still in opposition, for though the Conservative Party had made substantial gains, reducing Labour’s lead from 142 seats to a mere five, Labour could still cling on to power. From Heath’s point of view this was almost better than an overall victory. He could not have hoped to have been offered any sort of job if the Conservatives had won, it seemed likely that they would be in power after the next election, in the meantime a short period in opposition would give him a chance to make his maiden speech and establish his parliamentary identity.
Margaret Roberts, a young research chemist who was later to marry a prosperous businessman called Denis Thatcher, was standing in the neighbouring constituency of Dartford. She and Heath spoke at each other’s meetings during the campaign. ‘I hope you gallup to the top of the poll,’ read the telegram which Miss Roberts sent him on polling day. ‘Among my fellow Conservative candidates in neighbouring seats, only Margaret Roberts failed to be elected,’ Heath wrote in his memoirs. Whatever his feelings may have been when he wrote those words, at the time her failure caused him mild regret. For the rest, it was exultation.23
Heath was no Pitt the Younger, entering parliament like a young lord taking possession of his ancestral home, but he found his first appearances in the House of Commons less stressful than did most of his newly elected colleagues. His political activities at Oxford, the year he had spent nursing his constituency, the assiduity with which he had cultivated useful connections at Westminster, all ensured that to some extent his reputation went before him; he was known to the leadership as a sound and useful man, potentially a suitable candidate for preferment. The first meetings of the House which he attended, he wrote in his memoirs, ‘reminded me more than anything of the debating chamber of the Oxford Union. Nothing could be more natural. I was coming home.’1
The House had undergone a dramatic transformation since it had last met. A huge Labour majority had melted away; in spite of the fact that they had won 11/2 million more votes than the Conservatives they had only 33 more seats and their majority over all other parties was five. Their front bench still contained the giants of the 1945 administration – Attlee, Bevin, Cripps, Morrison – but they had been in office since the formation of the coalition government in 1940; they were older, tired, in some cases seriously sick. Even that splendid firebrand, Aneurin Bevan, seemed to burn less fiercely; as for the backbenchers, they were demoralised and diminished, conscious that they were in for some gruelling sessions and probably defeat at the end of them.
The Tories had achieved electoral success which, if not as great as they had dreamed of, at least was vastly better than had appeared possible a few years before. One more push, it seemed, and victory would be theirs. Over the previous years, under the guidance of R. A. Butler, they had planned new Tory policies for a return to power, but it had seemed at times a dispiritingly academic exercise. Now there was a real chance that soon they would be able to put those policies into practice. This lent a new urgency to their deliberations and ensured that the members who had won their seats for the first time in February 1950 would have a chance to make their mark as representatives of a new Conservatism. The new entrants were, indeed, an outstandingly able and forward-looking group. Even the scions of the traditional Tory grandee families – Julian Amery, Christopher Soames – seemed to have a slight flavour of radicalism about them; most of the others came from minor public or grammar schools and offered some promise of a serious shift both in the social composition and in the thinking of the party. Heath was one of these, but not considered to be among those most obviously destined for stardom. Ian Trethowan, then a young parliamentary lobby correspondent, reckoned that Iain Macleod, Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell were the three most exceptional of the new members, the men among whom a future leader of the party must be looked for. Heath, he considered, ‘in those early years seemed a conscientious but rather plodding man’.2 But, along with Angus Maude, Robert Carr, Harold Watkinson, it was clear from the start that, whether or not he attained the stratosphere, he had to be reckoned with as potentially a formidable figure within the Tory hierarchy.
He made no attempt to thrust himself into the limelight with a premature display of fireworks.