Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography. Philip Ziegler

for two years. ‘We must and should play it slow. We thought that a number of dinner parties would help. It would be very good, we thought, if you would also do this – it would dispel any austere-bachelor-technician image you may be surprised to learn you have.’ A poll in the Daily Telegraph in February 1965 seemed to support Kershaw’s view: three-quarters of the Tory MPs wanted Douglas-Home to carry on; if he did resign 35 per cent favoured Maudling as his replacement, 28 per cent still hankered after Butler, only 10 per cent wanted Heath.³⁵

      But things were changing. There had always been a small but robust section of the party which had thought it vital that there should be a change of direction and of management. ‘We are sick of seeing old-looking men dressed in flat caps and bedraggled tweeds,’ wrote a 44-year-old industrial manager. ‘The nearest approach to our man is Heath. In every task he performs, win or lose, he has the facts and figures and looks a director (of the country) and most of all he is quite different from these tired old men.’ As Heath’s reputation grew in the ACP as a reformist and in the House of Commons as a powerful and relentless debater – so people began to see him as a future leader. As Douglas-Home time and again demonstrated that he was too gentlemanly, too courteous, too restrained to cope with the mercurial mischief of Harold Wilson, so the feeling strengthened that the change should be made as soon as possible. A new system of selection had recently been introduced which meant that the traditional sounding of opinion would be abandoned in favour of a secret ballot among all Tory MPs. So long as a general election seemed likely at short notice the would-be rebels, nervous about the notorious risks of changing horses in mid-stream, preserved their silence. In the summer of 1965, however, Wilson announced that there would be no election that year. The main reason for restraint had disappeared; the dogs of war were let slip.

      What dogs and who let them slip? R. A. Butler had retreated from the political arena to become Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, but Maudling was quite as ready as Heath to replace Douglas-Home as leader if the opportunity was offered. Nevertheless, the weight of opinion suggests that it was Heath’s followers who made the running. ‘A number of Heath’s henchmen,’ wrote Humphrey Berkeley, were urging members to write to Whitelaw or du Cann, the new chairman of the Conservative Party, expressing their misgivings about the present leadership. Macleod and Walker in particular, alleged du Cann, were lobbying against Douglas-Home – ‘unknown to Heath, I dare say, though one could not be sure’.³⁶ Heath himself always vehemently rejected any such insinuation. He could make a good case in his own defence. To correspondents who urged him to press his candidature he replied that any speculation on such lines was playing into the hands of Harold Wilson; ‘the best service any of us can give to the party is to give full and loyal support to the leader’.³⁷ But he cannot have been wholly unaware of what his supporters were doing, if not in his name then at least on his behalf. Nor could he deny that he was positioning himself so that if Douglas-Home did retire he would be well placed to challenge for the succession. Nigel Fisher claimed that some of the preliminary meetings ‘designed to put him in an advantageous position should Douglas-Home decide to go’ were held in Heath’s flat in Albany. Over this period he at least twice entertained influential political journalists to lunch à deux. ‘If there were a leadership contest now I think you’d probably win it,’ said one of them. Heath considered the proposition. ‘You may be right,’ he concluded. He had no need to play a more active part himself; it was all happening without his personal intervention. As Chateaubriand said of the duc d’Orléans, he ‘did not conspire in fact, but by consent’. The worst of which Heath can be accused is that he could have called off the dogs of war. He chose not to do so.³⁸

      Douglas-Home himself never blamed Heath for his behaviour. ‘Ted was very unhappy in case people thought that he was trying to undermine me,’ he told Heath’s biographer, George Hutchinson. ‘I am quite sure he was not.’ His wife, Elizabeth, was less charitable. She made no secret of the fact that she felt Heath had been indelicately quick in letting himself be drafted as the next leader. ‘The fact’, commented Rhodes James, ‘that the principal architects of Sir Alec’s removal were also those of Heath’s subsequent campaign for the leadership left an aftertaste of bitterness in some parts of the party.’³⁹

      The plotters were pushing at an open door. Douglas-Home had no intention of continuing to lead a party which was not substantially behind him. On 22 July 1965 he summoned Selwyn Lloyd to his office and said: ‘I am going to let you down. I have decided to chuck my hand in and give up the leadership.’ Later the same day he announced his intention to the 1922 Committee. ‘The “rotters” eleven has won,’ snarled one knight of the shires angrily, but the feeling of the majority was some relief and a regretful acceptance of the inevitable. At once interest switched to the election of a successor. Macleod, knowing only too well his unpopularity in certain sections of the party, accepted that he must be a non-starter. Maudling and Heath were the obvious front-runners. Christopher Soames urged Selwyn Lloyd to stand: ‘He felt very much that the bulk of the party did not want either Maudling or Heath and there should be a third candidate.’ Quintin Hogg agreed that 60 per cent of the party were looking for someone else; after his experiences at the last leadership election he had no intention of himself standing again but he, too, would have backed Lloyd. Lloyd, after some reflection, decided he would not stand unless there was something near a dead heat on the first ballot and a bitter conflict would otherwise ensue. Whitelaw agreed that this was a proper course of action. Harold Macmillan let it be known that he thought it should either be Heath or Maudling: ‘That was the type of person they wanted, the age they wanted and it was no use kicking against the pricks.’ Peter Thorneycroft at first insisted that, whatever happened, he would compete himself because ‘he thought he was a better man than either of the other two’; after much persuasion he accepted that he would secure only a handful of votes and decided not to stand. Enoch Powell alone remained in the race, presumably so as to lay down a marker for the future. In effect it was to be a straight race between Heath and Maudling.⁴⁰

      Maudling was the favourite at the start. He had the greater experience, had for some time been treated as deputy leader, was widely popular in the House. But his very popularity seemed to count against him: Home had been popular but Home had failed to hold his own; perhaps someone rougher, more abrasive, would better suit the need? The press for the most part favoured Heath. Cecil King, proprietor of the Daily Mirror, liked both men but he believed that Heath was ‘a positive force – a leader…certainly the best available man to be Tory PM’. More remarkably he told Heath that Beaverbrook felt the same: a striking tribute given the differences between the two men over Europe, though Maudling too was stamped in Beaverbrook’s eyes as a dangerous Europhile. Of the Tory grandees Lord Avon was noncommittal; Macmillan was decidedly for Heath – ‘I feel sure that Ted is the best choice. He is a stronger character than Maudling’. Home was equivocal; he told Michael King ‘he would have preferred Reggie: he thought lazy men came off better in a crisis’, but to Selwyn Lloyd he ‘made it pretty clear that he himself was going to vote for Heath’. Probably the most important single voice was that of Iain Macleod. If he had stood he would have gained some forty-five votes; though he made no attempt to control the way his supporters cast their votes it was well known that he favoured Heath: almost to a man, the Macleodites plumped for Heath. But for those votes, Maudling would have won. ‘It was in character,’ du Cann wrote balefully. ‘Macleod had let down Alec, now he let down Reggie. Macleod was to have his reward: Heath made him Shadow Chancellor.’ Both Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph were warmly in Heath’s favour. ‘I was a Heath man,’ said Joseph. ‘He had been very good to me…listening to me. He had the right ideas on management. I remember the sheer excitement when he won.’⁴¹