In this landmark book Michael McManus, Heath's one-time political secretary, gathers reflections and contributions from an unprecedented range of sources, including Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine, Roy Jenkins, Jim Prior and Steve Redgrave, to shed new light on the personality and politics of Sir Edward Heath.
In this landmark book Michael McManus, Heath's one-time political secretary, gathers reflections and contributions from an unprecedented range of sources, including Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine, Roy Jenkins, Jim Prior and Steve Redgrave, to shed new light on the personality and politics of Sir Edward Heath.
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Overview
In this landmark book Michael McManus, Heath's one-time political secretary, gathers reflections and contributions from an unprecedented range of sources, including Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine, Roy Jenkins, Jim Prior and Steve Redgrave, to shed new light on the personality and politics of Sir Edward Heath.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783963010 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Elliott & Thompson |
| Publication date: | 07/14/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 432 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Michael McManus was responsible for researching, drafting and editing Sir Edward Heath’s memoirs, The Course of My Life (1998). He is also the author of several books of his own, including two biographies: of the former Liberal leader Jo Grimond, Towards the Sound of Gunfire (2001); and of the actor Nicholas Courtney, Still Getting Away With It (2005). He has extensive political experience, having worked for three Conservative Prime Ministers; as a special adviser in three government departments; and as a political and strategy consultant. He ran the Press Complaints Commission 2012–14. He is now a full-time writer, with a number of plays and a musical theatre piece at various stages of the production process.
Read an Excerpt
Edward Heath
A Singular Life
By Michael McManus
Elliott and Thompson Limited
Copyright © 2016 Michael McManusAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78396-301-0
CHAPTER 1
Early life (1916–1950)
The life of Edward Richard George Heath was remarkable by any standards, but it began unremarkably. He was born in Broadstairs on the Isle of Thanet. His father William was a jobbing builder who became a small businessman and his mother Edith had been a lady's maid. William was a fairly laid-back character with an eye for the ladies, whereas Edith was fiercely ambitious and determined that Edward should want for nothing.
With the recent death of Denis Healey, there is no one left who knew the young 'Teddy' Heath but, fortunately, many interviews exist with those who did. They give a consistent flavour of a serious and ambitious young man who drove himself very hard indeed; and who was generously supported by his parents, who denied themselves many aspects of material comfort in order to provide for him as he progressed through grammar school and university.
Heath and his younger brother John were very different, but remained close until John died, in his early sixties, in 1982. Their father William once said: 'Johnny would no sooner get to the bottom of the street than he fell into a tar barrel or something. Teddy could be out for hours and hours, and still come home as bright as a new pin.' In another interview he said: 'Teddy has a will of iron. He read and read about politics. His bedroom was like a library. When he was reading – or for that matter playing music – to try to talk to him was like speaking to a brick wall. Then suddenly he would stop what he was doing and say, "Let's go for a walk, mummy." And the rest of us would have to stop what we were doing and go out with him.'
One of Heath's school friends from Thanet days, Ronald Whittell, had this to say about young Teddy and the household in which he grew up:
'Mrs Heath ... was one of the most determined women I've ever known. She used to complain about Teddy sitting up in his bedroom reading instead of spending more time in boyish pursuits. It was a decided shock to both his parents when he turned out the way he did – they hadn't expected such a brilliant child ... He never tried for popularity. He wasn't actively liked or actively disliked. He was respected and accepted, though a little bit intolerant ... He seemed to achieve maturity of character earlier than others.'
The only time I saw tears in Heath's eyes was when Michael Cockerell, that brilliant BBC film-maker, showed him a montage of images of his mother. 'Yes, so beautiful,' he murmured gently (Michael also asked him whether he had ever changed a nappy, which elicited a far less revealing – indeed rather nonplussed – response). Edith Heath drove herself very hard, not least to provide for her beloved elder son, and when her terminal cancer manifested itself while Heath was on a trip to the US as a newly-elected Member of Parliament, she could hardly bring herself to reveal her condition to her family. William Heath remarried twice – and all three of his wives were 'Mummy' to him and to his sons, but Edith was irreplaceable to Heath. Although he was clearly delighted his father lived to see him become Prime Minister, we all knew it was his mother who made him the man he was.
John Heath married twice and his first (by this point ex-) wife, Marian Evans, wrote a book in 1970 entitled Ted Heath – A Family Portrait. Heath thought the book meretricious and opportunistic; and he deeply resented the impression it gave of him having been over-indulged as a child and a young man. Indeed, he was highly sensitive to any charge that he was spoiled, or favoured over his brother John, four years his junior, but there's no doubt he was the beneficiary of disproportionate financial support from both parents and also of love, affection and attention from his mother in particular. Especially when considered in light of the genuinely virulent attacks to which Heath was subsequently subjected, the book in fact reads rather well, even favourably. What really upset Heath – that shy and private man – was surely that his family and its internal affairs had been brought into the public domain in this fashion, purely because of their connection with him. This is what Heath said, in an interview for his memoirs, about his family background, his upbringing and, in particular, his relationship with his brother:
'Our sporting interests were different, because I never played soccer. Our father was a very good soccer player, but refused to allow me to play soccer, because, he said, it would interfere with musical activities and getting down to the homework, which he was always very insistent upon. My brother, who wasn't so concerned with homework, did play soccer. In the summer I was swimming and played tennis; and in the winter I did cross-country running. [John's] first marriage just didn't come off – and he allowed her to divorce him, by going off with some woman for the night. Nothing happened, but it was good enough grounds for divorce. She then married a journalist in Broadstairs and wrote the book about me, to make some money. In that, she says that I was always the favourite of the family and he was ill treated. There's no truth in that at all, because my parents went to great lengths to ensure that we were similarly treated. The examples are that I got the scholarship to Chatham House but he couldn't get a scholarship, so they paid for him to go to Chatham House; and another example was that I learned the piano, so they insisted on him learning the violin. He didn't follow it up after he left school because he went to the war, but afterwards he did become very interested in music and he and his second wife spent a lot of time going to concerts in London and so on. So we had that interest in common.'
Heath was certainly a smart and mature child and, whilst he was no boy genius, he was a diligent student and, for much of his schooling, was accelerated into a class where the other pupils were a year or two older than he was. One of his former teachers, Dr E.A. Woolf, who travelled with Heath on his first overseas trip – to Paris when Heath was thirteen – said this in a newspaper interview many years later:
'I dare to say if Heath had applied his mind to it, he could have been academically brilliant, but he would only bite on the subjects that really interested him. For the rest, a broad outline satisfied him. We were a very lively school under a great headmaster. I was a Liberal – I stood as a Liberal candidate – but I don't think any of my current affairs class became Liberals. I didn't mind what point of view the boys put forward, so long as they supported it with reasoned argument. Heath could certainly argue.'
When Heath was in his seventies, a mischievous journalist good-naturedly tried to tease out of him whether his reading ever veered into the traditional areas of interest for an adolescent boy. Did he, she asked, pore through books to 'find the rude bits'? At first he deflected the question: 'Of course they talk about all these things and it is ridiculous to try and censor them ... I think there is a stage in life that most people go through, when they want to find out about these things.' Did he? she asked. 'Oh yes ... people behave like that when they are in that stage of youth.'
He enjoyed precocious conversations with adults, about music, history and current affairs. Through his father (who looked after the weekend homes of a number of successful and high-profile London personalities) he became acquainted with Alec Martin of Christie's and also a leading London solicitor, Royalton Kisch, who made a big impact on him. Arnold Goodman (later Lord Goodman) was, at that time, a young solicitor in Kisch's office and became a lifelong friend of Heath:
'I remember him as an alert young man. I think of him then as an eager, questing person who was looking for founts of experience, founts of sophistication, founts of knowledge. I think perhaps he was looking for these outside his own world and often from people older than himself. He was very genuine. He was not at all a young man on the make.'
As he considered his options upon leaving grammar school, Heath fixed his sights not only on the ancient university of Oxford, but specifically upon the college that he believed would lend the greatest prestige to him in future life – Balliol. He would later claim: 'Balliol helped me. It really ironed out all the class distinctions, and then so did the army.' He won his place, but not, to his chagrin, an academic entrance award to smooth his path. Financing his life at Oxford was therefore a challenge. He received a loan of £90 a year from the Kent Education Committee, but his family had to make sacrifices to ensure he was able to pay his way as he sought to impress under the shadows of the 'dreaming spires', topping his funds up to around £220 per year. They evidently did so willingly. William Heath later explained that Mr Norman, the headmaster at Chatham House, sent for him when Teddy won his place, to persuade him he must take it up: 'He told me that Teddy might be Prime Minister. So his mother and I decided that he should go. It would have broken his heart had we refused. I had to work damned hard though.'
It is hard to avoid concluding that, to the young Heath, everything and even every one was, in a sense, a potentially helpful means to an end – grammar school, university, his various foreign trips, the interim jobs he took, even the Second World War – and, from an early age, the end he had in mind was a successful political career. He took every opportunity, seized upon every introduction and missed no chance to widen his circle of acquaintances, his contacts or his personal horizons.
In his early days at Oxford, Heath had to survive on a very restricted budget, but still he threw himself with gusto into the activities that fascinated him. He joined the Oxford Union Debating Society and, whilst he joined all the political societies, he was already a Conservative. He also founded the Balliol choir, composed incidental music for the university dramatic society and helped to reconstruct the chapel organ. Indeed, he soon won the three-year organ scholarship at Balliol, worth £100 a year, which enabled him both to live less frugally and also to add a fourth year in Oxford to the usual three. His discipline and determination to succeed had again won through. When a future parliamentary colleague, Julian Amery, arrived at Balliol two years after Heath, he found him well established: 'Impeccable in dress and precise in speech, Ted was already a leading figure in the Oxford University Conservative Association and would soon become President of the Union. He laughed easily, seemed to be everywhere and yet somehow remained a man apart.'
Heath's academic work generally took second place to his other, more career-orientated endeavours but to his credit, as one of his tutors from his time at Balliol cheerfully attested some years later, he never sought to conceal this fact. Charles Morris (later Lord Morris of Grasmere) was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at Balliol:
'When he was seeking a place at the college, straight from school, I asked him what he wanted to do in life after leaving Oxford, and he replied that he wanted to be "a professional politician". I do not think I ever heard any other schoolboy answer a similar question in these terms.'
Heath used his long vacations to travel; and a European continent in ferment with conflict and political extremism was the crucible in which his lifelong political convictions were formed and hardened. His first big trip was to the Nuremberg rallies in September 1937, when he was introduced to several senior members of the Nazi hierarchy. He returned home convinced war could not be far off – and utterly opposed to the policy of appeasement. The following summer he visited the Republican side in Spain during the civil war. This is a first-hand account from Heath of how he diced with death:
'My sympathies were firmly with the elected government of the Spanish Republic simply because it was not a dictatorship. The base for our visit was Barcelona, and we travelled there via Calais, Paris and Perpignan. Instructions in our rooms told us to go down to the basement in the event of an air-raid alarm. It was just as well that we did not heed those instructions, opting instead for the excitement of watching the bombers flying past. During one raid, a bomb went straight down the hotel lift shaft, killing all those who had rushed down to the basement shelter. A few days later, we set out to drive south to Tarragona and, when we were nearly halfway there, a single aeroplane flying low along the road spotted our procession of cars and machine-gunned us. His aim was poor and we were able to stop the cars, dive into the ditch alongside the road and crawl along it away from our vehicles.'
Academically Heath never quite dazzled, but he certainly made a name for himself in political circles, not least when, having seen the preparations for a European war which were underway in both Germany and Spain, he supported the Master of Balliol, Sandy Lindsay, in the 'Munich' by-election in the autumn of 1938, against the pro-Chamberlain official Tory candidate Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham). He was ambitious, but also highly principled. His opposition to appeasement was also fiercely expressed in the Union chamber.
When the Union debated the motion 'That this House disapproves of the policy of Peace without Honour', Heath 'attacked the muddled policy of the Government, which had been largely responsible for bringing us to the verge of disaster', according to the report in the university newspaper Isis: 'He maintained that the original Chamberlain declaration was indecisive ... He had no faith in a lasting peace, but foresaw further trouble – in Switzerland, Holland, and elsewhere. Had we won Hitler's goodwill? Hitler could not be trusted: that was clear to everyone save Mr Chamberlain. He was prepared to give justice, but not sympathy, to Nazi Germany, for Nazism was essentially incompatible with Democracy. Finally, our defences were in a sorry state. This speech was competent if a little too long and, as a Conservative, Mr Heath must have astonished some of his confrères by his bitter attack.'
Heath assailed Chamberlain more fiercely still when the Union Society was invited to express 'No confidence in the National Government as at present constituted' in November 1938 (carried by 203 to 163). As Isis reported, Heath said that 'everywhere there was the greatest distrust of the Government. It was nothing more nor less than an organised hypocrisy, composed of Conservatives with nothing to conserve and Liberals with a hatred of liberty ... As for Mr Chamberlain's foreign policy, it could only be described in the maxim, "If at first you don't concede, fly, fly, fly, again" ... He quoted an American journalist's opinion that, in the next crisis, Mr Chamberlain would again turn all four cheeks at once.'
Heath soon caught the eye (and earned the admiration and friendship) of Philip Kaiser, an Oxford contemporary and friend with a great future ahead of him as a US diplomat:
'You got the impression of a guy who was highly intelligent, well motivated, not a glad-hander but agreeable and congenial. Retrospectively, perhaps, looking back, there was a little bit of a quality which comes out more prominently in the person presented today – essentially self-protective, a certain obliqueness about him which came through in a rather charming way in those days. Now that characteristic is, I think, part of his image problem today – it's come through rather strongly in the public man.'
By the time he left Oxford in the summer of 1939, Heath had been President of the Oxford Union and also of the Balliol Junior Common Room; and he had also headed the university's Conservative Association. He and Madron Seligman, who would become his lifelong best friend, planned a trip to Franco's Spain, but Heath was denied a visa, so they decided instead to travel to the disputed city of Danzig, via Berlin. Heath recounts again:
'When we arrived in Berlin, we looked at the grotesque new Chancellery and then went for a full briefing from Anthony Mann, the Daily Telegraph correspondent there. His warnings had filled us thoroughly with foreboding by the time we caught the night train to Danzig. The atmosphere was very tense, and both Madron and I were acutely aware of how the attitude towards the British had changed among the German population. Then we decided to go by boat up-river to Warsaw, at that time still a lovely, sophisticated city and one very much under French influence. Its softness of style, welcoming atmosphere and easy pace of living were reminiscent of Paris. We reported to the British embassy, where the ambassador and his staff were horrified to see us. Having heard their forecast, we decided to start on the long hitch-hike back home.
'We saw massive German forces in tanks and trucks moving towards the Polish border. As if we did not already have enough problems, Madron insisted upon pulling out his penny whistle, playing once again the same old tunes I had heard incessantly for the past three weeks — all slightly out of tune. I had come to dislike these dirges intensely, and had already lost my temper with him after his umpteenth rendition of "Colonel Bogey" on the platform of Leipzig station. Now, as we tried to escape Germany on this ghastly train, out came the wretched penny whistle again. We had another flaming row, but at least I won and we had some peace afterwards.
'Once we reached the border, we walked across the bridge to safety in France. Late that night, we arrived to find a blacked-out Paris, dropped off the car and spent the night in a small hotel. The next day, we reported to the British embassy. "Unless you get out now," was the simple advice, "you will never get out at all." So full was the cross-Channel boat that, as it pulled away from the quay, it seemed about to capsize, taking all those waving goodbye down with it. My parents met me at Dover a week before Poland was invaded. It had not been possible for me to get in touch with them while we were away. They must have had some anxious moments, but they never mentioned them, and never complained. We had cut things pretty fine.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Edward Heath by Michael McManus. Copyright © 2016 Michael McManus. Excerpted by permission of Elliott and Thompson Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,ONE Early life (1916–1950),
TWO Rise through the ranks (1950–1959),
THREE Prime Minister (1970–1974),
FOUR Out of office (1974–1997),
FIVE Final years (1997–,
2005),
SIX Sailor and musician,
Coda: Heath, sex and the allegations of 2015,
Acknowledgements,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,