Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (25 page)

Willie Whitelaw, Keith Joseph and Edward du Cann were all approached by Airey Neave with the offer of his services as their campaign manager. The spectrum of views held by these potential contestants suggests that Neave’s overtures to them were not motivated by ideological constraints. His primary objective was to get rid of Heath.

In this role Neave had done well, with the assistance of his friend Nigel Fisher,
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in collecting almost seventy pledged supporters for du Cann. The scorecard was far from reliable due to the duplicity of many members of the electorate. Even so, Neave’s figures were at least three times better than the much vaguer list of supporters Margaret Thatcher’s fey and rather ineffective PPS, Fergus Montgomery, claimed were for her.

In mid-January 1975, the rumours, numbers, odds and runners were sharply clarified by the game-changing withdrawal of Edward du Cann. But only Margaret and Denis Thatcher and Edward du Cann knew it was coming. A few hours before the public announcement, Neave had a conversation with Bill Shelton, the MP for Streatham, who was counting the Thatcher pledges, suggesting that they should come to ‘some arrangement’, by which du Cann’s votes could be merged with her votes. The agreement was easily reached and consisted
of Shelton stepping down to a number two role and Neave being appointed as the number one campaign manager. All it required was the approval of the candidate herself.

Airey Neave came to see Margaret Thatcher after a late-night division at the House on 15 January. In the manner of a George Smiley, he asked who was running her campaign. Entering into the spirit of dissimulation, she replied that she did not really have a campaign. It is hard to decide whether the question or the answer was more disingenuous. What happened next, by Margaret Thatcher’s account, was: ‘Airey said: “I think I had better do it for you.” I agreed with enthusiasm. I knew this meant he would swing as many du Cann supporters as possible behind me.’
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Her instant trust in Airey Neave was surprising after the way he had been hawking himself around to other candidates. But she had known and liked him ever since their first encounters at meetings of the Conservative Candidates Association in 1950–1951. They had been in the same chambers at the bar. All her life she had a romantic view of war heroes and secret-service operatives. For her, he was the right man at the right time.

With the appointment of Airey Neave to run her campaign, Margaret Thatcher’s leadership prospects were transformed. She was no longer a stalking horse, but a serious runner with credible supporters, organisers and voters. No one could be sure what was going to happen in round one or round two (if it came to that) of the ballot. But the sheer unpredictability of the contest made her an exciting candidate as the end game began.

A STUNNING RESULT ON THE FIRST BALLOT

For the next three weeks, events moved at break-neck speed. Airey Neave ran by far the subtlest and smoothest campaign. Its key ingredients were discreet canvassing, accurate counting, confidential meetings with the candidate and calculated misinformation. By contrast, Heath met no undecided MPs on a one-to-one basis. He felt it demeaning to solicit votes. When he came to conduct a Christmas carol concert in Broadstairs, just before Christmas, I had a few moments alone with him and suggested he should talk to some of his new colleagues from the 1974 intakes, privately. ‘No I don’t think so, actually’, he replied. ‘They all know where I stand.’
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On reflection he relented, allowing his Parliamentary Private Secretary Tim Kitson to organise a series of dinners in a private room at Bucks Club throughout January. These were stilted affairs, attended by around twenty colleagues at a time, with deferential questions from the guests and wooden answers from the leader. The exercise did little or nothing to change the long-held feelings of animosity towards Heath that had been nurtured by so many for so long.

Just before nominations closed, Hugh Fraser threw his hat into the ring. For a while, this was thought to be a blow to the Thatcher camp, who feared that their candidate’s votes would be siphoned off to him. But such fears were misplaced. Although he had been an effective Secretary of State in Macmillan’s government, he was not a serious contender. A romantic Highlander, the younger brother of Lord Lovat, Fraser was a mixture of original ideas, quixotic ambition and a tendency to knock over the card table when he was holding the aces. Unfortunately, at this stage of his career he held no court cards, let alone aces.

Hugh Fraser was contemptuous of Heath but cautiously admiring towards Thatcher. Nevertheless, he felt Britain was not ready for a woman prime minister, particularly one who had shown so little interest in foreign affairs, a frequently heard complaint against her. But he thought Margaret Thatcher’s time might yet come and that she would make a good Chancellor of the Exchequer in a future government headed by Willie Whitelaw.

That last opinion was being increasingly voiced by Tory MPs who had been listening to Margaret Thatcher’s speeches on the Finance Bill. The best of these came on 22 January when she was leading the opposition’s attack on the Budget proposals for a Capital Transfer Tax.

In the early part of the debate she had attacked Denis Healey with a staunch defence of the right of families to pass on inheritance from generation to generation. ‘Why does the Chancellor take such objection to such efforts for one’s children?’ she asked. ‘Some think of it as a duty and a privilege.’
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Responding in the wind-up of the debate the following day, Healey counter-attacked her use of the word privilege, using a colourful metaphor. Comparing Margaret Thatcher to the legendary heroine of the Spanish Civil War, he mockingly described her as ‘La Pasionara of privilege’, who had decided to ‘see her party tagged as the party of the rich few’.
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In the midst of an uproar of points of order, Margaret Thatcher came back with a knockout blow. ‘Some Chancellors are macroeconomic. Other Chancellors are fiscal. This one is just plain cheap.’
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Her back-benchers roared approval, chanting ‘cheap, cheap, cheap’ at the discomfited Healey, who looked as crestfallen as a school bully who had been thrown to the ground by a girl wrestler.

The Conservatives were electrified by this momentary surge in their morale. Margaret Thatcher instinctively turned up the voltage, delivering a final flurry of thunderbolts at the Capital Transfer Tax which she denounced because it would affect ‘not only the one in a thousand to whom he referred but everyone, including people born like I was with no privilege at all. It will affect us as well as the Socialist millionaires.’

Her conclusion was that CTT would damage private businesses, farming, woodlands and shipping; and it would also damage

the very nature of our society by concentrating power and property in the hands of the State … We believe that the future of freedom is inseparable from a wide distribution of private property among the people … We can say little for this tax. It should be withdrawn.
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The vehemence of this four-word crescendo would have delighted her old Oxford speaking tutor, Mrs Gatehouse.

Many of us listening from the backbenches to this fighting speech saw that Margaret Thatcher had seized the initiative in the leadership contest. Up to this moment the campaign had been a prosaic affair characterised by grubby attempts at character assassination, unsuccessful efforts to persuade the unwilling to stand and dubious number counting. Suddenly a passionate candidate had lifted the battle to the higher ground of beliefs and principles.

The Tory party of the mid-1970s had become mired in defeatism. Buffeted by events and outmanoeuvred by union militancy it had lost its confidence. On that day in the House of Commons Margaret Thatcher was an inspirational force. Her crushing of Healey was the talk of the tea room for the next few hours. So was her championship of inheritance, family businesses and private property as essential ingredients in what she called ‘the future of freedom’.

I recall Teddy Taylor, the MP for Glasgow Cathcart, saying ‘we’ve heard the voice of leadership today’, as he declared he would probably vote for her.
This was a considerable surprise, for Teddy Taylor was thought to be a loyal admirer of Heath, even though he had resigned as a junior minister from his government on the issue of devolution. It was one of several indications that Margaret Thatcher’s speech had turned votes in her favour. The press gallery caught the new mood too.
The Times
reported, ‘Far fewer members … are speaking dismissively of a woman’s candidature for the party leadership than they did a fortnight ago, when she announced her challenge’.
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With less than two weeks to go until the first ballot, Airey Neave and his core group of six or seven ardent Thatcherites began canvassing with skill and sophistication. It was the ideal role for an intelligence officer well versed in the tradecraft of deceiving the enemy. Neave’s basic tactic was to pretend that his candidate was not gaining enough ground, and to tell all and sundry that ‘Ted’s bound to win’.
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These predictions upset a good many colleagues who thought little of Margaret Thatcher, but would like to see Willie Whitelaw, Jim Prior, Francis Pym or A.N. Other take over the leadership. Norman Tebbit was one of Neave’s key lieutenants in the dark art of persuading the electorate to vote for Thatcher in order to open up the contest for a second ballot. ‘I talked round quite a few colleagues into voting for Margaret on these grounds’, he recalled. One of these voters, according to Tebbit, was Michael Heseltine.
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The most Machiavellian manoeuvres were handled by Airey Neave himself. In a conversation with me, he said that Margaret was ‘doing well, but not nearly well enough’. Because I was known to be a close friend of Hugh Fraser, he asked me if I could persuade Hugh ‘to slip one or two of his votes to Margare’.
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The impression Neave was trying to disseminate was that his candidate was well short of the support needed to win.

I also witnessed a late-night conversation between Airey Neave and Sir John Rodgers. The latter, somewhat in his cups, kept repeating that he was ‘loyal to Ted, but fed up with him … the man needs a jolt to show he can’t take us for granted’.

‘Then jolt him by voting for Margaret. She won’t win, but she’ll give him a fright’, said Neave.

At the time he was saying this, he knew from his double- and treble-checked canvassing returns that his scorecard showed 120 certain votes for Thatcher, and only 80 for Heath. But Rogers fell for it, and then felt guilty; huffing and puffing for months afterwards that he had been ‘tricked’ into not voting for Ted.
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It is doubtful whether Margaret Thatcher ever knew the dark secrets of Neave’s dissimulation techniques. She wisely stayed aloof from the horse-trading. She saw any colleague who asked to meet her, and gave a few press interviews. For most of the time, she concentrated on the Finance Bill and confided only in Denis.

In comparison with Airey Neave’s tireless subterranean operations, the organisers of Ted Heath’s campaign (his Parliamentary Private Secretaries, Tim Kitson and Kenneth Baker) were overconfident and overbearing. Like their boss, they simply did not believe that a former Prime Minister could be beaten by an inexperienced woman. They were also lulled into a false sense of security by Neave’s misinformation about the strength of the support he knew was pledged to Margaret Thatcher. So, in the belief that their man was home and dry, the Heathites made little extra effort in the closing days before the ballot. Cheered up still further by some evidence that backing for the incumbent leader was firming up at the last moment, Ted Heath and his team stayed aloof, waiting in tranquillity for the result.

On the day of the first ballot, Margaret Thatcher had a lunch date at Rothschild’s Bank, which had been arranged by the thirty-two-year-old Norman Lamont MP who worked for them.
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‘Let’s vote together and then go to your bank’, she told him, giving him the impression as they went into Committee Room 14 to mark their ballot papers that she was taking a close interest in which name he put his cross against.

Their lunch was not a success. Every member of the Rothschild family, with the exception of Evelyn de Rothschild, had found an excuse to be absent. The non-Rothschild executives took it upon themselves to be ‘incredibly rude’ about the economic ideas their guest supported. ‘Don’t ever take me to that red bank again’, she said to Lamont. On the way back to the House of Commons she saw an
Evening Standard
placard saying ‘Constituencies rally to Heath’. ‘That’s Ted stirring up the press against me’, she complained with a touch of nervousness in her voice.
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The ballot closed at 3.30 p.m. on 5 February. The result, when it came some ten minutes later, was a bombshell. Airey Neave came to the waiting Margaret
Thatcher and said in his soft voice: ‘It’s good news. You’re ahead in the poll. You’ve got 130 votes to Ted’s 119.’ Hugh Fraser had 16 votes.
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Margaret Thatcher was stunned but exhilarated. She had never quite believed she would do it, and certainly not by such a convincing margin. Heath resigned as Leader of the Opposition immediately. Although a second ballot was required under the rules, most insiders thought Margaret Thatcher was now unstoppable, as she only had to pick up thirty-one fresh votes to achieve victory.

Whilst privately ecstatic about her success, the hot favourite for the run-off was careful to avoid any hint of presumptuous triumphalism. While being toasted by her supporters, she quietly returned to her tasks and duties. ‘Here’s to our future leader – where is she?’ was the cry of her fan club as they raised their silver tankards of champagne to her in the smoking room.
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The answer, which took some time to emerge, was that she had returned to the Committee Stage of the Finance Bill. And there she stayed, speaking and voting on complex amendments until almost midnight. For her, even in the hour of near-triumph, it was business as usual – with the second ballot fixed for 11 February.