On track but running out of fuel
Norman Tebbit
MICHAEL HESELTINE by Michael Crick Hamish Hamilton, £20, pp. 480 ichael Crick's book is hardly a literary masterpiece. The pedestrian style is singularly ill-suited to the mercurial personality of its subject. The boring early chapters (57 pages) on the schoolboy and student Heseltine go on and on and on. There are even ten pages of hagiography of Anne Heseltine telling how 'Christopher White [of the Ashmoleani thrilled Anne by also asking her to do some scholarly work at the museum', although it glosses over what was long-standing gossip at Westmin- ster by but a fleeting reference to her at one time being 'frantic with the thought that her husband might leave her'. In con- trast with these pages of padding, the only thing for which Heseltine will be remem- bered, the political regicide which brought down our greatest post-war prime minister, is over and done with in a single chapter of 23 pages. Even allowing that this is not a political history of our times but a book about Heseltine, there is a lack of balance, in the exclusion from the story of Thatcher's downfall and the rise of John Major, of the parts played by others.
None the less the picture drawn of Michael Heseltine is one easily recognised by those who have known him. Crick takes the reader back to Heseltine's adolescence when what one can only describe as a polit- ical missile targeted himself on the office of prime minister. Like a laser-guided weapon, once assigned to his mission Heseltine has remained on track ever since.
As a colleague over many years I am sur- prised by nothing in this book except for some things left out. Crick rightly sees Heseltine's single-mindedness as both a strength and a weakness. Heseltine's early planning was excellent. First get rich, he decided, not because he is besotted with money but because he saw it as a necessary fuel to drive his ambition. Would that I had had as much sense, been as ,single-minded m or known how easy it is to make money if all one's energy is applied to the task.
Readers are left to reach their own con- clusions on Michael Heseltine's personal values, his ethics and what, aside from per- sonal ambition, has driven him forward. At times his conduct has been tasteless, tacky if not dishonourable, and self-centred beyond even the call of his profession.
The case of his National Service is a good example. It is hard totally to condemn anyone knowing that National Service was coming to an end for seeking to escape completely. Having tried and failed to do that, to go on to escape from the army by standing for Parliament in a hopelessly safe Labour seat is a more dubious but still forgivable ploy. But it jars the nerves that after just 61 days' service as a second lieutenant Heseltine wears his Guards tie as though he had served his regiment, not legally deserted it.
In his political career Heseltine seems not to have wanted friends but actively used acolytes until their usefulness waned and they were dropped. Crick is unflatter- ing in his personal assessment, though he clearly has sympathy with his subject's muzzy, leftist, paternalistic corporatism.
And how often do you get these overwhelm- ing urges to fly Mr Marshall...Mr Marshall?' I thought that the exposure of Heseltine's limited powers of original thought particularly cruel. Not too many of mY former colleagues were power-houses of originality, though even fewer, I think, would have paid others to write books set- ting out their political credo, as Crick alleges Heseltine did.
To say Heseltine emerges as unscrupu- lous would be to do him an injustice, yet that is the implication of much of this book. -Nor can he be written off as an incompetent because of his political disasters. Despite boasts about efficiency he let the Nimrod project run out of con- trol. His tenures at the Department of the Environment were lacklustre and at the DTI he bungled both the Post Office and coal privatisations. It would, however, be wrong to forget his successes. His establishment of the Audit Commission, the creation of the Urban Development Corporations most notably in London's docklands — and his successful campaign against CND weigh heavily in his favour. While Crick gives plenty of credit to others for Heseltine's achievement, not least to Peter Blaker in the battle against CND, it was Heseltine who staked his reputation and who gave colour and flair to the campaign. Few successes in politics are single-handed affairs, but almost always there is a single pivotal figure, and in this case it was Hesel- tine. It is a pity he was never sent to sort out social security. Crick sheds no new light on the West- land affair. He regurgitates some tired left- wing tosh about the Belgrano. His account of Heseltine's role in John Major's leader- ship re-election campaign against Redwood is sparse and poorly informed. At the end of the book, what do we make of this portrait? Heseltine appears as a man of no great political insight, but a shrewd political operator, driven by ambi- tion rather than idealism. Neither particu- larly left nor right, a corporatist and fixer by instinct and practice, he could never understand Margaret Thatcher. At the roots of his hostility to her is a macho streak which sees only a subservient role for women, however talented, and a resent- ment that a woman achieved the supreme office which he coveted and which was denied him.
In a meandering passage Crick reflects upon the Heseltine government that might have been had he beaten John Major in 1990, but he scarcely understands whY someone like me set personal ambition aside to stop him. Heseltine's laser-guided system can focus on only one target at a time. He is a supremely good one-ball juggler, but a prime minister must keep a dozen or more balls in the air — and that he could not do. Finally, will that ambitious political guided missile hit its target? I think not. It is still on track but running out of fuel, and the target is accelerating away.
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