SHARED OPINION
The Edward Heath I knew. Well, for one lunch, anyway
FRANK JOHNSON
When Diana, Princess of Wales, died, every editor who had ever been anywhere near her wrote of the Diana he knew. Sir Edward Heath has not died. According to the unkind, only his memoirs have. But because of the memoirs — the extracts from which in the Sunday Times I found oddly readable — he is in the news: my excuse for recounting my one meeting with him.
We of my occupation meet people such as Sir Edward all the time. But usually both sides have one elbow in a tray of canapes or sushi. Both pairs of eyes scan the room for the lady in the pinafore with the cham- pagne bottle. All around is the `yock, yock, yock' of insincere laughter. Neither side usually has the slightest interest in what the other is saying, even if they could hear, especially if they could hear. Both wonder why they are there. After a while, the cham- pagne causes the room to reel. Our response to this is illogical: more cham- pagne. Too late, we leave. Must stop wast- ing my life like this, we vow. We don't.
What I mean by a meeting is a long lunch a deux. It happened between Sir Edward and me only once. I will rephrase that: it sounds like Mr Carling on the subject of Diana. What I mean is that the one lunch I ever had with Sir Edward has stayed in the memory more so than almost any other I have ever had with a politician. He would have forgotten it, but I have not.
It was in 1982. I was parliamentary sketchwriter for the Times, having previous- ly been the same for the Daily Telegraph, including during the last two years of Sir Edward's premiership. One of the ways of drawing attention to oneself in Tory jour- nalism at that time, as in the Tory party, was to oppose Sir Edward. We assumed that his economic policy would end in fail- ure. It did. When it did, we assumed that we had been right. We were not. All eco- nomic policies end in failure. Some of us were too young to know that, others too malicious. As we grow older, we realise that the ministers conducting a failing economic policy often themselves know that it is fail- ing, but are trapped by events. In due course, Mr Blair and Mr Brown will feel thus. The Greeks founded an entire tragic literature on such situations. Anyway, in my parliamentary sketches, I used to deride Mr Heath. The Telegraph's managing editor, a consummate toady to authority of all kinds, used occasionally to make trouble for me over it. Otherwise, it was very unbrave.
But by 1982 it was even less brave to oppose Sir Edward, so I no longer men- tioned him much. The then recession might have raised his hopes for Mrs Thatcher's ruin, but the recession seemed to be com- ing to an end. One day, I opened my post in the Times room at the Commons and it contained an invitation from Sir Edward to address his constituency supper club. For various reasons, I had to decline, but invit- ed him to lunch. He accepted.
I consulted a female friend of his as to what sort of place he would like to eat in. `Somewhere expensive' she replied, affec- tionately. How could I instantly show good- will? I asked. 'Vintage champagne,' she replied. This statesman risen from the peo- ple was, then, a man of simple tastes.
I consulted the scholarly guides as to the more expensive restaurants, and settled for Wilton's in Wilton Street, no, Walton's in Walton Street, or whatever. I was at my post a quarter of an hour early. A vintage bottle chilled away in a huge bucket by our table. The Times accounts department did not yet know the worst.
Sir Edward arrived. 'Like a glass of champagne?' I inquired. 'What's there to celebrate?' he croaked. My morale became strangely low. He was going to be in one of those monosyllabic moods which the nation knew so well. I had with me a book about the 1930s. After five minutes of silence, during which he knocked back my — that is, the accounts department's — cham- pagne, he groaned, 'What's that you're reading?' It was a book saying Chamberlain was more or less right about Munich, I explained. I'd always thought that myself.
Immediately, Sir Edward was years younger. As an undergraduate, though a Tory, he had opposed Quintin Hogg, the Munichois. Tory candidate, at the 1938 Oxford by-election. Suddenly, I was the Chamberlainite establishment against which he had taken a brave stand at a time when no one knew whether it was safe for an ambitious youth to do so.
We began to debate the issue. He would interrupt my arguments with occasional cries of, 'Balls!' I would interrupt his with occasional cries of, 'M. sommelier, another bottle of vintage champagne!'
Hours passed. Sir Edward's detective, in the far corner, began to die of boredom. Nei- ther Sir Edward nor I could be expected to cease combat on account of a sole casualty.
Eventually, an armistice was agreed, and my antagonist rose to leave. 'We must do this again,' he said. A couple of weeks later the Falklands war broke out. I complained in print that he had not told the Commons where he stood on the war. Some researcher of his telephoned to say that he had made his position clear on ITN. I replied that it would be better if he did so in the Commons of which he was a member.
It was all over between us, I assumed. We never 'did this' again. But I shall always be grateful to him for enabling me to talk about something momentous over lunch with a politician: Munich I mean, not the price of the champagne. This week is Munich's 60th anniversary. It was a glorious thing for a young Tory to be right about, or, from my point of view, wrong.
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