Political Commentary
How Heath Pulled It Off
By ALAN WATKINS
THE scene on Tuesday morning was, in its way, as remarkable as anything to be found in Disraeli's novels. Indeed it would take the pen of Disraeli to do full justice to the occasion. Up the stairway to the committee corridor they trudged, these Tory MPs, many of whom had grown grey in the cause of the established channels and the customary processes of consultation. And yet, here they were, taking part in a democratic elec7 flan; what is more, taking part as if they were enjoying it; for, though they- walked slowly to Committee Room 14, they did not walk reluc- tantly. No African tribe, voting for the first time, could have entered into the spirit of the thing with more enthusiasm. Mr. Humphry Berkeley observed the passing scene with an air of paternity. It seems that the Conservative party, like the man who spoke prose without realising the fact, has really been democratic all the time. This perfectly genuine, and possibly surprising, desire for a quick, clear result, is the key to the events of the past few• days, and several long- term consequences follow from it.
The first consequence is that the magic circle is now disbanded and will never come together again (except, of course, for purely social reasons). In the entire contest there was no more poignant occasion than last Friday's lunch, attended by Mr. Peter Thorneycroft, Mr. Christopher Soames, Mr. Quintin Hogg, Mr. Julian Amery and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd. All five believed that something ought to be done, and that they ought to do it. But what? They could not agree. In the event Mr. Thorneycroft behaved with incredible clumsiness. By announcing, in a lordly fashion, that he would intervene in the second ballot if called upon to do so, he alienated almost every Conservative at Westminster. `Who,' the irreverent inquired, 'is going to call on Thorneycroft anyway?' He was christened 'the Etonian candidate.' It was predicted that he would emerge with even fewer votes than Mr. Enoch Powell, It was not Mr. Thorneycroft's week.
Nor, again, was it Mr. Hogg's week. He would have liked nothing better than to be asked to come forward and save the party. Alas, the call did not come. Though he behaved with more circumspection than Mr. Thorneycroft, he also was dismissed from consideration in the same peremptory way.
Which leaves Mr. Powell. Why did he stand? Whose advice did he take? And what effect will his fifteen votes have on his effectiveness as a preacher? According to one of his young disciples, Mr. Powell stood because he believed that he was in some way obliged to--a stern view of where his duty lay that was not accepted by very many other Conservatives. In making his decision, Mr. Powell did not seek the advice of any senior members of the party. Certainly he did not consult those who had been closely associated with him in past adventures. The result of his most recent adventure is that he has destroyed Powellism. By this I mean that he has destroyed Powellism as a newsworthy, headline- making creed. It should never be forgotten that for all his apparent intellectual austerity, there are few politicians who have used the mechanisms of modern publicity with more effect than Mr. Powell. 'Pernicious nonsense' and 'dangerous rubbish' are phrases of which headlines are made. No longer, however, can Mr. Powell's speeches be written up as if they represent the views of any significant group within the Conservative party. No longer can he be described as the Tory equivalent of Aneurin Bevan : f or Bevan, despite his distaste for machine politics, never polled as badly as Mr. Powell did on Tuesday. (His own advance estimate of his support was twenty.)
Mr. Powell's vote, which can fairly be des- cribed as derisory, shows that there was no move- ment to block the other candidates. If Mr. Thorneycroft or Mr. Hogg had secured any serious support, the natural tactic would have been to vote for Mr. Powell on the first ballot. Nothing of the kind occurred. The party was having none of this. Moreover, as early as Mon- day afternoon, there was talk in the lobbies of the possibility of the defeated candidate conced- ing the election if the leader, on the first ballot, gained an absolute majority but no 15 per cent surcharge. After Tuesday's result the pressure on Mr. Reginald Maudling was almost irresistible. He immediately consulted a few of his friends, including Sir Ian Orr-Ewing, and made up his mind. He would concede. However, the news did not become generally known until a few hours later : Mr. Maudling did not want it to be thought that he was giving in too easily.
Yet why was Mr. Maudling in this position? The MPs who on Monday had been speculating on the possibility of the runner-up's conceding had mostly assumed that the man in this position
lain Macleod's article on 'The Future of • Parliamentary Privilege' has been held over.
would be Mr. Edward Heath. (`Ted's not the con- ceding type,' one of them had remarked.) There is no doubt that Mr. Maudling and his sup- porters were genuinely shocked and surprised at Tuesday's result. Where had they gone wrong?
In the first place, they had assumed that the party would be more affected than it was by emotional factors. There was, for instance, the idea that Sir Alec Douglas-Home had been forced out by Heath's boys, and that therefore the old loyalists would vote for Mr. Maudling. This was a vain hope. The truth is that there was very little senti- mental feeling for Sir Alec. Were we not assured that a number of his old supporters would abstain as a protest against his departure? In fact there was a near-100 per cent poll. Again, there was the notion that the press's strong support for Mr. Heath would produce a reaction. There was even talk of a Harmsworth conspiracy. But, despite a few grumbles, the party refused to be- come really excited about the press. The Con- servatives were unmoved even by the publication of polls, in Tuesday's Daily Mail and Daily Ex- press, showing that Mr. Maudling. was the over- whelming choice of ordinary voters.
In addition to the Maudling camp's over- reliance on these peripheral considerations, there was the fact that it was simply not as efficient as Mr. Heath's. Lord Lambton, Mr. William Clark, Mr. John Hall, Mr. Philip Goodhart and Mr. Patrick Wall all worked hard on Mr. Maudling's behalf, but they overestimated his support by some thirty votes. On the other hand, Mr. Peter Walker, who ran Mr. Heath's campaign in its later stages, came within six of his candidate's final figure. At times, certainly, Mr. Heath's sup- porters were in danger of being too keen— one MP was awakened at two in the morning last weekend and asked whether he was 'solid for Ted'---but this fault was later corrected.
When one compares Mr. Heath's support with Mr. Maudling's, the most striking fact is that it was more defined and more cohesive. Certainly it was made up of disparate and often conflicting elements, but these elements could be identified. There were the tough or would-he tough MPs: for example the Ulstermen (who divided eight to three in favour of Mr. Heath) and the Birming- ham MPs, led by Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd. There was a more gentle element, symbolised by Sir God- frey Nicholson. There were the Bow Group MPs. And, possibly most interesting of all, the bulk of Mr. lain Macleod's old supporters moved over to Mr. Heath. Indeed Mr. Peter Walker himself was originally thought to be a Macleod man. Mr. Ian Gilmour, and Mr. Humphry Berkeley, and Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas, and Mr. David Walder, and others besides, were known to he. All of these voted for Mr. Heath.
I do not altogether share the view that in doing so they, and the rest of Mr. Heath's supporters, were making a choice based solely on the difference in style between the two candidates. The notion-that there is really no political diver- gence between Mr. Heath and Mr. Maudling is one which has been put about mainly in the in- terests of Conservative party unity. It should not be taken seriously. Mr. Heath may not believe in laissez-faire, but he is much nearer to Mr. Powell than Mr. Maudling is. Mr. Maudling is closer, in doctrine at any rate, to Lord Butler. But the Conservative party has chosen to live dangerously. 'The hard-faced men have won,' said a disgruntled supporter of Mr. Maudling. regard this,' said an old newspaperman, 'as a victory for the unit trust boys.' A Labour minister put the situation differently. 'It's bad enough,' he. said, `having one Harold Wilson around, without there being two of them.'
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