I not only felt well-suited to my new job: it was also an exciting time to begin it. The incoherence and irresponsibility of socialist economic management had become apparent. The optimistic projections of George Brown’s National Plan, published in September 1965, were an albatross to hang around Labour’s neck, as forecasts of economic growth were not met. Labour’s pre-election promises of ‘no severe increases in taxation’ were broken with the announcement in the budget of May 1966 that a new Selective Employment Tax (SET) would be introduced, in effect a payroll tax falling particularly heavily on service industries: it was a major part of my brief to oppose it. The Labour Government’s reliance on its alleged special relationship with the trade unions to secure voluntary incomes restraint as a means of controlling inflation had already lost credibility with the failure of the Government-TUC joint Declaration of Intent, which had first been proclaimed amid fanfares in December 1964. In July 1966 the ‘voluntary’ approach was jettisoned. It was announced that there would be a six months’ wage freeze followed by six months of ‘severe restraint’. Prices would be frozen for a year, and a plea was made for limits to be applied to dividends over the same period. The National Board of Prices and Incomes, which Labour had established, was given powers to require one month’s advance notification of any price and wage increases and powers to delay increases by Order in Council for up to three months. The Government might take power to direct that specified price and wage increases should not be made. Fighting this policy in general and, under Iain Macleod’s leadership, opposing the ‘Standstill orders’ which came before the House of Commons, were the other important aspects of my brief.
In preparing myself for my first major Commons speech in my new role, I got out from the House of Commons Library every budget speech and Finance Bill since the war and read them. I was thus able to demonstrate to a somewhat bemused Jim Callaghan, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Jack Diamond, his Chief Secretary, that this was the only budget which had failed to make even a minor concession in the social services area. Then I sank my teeth into the SET. It was riddled with absurdities which I took great pleasure in exposing. The attempt to distinguish between manufacturing and service industries, shifting the tax burden onto the second and handing the money back as subsidies to the first, was a demonstrably inefficient, anomaly-ridden procedure. As I put it in the House: ‘Whatever the payroll tax is, it is thoroughly bad administration … I only wish that Gilbert and Sullivan were alive today so that we could have an opera about it.’
Our side of the House liked it. I got a good press, the Daily Telegraph observing that ‘it has taken a woman … to slam the faces of the Government’s Treasury ministers in the mud and then stamp on them’. Iain Macleod himself wrote some generous lines about the performance in another paper.
He did the same after my speech that autumn to the Party Conference in Blackpool. I put a special effort into it – though the nine hours of work I did would have seemed culpable idleness compared with the time I took for Conference speechwriting as Party Leader. That autumn, however, I spoke from notes, which gives extra spontaneity and the flexibility to insert a joke or jibe on the spur of the moment. Although the debate I was answering was on taxation, the cheers came in response to what I said about the way in which the Government was undermining the rule of law by the arbitrary powers it had taken through incomes policy and tax policy. With more than a touch of hyperbole, it must be admitted, I said: ‘All this is fundamentally wrong for Britain. It is a step not merely towards socialism but towards communism.’ The new and still left-of-centre Sun noted: ‘A Fiery Blonde Warns of the Road to Ruin’.
In October 1967 Ted made me front-bench spokesman on Fuel and Power and a member of the Shadow Cabinet. It may be that my House of Commons performances and perhaps Iain Macleod’s recommendation overcame any temperamental reluctance on Ted’s part. My first task was to read through all the evidence given to the inquiry about the causes of the terrible Aberfan disaster the previous year, when 116 children and 28 adults were killed by a slag tip which slipped onto a Welsh mining village. Many of the parents of the victims were in the gallery for the debate, and I felt for them. Very serious criticisms had been made of the National Coal Board and as a result someone, I thought, should have resigned, though I held back from stating this conclusion with complete clarity in my first speech to the House as Shadow spokesman. What was revealed by the report made me realize how very easy it is in any large organization to assume that someone else has taken the requisite action and will assume responsibility. This is a problem which, as later tragedies have demonstrated, industrial civilization has yet to solve.
Outside the House, my main interest was in trying to find a framework for privatization of electricity generation. To this end I visited power stations and sought all the advice I could from business contacts. But it turned out to be a fruitless enterprise, and I had not come up with what I considered acceptable answers by the time my portfolio was changed again – to Transport – in October 1968. Parliament had just passed a major Transport Bill reorganizing the railways, nationalizing the bus companies, setting up a new National Freight Authority – in effect, implementing most of the Government’s transport programme in one measure. I argued our case against nationalization of the ports. But, all in all, Transport proved a brief with limited possibilities.
As a member of the Shadow Cabinet I attended its weekly discussions, usually on a Wednesday, in Ted’s room in the House. Discussion was generally not very stimulating. We would begin by looking ahead to the parliamentary business for the week and agreeing who was to speak and on what line. There might be a paper from a colleague which he would introduce. But, doubtless because we knew that there were large divisions between us, particularly on economic policy, issues of principle were not usually openly debated.
For my part, I did not make a particularly important contribution to Shadow Cabinet. Nor was I asked to do so. For Ted and perhaps others I was principally there as the statutory woman whose main task was to explain what ‘women’ – Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbara Cartland, Esther Rantzen, Stella Rimington and all the rest of our uniform, undifferentiated sex – were likely to think and want on troublesome issues. I had, of course, great affection for Alec Douglas-Home, then Shadow Foreign Secretary, and got on perfectly well with most of my colleagues, but I had only three real friends around the table – Keith Joseph, Peter Thomas and Edward Boyle. And Edward by now was very much on the opposite wing of the Party from me.
The atmosphere at our meetings was certainly made more difficult by the fact that the most senior figures now had somewhat tense relations with each other. Ted was settling into the role of Party Leader with determination, but without any real assurance. Reggie Maudling, Deputy Leader, had never really recovered from his defeat for the leadership. Iain Macleod was the most politically acute of us, but though a superb public orator he was a rather private and reserved character. He was also growing out of sympathy with his old friend Enoch Powell, who was increasingly concerned about immigration, a topic about which Iain felt equally strongly on the other side. Undoubtedly, Enoch was our finest intellect – classicist, historian, economist and biblical scholar. In a quite different way from Iain, he was a powerful public orator and able to command the House of Commons, or indeed any audience, with his remorseless logic and controlled passion. But as regards the Shadow Cabinet, by this stage he had largely withdrawn into himself. He was disliked and probably feared by Ted Heath.
On Monday 26 February 1968 Shadow Cabinet discussed the Government’s Commonwealth Immigrants’ Bill to introduce the new immigration controls. A statement had been issued the previous week setting out the principles on which we would judge the measure. Ted Heath said that it was now up to Shadow Cabinet to decide whether the Bill came sufficiently within those terms. In fact, it did some of the things