The re-election of all the members of the 1922 Executive, including Edward du Cann, on the day of the reshuffle – Thursday 7 November – was bad news for Ted. A leadership contest could no longer be avoided. He wrote to Edward saying that he was now willing to discuss changes to the procedure for electing the Party Leader. From now on it was probably in Ted’s interest to have the election over as soon as possible, before any alternative candidate could put together an effective campaign.
At this time I started to attend the Economic Dining Group which Nick Ridley had formed in 1972 and which largely consisted of sound money men like John Biffen, Jock Bruce-Gardyne, John Nott and others. Above all, I buried myself in the details of my new brief. It was a challenging time to take it up, for on Tuesday 12 November Denis Healey introduced one of his quarterly budgets. It was a panic reaction to the rapidly growing problems of industry and consisted of cuts in business taxation to the tune of £775 million (£495 million of new business taxes having been imposed only six months before) and some curbs on subsidies to nationalized industries. Ted’s reply – in which, against the background of an audible gasp from Tory backbenchers, he criticized the Chancellor for allowing nationalized industry prices to rise towards market levels – did him no good at all.
My chance came the following Thursday when I spoke for the Opposition in the Budget Debate. I had done my homework and I set about contrasting the Labour Government’s past statements with its present actions. Some of the speech was quite technical and detailed, as it had to be. But it was my answers to the interruptions that had the backbenchers roaring support. I was directly answering Harold Lever (without whom Labour would have been still more economically inept) when he interrupted early in my speech to put me right on views I had attributed to him. Amid a good deal of merriment, not least from Harold Lever himself, a shrewd businessman from a wealthy family, I replied: ‘I always felt that I could never rival him [Lever] at the Treasury because there are four ways of acquiring money. To make it. To earn it. To marry it. And to borrow it. He seems to have experience of all four.’
At another point I was interrupted by a pompously irate Denis Healey when I quoted the Sunday Telegraph which reported him as saying: ‘I never save. If I get any money I go out and buy something for the house.’ Denis Healey was most indignant, so I was pleased to concede the point, saying (in reference to the fact that like other socialist politicians he had his own country house): ‘I am delighted that we have got on record the fact that the Chancellor is a jolly good saver. I know that he believes in buying houses in good Tory areas.’
No one has ever claimed that House of Commons repartee must be subtle in order to be effective. This performance boosted the shaky morale of the Parliamentary Party and with it my reputation.
Meanwhile, Alec Douglas-Home, now returned to the Lords as Lord Home, had agreed to chair a review of the procedure for the leadership election. On Wednesday 20 November I received a note from Geoffrey Finsberg, a neighbouring MP and friend, which said: ‘If you contest the leadership you will almost certainly win – for my part I hope you will stand and I will do all I can to help.’ But I still could not see any likelihood of this happening. It seemed to me that for all of the brouhaha caused by his Edgbaston speech Keith must be our candidate.
The following afternoon I was working in my room in the House, briefing myself on the Finance Bill, when the telephone rang. It was Keith to check I was there because he had something he wanted to come along and tell me. As soon as he entered, I could see it was serious. He told me: ‘I am sorry, I just can’t run. Ever since I made that speech the press have been outside the house. They have been merciless. Helen [his wife] can’t take it and I have decided that I just can’t stand.’
His mind was quite made up. I was on the edge of despair. We just could not abandon the Party and the country to Ted’s brand of politics. I heard myself saying: ‘Look, Keith, if you’re not going to stand, I will, because someone who represents our viewpoint has to stand.’
There was nothing more to say. My mind was already a whirl. I had no idea of my chances. I knew nothing about leadership campaigns. I just tried to put the whole thing to the back of my mind for the moment and concentrate on the Finance Bill. Somehow or other the news got out and I started to receive telephone calls and notes of support from MP friends. Late that night I went back to Flood Street and told Denis of my intention.
‘You must be out of your mind,’ he said. ‘You haven’t got a hope.’ He had a point. But I never had any doubt that he would support me all the way.
The following day Fergus Montgomery, my PPS, telephoned me, and I told him that Keith was not going to stand but that I would. I wondered how best to break the news to Ted. Fergus thought I should see him personally.
I arranged to see Ted on Monday 25 November. He was at his desk in his room at the House. I need not have worried about hurting his feelings. I went in and said: ‘I must tell you that I have decided to stand for the leadership.’ He looked at me coldly, turned his back, shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘If you must.’ I slipped out of the room.
Monday was, therefore, the first day I had to face the press as a declared contender for the Tory leadership. I was glad to be able to rely on the help and advice of Gordon Reece, who had now become a friend and who sat in on some of my early press interviews, which went quite well. It was, of course, still the fact that I was a woman that was the main topic of interest.
Ted’s coterie and, I believe, at least one Central Office figure had, in any case, alighted on something which they hoped would destroy me as effectively as had happened to Keith. In the interview I had given to Pre-Retirement Choice more than two months before I had given what I considered to be practical advice to elderly people trying to make ends meet in circumstances where food prices were rising sharply. I said that it made sense to stock up on tinned food. This was precisely the sort of advice I myself had been given as a girl. Any good housewife shops around and buys several items at a time when prices are low, rather than dashing out at the last minute to buy the same thing at a greater cost.
To my horror the press on Wednesday 27 November was full of stories of my ‘hoarding’ food. Someone had clearly used this obscure interview in order to portray me as mean, selfish and above all ‘bourgeois’. In its way it was cleverly done. It allowed the desired caricature to be brought out to the full. It played to the snobbery of the Conservative Party, because the unspoken implication was that this was all that could be expected of a grocer’s daughter. It reminded the public of all that had been said and written about me as the ‘milk snatcher’ at Education.
A veritable circus of indignation was now staged. Pressure groups were prompted to complain. A deputation of housewives was said to be travelling from Birmingham to urge me to give them the tins. Food chemists gave their views about the consequences of keeping tinned food too long in the larder. Martin Redmayne, the former Chief Whip, reliable Party establishment figure and now Deputy Chairman of Harrods, appeared on television to say that ‘any sort of inducement to panic buying was … against the public interest’ – although Lord Redmayne’s larder probably contained something more enticing than a few tins of salmon and corned beef. There was nothing for it but to invite the cameramen in and have them check the contents of my Flood Street larder and cupboards. This may have convinced some of the Tory hierarchy that my and my family’s tastes and standards were not at all what should be expected from someone who aspired to lead their party. But it certainly showed that the ‘hoarding’ allegation was malicious nonsense.
Finally, in order to keep the dying story alive my opponents went too far. On Friday 29 November I was in John Cope’s South Gloucestershire constituency when my secretary, Alison Ward, telephoned to say that the radio was now broadcasting that I had been seen in a shop on the Finchley Road buying up large quantities of sugar. (There was a sugar shortage at the time.) Alison had already checked and discovered that in fact no such shop existed. It was