Edward Heath. Philip Ziegler

Whip and, a few months later, was confirmed as the only Deputy. A Chief Whip, Buchan-Hepburn told one of his successors, had ‘to take the responsibility and be jolly rude at times’. Then the Deputy had to pick up the pieces. Heath ‘became very good at that. He could be very nice to people.’³² In due course Heath was to show that he could be surprisingly nice to people even when he was Chief Whip; for the moment he concentrated on building a network of relationships within the party. His new role meant that he became well-known, not only to the rank-and-file but also to the dignitaries of the party. Of these none was half as eminent or as remote from the hurly-burly of back-bench life as the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

      When Heath had first been appointed a Whip Churchill had said to him: ‘It will mean much hard work and it will be unremunerated, but so long as I am your leader it will never remain unthanked.’ That was almost all that Heath saw of the Prime Minister for the next few years. Buchan-Hepburn remembered that, when Heath had gained greater prominence, Churchill used to claim that it was he who had discovered him. This was rubbish, claimed Buchan-Hepburn: ‘He asked me more than once, even when Ted was Deputy Chief Whip, who he was.’ But later ‘he got to know him very well, and thought a lot of him’.³³ The relationship did not grow close until Heath had become Chief Whip and Churchill had ceased to be Prime Minister, but by 1953 at the latest Churchill would have had no doubts who the young Whip was. Several times Heath had to extricate him from dinner parties to come back to the House to vote when the Tory majority seemed dangerously low; once it was the other way round and Heath had to persuade him to honour an invitation to dine with the HAC on St George’s Day on an evening when Churchill decided that his duties in Westminster precluded his attendance. In July 1953 Heath was one of the very few leading Tories who knew about Churchill’s stroke and realised that the country was in effect being governed by a cabal of self-appointed substitutes. He was present when Churchill made his first speech after his illness at the Party Conference at Margate. By mistake the Prime Minister’s private secretary had left in both the original and an amended version of a certain page. Churchill began to repeat himself. ‘The Chief Whip and I looked at each other and shuddered. This must be the end of the road, I thought.’ But then Churchill stopped, rallied, remarked blandly: ‘I seem to have heard this somewhere before…’ and moved on to the next page. Heath was conscientious in presenting new Tory members to the old hero. Nigel Nicolson was already unnerved by the prospect and he was made no calmer when, as they approached the comatose figure in the smoking room, Heath murmured: ‘Remember, Winston simply hates small talk!’³⁴

      The relationship was not purely official. The visitors’ book for Chartwell, Churchill’s country home, shows that Heath stayed there nine times between 1957 and 1961, once finding himself expected to play poker for high stakes with Aristotle and Christina Onassis. Churchill liked him well enough to give him two of his paintings. He was an unlikely habitué of Chartwell. The young men whose company Churchill usually enjoyed were more socially accomplished – Jock Colville, Anthony Montague Browne – or more raffish – Brendan Bracken – than Ted Heath. Heath’s musical interests had only limited appeal to Churchill; his dedicated sense of purpose, though no doubt seeming admirable to the veteran statesman, was not calculated to amuse or stimulate. Nevertheless, Churchill clearly enjoyed his company. Mary Soames, Churchill’s daughter, believes that it was probably her mother who was primarily responsible for the repeated invitations. Heath’s social ineptness and his patent inadequacy when it came to handling women inspired in some a protective instinct. Clementine Churchill would not have been the only woman who took pity on him and resolved to make his task a little smoother than it would otherwise have been. He was appropriately appreciative and continued to invite Lady Churchill to lunches or dinners long after Churchill had died, taking pains to assemble small parties of old friends who would give her pleasure and impose no strain.³⁵

      As the Prime Minister visibly faded, Heath inevitably saw more of his designated successor, Anthony Eden. He felt for the Foreign Secretary none of the reverence that he held for Churchill but he admired and liked him and believed he would make a worthy incumbent of Number 10. He felt, too, that the sooner Eden got there, the better it would be, both for the country and for the party. Like many others, he wished that Churchill had retired after, or better still before, the defeat of 1945. He was not close enough to Eden to discuss directly with him his views about the succession; but Eden can have been in little doubt that Heath would prove a stalwart supporter. He for his part valued Heath highly and had no doubt that one of his first actions when he did finally become Prime Minister would be to appoint him his Chief Whip.

      It was presumably as a reward for faithful service that Heath in August and September 1954 was despatched as deputy Conservative leader of a delegation to a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Conference in Nairobi. He took advantage of the visit to travel widely throughout Africa, ending up in Cape Town. His reception reflected more his likely future than his actual status; wherever he went he met the leading figures of the country. It is a reflection of the times rather than of his own predilections that, except in Egypt, he did not talk at length with anybody who was not of European origin. Cairo provided the most interesting meeting. At dinner at the British Embassy Heath met Colonel Nasser, the young nationalist firebrand who was shortly to depose the President, Neguib, and take over the leadership himself. The two men sat in the Embassy garden in the small hours of the morning, talking about politics and the future of the Middle East. At that time the United Kingdom still had a substantial garrison in the Canal Zone; Heath was left in little doubt that it could only be maintained, and the Canal kept under British control, if the Egyptians could be persuaded that this was to their benefit. Heath was impressed by Nasser and thought that, though he would certainly champion Egyptian interests, he was in no way anti-British. Nasser talked of his wish to bring democracy to Egypt and of the problems he was encountering. ‘I am sure that his intentions were sincere,’ commented Heath, ‘although perhaps at that stage he underestimated the task ahead.’³⁶ The favourable view that he took of Nasser was to be an additional cause for discomfort when the Suez Crisis split the Tory party and the country two years later.

      Before that, however, much was to happen. In April 1955 Churchill finally resigned. His successor, Eden, almost immediately called a general election; he could have held on for another year or more but the economy seemed to be going well, the nation was glowing in the false dawn of the ‘New Elizabethan Age’, the temptation to go to the country, demand a fresh mandate and, with reasonable luck, secure a substantially increased majority proved irresistible. The gamble, in so far as it was one, paid off. The Tories cruised to victory, gaining an overall majority of 59. Heath, faced with a new and not particularly impressive Labour candidate, increased his own majority to 4,499. No longer did Bexley have to be considered a marginal constituency. Eden deferred a major cabinet reshuffle until the end of the year. As a preliminary, Buchan-Hepburn, who was to become Minister of Works, resigned as Chief Whip. He had no doubt who should succeed him. Nor did Eden: ‘Ted Heath took over as Chief Whip; by what seemed a natural process,’ he told Heath’s biographer, George Hutchinson.³⁷ In December 1954 the next stage of Heath’s career began.

       SIX Chief Whip

      ‘Painless flagellation is what we are all looking forward to,’ wrote Fitzroy Maclean – then a junior minister – when Heath’s promotion was announced. Derek Marks of the Daily Express doubted whether this would work: ‘I still think you have far too much sympathy with the chaps who smoke in the rugger team to make a very good head prefect.’ Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as Tony Benn then still styled himself, from the opposition, thought he would bring it off: ‘How you manage to combine such a friendly manner with such an iron discipline is a source of respectful amazement to us all.’¹ Benn caught exactly what was Heath’s aspiration: he did not wish to overemphasise the iron discipline but knew that it was a vital part of a Chief Whip’s role; he believed that he could exercise it with restraint and liberality. Sir Thomas Moore, a veteran Tory MP and perhaps extravagantly uncritical admirer of Heath, told him that he had known six Chief Whips but that Heath was different because he had ‘the capacity of making friends easily. That may make things much easier for you, or it may not…I believe that under that