The imposition of prescription charges late in 1956 provides an illuminating snapshot of the Whips at work. This was an issue on which people felt strongly but not with the passion provoked by capital punishment. Busily, the Whips canvassed opinions and did their sums. ‘Price thinks we should exclude all OAPs.’ ‘P Forth hoped the Whips had taken note of the party’s strong disapproval. This will be very serious.’ John Vaughan-Morgan wanted a preliminary discussion in the 1922 Committee. Philip Remnant ‘is still determined not to vote for the charges’, but, a day later, ‘I think he is weakening a little’. Julian Ridsdale is ‘very shaky and liable to vote against’. John Eden is ‘all worked up, though I don’t think he will oppose actively’. And so it went on. In the end Heath was able to tell the Cabinet that, at the price of a few conciliatory noises, their majority was secure. Nearly always the Whips were successful. On 28 June 1956 the 1922 Committee was almost unanimous in its opposition to an American takeover of Trinidad. On 4 July no Tory voted against it and only one abstained. ‘This was considered a text-book case of brilliant whipping.’27
These were mere storms in a teacup, however, compared with the hurricane that was about to break. In July 1956 Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. When the issue was first raised in the House of Commons, the Leader of the Opposition, Hugh Gaitskell, supported the Government, provided that the problem was handled through the United Nations. It seemed that a bipartisan approach might be possible, but Heath saw trouble ahead and warned Eden not to count on Labour support. As preparations went ahead for an attack on Egypt and the reoccupation of the Canal Zone, regardless of the United Nations and world opinion, it became clear that not only would Labour oppose such action but that the Tory Party was divided. Initially, Heath thought that this threat was small. Towards the end of August he told the Egypt Committee – the inner group which handled the crisis and which he regularly attended – that he was ‘pretty sure about the party, though there might be some weaker brethren’. To William Clark he said that nobody would revolt and that ‘it won’t cause much bother in parliament because there are no leaders on the Conservative side to cause trouble’. Two or three weeks later the mood had changed. Heath reported that there were three groups: those who would support any action; those who would accept it, but only after reference to the United Nations; and those who were opposed to the use of force. ‘The Chief Whip cannot estimate the strength of this group. It might be large enough to put us in a minority in a division.’28
Though Heath must have suspected what was going on, it was not until almost the end of October that Eden told him of the plot that was being hatched with Israel to circumvent the tortuous negotiations in the United Nations. Israel was to invade Egypt: Britain and France would then intervene to separate the contestants. ‘This is the highest form of statesmanship,’ Eden declared – ‘rather unnervingly’, in the view of his Chief Whip. If Heath was unnerved he concealed it well. His personal position was singularly difficult. He did not share Eden’s conviction that Nasser could be equated with Hitler and that the nationalisation of the Canal was another Munich crisis over which the West could not afford to fail. He believed that an honourable if imperfect solution could be reached through the United Nations. He felt that military intervention without the endorsement of the United Nations would be at the best extremely dangerous, at the worst disastrous. His doubts were evident to a few insiders. According to the Secretary of the Cabinet, Norman Brook, the sceptics in the Cabinet were Butler, Walter Monckton, Macleod, the Earl of Selkirk, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, possibly the Lord Chancellor, Kilmuir and Derrick Heathcoat-Amory and certainly, though strictly speaking he was not a member, Edward Heath.29 Yet he hugged his true opinions to himself. When, fifteen years later, Willie Whitelaw was asked what he believed were Heath’s views on Suez, he replied: ‘Do you know, I have no idea. He does keep his own counsel very much. I have a suspicion, but such a tiny suspicion that I couldn’t venture it.’ Certainly Heath did not see it as being his role to try to convert the Prime Minister; he was doing his duty if he brought home to Eden the misgivings in the party. An old friend from Oxford, Robert Shackleton, urged him to resign: ‘You must agree Government policy is disastrous. I implore you to put first things first. The resignation of the Chief Whip would do more than any other single thing to rescue the country. I beg you to consider it.’ It was just because his resignation would have been so seismic in its consequences that he would not consider it. And if he could not resign, then it was his duty to try to persuade every member of the parliamentary party to support the government.30
But when it was a case of working on members opposed to military intervention – in particular the eleven MPs, among whom Keith Joseph and Bob Boothby were the most prominent, who signed a letter demanding that British troops should be placed under the command of the United Nations – his approach was notably dulcet. It was also on the whole successful. Just before a crucial vote on 8 November he was seen exhorting two young MPs, Peter Kirk and David Price, who were known to be planning to abstain. He warned them that, if they did so, they might destroy the Government and, incidentally, their own futures. His arguments prevailed. But he was less successful with Nigel Nicolson. ‘I still believe it cannot be a bad thing for the party’, Nicolson told Heath, ‘that there should be at least one Conservative backbencher who is prepared to state he agrees with the very many eminent Conservatives outside this House who have expressed their distress at the Government’s action.’ Eventually Nicolson said that he would support the Government if the Chief Whip would assure him ‘that the purpose of our invasion was “to separate the combatants”, as the Prime Minister claimed and not to regain control of the Canal by a subterfuge. He held my gaze steadily and said nothing. I thanked him for his honesty, told him that I would abstain, and left the room.’31 When Anthony Nutting, a junior minister at the Foreign Office, resigned in protest at the Government’s action, a campaign to discredit him was launched, hinting that there were malign influences at work and that he had personal reasons for his behaviour, unconnected with the merits of the case. As often as not this sort of campaign would have had its origins in the Whips’ Office. It is hard to prove a negative but it would have been wholly out of character if Heath had lent his authority to such an operation. Again and again in the course of his career he refused to make use of damaging gossip, even though he believed it to be true. The sort of disinformation used to blacken Nutting’s reputation would have repelled him. If such a campaign was in fact mounted it was more probably the work of somebody in Number 10.32
But both wings of the party were in revolt. One group objected to intervention; the other, the ‘Suez Group’, was outraged when the government succumbed to overwhelming American pressure and agreed to withdraw from Egypt. The latter were more numerous, more clamorous and, in Heath’s eyes, less