History of England 1-6

In any case, there was no real revolution. Heath’s chief object was to contain the forces of organized labour, rather than to undermine them. Indeed, he always proclaimed a steadfast admiration for the TUC in particular and the unions in general, however opaque this regard often seemed to the public. Union leaders usually found him both responsive and affable. Jack Jones was to recall Heath’s willingness to give his opponents a sensitive and respectful hearing, a judgement that would have surprised those who saw only the unsmiling face or unbending rhetoric. He was not to be the last prime minister betrayed by his affection for organized labour.

Heath had long been convinced that politics was a matter for specialists, and so he began to invite businessmen into the business of government. Like so many of his ventures, it was well-intentioned, but he had Whitehall to reckon with. His Programme Analysis and Review was an attempt to bring a degree of specialist knowledge to questions of policy and reduce the need for bureaucracy. Whitehall’s response was polite and inexorable. It was noted by a Whitehall observer, Peter Hennessy, that ‘their first step was to remove it from the grasp of Heath’s businessmen … and to draw it into their own citadel in Great George Street from which it never emerged alive’. It was to become a familiar story: Heath’s attempts to reduce bureaucracy more often than not added to it. In this instance, the number of civil servants increased by 400,000.

It was Heath who coined the expression ‘think tank’, to describe a body chosen to advise the cabinet on policy. A scion of the Rothschild clan headed the first of these bodies, but its warnings of an oil crisis went unheeded. Most importantly perhaps, Lord Rothschild had identified the enemy: ‘that neo-Hitler, that arch-enemy, inflation’. Inflation, long recognized as a hindrance, was now the foe-in-chief.

A further strike by miners in February 1974 led to a second state of emergency. The willingness of Heath to resort to such a measure under conditions that rarely justified the title ‘emergency’ revealed much about his attitude to opposition. Beneath the granite self-confidence could often be heard the slam of a childish foot on a floorboard. And yet it was a time for which the expression ‘U-turn’ might have been coined. Rolls-Royce, in trouble over engines to be supplied to American ‘Lockheeds’, had to be rescued, in clear defiance of Heath’s election promises. But what could he do? It would not be true to suggest, as some have, that Heath despised or underrated America’s contribution to world prosperity or world peace. There can be little doubt, however, that he viewed the ‘special relationship’ as a hindrance to his European ideal. That the United States had consistently supported Britain’s attempts to join the bloc was a circumstance that Heath contrived to ignore. Henry Kissinger put it thus: ‘His relations with us were always correct, but they rarely rose above a basic reserve that prevented – in the name of Europe – the close cooperation with us that was his for the taking.’ As ever, it was not that Heath had no ear for advice or public opinion, merely a poor nose for changes in the wind.

On the question of the swelling war between India and Pakistan, Heath’s rejoinder to Kissinger could not have been clearer:

What they wanted from the special relationship was to land Britain in it [the war between India and Pakistan] as well … and I was determined not to be landed … Did we lose anything by it? No, of course not. We gained an enormous amount. I can quite see that it’s rather difficult for some Americans, including Henry, to adjust themselves to this, but it’s necessary for them to do it. Now, there are some people who always want to nestle on the shoulder of an American president. That’s no future for Britain.

In this, as in so many respects, Heath wished to place himself in opposition to Wilson. As Kissinger put it, ‘There was a nearly impenetrable opacity about Heath’s formulations which, given his intelligence, had to be deliberate … [He] could not have been more helpful on diagnosis or more evasive on prescription … He wanted Europe to formulate answers to our queries: he was determined to avoid any whiff of Anglo-American collusion.’