History of England 1-6

Alas, it was. In a pattern that had become depressingly familiar, each side blamed the other for the failure of the agreement. As far as the unions were concerned, Heath rejected the offer, and as far as he was concerned, the fault lay with his subordinate, Tony Barber. But it is unlikely in any case that an agreement could have been reached: the government was too suspicious and the TUC was in no case to honour its resolution. In later years, some union leaders still insisted that ‘we could have made it stick’, but Gormley was always dubious. Len Murray, already a leading light in the union movement, even claimed that the government had the unions ‘over a barrel’: ‘If [Heath] had taken the offer and it had failed to work, and other unions had broken through, he would have been home and dry with all his anti-union policies – Industrial Relations Act and incomes policy. If it had worked, it would have been his great political triumph, showing he could bring the unions to heel.’

But Heath was not the man for such politicking. He was weary, and his capacity for optimism was running low. For months negotiations limped along, but after two years of economic U-turns, and with a defeat still fresh in his memory, Heath could scarcely surrender now. On 13 December 1973, he announced the three-day week. Another such had been put in place less than two years earlier, with ruinous runs on candles, but this one was official. It came into force on 1 January 1974. Unsurprisingly, the measure was resented, but the resentment sprang not merely from the inconvenience; it was felt to be premature and therefore politically futile. Against the advice of Whitelaw, Heath decided that the impasse with the miners could be broken only by going to the country. William Rees-Mogg of The Times agreed, though for reasons Heath was unlikely to have welcomed. ‘The Government’s policies have changed so much since 1970,’ observed Rees-Mogg, ‘that there is ample constitutional justification for an immediate election.’ But Heath had not called the election to defeat the miners; for him, the issue was broader and deeper. In a political broadcast, he summarized his stance. ‘The issue before you is a simple one … Do you want a strong Government which has clear authority for the future to take the decisions which will be needed? Do you want Parliament and the elected Government to continue to fight strenuously against inflation? Or do you want them to abandon the struggle against rising prices under pressure from one particular group of workers?’

As we have seen, Heath was broadly sympathetic to the unions, having himself risen from a scarcely privileged background. Ever assiduous, he had made it his business to understand the struggles and complexities of workingclass reality. But he could never bring himself to endorse the principle of collective bargaining, and without that he could make no headway with the unions. He stated his objection with customary frankness: ‘We have all seen what happens in that situation. The strongest wins, as he always does, and the weakest goes to the wall.’

And so, weakened in body and morale, Heath called an election, and a minute but telling swing to Labour was noticeable from the first. Still he soldiered on – there was work to be done, if only he could be given just a little more time. Meanwhile, the irrepressible Wilson returned to the attack, cheery and confident, the friend of the unions and the tribune of the people. When the results of the February election came through, it was clear that Heath’s attempts to balance the budget while satisfying the unions had left the country unmoved.

But Wilson’s victory was not yet complete. His was a minority government, and it would take a further election in October to secure power. Heath fought for time and a coalition with Jeremy Thorpe’s Liberals. To his sad and undignified fall, the Spectator played both raven and cockerel. ‘The squatter in No. 10 Downing Street has at last departed … Mr Edward Heath’s monomania was never more clearly seen than in the days after the general election when, a ludicrous and broken figure, he clung with grubby fingers to the crumbling precipice of power.’ It was sadly suggestive of Heath’s tenure that the most vitriolic of the attacks upon him should have come from a conservative periodical. And there was one more humiliation to come, from a quarter he could never have suspected; it was the work of one of his own protégés, and, more shocking yet, a woman.