The ‘peace’ might unravel in a moment if either of the parties made a mistake.
For Ian MacLeod, Edward Heath’s death was a personal as well as a political tragedy. He had had few older, better friends in politics and life than Ted Heath. They had been young tyros together after the Second World War when the Party’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb following the Labour landslide of 1945. Together with others just back from that war, like Enoch Powell, Ian Macleod and Ted Heath had been the driving force, intellectually and on the ground, in forging the new ‘one nation Conservatism’ within the Party which had enabled it to reconnect to its disaffected natural constituency. After 1950 the Tories had swept to four successively greater election victories and become by the early 1960s ‘the natural party of government’ in the United Kingdom. At the time of the October War MacLeod had been leader of the House of Commons, and Heath, after several years as the Government’s Chief Whip, been the man charged with negotiating the country’s post-empire membership of the European Economic Community. Both men had been pro-European campaigners most of their lives, their convictions solidified by their war experiences and their determination to save future generations from ever having to go through what they had had to go through between 1939 and 1945. The October War had annihilated the world they had both dreamed of passing on to those future generations; but because they were the men they were, to whom duty and service trumped all other considerations, together they had carried on and basically, done their best in an impossible situation. Iain Macleod could not have been more bereft had he lost a brother; notwithstanding that he and Ted Heath had been at cross-purposes many times in the last year he would have cut of his right arm if his friend had assured him it that it was in the national interest.
“Jim agrees that we stand by the treaty,” Iain Macleod murmured.
The recently signed ‘treaty’ was in fact a memorandum of understanding broadly based on a restating — and a subtle gerrymandering — of the principles of the 1958 US — UK Mutual Defense Agreement, which had essentially been a bilateral concord governing nuclear co-operation between the two powers. Extended to cover ‘conventional ground, air and sea forces and the exploration of ways to explore re-integration of key elements of our intelligence communities’ the document had been grandly titled: Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Cooperation on Mutual Defense Purposes. The critical clause of the agreement was that within twenty-eight days further ‘executive level’ talks would take place with a view to ‘setting in stone’ the ‘long-term alliance’ of the two nations. At that time spheres of influence and matters of practical military assistance would be hammered out, ahead of which there would be a frank exchange of the current military capabilities and readiness states of both sides ‘to facilitate realistic future joint planning.’
However, Ted Heath was now dead and there was the danger of a yawning leadership vacuum at home.
Although James Callaghan, the leader of the junior partner in coalition, the Labour and Co-operative Party, was technically automatically elevated to the premiership he understood that his leadership was a short-term stop gap measure. He simply did not command the support to govern. Moreover, while no government in the post-war United Kingdom could function without the implicit support of the armed forces; James Callaghan had specifically ruled out requesting the backing of the British Chiefs of Staff.
“It is a mess,” Tom Harding-Grayson observed sagely, not attempting to be in any way ironic. His old friend Sir James Sykes, the Ambassador in Washington was missing presumed dead, as was his wife and practically the entire United Kingdom diplomatic mission. The insurgents had targeted foreign embassies, government buildings, bridges, railroad links and even, apparently, the great museums of the Republic. Obscenely, looters had roamed the wrecked and fire-blackened shell of large parts of the Smithsonian for at least twenty-four hours before troops had restored order. It was madness; not even the Bolsheviks had set out to systematically eradicate the glory that had been the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, or the spires of the Kremlin. The US Capitol had come under sustained attack after the rebels had been driven back by the tanks and the A-4 Skyraiders defending the White House. Insurgents had subsequently melted back into the great national museums around the National Mall where sporadic local fire fights erupted as the house to house, block by block bloody clearance operation continued
It was all too incredible to believe.
There had been vicious close quarter fighting to retake the two wings of the Pentagon occupied before the defenders had established a viable internal perimeter. Nobody would speculate on how many people had been killed and injured across Washington although several military men were already talking about ‘Antietam level head counts’. Personal, Tom Harding-Grayson suspected that even talking in terms of twenty to twenty-five thousand killed, missing and seriously injured was probably wishful thinking. He had spent time in Germany after the 1945 war; and therefore understood exactly how many civilians tended to get caught in the crossfire when a whole city was under attack.
The British Foreign Secretary had been an apolitical senior civil servant until only a few days ago. In one sense this gave his prognostications more weight but he was reluctant to dip his toe in the waters.
“Somebody must step up, Iain,” he offered. “Preferably, as soon as possible.”
Iain Macleod nodded.
“You, for example,” the Foreign Secretary went on. “You are Chairman of the biggest Party in Government and you have a many loyal friends…”
To Tom Harding-Grayson’s surprise the other man sucked his teeth and shook his balding head.
“Whoever takes over,” he retorted gravely, “must be somebody around whom there is some hope of public support coalescing.”
Tom Harding-Grayson had been a career civil servant all his adult life — the Second World War years apart — untroubled by such arcane considerations as ‘public support’ and he did not immediately see the trend of his colleague’s thoughts.
“You are a remarkably accomplished public speaker, you command respect on both sides of Parliament…”
“That’s not the issue, Tom.”
“Oh, what is then?”
“Jim Callaghan, me, all the others,” Iain Macleod struggled to his feet, stretched painfully as he tried and failed to straighten his back. The old 1940 war wound to his thigh which had never properly healed and his chronic ankylosing spondylitis — an inflammatory condition of the axial skeleton — caused him constant pain and meant he often walked mildly bowed over and with an obvious limp. “We are men of the past. We are the old guard. We are of the pre-war cabal whom in years to come our people will rightly hold culpable for all of the ills which have misfallen them. There can be no real ‘unity government’ of the United Kingdom with one of us at its head.”
“I can sympathise with the logic of the argument, Iain,” the Foreign Secretary grimaced, “but who,” his voice dropped away as he belatedly saw where the conversation was going. He shook his head. “Margaret has no experience of leadership. Dammit, Iain,” he added, more rattled than he had been over anything since the night of the October War. “She positively loathes the Americans. If she’d been on the plane over her with us we’d probably be at war by now!”