Then I went on to Cardiff for the first of the major rallies of the campaign. It was an appropriate place to start. This was very much the heart of enemy territory since Mr Callaghan’s constituency was Cardiff South East. So it was a good thing that Cardiff City Hall had a pleasant feel, the right acoustics and an enthusiastic audience. I also had an extremely powerful speech to deliver. It was an uncompromising statement of how socialism had debilitated Britain and of the need for a fundamental change of direction — though not towards some experiment with Utopia but rather back to principles from which we had mistakenly departed.
…In politics, I’ve learned something you in Wales are born knowing: if you’ve got a message, preach it. I am a conviction politician. The Old Testament prophets didn’t merely say: ‘Brothers, I want consensus.’ They said: ‘This is my faith and vision. This is what I passionately believe. If you believe it too, then come with me.’ Tonight I say to you just that. Away with the recent bleak and dismal past. Away with defeatism. Under the twin banners, choice and freedom, a new and exciting future beckons the British people.
The audience loved it and so did I. But my cunning adversary, Jim Callaghan, successfully used it to awaken all of the old fears in the Tory Party establishment about the unnerving figure leading them in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar direction. The Prime Minister subsequently claimed that in my speech I had moved the Conservative Party to the right and that this opened the centre ground for him. Appropriately enough, the main speaker at the Conservative press conference that morning was Reg Prentice, former Labour Cabinet minister and now Conservative Party candidate, who with other ‘converts’ from socialism was living proof that it was Labour which had shifted leftwards. But in any case I agreed with Keith Joseph that it was the ‘common ground’, not the ‘middle ground’, on which we must stake our case. From now on a gap opened up between the way in which Central Office wished to campaign and the direction I insisted on taking.
Such problems were not, however, immediately evident to me. Tuesday morning’s newspapers carried a report of an NOP poll suggesting that our lead was just 6 per cent, but compared with earlier NOP polls it did not suggest any narrowing of the gap. (Throughout the campaign the opinion polls were to give very different pictures of the balance of party support, ranging from the most exiguous of Tory leads — in one case a slight Labour lead — to an improbably overwhelming Tory landslide.) I felt it was an effective day’s campaigning, beginning in Bristol where I visited the Kleeneze brush factory to use every possible photo-opportunity to demonstrate my intention of ‘sweeping away the cobwebs’, ‘applying a new broom’ etc.
Also in Bristol I was on the receiving end of the Election Gall programme hosted by Robin Day. There is always an element of risk on these occasions. A well-briefed caller can expose gaps in a politician’s understanding which most political opponents never could. Moreover, judging the correct reaction is always more difficult when you cannot see the person to whom you are talking over the telephone. But I felt that this Election Call went particularly well, because the points raised with me were on the precise questions to which we had the most convincing answers — the need for tax cuts, controlling inflation, cutting back on government borrowing and encouraging small businesses. Of course, there were critical points too. I always felt that the key to dealing with these was to admit what had gone wrong and say clearly why a future Conservative Government would put it right. So on this occasion I agreed that the previous Conservative Government was indeed responsible for an increase in bureaucracy in the health service, and said how we were going to reverse it.
On the way back from Bristol, taking the new Intercity 125 high-speed train, I stopped off in West Country constituencies and had my photo taken with the candidates, including Chris Patten on the station platform at Bath. The day finished with my addressing a meeting at Gravesend. Since Central Office was telling me that our support among pensioners was shaky I wrote out a press release reminding voters of the record of Conservative Governments on this point.
The following day (Wednesday 18 April), after the morning press conference, I set off to campaign in East Anglia and the East Midlands. First stop was my bid for the agricultural vote. This consisted of a discussion of cattle feed with a friendly farmer, carefully navigating my way across a field full of cows (I had forgotten my boots) and then cradling a calf in my arms for the benefit of the cameras and, I hoped, the wider public. I had no experience with calves and I was not certain of the right technique. With cameramen from five continents present, Denis, ever realistic, warned that ‘If we’re not careful, we’ll have a dead calf on our hands.’ But it survived my attentions and those of the photographers. Fortunately, perhaps, the calf was not able to give an interview.
THE SECOND WEEK — D–14 to D–7
By now (Thursday 19 April) much agonizing had taken place back in London about the implications of my Cardiff speech for the ‘positioning’ of the Party and our campaign. Peter Thorneycroft had persuaded himself that we had made a strategic error which should not be repeated. And since nothing that Central Office or my colleagues did seemed to get much publicity, he decided to involve himself in the drafting of my speeches. Oblivious to all this, I spent that Thursday morning visiting a Leicester textile factory, where I put my childhood training to good effect by stitching overall pockets amid a chaotic crowd of journalists and an astonished workforce.
It was, however, just before the bus arrived at the Cadbury factory in Bournville that I learned that Peter Thorneycroft was insisting that a strong passage on trade unions, drafted by Paul Johnson, one of Britain’s leading journalists, an historian and a convert from socialism, should be removed from that evening’s speech in Birmingham — the second major rally of the campaign. Peter thought it too provocative. He had also apparently intervened to stop Keith Joseph speaking on the same subject. I did not agree with Peter’s assessment. But being away from London I felt insufficiently sure of my judgement to substitute it for his. So I angrily tore out the relevant pages of my draft speech and inserted some more innocuous passages. I contented myself with the knowledge that the last section of the speech, with which I had been helped by Peter Carrington, contained some extremely strong stuff on defence and foreign affairs, deliberately adopting the tone and some of the language of my earlier Kensington Town Hall speech.
But I was not in the best of humour as our coach drew up in front of the factory. I had specifically said that I did not want a formal reception committee, but rather to go straight in and talk to individual managers and workers. Now I saw two long lines of people in white hats and coats. I could not for the moment see the camera crews but I had no doubt that they were waiting somewhere to take suitable shots of this ludicrous scene. I stayed on the bus for a minute or two to regain my cool. It was only then that I realized that I knew the faces of what I had assumed to be the factory staff. It was the pressmen who, doubtless informed of my earlier instructions, had dressed up in white overalls as a joke. As I left the bus they held up their cameras as a kind of arch beneath which I entered the factory. They were so carried away with their joke that they forgot to take any photographs; but they helped me see the funny side of campaigning, for which I suspect we were all grateful.