Thanks to the blanket press coverage of Selsdon Park, we seemed to be a serious alternative Government committed to long-term thinking about the policies for Britain’s future. We were also helped by Harold Wilson’s attack on ‘Selsdon Man’. It gave us an air of down-to-earth right-wing populism which countered the somewhat aloof image conveyed by Ted. Above all, both Selsdon Park and the Conservative manifesto, A Better Tomorrow, contrasted favourably with the deviousness, inconsistency and horse trading which by now characterized the Wilson Government, especially since the abandonment of In Place of Strife under trade union pressure.[13]
Between our departure from Selsdon Park and the opening of the general election campaign in May, however, there was a reversal of the opinion poll standing of the two parties. At Selsdon we were in the lead and we thought we would win. In May quite suddenly we lost ground and appeared to be several points behind. Influenced by the short-term change in the polls, Harold Wilson called the election for 10 June — a mistake I never forgot when I became Prime Minister. But at the time most of us — including myself — thought that we would lose. The gloom steadily deepened. During the campaign I called in one day at the Conservative Research Department offices in Old Queen Street for some briefing material and was struck by how depressed everybody seemed.
Quite why this turnaround had occurred (or indeed how real it actually was) is hard to know. With the prospect of a general election there is always a tendency for disillusioned supporters to resume their party allegiance. But it is also true — and it is something that we would pay dearly for in Government — that we had not seriously set out to win the battle of ideas against socialism during our years in Opposition. And indeed, although we did not realize it, our rethinking of policy had not been as fundamental as it should have been.
The campaign itself was largely taken up with Labour attacks on our policies. We for our part, like any Opposition, but with more cause and opportunity than most, highlighted the long list of Labour’s broken promises — ‘steady industrial growth all the time’, ‘no stop-go measures’, ‘no increase in taxation’, ‘no increase in unemployment’, ‘the pound in your pocket not devalued’, ‘economic miracle’ and many more. This was the theme I pursued in my campaign speeches. But I also used a speech to a dinner organized by the National Association of Head Teachers in Scarborough to outline our education policies.
It is hard to know just what turned the tide, if indeed there was a tide against us to turn. Paradoxically perhaps, the Conservative figures who made the greatest contribution were those two fierce enemies Ted Heath and Enoch Powell. No one could describe Ted as a great communicator, not least because for the most part he paid such little attention to communication. But as the days went by he came across as a decent man, someone with integrity and a vision — albeit a somewhat technocratic one — of what he wanted for Britain. It seemed, to use Keith’s words to me five years earlier, that he had ‘a passion to get Britain right’. This was emphasized in Ted’s powerful introduction to the manifesto in which he attacked Labour’s ‘cheap and trivial style of government’ and ‘government by gimmick’ and promised ‘a new style of government’. Ted’s final Party Election Broadcast also showed him as an honest patriot who cared deeply about his country and wanted to serve it. Though it would not have saved him had we lost, he had fought a good campaign.
So had Enoch Powell. There had been much speculation as to whether he would endorse the Conservative leadership and programme. Attitudes towards Enoch remained sharply polarized. When he came in March to speak to my Association we were subject to strong criticism and I decided to issue a statement to the effect that: ‘Those who use this country’s great tradition of freedom of speech should not seek to deny that same freedom to others, especially to those who, like Mr Powell, spent their war years in distinguished service in the Forces.’
In the June campaign Enoch made three powerful speeches on the economic failure of the Labour Government, law and order, and Europe, urging people to vote Conservative. Furthermore, a bitter personal attack on Enoch by Tony Benn, linking him to fascism, probably rallied many otherwise unsympathetic voters to his standard. There is some statistical evidence that Enoch’s intervention helped tip the balance in the West Midlands in a close election.
When my own result was announced to a tremendous cheer at Hendon College of Technology, it appeared that I had increased my majority to over 11,000 over Labour. Then I went down to the Daily Telegraph party at the Savoy, where it quite soon became clear that the opinion polls had been proved wrong and that we were on course for an overall majority.
Friday was spent in my constituency clearing up and writing the usual thank-you letters. I thought that probably Ted would have at least one woman in his Cabinet, and that since he had got used to me in the Shadow Cabinet I would be the lucky girl. On the same logic, I would probably get the Education brief.
On Saturday morning the call from the No. 10 Private Secretary came through. Ted wanted to see me. When I went in to the Cabinet Room I began by congratulating him on his victory. But not much time was spent on pleasantries. He was as ever brusque and businesslike, and he offered me the job of Education Secretary, which I accepted.
I went back to the flat at Westminster Gardens with Denis and we drove to Lamberhurst. Sadly my father was not alive to share the moment. Shortly before his death in February, I had gone up to Grantham to see him. Having always had a weak chest, he had now developed emphysema and had oxygen beside the bed. My stepmother, Cissy, whom he had married several years earlier and with whom he had been very happy, was constantly at his bedside. While I was there, friends from the church, business, local politics, the Rotary and bowling club, kept dropping in ‘just to see how Alf was’. I hoped that at the end of my life I too would have so many good friends.
I understand that my father had been listening to me as a member of a panel on a radio programme just before he died. He never knew that I would become a Cabinet minister, and I am sure that he never imagined I would eventually become Prime Minister. He would have wanted these things for me because politics was so much a part of his life and because I was so much his daughter. But nor would he have considered that political power was the most important or even the most effective thing in life. In searching through my papers to assemble the material for this volume I came across some of my father’s loose sermon notes slipped into the back of my sixth-form chemistry exercise book.
Men, nations, races or any particular generation cannot be saved by ordinances, power, legislation. We worry about all this, and our faith becomes weak and faltering. But all these things are as old as the human race — all these things confronted Jesus 2,000 years ago… This is why Jesus had to come.
My father lived these convictions to the end.
CHAPTER VI
Teacher’s Pest
The Department of Education 1970–1974
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
On Monday 22 June 1970 I arrived at the Department of Education and Science (DES) in its splendid old quarters in Curzon Street (alas, in 1973 we moved to a hideous new office block at Waterloo). I was met by the Permanent Secretary, Bill (later Sir William) Pile and the outgoing Permanent Secretary, Sir Herbert Andrew. They gave me a warm greeting and showed me up to my impressive private office. It was all too easy to slip once more into the warm water of civil service respect for ‘the minister’, but I was very conscious that hard work lay ahead. I was generally satisfied with the ministerial team I had been allotted: one friendly, one hostile and one neutral. My old friend Lord Eccles, as Paymaster General, was responsible for the Arts. Bill Van Straubenzee, a close friend of Ted’s, dealt with Higher Education. Lord Belstead answered for the department in the Lords. I was particularly pleased that David Eccles, a former Minister of Education, was available, though installed in a separate building, to give me private advice based on his knowledge of the department.
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