Partly because of these developments, but partly too no doubt because it was bound to be difficult to focus on just one issue for a three-week campaign, we lost our momentum. I still thought that we might possibly win, but I was aware of a slackening of enthusiasm for our cause and confusion about our objectives. I also knew from the opinion polls and soundings in my own constituency that the Liberals were posing a serious threat. So by polling day my optimism had been replaced by unease.
That sentiment grew as I heard from Finchley and elsewhere around the country of a surprisingly heavy turn-out of voters to the polls that morning. I would have liked to think that these were all angry Conservatives, coming out to demonstrate their refusal to be blackmailed by trade union power. But it seemed more likely that they were voters from the Labour-dominated council estates who had come out to teach the Tories a lesson. I was glad to be wearing a spray of blue flowers in my buttonhole instead of the usual paper rosette. They had been given me by Mark and they stayed fresh all day, helping to keep up my spirits.
The results themselves quickly showed that we had nothing to be cheerful about. We lost thirty-three seats. It would be a hung Parliament. Labour had become the largest party with 301 seats — seventeen short of a majority; we were down to 296, though with a slightly higher percentage of the vote than Labour; the Liberals had gained almost 20 per cent of the vote with fourteen seats, and smaller parties, including the Ulster Unionists, held twenty-three. My own majority in Finchley was down from 11,000 to 6,000, though some of that decline was the result of boundary changes in the constituency.
I was upset at the result. We had finally squared up to the unions and the people had not supported us. Moreover, I had enjoyed my time as Education Secretary, or most of it. I would miss the workload and the decisions, and of course the conveniences like the ministerial car: from now on I would be driving myself around once more in my Vauxhall Viva. At least the painful process of clearing out desks and cupboards full of personal belongings was largely spared me. I had never taken much personal clutter to the DES in any case and, prudently, I had brought most of what there was back home at the start of the campaign and popped into the office to sign urgent letters when in central London. I could make a more or less clean break.
On Friday afternoon we met, a tired and downcast fag-end of a Cabinet, to be asked by Ted Heath for our reactions as to what should now be done. There were a number of options. Ted could advise the Queen to send for Harold Wilson as the leader of the largest single party. Or the Government could face Parliament and see whether it could command support for its programme. Or he could try to do a deal with the smaller parties for a programme designed to cope with the nation’s immediate difficulties. Having alienated the Ulster Unionists through our Northern Ireland policy, this in effect meant a deal with the Liberals — though even that would not have given us a majority. There was little doubt from the way Ted spoke that this was the course he favoured. We argued in circles about these possibilities.
My own instinctive feeling was that the party with the largest number of seats in the House of Commons was justified in expecting that they would be called to try to form a government. But Ted argued that with the Conservatives having won the largest number of votes, he was duty bound to explore the possibility of coalition. So he offered the Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe a place in a coalition Government and promised a Speaker’s conference on electoral reform. Thorpe went away to consult his party. Although I wanted to remain Secretary of State for Education, I did not want to do so at the expense of the Conservative Party’s never forming a majority government again. Yet that is what the introduction of proportional representation, which the Liberals would be demanding, might amount to. I was also conscious that this horse-trading was making us look ridiculous. The British dislike nothing more than a bad loser. It was time to go.
When we met again on Monday morning Ted gave us a full account of his discussions with the Liberals. They had in any case not been willing to go along with what Jeremy Thorpe wanted. A formal reply from him was still awaited. But it now seemed almost certain that Ted would have to tender his resignation. The final Cabinet was held at 4.45 that afternoon. By now Jeremy Thorpe’s reply had been received. From what Ted said, there were clues that his mind was already turning to the idea of a National Government of all parties, something which would increasingly attract him. It did not, of course, attract me at all. In any case, the Liberals were not going to join a coalition Government with us. There was nothing more to say.
I left Downing Street, sad but with some sense of relief. I had given little thought to the future. But I knew in my heart that it was time not just for a change in government but for a change in the Conservative Party.
CHAPTER VIII
Seizing the Moment
The October 1974 general election and the campaign for the Tory Leadership
THE 9½ PER CENT SOLUTION
It is never easy to go from government to opposition. But for several reasons it was particularly problematical for the Conservatives led by Ted Heath. First, of course, we had up until almost the last moment expected to win. Whatever the shortcomings of our Government’s economic strategy, every department had its own policy programme stretching well into the future. This now had to be abandoned for the rigours of Opposition. Secondly, Ted himself desperately wanted to continue as Prime Minister. He had been unceremoniously ejected from 10 Downing Street and for some months had to take refuge in the flat of his old friend and PPS Tim Kitson, having no home of his own — from which years later I drew the resolution that when my time came to depart I would at least have a house to go to. Ted’s passionate desire to return as Prime Minister lay behind much of the talk of coalitions and Governments of National Unity which came to disquiet the Party, though doubtless there was a measure of genuine conviction as well. Indeed, the more that the Tory Party moved away from Ted’s own vision, the more he wanted to see it tamed by coalition. Thirdly, and worst of all perhaps, the poisoned legacy of our U-turns was that we had no firm principles, let alone much of a record, on which to base our arguments. And in Opposition argument is everything.
For my part, I was glad that Ted did not ask me to cover my old department at Education but gave me the Environment portfolio instead. I had learned during our previous period in Opposition in the 1960s that there are difficulties in attacking proposals many of which will have been in some stage of gestation within one’s own department. Moreover, I was convinced from my own soundings in the course of the general election campaign that both rates and housing — particularly the latter — were issues which had contributed to our defeat. The task of devising and presenting sound and popular policies in these areas appealed to me.
There were rumblings about Ted’s own position, though that is what they largely remained. This was partly because most of us expected an early general election to be called in order to give Labour a working majority, and it hardly seemed sensible to change leaders now. But there were other reasons as well. Ted still inspired nervousness, even fear among many of his colleagues. In a sense, even the U-turns contributed to the aura around him. For he had single-handedly and with barely a publicly expressed murmur of dissent reversed Conservative policies and had gone far, with his lieutenants, in reshaping the Conservative Party. Paradoxically too, both those committed to Ted’s approach and those — like Keith and me and many on the backbenches — who thought very differently agreed that the vote-buying policies which the Labour Party was now pursuing would inevitably lead to economic collapse. Just what the political consequences of that would be was uncertain. But there were many Tory wishful thinkers who thought that it might result in the Conservative Party somehow returning to power with a ‘doctor’s mandate’. And Ted had no doubt of his own medical credentials.