During these early days I was encouraged by the number of backbenchers who came up to offer me their support. One of the first was Peter Morrison, later to become my PPS at Downing Street, who told me that three years earlier his father, Lord Marga-dale, a former Chairman of the 1922 Committee, had said of me: ‘That woman will be the next leader of the Tory Party.’ This may be the first recorded instance of the phrase ‘that woman’.
Meanwhile, dealings with the media were suddenly becoming important. In these Gordon Reece was invaluable. Angus Maude, a journalist who combined profound insights with pithy wit and who had been unceremoniously sacked from the front bench by Ted for writing a critical article in the Spectator in 1966, helped me with the crucial Daily Telegraph article called ‘My Kind of Tory Party’. (I also received useful advice from a group of Telegraph journalists such as Peter Utley, John O’Sullivan and Frank Johnson — and of course Alfred Sherman — who were advocates of my cause in spite of their newspaper giving Ted reluctant endorsement.) George Gardiner, who was one of the February 1974 intake of MPs, a journalist himself and as editor of Conservative News party to some of the Central Office gossip, also helped me with drafting. It was a lively team.
In fact, the attitude towards my candidature was tangibly changing. I spoke on Tuesday 21 January to a lunch in St Stephen’s Tavern of the Guinea Club, consisting of leading national and provincial newspaper journalists. By this time as a result of the soundings Airey had taken I was actually beginning to feel that I was in with a chance. I said to them wryly at one point: ‘You know, I really think you should begin to take me seriously.’ They looked back in amazement, and perhaps some of them soon started to do so. For by the weekend articles had begun to appear reappraising my campaign in a different light.
Nor were my prospects harmed by another exchange in the Commons the following day with the ever-obliging Denis Healey. In bitter but obscure vein he described me as the ‘La Pasionaria of privilege’. I jotted down a reply and delivered it a few moments later with relish: ‘Some Chancellors are microeconomic. Some Chancellors are fiscal. This one is just plain cheap.’ The Tory benches loved it.
With just a week to go, Airey, Keith and Bill came round to Flood Street on Sunday 26 January to discuss the latest position. The number of pledges — mine at around 120 and Ted’s less than eighty — looked far too optimistic. People would need to be revisited and their intentions re-examined. Presumably the Heath campaign, in which Peter Walker and Ted’s PPSs Tim Kitson and Ken Baker were the main figures, was receiving equally or even more optimistic information; but they made the mistake of believing it. Certainly, in marked contrast to Airey’s public demeanour, they were loudly predicting a large victory on the first ballot.
At Flood Street it was agreed that I should address my core campaigners in Committee Room 13 on Monday night. I could not tell them anything about campaigning. They had forgotten far more about political tactics and indeed political skulduggery than I would ever know. So instead I spoke and answered questions on my vision of a Conservative society from 10.30 till midnight. It was marvellous to be able to speak from the heart about what I believed, and to feel that those crucial to my cause were listening. Apparently my audience felt the same way; several MPs told me that they had never heard any senior Tory discuss policy in such philosophical terms. Plainly it was not I alone who was dispirited by the directionless expediency of the previous few years.
The Heath camp now changed the direction of their campaign, but still failed to get to the point. Ridicule had failed. Instead, the accusation became that the sort of Conservatism I represented might appeal to the middle-class rank and file supporters of the Party, particularly in the South, but would never win over the uncommitted. My article in the Daily Telegraph, which appeared on Thursday 30 January, took this head-on:
I was attacked [as Education Secretary] for fighting a rearguard action in defence of ‘middle-class interests’. The same accusation is levelled at me now, when I am leading Conservative opposition to the socialist Capital Transfer Tax proposals. Well, if ‘middle-class values’ include the encouragement of variety and individual choice, the provision of fair incentives and rewards for skill and hard work, the maintenance of effective barriers against the excessive power of the state and a belief in the wide distribution of individual private property, then they are certainly what I am trying to defend… If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it. Indeed one of the reasons for our electoral failure is that people believe too many Conservatives have become socialists already. Britain’s progress towards socialism has been an alternation of two steps forward with half a step back… And why should anyone support a party that seems to have the courage of no convictions?
This theme — the return to fundamental Conservative principles and the defence of middle-class values — was enormously popular in the Party. I repeated it when speaking to my Constituency Association the following day. I rejected the idea that my candidature was representative of a faction. I emphasized that I was speaking up for all those who felt let down by recent Conservative Governments. I was also prepared to accept my share of the blame for what had gone wrong under Ted.
But [I added] I hope I have learned something from the failures and mistakes of the past and can help to plan constructively for the future… There is a widespread feeling in the country that the Conservative Party has not defended [Conservative] ideals explicitly and toughly enough, so that Britain is set on a course towards inevitable socialist mediocrity. That course must not only be halted, it must be reversed.
It was in an open letter to the Chairman of my constituency released on Saturday afternoon, however, that I really summed up the gravamen of the charge against Ted and his leadership. Ted was a political paradox. He combined a belief in strong leadership (especially his own) with a record of buckling under the pressure of events. He was always talking about reaching out to win over the support of people from other parties, but he had no willingness to listen to the Conservative Party. By contrast, I said that what was required was a ‘leadership that listens’, adding that ‘in office… we allowed ourselves to become detached from many who had given us their support and trust’.
I knew from my talks with Conservative MPs that there were many contradictory factors which would influence their votes. Some would support Ted simply because he was the Leader in situ. Many would not dare go against him because, even after two successive election defeats, he inspired fear that there would be no forgiveness for mutiny. Moreover, many thought that I was inexperienced — and as I had publicly admitted, there was more than a little truth in that. There was also some suspicion of me as too doctrinaire and insensitive. And then, of course, there was the rather obvious fact that I was a woman.