MACHINE POLITICS
It is said that when Ted Heath was offered a Junior Whip’s job in 1950, he asked the advice of Lord Swinton, the Tory Party’s elder statesman, as to whether he should accept it. ‘Get in on the machine — at however squalid a level,’ said Lord Swinton. Ted had taken this advice to heart, and I, in my still vulnerable position as head of the machine, could not afford to neglect it. So I set out to get some control of it.
Airey Neave and I decided that there would have to be changes at Conservative Central Office. Constitutionally, Central Office is the Leader of the Party’s office: events during the leadership campaign had convinced me that it would be very difficult for some of those there to act in that capacity under me.
At Central Office I wanted as Chairman an effective administrator, one preferably with business connections, who would be loyal to me. I had always admired Peter Thorneycroft and in retrospect I thought that his courageous resignation on the issue of public expenditure in 1958 had signalled a wrong turning for the post-war Conservative Party. As part of that older generation which had been leading the Party when I first entered Parliament, and as chairman of several large companies, Peter seemed to me to fit the bill. But how to persuade him? It turned out that Willie Whitelaw was related to him, and Willie persuaded him to take the job. It would have taxed the energy of a much younger man, for the Party Chairman has to keep up morale even in the lowest periods, of which there would be several. Peter had the added problem that at this stage most of the Party in the country accepted my leadership only on sufferance. This would gradually change after the 1975 Party Conference. But it took a good deal longer — and some painful and controversial personnel changes — before I felt that the leading figures at Central Office had any real commitment to me. Peter gradually replaced them with loyalists; I never enquired how.
Alistair McAlpine’s arrival as Party Treasurer certainly helped. The existing Treasurers, Lords Ashdown and Chelmer, told me that they had decided to resign. Airey Neave had suggested that Alistair, who had been Treasurer for ‘Britain in Europe’ during the referendum campaign, had the personality, energy and connections to do the job. He was right. Although a staunch Tory from a family of Tories, Alistair had to turn himself into something of a politician overnight. I told him that he would have to give up his German Mercedes for a British Jaguar and he immediately complied. But I had not prepared him for the host of minor but irritating examples of obstructive behaviour which confronted him at Central Office, nor for the great difficulties he would encounter in trying to persuade businessmen that in spite of the years of Heathite corporatism we were still a free-enterprise Party worth supporting.
Some people expected me to make even more substantial changes at the Conservative Research Department. The CRD was in theory a department of Central Office, but largely because of its geographical separateness (in Old Queen Street) and its intellectually distinguished past, it had a specially important role, particularly in Opposition. In a sense, the Centre for Policy Studies had been set up as an alternative to the Research Department. Now that I was Leader, however, the CRD and the CPS would have to work together. The Director of the Research Department, Chris Patten, I knew to be on the left of the Party. Much bitterness and rivalry had built up between the CRD and the CPS. In the eyes of many on the right it was precisely the consensus-oriented, generalist approach epitomized by the CRD which had left us directionless and — in the words of Keith Joseph — ‘stranded on the middle ground’. I decided to replace Ian Gilmour with Angus Maude as Chairman of the Research Department, who would work with Keith on policy, but leave Chris Patten as Director and Adam Ridley, Ted’s former economic adviser, as his deputy. These were good decisions. I came to have a high regard for the work of the department, particularly when it was fulfilling its role as Secretariat to the Shadow Cabinet rather than devising policy. Even though there were occasional squalls, the CRD moved further and further in the direction that Keith and I were taking.
Meanwhile, Airey Neave and I had to assemble a small personal staff who would run my office. The day after the leadership election result I met the secretaries who had worked for Ted. They were clearly upset, and I detected some hostility. This was quite understandable; indeed, I thought it a tribute to their loyalty. But I asked them to stay on if they felt able to, and most of them did, for a time at least. In those days the Leader of the Opposition had the present Home Secretary’s office in the House. There was one large room with a small ante-room for two secretaries, and some other small rooms upstairs. There was not enough space, and as summer approached it all became very hot and airless. (It was only later in the summer of 1976 that we moved into the rather more spacious accommodation previously used as the flat of the Serjeant-at-Arms, where the secretaries I had inherited from Ted were joined by my lively and reliable constituency secretary Alison Ward.)
A flood of letters followed my becoming Leader, sometimes 800 a day. Girls would come across from Central Office to help sort out the post, but usually this was the task of my four secretaries, who sat on the floor in the main room opening envelopes and categorizing the letters. They did their best, but it was hopelessly unsystematic. Then Alistair McAlpine suggested that I ask David Wolfson to take charge of the correspondence section. Alistair thought that if David, as the man responsible for the mail-order section of Great Universal Stores, could not bring order out of this chaos no one could. In fact, both in Opposition and then at 10 Downing Street David’s talents were put to a good deal wider use than sorting the maiclass="underline" he gave insights into what business was thinking, provided important contacts and proved particularly adept at smoothing ruffled political feathers.
But I also needed a full-time head of my office, who had to be industrious, dependable and, with the number of speeches, articles and letters to draft, above all literate. It was my old friend and colleague, providentially translated to the editorship of the Daily Telegraph, Bill Deedes who suggested Richard Ryder, then working on Peterborough, the Telegraph’s respectable gossip column. Richard joined me at the end of April — to begin work alongside Caroline Stephens, one of the secretaries I inherited from Ted, who would later become Caroline Ryder.
Richard Ryder ran this small office very effectively on a shoestring. It was a happy ship, and some entertaining characters served on their way to better things. Matthew Parris, who was in charge of replying to my correspondence, showed a talent for the sketch-writing he was later to perform for The Times when, on the eve of the 1979 election campaign, answering an aggrieved letter from a woman rejecting our policy of selling council houses and simultaneously complaining about what was wrong with her own, he told her that she was fortunate to have been given a home paid for by the rest of us out of taxation. Like Queen Victoria, I was not amused — especially when the Daily Mirror published the letter at the very beginning of the campaign. But Matthew survived.
A month after Richard’s arrival Gordon Reece, on secondment from EMI for a year, joined my full-time staff to help in dealing with the press and much else. Gordon was a Godsend. An ebullient former TV producer whose good humour never failed, he was able to jolly me along to accept things I would have rejected from other people. His view was that in getting my message across we must not concentrate simply on heavyweight newspapers, The Times and the Daily Telegraph, but be just as concerned about the mid-market populars, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express and — the real revolution — about the Sun and the News of the World. Moreover, he believed that even newspapers which supported the Labour Party in their editorial line would be prepared to give us fair treatment if we made a real attempt to provide them with interesting copy. He was right on both counts. The Sun and the News of the World were crucial in communicating Conservative values to traditionally non-Conservative voters. The left wing Sunday Mirror also gave me fair and full coverage, however critical the comments. Gordon regularly talked to the editors. But he also persuaded me that the person they really wanted to see and hear from was me. So, whatever the other demands on my diary, when Gordon said that we must have lunch with such-and-such an editor, that was the priority.