Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Remarks leaving Flood Street (“It is so close”)

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: 19 Flood Street, Chelsea
Source: Daily Mail , 5 February 1975
Journalist: Gordon Greig, Daily Mail , reporting
Editorial comments: 0900. The Daily Mail article covers the whole day.
Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 2584
Themes: Conservative (leadership elections)

Sudden death in the silence of Committee Room 14

It was an early dawn for the Thatchers. In a household where two careers bustle for attention, it was Mr Denis Thatcher, a Burmah oil company executive, who had priority.

Mr Thatcher needed to be at head office in Swindon, Wiltshire, at 9 a.m. and that meant a two-hour drive from his home in Chelsea.

Margaret Thatcher cooked the breakfast and then saw him off to work.

If she believed in omens, that moment must have been an uncomfortable one. For his car, a green German Audi, refused to start and a mechanic had to be called to put it right.

By 7.30 a.m. the telephone began ringing—mainly calls from well-wishers, but also from Mrs Thatcher's lieutenants with plans for last-minute canvassing at Westminster.

No. 19 Flood Street, Chelsea, from the moment the first call came in had ceased to be just another London household. It had become a fulcrum of power inside the Conservative Party.

DOWN the King's Road, past Sloane Square and Eaton Square and in the heartland of Belgravia, the Leader of the Opposition. Mr Edward Heath also rose early.

He, too, took telephone calls on his unlisted number from his closest advisers. The messages from all of them were encouraging: he might not quite make it on the first ballot, but his vote would be sufficiently large to intimidate any possible challenger on the second try.

The newspapers drummed out the same message. Only the Daily Mail didn't seem convinced.

He took a quiet breakfast and then began working through his papers. It would be a normal day save for the temporary embarrassment of that vote at 3.30 p.m.

Life at No. 17, Wilton Street, Belgravia, would go on much as before.

Strange tradition

Margaret Thatcher left for the House of Commons at 9 a.m. The Press were on her doorstep—not an unusual event during these past two weeks. She gave the statutory politician's smile and the statutory non-statement: ‘I am going straight to the Commons and I shall be working as usual.’

Asked about the leadership election she said: ‘It is so close.’ And must have felt the disbelief in the air.

It was, indeed, to be a busy day for her. The Commons were once again debating the Finance Bill and she was leading for the Opposition. That meant a line-by-line, clause-by-clause review of the complexities of Denis Healey 's Budget still staggering its way through this Committee Stage in the Commons.

She met members of the Tory front-bench who would be taking part in the debate and then her supporters.

It's a strange tradition of both parties in the House that during leadership elections the actual candidates do not do any button-holing on their own account—except subtly, like suddenly appearing in the tea-room for a chat.

The real work is done by their champions who pour out the balm or the poison where appropriate.

Save for Sir Keith Joseph, Mrs Thatcher's supporters packed very little political weight. One was Airey Neave, the Old Etonian MP for Abingdon, whose main claim to fame is that he successfully escaped from Colditz during the war, and made his way to England. His highest Government post was as a Parliamentary Secretary way back in 1959.

Strategy of courage

The other supporter was Mr Geoffrey Finsberg, MP for Hampstead, who only got into the House in the 1970 election.

But they seem to have worked out a strategy with Mrs Thatcher which took courage.

Instead of proclaiming that their candidate was winning they began to whisper in the corridors of Westminster that she was in trouble. It was a policy designed to force the Tory Party to face up to the fact that if it wanted to get ride of Ted Heath it had to do in on the first ballot.

The pessimistic reports from Margaret Thatcher's camp were balm to the ears of Mr Peter Walker running the Leader's campaign.

His canvass returns showed Mr Heath in with a chance of winning on the first ballot, but there was always the nagging fear that some Tory MPs, fearful of offending the Establishment, had lied when approached by his people.

But now Mrs Thatcher's own figures seemed to be confirming his.

Mr Walker, of course, had been through it all before. He it was who so skilfully master-minded Mr Heath 's campaign against Mr Maudling ten years ago when Sir Alec Douglas-Home had stepped down. Then he was a mere novice.

Mr Heath himself did not put in an early appearance and it was appropriate that he should not. His best policy was to appear so confident of victory that there was no need for him even to appear to be trying. Mr Walker would look after everything.

He had an official function to attend in any case—representing the Opposition at the Service of Thanksgiving in Westminster Abbey for the life and work of the late Lord Fraser.

After the service he walked the 200 yards to Parliament with a police sergeant at his side.

It was the opportunity [end p1] 34-year-old Mrs Sheila Prince, who had travelled up from Bournemouth, had been waiting for.

He was her ‘political idol’ and she was determined to wish him well and had come up especially in order to do so.

A few years ago Mr Heath would have handled the encounter badly. But politics have taught him a lot and he stopped and chatted. It was a graceful and a professional performance.

Mr Tony Benn who has more to learn, hurried along the path in the opposite direction and pretended that he hadn't seen the Leader of the Opposition. Mr Wilson would never have been so clumsy.

For Tory MPs, the sensation they were about to inflict on themselves began just before noon when Mr du Cann and a conspiracy of senior back-benchers set up for business in committee room 14.

Mr Philip Goodhart, the MP for Bromley and Beckenham, brought along the black ballot box he used for a constituency poll on the Common Market.

Charles Morrison (Devizes) took up position at one door to hand out ballot slips with the names of the three candidates.

First to vote was Mr Nicholas Fairbairn, who succeeded Sir Alec Douglas-Home in his seat at Kinross and West Perthshire. He immediately announced he had voted for Mrs Thatcher.

The first of the actual contestants to vote was Mr Hugh Fraser, the great patrician figure of the Tory Party, all jolly and chuckling—‘I'm wearing my lucky leadership tie today.’

It was an Old Square pattern in deepest Tory blue on a cream silk background.

Stroll in corridor

A brisk spell of voting was interrupted by Army helicopters whirring past the terrace windows.

Then the Tory Party's first lady strolled down the corridor with a backbencher fan. It was two minutes to one.

Mrs Thatcher then left to be driven to the City for a working lunch about details of the Finance Bill with young banker MP Norman Lamont and a group of leading businessmen.

For nearly an hour the corridor was almost deserted as the Tory Party gave its priority to lunch while pondering its leadership troubles.

It was in the middle of this lull that Mr Heath arrived to vote. He walked down the corridor dressed in the grey tweed suit he wore on the day he lost the election last October.

A minute later he was out respectfully escorted by a young, anonymous backbencher maybe seizing his one chance—actually to chat to a party leader usually impenetrably surrounded by aides.

At 2.30 a workman passed the room hauling a length of timber. ‘God, they're building the scaffold already,’ quipped one late voter.

Question time began as it always does at 2.30. Tuesday is a big day always because at 3.15 the Prime Minister is at the despatch box. But this time the House was more crowded than usual.

Mr Hugh Fraser arrived to some quiet ribaldry, but when the Leader of the Opposition took his seat at 3.10 there was no demonstration either of affection from his supporters or abuse from Labour MPs.

Those who expected Mr Wilson to make as much mileage as possible of the paroxysms of the Tory Party were disappointed too. The House of Commons is a curious place which sometimes manages to show a surprising sensitivity.

Silly supporters

Everyone knew that Mr Heath's thoughts were on other matters, but no one made a point of saying so.

Mrs Thatcher, too, showed a calm understanding of the situation. An appearance by her might have set off a demonstration on her behalf by some of her sillier supporters. She knew instinctively that that could do her or the Tory Party no good at all—no matter what the ultimate result.

So when she returned from a working lunch in the City she went straight to her room in the House to await, nervously, the result.

Margaret Thatcher sat in the gloom of Westminster's central lobby, her fingers drumming a tattoo on the leather seat muttering to a close friend: He's got to be stopped, we must stop him, we've got to get him out …

Five minutes before the close two of her campaign managers were echoing their leader's thought more as a desperate prayer than any hard prophecy.

‘She'll do well to get 95 votes … Sir Alec 's declaration has lost us a few vital ones … Ted 's boys have won the psychological war …   .’

Then within minutes the whole atmosphere changed.

The first real clue to the sensation came as Tim Kitson, parliamentary private secretary to Mr Heath, tore out of committee room 14 where the count and vote were held.

His face usually mirrors the moment—and this time was no exception. It was glazed, glum. Almost breathing over his shoulder was Mr Bill Shelton, the young Tory MP who was acting as Maggie Thatcher 's runner. His face was an enigmatic mask.

Then the 70 MPs who crowded in to listen to the result being announced burst into the corridor in an explosion of excitement.

Geoffrey Johnson Smith (East Grinstead) spread the news to journalists.

‘Thatcher 130, Heath 119 …’ The Press Association man looked aghast: ‘Could you repeat that? My God. …’

A few minutes later Edward du Cann, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, who has been on the receiving end of a lot of rough knocks, emerged with an infectious smile: ‘You've heard it all. …’

What do you think?

‘Well, I said it was tramlines, but now I don't know what terminal we will stop at.’

Mrs Thatcher waited in her room high in a Commons alcove. By her side were Airey Neave, Robin Cooke, one of the younger members of the team, and former Tory MP Joan Hall, who has acted as Girl Friday.

Mrs Thatcher had already made plans for a small tea-party briefing with half a dozen political journalists on the cautious theory that she would at least come second and maybe even force a second ballot.

Within minutes that had all changed to a champagne-style jamboree confrontation with a score of television cameramen in a huge open Presidential Press conference in the very room where she won her vote.

Edward Heath slipped from the Opposition front bench in the Commons just after 3.30 to wait in his room.

With him at the awful, lonely minute as Kitson relayed the result was the one man he has always looked to at a watershed in his career—Lord Aldington, formerly Sir Toby Lowe, the small, cherubic-faced, shrewd financier and top Tory politician.

Mr Heath sat woodenly in one of the chairs at the end of the long table where the Opposition Shadow Cabinet meets listening to the advice from Aldington.

Curiously the Heath campaign has been largely directed and run by some of the party's young lions—Peter Walker, Nick Scott and Kenneth Baker, all of them leadership potential.

Sprawling in a chair

But it was to the wise old head of Aldington, sprawled in a green leather easy chair, that Mr Heath turned for the comfort and encouragement for what must be one of the most terrible moments in any politician's life.

For 20 minutes the two discussed all the possible permutations of the vote—but the one inescapable conclusion could not be avoided. Ted 's time was up.

Meanwhile in the hysterically elated Thatcher camp they began a chant that went like this:

Knock, knock. …

Who's there?

Ted. …

Ted who? …

You see, you've forgotten already. …’

Mr Heath, for all his declarations that he would fight to the bitter end, knew that the battle was over. He knew it the moment the result was handed to him by Sir Timothy Kitson and no one needed to tell him where his duty lay.

Nevertheless, he was not [end p2] spared the advice of his closest colleagues. Now, they told him, he had to throw in the towel immediately and throw all his remaining authority behind Mr Willie Whitelaw.

Mr Heath has always shared his triumphs and his disappointments with his great character of a father, 86-year-old William Heath. But this blow came so suddenly and so unexpectedly that for once he didn't make the telephone call.

It was the Daily Mail who, shortly before 6 p.m. telephoned him at his house in Broadstairs to tell him his son had resigned as leader.

Ever since he had heard the shattering news of the voting he believed that Ted Heath would continue his battle. He found the resignation decision impossible to believe.

And then, when it sank in, said bitterly: ‘This is such a tragic waste of a fine and honest man.’

Speech cancelled

Mr Heath had two more things to do before returning to the home from which he had left so confidently in the morning. First he cancelled the speech he was due to make to Faversham Tories at their annual dinner in Sitting-bourne Town Hall. He is a man of great resillience but that he knew he could not face.

Secondly he made his last and very temporary appointment as leader of the Conservative Party. He asked Mr Robert Carr to take over the Leadership of the Opposition until a new leader had been elected.

The day of the Rt Hon Edward Heath, Leader of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition, had come to a close.

For Mrs Thatcher it was only just beginning.

Of course, like all winners, she looked like one right away. Oddly she began talking in the royal ‘We.’ … ‘We did not quite expect these results,’ she said and no one was quite sure whether she was talking for herself or for all her supporters.

With her two children and her husband by her side she gave a president-style champagne reception at 7.15 in Airey Neave 's flat in Westminster Gardens. With Sir Keith Joseph dropping in for a toast, the public woman and the private wife became inextricably entwined.

‘Part of me is a woman,’ she said, ‘and part of me is a politician. The MPs voted for the whole of me.’

But everyone knew thats things could never be quite the same again.

For the moment her eyes were kept firmly fixed on the second ballot in a week's time. But whether she wins or loses then makes no difference to the fact that Mrs Margaret Thatcher has arrived.

Her day has come.