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For ten tumultuous years from 1965 to '75, | 0:00:05 | 0:00:09 | |
two men fought THE heavyweight duel of 20th-century British politics. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:16 | |
One was the Labour leader and Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
The Britain that is going to forged in the white heat of this revolution. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:26 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:00:26 | 0:00:27 | |
The other was the Conservative leader and Prime Minister, Edward Heath. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:33 | |
Away with all the short-term gimmickry and instant government we've had for the last few years. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:38 | |
Heath and Wilson governed in an era of huge upheaval - the swinging sixties and turbulent seventies. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:49 | |
On their watch, Britain changed irreversibly... | 0:00:51 | 0:00:55 | |
and become a nation state within Europe. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:58 | |
The future is yours! | 0:00:58 | 0:01:00 | |
But it also hit economic and industrial chaos. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:06 | |
Mr Heath has given the militants the charter they always dreamed of. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:11 | |
The Heath-Wilson duel spanned four elections... | 0:01:14 | 0:01:18 | |
their rivalry was both political and personal. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
It was quite extraordinary how much they hated each other when they were opposite each other | 0:01:21 | 0:01:27 | |
in the House of Commons, and yet in some ways they were extraordinarily similar characters. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:33 | |
Harold Wilson and Edward Heath were the political titans of their era. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:38 | |
Two grammar school boys, born in the same year, | 0:01:38 | 0:01:43 | |
who grew into very different men, bound by political fate. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:47 | |
They were a double act for 10 years, we began to think | 0:01:47 | 0:01:50 | |
in those days, it would be like Gladstone and Disraeli, would this double act ever come to an end? | 0:01:50 | 0:01:55 | |
Their double act did come to an end. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
But by then, the Heath-Wilson duel had redefined a nation. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:04 | |
# Hey, you, get off of my cloud | 0:02:04 | 0:02:08 | |
# Hey, you, get off of my cloud. # | 0:02:08 | 0:02:13 | |
In October 1964, Harold Wilson was elected British Prime Minister. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:22 | |
It marked a huge change from the public school toffs who had been running the country. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:29 | |
Wilson's Conservative predecessors had been the old Etonian aristocrat Sir Alec Douglas-Home, | 0:02:30 | 0:02:36 | |
and before him another old Etonian, Harold Macmillan. | 0:02:36 | 0:02:41 | |
Harold Wilson was cut from a very different cloth. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:45 | |
Country estates and grouse moors were another world. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
Well, he were a Yorkshire lad, weren't he? | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
Come from Huddersfield. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
I come from Keighley, which is not far away. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
And I think the Yorkshire thing in Harold was very meaningful. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:12 | |
It meant a lot to him, as it always has to me. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
It means being rather tough, and where there's muck there's brass. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:20 | |
I remember during the election campaign of 1964, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
we were en route across from Lancashire to Yorkshire, | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
and he said, "Would you like to see the house where I was born?" | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
And we said, "Oh, yes, please!" | 0:03:31 | 0:03:34 | |
So we stopped en route outside his birthplace in Huddersfield - | 0:03:34 | 0:03:39 | |
a very ordinary terraced house - and he stood there, | 0:03:39 | 0:03:42 | |
and there was a certain humble pride and pleasure | 0:03:42 | 0:03:48 | |
in feeling that he had risen from | 0:03:48 | 0:03:52 | |
quite a humble background, with outstanding success. | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
'James Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour party, | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
'who could be the youngest Prime Minister for nearly 200 years, | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
'and perhaps the first with a Yorkshire accent.' | 0:04:02 | 0:04:04 | |
It was a breakthrough, that here was a grammar school boy, | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
no public school boy, done very well, won a scholarship | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
at University College Oxford, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
got a first in PPE, and here he was, | 0:04:13 | 0:04:17 | |
the mascot, as it were, of the new Britain. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:20 | |
A meritocrat. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
The self-made Yorkshireman, with his homespun pipe, Gannex raincoat | 0:04:24 | 0:04:28 | |
and humble tastes, revolutionised the political landscape. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:32 | |
He was, in some senses, quite deeply and naturally a man of the people. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
When I say that, I mean when he chose to spend his holidays in Scilly | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
in a small seaside bungalow, that's what he wanted to do. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:45 | |
He wasn't trying to persuade the media that he was an ordinary man. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:50 | |
He just was an ordinary man. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:52 | |
But he was aware that the image | 0:04:52 | 0:04:55 | |
of the ordinary man with HP Sauce on his sausage, | 0:04:55 | 0:04:59 | |
drinking his pint of beer... | 0:04:59 | 0:05:01 | |
was helpful politically. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:04 | |
-# White light -White light going messing up my mind | 0:05:04 | 0:05:08 | |
# White light... # | 0:05:08 | 0:05:09 | |
In the 1964 campaign Wilson told the British people that, after 13 years of misrule by old fogey Tories, | 0:05:09 | 0:05:16 | |
he would revitalize the nation with a planned economy and modern, scientific thinking. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:23 | |
We're restating our socialism | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
in terms of the scientific revolution. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:33 | |
I worked with him fairly closely on the manifesto. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:37 | |
He made the speech about the white heat of technology. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
The Britain that will be forged in the white heat of this revolution | 0:05:41 | 0:05:45 | |
will be no place for restrictive practices, or for outdated methods on either side of industry. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:52 | |
He was mocked as someone who was going to put on a white coat | 0:05:52 | 0:05:55 | |
and go round and modernise the economy with a blow lamp. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
Actually what he was saying was we are all going to be burned up | 0:05:58 | 0:06:02 | |
by technical change unless we plan for it. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:07 | |
NEWSREADER: 'The electorate has chosen.' | 0:06:07 | 0:06:12 | |
This new man, with his new message, struck a chord... | 0:06:12 | 0:06:15 | |
and Wilson won the October 1964 election, but only just. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:21 | |
'A fantastically close result, but a majority for Harold Wilson, | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
'When Wilson came in, in 1964...' | 0:06:24 | 0:06:28 | |
that was the great sun-rising moment | 0:06:28 | 0:06:31 | |
in the second half of the 20th century in Britain, other than, | 0:06:31 | 0:06:36 | |
I suppose, Tony Blair in 1997. It was the kind of new dawn. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
The grammar school boy from Yorkshire was off to meet the Queen, | 0:06:41 | 0:06:45 | |
who would ask him to form the first Labour government in 13 years. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:49 | |
He was still in his underpants, as a matter of fact, | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
changing to go to the palace. And I remember so vividly | 0:06:52 | 0:06:56 | |
one of his colleagues said to him, "Harold, you can't go to the palace wearing red braces." | 0:06:56 | 0:07:02 | |
And Harold turned round and said, "Why not? | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
"I'm leader of the Labour party, why can't I wear red braces?" "But you can't do it. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
"You've got to meet the Queen." | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
"But I haven't got any other braces." | 0:07:11 | 0:07:12 | |
"OK," said this person, "I'll go out to a local shop | 0:07:12 | 0:07:17 | |
"and buy you a new pair of black braces," which he did. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:22 | |
Harold changed from his red braces to his black braces and off he went to the palace. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:26 | |
The fusty old Etonian Tories had been a soft target for satirists, | 0:07:28 | 0:07:33 | |
like the magazine Private Eye. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:36 | |
The homespun but hi-tech Harold Wilson was harder to pin down. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:42 | |
Their solution was to invent a diary, | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
written by Mrs Wilson. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:47 | |
It was, in a way, a reaction against the image | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
that Wilson had projected of the super professional whizz kid, | 0:07:50 | 0:07:54 | |
to make him a comic bungler, | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
and his wife was a simple lady from the North Country, writing crap poems. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:04 | |
An early entry in Mrs Wilson's Diary imagined their first encounter with | 0:08:05 | 0:08:09 | |
the posh cook they'd inherited from Alec and Lady Douglas-Home. | 0:08:09 | 0:08:13 | |
I had the terrible business of Mrs Green. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:16 | |
There she was at the door, saying, "Oh, I'm so glad you've come, | 0:08:16 | 0:08:20 | |
"I've got a lovely cote de veau garni aux epinards in the oven for you." | 0:08:20 | 0:08:25 | |
"Thank you very much," Harold replied, "I think I'll just have some baked beans | 0:08:25 | 0:08:30 | |
"and a glass of Wincarnis if you don't mind." | 0:08:30 | 0:08:34 | |
Though the '64 election had been much closer than expected, | 0:08:44 | 0:08:48 | |
the Conservative Party was terrified by Wilson's success. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:52 | |
Soon afterwards, Sir Alec Douglas-Home withdrew to the grouse moor, | 0:08:57 | 0:09:02 | |
and the party began the search for its own Harold Wilson. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:06 | |
In July 1965, the man they alighted on was Edward Heath. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:13 | |
Ironically, why Heath became leader of the Conservative Party in 1965 | 0:09:18 | 0:09:24 | |
was because the Conservatives decided they must have someone | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
who would be able to deal with Wilson. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:30 | |
Who was, if you like, although they wouldn't put it this way, a carbon copy of Wilson. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
So I think Wilson, in a way, created Heath. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:37 | |
Heath would not have got the job if Wilson hadn't already become Prime Minister | 0:09:37 | 0:09:42 | |
and leader of the Labour party. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:43 | |
But it was instantly clear that Heath lacked Wilson's silver tongue. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:48 | |
Good afternoon, Mr Heath, how are you feeling now it's all over? | 0:09:48 | 0:09:52 | |
I'm feeling very pleased. | 0:09:52 | 0:09:53 | |
-Are you a very happy man today? -Very. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:55 | |
Are you going to celebrate tonight? | 0:09:55 | 0:09:57 | |
I have a whole series of TV interviews tonight. | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
Any chance of a holiday soon? | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
Not yet, no. Too much work to be done. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:04 | |
Thank you very much. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:05 | |
Ted Heath was born only months after Harold Wilson in 1916, | 0:10:08 | 0:10:13 | |
and though he hailed from the other side of the country, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:16 | |
he grew up in seaside Kent. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:18 | |
His background was every bit as ordinary. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:21 | |
He didn't talk a great deal about his boyhood. | 0:10:21 | 0:10:25 | |
His father was a small-town builder, his mother had been a ladies' maid, | 0:10:25 | 0:10:29 | |
and he'd emerged from that quite humble background | 0:10:29 | 0:10:33 | |
by working very hard, and his parents had sweated their guts out to give him a start in life. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:38 | |
He'd achieved that start in life partly due to his parents, partly due to his own hard work. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:43 | |
The funny thing was both men came from relatively humble backgrounds, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:47 | |
they didn't have connections to anybody who could forward or help them. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
So it's hugely to their credit they did it on their own. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
Like Wilson, Heath was a grammar school boy who made it to Oxford University in the 1930s. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:07 | |
He would win an organ scholarship to Balliol, | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
but at first it was touch and go as to whether he'd get there. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
His parents weren't at all sure they, even with the help of Kent County Council, | 0:11:15 | 0:11:20 | |
would be able to afford a son at Oxford. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:24 | |
It was completely unknown territory to them. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:26 | |
When they went to Oxford in their Hillman Minx piled high with his possessions that first autumn, | 0:11:28 | 0:11:34 | |
it was the first time any of them had been to Oxford. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
Heath's future rival was a year ahead of him, just around the corner at Jesus College. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:44 | |
It's said that Wilson used to occasionally | 0:11:44 | 0:11:46 | |
go to concerts in which Heath was playing the organ. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:49 | |
Well, he may have. I bet he did it pretty rarely, because he wasn't at all tuned in to classical music. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:56 | |
They lived in different worlds. | 0:11:56 | 0:11:58 | |
Heath quickly plunged into politics, Wilson had no time for these fripperies at all. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:06 | |
I was at Balliol with Ted Heath from 1936 until the war broke out. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:10 | |
And he was a year ahead of me so he was chairman of the junior common room | 0:12:10 | 0:12:14 | |
when I was his secretary, and we got on very well together, | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
although at that time I was in the Communist Party, | 0:12:18 | 0:12:21 | |
and he of course, as always, was a Tory. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:23 | |
Heath's conservatism went beyond politics, | 0:12:25 | 0:12:29 | |
and there were early signs of a continuing awkwardness about the opposite sex. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:33 | |
A mutual friend of ours had gone off to Banbury with his girlfriend, and Ted looked at me in alarm and said, | 0:12:33 | 0:12:40 | |
"You don't mean to say they're...sleeping together?" | 0:12:40 | 0:12:46 | |
I said, "I suppose so, but why not?" | 0:12:46 | 0:12:48 | |
He said, "I can't imagine anybody in the Conservative Association doing that!" | 0:12:48 | 0:12:54 | |
Unlike Heath, Wilson did not engage in university politics. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
His priority was academic success. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
He got a brilliant first, he got an alpha plus in economic theory, which was almost unheard of. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:13 | |
They did share one tutor, who compared them, and said that Wilson | 0:13:13 | 0:13:18 | |
was a brilliant analytical mind, profound thinker, Heath was a plodder. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:25 | |
Wilson's quicksilver mind was a sign of things to come. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:33 | |
Almost 3 decades after crossing paths at Oxford, on August 2nd 1965, | 0:13:36 | 0:13:42 | |
Wilson and Heath faced each other | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
in the House of Commons for the first time. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
No-one yet knew how their duel would play out. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
But expectations of Edward Heath, | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
the new man the Tories had elected to match Wilson, | 0:13:56 | 0:13:59 | |
were huge. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
It was a very new departure | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
for the Conservative party, and he was elected with much enthusiasm. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:10 | |
And, of course, my generation were all rather thrilled. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
The thought was that Alec Home, who was his predecessor, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:19 | |
was just not up to taking Harold Wilson on on the floor of the house. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:24 | |
Whereas Ted Heath was much more belligerent, or appeared to be | 0:14:24 | 0:14:28 | |
much more belligerent at that stage, and would take Harold Wilson on. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:31 | |
-That's the way to do it! -Oh, no, it isn't! | 0:14:31 | 0:14:35 | |
-How do you do it then? -That's the way to do it! Ha-ha! | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
Heath's performance at the despatch box was a devastating disappointment. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:44 | |
Everyone expected him to be brilliant, to shatter Wilson's image. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:48 | |
Instead, he was ponderous, he was lumbering, he piled in far too many facts. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:53 | |
He failed to enthuse anyone, and he was outmanoeuvred and made to look silly by Wilson. | 0:14:53 | 0:15:00 | |
Even when Heath tried a joke about Wilson's brand new Technology Ministry, he was smoothly trumped. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:07 | |
The Minister of Technology is no tiger. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
That is now plain. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:12 | |
The Prime Minister has put a tortoise in the tank. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:16 | |
I was grateful to the right honourable gentleman | 0:15:18 | 0:15:20 | |
for that memorable phrase about "the tortoise in the tank". | 0:15:20 | 0:15:23 | |
I must say that I liked that. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:25 | |
I liked it the first time I saw it in a Sunday Citizen cartoon on 27th June. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:31 | |
I am sure the House will always be ready to hear the right honourable gentleman again, | 0:15:31 | 0:15:35 | |
especially if he keeps reminding us of that phrase. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:38 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:15:38 | 0:15:41 | |
Wilson sort of waltzed round him. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:43 | |
And he was just witty. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:44 | |
Ted resented this. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:47 | |
Ted was not good at being laughed at. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:49 | |
Ted had this rather...at once, bland and pompous manner. | 0:15:49 | 0:15:53 | |
It's difficult to be bland and pompous simultaneously, | 0:15:53 | 0:15:56 | |
but Ted Heath managed it. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:58 | |
I always felt he was brushing Harold aside, swatting him, | 0:15:58 | 0:16:00 | |
but whilst he attempted, he always missed. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:03 | |
Wilson, I think it's fair to say, he really despised Ted Heath. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:07 | |
I can hear him saying to me down the years "Heath? | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
"Ha! I could knock him around the room any time I like." This kind of thing. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:15 | |
The personal animosity was palpable to MPs watching them. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:19 | |
Once, in the House of Commons, there was a slanging match going on | 0:16:19 | 0:16:23 | |
between the PM and the leader of the opposition, | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
and Manny Shinwell chipped in rather wistfully from the back bench, | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
"Is this a private matter, or can we join in?" | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
I think that was the slight worry | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
on the part of Heath's followers, that it was a private matter. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:42 | |
Heath, perhaps, was not the attack weapon his supporters had hoped for. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:50 | |
And his lack of ease came as a shock to them. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:54 | |
One of his previous jobs had been chief whip, | 0:16:56 | 0:17:00 | |
where he was remembered as being gregarious and sociable. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:04 | |
But once elected leader of the opposition, he began to display an alarming brusqueness. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:10 | |
Can you make any comment at all, Mr Heath? Nothing at all so far? | 0:17:10 | 0:17:15 | |
Anthony Howard went to visit him on holiday in France | 0:17:15 | 0:17:19 | |
for a Sunday Times feature. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:21 | |
He greeted me without any great enthusiasm, and said something like, "I suppose you'd like a drink." | 0:17:21 | 0:17:28 | |
I said, "That would be a good idea, thank you very much." | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
"What would you like to have?" I said, "Well, is there any whisky?" | 0:17:31 | 0:17:35 | |
So he went to a nasty plywood sideboard, opened the door, | 0:17:35 | 0:17:41 | |
looked at a half bottle of whiskey, saw that it was pretty nearly empty and said, "You'd better have coffee." | 0:17:41 | 0:17:49 | |
Heath may well have intended it as a joke. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
But, as his friends acknowledge, his mordant sense of humour was an acquired taste. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:59 | |
Mentally, he was very sharp. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:02 | |
Sharp is the word, because often he said things which were meant | 0:18:02 | 0:18:08 | |
to be slightly humorous. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
He cracked a joke, rather like Prince Philip, | 0:18:10 | 0:18:12 | |
he cracked a joke and was amazed when people took it very seriously. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:17 | |
He had the best sense of humour, | 0:18:17 | 0:18:19 | |
as well concealed as anyone's been able to conceal a sense of humour. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:24 | |
But what was so dementing is his ability to present himself in most angular possible form. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:31 | |
Gave one homicidal feelings about him quite often! | 0:18:31 | 0:18:36 | |
You're not even old enough to remember what was going on when we came to power! | 0:18:36 | 0:18:41 | |
There was... There was food rationing! | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
And sweets rationing! | 0:18:45 | 0:18:47 | |
You were just old enough to eat sweets, and you had to queue up with a little coupon to buy them! | 0:18:47 | 0:18:51 | |
That was the situation when we came into power! | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
It was actually a wooden leg that he wore all his life. | 0:18:54 | 0:19:00 | |
The more he latched onto the things that he wanted to do in life, | 0:19:00 | 0:19:05 | |
the more the wooden leg, this wooden manner, came into play. | 0:19:05 | 0:19:10 | |
We said, "Relax, be yourself!" | 0:19:10 | 0:19:14 | |
It didn't... The advice never really went down well, | 0:19:14 | 0:19:17 | |
because I think he wasn't sure what himself was. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:20 | |
He didn't have a ready-made persona, he didn't have a switch which he could turn on in the way that | 0:19:20 | 0:19:26 | |
many politicians did, Harold Wilson certainly did. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
The image-conscious Wilson was always ready to milk the latest trend. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:36 | |
In 1965, it was the new age of pop. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
Thank you very much for giving us this silver heart, | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
but I still think you should've given one to good old Mr Wilson. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:55 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:19:55 | 0:19:57 | |
Wilson had entered Downing Street promising a whirlwind of activity, | 0:20:04 | 0:20:09 | |
even comparing himself to America's most recent political hero. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:13 | |
What I think we're going to need is something like | 0:20:13 | 0:20:17 | |
what President Kennedy had when he came in | 0:20:17 | 0:20:20 | |
after years of stagnation in the United States, he had a programme of 100 days of dynamic action. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:27 | |
It was felt that the Government could do more by greater | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
intervention when Labour came in. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:33 | |
So almost every month there would be some form of tinkering | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
with the economy to try to get the level of activity exactly right. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:44 | |
I was secretary of the Budget Committee at the time and we used to be almost in constant session. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:49 | |
In spite of his awkwardness, Heath could sometimes score a laugh... | 0:20:51 | 0:20:55 | |
and Wilson's hyperactivity gave him an early chance. | 0:20:55 | 0:20:59 | |
'Comrades, we have managed to increase our productivity | 0:20:59 | 0:21:04 | |
'in the Cabinet - a budget in March, a budget in May, a budget in July.' | 0:21:04 | 0:21:08 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:21:08 | 0:21:09 | |
But despite his much-vaunted economic planning, | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
Wilson, from the very beginning, found himself at the mercy of events. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:24 | |
He was buffeted by pressure on the pound, | 0:21:24 | 0:21:27 | |
which then was set at a fixed exchange rate. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:30 | |
The obvious solution was to devalue it. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
But Wilson was haunted by the previous Labour government's | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
devaluation in 1948. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
It was a very odd thing in those days that we regarded | 0:21:42 | 0:21:45 | |
the devaluation of the pound as almost a test | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
of virtue in politics, | 0:21:48 | 0:21:50 | |
and so devaluation was almost a sin... | 0:21:50 | 0:21:54 | |
and that was absolutely ridiculous. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
While the weak pound was the rod across Wilson's back, Heath's - | 0:22:00 | 0:22:05 | |
from the very outset - | 0:22:05 | 0:22:07 | |
was the whisperers in his own party. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
Private Eye had named him The Grocer. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
Heath had once been president of the Board Of Trade. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:16 | |
But for large sections of the Tory Party, that encapsulated | 0:22:16 | 0:22:20 | |
a disdain of the grammar-school boy with strange-sounding vowels... | 0:22:20 | 0:22:24 | |
who couldn't even beat his opponent. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:26 | |
The stupid people turned on him and began to mock his background | 0:22:28 | 0:22:32 | |
and mock the past that he came from. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:36 | |
"That's the sort of thing you get when you elect a grammar-school boy." | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
I knew quite a grand Tory lady, who was the wife of the chairman of the Party, Lord Latham. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:47 | |
I remember her saying to me, "What we all have to face about Ted, | 0:22:47 | 0:22:51 | |
"it's not his fault, poor dear, but he hasn't got any manners." | 0:22:51 | 0:22:54 | |
Heath's highly personal duel with Wilson, | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
and the savaging he was receiving in the House of Commons, | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
began to have a significant psychological impact. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:05 | |
He retreated into his shell, | 0:23:08 | 0:23:09 | |
comfortable only with his trusted circle of close advisers and friends. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:14 | |
It was politics at its juvenile-playpen worst. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:20 | |
What I didn't realize, until looking back on it, | 0:23:20 | 0:23:24 | |
it made an appalling and searing and lasting impression on Ted. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:30 | |
Wilson was oozing confidence. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
In spring 1966, with his new opponent posing so little threat, | 0:23:34 | 0:23:39 | |
his highly-tuned political antennae sensed that the time was ripe to increase his slender majority, | 0:23:39 | 0:23:45 | |
before events began to overtake him. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:48 | |
Harold timed it exactly. I remember talking to Roy Jenkins, | 0:23:48 | 0:23:52 | |
saying, "When is the election going to come?" | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
and Roy saying, "Don't you and I worry about it. | 0:23:55 | 0:23:56 | |
"We can do some things. The man who will chose the election date | 0:23:56 | 0:24:01 | |
"to the 'nth degree, perfect on that date, is Harold Wilson." | 0:24:01 | 0:24:05 | |
For Harold Wilson, unlike Heath, elections, and the razzamatazz surrounding them, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:12 | |
were the stuff of life, ever since he'd first entered Parliament in 1945. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:18 | |
He was political to his fingertips. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:22 | |
I once said to him... I was talking politics to him, and he said that | 0:24:22 | 0:24:25 | |
it had always been his worry | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
in 1953 when the King died, he feared that Winston Churchill | 0:24:27 | 0:24:33 | |
would take advantage of that and call a quick general election. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:38 | |
I said, "I was too young to think like that in those days, Harold." | 0:24:38 | 0:24:42 | |
"Were you? I've thought like that since the day I was born." | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
The 1966 election trail threw Wilson and Heath's very different styles | 0:24:46 | 0:24:51 | |
onto streets and TV screens across the country. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:56 | |
That's where the mismatch between Harold and Ted came out. | 0:24:56 | 0:25:01 | |
One, the political arc lamps | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
came on full at the glimmer of being seen by outsiders | 0:25:04 | 0:25:11 | |
or the pubic, whereas Ted... | 0:25:11 | 0:25:12 | |
the arc lights tended to go off. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
It was tragically ludicrous. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
'The first point I want to make is, yesterday there was yet another warning from | 0:25:20 | 0:25:25 | |
'the Building Societies Association that the mortgage rates must rise... | 0:25:25 | 0:25:32 | |
"again..." | 0:25:32 | 0:25:34 | |
Now, just to break for a moment before I turn to the other subject I want to deal with... | 0:25:35 | 0:25:41 | |
The half time scores are as follows... | 0:25:41 | 0:25:44 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
It was a terrible campaign. We were fighting a losing battle the whole way through the campaign. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:53 | |
Wilson sat back and enjoyed the ride, | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
rarely deigning even to engage with his opponent... | 0:25:57 | 0:26:00 | |
'After all these words, what has been the result in productivity. | 0:26:00 | 0:26:06 | |
'Just 1 per cent. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:08 | |
'One miserable one per cent. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:11 | |
'Well, is Mr Wilson proud of it? | 0:26:13 | 0:26:15 | |
'Apparently not. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:17 | |
-'< He is. -You think he is? | 0:26:17 | 0:26:19 | |
'Well, ask him why he doesn't come onto television | 0:26:19 | 0:26:21 | |
'and face me there and argue it out?!' | 0:26:21 | 0:26:23 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:26:23 | 0:26:24 | |
Harold would never put him on an equal level with him. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:29 | |
He'd never agree to a television debate or anything like that with him. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:36 | |
Wilson was a masterly electioneerer, partly by | 0:26:36 | 0:26:41 | |
ostentatiously appearing everywhere with his wife, therefore making it perfectly clear that poor Heath | 0:26:41 | 0:26:46 | |
as a bachelor didn't understand what was going on. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:48 | |
Heath's bachelor status was another gift to the whisperers. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:54 | |
In private,, Wilson relished alluding to it. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
When he made the speech once about the importance of family, Harold's only remark was, | 0:26:57 | 0:27:05 | |
"Those who don't play the game shouldn't make the rules." | 0:27:05 | 0:27:09 | |
All these rumours about how he might be homosexual, | 0:27:09 | 0:27:12 | |
totally without foundation as far as I'm concerned, but they certainly swirled around, these rumours. | 0:27:12 | 0:27:17 | |
My feeling, for what it's worth, though I'm not medically qualified, is that he's one of these people - | 0:27:17 | 0:27:22 | |
they do exist - he was pretty asexual, it just didn't interest him. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
'Let's say we average them out to around 4.5 per cent. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
'which is the average of these four national polls, | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
'pointing to something like a 150 majority...' | 0:27:36 | 0:27:38 | |
On March the 31st 1966, in the first of their four general election battles, | 0:27:38 | 0:27:46 | |
Wilson humiliated Heath. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:48 | |
Labour's majority over the Conservatives was well over a hundred. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:53 | |
In the summer of '66, it seemed that Britain was rocking. | 0:27:55 | 0:28:00 | |
# Sunshine came softly | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
# Through my | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
# Window today | 0:28:04 | 0:28:07 | |
# Could have tripped out easy | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
# But I've a-changed my ways... # | 0:28:12 | 0:28:13 | |
England, for the first time, even managed to win the World Cup. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:20 | |
England's victory in the 1966 World Cup is now taken as | 0:28:22 | 0:28:26 | |
a kind of high point of the 1960s, | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
so we think that '66 is the culmination | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
of swinging London and the optimism and change and whatnot, | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
but I think there is a nice coincidence, because the day after England's victory | 0:28:34 | 0:28:38 | |
in the World Cup final is the day that the Colonial Office, | 0:28:38 | 0:28:41 | |
the very symbol of British imperialism and British power, closes its doors for the last time. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:48 | |
We won the war, but at great cost. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:51 | |
We were living with the end of Empire and there were people about, | 0:28:51 | 0:28:56 | |
including senior civil servants, who saw what we were doing as the management of decline. | 0:28:56 | 0:29:01 | |
Wilson was much much closer to those who thought we were in the business of managing decline than Heath was. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:08 | |
I think Heath had greater optimism. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:12 | |
Once again, it was the weak pound that seemed the overwhelming symbol of decline. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:21 | |
In the autumn of 1967, | 0:29:23 | 0:29:25 | |
Wilson and his chancellor, James Callaghan, were finally forced into devaluation. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:32 | |
What concerned Wilson more than anything was how to present this surrender to the British people. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:39 | |
That morning, I'd been rung by a brother-in-law from Leeds, | 0:29:39 | 0:29:43 | |
and he had said, | 0:29:43 | 0:29:47 | |
"Is my money in the bank going to be devalued? | 0:29:47 | 0:29:51 | |
"Will it be worth as much as it was yesterday?" | 0:29:51 | 0:29:55 | |
So when Harold was doing the "pound in your pocket or in your purse", | 0:29:55 | 0:30:00 | |
I suggested that he added "in your bank". | 0:30:00 | 0:30:02 | |
Wilson made the infamous statement, | 0:30:02 | 0:30:05 | |
implying nothing had really changed. | 0:30:05 | 0:30:08 | |
'From now on, the pound abroad is worth 14% or so less | 0:30:08 | 0:30:13 | |
'in terms of other currencies. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:15 | |
'That doesn't mean, of course, that the pound here in Britain, | 0:30:15 | 0:30:19 | |
'in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued.' | 0:30:19 | 0:30:22 | |
I was an accomplice in that error, but it was | 0:30:22 | 0:30:25 | |
an error meant to reassure people, | 0:30:25 | 0:30:28 | |
however... | 0:30:28 | 0:30:30 | |
..It has lived on in infamy ever since. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:35 | |
CROWD: Wilson out! Wilson out! | 0:30:35 | 0:30:37 | |
For Heath, devaluation was an affront. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
He was extremely patriotic. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:44 | |
When Britain devalued the pound | 0:30:44 | 0:30:46 | |
in 1967, he thought this was a great humiliation for us | 0:30:46 | 0:30:51 | |
and said so. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:52 | |
Whereas, actually, economically there was a lot to be said for it, | 0:30:52 | 0:30:55 | |
but he forgot the economics and was just interested in the blow to our prestige. | 0:30:55 | 0:31:00 | |
'As Mr Wilson himself said a few years ago - | 0:31:00 | 0:31:06 | |
"Devaluation is an acknowledgment of defeat. | 0:31:06 | 0:31:08 | |
"Last Saturday night was defeat." | 0:31:10 | 0:31:13 | |
Devaluation, | 0:31:16 | 0:31:18 | |
and the way it was presented, | 0:31:18 | 0:31:19 | |
was a psychological turning point in the Heath-Wilson duel. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:23 | |
# I know when I've had enough... # | 0:31:23 | 0:31:27 | |
For Wilson, it was the first real defeat. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
He never regained full mastery of his colleagues... | 0:31:32 | 0:31:36 | |
and in the country beyond, he was never again as trusted. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:39 | |
For Heath, it was a vital stimulant. | 0:31:42 | 0:31:46 | |
Now more than ever he saw his mission as ridding the nation of Harold Wilson... | 0:31:46 | 0:31:51 | |
a man he deemed an unprincipled creature, who put style over substance every time. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:58 | |
Essentially, the great difference between them | 0:31:58 | 0:32:01 | |
was that Ted saw himself and felt himself to be | 0:32:01 | 0:32:04 | |
an outstanding, clean, | 0:32:04 | 0:32:07 | |
clear, uninfluenceable, | 0:32:07 | 0:32:11 | |
public servant, working for nation's good, | 0:32:11 | 0:32:13 | |
and he therefore thought of Wilson as being a scraggy politician. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:18 | |
Ted Heath would not have thought of himself as being a politician at all, despite having been chief whip. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:24 | |
Ted and Harold | 0:32:24 | 0:32:26 | |
had totally different approaches to the work of politics. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:32 | |
Um... | 0:32:32 | 0:32:33 | |
WORK of politics would have been Ted's attitude. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:37 | |
The GAME of politics was more Harold's natural habitat. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:45 | |
Ted used to get irritated by the behaviour of some MPs in the House. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:52 | |
Harold would encourage it. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:55 | |
Harold once described the Tory MP Bernard Braine as a misnomer. | 0:32:55 | 0:33:02 | |
Ted would never have thought of something like that. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:04 | |
Heath was a serious man, believed that Wilson stood for everything | 0:33:04 | 0:33:08 | |
that was wrong in British public life. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:10 | |
Gimmicks, government by press leak, all the rest of it. | 0:33:10 | 0:33:15 | |
He really morally disapproved of Wilson. I think that's true. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:19 | |
It wasn't just a political disagreement. He thought that Wilson | 0:33:19 | 0:33:23 | |
symbolized, and was the emblem, of everything that had gone wrong with Britain. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:29 | |
Heath's principled stiffness and Wilson's political adroitness was one key contrast. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:40 | |
Another was how they saw the world beyond Britain. | 0:33:40 | 0:33:43 | |
Wilson was a classic, little England, | 0:33:48 | 0:33:51 | |
introverted patriot. | 0:33:51 | 0:33:52 | |
He was only comfortable at home, really. | 0:33:57 | 0:34:00 | |
When he went abroad to conferences, | 0:34:00 | 0:34:02 | |
he would come back as quickly as possible, | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
and look for excuses to come back. | 0:34:05 | 0:34:07 | |
For his food, he loved all the traditional English foods. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:12 | |
He loved beans on toast, he loved HP sauce. | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
He once said to me, "I do go on holiday abroad, | 0:34:16 | 0:34:19 | |
"I go to the Scillies!" | 0:34:19 | 0:34:21 | |
And that for him was about the outermost Siberia of his imagination. | 0:34:21 | 0:34:26 | |
Heath was every bit as patriotic, | 0:34:28 | 0:34:32 | |
but he was an internationalist, with an appetite for seeing the world. | 0:34:32 | 0:34:36 | |
This went right back to his time as an undergraduate. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
Oddly enough, we both cycled through Germany | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
in those days when Hitler was there. | 0:34:47 | 0:34:49 | |
I think all of us who did journeys through Europe before the war were enormously influenced | 0:34:50 | 0:34:57 | |
by it because, of course, of the terrible things that happened to Europe during the war itself. | 0:34:57 | 0:35:02 | |
He went to Germany as a soldier, | 0:35:07 | 0:35:10 | |
as an officer, and he saw the wreck and the ruin caused by the bombing. | 0:35:10 | 0:35:15 | |
He'd fought in the war. He'd been part of it. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
Heath had a distinguished military record in the Second World War. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:26 | |
Wilson had been a civil servant on the Home Front, organizing coal stocks... | 0:35:26 | 0:35:31 | |
a vital role but somehow not quite the same. | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
It did leave...not a scar, | 0:35:34 | 0:35:39 | |
but he was always conscious of the fact | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
that he hadn't fought. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:44 | |
He was rather resentful about the fact that Heath got one up on him that way. | 0:35:44 | 0:35:48 | |
I think it did change people's attitudes. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:51 | |
I mean, I don't suppose for one moment Harold Wilson | 0:35:51 | 0:35:54 | |
didn't feel exactly the same about preventing a world war, | 0:35:54 | 0:35:59 | |
but I think it coloured one's vision of things. | 0:35:59 | 0:36:03 | |
Ted Heath's wartime experience led to a lifetime ambition for a united Europe, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:10 | |
which could never again tear itself apart, with Britain at its heart. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:15 | |
The vision of a united Europe, to him, was civilisation. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:23 | |
It wasn't just politics. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:25 | |
It was the beginning of teaching the planet how human beings ought to live. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:29 | |
It was almost as big a vision as that. | 0:36:29 | 0:36:31 | |
Back in 1963, Heath had spearheaded Britain's first attempt - | 0:36:36 | 0:36:40 | |
by the Tory prime minister, Harold Macmillan - | 0:36:40 | 0:36:43 | |
to join what was then called the Common Market. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:46 | |
But it was rebuffed by the French president, Charles de Gaulle. | 0:36:49 | 0:36:54 | |
In 1967, Harold Wilson decided he'd have a go. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:59 | |
But for reasons rather different from Heath's. | 0:36:59 | 0:37:02 | |
I think Harold wanted to be a member of the community... | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
not for the rather grander reasons, or he thought, the grand design. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:12 | |
Harold was an economist. He regarded Europe as economies of scale. | 0:37:12 | 0:37:16 | |
I guess he decided that, on balance, it was in Britain's interest to be in. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:21 | |
The Labour Party had opposed the Heath-Macmillan attempt to join. | 0:37:21 | 0:37:26 | |
Wilson always had to balance his priority to keep his party united | 0:37:26 | 0:37:30 | |
against its traditional fear of joining Europe. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:34 | |
Harold's principle object in politics | 0:37:34 | 0:37:37 | |
was to keep the Labour Party together. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:40 | |
That's really like putting Humpty Dumpty together after he's fallen off the wall. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:46 | |
So he had to duck and dive and weave | 0:37:46 | 0:37:49 | |
and go with the flow, sometimes when the flow was bad, | 0:37:49 | 0:37:53 | |
but he never lost sight of the fact that we'd end up in Europe one day. | 0:37:53 | 0:38:01 | |
The next 10 years, the next 20 years, | 0:38:04 | 0:38:06 | |
the unity of Europe is going to be forged. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
Heath was so anxious that Britain should go into Europe, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
but I think he was slightly horrified when it looked, at one moment, | 0:38:12 | 0:38:17 | |
as if Wilson might be the man who would bring it off. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:21 | |
Heath needn't have worried. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:24 | |
The French President de Gaulle once again vetoed Britain's entry. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:29 | |
For Wilson, the timing was dreadful. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:33 | |
The veto came just one week after the trauma of devaluation. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:39 | |
At the close of 1967, his administration was on the skids. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:45 | |
Things weren't going to get much better in 1968. | 0:38:45 | 0:38:48 | |
# Fire | 0:38:48 | 0:38:50 | |
# I'll take you to burn... # | 0:38:51 | 0:38:52 | |
As revolutions and riots erupted across the globe, | 0:38:54 | 0:38:58 | |
both Heath and Wilson had their own explosive issues to face at home. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:02 | |
For Heath, it was troubles with his own party again... | 0:39:08 | 0:39:12 | |
this time from the firebrand Enoch Powell, | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
who was exploiting the racial tensions emerging across Britain. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:18 | |
I told Mr Powell that he could not remain a member of the Shadow Cabinet | 0:39:18 | 0:39:22 | |
because of the inflammatory nature of his speech in Birmingham. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
Wilson deftly managed to keep Britain out of the political minefield | 0:39:29 | 0:39:33 | |
that was Vietnam, despite pleas from the Americans. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:38 | |
'Phantom F4s... Napalm.' | 0:39:38 | 0:39:39 | |
But he faced an internal war of his own, | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
with Labour's traditional allies... the trade unions. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
'Strikes, especially unofficial strikes, are a major factor in Britain's economic difficulties.' | 0:39:46 | 0:39:52 | |
The unions would be both Wilson's, and later Heath's, running sore. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:57 | |
Today one might say that banking or finance is the biggest problem for prime ministers. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:07 | |
At that time, it was clearly the trade unions. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:10 | |
In both cases, this huge interest didn't really see itself as part of society. | 0:40:10 | 0:40:16 | |
It saw itself as getting the most it could out of society for itself, | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
but not contributing to society, and both Harold Wilson and Ted Heath tried to bring | 0:40:19 | 0:40:26 | |
the trade union leaders into, as it were, sharing the responsibility. | 0:40:26 | 0:40:30 | |
CROWD CHANTS: Wilson out! Castle out! | 0:40:30 | 0:40:35 | |
Wilson and his employment secretary, Barbara Castle, tried to bring in new laws | 0:40:35 | 0:40:39 | |
to curb the unions and make them more democratic. | 0:40:39 | 0:40:44 | |
Their plan was quickly sabotaged by their Cabinet colleagues. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:47 | |
THEY CHANT: White paper out! White paper out! | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
After yet another failure, Wilson's prospects by the beginning of 1969 were pretty bleak. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:59 | |
I started at Number 10 | 0:41:02 | 0:41:04 | |
in January 1st 1969, | 0:41:04 | 0:41:08 | |
and Harold was 23 points behind | 0:41:08 | 0:41:14 | |
in the opinion polls at that time. And he said to me quite early on, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:20 | |
"Joe, what can you offer me?" I said, "Complacency, | 0:41:20 | 0:41:24 | |
"because you've got too much of the other - hysteria!" | 0:41:24 | 0:41:27 | |
Violence in Northern Ireland, with British troops deployed on the streets, | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
added to the feeling that Britain was going off the rails, | 0:41:36 | 0:41:41 | |
and that the man at the wheel, Harold Wilson, was powerless to stop it. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:46 | |
Heath was looking more comfortable at the helm. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:56 | |
He'd become an ocean-going sailor, | 0:41:59 | 0:42:01 | |
with great success. | 0:42:01 | 0:42:03 | |
In the last days of 1969, he even won the highly-prestigious Sydney-Hobart yacht race. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:10 | |
That, I think, improved his image enormously in the country and also with the Party. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:18 | |
All the old grey beards who were very worried about him sailing a boat at all, | 0:42:18 | 0:42:23 | |
suddenly became enamoured with Ted Heath, about how wonderful he was. | 0:42:23 | 0:42:27 | |
I was there to arrange the parties and the receptions and so on, in case he won. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:31 | |
And he did win, and we had a great time in Sydney. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:35 | |
And, of course, it was politically advantageous. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:38 | |
It did ring a bell in people's minds because it was unexpected. | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
Wilson was being upstaged. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:46 | |
Mrs Wilson's Diary imagined him plotting his counter-strike. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:50 | |
"Harold, seated at the controls, wearing antique goggles and a balaclava helmet, | 0:42:52 | 0:42:59 | |
"with an Isodora Duncan scarf, | 0:42:59 | 0:43:01 | |
"gave Mr Kaufman the thumbs-up sign to remove the chocks. | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
"Then, with a cry of, 'This'll show Heath where he gets off!', | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
"he piloted the aircraft some 200 yards over the bumpy grass | 0:43:08 | 0:43:12 | |
"and turned with a roar of its tiny engine to begin the take-off. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:15 | |
"As the engine thundered to full throttle, there was a dramatic explosion | 0:43:15 | 0:43:19 | |
"and Harold was catapulted forward with a despairing cry, to land with a splash." | 0:43:19 | 0:43:25 | |
But just when Heath had seemed to be finally outdoing Wilson, something curious happened. | 0:43:30 | 0:43:37 | |
Their political fortunes went into abrupt reverse. | 0:43:40 | 0:43:43 | |
The economy was improving under a capable new chancellor, Roy Jenkins. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:50 | |
Somehow, the country seemed more at ease. | 0:43:51 | 0:43:54 | |
Life wasn't so bad after all. | 0:43:54 | 0:43:57 | |
The opinion polls began to show that Wilson was staging a remarkable recovery. | 0:43:59 | 0:44:05 | |
As the summer of 1970 approached, he had a double-digit lead. | 0:44:05 | 0:44:10 | |
For Heath, the infuriation was that it continued to seem all about style, not substance, | 0:44:10 | 0:44:16 | |
particularly in the cockpit of the House of Commons. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
He used to say to me in moments of almost despair, | 0:44:20 | 0:44:24 | |
"What's gone wrong? Why can't I get it right? | 0:44:24 | 0:44:26 | |
"Why can't I perform better?" | 0:44:26 | 0:44:28 | |
I think he found it very very difficult. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:32 | |
The more difficult he found it, the worse it really became, because he became even more screwed up, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:39 | |
but he never got it right until the last appearance | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
before the general election in 1970, | 0:44:42 | 0:44:46 | |
and on that occasion he absolutely walloped Harold Wilson - so much so | 0:44:46 | 0:44:51 | |
that he said to me afterwards, "Why have I only just started doing this? | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
"I ought to have been doing this for four years | 0:44:55 | 0:44:58 | |
"and the Party ought to have been supporting me for four years", but hadn't. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
Wilson sensed that the time was ripe for the next round with Heath. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:10 | |
'The battle is on. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:12 | |
The Prime Minister has taken the plunge - | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
a general election on June 18th. | 0:45:15 | 0:45:17 | |
When we started the election, we were running about 10-12% behind the Labour Party, | 0:45:17 | 0:45:24 | |
having moved from, in the space of about three or four months, from being in a commanding position | 0:45:24 | 0:45:30 | |
to being in this very terrible position, | 0:45:30 | 0:45:33 | |
and so it looked as if it was going to be awful. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:37 | |
The 1970 election was the epicentre of the Heath-Wilson duel. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:46 | |
For Heath, it was personal. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:50 | |
'What I am going to create is a new style of government, | 0:45:51 | 0:45:55 | |
'which is honest, well thought out. and which takes account of | 0:45:55 | 0:45:59 | |
'the long term, away with all the short-term gimmickry and instant government | 0:45:59 | 0:46:03 | |
'which we've had for the last few years.' | 0:46:03 | 0:46:05 | |
Ted wanted not just a change of policy, but a change of style, | 0:46:05 | 0:46:10 | |
and that was all a dig at what he thought was the sheer flippancy of Wilson. | 0:46:10 | 0:46:14 | |
But Heath's serious message seemed to be | 0:46:14 | 0:46:18 | |
missing the mark...once again. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
I was sat on by people... | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
from all over the country, who said that Heath was the drawback, | 0:46:24 | 0:46:28 | |
the grocer's mind, the lack of vision, the inarticulateness. | 0:46:28 | 0:46:35 | |
The candidates were tearing the photograph of the leader | 0:46:35 | 0:46:39 | |
out of the manifesto before putting it through people's doors when canvassing, | 0:46:39 | 0:46:45 | |
because it was... Ted was a complete turn-off. | 0:46:45 | 0:46:48 | |
There was a newlywed couple in a restaurant, I remember, and everybody was waiting, | 0:46:48 | 0:46:54 | |
the press, to see if Ted would go and talk to the couple and wish them well, and he didn't. | 0:46:54 | 0:47:01 | |
He didn't for about a quarter of an hour. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:02 | |
He sat there, rather solidly eating whatever he was eating, and then as soon as the | 0:47:02 | 0:47:08 | |
press had gone, he went up, and went over, and was very nice | 0:47:08 | 0:47:13 | |
and jolly, and they were impressed, | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
but he had completely missed the boat as far as the press was concerned, who scribbled, | 0:47:16 | 0:47:21 | |
"He can't even be bothered to pass the time of day with a newlywed couple." | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
This kind of episode was constantly happening. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:27 | |
Wilson, by contrast, was avoiding the issues... | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
but glad-handing the people | 0:47:31 | 0:47:33 | |
Prime Minister, you haven't actually kissed any babies yet. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:36 | |
You've come close sometimes. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
-Why did you chose this style of campaign? -I wanted to take the campaign to the people. | 0:47:38 | 0:47:44 | |
Not to ask them to come, especially on hot summer evenings or weekends, | 0:47:44 | 0:47:49 | |
to city halls, miles from where they live. | 0:47:49 | 0:47:51 | |
Wilson had treated the election as if it was a kind of coronation. | 0:47:54 | 0:47:59 | |
He went round the country waving at people. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:00 | |
He didn't really make any speeches or anything like that. | 0:48:00 | 0:48:03 | |
Harold had got the idea, he'd seen the Queen doing walkabouts, | 0:48:05 | 0:48:10 | |
so he concluded that his role would be to be seen around the place, being filmed everywhere. | 0:48:10 | 0:48:17 | |
He saw himself as being above politics, which he wasn't. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:21 | |
You can't be a prime minister and above politics. | 0:48:21 | 0:48:23 | |
And you couldn't play the part of the Queen, which he rather hoped he might! | 0:48:26 | 0:48:30 | |
It's Theresa's birthday, shall we sing for her? | 0:48:30 | 0:48:33 | |
# Happy birthday to you | 0:48:33 | 0:48:36 | |
# Happy birthday to you... # | 0:48:36 | 0:48:38 | |
Rather in desperation, because Wilson was doing so well | 0:48:38 | 0:48:42 | |
with his walkabouts, we put it in | 0:48:42 | 0:48:44 | |
and I remember, in Chatham and Rochester, we did that. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:49 | |
We did it in Edinburgh, and then we gained confidence, and he gained confidence... | 0:48:52 | 0:48:58 | |
and he was rather good at it. | 0:48:58 | 0:49:00 | |
'He's having to do, rather belatedly, what I started doing a week last Sunday. | 0:49:00 | 0:49:04 | |
'I'm sure he'll be encouraged to know | 0:49:04 | 0:49:06 | |
'that I'm 29 marginals ahead of him. He'll have to get round at quite a rate to catch up.' | 0:49:06 | 0:49:11 | |
'It doesn't bother me what he says. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:16 | |
'I've covered practically all the marginals in this country | 0:49:16 | 0:49:18 | |
'with our party work. I'd covered them all in-between elections. | 0:49:18 | 0:49:22 | |
'I've been speaking at meetings with workers from all the marginals.' | 0:49:22 | 0:49:26 | |
Some of the walkabouts were terrible. | 0:49:27 | 0:49:30 | |
I always remember one in Norwich, in which I had to participate. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:36 | |
We chose a half-day holiday anyhow. | 0:49:36 | 0:49:40 | |
We walked down a street in Norwich, a long street in Norwich | 0:49:40 | 0:49:45 | |
and there was absolutely no-one there at all! | 0:49:45 | 0:49:49 | |
There wasn't a sign of anyone. | 0:49:49 | 0:49:50 | |
It seemed that Harold Wilson was about to humiliate his rival once again. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:57 | |
And he was enjoying every minute of it. | 0:49:57 | 0:50:00 | |
Perhaps you could point to... the last election, in which | 0:50:00 | 0:50:05 | |
a party won the election | 0:50:05 | 0:50:10 | |
with its leading trailing behind the other leader in the personal ratings, | 0:50:10 | 0:50:15 | |
particularly if you can find one where he was trailing nearly 2-1 behind the other leader. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:20 | |
I mean, we had a 14% lead in the Daily Mail | 0:50:20 | 0:50:23 | |
the Friday before polling day, but then over the weekend, | 0:50:23 | 0:50:28 | |
and with the trade figures and everything else, it all fell apart. | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
Three days before the country went to the polls, the latest balance of trade figures - | 0:50:34 | 0:50:38 | |
then critical indicator of how Britain's economy was doing - | 0:50:38 | 0:50:41 | |
were released. | 0:50:41 | 0:50:43 | |
For the first time in months, they were in deficit. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:47 | |
Then, on election eve, one opinion poll put the Heath just ahead. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:53 | |
The experts said it was a rogue poll. | 0:50:55 | 0:50:57 | |
A very famous political correspondent Robert Carvel | 0:50:58 | 0:51:01 | |
said on the World at One, "The opinion poll's phoney. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:04 | |
"Take it from me, Labour is home and dry." | 0:51:04 | 0:51:07 | |
"I went to the Tory press conference this morning | 0:51:07 | 0:51:09 | |
"and saw Mr Heath fighting for the soul of the Conservative Party in defeat." | 0:51:09 | 0:51:13 | |
We waited then for the results to come in and the first result | 0:51:15 | 0:51:19 | |
that came in showed quite a swing towards us, | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
we could hardly believe our eyes when we saw the results coming in! | 0:51:22 | 0:51:26 | |
David Howell, Conservative - 27,203... | 0:51:26 | 0:51:31 | |
We drove back to London, and the radio kept on producing the most extraordinary news. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:37 | |
We were winning! We were not winning just this seat and that seat, we were winning | 0:51:37 | 0:51:43 | |
the whole damned election... | 0:51:43 | 0:51:44 | |
..I was delighted. I was delighted not so much because Labour was losing, but because | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
all those clever, well-informed people | 0:51:53 | 0:51:56 | |
who had been with us for the last fortnight were going to have to eat their words! | 0:51:56 | 0:52:02 | |
Two of them had actually been writing a book explaining why Ted had lost, | 0:52:02 | 0:52:05 | |
and they had to rewrite it rather rapidly. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:08 | |
I was with him in Bexley when it was clear he had won. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
It was a great surprise, but he says not to him! | 0:52:19 | 0:52:24 | |
-'How do you feel at this moment? -I feel in excellent form. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:29 | |
'I thoroughly enjoyed this campaign, | 0:52:29 | 0:52:31 | |
'I've enjoyed today particularly, here in my own constituency, | 0:52:31 | 0:52:35 | |
'and I'm delighted with tonight's result here in Bexley, | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
'and I'm much encouraged by the results of the rest of the country.' | 0:52:38 | 0:52:40 | |
'Labour has suffered serious losses in these...' | 0:52:40 | 0:52:44 | |
In his suite in the Adelphi Hotel, near his constituency in Huyton, | 0:52:44 | 0:52:49 | |
Harold Wilson watched the shock results come in. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:53 | |
'A great upset has occurred... # | 0:52:53 | 0:52:55 | |
That was a really really mortal blow to Wilson. | 0:52:55 | 0:52:58 | |
He'd actually gone to press conferences. People had asked questions about the Party's prospects | 0:52:58 | 0:53:03 | |
and he'd say, "You tell me the last time a party whose leader has lagged behind the rival by 12 points | 0:53:03 | 0:53:10 | |
"and the last time that party won the election." He was totally given to bragging, Wilson, and so he got | 0:53:10 | 0:53:15 | |
his comeuppance. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:16 | |
'Some applause from the people outside... | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
'a small crowd of spectators.' | 0:53:19 | 0:53:21 | |
It was unpleasant on the day. I mean, I looked out the window | 0:53:21 | 0:53:28 | |
at Number 10 and there was a goodly crowd of Tories booing us | 0:53:28 | 0:53:33 | |
and waiting to see us go. It's not nice. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:36 | |
'To all intents and purposes you've given up any hope? | 0:53:36 | 0:53:39 | |
'I think the figures speak for themselves. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:41 | |
'When do you expect to go to the Palace? | 0:53:43 | 0:53:44 | |
'That I don't know.' | 0:53:44 | 0:53:46 | |
And we got to Number 10, | 0:53:46 | 0:53:47 | |
and there was quite a big crowd there, so we were feeling pretty pleased about life by that time. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:53 | |
Ted was in very good form, and of course we then wanted something to drink | 0:53:53 | 0:53:58 | |
and Harold Wilson's secretary said that all they'd got were a few sandwiches and a glass of beer. | 0:53:58 | 0:54:05 | |
I think we wanted rather more than that. I think we could do with a little champagne on | 0:54:05 | 0:54:10 | |
an occasion of that nature! | 0:54:10 | 0:54:11 | |
The Queen has asked me to form the next government, and I am indeed proud to accept. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:22 | |
To govern is to serve. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:26 | |
I was sitting with my predecessor in the Private Office and the door | 0:54:30 | 0:54:34 | |
opened from the Cabinet Room and the Prime Minister came in | 0:54:34 | 0:54:37 | |
and he looked at me and said, "Oh, are you here? | 0:54:37 | 0:54:39 | |
"It's going to be very hard work, you know", | 0:54:39 | 0:54:41 | |
and went back into the Cabinet Room. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:44 | |
And this seemed a very sort of off-hand... | 0:54:44 | 0:54:50 | |
rather off-putting way of welcoming me into the team, | 0:54:50 | 0:54:55 | |
but then he was like that, and you got used to it. | 0:54:55 | 0:54:58 | |
Heath offered the Wilsons the use of the prime minister's country house, Chequers, | 0:54:58 | 0:55:03 | |
while they looked for somewhere to live. | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
But there was a strange sequel- to do with Wilson's dog. | 0:55:06 | 0:55:11 | |
It was called Paddy. | 0:55:11 | 0:55:12 | |
A big, yellow Labrador that he was always being photographed with, | 0:55:12 | 0:55:18 | |
taking it down to the Scilly Islands and that sort of a thing. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:20 | |
I think he felt he ought to have a dog, | 0:55:20 | 0:55:22 | |
because when he left, he left the dog when he left Chequers. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:27 | |
To my total amazement when we went down there after he'd gone, the dog was still there. | 0:55:27 | 0:55:31 | |
I don't think Ted really liked the dog. | 0:55:31 | 0:55:33 | |
He thought that he was looking at Wilson every time. | 0:55:33 | 0:55:35 | |
I was a bit worried that it might bite, but it was actually quite a nice dog. | 0:55:35 | 0:55:42 | |
Wilson was gone... | 0:55:42 | 0:55:44 | |
and eventually Paddy went with him too... | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
but, for Heath, Wilson was to be out of mind as well as out of sight. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:52 | |
The first thing he wants to do is to he gets rid of every | 0:55:52 | 0:55:56 | |
taint of the dreadful Harold Wilson, | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
so the wallpaper goes. In comes all of Heath's furniture that he has been amassing over the years. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:04 | |
In comes the piano. And this is classic Heath. He basically... | 0:56:04 | 0:56:09 | |
He sees Wilson as a kind of disease that he wants to eradicate completely from British politics. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:15 | |
Instead of learning the lessons from Wilson's time, particularly Wilson's emphasis on | 0:56:15 | 0:56:20 | |
public relations, that all has to go. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:22 | |
Everything must go. Whitewash the lot, and that I think was a great failing of Heath's... | 0:56:22 | 0:56:27 | |
his over-obsession with Wilson. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:29 | |
The morning after the election, Wilson had shown some generosity to his victorious opponent. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:38 | |
'Could we look at the campaign for a moment. Just your feelings this morning | 0:56:41 | 0:56:45 | |
'towards Mr Heath. Do you admire him as an opponent? | 0:56:45 | 0:56:48 | |
'I've always admired him, and I've said this many times, much more than many other people. | 0:56:48 | 0:56:53 | |
'Even in his own party.' | 0:56:53 | 0:56:55 | |
But behind closed doors, Wilson was fuming - defeat had been unthinkable... | 0:56:55 | 0:57:01 | |
and it was now personal. | 0:57:01 | 0:57:04 | |
A few weeks later, over a very trivial matter, | 0:57:06 | 0:57:10 | |
he suddenly lost his temper. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:12 | |
I only, in all the time I knew Wilson, | 0:57:12 | 0:57:16 | |
only saw him lose his temper twice, | 0:57:16 | 0:57:18 | |
and that was one of the times. | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
The sheer dismay and disappointment must have been seething inside him. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:28 | |
He didn't like to talk about it, but he sometimes referred to it, | 0:57:29 | 0:57:32 | |
and how humiliating it was to be bundled out of 10 Downing Street. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:38 | |
Out through the back door with his furniture carried out, | 0:57:38 | 0:57:43 | |
while Ted Heath came through the front door. | 0:57:43 | 0:57:44 | |
His whole objective after that was to walk back into Number 10 | 0:57:44 | 0:57:50 | |
as Prime Minister. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:52 | |
Heath pitched camp to tackle the serious business of government, | 0:57:54 | 0:57:58 | |
which he believed Wilson had so trivialized. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:01 | |
'We begin Panorama live from Number 10. | 0:58:01 | 0:58:04 | |
'People must face up to their own responsibilities, and when I say that I mean all of us, | 0:58:04 | 0:58:10 | |
'the Government has certain responsibilities - to change policies as we are doing.' | 0:58:10 | 0:58:16 | |
Wilson had arrived at Number 10 with the white heat of technology, | 0:58:16 | 0:58:21 | |
but that had fizzled out. | 0:58:21 | 0:58:23 | |
Heath's plans were even bigger. | 0:58:23 | 0:58:25 | |
Heath had a couple of really large ideas about how to change Britain... | 0:58:25 | 0:58:30 | |
entering Europe and also huge building projects. | 0:58:30 | 0:58:33 | |
Heath started building the Channel Tunnel - | 0:58:33 | 0:58:35 | |
that's lost to history now. He wanted to build a huge off-shore airport off the coast of Essex, | 0:58:35 | 0:58:40 | |
which is very similar to what Boris Johnson wants to do now. | 0:58:40 | 0:58:43 | |
So, Heath had big ideas. | 0:58:43 | 0:58:45 | |
But, almost immediately, Heath suffered a major setback. | 0:58:45 | 0:58:50 | |
His new chancellor, Iain Macleod, considered the cleverest Tory of his generation, | 0:58:50 | 0:58:56 | |
died suddenly in Downing Street. | 0:58:56 | 0:58:59 | |
The telephone rang at home and the prime minister came on the line and said, | 0:58:59 | 0:59:04 | |
in a flat kind of voice, "Iain's dead. | 0:59:04 | 0:59:07 | |
"You'd better come in." | 0:59:07 | 0:59:08 | |
And so that was half past ten. | 0:59:08 | 0:59:10 | |
I went straight in, of course, and I did then feel | 0:59:10 | 0:59:14 | |
that it was very lonely sitting up in that great house, | 0:59:14 | 0:59:18 | |
without a wife, without anybody close to him, as it were, | 0:59:18 | 0:59:22 | |
but always denied that he was lonely until very late in his life. | 0:59:22 | 0:59:25 | |
Heath had huge battles ahead. | 0:59:25 | 0:59:28 | |
Now he would have to face them without his closest ally. | 0:59:28 | 0:59:32 | |
# Now I'm a union man... # | 0:59:35 | 0:59:38 | |
First up were the unions that had so plagued Wilson. | 0:59:38 | 0:59:43 | |
# ..I'll say what I think That the company stinks | 0:59:43 | 0:59:45 | |
# Yes, I'm a union man... # | 0:59:45 | 0:59:47 | |
Within Heath's first months, council workers struck. | 0:59:47 | 0:59:52 | |
Then the lights went out in an electricity dispute. | 0:59:52 | 0:59:56 | |
# ..You don't get me I'm part of the union | 0:59:56 | 0:59:58 | |
# Till the day I die... # | 0:59:58 | 1:00:00 | |
Heath was determined to succeed where Wilson failed | 1:00:00 | 1:00:03 | |
and introduced new laws to control the unions. | 1:00:03 | 1:00:07 | |
In a foretaste of what was to come, the workers took to the streets in protest. | 1:00:10 | 1:00:15 | |
NEWSREADER: The 5,000 men who marched in Birmingham today | 1:00:15 | 1:00:18 | |
came mainly from the Austin-Morris factory at Longbridge. | 1:00:18 | 1:00:22 | |
'In a way, Ted was ahead of his time. | 1:00:22 | 1:00:25 | |
'We were trying to do things the country was not yet ready for.' | 1:00:25 | 1:00:30 | |
It's an extraordinary thing about the British - | 1:00:30 | 1:00:33 | |
we have to go through a lot of misery | 1:00:33 | 1:00:35 | |
before we actually decide what we want to do. | 1:00:35 | 1:00:38 | |
For the political satirists at Private Eye, the apparently humourless Heath was an easy target. | 1:00:39 | 1:00:45 | |
They cast him as the managing director | 1:00:45 | 1:00:48 | |
of an embattled company called Heathco Ltd. | 1:00:48 | 1:00:51 | |
Heathco was a sort of run down company operating | 1:00:51 | 1:00:56 | |
in the suburbs of London, | 1:00:56 | 1:00:58 | |
and it had all gone pear-shaped, and this man | 1:00:58 | 1:01:00 | |
was trying to keep it going | 1:01:00 | 1:01:02 | |
but was continually frustrated by the workers. | 1:01:02 | 1:01:06 | |
"To all employees. | 1:01:06 | 1:01:08 | |
"I would like to address a few words to all of you about our new code | 1:01:08 | 1:01:12 | |
"of industrial behaviour at Heathco's. | 1:01:12 | 1:01:14 | |
"Let me say, here and now, that I am fully conversant with the fact | 1:01:14 | 1:01:19 | |
"that some of you may find these new regulations a bitter pill to swallow." | 1:01:19 | 1:01:23 | |
CHANTING | 1:01:23 | 1:01:25 | |
The unions would be one common thread that bound Heath and Wilson. | 1:01:25 | 1:01:30 | |
The second was the irreversible change in Britain's identity. | 1:01:30 | 1:01:35 | |
Britain had ceased to be an imperial world power. | 1:01:37 | 1:01:41 | |
For Heath, its new role had to be the one he'd so long dreamed of | 1:01:41 | 1:01:46 | |
at the heart of a unified Europe. | 1:01:46 | 1:01:48 | |
France's General de Gaulle had first rebuffed Harold Macmillan in 1963, | 1:01:52 | 1:01:58 | |
then Harold Wilson in 1967. | 1:01:58 | 1:02:01 | |
But there was now a new French President, Georges Pompidou, | 1:02:03 | 1:02:07 | |
and Heath made it his business to make Pompidou open the door. | 1:02:07 | 1:02:12 | |
On 22nd January, 1972, Heath took Britain into Europe. | 1:02:12 | 1:02:17 | |
That was a personal achievement. Whether you think it is right for us | 1:02:19 | 1:02:24 | |
to be in Europe or not, | 1:02:24 | 1:02:26 | |
I think he has to be credited with that achievement. | 1:02:26 | 1:02:29 | |
'Certainly Ted Heath felt a sense of triumph, | 1:02:32 | 1:02:37 | |
'of personal triumph...' | 1:02:37 | 1:02:39 | |
..to have won where Wilson had failed added a certain extra savour to the achievement. | 1:02:41 | 1:02:48 | |
Wilson was profoundly irritated that Heath had succeeded where he'd missed out. | 1:02:52 | 1:02:58 | |
Though Heath's terms of entry were much the same as Wilson would have accepted, | 1:02:58 | 1:03:03 | |
he now used them to perform a political somersault. | 1:03:03 | 1:03:07 | |
But the terms Mr Heath accepted mean that Britain has to accept | 1:03:07 | 1:03:11 | |
terms and burdens and sacrifices | 1:03:11 | 1:03:14 | |
which no other members of the six would have accepted for themselves. | 1:03:14 | 1:03:20 | |
Our hopes have been fulfilled. We have succeeded. | 1:03:20 | 1:03:25 | |
There is nothing that infuriates the prophets and apostles of gloom and defeat | 1:03:26 | 1:03:32 | |
more than success. | 1:03:32 | 1:03:34 | |
Heath, understandably, took a low view of this kind of volte-face that Wilson had committed. | 1:03:34 | 1:03:41 | |
Basically, he got the party to stand on its head | 1:03:41 | 1:03:43 | |
and waggle its legs in the air and pretend it had never | 1:03:43 | 1:03:46 | |
stood in favour of Europe at all but it had. | 1:03:46 | 1:03:49 | |
It's Heath who gets it through so Wilson manages to rain on | 1:03:49 | 1:03:53 | |
even that parade. Tellingly, he won't even go and mark the event | 1:03:53 | 1:03:58 | |
in Brussels or in London or whatever. | 1:03:58 | 1:04:01 | |
He goes off to watch a football match instead, | 1:04:01 | 1:04:03 | |
when Britain accedes to the European Community. | 1:04:03 | 1:04:05 | |
Heath's great achievement came amid gathering economic gloom. | 1:04:09 | 1:04:15 | |
Two days before he signed the treaty, unemployment in Britain, | 1:04:15 | 1:04:20 | |
which had quietly been creeping up since the 1960s, | 1:04:20 | 1:04:23 | |
finally reached one million. | 1:04:23 | 1:04:26 | |
'When unemployment hit a million,' | 1:04:26 | 1:04:30 | |
the House of Commons had to be suspended, | 1:04:30 | 1:04:33 | |
there was so much opposition and so much noise. | 1:04:33 | 1:04:36 | |
The very fact that unemployment went to three million or more | 1:04:36 | 1:04:41 | |
under Margaret Thatcher and very nearly as high again under Labour a few years later, | 1:04:41 | 1:04:49 | |
didn't alter the fact that for unemployment to reach a million | 1:04:49 | 1:04:54 | |
was regarded as being a terrible political blunder. | 1:04:54 | 1:04:58 | |
Heath was deeply troubled. | 1:04:58 | 1:05:00 | |
Unemployment went against everything he believed in. | 1:05:00 | 1:05:05 | |
It marked the beginning of a terrible few weeks | 1:05:06 | 1:05:09 | |
On 30th January 1972, 13 men were shot dead on the streets of Derry by the British Army. | 1:05:16 | 1:05:23 | |
Bloody Sunday. | 1:05:23 | 1:05:25 | |
Then the miners walked out on strike - the first national miners' strike since 1926. | 1:05:28 | 1:05:34 | |
The crucible was a coke depot on the outskirts of Birmingham - Saltley - | 1:05:38 | 1:05:42 | |
where the miners were using flying pickets to block lorries. | 1:05:42 | 1:05:45 | |
Heath knew this was where the battle would be won or lost. | 1:05:50 | 1:05:55 | |
The climax came during a cabinet meeting on 10th February. | 1:05:55 | 1:06:00 | |
Ted asked Reggie Maudling, who was Home Secretary at the time, | 1:06:00 | 1:06:04 | |
whether he could give us any information on it | 1:06:04 | 1:06:08 | |
and Maudling said he'd just been talking | 1:06:08 | 1:06:12 | |
to the Chief Constable of Birmingham who had said | 1:06:12 | 1:06:17 | |
that under all circumstances he was going to keep the gasworks open. | 1:06:17 | 1:06:23 | |
An hour later, a message came in from Reggie Maudling | 1:06:23 | 1:06:27 | |
to say that the Chief Constable | 1:06:27 | 1:06:30 | |
had just rung up to say that the pressure had become too great. | 1:06:30 | 1:06:34 | |
He had closed the gates | 1:06:34 | 1:06:36 | |
and no lorries were getting in or out and, therefore, | 1:06:36 | 1:06:42 | |
the unions had won. | 1:06:42 | 1:06:43 | |
Heath had lost the first big battle of wills with the unions. | 1:06:43 | 1:06:49 | |
Harold Wilson sniffed his opportunity. | 1:06:52 | 1:06:56 | |
He'd kept a low profile since his election defeat. | 1:06:56 | 1:06:59 | |
But now it was time to take on his adversary once again. | 1:06:59 | 1:07:03 | |
Mr Heath was going to deal with strikes. He was going to end them once and for all. | 1:07:03 | 1:07:08 | |
In fact we've lost far more man days through disputes | 1:07:08 | 1:07:12 | |
under this government in 20 months than in the whole five years, eight months of the Labour government. | 1:07:12 | 1:07:20 | |
It was only halfway through Heath's administration when things started to go badly wrong. | 1:07:20 | 1:07:26 | |
Wilson pricked up his ears and said, "Back into the battle." | 1:07:26 | 1:07:30 | |
One million unemployed had seriously rattled Heath. | 1:07:31 | 1:07:36 | |
He'd been elected on a promise to make British industry competitive | 1:07:36 | 1:07:41 | |
and let lame ducks go to the wall. | 1:07:41 | 1:07:43 | |
But in 1972, he went into abrupt reverse | 1:07:43 | 1:07:47 | |
and poured in government money to rescue failing businesses, | 1:07:47 | 1:07:51 | |
most notably Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in Glasgow. | 1:07:51 | 1:07:55 | |
He took the view that unemployment was such an evil thing to happen | 1:07:55 | 1:08:01 | |
that he decided that he had to do what was then known as a U-turn. | 1:08:01 | 1:08:07 | |
Of course, looking back on it, I think he was wrong because the welfare state had intervened | 1:08:07 | 1:08:14 | |
and unemployment, though awful, didn't have the same sort of horrors | 1:08:14 | 1:08:19 | |
that it had before the Second World War. | 1:08:19 | 1:08:21 | |
# Ch-ch-ch-changes... # | 1:08:21 | 1:08:22 | |
Heath's U-turn astonished the nation. | 1:08:22 | 1:08:26 | |
And it was only the beginning. | 1:08:26 | 1:08:28 | |
He now decided that government, far from letting the free market rule, | 1:08:28 | 1:08:33 | |
should run the economy itself in collaboration with business and the unions. | 1:08:33 | 1:08:37 | |
It sounded just like Harold Wilson. | 1:08:37 | 1:08:40 | |
They are both really Social Democrats. | 1:08:42 | 1:08:44 | |
They both believe in a large state and quite high taxation. | 1:08:44 | 1:08:47 | |
They both hold positions at various times, | 1:08:47 | 1:08:50 | |
almost deliberately holding the opposite position to the other and as soon as they are elected, | 1:08:50 | 1:08:54 | |
they switch back. | 1:08:54 | 1:08:56 | |
'Wilson once told me, "Do you know I am quite surprised that Ted Heath ever became a Tory." | 1:08:56 | 1:09:00 | |
'Famously, when Ted Heath completely turned the Tory party' | 1:09:00 | 1:09:04 | |
in a terrific U-Turn, | 1:09:04 | 1:09:06 | |
he once criticised Ted Heath with the jibe, | 1:09:06 | 1:09:11 | |
"He's just a socialist." | 1:09:11 | 1:09:13 | |
And I don't think Heath liked that. | 1:09:13 | 1:09:16 | |
TV ANNOUNCER: 'Do you know Britain's favourite game? | 1:09:16 | 1:09:21 | |
'It's called inflation...' | 1:09:21 | 1:09:23 | |
Heath was battling rocketing inflation at home, | 1:09:23 | 1:09:26 | |
and complex global economic forces. | 1:09:26 | 1:09:29 | |
In October 1973, oil prices soared after war broke out in the Middle East. | 1:09:29 | 1:09:37 | |
Heath introduced government control of prices and incomes, | 1:09:37 | 1:09:41 | |
pleading with the unions to work with him. | 1:09:41 | 1:09:43 | |
Mr Barker Brierfield, would you please put your question to the Prime Minister? | 1:09:43 | 1:09:48 | |
CALLER: What is the purpose of discussing prices and incomes | 1:09:48 | 1:09:53 | |
with the TUC when it is known | 1:09:53 | 1:09:56 | |
they could never be seen cooperating with a Tory government? | 1:09:56 | 1:10:02 | |
I wouldn't accept your final point, | 1:10:02 | 1:10:04 | |
that they could never be seen cooperating with a Tory government. | 1:10:04 | 1:10:08 | |
We've been having these talks over the past 15 few months and they've been extremely valuable. | 1:10:08 | 1:10:13 | |
But now, at Heath's moment of maximum weakness, the miners came back for more. | 1:10:13 | 1:10:19 | |
'By the second time, it was not just money they were after.' | 1:10:19 | 1:10:24 | |
It was to overthrow the government. | 1:10:24 | 1:10:27 | |
The miners went on strike. | 1:10:27 | 1:10:30 | |
Heath introduced a three-day week and restrictions on energy to conserve coal stocks. | 1:10:30 | 1:10:36 | |
I was, for about ten minutes, Secretary for Energy when there wasn't any. | 1:10:36 | 1:10:40 | |
There was no light, the three-day week and everybody was miserable. | 1:10:40 | 1:10:46 | |
It was a horrible time. One didn't see an end of it and there couldn't | 1:10:46 | 1:10:50 | |
be an end of it until you settled the miners' strike. | 1:10:50 | 1:10:53 | |
HEATH: It is the fall in coal production and delivery, | 1:10:54 | 1:10:57 | |
as a result of industrial action, that makes today's severe measures essential, | 1:10:57 | 1:11:03 | |
so we must all use less electricity. | 1:11:03 | 1:11:06 | |
In terms of comfort, we shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war. | 1:11:06 | 1:11:12 | |
WILSON: There's a deep feeling in the hearts of our people that they would like | 1:11:12 | 1:11:17 | |
to get back to a spirit of conciliation, to unite the country, | 1:11:17 | 1:11:22 | |
in place of all these confrontations which divide it. | 1:11:22 | 1:11:27 | |
Once Heath began to go down, Wilson was on him like | 1:11:27 | 1:11:30 | |
a ferret on a rabbit and got his teeth firmly into the Prime Minister's throat. | 1:11:30 | 1:11:37 | |
At times, the three-day week was pure tragicomedy. | 1:11:37 | 1:11:40 | |
Never had a better deal, have they? | 1:11:40 | 1:11:43 | |
'One of the things was saunas,' | 1:11:43 | 1:11:46 | |
and so I asked my officials, "What can we do about it? | 1:11:46 | 1:11:50 | |
Surely there don't need to be any saunas | 1:11:50 | 1:11:52 | |
during this... | 1:11:52 | 1:11:53 | |
And they came back and said, "Well, Minister, there are three sorts of saunas. | 1:11:53 | 1:11:58 | |
"There are saunas in health clubs and there are saunas in hotels | 1:11:58 | 1:12:01 | |
"and there are dubious saunas." And I said, "Well they can all be asked to be switched off." | 1:12:01 | 1:12:07 | |
But I loved the expression "dubious saunas". One knew what they meant. | 1:12:07 | 1:12:13 | |
The government was writing the script for comedians | 1:12:13 | 1:12:17 | |
without the need for any editors! | 1:12:17 | 1:12:20 | |
It was a great time to be engaged in politics. A pretty awful time to live in Britain. | 1:12:20 | 1:12:25 | |
That was the reality. | 1:12:25 | 1:12:26 | |
There were a number of silly things that happened | 1:12:26 | 1:12:30 | |
but they were very difficult days. | 1:12:30 | 1:12:34 | |
They were days that no other government really has had to face. | 1:12:34 | 1:12:39 | |
Most of Heath's closest colleagues and advisers urged him to go | 1:12:40 | 1:12:44 | |
for an early election to take the wind out of the miners', and Harold Wilson's, sails. | 1:12:44 | 1:12:50 | |
'It's all very well appealing to Dunkirk spirit | 1:12:50 | 1:12:52 | |
'but Dunkirk spirit lasts for days more than weeks. | 1:12:52 | 1:12:56 | |
'I only remember seeing Ted once about then and saying exactly that | 1:12:56 | 1:13:02 | |
and he was cross, not to put too fine a point on it. | 1:13:02 | 1:13:05 | |
Heath was determined to hang in and get a deal with the miners. | 1:13:05 | 1:13:12 | |
At one point he informally agreed a solution with the miners' leader | 1:13:12 | 1:13:16 | |
Joe Gormley which involved paying miners for washing time. | 1:13:16 | 1:13:21 | |
Wilson sabotaged it. | 1:13:21 | 1:13:24 | |
Gormley rather rashly told Harold Wilson what he'd suggested. | 1:13:24 | 1:13:28 | |
Harold Wilson promptly wrote | 1:13:28 | 1:13:31 | |
a more or less open letter to Heath suggesting it, | 1:13:31 | 1:13:35 | |
putting it forward as the solution, | 1:13:35 | 1:13:37 | |
which, of course, meant Heath in turn felt bound to turn it down. | 1:13:37 | 1:13:41 | |
Gormley believed that Wilson had done this deliberately to scupper | 1:13:41 | 1:13:46 | |
the negotiations, and that otherwise this could have been a solution. | 1:13:46 | 1:13:50 | |
The miners voted on Heath's final offer. | 1:13:50 | 1:13:54 | |
He was desperate for them to accept it. | 1:13:54 | 1:13:57 | |
They didn't. | 1:13:57 | 1:13:59 | |
I had to go and tell him the result of this ballot. | 1:13:59 | 1:14:02 | |
I remember taking it up to Downing Street one morning, | 1:14:02 | 1:14:05 | |
realising the significance of it | 1:14:05 | 1:14:07 | |
and I remember him sitting in his chair and looking at the result | 1:14:07 | 1:14:11 | |
and said, "What can I do now?" and I said to him that it wasn't my job to give him political advice. | 1:14:11 | 1:14:18 | |
I think there's only one thing you can do which is to have a General Election. | 1:14:18 | 1:14:23 | |
On 7th February, 1974, Heath finally called an election. | 1:14:26 | 1:14:32 | |
HEATH: This time, the strife has got to stop. | 1:14:33 | 1:14:36 | |
Only you can stop it. | 1:14:36 | 1:14:38 | |
It's time for you to speak with your vote. | 1:14:38 | 1:14:42 | |
It's time for you to say to the extremists, the militants, | 1:14:42 | 1:14:46 | |
and to the plain and simple misguided, "We've had enough!" | 1:14:46 | 1:14:50 | |
CHANTING: Heath out! Heath out! Heath out! Heath out! | 1:14:50 | 1:14:54 | |
Ted Heath started to try to make the election about who runs the country. | 1:14:54 | 1:14:58 | |
Is it the unions or the elected government? | 1:14:58 | 1:15:00 | |
That argument survived about three days because the public by that time were very cross, very cross. | 1:15:00 | 1:15:07 | |
Tories out! Go and sail your yacht! You've taken the country down the river! | 1:15:07 | 1:15:13 | |
Heath, in asking the question, "Who rules Britain?" | 1:15:13 | 1:15:17 | |
was going to get the answer from huge numbers of people, "Not you, mate!" | 1:15:17 | 1:15:21 | |
'Wilson had a much keener nose for public opinion than Mr Heath.' | 1:15:23 | 1:15:29 | |
Wilson was almost feline. | 1:15:29 | 1:15:32 | |
I believe that the voters recognise who it is that has encouraged the militants over the past three years. | 1:15:32 | 1:15:38 | |
Mr Heath has given the militants the charter they always dreamed of. | 1:15:38 | 1:15:43 | |
He was offering the public the option of not dealing | 1:15:43 | 1:15:48 | |
with the trade union problem, really, and that was put off | 1:15:48 | 1:15:52 | |
because the public wasn't yet ready to face it. | 1:15:52 | 1:15:54 | |
They faced it with Margaret Thatcher but they weren't yet ready for that. | 1:15:54 | 1:15:59 | |
The result was extremely close. | 1:16:02 | 1:16:04 | |
ANNOUNCER: For the first time since 1929, | 1:16:04 | 1:16:06 | |
a British general election has produced no clear result... | 1:16:06 | 1:16:11 | |
Wilson won most seats, though not an overall majority, | 1:16:11 | 1:16:15 | |
but Heath won most votes. | 1:16:15 | 1:16:17 | |
ANNOUNCER: Mr Heath going back to Number 10... | 1:16:17 | 1:16:21 | |
Heath stayed put in Downing Street and tried to do a deal | 1:16:21 | 1:16:24 | |
with the Liberal Party and its leader Jeremy Thorpe. | 1:16:24 | 1:16:27 | |
Heath made a rather flat-footed attempt to form | 1:16:27 | 1:16:31 | |
the sort of coalition we've got now. | 1:16:31 | 1:16:33 | |
He would say, and his supporters would say, | 1:16:33 | 1:16:35 | |
he made a more principled attempt. | 1:16:35 | 1:16:37 | |
He said to Jeremy Thorpe, "There's a national emergency. | 1:16:37 | 1:16:40 | |
"We want you to support the emergency but we can't buy you | 1:16:40 | 1:16:44 | |
"with seats in the Cabinet." | 1:16:44 | 1:16:45 | |
That was rather typical of Heath. | 1:16:45 | 1:16:47 | |
A man of principle but nevertheless applying his principles in a flat-footed way. | 1:16:47 | 1:16:51 | |
The coalition would never come about. | 1:16:51 | 1:16:53 | |
I remember Jeremy Thorpe coming out of Number 10 | 1:16:53 | 1:16:56 | |
and saying on the TV, "He wont give us anything." | 1:16:56 | 1:16:59 | |
That was Mr Heath all over. | 1:16:59 | 1:17:00 | |
The last day in Number 10 was on the Monday and we sat round the cabinet table, | 1:17:00 | 1:17:06 | |
and the person who really expressed our feelings on that occasion was Margaret Thatcher | 1:17:06 | 1:17:12 | |
who was the one who expressed admiration | 1:17:12 | 1:17:16 | |
for what Ted Heath had done as Prime Minister | 1:17:16 | 1:17:20 | |
and for the way he had behaved towards colleagues | 1:17:20 | 1:17:23 | |
and how sad it was that it ended in that way. | 1:17:23 | 1:17:27 | |
And that was Margaret Thatcher. | 1:17:27 | 1:17:29 | |
It didn't always work out like that afterwards. | 1:17:29 | 1:17:32 | |
He was deeply depressed and it was emotional for all of us, really, | 1:17:32 | 1:17:38 | |
because there was a sense in which, because Heath had no close family of his own, the people | 1:17:38 | 1:17:44 | |
at Number 10 felt like an extended family | 1:17:44 | 1:17:47 | |
and that was coming to an end. | 1:17:47 | 1:17:49 | |
So it was an emotional time. | 1:17:49 | 1:17:51 | |
I feel sad because I believe in three and a half years, we've achieved a very great deal. | 1:17:52 | 1:17:57 | |
But we've left unfinished business. | 1:17:57 | 1:18:00 | |
At Buckingham Palace, Heath came out of one door whilst Wilson went into another. | 1:18:01 | 1:18:07 | |
He went up to see the Queen and handed in his resignation, | 1:18:07 | 1:18:11 | |
which he did and I had some rather unpleasant sherry | 1:18:11 | 1:18:16 | |
with the Queen's secretary downstairs. | 1:18:16 | 1:18:20 | |
Harold Wilson and his wife Mary | 1:18:20 | 1:18:23 | |
went in their little car and the rest of us in his | 1:18:23 | 1:18:27 | |
personal team went in a separate big car and we all drove to the palace. | 1:18:27 | 1:18:33 | |
And then, eventually, he came down and we walked out to the door | 1:18:33 | 1:18:38 | |
and there was no car. Our car had gone. | 1:18:38 | 1:18:41 | |
Our driver who we had had for four and half years. | 1:18:41 | 1:18:44 | |
So we said, "Where the hell's the car gone?" | 1:18:44 | 1:18:46 | |
"Oh, he's gone to pick up Mr Wilson," they said. | 1:18:46 | 1:18:49 | |
Half an hour later, he came out | 1:18:49 | 1:18:53 | |
and there was an official Number 10 car waiting, and he got in. | 1:18:53 | 1:18:57 | |
Then I watched him get in | 1:18:57 | 1:19:00 | |
and I thought, "He's Prime Minister." | 1:19:00 | 1:19:03 | |
ANNOUNCER: Mr Wilson, having kissed hands as Prime Minister, | 1:19:03 | 1:19:06 | |
has returned from the palace to Number 10 Downing Street... | 1:19:06 | 1:19:09 | |
We've got a job to do. | 1:19:09 | 1:19:11 | |
We can only do that job as one people. | 1:19:12 | 1:19:16 | |
And I'm going right in to start that job now. | 1:19:16 | 1:19:19 | |
When we walked into Number 10, we all went and had a look around, | 1:19:19 | 1:19:24 | |
and Wilson was very intrigued by all the changes, | 1:19:24 | 1:19:28 | |
new wallpaper and all of this, | 1:19:28 | 1:19:31 | |
and Harold turned to me and said, "Ted's ponced it up a bit!" | 1:19:31 | 1:19:36 | |
Wilson immediately bought off the miners. | 1:19:39 | 1:19:43 | |
He ordered a pay review, which gave them a massive increase. | 1:19:43 | 1:19:48 | |
It was storing up trouble ahead but, for now, the nation had chosen peace and submission. | 1:19:48 | 1:19:55 | |
From one week writing speeches for Ted Heath | 1:19:55 | 1:19:58 | |
about how important it was to resist the miners, | 1:19:58 | 1:20:02 | |
found myself the next week writing speeches | 1:20:02 | 1:20:05 | |
for Harold Wilson saying that all this had been a waste of time | 1:20:05 | 1:20:08 | |
and the problem could be easily settled. | 1:20:08 | 1:20:10 | |
The public preferred a quiet life under Harold. | 1:20:12 | 1:20:17 | |
And he didn't understand Ted Heath | 1:20:17 | 1:20:20 | |
for what he felt was creating a lot of disorder and chaos. | 1:20:20 | 1:20:25 | |
He wasn't a revolutionary. He wasn't very radical. | 1:20:25 | 1:20:29 | |
Ted Heath was much more radical than Harold Wilson. | 1:20:29 | 1:20:33 | |
There is an actual, if not animosity, a real feeling | 1:20:34 | 1:20:36 | |
between the two of you? | 1:20:36 | 1:20:38 | |
Well, I think in politics it's not a question of liking one another. | 1:20:38 | 1:20:42 | |
-It's a question of dealing with people. -Do you like him? | 1:20:42 | 1:20:46 | |
Again, it's not a question of likes or dislikes. | 1:20:46 | 1:20:51 | |
-But do you like him? -That'll have to remain to be seen. | 1:20:51 | 1:20:56 | |
The nature of the Prime Minister himself | 1:20:58 | 1:21:00 | |
was very different under Wilson. | 1:21:00 | 1:21:02 | |
In personal terms, he and I got on very well together. | 1:21:02 | 1:21:05 | |
I enjoyed him. He had small talk in a way that | 1:21:05 | 1:21:09 | |
Ted Heath never had and, in that sense, it was a much easier relationship, | 1:21:09 | 1:21:14 | |
but you didn't have the same sense... | 1:21:14 | 1:21:19 | |
of confidence and trust that you had with Heath. | 1:21:19 | 1:21:22 | |
You felt with Heath that you could always trust him. | 1:21:22 | 1:21:25 | |
With Wilson you could never be quite sure what he would be up to. | 1:21:25 | 1:21:28 | |
"By the Queen, a proclamation, | 1:21:28 | 1:21:32 | |
"dissolving the present Parliament and declaring the calling of another." | 1:21:32 | 1:21:38 | |
In October, 1974, Wilson called another election, | 1:21:38 | 1:21:43 | |
the fourth between himself and Heath. | 1:21:43 | 1:21:46 | |
Heath was drinking in the last chance saloon. | 1:21:47 | 1:21:50 | |
By the time we came to the Autumn of 1974, | 1:21:50 | 1:21:54 | |
the message coming through | 1:21:54 | 1:21:57 | |
to MPs and people who canvassed on the streets | 1:21:57 | 1:22:01 | |
was, "We've got to get rid of this man." | 1:22:01 | 1:22:03 | |
The feeling that Ted Heath's time had come and gone. | 1:22:03 | 1:22:07 | |
Wilson won again. | 1:22:09 | 1:22:12 | |
Only just, but it was enough to defeat Ted Heath, for the third | 1:22:12 | 1:22:17 | |
and what would be the final time. | 1:22:17 | 1:22:19 | |
Heath's party did not forgive him. | 1:22:22 | 1:22:25 | |
In February 1975, a surprise challenger, | 1:22:27 | 1:22:30 | |
Margaret Thatcher, took him on in the Tory leadership contest. | 1:22:30 | 1:22:35 | |
When the ballot for leadership came, I was up fulfilling a political engagement in the Midlands | 1:22:35 | 1:22:42 | |
and the train arrived back in London an hour and a half late | 1:22:42 | 1:22:46 | |
and I got to the House of Commons too late to vote. | 1:22:46 | 1:22:49 | |
So I wasn't in a very strong position all round. | 1:22:49 | 1:22:53 | |
And as I got to | 1:22:53 | 1:22:56 | |
the House of Commons, | 1:22:56 | 1:22:59 | |
none other than Kenneth Clarke | 1:22:59 | 1:23:02 | |
came running out of Westminster Hall, | 1:23:02 | 1:23:07 | |
saying, "She's won, she's won!" | 1:23:07 | 1:23:09 | |
After ten dramatic years, the Heath-Wilson duel was suddenly over. | 1:23:12 | 1:23:18 | |
Wilson at first looked pleased | 1:23:20 | 1:23:23 | |
because he had seen off his opponent throughout much of his career | 1:23:23 | 1:23:28 | |
and then he suddenly looked own and said, | 1:23:28 | 1:23:33 | |
"I'm not sure that's a good thing." | 1:23:33 | 1:23:35 | |
He said to me, "You know, Bernard, I've been studying him for decades. I've watched his every move. | 1:23:35 | 1:23:43 | |
"I think I know what he'll say in any situation. | 1:23:43 | 1:23:47 | |
"I know how to provoke him. | 1:23:47 | 1:23:50 | |
"I know how to respond to him, I know what he'll do and now he's gone." | 1:23:50 | 1:23:55 | |
There was one final piece of unfinished business | 1:23:56 | 1:23:59 | |
in the topsy-turvy course of Heath and Wilson - Europe. | 1:23:59 | 1:24:05 | |
Wilson had opposed Heath's entry, saying the terms were wrong. | 1:24:05 | 1:24:11 | |
In 1975, he renegotiated the terms. The changes were entirely superficial | 1:24:11 | 1:24:15 | |
but allowed Wilson to recommend the country to vote in a referendum | 1:24:15 | 1:24:22 | |
to stay in. | 1:24:22 | 1:24:23 | |
Heath, from the backbenches, was at the forefront of the "yes" campaign. | 1:24:25 | 1:24:30 | |
"Is Britain stronger inside Europe? Yes!" | 1:24:30 | 1:24:35 | |
Wilson, ever fearful of splits in his party, kept a low profile. | 1:24:35 | 1:24:40 | |
In the 1975 referendum, the British people voted overwhelmingly | 1:24:42 | 1:24:48 | |
to stay in Europe. | 1:24:48 | 1:24:49 | |
I'm delighted with the result. I've worked for this for 25 years. | 1:24:49 | 1:24:53 | |
I was the Prime Minister who led... | 1:24:53 | 1:24:54 | |
Every democrat will accept the result, you and all! | 1:24:54 | 1:25:00 | |
It was the outcome both Heath, publicly and vociferously, | 1:25:00 | 1:25:04 | |
and Wilson, privately and furtively, had wanted. | 1:25:04 | 1:25:08 | |
But it had been a curious double act to get there. | 1:25:08 | 1:25:12 | |
Wilson had always said to those close to him he'd do two more years and retire at 60. | 1:25:16 | 1:25:21 | |
Fatigue and mental decline were beginning to show. | 1:25:21 | 1:25:25 | |
I left in April '75 and I came back in December '75 for some function. | 1:25:25 | 1:25:32 | |
I'd never met a man so absolutely tired and exhausted. | 1:25:32 | 1:25:37 | |
It was like a piece of elastic where all the rubber has gone. | 1:25:37 | 1:25:40 | |
And I now think that the signs of his eventual mental decline | 1:25:40 | 1:25:45 | |
were beginning to show. | 1:25:45 | 1:25:46 | |
On 16th March, 1976, just over a year after Heath | 1:25:49 | 1:25:54 | |
had been ditched by the Conservative party, | 1:25:54 | 1:25:57 | |
Harold Wilson resigned as Prime Minister | 1:25:57 | 1:26:00 | |
and slowly slipped out of British politics. | 1:26:00 | 1:26:04 | |
Heath set up home in Salisbury but remained active in the Commons | 1:26:07 | 1:26:11 | |
for the next 25 years. | 1:26:11 | 1:26:13 | |
When they both got old, Ted was really quite kind. | 1:26:13 | 1:26:18 | |
When Wilson had lost his marbles, he would ask Wilson and his wife Mary | 1:26:18 | 1:26:24 | |
down to Salisbury for Sunday lunch and that kind of thing. | 1:26:24 | 1:26:27 | |
And after Wilson died, he would ask Mary on her own and I think he got on | 1:26:27 | 1:26:31 | |
quite well with Mary Wilson. | 1:26:31 | 1:26:33 | |
That wasn't the problem. The problem was Harold. They were chalk and cheese. | 1:26:33 | 1:26:37 | |
Lord Harold Wilson died on 24th May, 1995, aged 79. | 1:26:40 | 1:26:46 | |
Sir Edward Heath ten years later, on 17th July, 2005, aged 89. | 1:26:50 | 1:26:57 | |
Their duel now seems another era | 1:26:59 | 1:27:03 | |
yet the problems they faced are oddly familiar. | 1:27:03 | 1:27:07 | |
Britain's identity within Europe is still debated. | 1:27:08 | 1:27:12 | |
Trade unions are gearing up against a Conservative-led government. | 1:27:12 | 1:27:17 | |
The economy is fragile. | 1:27:17 | 1:27:19 | |
The shadow of Heath and Wilson hangs over us. | 1:27:21 | 1:27:24 | |
But as for the two men themselves, was there a winner? | 1:27:26 | 1:27:31 | |
Harold Wilson retired at a time he chose, | 1:27:31 | 1:27:35 | |
under no particular pressure to do so, whilst still in office. | 1:27:35 | 1:27:39 | |
Ted Heath was first defeated in an election and then hounded | 1:27:39 | 1:27:44 | |
from leadership of the party. So, in those terms, Wilson won. | 1:27:44 | 1:27:49 | |
Looked at another way, I'm not quite so sure. | 1:27:49 | 1:27:53 | |
Ted Heath had a passionate crusade, | 1:27:53 | 1:27:56 | |
an ideal in which he believed - Britain in Europe - | 1:27:56 | 1:27:59 | |
and in which he succeeded and his success lasted after he had gone. | 1:27:59 | 1:28:05 | |
Howard Wilson had no such ambition, no such crusade. | 1:28:05 | 1:28:11 | |
His only concentration was on keeping the party united, | 1:28:11 | 1:28:15 | |
which he did very successfully but which was not a noble cause | 1:28:15 | 1:28:20 | |
in the sense that Heath had. | 1:28:20 | 1:28:22 | |
So perhaps Heath won after all. | 1:28:22 | 1:28:25 | |
# Chalk and cheese | 1:28:36 | 1:28:37 | |
# We're as different as Chalk and cheese | 1:28:37 | 1:28:39 | |
# Were there ever two people more Out of step before? | 1:28:39 | 1:28:43 | |
# More unlike, if you please... # | 1:28:43 | 1:28:45 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 1:28:46 | 1:28:49 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 1:28:49 | 1:28:52 |