Background

Edward Richard George Heath was born on July 9, 1916, in Broadstairs, Kent, United Kingdom, the first child of William Heath and Edith Pantony. He did not have the traditional wealthy background of Conservative leaders; his father was a carpenter who later ran a small building firm, and his mother had been in domestic service before she married.

Education

Edward Heath was educated at Chatham House Grammar School in Ramsgate, and in 1935 he went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford. A talented musician, he won the college's organ scholarship in his first term. Heath was awarded a Second Class Honours Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1939.

While at university he became active in Conservative politics, but unlike some senior politicians such as Neville Chamberlain and George Lansbury, was an active opponent of appeasement. He supported the anti-Munich "Independent Progressive" candidate Alexander Lindsay against the official Conservative candidate, Quintin Hogg, in the October 1938 Oxford by-election, and was elected as President of the Oxford Union Society in November 1938 as an anti-appeasement candidate, sponsored by Balliol. He was also twice the President of the Oxford University Conservative Association.

Heath's opposition to appeasement stemmed from his witnessing first-hand a Nazi Party Nuremberg rally in 1937, where he met top Nazis Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler at an SS cocktail party. He later described Himmler as "the most evil man I have ever met."

Career

Heath joined the army shortly after World War II began. In 1940 he was assigned to the Royal Artillery, where he advanced to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. His distinguished war record included time spent on the Normandy front and in the crossing of the Rhine River. In the immediate postwar years he began to prepare for a career in politics. He worked successively as a civil servant in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, as news editor of the Church Times, and for a merchant bank in the City of London.

In 1950 Heath was elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Bexley, Kent, a constituency that he continued to represent into the 1980s. When the Conservatives were returned to power under Winston Churchill in 1951, Heath was appointed to a junior position in the government. Two years later he was made government chief whip, a position he held until 1959. The chief whip is in charge of party discipline, and Heath's skills at conciliation served him well. He helped to preserve the unity of the Conservative Party during the controversial Suez invasion of 1956.

In 1959, with Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister, Heath was appointed Minister of Labor with a seat in the Cabinet. A year later he became Lord Privy Seal. Then from 1963 to 1964, he was secretary of state for industry, trade, and regional development as well as president of the board of trade. These were years of transition within the Conservative Party. An older generation of leaders, including Anthony Eden, Macmillan, and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was passing from the scene. Heath was among the younger politicians who were competing for the future leadership of the party. Though not an ideologue, he was identified with the moderate wing of the party on social and economic questions. Above all, he was a "European" who wanted Britain to join the Common Market. As lord privy seal, he conducted lengthy negotiations to that end, only to have President Charles de Gaulle of France exercise a veto in January 1963.

Heath was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1965 in succession to Douglas-Home. At 49, he was the youngest Conservative leader in a century; he was also the first to be chosen by members of Parliament rather than private consultation. Although he was defeated by Harold Wilson in the election of 1966, Heath worked hard to prepare his party for power, emphasizing personal initiative and a reduction of the role of the central government as elements of modern conservatism. In 1968 he dismissed Enoch Powell from his shadow cabinet as a "racist" after the latter made an extreme anti-immigrant speech.

In the election of 1970 Heath won the prime ministership with a narrow victory over Wilson. From the outset, he turned his attention to the unresolved question of the Common Market. He and President Georges Pompidou of France reached a historic agreement in 1972, and the following year Britain entered the Common Market. This attempt at unity with the continent of Europe was almost certainly Heath's major achievement in politics.

On domestic matters, Heath pursued a "quiet revolution" involving fewer governmental controls, reduced taxation, and the reform of trade union law. However, by 1972 he had reversed some of his policies. The Industrial Relations Act, passed in 1971, was not enforced effectively, and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Anthony Barber, carried out a policy of increased expenditure to deal with rising unemployment. In February 1974, in the midst of a miners' strike that led to severe power cuts, the Conservatives were defeated in a general election and Wilson returned to power with the Labour government.

Heath fought and lost another election to Wilson in October 1974. The following February he was replaced as leader of the opposition by Margaret Thatcher. After that, he was on poor terms with Thatcher and lost much of his influence within the Conservative Party. He continued to be a vigorous spokesman for the Conservative "wets," who favor a consensual approach to social and economic problems and have generally been critical of Thatcher's policies.

Losing the General Election of October 1974 to Margaret Thatcher and the Party Election to Harold Wilson in 1975 did not remove Sir Edward Heath from political life, as he retained his seat in Parliament as the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup. Thus, he was still a Member of the House and of the ruling Conservative Party. As such, he chaired important governmental committees which determined national policy. During the 1990-1991 war in the Persian Gulf, Heath was the British government's negotiator with Saddam Hussein of Iraq and succeeded in gaining the release of many British hostages.

In April 1972, Edward Heath was appointed Knight of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II, i.e., an ancient British title which elevated Heath to the peerage (British aristocracy). He had already been decorated with the Order of the British Empire in November 1965, for meritious service to the nation. He was now addressed formally as The Right Honourable Sir Edward (Richard George) Heath, Knight of the Garter, Member of the Order of the British Empire. In Parliament, he was termed the Father of the House of Parliament and, as such, he presided over the internal elections.

Sir Edward Heath figures in history as the man who brought Great Britain back into the European community of nations as Britain had been so many centuries ago.

Achievements

• Edward Heath served as the prime minister of the country between 1970 and 1974. As a member of the Conservative Party, he served as a Member of Parliament for 51 years and was honored as the "Father of the House." He led the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975.
  
  Heath had received several honorary doctorates, such as the Doctor of Laws from the universities of Kent, Wales, Calgary, and Greenwich and the Doctor of Music from organizations such as the Royal College of Music and the Royal College of Organists. He also received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford and an honorary fellowship from Goldsmiths, University of London.
  
  His life has been captured in many biographies and books, such as Edward Heath: A Biography by John Campbell, Leaders of the Opposition: from Churchill to Cameron by Mark Garnett, The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945 by Peter Hennessey, and Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography by Philip Ziegler.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Course of My Life

    (Since joining the House of Commons in 1950, Edward Heath ...)

    1998

Religion

Heath co-authored the book, Christian Values (1996) as well as authoring a book on carols. Biographer MacShane suggests that Heath drew on Christian social thought that was inclined to favor power-sharing and class cooperation. In addition, Heath wrote a foreword to the 1976 edition of William Temple's Christianity and the Social Order which called for a just society. In the 1990s, Heath often took part in conferences of the Summit Council for World Peace and Federation for World Peace, organizations begun by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification movement on family values and society.

Politics

Heath's moment came in the general election of June 1970, when he committed the Conservative Party to a policy of modernization aimed at tackling the relative decline of the British economy. His approach was largely designed to release private initiative and enterprise by reducing direct taxation, cutting back on government expenditure, and reforming industrial relations and central and local government administration. It was also linked with the need to negotiate entry into the EEC, which Heath felt would guarantee both Britain's political security and economic competitiveness in its postimperial days. Armed with these policies, and with the Wilson government facing difficulties with the trade union movement, Heath's Conservative government was elected with a majority of thirty seats.

Heath's premiership foreshadowed Margaret Thatcher's in its demonstrated willingness to challenge political convention by attempting to reduce the government's commitment to the welfare state. Heath developed a reputation for being abrupt, lacking tact, and leading from the front, and his efforts were not as successful as those of other recent British prime ministers. Yet in some areas, he showed surprising political skill - for example, on the question of Europe, where he put the question of Britain's entry to the EEC to a free vote in Parliament and obtained the necessary majority (39 Conservative M.P.s voted against entry, but 69 Labour M.Rs ignored the Labour Party whip and voted in favor).

His handling of the immigration issue - an issue that provoked as much controversy as did Britain's entry to the EEC - was less successful. The Conservative manifesto of 1970 had accepted that there would be no further large-scale immigration, and the Immigration Act of 1971 was introduced to ensure that immigration restrictions would be tightened. Heath's agreement to accept 60,000 Ugandan Asians who held British passports and who were threatened with expulsion from Uganda by President Idi Amin evoked serious criticism from Conservative Member of Parliament Enoch Powell, a well-known opponent of immigration, as well as considerable disquiet within the Conservative Party.

The dominating theme of Heath's government was efficiency; it introduced many initiatives to reduce public expenditure, creating new, larger departments, such as the Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ministry of the Environment. The government's financial prudence was, however, offset by rising inflation, wage demands, and the failure of high-profile companies such as Rolls Royce, which had to be nationalized, and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, which had to be subsidized. The Heath government also abolished the prices and incomes board and the Industrial Reorganization Corporation and was determined to fight excessive public sector wage claims. At first, it made attempts to negotiate a voluntary prices and incomes policy. When this policy failed, Heath moved to make the scheme compulsory. The early stages of implementation went well enough, but there were problems at the final stage when the miners' union decided to ignore the wage guidelines altogether.

The battle over wage limits added to the tensions that had been accumulating since the passage of the Industrial Relations Act of 1971, which had mandated sixty-day cooling-off periods and prestrike ballots. Trade unions and employers refused to cooperate in such measures, and the resultant increase in the antagonism between the two groups led to a number of serious industrial confrontations. The coal miners' strike of 1972 created serious difficulties for Heath's government, and the 1973-1974 coal strike broke its back: The government was compelled to introduce a three-day workweek in order to save fuel, and the ensuing political fracas forced Heath to call a general election in February 1974, at which his government was defeated.

Views

Quotations: "We will have to embark on a change so radical, a revolution so quiet and yet so total, that it will go far beyond the programme for a parliament."

"I am not a product of privilege. I am a product of opportunity."

"You mustn't expect prime ministers to enjoy themselves. If they do, they mustn't show it - the population would be horrified."

"Do you know what Margaret Thatcher did in her first Budget? Introduced VAT on yachts! It somewhat ruined my retirement."

Personality

Edward Heath was famed for his love of music and sailing, in which he competed at the international level. He owned a series of yachts called Morning Cloud, winning the Sydney Hobart Race in 1969 and - as prime minister - captained the British team that won the Admiral's Cup in 1971.

Physical Characteristics: In old age, Heath became very overweight. He suffered a pulmonary embolism in August 2003 while on holiday in Salzburg, Austria. He never fully recovered, and due to his declining health and mobility made very few public appearances in the final two years of his life.

Interests

• Yachts

• Sport & Clubs

  Sailing, football, Burnley Football Club

• Music & Bands

  Classical music

Connections

Heath was a lifelong bachelor, although he always had the company of women when social (and particularly musical) circumstances required. John Campbell, who published a biography of Heath in 1993, devoted four pages to a discussion of Heath's sexuality. He commented that there was "no evidence whatsoever" that Heath was gay "except for the faintest unsubstantiated rumor" (the footnote refers to a mention of a "disturbing incident" at the beginning of the war in a 1972 biography by Andrew Roth). Campbell also points out that Heath was at least as likely to be a repressed heterosexual (given his awkwardness with women) or "simply asexual."

Heath had been expected to marry childhood friend Kay Raven, who reportedly tired of waiting and married a Royal Air Force officer whom she met on holiday in 1950. In a terse four-sentence paragraph in his memoirs, Heath claimed that he had been too busy establishing a career after the war and had "perhaps ... taken too much for granted." In a TV interview with Michael Cockerell, Heath admitted that he had kept her photograph in his flat for many years afterwards.

After Heath's death, gay rights campaigner and Conservative London Assembly member Brian Coleman suggested in 2007 that the former Prime Minister was a homosexual. Coleman, writing on the website of the New Statesman on the issue of "outing," said: "The late Ted Heath managed to obtain the highest office of state after he was supposedly advised to cease his cottaging activities in the 1950s when he became a privy councilor." The claim was dismissed by Member of Parliament Sir Peter Tapsell, and Heath's friend and Member of Parliament Derek Conway stated that "if there was some secret I'm sure it would be out by now." The alleged activities would seem inconsistent with Heath's religious convictions.

Father:

William Heath

Mother:

Edith Pantony

Friend:

Kay Raven

colleague:

Margaret Thatcher

References

• Edward Heath: The Authorised Biography by Philip Ziegler
  2010
• Edward Heath: A Singular Life by Michael McManus
  2016