THE FASHIONABLE MERITOCRAT
By all the traditions of British politics, Edward Heath has no business being where he is today. Some Tory leaders did not go to Eton, but none went to a grammar school on a scholarship, as did the burly Kentishman with the rumbling laugh and the steely blue eyes. Some were born untitled, but none the son of a carpenter, like Ted Heath. Some Tories were chosen leader at an earlier age, but none since Disraeli in 1849 at the age of 45, a mere four years younger than Heath today. By all the odds of British politics, Edward Richard George Heath will be Britain's Prime Minister some day. Britain has had bachelor Prime Ministers, but none since the urbane Arthur Balfour in the Edwardian era.
In a changing Britain, Heath is both proof and symbol of change--a recognition overdue by the Conservatives that class is rapidly going out of fashion. A man passionately dedicated to change himself, to "modernizing Britain," Heath is the very model of the meritocrat--the man making his way on his merits. Heath's merits include immense energy, ruthlessness when necessary, and politics in the very marrow of his bones. They are all qualities his Laborite opposite Harold Wilson possesses in abundance too, and many a tradition-minded Tory M.P. will admit privately that he voted for Heath just to nail Wilson.
A Steinway. Heath has lost only one battle in an ambitious life--to Charles de Gaulle, who vetoed Britain's entry into the Common Market in 1963. Then, as Harold Macmillan's Lord Privy Seal, Heath was conducting the negotiations in Brussels. He remains as convinced as ever that Britain's destiny lies with the Continent. Born on the Kentish coast within sight of "the mainland," as he calls Europe, Heath showed such early promise that he won a grant to Chatham House, a school at nearby Ramsgate. His flair for music got him the organ scholarship to Oxford's Balliol College, and music remains his only real passion outside politics. A Steinway piano, much used, adorns his bachelor quarters in London's elegant 18th century Albany apartments. At Oxford, Teddy (he has since dropped the dy) was president of the Union (the debating society) and the young Conservatives.
Heath took a gentleman's second at Oxford, but came out a remarkable first in the civil service exams. After a stint in the civil service, he went into banking as an executive trainee, finally found his calling when the Tories invited him in 1950 to stand for Parliament in Bexley. He ousted the incumbent Laborite by 133 votes. He mastered the intricacies of the House so well that by 1955 he was Chief Whip and played a critical role in holding the Tories together through the tumultuous days of the Suez crisis. A Cabinet post (Labor) and the Common Market portfolio followed soon after.
A Proposition. Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home made Heath his minister for trade and industry, and one of the Tories' last acts in power last year was to accept Heath's bill to kill resale price maintenance (the equivalent of U.S. "fair trade" laws), which took courage, since it angered shopkeepers, who are normally a source of Conservative voting strength. In opposition, Heath relentlessly harried Labor's finance bill through 211 hours of debate, by his enormous grasp of detail often embarrassed its Socialist authors, once even succeeded, by a clever ruse, in defeating the government in a late night's voting.
His friends think he will prove more than a match for Wilson in the Commons. His critics think that he may prove to be so much like Wilson as to actually reinforce Wilson's image as Prime Minister in the nation's eyes by seeming to offer so little alternative. Heath has yet to develop anything like the public image Wilson commands, but with his cherubic visage and quick sallies of humor it may not be long in coming. When a woman reporter asked the new leader what he intended to do about a hostess at No. 10 Downing Street, he parried tartly: "Is that a proposition?"
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