Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, CH,
PC (born 21 March
1933) is a British businessman and Conservative Party politician. He is a patron of the Tory
Reform Group.
Early life
Heseltine was born in Swansea, Wales. He is a distant
descendant of Charles Dibdin, from whom one of his middle names was taken. Heseltine was
educated at Shrewsbury School and campaigned briefly as a volunteer in the
October 1951 General Election before going up to Pembroke College, Oxford, where, in frustration at his inability to be elected to the committee
of the Oxford University Conservative Association, he founded
the breakaway Blue Ribbon Club. Julian Critchley recounts a story from his student days
of how he plotted his future on the back of an envelope, a future that would culminate as Prime Minister in the 1990s. Another
more detailed apocryphal version has him writing down: 'millionaire 25, cabinet member 35, party leader 45, prime minister
55'. He did become a millionaire, and a member of the shadow cabinet at the age of 41 —
but failed to achieve the last two (although he would, under John Major, be appointed Deputy Prime Minister at the age of 62).
Heseltine's biographers, Michael Crick and Critchley and recount how, despite not being
a natural speaker, he became a strong orator through much practice, which included speaking in front of a mirror, listening to
tape recordings of the speeches of Charles Hill, and taking speaking lessons from a vicar's wife. In the 1970s and 1980s
Heseltine's conference speech was often to be the highlight of the Conservative Party Conference, despite his views being well to
the left of Margaret Thatcher.
He was eventually elected to the committee of the Oxford Union after five terms at the
University. The following year (1953-4) he served (having challenged unsuccessfully for the Presidency the previous summer) in
top place on the committee, then as Secretary, and then Treasurer. It was during this last
post that he reopened the Union cellars for business and persuaded the visiting Sir Bernard and Lady Docker to contribute to the
considerable cost. After graduating with a second-class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (described by his own tutor as "a great and
undeserved triumph"), he was permitted to stay on for an extra term to serve as President of the Oxford Union for
Michaelmas term, 1954, having been elected with the assistance
of leading Oxford socialists Anthony Howard and Jeremy
Isaacs.
After graduating he built up a property business in partnership with his Oxford friend Ian Josephs; with financial support
from the families of both men they started with a boarding house in Clanricarde Gardens and progressed to various other
properties in the Bayswater area. He also attempted to train as an accountant but did not qualify, and after failing his accountancy exams could no longer postpone
National Service. He was called up in January 1959 and became a Second Lieutenant in the Welsh Guards. He left the Guards to
contest the General Election that year and on business grounds was exempted from the remaining sixteen months of service. During
the 1980s his habit of wearing a Guards tie, sometimes incorrectly tied with red showing on the knot, was the subject of much
acerbic comment from military figures and older MPs with extensive war records. Crick estimated that he must have worn the tie on
more days than he actually served in the Guards.[1]
Besides building a housing estate at Tenterden in Kent, which failed to sell and was beset with repair problems until after his
election to Parliament, [2] he founded the magazine
publishing company Haymarket in collaboration with another Oxford friend, Clive
Labovitch, and early in the 1960s acquired the famous (but never profitable) magazine Man About Town, whose title he
shortened to About Town then simply Town. In 1962 he also briefly published a well-received weekly
newspaper,Topic, which folded but whose journalists later became the "Sunday Times Insight" Team. Between 1960 and 1964 he also somehow found the time to
be a part-time interviewer for ITV.
After such rapid expansion, Heseltine's businesses were badly hit by the Selwyn Lloyd
credit squeeze of 1962 and, still not yet thirty years old, he would eventually owe £250,000 (over £3 million in 2007 prices). He
claims to have been lent a badly-needed £60,000 by a bank manager who retired the same day. During the 1990s Heseltine was later
to joke about how he had avoided bankruptcy by such stratagems as only paying bills when
threatened with legal action, or by sending out insufficiently completed cheques, although it has never been suggested that he
did not pay off all his debts eventually. It was during this period of stress that he took up gardening as a serious hobby.
In 1967 Heseltine secured Haymarket's financial future by selling a majority stake to the British Printing Corporation,
retaining a large shareholding himself. Although his associates have testified to Heseltine's entrepreneurial courage and
deal-making skills, it was only after Heseltine's election to Parliament that Haymarket, under the management of Lindsay Masters,
grew into the company which has made Heseltine very rich, publishing a series of mundane yet profitable management and
advertising journals.
Member of Parliament
He contested the safe Labour seat of Gower in 1959 and a
marginal Coventry seat in 1964, before being elected as a
Member of Parliament (MP) in 1966 for
Tavistock in Devon, subsequently
representing Henley from 1974. Following the Conservative victory in the 1970 General Election, he was promoted to the ranks of government by
Prime Minister Edward
Heath. In 1970, he served briefly as a junior minister at the Department of
Transport, before moving to the Department for the Environment,
where he was partly responsible for shepherding the Local Government Act 1972
through Parliament. He then moved to the Department of Industry from
1972 onwards.
As Minister for Aerospace in 1973 Heseltine was responsible for persuading other governments to invest in the Concorde, but was accused of misleading the House of Commons when he stated that the government was still
considering giving financial support to the Hovertrain, when the decision to pull the plug had already been taken by the Cabinet.
Although his chief critic Airey Neave disliked Heseltine as a brash 'arriviste', Neave's real target, in the view of Heseltine's
PPS Cecil Parkinson, was the Prime Minister Edward Heath, whom Neave detested and later helped to topple as party leader in
1975.
Heseltine became Shadow Industry Secretary in the Conservative's 1974 - 1979 opposition, gaining notoriety following a 1976 incident in the House of Commons during the debate on
measures introduced by the Labour Government to nationalise the shipbuilding and aerospace industries. Accounts of exactly what happened vary, but the most colourful image portrayed Heseltine
seizing the mace and brandishing it towards Labour left-wingers who were celebrating
their winning the vote by singing the Red Flag, his long fair hair flowing elegantly
behind him. Heseltine subsequently acquired the nickname Tarzan or, on occasion,
Hezza, in imitatation of "Gazza". He was portrayed on the satirical TV puppet
show, Spitting Image, as a flak jacket-wearing
psychopath, in a reference to an occasion when, as Defence Secretary, he had been persuaded to don a flak jacket over his suit
while inspecting troops in the rain.
In government
He was appointed to the cabinet of Margaret
Thatcher as Secretary of State for the Environment in
1979 after her election victory that year. He was a key figure in the sale of council houses and was sent in as a troubleshooter to deal with the explosion of violence in Britain's
inner cities in the aftermath of the Brixton and
Toxteth riots during the early 1980s. Heseltine was
responsible for developing the policies that led to five bi-annual National Garden
Festivals, starting in 1984. He established Development Corporations that were directly
appointed by the minister and empowered to circumvent local authority planning controls. This measure proved controversial in
Labour strongholds such as East London, Merseyside and North East England. He then served as Secretary of State for Defence from January 1983 - his
presentational skills were used to take on the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament in the June 1983 General Election - until 1986, when he resigned over the
bitter dispute with the Prime Minister Thatcher over the Westland Affair.
Backbenches and Leadership Contest
He then returned to the backbenches, where he became increasingly critical of Margaret
Thatcher's performance, although he abstained in November 1989 when Sir Anthony Meyer challenged for the party leadership. At one
point during a carefully worded statement he repeatedly insisted that he could "not foresee the circumstances" in which he would
challenge her for the leadership. But circumstances altered dramatically following Sir Geoffrey
Howe's resignation speech [1] in November 1990, and Heseltine announced his
candidature. He did well enough in the first round of voting to prevent an outright Thatcher victory, and at one point appeared
on course to beat her in the second ballot; but faced with humiliation and the bitter prospect of a Heseltine premiership,
Thatcher resigned and the second ballot – which Douglas Hurd also entered – was topped by
John Major. As Major was only two votes short of an overall majority, Heseltine immediately
and publicly conceded defeat, announcing that he would vote for Major if the third ballot went ahead (it did not). Although for
the rest of his career Heseltine's role in Mrs Thatcher's downfall earned him enmity from Thatcher's supporters in the
Conservative Party, this was not universal. In a reference to the reluctance of the Cabinet to support her on the second ballot,
Thatcherite Edward Leigh said of Heseltine: "At least he stabbed her in the front".
Afterwards Heseltine returned to government as Secretary of State for the Environment (with particular responsibility for
replacing the poll tax; he allegedly declined an offer of the job of Home Secretary). After the
1992 general election, he was appointed Secretary of State for
Trade and Industry, but chose to be known by the title of President of the Board of Trade promising to intervene
"before breakfast, dinner and tea" to help British companies. In 1992, when plans were made for the privatisation of British
Coal, Heseltine announced that 31 collieries were to close[2], including many of the mines in Nottinghamshire that had continued working during the 1984-5 strike. Although
this policy was seen as a betrayal by the Nottinghamshire miners and the threatened miners had much more public sympathy than in
1984,[citation needed] there was hardly any organised
resistance to the programme.
The government stated that since the pits were money losers they could only be sustained through unjustifiable government
subsidies. Mine supporters pointed to the mines' high productivity rates and to the fact that their monetary losses were due to
the large subsidies that other European nations were supplying their coal industries. Whilst Heseltine is generally seen as a
centrist Conservative in the whole of Britain, his reputation in the coalfields remains low.[citation needed] The band Chumbawamba released the critical song "Mr Heseltine meets the public" that portrayed him as an out-of-touch
figure; the same group had once dedicated a song to the village of Fitzwilliam,
West Yorkshire, which was reduced to a ghost town following the closure of local
pits.
In June 1993, Heseltine suffered a heart attack whilst in Venice, leading to concerns on his
ability to remain in government after he was televised leaving hospital in a wheelchair. In 1994, Chris Morris joked on BBC Radio 1 that Heseltine had died, and fellow MP Jerry Hayes soon broadcast an on-air tribute. Morris
was subsequently suspended. Nonetheless Heseltine - who after being seen as an 'arriviste' in his younger days was now something
of a grandee and elder statesman - reemerged as a serious political player in 1994, helped by his flirting with the idea of
privatising the Post Office and by his testimony at the Arms to Iraq Inquiry (at which it emerged that he had refused to sign the
certificates attempting to withhold evidence). The cover of "Private Eye" announced "A Legend Lives", and one major newspaper
ended an editorial by proclaiming that "balance of probability" was that Heseltine would be Prime Minister before the end of the
year. The truth of this prediction will never be known, as no leadership election emerged that autumn.
Deputy Prime Minister
In the summer of 1995, John Major, having found himself consistently opposed by a minority of
Eurosceptics in his party, challenged them to "put up or shut up" by resubmitting himself to a leadership election in which he
was unsuccessfully opposed by the Secretary of State for Wales,
John Redwood. There was speculation that Heseltine's supporters would engineer Major's
downfall in the hope that their man would take over, but in the event they stayed loyal to Major, and Heseltine (who voted for
Major and showed his ballot paper to the returning officers) was rewarded by promotion to Deputy Prime Minister. In this capacity he chaired a number of key Cabinet
committees and was also an early key enthusiast for the Millennium Dome. In December
1996 Heseltine, angering eurosceptics, joined with Conservative Chancellor Kenneth Clarke in preventing any movement away from
the government's official refusal to decide on whether or not to join the Single Currency.
After Labour won the 1997 election, he suffered further heart
trouble and was unable to stand for the Conservative Party leadership again, although there was still speculation that Clarke
might have stood aside for him to stand as a compromise candidate. He became active in promoting the benefits for Britain of
joining the single European Currency, appearing on the same stage as Tony Blair,
Gordon Brown and Robin Cook as part of an all-party
campaign to promote Euro membership. He was also made a Companion of Honour by John Major in the 1997 resignation Honours List.
Retirement
He resigned his Henley-on-Thames constituency at the 2001 Election but remained outspoken on
British politics. He was given a life peerage as Baron Heseltine, of Thenford in the County of Northamptonshire.
In December 2002, Heseltine controversially called for Iain
Duncan Smith to be replaced as leader of the Conservatives by the "dream-ticket" of Kenneth Clarke as leader and Michael Portillo as deputy. He
suggested the party's MPs vote on the matter, rather than party members as currently required by party rules. Without the
replacement of Duncan Smith, the party has not "a ghost of a chance of winning the next election", he said. Duncan Smith was
removed the following year. In the 2005 party leadership election, he backed the young moderniser, David Cameron.
Following Cameron's election to the leadership, he set up a wide-ranging policy review. Chairmen of the various policy groups
included ex-Chancellor Kenneth Clarke and other former cabinet ministers John Redwood, John Gummer, Stephen
Dorrell and Michael Forsyth, as well as ex-leader
Iain Duncan Smith. Heseltine was appointed to head the cities task force, having been
responsible for urban policy twice as Environment Secretary under Margaret Thatcher
and John Major.
Member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001:
He was ranked 170th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2004, with an estimated wealth of £240
million.
He is now a keen gardener and arboriculturalist and
his arboretum is one of the most important private collections of specimens in the UK. It was
featured in a one off documentary on BBC Two in December 2005.[3]
External links
Publications
- Michael Heseltine, Raising The Sights - A Tory Perspective, in the Primrose
League Gazette, vol.91, no.2, Aug/Sept 1987 edition, London.
- Julian Critchley, Heseltine - The Unauthorised Biography, André Deutsch, London, September 1987, ISBN 0-233-98001-6
- Michael Crick, Michael Heseltine: A Biography, Hamish Hamilton, 1997, ISBN 0-241-13691-1
- Michael Heseltine, Life in the Jungle, Hodder & Stoughton, 2000,
ISBN 0-340-73915-0
References
- ^ Michael Crick, Michael Heseltine:
A Biography, Hamish Hamilton, 1997, ISBN 0-241-13691-1, p92-3
- ^ Michael Crick, Michael Heseltine:
A Biography, Hamish Hamilton, 1997, ISBN 0-241-13691-1, p105-7
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