Political and economic turmoil are unpleasant (to say the least) to the armchair agent of reform who stays focused on only the big picture. There is wisdom to spare in all the detail of this long obituary.

Whatever you do, however, do not miss the last line.

FROM THE NEWS TELEGRAPH OF LONDON
18 JULY 2005

Sir Edward Heath

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005

Sir Edward Heath, who died yesterday aged 89, achieved his great ambition of taking Britain into the European Economic Community, but proved unable to solve the many economic and labour problems which afflicted his administration between 1970 and 1974.

The first Conservative Prime Minister to be born the son of a manual worker, Heath pursued his European vision against every discouragement. But in the face of almost continuous crisis he was unable to maintain policy at home. Elected on laissez-faire economics, his government found itself pouring out public money in all directions. Determined to reform industrial relations, he made matters worse through ill-considered legislation.

Heath, moreover, conspicuously lacked the ability to charm his way out of trouble: for a leading politician he was an astonishingly inept communicator. His awkward mannerisms - the brusque retort, the shoulders heaving in mirthless laughter - repelled; his speeches were wooden in delivery and banal in phrasing; for almost a year, from November 1972 to October 1973, he gave no television interview.

In consequence, "the Grocer" was pilloried as a heartless automaton, contemptuous of the poor and unemployed. In reality, his administration twisted and turned because the kind of Conservatism which Heath espoused - and which appealed to his instincts far more than did the prescriptions of the market-place - was corporatist rather than political, dirigiste rather than democratic.

In some respects Heath was a permanent secretary manqué, more at ease with civil servants than with his own Cabinet. His creation of the Central Policy Review Staff, or Think Tank, to help him take the long strategic view, suggested his impatience with orthodox politics.

Heath also differed from most prime ministers in his interests. A keen sailor, he had won the Sydney-Hobart race in his yacht Morning Cloud in 1969; and in 1971, as Prime Minister, he captained the British team which won the Admiral's Cup. That same year he conducted Elgar's Cockaigne overture at the Royal Festival Hall.

But these were not accomplishments to impress the voters. When Heath was ejected from office in 1974 the failure was too painful for him even to admit, yet alone redeem. For years he treated the Right with the same contempt, if rather less bitterness, that he lavished upon Mrs Thatcher herself.

Edward Richard George Heath was born on July 9 1916 at Broadstairs, Kent, the elder son of a carpenter. Edward was particularly close to his mother, who never failed in either ambition or admiration for her son. His brother, who died in 1982, became a borough surveyor in Harrow.

He was educated at Chatham House School, Ramsgate, where he was determinedly industrious. Though he failed (twice) to win a scholarship to Balliol, he went there as a commoner in 1935, thanks to some financial sacrifice by his parents and a loan from the Kent Education Committee.

Heath always resented the difficulty that he had had repaying the loan, and later, when student loans were advocated to replace grants, he fiercely opposed it. In his first term at Balliol Heath won the college's Organ Scholarship.

During the summer of 1938 he went on a student delegation to Franco's Spain. In the Oxford by-election, just after Chamberlain's deal with Hitler in Munich at the end of September, Heath campaigned for AD Lindsay, the Master of Balliol, who stood as an anti-appeasement candidate against the official Conservative, Quintin Hogg. Later that autumn he was elected President of the Oxford Union.

He came down from Oxford in 1939 with a second in PPE, and in August went to tour in Germany. He was in Leipzig when he heard the news of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and returned to England on September 1, two days before the declaration of war. That October he set out on a three-month debating tour of the United States. Called up in July 1940, he was assigned in March 1941 as Second-Lieutenant to the 107th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, and posted to Liverpool to help defend the Mersey docks.

Heath adapted well to Army life, and in March 1942 was appointed adjutant of the regiment. But it was not until July 1944, three weeks after D-Day, that he saw serious action, landing under fire at Arromanches and pushing east and north towards Antwerp. In September the 107th kept open a bridge at Nijmegen against fierce German air attack.

Heath proved an efficient officer, and in September 1945 was posted as second-in-command of 86 (HAC) HAA - the Honourable Royal Artillery Company, the oldest and one of the most socially exclusive regiments in the British Army. For three months, with the commanding officer away, Heath was in charge. He was demobilised in August 1946 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel; in the same year he was appointed MBE. He had also been mentioned in dispatches. He retained his connection with the HRAC as a Territorial officer, and for three years from 1951 was Master Gunner at the Tower of London.

In 1946 he took the Civil Service exam and passed out joint top. For two years he worked in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, resigning when he was adopted for the Labour-held seat of Bexley. In 1948 and 1949 he was news editor of the Church Times - "a political fish in holy water", as he described himself - and afterwards a merchant banker with Brown Shipley.

At the General Election of 1950 Heath squeaked home with a majority of 133 in Bexley, then a marginal seat, which he held until he stepped down in 2001. In his maiden speech, he attacked the Labour government for its negative response to the Schuman plan to create a single European market in coal and steel.

After the 1951 election Heath became a Whip, and was promoted to Deputy Chief Whip a year later. Following the 1955 election he was appointed Whip. He won credit for holding the party together during the Suez Crisis of 1956. When Macmillan became Prime Minister in 1957, it was with Heath that he celebrated with a supper of oysters and Champagne at the Turf Club.

In 1960 Macmillan brought Heath into the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal, responsible for negotiating Britain's attempt to join the EEC. Although de Gaulle's intransigence meant that Heath's efforts ended three years later in failure, he won respect for his grasp of detail. "We in Britain," Heath declared after the General's "Non" in January 1963, "are not going to turn our backs on the mainland of Europe or on the countries of the community." He was awarded the Charlemagne Prize; and put the £446 bounty towards a Steinway piano.

When Sir Alec Douglas-Home succeeded Macmillan, Heath was made President of the Board of Trade. His principal achievement was the abolition of resale price maintenance, a bold and progressive move, carried out in the teeth of opposition from small shopkeepers.

In opposition Heath became chairman of the party's Policy Committee. The battle for the succession after Sir Alec Douglas-Home's resignation in 1965 was the first time that the Conservative Party had ever elected a leader. Heath emerged triumphant from a three-cornered fight with Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell. But hopes that the party would win back voters were disappointed. In March 1966, Harold Wilson gained an absolute majority of 96 seats.

Labour's failures - notably devaluation and the failure to tame the Trade Unions - afforded opportunities for Heath. But he had troubles with his own party. In 1967, after a series of acrimonious disputes, he sacked Edward du Cann as party chairman, and replaced him with Tony Barber.

The following year, the Conservative leadership came under fierce criticism from the Right, led by Enoch Powell, for its vacillating stance on Wilson's Race Relations Bill. When Powell over-reached himself that April with his "Rivers of Blood" speech Heath unceremoniously sacked him. However, senior party figures - notably Sir Keith Joseph - were in sympathy with Powell's economic thinking. A meeting of the Shadow Cabinet at the Selsdon Park Hotel in Surrey adopted tax cuts, trade union reform, emphasis on law and order, and immigration control. "Selsdon Man" had begun his brief existence. When Wilson went to the country in June 1970, the opinion polls at the start of the campaign gave him a clear lead. Heath's leadership seemed to be denying the Tories all hope of victory.

He refused to be flustered. His campaign managers boldly made his personality an issue, showing him touring the country meeting the people and being warmly welcomed. The gambit was successful; on June 18 the Tories were returned with an overall majority of 30. At the victorious party conference that autumn Heath promised "a quiet revolution" which would foster individual effort and take government out of the market place. But, disastrously, Heath's first priority was to take Britain into the European Community (though his very first act as PM was to ban smoking in Cabinet).

Terms were announced in June and, in October, accepted by the Commons (on a free vote) by 356 to 244 votes. Heath celebrated by playing the first Prelude and Fugue from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. In January 1972, he signed the Accession treaty in Brussels. But in February 1972 the second reading was passed by a majority of only eight, in an atmosphere that degenerated into fisticuffs. Britain became a member of the EEC on January 1 1973.

By then, however, the government had run into serious economic difficulties. Heath had bad luck from the beginning, for Iain Macleod, whom he had appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1970, died soon after. Macleod's successor, Tony Barber, produced a budget which cut both income and corporation taxes. But the government was hard put to control wages in the public sector.

Strikes by the dockers and the power workers forced the administration to introduce two states of emergency within its first six months; and the need to ration heating and lighting in December 1970 led to a rush on candles.

Lord Wilberforce, appointed to arbitrate, gave the power workers 15 per cent, a bad start for the policy that every wage award should be lower than the one before. Meanwhile, the Industrial Relations Bill specifying "unfair industrial practices", and proposing secret ballots and a "cooling-off" period before strike action, led to protests. The Act eventually came into force in March 1972. Many unions adopted the simple but effective tactic of failing to register with the Industrial Relations Court. Within six months the government had effectively abandoned its own Act.

Even before that, though, Heath's troubles with the unions had multiplied. There was a steady rise of unemployment in 1971, and despite its declared policy not to help lame ducks, the government rescued Rolls-Royce in January, and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in June 1971. Matters reached a crisis at the beginning of 1972, when the unemployed figures went over the million mark and miners began a strike.

Thereafter Heath completely caved in, changing the economic direction of his government. Determined that Britain should join the Common Market in January 1973 with business booming, he persuaded Barber to introduce regional investment grants and to provide favourable terms for investment in plant and machinery. An Industry Bill allowed the government to assist individual companies, which resulted in heavy investment in British Steel and the coal industry.

Tony Benn exulted at this "spadework for socialism". Norman Tebbit reflected that "perhaps Selsdon Man was always a Civil Servant at heart". In June 1972 the pound was floated, and soon dropped from 2.70 to the dollar to 2.40. Public expenditure rocketed. The increase in the money supply caused a credit explosion, a property boom and a boom in secondary banks. Inflation fell in the third quarter of 1972.

After striving in vain throughout the autumn of 1972 to reach a voluntary agreement with the unions, Heath was obliged that November to introduce a 90-day statutory freeze on wages, salaries, rents and dividends. This was followed in April 1973 by Stage Two, under which pay rises were limited to £1 a week plus four per cent.

Stage Three, unveiled in October 1973, limited pay rises to £2.25 or seven per cent per week, up to a maximum of £350 per year. For a year these policies appeared to work; by May 1973 it seemed that inflation was under control. And in the full year of 1973 industrial output rose by nine per cent and exports by 12 per cent.

But a host of other issues - Mrs Thatcher's ending of school milk, Peter Walker's abysmal and philistine reform of local government, and Heath's obsession with imposing museum charges - kept the government unpopular. In spite of all this, Heath was obsessed by large-scale vanity projects. His support of Concorde, and his plans for a Channel Tunnel and the development of a third airport (together with deep-water seaport) at Maplin, all continued until he lost power.

In Ulster Heath made a bad error in August 1971, when he supported Brian Faulkner, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, in his decision to introduce the internment of suspects without trial. Before long Heath was forced to order that "intensive questioning" should cease. On January 30 1972, "Bloody Sunday", a march against internment in Londonderry ended with 13 unarmed demonstrators being shot dead by paratroopers. In March Heath suspended Stormont and put the whole apparatus of law and order in Northern Ireland in the hands of Westminster.

A year later, Willie Whitelaw, then Secretary of State, proposed a new Northern Ireland Assembly, and that November he secured agreement to a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive. In December 1973, at Sunningdale, Heath persuaded Unionist leaders to accept a Council of Ireland, in return for the Republic waiving its claim over all 32 counties.

By that time, though, Heath's administration had run into terminal trouble, and it did not help that the Prime Minister was suffering from a thyroid deficiency. Raw materials doubled in price between September 1972 and September 1973, and the price oil quadrupled as a result of the Arab-Israeli war in the autumn of 1973. Heath did all he could to avoid a miners' strike, offering them up to 16 per cent, but ultimately he refused to make an exception for the Coal Board. Determined to avoid running out of stocks at the power stations, the government prematurely announced a three-day week on December 13. This added to the sense of social breakdown.

It was only reluctantly that Heath agreed to fight an election on the issue on February 28 1974. Though 300,000 more people voted Conservative than Labour, the Conservatives only won 297 seats to Labour's 301. The Liberals under Jeremy Thorpe, with 19 per cent of the vote and 14 seats, potentially held the balance of power, and Heath added to his unpopularity by staying on in Downing Street over the weekend in an attempt to treat with them.

Another election before long was inevitable; no less certainly it would be very difficult for Heath to win. A visit to China in May 1974 underlined his image as an international statesman, while at home he campaigned on the theme of national unity.

In the election of October 1974, the Conservatives did rather better than had been predicted, registering only 3.4 per cent (or 42 seats) less than Labour. Wilson's overall majority was only three. But two election defeats in a year were bound to produce a challenge to Heath's leadership. In November Mrs Thatcher told Heath that she was going to stand against him. "You'll lose," was his only reply.

Over the years his charmless ways had offended countless people. Airey Neave, who ran Mrs Thatcher's campaign so brilliantly, had hated Heath since 1959 when he had told the then Chief Whip that, due to a heart condition, he would be unable to stand in the forthcoming election. "You're finished," had been Heath's response.

His attempts to lobby Conservative MPs were ghastly failures. On the first ballot Mrs Thatcher scored 130 votes to Heath's 119. "So," Heath remarked on being given the news, "we got it all wrong.

The long war against Mrs Thatcher had begun, even if he rarely accorded her the honour of mentioning her name. As her star rose, so his loathing for her increased, until in the flood tide of her success his gracelessness assumed an almost heroic quality. He seemed to relish his isolation as the only possible attitude available to a man who had cast himself as a colossus amongst pygmies.

Shorn of the burden of power, Heath became a more relaxed - sometimes even a witty - speaker. He played a leading part in the campaign to secure a "Yes" vote in the referendum on Europe. He was careful, though, not to parade his hopes for the future development of the Community, or to mention that he had envisaged monetary union by 1980. The "Yes" vote carried the day by 67 per cent to 32 per cent.

Outside politics Heath led a busy and varied life, travelling widely and conducting whenever possible, especially with the European Community Youth Orchestra. If some complained that he beat time like a metronome, his recording of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the English Chamber Orchestra was respectfully reviewed.

He dictated a series of books - Sailing: A Course of My Life (1975), Music: A Joy for Life (1976), Travels: People and Places in My Life (1977) and Carols: The Joy of Christmas (1977) - and promoted them assiduously. His first three books netted him some £300,000.

In 1977 Heath became member of the North-South Commission headed by Willy Bradt, which aimed to find means of closing the gap between the rich nations of the North and the poor ones of the South.

By the time of the General Election of 1979, the bien pensant element applauded when he attacked Mrs Thatcher's rejection of an incomes policy. During the election campaign a MORI poll suggested that the Tory lead of 5 per cent would be tripled if he were to replace Mrs Thatcher. It is said that Heath nursed a sneaking hope that he might be appointed Foreign Secretary. Mrs Thatcher offered him the embassy in Washington, which he indignantly rejected.

Heath was soon attacking the "ruinous" and "catastrophic" effects of her monetary policies on manufacturing industry, and issuing dire warnings about unemployment figures, which were soon soaring over the three million mark. But the Falklands War - Heath advocated a negotiated settlement - and economic revival enabled Mrs Thatcher to triumph in the election of 1983. Heath attacked privatisation, condemning the government on unemployment benefit and tax cuts.

In 1985 he bought a beautiful house in Salisbury Close, where photographs of world leaders (some of them despots, but in his view, his peers) were prominently displayed. But though he signed a lucrative deal with Weidenfeld for his memoirs, somehow he could not get down to writing them. In 1987 he lost to Roy Jenkins when he stood for the Chancellorship of Oxford University.

Mrs Thatcher's third term of office brought more grist to his mill, and he opposed the poll tax and education reforms. The Spectator made him Parliamentarian of the Year. The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe left Heath supporting a united Germany, while Mrs Thatcher strove to keep the two parts separate. The Tiananmen Square massacre seemed rather to puzzle than to outrage him.

He also gave an emollient reaction to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, stressing the need for a negotiated settlement. In October he led a mission to Baghdad, which succeeded in securing the release of 33 hostages. He also met Saddam, who impressed him. "He made a misjudgment about Kuwait," Heath explained, "and I am sure he recognises now that it was a misjudgment."

In November 1990 Heath at last enjoyed the gratification of Mrs Thatcher's resignation. When he heard the news of her departure he told his office (in echo of the fallen Prime Minister) to "Rejoice! Rejoice!" and bought his staff Champagne.

The next June, after Mrs Thatcher had made an anti-European speech in New York, he boiled over in fury. "She shows no appreciation of the ghastly legacy she has left this country," he spluttered. Heath supported John Major in 1992, treating the concessions obtained at Maastricht as purely tactical withdrawals. Returned once more for Bexley, he relished his position as "Father of the House". But he soon turned against Major after Britain left the ERM.

He took great pleasure in being awarded the Garter in 1992. In 1998, he finally brought out his autobiography, The Course of My Life, which had involved dozens of researchers and writers (some of whom he never paid) over many years.

He never married.

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