alternatehistory.com

Part XI:


❥ Peter Shore, Leading the Left, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"Upon learning Mrs. Thatcher was removing her candidacy from the Tory Leadership election and together with Mr. Tebbit was nominating Tom King for the second round in 1985 I rather suspect I had the same reaction as the rest of the nation, 'Who the Hell is Tom King?'"


♤ David Mellor, My Moment, (Fourth Estate, 2000):

"Mr. King was ideally suited to carry on the ideals of Mrs. Thatcher's government. He was the former Secretary of State for the Environment, Secretary of State for Energy (during the Scargill Strike) and was at the time of Mrs. Thatcher's designation the Chancellor of the Exchequer."


♤ Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical, (Bantam Press, 1990):

"Tom (King) was an empty vessel to filled with Margaret's ideas. He was a puppet."


☆ John Bercow, Thatcher, Thatcherism, and Thatcherites, (Faber, 1998):

"Mrs. Thatcher's designated heir was the only one she felt she could trust to carry on her ideas. Party Chairman Mr. Tebbit's actions during the Nigel Lawson kerfuffle made him suspect. Home Secretary Mr. Howe was tainted in her eyes by his long standing association with Nigel Lawson. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Mr. Parkinson was only in the process of his political rehabilitation and could not marshal the votes necessary to win broad Tory support. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Mr. Hurd was viewed with suspicion due to his close ties with former Prime Minister Mr. Heath. Secretary of State for Trade Mr. Moore lacked Cabinet experience. Secretary of State for Defence Mr. Younger had a Heathite past Mrs. Thatcher could not quite overlook. The other members of her Cabinet had either declared for other candidates, been nominated themselves or were even worse candidates. There was the also the more immediate success of Mr. King in his handling of the Scargill Strike while he was at Energy. From the point of view of Mrs. Thatcher, Mr. King was the logical successor and the only choice to stop the Heseltine juggernaut."


★ Rebekah Mary Wade, Hezza, (Politico's, 2000):

"Sir Cecil Parkinson fueled in Mrs. Thatcher her absolute terror of the prospect of a Michael Heseltine victory. She thought Mr. Heseltine would undo everything 'she' had spent creating in the previous seven years. It was an odd notion. If the basic tenet of Thatcherism was privatization, then it may do all well to remember the Prime Minister who allowed the sale of council houses was Sir Ted Heath, and he did so in 1974 based on the recommendation of the Tory MPs led by Mr. Heseltine. Long before Mrs. Thatcher discovered Keith Joseph as her economic guru, Mr. Joseph was inspired by the changes done in the Heath government by Mr. Heseltine. The clear blue economic theories of Tories did not begin nor end with Mrs. Thatcher, however much she and her adherents choose to rewrite history. But Mrs. Thatcher's misremembrance fueled her decision to do whatever it took to stop Mr. Heseltine, including making the decision to step down in favour of a designated heir of very light intellectual weight."


♣ Bill Rodgers, Call Me What You Will, (Politico's, 2000):

"The same bookmaker called me yet again before the second round of the Tory Leadership voting was to commence. He read out the odds: Tom King was listed at 7/4, Michael Heseltine at 7/2, Francis Pym at 5/1 and Leon Brittan at 16/1. I asked if that was for the second round or overall. I was told it was overall. I advised him to lengthen the odds on Pym and Brittan, but to take no action on the others. I had no idea what would happen in the third round, but I was certain there would one and it would come down to Heseltine and King."


♠ Michael Mates, Where There’s a Will, (Hamish Hamilton, 1995):

"Regardless the opinion of Mr. Lawson in his awful autobiography, Michael (Heseltine) was ably served in his campaign against the Thatcherite machine by his team, of which I was a proud part. Michael thought little of Tom King, while I did not think of him at all. Leon Brittan we dismissed out of hand. Both of us had enormous respect for Francis Pym, despite our differences. Pym was soft on the trade unions. We were not. But he, as us, was on the right side of history when it came to Europe."


♥ Bryan Gould, Hard Labour, (Penguin Books, 1989):

"Given the rules of the Leadership we were all prepared for a three-week spectacle culminating in the removal of a sitting Prime Minister. But Leon Brittan shortened the game by taking himself off the block as soon as Mrs. Thatcher stated she would step down. At this point, we were down to Mr. Heseltine, Mr. Pym and Mr. King before the second round could commence."


♠ William Powell, My Party - Wet or Dry, (Hamish Hamilton, 1990):

"After Leon stepped down, we knew Michael could not win outright so long as it was a three-man race, but we had to make a good showing to go into the third round against Tom King to crown Michael as the only anti-Thatcherite candidate, picking up Mr. Pym's voters along the way. My secretary obtained 1,780 flash cards, divided equally into five sets of different colors: blue, green, red, yellow and white. Each Tory MP had their name listed on a blue, green, red, yellow and white card. Blue was Michael. Green was Francis. Red was Tom. Yellow was leaning towards Michael. White was unknown preference. When in doubt, we assumed the worst and gave the preference to Tom. By phone calls and tea room interrogations we had our count at 123. We pegged Tom at 147 and Francis picking up the rest. It was workable. I was just putting the finishing touches to the cork board with the colored cards when I got a call from Michael. That is how I learned Francis Pym was withdrawing from the race. My poor secretary nearly broke down in tears at the thought of us having to redo the cork board. I was, however, relishing the prospect of a one-on-one winner-take-all fight-to-the-finish. We took a day to redo the board, when news arrived of a third entry into the contest. My secretary had to go lie down."


♤ Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical, (Bantam Press, 1990):

"Geoffrey (Howe) and I were having dinner when I quite casually inquired about his feelings on Tom (King) being named the successor to Margaret (Thatcher). Geoffrey expressed his unease with the feeling of being passed over. I quite agreed. Tom's qualifications could not compare to that of Geoffrey's. Nor could Tom's barely month long stint as Chancellor of the Exchequer be treated as anything but a joke and a bad joke at that. Geoffrey was the Home Secretary and had been one for five years. The idea of him reporting to the likes of Tom was offensive. Geoffrey inquired if he would have my support in the event he stood. I agreed. I thought myself too divisive a figure at the moment and suggested Geoffrey be nominated by someone else. He agreed. That is all. There was no plot."


★ Alastair John Campbell, The Claret Revolution, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"Mr. Howe was nominated for the second round of the Conservative Leadership Election in '85 by the then Secretary of State for Health Norman Fowler and then Secretary of State for Energy Norman Lamont. By a quirk of fate all three men had been Chairmen of the Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA), as were Mr. Brittan, Mr. Biffen and Mr. Gummer."


♤ David Mellor, My Moment, (Fourth Estate, 2000):

"As a former Chairman of the Cambridge University Association myself and a staunch supporter of Mrs. Thatcher I can assure you there was no 'Cambridge Plot' to oust her out of office. Cambridge had nothing to do with it. It was a ghastly ill thought out plot by simple minded ambitious men."


❥ Peter Shore, Leading the Left, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"I suppose it falls upon me, as a Cambridge man, to make sense of the CUCA plots of '85. First, it must be said, not every Tory who attended Cambridge is a Machiavellian schemer, just the ones who join(ed) the CUCA. No Labour man I met, friend or foe, could sink to the level of depravity, backstabbing and infighting found in the CUCA. A typical CUCA maneuver involves a conspiracy, cold blooded calculation to benefit someone who can benefit you in return, needless complication and raging egotism. It would not surprise me if Geoffrey Howe, Leon Brittan, Norman Fowler, Norman Lamont, John Gummer and John Biffen conspired to elevate one of their own via Byzantine plots. Incidentally, it may be good for some of you to know the following are CUCA as well: David Mellor, Douglas Hurd, Peter Viggers, Hugh Dykes, Timothy Eggar, Richard Ryder and David Prior (son of Jim). They walk amongst you. Beware."


♠ Michael Mates, Where There’s a Will, (Hamish Hamilton, 1995):

"Michael (Heseltine) called me and William (Powell) to reassess our strategy. Geoffrey Howe was a game changer. He would siphon the dry votes from Tom King, but he would also take away the votes of those MPs who were neither supportive of Mrs. Thatcher nor of Michael. While we considered him to be as boring as Leon Brittan and just as unlikely to lead the Party to victory in the general election, we understood a great deal of MPs would think him a safe choice. Winning outright in the second round was (once again) no longer a possibility. It would mean going into the third with alternate voting system (AVS) of voters marking down their choices in preference, and that would mean chaos."


♤ Norman Lamont, Inside Westminster, (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1996):

"There was a general feeling in the House that the candidate with the lowest number of votes in the second round would almost be compelled to drop out to avoid the grotesque and chaotic spectacle of someone potentially winning the Leadership in the third round without ever winning the majority of the first-place votes that a three-way contest in a third round AVS portended. It was therefore imperative for Geoffrey (Howe) to come in first or second in the second ballot."


★ Conservative Party (UK) Leadership election (1985), Second Ballot:

♤ Tom King - 145 votes - 41%

♤ Geoffrey Howe - 119 votes - 33%

♠ Michael Heseltine - 92 votes - 26%

No candidate achieve a simple majority (179 votes). Third ballot is required.


★ Rebekah Mary Wade, Hezza, (Politico's, 2000):

"Michael Heseltine had always cared more for Party unity than his own ambition. In 1985, having wished to avoid a prolonged contest and thereby damage the Party, he withdrew his nomination."


♤ Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical, (Bantam Press, 1990):

"Michael (Heseltine) will never be Prime Minister because he does not pass the football team test. Think back to the time you played football as a youth. If your team travelled and you stayed together you would sooner rather than later learn much about your teammates. The longer you played as a team and more time you spent around each other, the more you would learn about each other. You would know things about your fellow teammates that no one else knew, things you can never say out loud in public, but things every player on your team knew along with you. The trouble with Michael is that we all know him too well. He might fool the blue-haired blue-rosette wearing matrons who coo at his looks and giggle along with his speeches, but he cannot fool his fellow MPs. And it is his fellow MPs who decide whether he is to be made our Leader or not."


♡ Cherie Booth, Speaking for Myself, (Little, Brown, 1998):

"With Heseltine dropping out, Geoffrey Howe should have been the beneficiary of the Heseltine supporters being loosed and I went down to a shop in Brussels to put a tanner on him to win it all. When I got back to my office I was told I had missed a call from Tony (Blair). I rang him up, we chatted and I told him of my bet. He said, 'Tom King will win.' He was right. The Thatcherite machine was too well oiled in '85. It survived the fall of its leader, the implosion of its Cabinet and the nomination of a complete nonentity."


★ Rory Bremner, Hearing Voices, (HarperCollins, 1994):

"Selfishly, the first thing I thought of when I learned Tom King was to be our Prime Minister, 'Yes! Mike Yarwood will be back on TV again.' Mike, for a variety of complex reasons, never felt comfortable portraying Mrs. Thatcher on TV. Although he could mimic her voice and mannerisms perfectly he was uneasy about being Mrs. Thatcher for any length of time as opposed to when he was Mr. Wilson, Mr. Heath, Mr. Callaghan or even Mr. Foot. He began to portray Prince Charles and the Duke of Edinburgh in his acts, but while the Royals were fun to mock, audiences expected Mike to portray the top political figure in England and his unwillingness to be Mrs. Thatcher hurt his career and his sense of self-worth. I betray no confidence when I say he suffered a drinking problem as a result. Mr. King's elevation to Prime Minister resurrected Mike Yarwood's career and a sense of self-worth. His was a gentle mocking as opposed to the harder edged satire on ITV, but as a fan I was glad to see him back. Thanks, Tories."


♤ Bernard Ingham, Kill the Messenger, (HarperCollins, 1994):

"Mrs. Thatcher's Prime Minister's Resignation Honours list was no Wilsonian Lavender. Less than a handful of friends in the industry and the Party received life peerages. Roughly the same received knighthoods. I was quite startled to receive mine. 'You deserve it,' she said, bringing me yet again to tears. She made sure all the detectives, guards, cooks, messengers, house managers and housekeepers were honoured in some way. I once again stress it was not extravagant. It was fitting."


♣ Peter Walker, A United Kingdom, (Hamish Hamilton, 1987):

"As of this book's publication, Mrs. Thatcher is no longer Prime Minister nor leader of my former Party, but I fear her influence remains and will linger for a long, long time."


★ Alastair John Campbell, The Claret Revolution, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"Mr. King thanked Mrs. Thatcher profusely and arranged for her departure to be something of a cross between the grand review of an army before a retiring general and a state funeral of a Roman Emperor. Throughout all this Mrs. Thatcher gave interviews indicated she would be 'a very good back seat driver.' It was at Mrs. Thatcher's advice that Mr. King did not try to reach out to the former Tories in the SDP, nor did he try to reconcile the disaffected members of the Thatcherite Cabinet. What followed next was alternatively called by the press as 'The King's Purge' or 'Night of the Short Knives.'"


♣ Bill Rodgers, Call Me What You Will, (Politico's, 2000):

"In one long night Mr. King sacked his Foreign Secretary Leon Brittan, Home Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Douglas Hurd, Leader of the House of Commons and Lord Privy Seal John Biffen, Secretary of State for Health Norman Fowler, Secretary of State for Energy Norman Lamont, Secretary of State for Defence Michael Heseltine, Chief Whip John Wakeham and Secretary of State for Trade and the Conservative and Unionist Party Chairman Norman Tebbit. And those were just the Cabinet level posts. Dozens of ministers and under-secretaries were purged as well. It was the stuff of banana republic palace coups."


★ List of the Tom King's ministers (December, 1985):

♤ Tom King - Prime Minister

♤ Lord Atkins - Lord President of the Council and Deputy Prime Minister

♤ Peter Brooke - Lord Privy Seal (and Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party)

♤ Lord Young of Graffham - Chancellor of the Exchequer

♤ John Moore - Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

♤ Sir Cecil Parkinson - Secretary of State for the Home Department

♤ Neil Hamilton - Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

♤ George Younger - Secretary of State for Defence

♤ Rhodes Boyson - Secretary of State for Education and Science

♤ Michael Brown - Secretary of State for Employment

♤ Jeffrey Archer - Secretary of State for Energy (and Deputy Chairman of the Party)

♤ Michael Jopling - Secretary of State for Health and Social Security

♤ Patrick Jenkin - Secretary of State for the Environment

♤ Michael Alison - Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

♤ Malcolm Rifkind - Secretary of State for Scotland

♤ Paul Channon - Secretary of State for Trade

♤ David Mellor - Secretary of State for Industry

♤ Nicholas Ridley - Secretary of State for Transport

♤ Nicholas Edwards - Secretary of State for Wales

♤ David Waddington - Chief Whip


♣ Roy Jenkins, Centre Ground, (Harper Collins, 1991):

"When John Russell's Whig government collapsed in 1852, the Tory leader Lord Derby found himself forming a government, a task made infinitely harder due to the defection of the Peelites. He thus crafted a Cabinet with ministers of little to no experience. As the names were read out in the House of Lords, it is said the octogenarian, and by then largely deaf, Lord Wellington was heard to shout, 'Who? Who?' after each name to the delight of his fellow noble lords. Thanks to this, Lord Derby's government is known through the ages as the 'Who? Who? Ministry' due to its inexperienced ministers. Mr. King's contribution to history was to craft a cabinet whose names caused people to say 'Hang about. What?'"


♥ Bryan Gould, Hard Labour, (Penguin Books, 1989):

"In '85 Mr. King assembled the most puzzling government in the history of the British isles."


♥ Denis Healey, Silly Billies, (Penguin Books, 1990):

"They were not right of centre, they were right of Kaiser."


♥ Eric Hammond, Union Man, (Penguin Books, 1987):

"Disciples of High Church Thatcherism and rabidly anti-trade union."


♥ Joe Ashton, My Labour, My Party, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"On paper they looked to be more Thatcherite than even Mrs. Thatcher."


❥ Peter Shore, Leading the Left, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):

"I did not know the politics of most of them because they were utter nobodies in the House, but I could guess it by the politics of those few I knew. They would have sacked Mussolini for being too left wing."


♥ Philip Gould, Confessions of an Adman, (HarperCollins, 1996):

"At the time I thought Mr. King would make our victory in the next general election much easier."


♥ Roy Hattersley, Roy from Yorkshire, (Penguin Books, 1992):

"Much has been said about Mr. King's Cabinet. I have not much to add to the bewilderment we in the Labour felt when all of the names were announced, but like most I also felt a twinge of hope. The polls gave us much lift in the aftermath of the Fall, Plot and Purge. For the first time since the disaster in Wembley in '81 I began to feel Labour could win another general election within my lifetime."


♧ Mike Thomas, Separate Ways, (Duckworth, 2000):

"For reasons that will defy all logic and sense, I attempted to perform electoral calculations in late December of '85 to try to make sense of what had transpired. I could not. The polls were going crazy. Labour was up, Tories were down and we were all over the place. But little by little, even in those hectic days, a thread emerged. Labour's rise was capped by their defence policy. In each poll as soon as the unilateralist policy of the Labour Party was made known, the voters were turned off. It was the single most powerful issue of the day to the man on the street. You can well imagine then my state of mind when the Liberal Party faithful began to circulate a defence policy paper advocating removal of all nuclear deterrent from British soil and committing themselves to unilateralism."