Editing Michael Heseltine (section)

==Career under Thatcher: 1975–86==
===Opposition: 1975–79===
Heseltine did not work easily with women as senior colleagues, as was shown by the difficulty experienced by [[Elinor Goodman]] in obtaining promotion from secretary to journalist at ''Campaign'', and his reluctance to let Josephine Hart sit on the Haymarket Board.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 151, 180–1.</ref> Heseltine fully expected to be sacked from the Shadow Cabinet by the new leader (as [[Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester|Peter Walker]] was at this time), but was retained, in part because Thatcher was impressed by his fierce opposition to Benn's Industry Bill, and partly because a senior figure, possibly [[Geoffrey Howe]], argued for his retention.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 180–1.</ref>

Heseltine first emerged as a platform orator at the Conservative National Council in March 1975, and then at the autumn conferences in 1975 and 1976 (where he likened Labour to a one-legged army marching "Left, left, left"). He dictated his speech ideas beforehand to his scriptwriters, who had to discard a good deal of unintelligible material. His reputation was derived not from any factual content or argument, but from the force and brio of his delivery – it was said of him that he could "find the party's [[clitoris]]". There was talk of his being appointed Party Chairman (in charge of the party organisation and of campaigning across the country) in place of [[Peter Thorneycroft]].<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 185–8.</ref>

In the summer of 1975, Heseltine persuaded the Shadow Cabinet not to oppose the Labour Government's bailout of [[British Leyland]] because of the risk to marginal seats (including some [[Plant Oxford|Cowley]] workers in northern wards of his own Henley seat). Industry Secretary [[Tony Benn]] thought Heseltine intellectually shallow (describing one of his speeches as "an awful old flop" and another as "another flayling attack") but admired his ability to make headlines in opposition.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 182–44.</ref>

The infamous mace incident took place on 27 May 1976 during the [[Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act 1977|Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill]], a measure whose passage had already lasted a year and seen 58 Committee sessions. The Speaker had ruled the bill to be [[Hybrid instrument|hybrid]], as it excluded one shipbuilding company (although there was dispute as to whether the company in question actually was a shipbuilder). All interested parties were therefore entitled to put their case to a special select committee. An earlier vote in favour of the Speaker's ruling had been tied, and defeated after the Speaker had been obliged by convention to use his casting vote against his own ruling. The Labour Government now moved to suspend the normal Parliamentary standing order to allow the bill to proceed as normal. This time the Conservatives expected the Speaker to use his casting vote ''against'' the government's motion to suspend the standing order. Instead the Labour motion was carried, after a Labour whip broke his [[Pair (parliamentary convention)|pair]]. Amid riotous scenes of Labour left-wingers singing [[The Red Flag#The song "The Red Flag"|''The Red Flag'']] Heseltine picked up the [[ceremonial mace|Mace]], the symbol of Parliament's authority, until Jim Prior grabbed it off him. Accounts of exactly what happened vary but it seems likely that he was mockingly offering it to the Labour benches, not, as some alleged, "brandishing" it – an illusion caused by Prior pulling his other arm down. Thatcher was furious. Speaker [[George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy|Thomas]] [[List of incidents of grave disorder in the British House of Commons|suspended the sitting]] and made Heseltine wait until next day to apologise so that tempers could cool. Heseltine was faced with calls for his resignation from the Shadow Cabinet; he thought it would play well with the public, but in Crick's view it helped to cement a reputation for impulsiveness and poor judgement.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 188–91.</ref>

In autumn 1976 Heseltine was reshuffled, against his will, to the job of Shadow Environment Secretary. He was particularly cross at having to give up the job of Shadow Industry Secretary to [[John Biffen]]. He accepted on condition that he would not have to take the Environment job when the Conservatives returned to office. As Benn had given way to [[Eric Varley]] there was no longer such a need for aggressive campaigning on Industry, and Thatcher, who had herself been Shadow Environment Secretary in 1974, wanted campaigning on council house sales (Heseltine offered up to 50% discounts for tenants who bought their homes) and reform of the rates, and thought his predecessor [[Timothy Raison]] ineffective.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 191–3.</ref><ref>Michael Heseltine, ''Life in the Jungle'', Hodder & Stoughton, 2000, {{ISBN|0-340-73915-0}}, pp. 155–85.</ref>

===Secretary of State for the Environment 1979–83===

====Appointment and political stance====
Thatcher was impressed by Heseltine's campaigning and love of headlines during the [[1979 United Kingdom general election|May 1979 election]], in contrast to most of the Shadow Cabinet. After the Conservatives had won, and mindful of her earlier promise that he need not take on the Environment job in government, she offered him the Energy Department (an important job following the [[1979 energy crisis]] caused by the [[Iranian Revolution]]). He preferred to be Secretary of State for the Environment after all, entering the Cabinet for the first time.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 198.</ref>

During the macroeconomic disputes of the early 1980s, Heseltine was sometimes associated with the Cabinet "wets" ([[Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester|Peter Walker]], [[Jim Prior]], [[Ian Gilmour]], [[Lord Carrington]] and [[Norman St John Stevas]]) but was not seen as one of them, nor was he invited to their private meetings. Both [[Nigel Lawson]] and [[Cecil Parkinson]] agreed in their memoirs (1992) that he accepted in principle the need to control public expenditure. He opposed the abolition of exchange controls in 1979 and opposed [[Geoffrey Howe]]'s tight budget in 1981, suggesting a public sector pay freeze instead.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 218–20.</ref>

Heseltine favoured privatisation of state owned industries, a novel idea in 1979 as the Conservatives were initially only proposing to denationalise the industries nationalised by Labour in the 1970s.<ref name=crick198-200>Crick 1997, pp. 198–200.</ref>

Despite his initial reluctance to take on the job, Heseltine later described it as "four of the happiest years of my life". He passed the [[Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981]], a conservation measure. He also vetoed the "Green Giant", a skyscraper on the [[South Bank]], initiated plans for the [[National Gallery]] extension (the winning entry was famously described by [[Prince Charles]] as "a monstrous carbuncle" and was never built) and signed off on the building of the [[Queen Elizabeth II Centre]] on a bomb site near Westminster; when he was unable to secure private funding as planned the Treasury were forced to pay for the building. Some of the DoE's responsibilities were hived off into [[English Heritage]], a new body.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 240–1.</ref>

====Administering the department====
The Permanent Under-Secretary at the Environment Department, Sir John Garlick, described Heseltine's arrival as a change from "a very conservative Labour Secretary of State, [[Peter Shore]], to a very radical Conservative Secretary of State". On his first day Heseltine took him out to lunch at the Connaught and drew up a list of what he wanted to accomplish in office (the list appears in Heseltine's book ''Where There's A Will'', and was returned to him at the end of his time at the Environment). Only a quarter of Heseltine's agenda consisted of manifesto commitments and other political goals; the rest of it consisted of administrative and organisational changes. [[Peter Hennessy]] observed that Heseltine was more interested in the nuts and bolts of Whitehall reform than any minister since [[David Lloyd George]]. Heseltine was quite ruthless about moving civil servants with whom he was dissatisfied, but nonetheless staff thought he had mellowed somewhat since the early 1970s, and was more relaxed and fun to work with. His permanent secretaries Sir John Garlick and Sir George Moseley thought highly of him. He preferred to reach decisions through informal discussion rather than wading through paperwork. He instituted [[Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester|Peter Walker]]'s custom of morning "prayer" meetings (ministers and PPSs with no civil servants present), now common in Whitehall but an innovation at the time.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 201–4.</ref>

The department had a budget of £14 billion a year and employed 52,000 people. The Conservatives were pledged to cut 100,000 off the 730,000 strong civil service. On the advice of his junior minister [[Irwin Bellow, Baron Bellwin|Lord Bellwin]], a former leader of Leeds City Council, Heseltine ordered that nobody was to be hired without his personal approval.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 204–5.</ref>

Heseltine instituted an internal audit system called "MINIS" ("management information system for ministers"), ironically, in Crick's view, as Heseltine's own company Haymarket had often been chaotically organised. Peter Hennessy likened it to "a [[Domesday Book]]". Heseltine personally interrogated the heads of department (many of whom felt he was interfering in internal civil service matters). The lengthy reports, showing organisation charts of each of the 66 directorates, expenditure, staff costs and forward plans, were made publicly available. Staff numbers were cut more deeply than in any other Whitehall department; one in twelve had gone within a year and nearly 30%, 15,000, by 1983; local government finance, under Terry Heiser, was the only department to receive extra resources. Thatcher was impressed by MINIS, and in February 1983 Heseltine was invited to give a presentation about them to other senior ministers and civil servants, in the hope that they might be adopted by other departments. There was little interest, but similar concepts were later adopted by [[Derek Rayner]]'s Financial Management Initiative across Whitehall.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 205–9.</ref>

====Council house sales====
Heseltine was a convert to the sale of [[council house]]s, a policy pioneered by some Conservative local authorities, e.g. Birmingham. He also favoured the policy of giving away houses, a policy first mooted from the backbenches by Peter Walker in the mid-1970s, not least as some local authorities were spending more on maintenance than they were recouping in rents. Thatcher, who was concerned at the reaction from those who had made financial sacrifices to buy their homes, was initially sceptical. After taking office Heseltine issued a circular enabling councils, if they chose, to sell houses at 30% discount and to offer 100% mortgages. The [[Housing Act 1980]] enacting Right to Buy was delayed by a Lords amendment and did not reach the statute book until the end of 1980. Some councils were slow in processing applications (one even threatened to house "problem" families next door to those who bought) and Heseltine made an example of Norwich by setting up a DOE sales office there; Norwich council took him to court and lost. At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury. Heseltine also insisted on the doubling of rents to encourage buying.<ref name=crick198-200/>

During the 1980s over a million council houses, around 20% of the stock, were sold, and by 1987 Labour had dropped their opposition to the [[Right to Buy]]. This was an enormous social change, doing much to increase Conservative support amongst new homeowners and which Heseltine often cites as one of his major achievements.<ref name=crick200-201>Crick 1997, pp. 200–1.</ref> Heseltine noted that, "no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people." He said that the 'right to buy' policy had two main objectives: to give people what they had wanted, and to reverse the trend of ever-increasing dominance of the State over the life of the individual. He said: "There is in this country a deeply ingrained desire for home ownership. The Government believe that this spirit should be fostered. It reflects the wishes of the people, ensures the wide spread of wealth through society, encourages a personal desire to improve and modernize one's own home, enables parents to accrue wealth for their children and stimulates the attitudes of independence and self-reliance that are the bedrock of a free society."<ref>"Housing Bill – Provisions and Enactment" in ''Keesing's Contemporary Archives'' v. 27, January 1981 p. 30644.</ref> Many of the homes sold were "street properties" rather than flats, which arguably helped to ghettoise the remaining council tenants on run-down inner city estates. In fact, in Crick's view, he deserves only limited credit; it had been a Conservative commitment since 1974, and much of the detailed work was done by his juniors [[Hugh Rossi]] (in opposition) and [[John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling MP)|John Stanley]] (in government).<ref name=crick200-201/>

====Local government finance====
In 1979 the Conservatives were strongly represented in local government, as a result of the unpopularity of the outgoing Labour government. Four of the five council associations were Conservative-controlled. Heseltine was able to persuade them to rein in their spending by 1% each year. Whereas previously overspending councils had received extra rate support grants from Whitehall, after six months Heseltine announced a list of fourteen overspending councils who were to have their grant ''cut'', most of them inner London councils and only one of them, Hammersmith & Fulham, Conservative controlled. The move appeared blatantly political as many of the other 114 overspenders were Conservative councils. Council leaders who came to appeal to Heseltine were often humiliated by being interrogated about their budget, to demonstrate their lack of detailed knowledge, before the council treasurer was allowed to speak.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 210–1.</ref>

From 1980 to 1981 relations with local government became increasingly confrontational, as Labour made large gains in local elections, with a new generation of council leaders such as [[Ken Livingstone]] in [[Greater London Council|London]] and [[David Blunkett]] in Sheffield seeking to generate employment through their councils. Council spending now began to rise again, largely as a result of increases by the GLC, Merseyside and West Midlands councils; whereas Labour votes tended to be poorer and eligible for rate rebates, the burden of higher spending tended to fall on businesses and middle class homeowners. Although councils had already suffered deep cuts under Labour in the 1970s, Heseltine was under pressure from Thatcher and from Conservative MPs and newspapers to cut more. Heseltine's initial suggestion, that councils who wanted to increase the rates be forced to submit to re-election, was rejected by the Cabinet, in favour of a proposal that such increases be put to referendum (in Coventry, voters had recently voted by over 7:1 for spending cuts rather than a supplementary rate increase). This proposal in turn was attacked by Conservative backbenchers, both as an infringement of council freedom and a risky precedent for national taxation, both in the Environment Committee and in the debate on a bill which Heseltine introduced and had to withdraw. Heseltine then banned supplementary rates and imposed stiffer sanctions on overspending councils.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 211–3.</ref>

Thatcher's 1974 pledge to abolish the rates and replace them with a new form of local government funding was still in force. However, the 1979 manifesto made clear that income tax cuts took priority over rates reform. Thatcher also blocked the upward revaluation of property rating values in 1982. A review of rates reform was begun in 1981, in which his junior minister [[Tom King, Baron King of Bridgwater|Tom King]] personally spoke to every single backbench Conservative MP to canvass opinion about the various options. A Green Paper was produced in December 1981, recommending that no single alternative to the rates suggested itself. Thatcher wrote "I will not tolerate failure in this area" in the margin of the report and in the summer of 1982 a new committee was set up under Willie Whitelaw, only to come to much the same conclusion (The eventual solution, a "poll tax", was rejected both by the Green Paper and by Whitelaw's committee).<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 214–5.</ref>

Heseltine resisted demands by [[Leon Brittan]], the [[Chief Secretary to the Treasury]] with whom he already enjoyed a somewhat antagonistic relationship, that central government have power to cap the spending of local authorities. He argued that the worst offenders were the large metropolitan counties (which, ironically, he had helped to create a decade earlier) and that the simplest solution was simply to abolish them. In the event, the 1983 manifesto, after Heseltine had moved to his next job, committed the Conservatives both to abolition of the metropolitan boroughs and to rate capping. When Heseltine objected after the election, Thatcher gave him "one of the most violent rebukes I have ever witnessed in Cabinet" according to [[Jim Prior]], who believed that the issue helped fuel the hostility between Heseltine and Thatcher and Brittan, which would later exhibit itself as the Westland Affair.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 215–6.</ref>

In opposition, in the late 1970s, Heseltine had been committed to reducing central government control over local government. In the 1980s, the opposite happened, with no less than 50 Acts of Parliament reducing the powers of local government. In Crick's view, although he opposed both rate capping and the poll tax, the overall trend towards centralisation was too strong for him to resist. During his time at Environment Heseltine also brought in compulsory competitive tendering for council services, and helped set up the [[Audit Commission (United Kingdom)|Audit Commission]], whose initial role was to act as an independent supervisor of district auditors of council activities.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 216–8.</ref>

====Riots====
Heseltine became the troubleshooter to deal with the explosion of violence in Britain's [[inner cities]] in the aftermath of the [[1981 Brixton riot|Brixton]] and [[Toxteth riots]] of 1981. Unemployment had reached 20% in Liverpool as a whole, but 60% among young black residents in Toxteth. [[Tear gas]] had had to be used, and the Cabinet contemplated deploying the Army. A few weeks before the riots, a Cabinet thinktank had proposed that the area be left to go into "managed decline". Thatcher visited Merseyside and it was decided that a minister should go for a longer visit. Heseltine was already chairman of the Merseyside Partnership, set up by his predecessor Peter Shore, to channel government money into Liverpool (six other partnerships existed).<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 221–2.</ref>

Heseltine visited Liverpool accompanied by a dozen or so officials from different ministries. [[Timothy Raison]], a junior Home Office minister, went ostensibly to check on race matters but actually to ensure that Heseltine did not interfere in police matters. Heseltine visited council estates, often accompanied by gangs of grinning children trying to be noticed on television, and his flamboyance as a [[self-made man]] went down surprisingly well in a City famous for turning out flamboyant figures in the entertainment industry. He talked to black community leaders, who complained about [[Merseyside Police|police]] bias and brutality, and he later had an awkward private meeting with the [[Chief constable]] [[Kenneth Oxford]] about the matter. He arranged for the bosses of the leading banks and building societies to tour the area in a coach (they were reluctant until Heseltine's PPS [[Tim Sainsbury]] persuaded [[Robin Leigh-Pemberton]] of NatWest to come), and asked them to each second a bright young manager to the DOE for a year.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 222–6.</ref>

Heseltine circulated a 21-page minute to Cabinet on his return, entitled ''It Took a Riot''. He proposed a regional office and a review of the status of the Metropolitan Counties, as well as greater government emphasis on Merseyside in future. He had prepared the ground with a small dinner for Whitehall mandarins including [[Robert Armstrong, Baron Armstrong of Ilminster|Robert Armstrong]] ([[Cabinet Secretary (United Kingdom)|Cabinet Secretary]]) and [[Ian Bancroft]] (Head of the Civil Service). However, Thatcher was not impressed, although she agreed to his appointment as Minister for Merseyside for twelve months. Neither was Keith Joseph (Secretary of State for Industry) nor Howe (Chancellor of the Exchequer), who favoured enterprise zones where businesses would be given favourable tax treatment.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 226–8.</ref>

Shortly after his appointment as Minister for Merseyside, Heseltine gave his annual party conference speech, in which he condemned talk of repatriation and called for more public spending on inner cities. Although he felt he had taken a risk – the speech was in marked contrast to [[Norman Tebbit]]'s "On Your Bike" speech a few hours later – he received his usual standing ovation and later recorded that it was the one of his speeches of which he was most proud.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 228–9.</ref>

In autumn 1981 he visited Liverpool again, this time with a thirty-strong task force of representatives of local employers and civil servants (unusually for the time, drawn from different departments – DOE, DTI and Employment, but not the Home Office this time – Heseltine had been pushing for greater cooperation between departments since the setting up of the European Space Agency in 1973). For the next fifteen months he visited Liverpool for a day almost every week, refusing police protection and often driving himself, persuading business and local government to work together. [[Colette Bowe]], a DTI official who was deputy director of the task force, recorded that Heseltine was the most effective minister she had ever seen at getting the official machine to do his bidding through a mixture of charm and tough questions.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 230–1.</ref>

====Inner city development====
Heseltine faced initial suspicion from Labour-led Merseyside Council, but got on well with [[Trevor Jones (British politician)|Sir Trevor Jones]], Liberal leader of [[Liverpool City Council]]. Jones, also a self-made businessman, got on well with Heseltine, and Jones claimed that Heseltine admitted to him late one night that he was a Liberal at heart, but could not bear the thought of having no realistic chance to win power.<ref name=crick231-233>Crick 1997, pp. 231–3.</ref>

Inspired by the [[Bundesgartenschau]]en which had helped to regenerate German cities after the war, Heseltine arranged for the first of five biennial [[National garden festival]]s to be held in Liverpool in 1984 (Jones arranged for the council to delegate the bid to the [[Merseyside Development Corporation]], of which he was a director). More than 3 million people eventually attended.<ref name=crick231-233/><ref name=duffy76-96>Michael Parkinson and James Duffy, "Government's Response to Inner-City Riots: The Minister for Merseyside and the Task Force," ''Parliamentary Affairs'' (1984) 37#1, pp. 76–96.</ref>

Heseltine arranged for Liverpool to receive unused government grants for other cities (from the Urban Programme), although the money was less than had been clawed back from Liverpool through council spending cuts. He also played an important role in the redevelopment of [[Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool|Albert Dock]], the development of Wavertree Technology Park (the land purchased by £10 million of public money) and the development of Cantril Farm estate into Stockbridge Village, arranging for [[Barratt Developments]] to build many new houses for owner occupiers.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 233–5.</ref>

Heseltine also played an important role in the development of [[Development Corporation|Urban Development Corporations]], directly appointed by the minister and overriding local authority planning controls to spend government money on infrastructure. This was a controversial measure in Labour strongholds such as East London, Merseyside and North East England.<ref name=duffy76-96/><ref name=crick238>Crick 1997, p. 238.</ref> He obtained a Treasury grant of £77 million to build the [[Docklands Light Railway]], although transport links to Docklands remained inadequate.<ref name=crick238/> He opened Britain's first [[Enterprise Zone]] at [[Corby]] in Northamptonshire.<ref name=duffy76-96/>

Some criticism was made of his time in Liverpool that he spent a lot of money but generated little in the way of new employment ("I would not blame him for that: Liverpool had defeated better men than Michael Heseltine" commented Lady Thatcher acidly in her memoirs in 1993). Local Labour politicians tended to feel that he had accomplished little, although they acknowledged his good intentions. However a more positive assessment was offered by Michael Parkinson, Professor of Urban Affairs at [[John Moores University]]: although he had been sceptical in the 1980s, by 1997 he had come to favour the policies championed by Heseltine: assignment of ministers to regions, development of housing associations and cooperatives, and the channelling of government money through business-led agencies rather than through local government.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 241–2.</ref>

===Secretary of State for Defence 1983–86===
====Appointment====
In October 1982 [[Secretary of State for Defence]] [[John Nott]] announced that he was stepping down from Parliament at the next election. As defence was expected to be a major issue at the election, it made sense to appoint his successor as soon as possible, and Heseltine's name was widely touted. Over the winter of 1982–1983 there were frequent rumours that military top brass were lobbying against his appointment, strongly denied to the press by [[Willie Whitelaw]] (Home Secretary and ''de facto'' Deputy Prime Minister) and [[Chief of the Defence Staff (United Kingdom)|Chief of Defence Staff]] [[Edwin Bramall]]. Heseltine was appointed in January 1983, with the backing of Nott and [[Chairman of the Conservative Party|Party Chairman]] [[Cecil Parkinson]].<ref>Crick 1997, p. 243.</ref>

Bramall had hoped for a period of consolidation after the reorganisations of the early 1980s and the [[Falklands War]]. Thatcher felt that Heseltine was "restless" at the Environment, and that he would bring efficiency reforms to Defence, whilst she also wanted to keep him away from economic and social issues. She appointed her [[Permanent secretary|Principal Private Secretary]] [[Clive Whitmore]] as [[Permanent Secretary|Permanent Under-Secretary for Defence]] (head civil servant for the department – the job had coincidentally fallen vacant).<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 243–4.</ref>

====Nuclear disarmament and 1983 election====
One of Heseltine's main jobs was to campaign against the [[Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament]] (CND), which had grown in size from 3,000 to 10,000 in three years amid public disquiet about the deployment of [[Trident (missile)|Trident]] and [[Cruise missile]]s, and the hawkish rhetoric often employed by Thatcher and US President [[Ronald Reagan]]. Nott had had little interest in campaigning and had left the matter to the Minister of State, [[Peter Blaker]], Heseltine's contemporary from Oxford. Heseltine put together a small group of seven civil servants called Defence Section 19 (DS19) to brief MPs and other opinion formers, and argue the case for Britain to have nuclear weapons. Some, both in the civil service and out of it, had qualms about using civil servants for what amounted to a political campaigning role. Opinion polls showed the public to be opposed to Trident and Cruise missiles, but also opposed to ''unilateral'' ("one-sided" as Heseltine insisted on calling it) disarmament, so Heseltine steered the debate away from the former and towards the latter.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 244–6.</ref>

At the advice of John Ledlie Heseltine visited at the US Air Base at [[RAF Greenham Common]], and after long prior discussion Heseltine insisted on wearing a combat jacket (not, as was often wrongly asserted, a [[Flak jacket]]; Ledlie does not accept Heseltine's later claim that he was simply handed it by a military figure to protect his coat from the rain). The jacket was a gift to cartoonists and he wore it on several subsequent visits to military bases. In February 1983 he fell over in the melée (he said at the time that he was pushed) when CND protestors surrounded a meeting of Newbury Conservatives, a propaganda gift, and on Good Friday 1983 he was filmed in [[West Berlin]] looking over the wall to the communist east, distracting attention from CND's linking of arms round Greenham Common that day.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 246–7.</ref>

With a general election looming, Heseltine was keen to associate Labour with CND, and CND with communists and the Soviet Union (ignoring earlier comments by Party Chairman [[Cecil Parkinson]] that this was "manifest nonsense" – the media did not pick up on this). He made such a claim in a speech at Exeter in April 1983, and distributed to Tory candidates information about the background of leading members of CND. This had been assembled by [[Ray Whitney (politician)|Ray Whitney]] MP, but some of it was suspected of having come from intelligence sources. MI5 agent Cathy Massiter later wrote, in 1985 in ''[[The Observer]]'', that from 1981 onwards and especially from 1983 she had been asked to pass on to DS19 (the propaganda unit at the Ministry of Defence) information obtained by wiretaps and by an MI5 mole in CID. MI5 bosses refused to pass on classified material about security matters but agreed to pass on information about the political links of CND members. Even this was in breach of the 1952 Directive from Home Secretary [[David Maxwell-Fyfe]] that the security services not provide information for party political purposes. Heseltine allowed his deputy Peter Blaker to debate with CND, but refused to do so himself, believing that he would be at a disadvantage against the attractive [[Joan Ruddock]]. Blaker did much of the work while Heseltine got the publicity. DS19 was wound up three months after the [[1983 United Kingdom general election|1983 election]], at which Heseltine was widely credited with helping the Conservatives achieve a landslide victory.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 247–50.</ref>

====Administering the department====
Although the Ministry of Defence already had its own "Management Audit" system, Heseltine insisted on introducing his own version of the MINIS system which he had introduced at the Environment. The Ministry of Defence had a budget of £17 million per annum, and employed 246,000 civilians as well as 300,000 in uniform. Whereas the Department of the Environment had 66 directorates, Defence had 156, each headed by a [[two-star officer]] or a civil servant of equivalent seniority. The organisation chart took months to design and covered four large sheets of paper. In the event Heseltine was too preoccupied by the political matters to pay much attention to the MINIs reports which had taken so long to produce. Heseltine disliked dealing with paperwork, and insisted on having plenty of time to take decisions, and that all reports sent to him had to be first run past one of his advisers for comments. Staff numbers fell by 20,000 (one in twelve) during Heseltine's time at Defence, and many services were privatised, including the [[Royal Ordnance Factories]] whilst the [[Royal Navy Dockyard]]s at [[HMNB Devonport|Devonport]] and [[Rosyth Dockyard|Rosyth]] were put under private management.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 251–3.</ref>

The three separate service ministries (Admiralty, War and Air) had merged into a single Ministry of Defence in 1981. Heseltine drew up plans on a flight back from Kuwait to merge the services further, so that the three chiefs of staff reported directly to the Chief of Defence Staff instead of being treated as colleagues, whilst some supply services were to be merged. The plans were bounced onto the Chief of Defence Staff, Field Marshal "Dwin" Bramall, over a weekend before publication on Monday, so senior officers had minimal time to drum up opposition in Parliament and the press. There was around three months of protest in the press, including from Bramall's predecessor [[Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy)|Admiral of the Fleet]] Sir [[Henry Leach]]. Bramall obtained the concession that the individual service chiefs would be allowed to retain small staffs of their own and have a right of appeal to the Prime Minister. The changes took effect at the start of 1985.<ref>Crick 1997, pp, 253-5.</ref>

Bramall admired Heseltine's "great drive" and his "style, energy and vision about Europe", but was displeased at Heseltine's rudeness. It was not uncommon for Heseltine to summon him to a meeting early in the day, then keep Bramall "on hold" all day as he kept putting back the meeting, and eventually earning himself a rebuke for failing to display the respect with which every officer in the armed forces is trained to treat his subordinates. A number of senior officers spoke of Heseltine in scathing terms, for example for his self-centredness, to [[Michael Crick]] when he was researching his biography.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 255–6.</ref> Crick observes that with the exception of some defence chiefs, many people who worked with Heseltine came to "admire and respect him", although those who see him from afar are more suspect.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 352.</ref>

====The sinking of the ''Belgrano''====
Heseltine took a hard line on civil liberties issues. He supported Thatcher's [[GCHQ trade union ban|attempt to ban trade unions from GCHQ]]. He supported the prosecution of [[Sarah Tisdall]] for leaking his public relations plans for the arrival of cruise missiles in 1983.<ref name=crick257-260>Crick 1997, pp. 257–60.</ref>

Before Heseltine's arrival at the Ministry of Defence, [[Tam Dalyell]] had exposed inconsistencies in ministerial accounts of the sinking of the Argentinian warship ''[[ARA General Belgrano]]'' during the [[Falklands War]] of 1982, and alleged that the ship had been sunk to sabotage Foreign Office attempts to negotiate peace via Washington and Peru. Heseltine, apparently worried that there might be a scandal comparable to [[Watergate]], asked [[Clive Ponting]], a civil servant who had played an important role in Derek Rayner's efficiency reforms, to draw up a detailed report into the sinking of the ''Belgrano''. At the end of March 1984 Ponting attended a series of meetings with Heseltine. He and the Permanent Under-Secretary [[Clive Whitmore]] wanted to disclose further information to reveal that the ''Belgrano'' had been spotted a day earlier than had previously been admitted. [[John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling MP)|John Stanley]], thought to be Thatcher's eyes and ears in the Ministry of Defence, initially opposed it, but Thatcher was persuaded that a letter should be sent to the Opposition Defence Spokesman [[Denzil Davies]]. However, both Heseltine and Thatcher rejected Ponting's draft which would have admitted for the first time that the Belgrano had been sighted a day earlier and stated that she was sailing away from the British taskforce when sunk.{{efn|It was finally revealed in 2011 that the ''Belgrano'' had in fact been sailing back ''towards'' the taskforce when sunk, but this intelligence was kept secret at the time – see the article on the ''Belgrano'' for details.}} Ponting later stated that Stanley had asked Thatcher to overrule Heseltine on the matter; he withheld information not just from Dalyell but from the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which was conducting its own inquiry, citing national security considerations.<ref name=crick257-260/>

Six days after Heseltine's letter to [[Denzil Davies]], Ponting sent Davies an anonymous note stating that the letter had been written according to the advice of [[John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling MP)|John Stanley]], but contrary to the advice of civil servants, and suggesting other potential lines of inquiry. Three months later he sent two documents exposing the alleged cover up. Heseltine strongly supported, and by some accounts pushed for, the prosecution of Ponting (Ministry of Defence police had advised against, but the [[Solicitor General for England and Wales|Solicitor-General]] Sir [[Patrick Mayhew]] urged that he should be). Heseltine later said that Thatcher had not been involved in the decision to prosecute. Neither Heseltine nor Stanley were called as witnesses at Ponting's trial in January 1985 ([[Richard Mottram]], Heseltine's Private Secretary, gave evidence on behalf of the Ministry of Defence). To general surprise Ponting was acquitted. A week later Heseltine launched a stinging seventy-minute attack on Ponting in the House of Commons, and a year later he walked out of a [[Channel 4 News]] studio on being told that a recorded interview with Ponting was also to be shown. Stanley was seen as the villain of the piece, whereas Heseltine had merely declined to correct false statements made by others.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 260–2.</ref>

====NATO====
The Foreign Secretary, [[Geoffrey Howe]], spoke highly of Heseltine's contribution to NATO and [[WEU]] conferences. Heseltine was as angry as Thatcher at the [[US invasion of Grenada]], a Commonwealth country. He wanted warmer relations with the Soviets and was sceptical about the US [[Strategic Defense Initiative]] ("Star Wars"), putting in a brief and grudging appearance at [[Caspar Weinberger]]'s Ditchley Park Conference about the topic in 1985.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 257.</ref>

Heseltine came close to misleading the House of Commons over the meeting of NATO defence ministers at Montebello, Quebec, in October 1983. He stated that no "specific" proposals had been made to update NATO short range and tactical nuclear weapons. In fact a decision had been made ''in principle'' to do so. Crick describes Heseltine's answers as "highly disingenuous and deceitful". At the time NATO was claiming to be cutting back on such weapons, and the peace movement was still powerful in Germany where such weapons might be used.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 262–4.</ref>

====Defence procurement====
The Defence budget was protected by a NATO commitment to increase defence spending by 3% per annum until 1986, but was still subjected to cuts in the proposed budget during Heseltine's tenure. Some senior military figures felt that Heseltine was obsessed with the minutiae of running the department rather than thinking strategically about defence priorities and procurement. Dwin Bramall recalled that Heseltine never showed an interest in the strategy papers he sent him. Thatcher was highly critical of him for failing to take a decision on the development of the [[Hawker Siddeley Nimrod|Nimrod]] early-warning plane, on which £660 million was spent over a ten-year period, only for the project to be cancelled by his successor. Some accusations were raised (the Commons Select Committee on Defence thought him "vague and evasive" on the issue in 1985) that the accounts were being massaged to push costs into the period after 1986, when cuts would become inevitable. The journalist [[Hugo Young]] later recalled Heseltine briefing journalists confidentially that spending and funding could be reconciled until 1986, by which time he expected "to be gone".<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 264–6.</ref>

In Cabinet, Heseltine resented being kept out of economic debates and suspected he might be reshuffled to the job of [[Secretary of State for Northern Ireland]] as [[Jim Prior]] had been. He had tried to pursue a one-man industrial policy, as defence spent £17 billion per annum, 5% of UK GDP, half of it on procurement, and 90% of that in the UK, with 700,000 British jobs dependent on it. Heseltine was unhappy at the way defence contracts were often awarded on a cost-plus basis (i.e. agreeing to pay the supplier a certain amount over and above his costs, leaving no incentive to keep costs to a minimum). In 1985 he promoted his special adviser [[Peter Levene]] to be Chief of Defence Procurement; special arrangements had to be made to ensure that Levene did not make decisions affecting his own defence company [[United Scientific Holdings]], of which the former Permanent Secretary [[Frank Cooper (civil servant)|Sir Frank Cooper]] was now chairman, and he was paid £95,000 per annum plus £12,000 in pension contributions, more than the Prime Minister or senior civil servants. Thatcher agreed to Levene's appointment over civil service objections. He abolished cost-plus pricing of contracts and stated that he had trimmed 10% off the defence equipment budget by 1989 through greater competitive tendering; enough, as Heseltine put it, to pay for the Trident nuclear missile programme.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 268.</ref>

It had been agreed to spend £280m for two [[Type 22 frigate]]s. [[Norman Tebbit]] (Trade and Industry Secretary), with the backing of the Cabinet, wanted them built at [[Swan Hunter]] in the North East, but Heseltine threatened resignation in January 1985 unless at least one was built at [[Cammell Laird]] on Merseyside, at a cost of an extra £7 million, where Type 22s had been built before. Thatcher let him have his way after he persuaded her that it would reward shipyard workers who had crossed picket lines during a recent strike, but was privately furious, and keen to keep defence costs down in future by buying American equipment.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 268–72.</ref>

Heseltine also favoured European cooperation in defence procurement, feeling that this allowed Europe to compete with US firms which receive huge orders from [[The Pentagon]]. Crick argues that his experience of Concorde in the early 1970s should have warned him that such multinational ventures are problematic and, because of the political capital invested, hard to cancel when things go wrong. Heseltine played an important role in persuading West German defence minister [[Manfred Wörner]] to back the joint Anglo-German-Spanish-Italian [[Eurofighter]], and contrary to the wishes of Thatcher (and previous defence secretary John Nott) who preferred an American or British fighter. Cabinet refused to allow a loosening of the specifications to allow French company [[Dassault]] to become involved in the consortium. Agreement was reached at Turin in August 1985.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 272.</ref>

Heseltine also sold 132 [[Panavia Tornado|Tornados]] for £4bn to Saudi Arabia later in 1985, accepting oil instead of cash (to the displeasure of Peter Walker, Energy Secretary) so that they would buy British rather than US aircraft. This later formed part of the controversial [[Al-Yamamah arms deal]], the main part of which was signed in 1988.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 274–5.</ref>

===Westland Affair===
{{Further|Westland affair}}

====Background====
In spring 1985 Heseltine displayed little interest in Westland helicopters when approached by Tebbit (then [[Secretary of State for Trade and Industry]]) at the time of [[Alan Bristow]]'s bid for the company, as plenty of American helicopters were available to meet Britain's defence requirements. He attended two meetings about the company's future in June 1985, chaired by Thatcher. Heseltine, who had a poor opinion of Westland's management, was willing to inject £30 million, provided the Treasury contributed half. The idea was not approved.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 275–6.</ref>

Heseltine took against the new chairman Sir John Cuckney's plan that Westland merge with [[United Technologies Corporation]], of which the US company [[Sikorsky Aircraft|Sikorsky]] was a subsidiary, after realising that Westland would probably become responsible for assembling the [[Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk]] helicopter, which the Ministry of Defence would then be under great pressure to buy, whereas he preferred Westland to go into receivership so that [[General Electric Company|GEC]] and [[British Aerospace]] could buy the viable parts of the business.<ref>Crick 1997, p. 276.</ref>

In mid-October Heseltine suggested a European consortium (which would include French [[Aérospatiale]], German [[Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm|MBB]] and Italian [[Agusta]]). The new Trade and Industry Secretary [[Leon Brittan]] at first urged Thatcher to consider a European option (Heseltine later said Brittan ''preferred'' this option, although Brittan denied this). The Government was officially neutral (i.e. arguing that it was a matter for Westland directors and shareholders) but by November Heseltine was pushing the European option hard. In late November Peter Levene, Chief of Procurement, had a meeting at the Ministry of Defence with his French, German and Italian counterparts (the National Armaments Directors) and the representatives of the consortium, and agreed to "buy European" for certain classes of helicopters, although Heseltine was not actually present. The meeting was later praised by the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. Thatcher, who only learned of the meeting through Cuckney, was displeased, as were Brittan and the Treasury, who thought the US option might be cheaper.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 277–8.</ref>

====The cancelled meeting====
In early December Thatcher had two ''ad hoc'' meetings with Heseltine, Brittan, Tebbit, [[William Whitelaw]] (Deputy Prime Minister), [[Geoffrey Howe]] (Foreign Secretary) and [[Nigel Lawson]] (Chancellor of the Exchequer). Howe and Tebbit were not unsympathetic to Heseltine's proposed consortium, and the decision was deferred to the Cabinet Economic Affairs Committee (E(A)) on Monday 9 December 1985. After that meeting Thatcher, who complained that three hours had been spent discussing a company with a market capitalisation of only £30m (a tiny amount in government terms), allowed Heseltine until 4pm on Friday 13 December to submit a viable proposal for a European deal. He did (with British Aerospace and GEC now part of his consortium), but Westland's directors rejected it. Heseltine had expected that there would be a second meeting of E(A) to discuss his consortium, but no such meeting was called; Thatcher later stated that the Monday meeting had agreed to leave the decision to Westland to take, but it later emerged that Ridley and Lord Young ''had'' placed such a meeting in their diaries and had been told by Number Ten that it had been cancelled. Heseltine threatened resignation for the first time.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 278–80.</ref>

Heseltine raised his concerns with Tebbit, Whitelaw and [[John Wakeham]] (Chief Whip). At Cabinet on Thursday 12 December he had an angry exchange with Thatcher about the cancelled meeting, but Westland was not on the agenda for the meeting and Thatcher refused to permit a discussion on the matter, arguing that Cabinet could not do so without the necessary papers. Heseltine asked for his dissent to be minuted, and this was not done, although [[Cabinet Secretary (United Kingdom)|Cabinet Secretary]] [[Robert Armstrong, Baron Armstrong of Ilminster|Robert Armstrong]] stated that this had been an error and added it himself. On Monday 16 December Heseltine sat on the front bench with obvious disapproval when Brittan told the House that it was up to Westland to decide; on Wednesday 18 December he won the backing of the Commons Defence Committee for the European Consortium. On Thursday 19 December the matter was discussed at Cabinet for ten minutes: Cabinet approved leaving the decision to Westland and Heseltine was ordered to cease campaigning for the European option. Heseltine had failed to drum up enough support among possible allies like Tebbit, Howe, Walker, Norman Fowler and Tom King. A ministerial colleague at the time described him as "absolutely looney, completely hyped up with the thing" and of having a "persecution mania".<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 280–2.</ref>

====Mayhew's leaked letter====
By now the political row was being discussed in the media, partly because of the lack of other news in December. Cuckney wrote to Thatcher, at her behest, asking for reassurance that the Sikorsky deal would not damage Westland's business prospects in Europe. Heseltine was not satisfied with Thatcher's draft reply when he saw it and consulted Sir [[Patrick Mayhew]] ([[Solicitor General for England and Wales|Solicitor-General]] and acting [[Attorney General for England and Wales|Attorney-General]] as Sir [[Michael Havers]] was ill) on the grounds that the government might be legally liable for any incorrect advice. Heseltine supplied extra material about the risk of losing European business, which Thatcher did not include in her reply to Cuckney. Heseltine then wrote to David Horne of [[Lloyds Bank|Lloyds Merchant Bank]], who was advising the European consortium (in reply to planted questions from Horne which had been dictated to him over the phone by one of Heseltine's staff), giving him the advice which Thatcher had declined to include in her letter to Cuckney (that the Sikorsky deal would be "incompatible with participation" in European helicopter projects). Heseltine's letter was also leaked to the press. This was a blatant challenge to Thatcher's authority as Heseltine had not consulted Downing Street, the Department of Trade and Industry or Mayhew before writing to Horne.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 282–3.</ref>

Thatcher discussed sacking Heseltine with close colleagues over Christmas; but, as she later admitted in her memoir, refrained from doing so as he was too popular and important as a political figure.<ref>{{cite book|author=Margaret Thatcher|title=The Downing Street Years|year=2012|publisher=HarperPress|isbn=978-0-00-745663-5|page=436}}</ref> She also decided against sending him a letter threatening him with the sack, which had been drafted. Instead she asked Mayhew to write to Heseltine complaining of what he thought were "material inaccuracies" in his letter to Horne, and asking Heseltine to write to Horne again, correcting them.<ref>{{cite book|author=John Campbell|title=Margaret Thatcher Volume Two: The Iron Lady|date=30 April 2011|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-1-4464-2008-9|page=487}}</ref> Mayhew's letter of rebuke to Heseltine – marked "Confidential" – reached Heseltine at lunchtime on Monday 6 January and was immediately leaked to the press by [[Colette Bowe]], an information officer at the Department of Trade and Industry, at Brittan's request (some years later he admitted that he acted on the "express" instructions of [[Charles Powell, Baron Powell of Bayswater|Charles Powell]] and [[Bernard Ingham]], Thatcher's two senior advisers). Heseltine was able to produce extra documents which Mayhew accepted as backing up his letter to Horne, but not before ''[[The Sun (United Kingdom)|The Sun]]'' had called Heseltine "You Liar!" on its front page (the newspaper was later required to make a donation to charity in lieu of libel damages).<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 283–5.</ref>

====Resignation====
Cabinet met on the morning of Thursday 9 January, with Thatcher already having agreed her position with close colleagues at Chequers that weekend, and arranged that Scottish Secretary [[George Younger]] should take over as Defence Secretary if Heseltine resigned. Westland was first on the agenda, and Heseltine and Brittan were permitted to put their cases. Heseltine had won the moral high ground over the leaking saga, but Lawson recorded that he seemed obsessive at Cabinet and attracted little sympathy. Thatcher then reiterated her position, which had already been endorsed by the Cabinet, that Westland's future was a matter for Westland to decide, and announced that on grounds of [[Collective responsibility]] all answers to questions about Westland must in be cleared through the Cabinet Office. In response to a question by Nicholas Ridley (a friend of Heseltine) she confirmed that this also applied to statements which had ''already'' been made. After further questions from Heseltine, and another summing up by Thatcher, Heseltine protested that there had been no collective responsibility, gathered up his papers and left the Cabinet Room. Eyewitness accounts differ as to his exact words, or even whether he explicitly resigned.<ref name=crick285-288>Crick 1997, pp. 285–8.</ref> By one account he declared, "I can no longer be a member of this Cabinet".<ref name=jenkins192>Peter Jenkins, ''Mrs Thatcher's Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era'' (Pan, 1989), p. 192.</ref> Having allegedly paid a quick visit to the lavatory to straighten his hair and his Guards tie, Heseltine announced his resignation to the waiting press outside Number Ten, the first Cabinet minister to resign from a Cabinet meeting since [[Joseph Chamberlain]] in 1886. Some ministers (for example [[Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester|Peter Walker]]) and civil servants believed Heseltine could have been persuaded to return had it not been for the public announcement.<ref name=crick285-288/>

At 4pm that day Heseltine delivered a 3,000 word, 22 minute resignation statement at the Ministry of Defence (rather than waiting to make a statement to the House of Commons when it resumed four days later). He may well have prepared this earlier, although his private secretary Richard Mottram says not. To Thatcher's fury Defence officials had helped him throughout the crisis and in preparing this document.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 288–9.</ref> His statement denounced Thatcher's managerial style and suggested she was a liar who lacked integrity.<ref name=jenkins192/> Thatcher later said during a television interview that she had not sacked him or called him to order before the incident because, “Had I done that, I know exactly what the press would have said: there you are, old bossyboots at it again.”<ref>{{cite book|author1=R. Biddiss|author2=Kenneth R. Minogue|title=Thatcherism: Personality and Politics|date=12 June 1987|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-349-18687-7|page=58}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=John Campbell|title=Margaret Thatcher Volume Two: The Iron Lady|date=30 April 2011|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-1-4464-2008-9|page=489}}</ref>

====Fallout from the affair====
Unlike when [[Peter Thorneycroft]] (Chancellor of the Exchequer) resigned in 1958 or [[Lord Carrington]] (Foreign Secretary) in 1982, Heseltine's junior ministers [[Norman Lamont]] and [[John Lee, Baron Lee of Trafford|John Lee]] did not resign with him. Heseltine was portrayed by ''[[Spitting Image]]'' as a swivel-eyed lunatic holding a toy helicopter.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 295–6.</ref>

Brittan had to resign, partly as a result of fallout from the leak of the Mayhew letter, and partly because of his failure to give an entirely truthful answer to the House of Commons about Heseltine's accusation that he had pressured British Aerospace to withdraw from the European Consortium. Thatcher survived the Westland debate on 27 January, aided by a poor and long-winded speech by Opposition Leader [[Neil Kinnock]]. Sikorsky bought Westland.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 293–4.</ref>

Up until Westland, Thatcher had approved of most of what Heseltine had done, even though their politics were rather different. Heseltine and Thatcher had quarrelled openly over a question of relations between Britain and the European Community (as it then was).<ref>Crick 1997, p. 267.</ref> Apart from the clash of personalities, and the escalation of small issues into bigger issues, it has been suggested that Heseltine, concerned at impending Defence cuts in 1986, and worried that Thatcher was unlikely to promote him further, was looking for an excuse for a resignation, which would put him in good stead to be elected party leader after, as seemed likely at the time, the Conservatives would lose the next election due by summer 1988.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 289–92.</ref>