Edward Heath: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974

He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 until 1974. Heath was also the leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 until 1975.

The Right Honourable Sir Edward Heath KG MBE
Portrait by Allan Warren, 1987
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 19 June 1970 – 4 March 1974
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Preceded by	Harold Wilson
Succeeded by	Harold Wilson
Leader of the Opposition
In office 4 March 1974 – 11 February 1975
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Harold Wilson
Succeeded by	Margaret Thatcher
In office 28 July 1965 – 19 June 1970
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Succeeded by	Harold Wilson
Leader of the Conservative Party
In office 28 July 1965 – 11 February 1975
Preceded by	Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Succeeded by	Margaret Thatcher
Father of the House of Commons
In office 9 April 1992 – 14 May 2001
Preceded by	Bernard Braine
Succeeded by	Tam Dalyell
Ministerial offices President of the Board of Trade In office 20 October 1963 – 16 October 1964 Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home Preceded by Fred Erroll Succeeded by Douglas Jay Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development In office 20 October 1963 – 16 October 1964 Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home Preceded by Position created Succeeded by Position abolished Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal (Deputy Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) In office 14 February 1960 – 18 October 1963 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan Preceded by The Viscount Hailsham Succeeded by Selwyn Lloyd Minister of Labour In office 14 October 1959 – 27 July 1960 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan Preceded by Iain Macleod Succeeded by John Hare Chief Whip of the House of Commons Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury In office 7 April 1955 – 14 June 1959 Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden Harold Macmillan Preceded by Patrick Buchan-Hepburn Succeeded by Martin Redmayne Lord Commissioner of the Treasury In office 7 November 1951 – 20 December 1955 Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill Sir Anthony Eden Preceded by William Wilkins Succeeded by Edward Wakefield
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 27 October 1964 – 27 July 1965
Leader	Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Preceded by	Reginald Maudling
Succeeded by	Iain Macleod
Member of Parliament for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sidcup, 1974–1983; Bexley, 1950–1974)
In office 23 February 1950 – 14 May 2001
Preceded by	Ashley Bramall
Succeeded by	Derek Conway
Personal details
Born	Edward Richard George Heath (1916-07-09)9 July 1916 Broadstairs, Kent, England
Died	17 July 2005(2005-07-17) (aged 89) Salisbury, Wiltshire, England
Resting place	Salisbury Cathedral
Political party	Conservative
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Civil servant musician politician yachtsman
Military service
Branch/service	British Army
Rank	Lieutenant Colonel
Unit	Royal Artillery Honourable Artillery Company
Battles/wars	Second World War
Awards	Member of the Order of the British Empire Mentioned in despatches
Service #	179215

Heath was educated at Balliol College, Oxford.

In 1937, as a student when he was travelling in Nuremberg, Heath met three of Adolf Hitler's top Nazi leaders Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. He described Himmler as the most evil man he had ever met. Heath also travelled to Barcelona in Spain in 1938 at the time of the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, Heath went again to Germany, and returned to Britain before the outbreak of World War II.

Heath was a lifelong bachelor. He never married. His sexual orientation was a matter of dispute during his lifetime, and since. There were rumours that he was gay. Heath never spoke about his sexuality. He was also a classical organist and conductor and a sailor.

In August 2015, ten years after his death, it was claimed that five police forces were investigating Heath about allegations of child sexual abuse. Writing in The Independent, Heath's biographer John Campbell said: "If he had any inclinations that way he would have repressed them; he was too self-controlled and self-contained to do anything that would have risked his career".

Edward Heath was from a working class family, the son of a carpenter and a maid. He was the first of two important post-World War II prime ministers to come from the lower ranks of society (the other being Margaret Thatcher). Heath went to a grammar school in Ramsgate, and won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. Heath was a talented musician, and won the college's organ scholarship in his first term. This enabled him to stay at the university for a fourth year. He eventually graduated with in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) in 1939.

Heath served in the army in WWII, starting as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. In 1944 he took part in the Normandy Landings. Heath was eventually demobilised (left the army) as a lieutenant-colonel in 1947.

After a spell in the Civil Service, Heath won a seat as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bexley in the February 1950 general election.

Heath's early appointments were as a whip in the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. He rose to be Chief Whip and Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury from 1955 to 1959. Harold Macmillan appointed him Minister of Labour, a Cabinet post, in 1959.

In 1960 Macmillan gave Heath responsibility for negotiating the UK's first attempt to join the European Economic Community (as the European Union was then called). After extensive negotiations, the British entry was vetoed by the French President, Charles de Gaulle.

From 1965 to 1970 Heath was Leader of the Opposition when the Labour Party were in power. Then he was elected Prime Minister in the General Election of 1970.

During his premiership the UK government passed through parliament some quite radical changes.

Currency and metrication

Since Anglo-Saxon times, the currency of England (and so later the UK) was based on the pound sterling, at a rate of 240 pence to £1. On 15 February 1971, known as Decimal Day, the United Kingdom and Ireland decimalised their currencies.

This change had many consequences, but it was eventually accepted by most people. It was an expensive change. Not only was the whole of the currency in circulation changed, but many mechanical gadgets also had to be changed. Every cash register in the country, every commercial machine which took coins, every public notices of monetary charges, and so on.

The other change, which happened at roughly the same time, was metrication of the old imperial system of weights and measures. This idea dated to before Heath, and was continued after him by the next Labour government. It was never fully completed. Speed limits are still in miles per hour, and measurements of length are still in traditional yards, feet and inches, with metric as an alternative. Once again, the changes were hugely expensive. It meant an almost complete retooling in the machine tool industry.

It was mainly done because joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 obliged the United Kingdom to take into its law all EEC directives. These included the use of a prescribed SI-based set of units for many purposes within five years. However, metric measures are not much used in everyday life in the UK.

Heath took the United Kingdom into Europe with the European Communities Act 1972 in October.

Once de Gaulle had left office, Heath was determined to get the UK into the (then) European Economic Community. The EEC economy had also slowed down and British membership was seen as a way to revitalise it. After a 12-hour talk between Heath and French President Georges Pompidou Britain's third application succeeded.

End of his premiership

 

Heath failed to control the power of the unions. Two miners' strikes damaged the economy. The 1974 strike caused much of the country's industry to work a three-day week to conserve energy. That was enough for the electorate to put the government out of office. The loss of the 1974 general election ended Heath's career at the top. The Conservative Party replaced him with Margaret Thatcher.

Heath never married. He had been expected to marry childhood friend Kay Raven, who reportedly tired of waiting and married an RAF officer whom she met on holiday in 1950. In a four-sentence paragraph of his memoirs, Heath claimed that he had been too busy establishing a career after the war and had "perhaps ... taken too much for granted". In a 1998 TV interview with Michael Cockerell, Heath admitted that he had kept her photograph in his flat for many years afterwards.

His interest in music kept him on friendly terms with a number of female musicians including Moura Lympany. Lympany had thought Heath would marry her, but when asked about the most intimate thing he had done, replied, "He put his arm around my shoulder." Bernard Levin wrote at the time in The Observer, forgetting two other prime ministers who were bachelors with no known romantic interests, that the UK had to wait until the emergence of the permissive society for a prime minister who was a virgin. In later life, according to his official biographer Philip Ziegler, Heath was "apt to relapse into morose silence or completely ignore the woman next to him and talk across her to the nearest man".

John Campbell, who published a biography of Heath in 1993, devoted four pages to a discussion of the evidence concerning Heath's sexuality. Whilst acknowledging that Heath was often assumed by the public to be gay, not least because it is "nowadays ... whispered of any bachelor" he found "no positive evidence" that this was so "except for the faintest unsubstantiated rumour". Campbell concluded that the most significant aspect of Heath's sexuality was his complete repression of it.