Tributes poured in on Monday for former British leader Sir Edward Heath who has died aged 89, with fellow political veteran Margaret Thatcher describing him as a ”political giant” and Prime Minister Tony Blair calling him a ”man of great integrity”.
Heath, most famously remembered for leading Britain into Europe, passed away on Sunday after growing weak in recent days, a spokesperson said.
Despite only serving one term in office from 1970 until 1974, he famously took Britain into what was then the European Economic Community, the forerunner to the European Union.
It was a rare moment of triumph during Heath’s time in Downing Street, which was sandwiched between terms for the far more popular Labour Party prime minister Harold Wilson.
In a formidable political career, Heath led the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975 when he was succeeded by the then largely untested Thatcher.
He felt snubbed and never forgave Thatcher, lapsing into what was popularly dubbed ”the longest sulk in modern politics”.
Friends say his feelings towards her mellowed after she, too, left Downing Street and she offered warm words of tribute.
”Ted Heath was a political giant,” Thatcher said. ”He was also, in every sense, the first modern Conservative leader — by his humble background, his grammar-school education and by the fact of his democratic election.”
She praised his work during the difficult post-World War II era.
”For that, and much else besides, we are all in his debt,” she said.
Heath, the lower-middle-class son of a carpenter and a domestic servant who won a place at Oxford University from his local state school, was viewed by his then largely patrician party as a useful weapon with which to counteract Wilson’s man-of-the-people image.
Yet despite his background, Heath lacked any sort of common touch. He antagonised many political rivals and established few real allies, either in the party or in the wider country.
Much of his premiership was marked by militant trade-union activism, notably by miners, and a wave of strikes and energy shortages in the winter of 1973/74 eventually led Heath to declare a three-day working week.
”He wouldn’t feel he was doing his job properly unless he was booed a bit,” one colleague of the time, James Pryor, famously said.
Heath called an election for February 1974 on the slogan ”Who governs Britain?”, to which the voters’ answer, pundits noted at the time, was: ”Not you.”
The election saw no party secure a majority, and in another poll, in October, Wilson scraped home with a five-seat margin. The next year the Conservatives deposed Heath as leader in favour of Thatcher.
An increasingly corpulent and pink-faced Heath lurked on the back benches of the House of Commons for another 26 years, only retiring at the 2001 election after more than half a century in Parliament.
A lifelong bachelor, Heath was devoted to sailing and was a talented classical musician who almost chose it as his career.
The ageing politician suffered a pulmonary embolism — a blood clot in the lung — while holidaying in Austria two years ago and never seemed to recover fully.
He was well enough to celebrate his birthday with a party only last week but had ”recently become considerably weaker”, the spokesperson said.
News of his death dominated the British press on Monday, while Britain’s main political parties paid their respects.
”He was a man of great integrity and beliefs he held strongly from which he never wavered. And he will be remembered by all who knew him as a political leader of great stature and significance,” said Blair.
Current Conservative leader Michael Howard said: ”He made an enormous contribution to the political life of our country.”
His Liberal Democrat counterpart, Charles Kennedy, said Britain has lost a ”great figure”.
”There can be few of whom it can be said that they literally changed the course of history but undoubtedly, where Europe is concerned, that can be said of Sir Edward Heath,” he said.
Queen Elizabeth II was also ”terribly sorry”, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said. — AFP
