Last of the Amateurs

"I come to the promises which I have always made to you," Tory Leader Sir Alec Douglas-Home last week told a hushed group of Conservative M.P.s. "The first is that I would never allow disunity in the party, least of all over myself; the second, that I would tell you when I considered that the time was right to hand over the leadership to another." With that Sir Alec announced that the time had come: after 21 months and three days, first as Prime Minister and then Opposition Leader, he was relinquishing his position as the top Tory.

Though a few colleagues had been privy to Home's decision, by and large Britain was taken by surprise. Sir Alec's last public word on the subject had been a ringing assurance in March that he was "impatient for the election in which I shall lead you to victory." Just two weeks ago, when confronted with a flurry of unrest from backbenchers, Home had privately reiterated his determination to stay on. Party Chairman Edward du Cann concurred, but the British press, most notably the Tory press, emphatically did not, and had been saying so in a rising crescendo. "He should go," asserted the Sunday Express. "The right moment to change," advised the Sunday Times. "Sir Alec could now retire with the genuine thanks of his party," allowed The Economist.

A Near Defeat. The chorus of critics--public and private--was saying that Sir Alec was his party's own worst liability. In Commons, he had proved no match for the acid jousts with Prime Minister Harold Wilson. On TV, he came across to the nation as a frail, pale shadow of the graceful, witty private Sir Alec. The latest National Opinion Poll had Labor back in front of the Tories 46% to 41%. On a man-to-man popularity basis, polls invariably showed Home trailing Wilson. One gave Wilson the nod in virtually every category, from "tough" (Wilson 62%, Home 29%), to "straightforward and plain speaking" (Wilson 75% , Home 57%).

Though the Tories may not need Sir Alec now, they owe the former 14th Earl of Home, who gave up his title to become Prime Minister when Harold Macmillan stepped down, a large debt. The gaunt, gracious aristocrat was hardly a public figure when he moved from the foreign secretaryship to No. 10 Downing Street. He inherited a party embarrassed by the Profumo-Keeler scandal and racked by dissension over his own selection. After nearly 13 years in power, the Tories were visibly tired and the public seemed overwhelmingly ready for a switch to Labor. Sir Alec managed to rally his party, and in the end it very nearly defeated Labor last September. Once expecting a landslide, a shaken Harold Wilson had to settle, when the votes were tallied, for a slender four-vote majority.

Tory backbenchers, spoiling for a fight, wanted to press this advantage, but Sir Alec replied that Wilson deserved a chance to govern--and that a partisan time-out was in the nation's best interests. He used the hiatus to reorganize the Tories into fighting trim, resolved to do away with the traditional Tory way of choosing its leaders by the "customary processes"--that is, by informal agreement of the few ranking leaders. Home's successor will be chosen this week by democratic election in which all 303 Tory M.P.s will have equal votes.

A Professional Decision. Whoever wins will almost surely give the party its first youthful look in decades; the two prime contenders are Reginald Maudling, 48, and Edward Heath, 49. A half dozen other Tories, from the coldly brilliant, right-wing Enoch Powell to the pugnaciously independent Peter Thorneycroft, are given dark horse chances.

Reggie Maudling, Sir Alec's Chancellor of the Exchequer, is a relaxed Saint Bernard of a man. Ted Heath, an energetic "technocrat," made his reputation as Britain's hard-nosed representative in the ill-fated Common Market negotiations. Victory by either will represent a sharp break in the Old Etonian tradition of the gifted amateur in Tory politics. Indeed, Sir Alec may well be the last of that line. If so, the last of the amateurs had made a thoroughly professional decision last week. With parliamentary recess looming, the new top Tory will have ample time to marshal his forces before facing the Commons in November, and to establish his control over the party before the annual Tory conference next October.

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