The 1964 General Election

The narrowness of the Conservatives’ General Election defeat in 1964 meant that there was no immediate pressure for Douglas-Home to stand down as party leader. A second contest was thought to be imminent given Labour's slender majority, which was reduced to just three following the by-election defeat of the Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon-Walker, at Leyton in January 1965.

The possibility of an early election encouraged Douglas-Home to instigate a major policy review, which was to be directed by the new shadow Chancellor Edward Heath, who had succeeded Butler as Chairman of both the Conservative Research Department (CRD) and the Advisory Committee on Policy. Heath, a technocrat by inclination, was keen to introduce a set of policy proposals that would appeal to owner-occupiers, young married couples and Liberal ‘swing’ voters in time for a snap election. By the spring of 1965, some 36 policy groups had been established, the majority of which were able to submit initial reports to the new CRD Director, Brendon Sewill, by the summer of that year. The ideas emerging from these reports included a renewed bid for entry into the European Economic Community, trade union reform and greater emphasis on ‘selectivity’ in the field of social policy. These were subsequently included in a policy document entitled Putting Britain right ahead (Conservative Political Centre, 1965), which was launched at the party's annual conference in Brighton in October 1965, shortly after Heath (having seen off challenges from Maudling and Powell following a ballot of his fellow Conservative MPs) had succeeded Douglas-Home as Conservative leader.

Although Heath was personally sympathetic to One Nation ideas, he was not wedded to this strand of Conservative thinking or, indeed, to the neo-liberal ideas that were emerging from various think tanks. For Heath and his so-called Heathmen, the main imperative was to modernise and streamline existing economic and social institutions so that Britain could regain its pre-eminent position in the world. Any policy ideas that furthered this aim were to be given serious consideration. For Heath, it was not a question of the provenance of a policy idea but rather the question of whether it might help further his modernising crusade. Pragmatic, evidence-based, expert-led policy and practice rather than ‘pure’ ideology was the order of the day.