BBC: Former PM Sir Edward Heath dies (UK Prime Minister)

[Greeby]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4691051.stm

Former Conservative Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath has died at the age of 89.

His successor Lady Thatcher said he was a "political giant" and "in every sense the first modern Conservative leader".

Sir Edward, who was knighted in 1992, won his first seat for the Tories in Bexley in 1950 and led the 1970-74 Conservative Government.

He took Britain into the European Economic Community and sent troops to Northern Ireland. He lost the leadership to Mrs Thatcher in 1975.


:cry: Whatever his faults, there passes a REAL Prime Minister. Take note, Tony

[Cooley Hurd]

1. RIP, Sir edward...

I guess you can now ask George Harrison why he singled you out in his song "Taxman."

[daleo]

3. "Taxman, Mr. Wilson, taxman, Mr. Heath"

I think those were just the two prime ministers during that time of the Beatles career.

[Briar]

2. Yes, I was sorry to hear this.

It tells you how awful Thatcher and Bliar have been that this more traditional, one-nation, Europhile Tory should seem a finer Prime Minister and statesman than the two of them put together.

[Greeby]

4. True

Well, that and whatever he did that you might object to, at least it was his idea, and not that of a tyrant in the White House.

What I wouldn't give to have a Prime Minister like that again. This one's for you, Teddy :beer:

[non sociopath skin]

5. Conservatives mourn the passing of an ex-party leader. Not.

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/sterlingtimes/vpost?id=542221

The same mess of plonkers, not so very long ago, were slagging off DU for not "Being respectful" after the demise of Ronnie Rayguns.

Wankers.

The Skin

[Fenris]

7. Wow that's a frightening website.

:scared:

[cheeseit]

10. That lot really are a bunch of whackos.

RIP Ted. To restate more respectfully what i said in the other thread, even though he was at best a mediocre PM (which is actually pretty good compared to the flat-out disastrous reigns of subsequent Tory PMs), he was the last Conservative leader to actually posess an ounce of decency. Which is of course why hardcore Tories hate his guts.

[Taxloss]

13. Ugh.

Why do you bother fishing in that sewer?

[non sociopath skin]

15. It's like sucking a hollow tooth, Taxloss.

It hurts, but I can't stop myself doing it ...

Sometimes when I'm feeling ecumenical and cuddly I have to remind myself what some of the other lot are really like. Just like when the US DUers go to Freeperland, I guess.

The Skin

[Taxloss]

16. I think I'm too tribal and Fabian to consort like that.

They make me sick.

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. Ha.

I'm planning on being plenty "disrespectful" when Maggie bites it, too. But then, I believe in doing a person the courtesy of not saying anything about him when he's dead that I wouldn't have said when he was alive. As Voltaire said, "One owes respect to the living; to the dead, one owes only the truth."

[Fenris]

6. Ah, a good rational conservative.

:toast:

Here's to the late Ted.

[Henny Penny]

8. Here here!!!

Farewell Ted!

:toast:

[fedsron2us]

9. The BBC article does not do justice to the man

It does not explain that it was the threat of fascism that drove his pro European agenda. In 1937 he witnessed the evil of Nazism first hand at the Nuremberg rally. It coloured his entire life. Heath was one of the few pre war Conservatives that actively opposed the appeasement of Hitler. Of course, later in life his reluctance to back US policy blindly did not make him popular in Washington.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/parl/Story/0,2763,461083,00.html

On edit - A bit more about Heath's life from an educational site

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRheathE.htm

[Greeby]

11. Cool article

I particularly enjoy this passage here:

As ever, Benn is making contemporary political points. He points out that in the 60s Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, had refused US appeals to send a token British force to fight in Vietnam. "But otherwise, am I wrong in saying all British governments since 1945 have done what the Americans wanted ?"

"I wouldn't go that far," replies Heath, who rarely goes as far as Benn. "On Vietnam I wouldn't play with them either. I didn't play with Kissinger over India , where he wanted us to go in. And I didn't play when he wanted to go into Cyprus, when he wanted to go in with the Israeli war."


The idea of a British PM telling Nixon and Kissinger to shove it, ah, to be a fly on that wall. :loveya:

[Anarcho-Socialist]

12. Rest In Peace, Sir Ted Heath n/t

[Taxloss]

14. Goodbye, Ted.

You were a feature of my childhood. You hated Thatcher and took us into Europe, and that makes you a good chap in my book.

RIP.

[whalerider55]

17. RIP

i was living in London 1973/74, and i remember him as a decent man, and a sharp contrast to the two thieves in the white house at the time.

whalerider55

[T_i_B]

18. I wasn't born then....

...but I'm afraid that whenever I've spoken to people who were old enough to remember Ted Heath's government they tend to be less then complementary.

Reasons why? All anyone ever seems to mention about that government are the strikes, the three day weeks and the inflation. Plus the EU is not as popular a cause as it was in the 1970's. Indeed the main reason why the right grew to dislike him as that he was a massive Europhile in a party that has been growing ever more-anti-EU for some time now.

[GCP]

19. You hit the nail on the head

I was in the UK during those years and he was regarded as the guy who put us on the 3 day work week and the electricity blackouts because of refusing to give in to wage demands of miners and elecrical workers. When people started to get pissed off with the whole situation, he called a snap election and basically put his reputation on the line. He lost to Labour, who then went on to lose to Thatcher who was 50 times worse than Heath had ever been.
So if he'd just been willing to negotiate more with the workers, he may have survived politically and (maybe) we would never have been saddled with Thatcher, who was the worst thing that ever happened to the UK and one of the main reasons we, as a family, came to live in the US.

[non sociopath skin]

20. Heath was certainly a bogeyman of the left in those days ...

... although he was seen as a figure of fun rather than the demonic icon that La Snatchera became.

As I've said elsewhere, in those Dear Dead Days Beyond Recall, Labour-Tory politics were seen as being about fine-tuning of a broadly consensual mixed-economy social democratic system of government, and not about the demonising of the Evil Opposition and All Its Works.

The Skin