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Biography Edward Heath was the son of a carpenter and a maid from Broadstairs in Kent, England. He was educated at Chatham House Grammar School in Ramsgate, and in 1935 he went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford as a commoner after twice failing to win a scholarship. During his studies he was supported financially by his parents and a loan from the Kent Education Committee. A talented musician, he won the college's Organ scholarship in his first term. Heath was awarded a second scholarship in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1939. While at the university he became active in Conservative politics, but unlike some senior party figures such as Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin, was an active opponent of appeasement. He supported the Independent Progressive Candidate, Dr. Lindsay, against the official Conservative candidates, Quintin Hogg, in the October 1938 City of Oxford by-election. He was elected as President of the Oxford Union in November 1938 as an anti-appeasement candidate, sponsored by Balliol. He was also twice President of the Oxford University Conservative Association. Heath's opposition to appeasement is said to have stemmed from his witnessing first-hand an NSDAP Nuremberg rally in 1937, where he met top Nazis Goering, Goebbels and Himmler at an SS cocktail party. He said later of Himmler that he was, "the most evil man I have ever met." He served in the Royal Artillery during World War II and joined the Honorable Artillery Company after demobilization in August 1946, where he rose to become the Commanding Officer. He then became a civil servant in the Ministry of Civil Aviation resigning in November 1947 following his adoption as the prospective parliamentary candidates for Bexley. He was Editor of the Church Times and later a banker at Brown, Shipley & Co until his election as MP for Bexley in 1950 (defeating an old contemporary from the Oxford Union, Ashley Bramall) with majority of 133. In February 1951 Heath was appointed as a Opposition Whip by Winston Churchill. He remained in the Whips Office after the Conservatives won the 1951 election, rising rapidly throughout the ranks with promotions to Joint Deputy Chief Whip, Deputy Chief Whip and, in December 1955, he became Government Chief Whip under Anthony Eden. Because of the convention that Whips do not speak in Parliament, he managed to keep out of the controversy over the Suez Crisis. On the announcement of Anthony Eden's resignation, Heath submitted a report on the opinions of the Conservative MPs regarding Eden's possible successors. This report was extremely favorable to Harold Macmillan and was instrumental in eventually securing Macmillan the premiership. Macmillan soon appointed him Minister of Labor after the 1959 election. After the Conservative Party lost the 1964 general election, the defeated PM Douglas-Home changed the party leadership rules to allow for an MP ballot vote and then resigned. The following year Heath unexpectedly won the party's leadership contest, beating the favorite Reginald Maudling by 150 votes to Maudling's 133. Enoch Powell received 15 votes. Heath became the youngest leader the party had had up to that point. He retained office despite the second party defeat in the 1966 general election. With another general election looming, 1970 saw the emergence of the Conservative policy document from the Selsdon Park Hotel, surprising in its embrace of fairly radical monetarist and free-market oriented policies as solutions to the country's unemployment and inflation problems. Labor's left-leaning Prime Minister Harold Wilson regarded the document as a vote loser and dubbed it Selsdon Man in the attempt to portray it as reactionary. But Heath's Conservative Party won the general election of 1970 in a victory seen as a personal triumph that surprised almost all contemporary commentators. Edward Heath's major achievement as prime minister was to take Britain into the European Community in 1973. Trying to bolster his government, Heath called an election for February 28, 1974. The result was inconclusive: the Conservative Party received a plurality of votes cast, but the Labor Party gained a plurality of seats due to the Ulster Unionist MPs refusing to support the Conservatives. Heath began coalition negotiations with leaders of the Liberal Party, but, when these failed, on March 4, 1974 he resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by Harold Wilson and a minority Labor government. Wilson was eventually confirmed with a wafer-thin majority in a second election in October of the same year. Heath, a lifelong bachelor, remained bitter over his defeat and was persistent in his criticisms of the party's new ideological direction for many years. After the 1979 general election, he was offered, and declined, the job of British Ambassador to the United States. He continued to be seen as a figurehead by some on the left of the party up to the time of the 1981 Conservative Party conference. He never forgave Margaret Thatcher for challenging and replacing him as leader of the Conservatives and would refer to her as, 'That woman'. On being asked to comment from time to time on the significance or otherwise of Thatcher's actions or pronouncements he was known to answer, 'I don't know. I'm not a doctor'. In the second 1974 general election, Heath had called for an all party "National Government". Some commentators believe that after losing the leadership Heath's aim was to await a major crisis in British politics and be available as a potential "elder statesman" who could head such a government. However, the opportunity never came. Heath continued to serve as a backbench MP for the London constituency of Old Bexley and Sidcup until retiring from Parliament at the 2001 general election, by which time he had been created a Knight of the Garter and was the longest-serving MP and "Father of the House". In this capacity he oversaw the election of two Speakers of the Commons, namely Betty Boothroyd and Michael Martin. In August 2003, Heath suffered a pulmonary embolism, while on holiday in Salzburg, Austria. He lived in Salisbury until his death from pneumonia on July 17, 2005, at the age of 89. He is interred at Salisbury Cathedral.
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