Heseltine’s resignation challenges Thatcher style

Press, 11 January 1986, Page 8

Heseltine’s resignation challenges Thatcher style

NZPA-Reuter London The British Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, faces the most severe challenge to her style of leadership in her 6% years in office with the resignation of the Secretary for Defence Mr Michael Heseltine.

Mr Heseltine yesterday shocked colleagues by walking out of a meeting of the Cabinet and later launched a ferocious attack on Mrs Thatcher’s handling of the battle to rescue Westland, Britain’s only helicopter company, from financial difficulties. He accused Mrs Thatcher of pretending to take a neutral stance in the struggle between rival bids for a stake in the company while actually promoting a rescue bid by the United States helicopter giant, Sikorsky, and the Italian firm, Fiat.

Mr Heseltine, who has backed a bid by a west European consortium, also accused Mrs Thatcher of trying to gag him. Opposition leaders and some members of Mrs

Thatcher’s Conservative Party said the resignation highlighted the Prime Minister’s inability to tolerate dissenting voices in the Cabinet and could harm her image.

A Conservative parliamentarian Mr Patrick Cormack said Mr Heseltine “could not have delivered a more disturbing indictment of the way the Prime Minister has handled a major issue”.

He had resigned because of the way reconstruction of Westland had been handled over a period of months. Mrs Thatcher had chaired three ill-tempered ministerial meetings in December where she tried to ditch officials’ recommendations and clear the way for the American bid, Mr Heseltine said.

A deliberate attempt had been made to avoid “profound issues about defence procurement and Britain’s future as a technologically advanced country.-..this is not a proper way to carry on Government,” he said. Mrs Thatcher said she

accepted Mr Heseltine’s resignation with “great regret.” She said it was also a matter of regret that he was unable to accept a Cabinet ruling that all future statements on Westland be cleared by the Cabinet office. Mr Heseltine said: “If the basis of trust between the Prime Minister and her Defence Secretary no longer

exists there is no place for me with honour in such a Cabinet.”

Mrs Thatcher had refused to allow discussion on the issue at a Cabinet meeting, on December 13. He said he repeatedly asked for his protest to be recorded but the Secretary of the Cabinet had not done so. Mr Heseltine said the Government had suggested it was being even-handed between the offers to Westland.

“In practice throughout, the attempt was being made to remove any obstacles to the (American) offer, even to the extent of changing existing Government policy,” he said. Mr Heseltine had lined up against the Secretary for Trade and Industry, Mr Leon Brittan, in an extraordinary public argument over the bid by the United States led Sikorsky-Fiat combine to rescue Westland.

Mr Brittan effectively backed the American offer while Mr Heseltine put up a last-minute public fight for a European consortium of

British Aerospace, General Electric, Italy’s Agusta, France’s Aerospatiale and Messerschmitt - BoelkowBlohm of West Germany. Mr Brittan said Westland should decide its own future while Mr Heseltine feared for defence independence and the future of Britain’s only helicopter company if it was under American ownership. The row became a personality struggle with implications for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Mr Heseltine’s resignation over what has been portrayed as the relatively minor matter of Westland may have sidelined him as a potential successor to Mrs Thatcher — who clearly has not got on with the ambitious secretary for Defence. According to Whitehall rumour, while at Oxford University Michael Heseltine mapped out a plan for his life, culminating with his election as Prime Minister.He had a successful career out of politics, making a fortune in publishing, and was described as the richest man in the Cabinet.