Trough of Lard snuffs it. posted by Richard Seymour

I have my own personal, glowing memory of the late Ted Heath . At the height of the Stephen Lawrence scandal, I happened to be on Question Time with him - although, curiously enough, I had to sit with the serfs in the audience, while Teddy got his own spot-lit enclave in front of the cameras, next to David Steel, Polly Toynbee and Tony Benn. Asking what I took to be some incendiary questions about 'institutional racism' in the police, I got a 'canteen culture' answer from Ms Toynbee followed by a phlegm-ridden plea from Heath on behalf of the police. They were doing their best - indeed, had been since the Scarman report. Something like that. If I'd been close enough, I'd have jammed a squirrel down his throat. Instead, I worked him over with a few statistics and sat back with a vague feeling of smugness. Then, the bastard, Tony Benn began his contribution by saying "No, Teddy'sh right, you can't blame the p'lice". Fucker.


Bloviating windbag croaks it.

Teddy wasn't right. I don't know if he was ever right. Thatcher describes him, apparently, as 'the first modern Conservative', which is accurate in its barmy little way. He was the first post-war Tory leader to try and substantially reverse the post-war consensus: displacing direct taxation onto indirect tax; attempting - ultimately without success - to seriously bludgeon the unions and legally curtail their scope for resisting wage cuts; being spectacularly, unembarrassedly ugly. But in some ways, he was a very old-fashioned kind of Tory. His government imposed internment in Northern Ireland with his approval - torture was routinely practised at internment camps, a practise still deployed in certain imperialist interventions. His government sent the paras in to murder Catholics - precisely how aware Heath was of the details of the planned assault is difficult to determine, since during his appearance before Saville enquiry he temporised, obfuscated, blustered, contradicted himself and generally found his memory failing him at crucial moments. It is clear that whenever the massacre was done, Heath had no qualms about covering for those responsible. He asked Lord Widgery to chair an inquiry into the events, but warned him that a propaganda war was being fought and that the morale of the army was at stake.

His administration was also old-fashioned enough to allow Home Secretary Reginald Maudling to impose a new law to clamp down on "coloured immigration", a deliberate sop to the Powellites. And his views on Europe would today see him blasted as a Federast and a Europhile by most modern Tories.


One down, one to go.

Still, his history in government now reconciles me to his spit-flecked performance on Question Time. After all, if you've presided over a government that shoots Catholics, imprisons trade unionists and smacks dusky immigrants about, what's a bit of over-zealous racist policing? Heath's dead. In time-honoured Tomb style, I say fuck im.