THE OTHER YORKSHIREMAN A MINISTER OF DEFENCE WITH £.S.D. ON HIS MIND

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30955, 11 January 1966, Page 10

THE OTHER YORKSHIREMAN A MINISTER OF DEFENCE WITH £.S.D. ON HIS MIND

IBy

EVAN WILLIAMS

in London/ • I Ki, Aizirfin/’in/nt)

(Reprinted from the “Sydney Morning Herald" bg ararngement Who is Britain’s most brilliant Yorkshireman? What British politician is 48 years old, has an unmatched record at Grammar bchool and Oxford, an incisive and formidable strength in debate. no, within weeks of Labour coming to power last October, flew to Washington to shake hands with President Johnson?

In Britain, of course, there are no prizes for the answer. In Bradford or Leeds, where Denis Winston Healey comes from, you would get the same reply. Even in the House of Commons there are probably few members who could not tell you at once that the description fits Denis Healey as well as it does the Prime Minister. It may even explain why so many people these days are describing Britain's Secretary of State for Defence as Harold Wilson’s most likely replacement. It is difficult to press the resemblance much further. After all, when Labour was choosing a leader after Gaitskell died, Denis Healey was backing James Callaghan, turning his back on the Wilson movement. Where Wilson’s face is chubby and benign, Healey’s is lined and tough and marked by bushy grey brows that almost meet above his nose. Where Wilson puffs reassuringly on a pipe, Healey draws urgently on filter cigarettes Technical Mastery He is a kind of Minister familiar in Wilson’s Administration. Like the Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, he would be just as welcome in Ted Heath’s next Tory Cabinet—if not for his politics, then at least for the sheer technical mastery of his job. Healey’s real comparison is not with Wilson, but with Robert MacNamara, his American counterpart, whom Healey deeply admires.

His name was in Wilson's first short list of appointments issued within hours of Labour taking office. It was no surprise. Healey had always been a “foreign” man —an expert in defence, overseas affairs, the colonies. Even those Labour men who regard the whole concept of defence as a kind of “mal necessaire” could praise the appointment. Even the unilateralists who would have Britain out of N.A.T.O. before you could say Lynam G. Lemnitzer were agreeing with Wilson on one thing: the jobs that go against the grain need the best men to fill them. And who else but Healey could grasp the excruciating complexities of costing and obsolescence, the abstract patterns of strategic thought and foreign policy, the conflicting interests of three Service departments with three junior Ministers in charge of them? Four Languages “This man knows more about West German politics than I do,” a German diplomat said of Healey in London recently. It was quite probably true, since Healey has lectured on the subject. He speaks German fluently, and three other languages besides He knows more than the average diplomat about music, literature and the theatre, he talks vividly and in depth about painting and philosophy. If there is sometimes a hint of intolerance in his conversation —the intellectual arrogance that some accuse him of—it is due more to the sharpness of his mind, to his bustling air of rude good health, than to any motive of unkindness to inferiors. When he took over the Ministry of Defence—the biggest and most complicated administrative task in modern government Britain’s defence policies were vague and cumbersome. Her defence budget was stretched by her three great commitments — N.A.T.0., the independent deterrent, and “east of Suez," the manpower of her armed forces —the thin red line—was stretched to the limit, yet the size of her forces was taxing too much of the manpower of the nation. Important Changes While Conservative colonels like Sir Tufton Beamish were calling for conscription, industry was complaining of a shortage of manpower. There were only half as many men in the forces as there were 10 years ago. A succession of costly missile and aircraft projects had been scrapped. There was a general sense of uncertainty. Healey has not solved all the problems yet, but no-one can say he has been idle. “We cannot justify any defence expenditure in this country unless it can be proved to be strictly necessary for keeping the peace in the world.” So saying, Healey set in train a round of consultations with Britain’s allies and a series of Cabinet decisions that have shaken more dust from Whitehall filing cabinets than a decade of Tory White Papers. He has brought the most important changes in British defence policy since the war. His measures have had a single aim—to save money. And since this is a defence

policy that all good Labour men can applaud, any suspicions that Healey was tying Britain closer to N.A.T.O. and Germany, approving German participation in an Atlantic nuclear force, and retaining Britain's deterrent were unlikely to be voiced too loudly. By 1970. Healey’s economies will be saving Britain £220 million a year—close enough to Australia’s entire defence budget for a year. Nor will they deprive the Services of the “tools for the' job” as Healey—with one of his frequent echoes of Churchillian phrasing—told a workers’ rally on May Day. Britain’s aircraft production programme was reorganised to save £4O million. Her order for a fifth Polaris submarine was cancelled to save £l5 million. American Phantom jets were bought on credit for the Royal Navy to save £2O million. The TSR2 “hedge-hopping” fighter-bom-ber—the most elaborate and costly achievement of the British electronics and aviation industry—was scrapped,

'saving a fortune that no one has yet been able to compute Healey was a journalist and politics have long been in his blood. He left Balliol College, Oxford, with a Double First and was 19 when he joined the Labour Party in 1936. He entered Parliament in 1952 at a by-election for East Leeds —the heart of industrial Yorkshire, with its mills and spinning factories, the land where Harold Wilson still feels most at home, downing pints on “social night" at the Huddersfield Football Club nearby. When war came Healey joined the Army, was commissioned, served in North Africa and Italy, and was mentioned in dispatches. A Sharp Tongue If he still prefers writing learned pamphlets on nuclear policy to making speeches on the hustings, Healey has certainly not lost the taste for a political fight, or the sharp edge of his tongue. His comment on the aircraft industry after the TSR2 was scrapped —it was no busines of the Minister of Defence "to act as a wet nurse to overgrown and mentally retarded children" —almost provoked a riot among demonstrating aircraft workers. It was not his first indiscretion.

“One of the great crimes of the Conservatives.” said Healey recently, “was that they sent our men into action against the Nazis without the weapons they needed to sur vive.” Even for the Tories who supported Munich this was too much: they wanted him censured. They were not consoled when Healey returned to attack the Conservatives for selling arms abroad. The Yemen was claiming Aden, Sukarno's men were killing Britons in Borneo, Franco was threatening to wipe out Gibraltar “It is nauseating,” he said, “that the Conservatives treated the Union Jack as their private property when you look at their readiness to sell arms to Britain’s enemies." There is a campaign flavour about these speeches. You would not hear Healey making them now. Office has mellowed him, as it has so many of the hot spirits in Harold Wilson’s Government.