Everything about Denis Healey totally explained
Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey,
CH,
MBE,
PC (born
30 August 1917), is a British
Labour politician. He was
Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Defence from
1964 to
1970 and
Chancellor of the Exchequer from
1974 to
1979.
Early life
Healey was born in
Mottingham in
Kent. At the age of five he and his family moved to
Keighley, in the West Riding of
Yorkshire. His paternal grandfather was a
tailor from
Enniskillen in
Ireland. Healey's father was an
engineer who had worked his way up from humble origins studying at night school. Healey was one of three siblings.
Healey was given his middle name in honour of
Winston Churchill and was educated at
Bradford Grammar School. In
1936 he won an exhibition in
classics at
Balliol College, Oxford where he was involved in Labour politics, although unlike many future politicians he wasn't active in the Oxford Union Society. He studied
Moderations (
Latin and
Greek literature) and
Greats (
ancient history and
philosophy). Whilst at Oxford, Healey joined the
Communist Party in
1937 but left it in
1939, in protest over the
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
At Oxford, Healey met future Conservative Prime Minister
Ted Heath, whom he succeeded as President of Balliol College Junior Common Room, and who was to be both a life-long friend and political rival. Healey managed to get a
double first for his degree, awarded in
1940.
World War II
After Healey had taken his degree, he served in
World War II, with the
Royal Engineers, in
North Africa,
Sicily and
Italy, and was the Military Landing Officer for the British assault brigade at
Anzio. Leaving the service with the rank of
Major after the war - he declined an offer to remain in the army as a
Lieutenant-Colonel - Healey joined the Labour Party. Still in uniform, Major Healey gave a barnstorming and strongly left-wing speech to the Labour Party conference in
1945, shortly before the general election in which he narrowly failed to win the
Conservative-held seat of
Pudsey and Otley, doubling the Labour vote but losing by 1651 votes. Following this, he was appointed to the post of secretary of the
International Department of the Labour Party, becoming a foreign policy advisor to Labour Party leaders and establishing contacts with socialists across Europe.
From 1948 to 1960 he was a councillor of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs, and of the
International Institute for Strategic Studies from 1958 till 1961. He was a member of the
Fabian Society executive from 1954 till 1961.
Member of Parliament and In government
Healey was elected to the
House of Commons as MP for
Leeds South East at a
by-election in February
1952 with a majority of 7000 votes, after the incumbent MP
Major James Milner left the Commons to accept a peerage.
Healey supported the moderate side in the Labour Party during the series of 1950s' splits. Though a supporter and friend of
Hugh Gaitskell, when Gaitskell died in
1963, Healey was horrified at the idea of Gaitskell's volatile deputy,
George Brown, leading the Labour Party, saying "He was like immortal Jemima, when he was good he was very good but when he was bad he was horrid". As a result Healey voted for Callaghan in the first ballot and
Harold Wilson in the second. Healey thought Wilson would be able to unite the Labour party and lead it to victory in the next general election. He didn't think Brown was capable of doing either.
When Labour won the
1964 election Healey served throughout the government as
Secretary of State for Defence. In this capacity he'd to cut back on defence expenditure, including cancelling the
TSR-2 aircraft and withdrawing from "
East of Suez" commitments. He remained in that post for the party's near six-years of Government and in a shadow position after Labour's unexpected defeat in June
1970.
Healey was appointed
Shadow Chancellor in April
1972 after
Roy Jenkins resigned in a row over
Europe. Healey was widely - but incorrectly - reported as saying that under a Labour Government he'd "tax the rich until the pips squeak". However he did say at the Labour Party conference in
1973, "I warn you that there are going to be howls of anguish from those rich enough to pay over 75% on their last slice of earnings".
Healey became
Chancellor of the Exchequer in March
1974 after the Labour Party's narrow election victory. As Chancellor, Healey's tenure is sometimes divided into two parts which are sometimes called
Healey Mark I and
Healey Mark II. (See "The Jekyll and Hyde Years: Politics and Economic Policy since 1964" by Michael Stewart.) The divide between the two is marked by Healey's decision, taken in conjunction with then-Prime Minister
James Callaghan to seek an
International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan and submit the British economy to the associated IMF supervision. Within some parts of the Labour Party the transition from Healey Mark I (which had seen a proposal for a
wealth tax) to Healey Mark II (associated with a government specified wage control) was regarded as a betrayal. Healey's left-wing ideology of increasing benefits for the poor famously led to him saying that he'd "Tax the rich until they squealed" in which to help the poor, those earning over £100,000 per year would be taxed more heavily than beforehand.
Shadow Cabinet and Retirement
Healey's bushy eyebrows and soft-spoken wit earned him a favourable reputation with the public. When the media were not present, his humour was equally caustic but more risqué: "These fallacies (pronounced like 'phalluses') are rising up everywhere", he once retorted at a meeting of
Leeds University Labour Society. The impressionist
Mike Yarwood coined for him the catchphrase "Silly Billy", which Healey had never actually said until that point, but he adopted it and used it frequently. However Healey's directness of speech made enemies. He attacked left-wing opponents of his policies as being "out of their tiny Chinese minds" early in
1976, meaning to imply that they were
Maoist, but offending the
Chinese community. The controversy over this remark led to a poor performance when he fought for
the Labour leadership on
Harold Wilson's resignation. He obtained 30 votes in the first ballot on
25 March, and then 38 in the second on
30 March. He was eliminated from the election and supported James Callaghan in the final ballot on
5 April.
His long-serving deputy at the Treasury,
Joel Barnett, in response to a remark by a third party that "Denis Healey would sell his own grandmother", quipped, "No, he'd get me to do it for him". On
14 June 1978, he likened being attacked by the mild-mannered
Sir Geoffrey Howe in the
House of Commons to being 'savaged by a dead sheep'. Nevertheless, when Healey was featured on
This Is Your Life in
1989, Howe appeared and paid warm tribute to Healey. The two have been friends for many years.
Healey was considered favourite to win the
Labour Party leadership election in November
1980, which was decided by Labour MPs only. However he ran a complacent campaign in which he took his support from the right wing of the party for granted. Four Labour MPs who later defected to the
Social Democratic Party (SDP) claimed they voted against Healey in order to land the Labour Party with an unelectably left-wing leader and so help their new party.
He was elected
deputy leader to
Michael Foot when Foot became leader, but the next year was challenged for the job by
Tony Benn under the new election system, which included individual members and trade unions. The contest was seen by many as a battle for the soul of the Labour Party and was vigorously debated over the summer of
1981 ending with Healey winning by 50.4 per cent to Benn's 49.6 on
27 September 1981. In this still controversial contest
Ron Todd, the general secretary of the huge
Transport and General Workers Union (the "T&G"), was obliged to cast the T&G's collective votes for the left candidate Tony Benn. The T&G's choice of Tony Benn as deputy leader of the labour Party was the outcome of a normal and constitutional preconference vote by the T&G's democratically elected Labour Party Conference Delegation. The T&G's support for Tony Benn reflected the votes of union members in T&G branches and regions nationally but after secret consultations with the rightwing of the party the general secretary defied the democratic decision of the delegation and at the last minute cast all the T&G's block vote for Healey, assuring him of a narrow victory he'd never have achieved without this switch.
Healey served as Shadow
Foreign Secretary during most of the 1980s, a job he'd coveted. His views on nuclear weapons were at variance with the official unilateral nuclear disarmament policy of the party. After the
1987 general election, he retired from the Shadow Cabinet, and in
1992 he stood down after 40 years as a Leeds MP. In that year he received a life peerage as
Baron Healey, of Riddlesden in the County of
West Yorkshire. Healey is regarded by some - especially in the Labour Party - as "the best Prime Minister we never had". Denis Healey is a founder member of the secretive
Bilderberg Group. When journalist
Jon Ronson requested to see Healey's photos of Bilderberg meetings, Healey replied: "No. Fuck off."
Although he supported
Tony Blair to be leader of the Labour Party within hours of
John Smith's death, he later became critical of Blair. During
2004 and
2005, he several times called on Blair to stand down as Prime Minister in favour of
Gordon Brown. In July
2006 he argued that "Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War" and that "I don't think we need nuclear weapons any longer". This view is shared by many Labour MPs.
Personal life
Healey married Edna on
21 December 1945. They are still married today after over 60 years, and they live in East Sussex. They have three children.
He has been a keen photographer for many years and enjoys music and painting.
Author
His publications have included;
Healey's Eye (photography) (1980), The
Time of My Life, (his autobiography) (1989),
When Shrimps Learn to Whistle (1990),
My Secret Planet (an anthology) (1992),
Denis Healey's Yorkshire Dales (1995) and
Healey's World (2002).
In popular culture
- The Remastered edition of the Yes album Tormato, features the added track "Money"; which contains a satirical voice-over of Healey by Rick Wakeman in the background throughout the course of the song.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Denis Healey'.
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