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Spectator
7 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Ted Heath deserves to be remembered for more than his blemishes
For anyone born as I was, in the seventies, Edward Heath – who died 20 years ago this week – was a frequent presence in the news, and not always for the best of reasons. He was the silver-haired, curmudgeonly ex-prime minister nursing an implacable rage against his successor Margaret Thatcher, the cabinet colleague who'd ousted, then eclipsed him. Against her monetarist policies he railed, perhaps justly, though in a way that seemed at times bitingly personal. On global issues, with which he much concerned himself, Heath often appeared to be defending the indefensible. The tyrant Saddam Hussein he described as an 'astute person, a clever person'; he was openly against Western intervention in Bosnia, and came close to being a no-bones apologist for a brutal communist regime in China with whom he had, it was said, opaque business links. A confirmed bachelor, seemingly asexual, Heath cut an isolated figure, fuming in the wilderness, all too often reviled by the party he'd once led. How had this man ever become prime minister? The picture he painted of himself, it turned out, didn't do him justice, because to know something of Edward Heath, his beliefs and their formation, is to gain increasing respect for him. Heath had once seemed the great hope of conservatism, the Balliol-educated son of a Kent builder who would lead the party away from its stuffy, class-ridden image and make it fit for the modern age. The Mirror called him 'a new kind of Tory leader…who has fought his way to the top by guts, ability and political skill.' The Panorama programme pushed him as 'the man for those Conservatives who think the party needs a 'tiger in its tank.'' Even Marcia Williams, political secretary to opponent Harold Wilson, gushed about Heath's 'clean and shining silver hair, well-tended and suntanned face, immaculate blue suit and tie.' Yesterday's man once looked like tomorrow's saviour. There seem, in fact, to have been two distinct Edward Heaths – before and after he became party leader. In his Oxford days, he'd been President of the Oxford Union and head of the Conservative Association, attracting plaudits wherever he went. He'd visited Spain during the Civil War and travelled widely in Germany, attending a Nazi rally. There he saw Hitler speak and met Goebbels, Goering and Himmler, returning from the experience an ardent anti-appeaser. As artillery officer in the Second World War, he'd fought bravely through France and the low countries, described by one admiring major as 'the most capable officer I met in any department during the four years in which I had command.' In 1946, Heath attended the Nuremberg Trials, and became, ever after, a convinced Europhile: 'My generation did not have the option of living in the past; we had to work for the future…Only by working together right across our continent had we any hope of creating a society which would uphold the true values of European civilisation.' Finally, as PM, he got his wish, taking us into Europe on New Year's Day 1973. Many, seeing the wholesale dismantling of that legacy, will surely continue to feel that he was right. Certainly, he had legions of admirers in his early days. Elected as MP for Bexley in 1950, he was promoted under Eden a few years later, becoming, in Lord Chancellor David Kilmuir's description, 'the most brilliant Chief Whip of modern times…the most promising of the new generation of Conservatives.' Even Tony Benn rolled over for Heath: 'How you manage to combine such a friendly manner,' he wrote, 'with such an iron discipline is a source of respectful amazement to us all.' With his classical conducting and his yachting – the latter of which he excelled at, winning two international cups – Heath had real hinterland too. 'He changed the scale of my thinking,' said one colleague who worked for him. 'He is what I would like to be.' But it was as leader and then PM that his limitations became clear. 'Gone,' as minister Ian Gilmour put it, 'was the genial, human and successful Chief Whip and in his place…was a brusque and dour leader of the party.' In speeches, Heath was leaden and uninspiring, forever torturing the House with turgid, fact-laden addresses. His honesty and integrity were acknowledged, but party members sniped about his social background (his voice was almost comically posh and plodding, though the 'ow' sounds gave him away). They also speculated darkly and ad nauseam about his 'confirmed bachelor' status ('The voters of Aldershot,' wrote Julian Critchley, 'evidently much preferred dull wives to no wives at all.') Curt and brusque, with a deadpan humour too subtle for many and an intolerance of dissent, Heath made needless enemies among MPs and party members. What stands out, though, is the loyalty and affection many close colleagues went on feeling towards this awkward, bloody-minded man. 'I don't know what it is – it's a mystery to me,' said Willie Whitelaw. 'I only know I trust him more than I've ever trusted anyone.' Having won a surprise election victory in 1970, Heath, a meticulous planner, arrived with the boldest of intentions, speaking of 'a change so radical, a revolution so quiet and yet so total that it will go far beyond the programme for a Parliament.' Yet his free-market, non-interventionist aims quickly hit the rocks. Soon he was bailing out companies and, amidst an endless barrage of walkouts and work-to-rules, caving into union demands like the best of them. Following two miners' strikes, a compulsory 'three-day week' to conserve energy, and an eye-watering five 'states of emergency' in four years, Heath went to the country in 1974, losing by a wafer to Harold Wilson. When he lost another election later that year, it was clear to everyone except Heath himself that it was time for change. Enter Margaret Thatcher, and the Great Sulk began. At conference after conference, Heath lambasted her policies, all attempts at a rapprochement scotched by him. He denounced her to the press as a 'traitor' and at one public event, presented with a chocolate image of her face, reportedly picked up a knife and stabbed it into splinters, to the glee of onlooking hacks. In an open letter to the Times, his biographer and onetime acolyte George Hutchinson laid into him: 'You are already estranged from a number of old friends…You are in danger of losing the goodwill and respect of the party.' Heath, as so often, sailed on regardless. Yet as he did so, his real achievements – taking us into Europe, the abolition of Resale Price Maintenance – seemed to recede on the horizon. Heath may now be the forgotten man – widely considered a failed prelude to Thatcherism – yet this is unjust. What the electorate could embrace in the eighties – after a decade of industrial woe, an IMF bail-out and the Winter of Discontent – was miles on from what they'd have swallowed a decade before. As Ian Gilmour put it: 'To attack Ted Heath for not having behaved like Margaret Thatcher is little more sensible than to say that the First World War could have been won more cheaply by using the methods of the second.' Meanwhile, his term in office has lessons for today's bunch of leaders. Kemi Badenoch, in her great policy-purdah, might recall Heath's rigorous planning and lofty aims for national renewal – all torpedoed, within weeks, by the intransigence of actual, unforeseen events. Keir Starmer could reflect on the words of Enoch Powell (probably Heath's deadliest foe) about the perils of abandoning core policies: 'Does my right hon. Friend not know that it is fatal for any Government or party or person to seek to govern in direct opposition to the principles on which they were entrusted with the right to govern?' As for Heath himself, he deserves, perhaps, more credit than he's customarily given. The smouldering resentment of his later years too often undermined what was at times a formidable, even inspirational career. As Labour MP Denis Macshane pointed out, he had, by the end of it all, 'made and lived more history than any other British politician in active service.' The last word, though, surely goes to Philip Ziegler, his official biographer: 'He was a great man, but his blemishes, though by far less considerable, were quite as conspicuous as his virtues, and it is too often by his blemishes that he is remembered.'
Sky News AU
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
Resurfaced clips of Buzz Aldrin reignite Apollo 11 landing conspiracy theory as US marks 56th anniversary of first man to walk on the moon
Resurfaced clips of Buzz Aldrin have reignited an old conspiracy theory about the 1969 moon landing, with scientists once again having to debunk it. As the United States prepares to mark the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, old clips of Buzz Aldrin have resurfaced, which have reignited a conspiracy theory claiming the iconic 1969 moon landing never happened. The clips, which show Aldrin on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien Show back in 2000 have, according to some social media commentators, given credence to the theory that man never made it to the lunar surface. In the video, Aldrin responded to a quip by host Conan O'Brien saying that he watched the moon landing as a boy. 'No, you didn't,' Aldrin snapped. "There wasn't any television, there wasn't anyone taking a picture. You watched an animation," he said. The video, which has since racked up more than a million views online, has led to conspiracy theorists in the United States taking it as gospel that the moon landings were faked and were staged by NASA to fool the Soviet Union. A subsequent 2015 clip has also gone viral, with an eight-year-old girl asking the NASA veteran why NASA has not returned to the moon since, to which he replied, 'Because we didn't go there, and that's the way it happened.' Doubt over the moon landing took root in the mid-1970s, fuelled by public mistrust after Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. Theories about staged sets, lighting inconsistencies, and suspicious interviews have persisted ever since. — Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) March 20, 2023 NASA has repeatedly dismissed such claims, pointing to telemetry data, lunar rock samples, and the testimonies of thousands of engineers, scientists, and astronauts as proof of the mission's authenticity. In fact, a Reuters fact check from 2023 has debunked the 2000 clip, with the news agency reporting that Aldrin's comments are related to animation graphics that television networks used to illustrate the moon landings. The news agency also debunked the 2015 clip, which was a question-and-answer session at the Oxford Union. They said the clips edited out elements where Aldrin was talking about his fears of a technical failure in the craft that could have caused a catastrophic fire like the Apollo 1 disaster or caused a decompression sending himself and Neil Armstrong into the vacuum of space. Aldrin is the only surviving member of the Apollo 11 team after Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins died in 2012 and 2021, respectively. In the 2024 US election, he endorsed Donald Trump for the presidency after he made a promise to put an American astronaut back onto the moon.
NZ Herald
20-06-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
David Seymour: I went to Oxford to test my beliefs and learned a sad thing about NZ
Is it a prank? We think it's real. Okay, then, but we can't use taxpayer money. That conversation is how I ended up debating at Oxford Union. The question of the debate was that 'no one can be illegal on stolen land'. It was a clever moot, tapping into colonisation and immigration. What Government has the right to tell would-be migrants they can't come, when every inch of the planet has been fought over at some time? I went to test my beliefs that human rights are universal, that we should stop searching the past for reasons to doubt one another and focus more on where we're going than where we've been. I think those beliefs held up well, but I learned something sad about our country, too. Every Thursday in semester time, the Union invites guests to debate. Most people don't realise Lange was one of six or eight debaters. His speech, and the uranium line, obliterated the others. I had a student and a couple of American 'immigration enforcement experts' on my team. On the other side was the president of the Union, an Australian senator, an Oxford academic, and someone best described as Noam Chomsky's daughter. At the end of the debate, the audience divides, going through one door or another to register their vote for or against the motion, like Parliaments of old. The president of the Union opened, saying our team of white guys in tuxedos had 'something in common', that all borders are drawn in blood, and that New Zealand 'invites, exploits, then hunts' migrants. Since she came in an Alice in Wonderland dress with a two-metre hoop skirt, though, you can't help but like her. I think she was in on the joke. The Australian senator said 'white immigration' to Australia is unlawful, then described her own migration from India without explaining the difference. The academic wanted open immigration rights for anyone whose ancestors had been colonised, but it wasn't clear how far back this went. Chomsky promised to make seven points in her speech. I listened, but can only guess they were above my pay grade. My team agreed that, yes, history is filled with barbarism on all sides, but who decides where it stopped and started? Should we count Scottish victims of the Clearances as victims or villains? How about descendants of Māori who slaughtered other tribes in the musket wars? How do we account for people who, like the new Pope, have ancestors on both sides of conflict? We argued that grouping ourselves into victims and villains, based on ancestry, is exactly what leads to oppression and discrimination – seeing an individual as just another faceless member of a guilty group. Even if you could pick a time when land stopped being owned and started being stolen, you would create another problem, determinism. No wonder young people are depressed and anxious, being told they are either victims or villains in stories written before they were born. Building a better world, we said, needs a commitment to treat each person as a thinking and valuing being, deserving equal rights and dignity. I think the arguments for equal rights stood up well, but I learned something about New Zealand from how the events in Oxford were reported at home. What a depressing little country we can be. TVNZ based its coverage around an activist saying I shouldn't be able to speak because free speech is dangerous. The headline was me 'defending' speaking. What a contrast with the Oxford Union's commitment to free speech. Stuff's coverage announced, sneeringly, that I 'debated at Oxford, and lost'. Nowhere in the article does it explain how the debate is decided, or that my team, not I, lost by a margin of 54-46. It quotes a handful of audience members who disagreed with me, but didn't try to inform the reader of what I said or why nearly half voted for my team. Anyone reliant on these outlets would prove the adage that if you don't read the media, you're uninformed; if you do, then you're misinformed. I thank the Herald for its more balanced coverage and this right of reply. Thank you, Oxford Union, for the wonderful opportunity to freely debate controversial topics. Yes, all borders are drawn in blood, but if you want a better world, you need to ask not where we came from, but where we're going. Some in our media could learn from your spirit. David Seymour is the Deputy Prime Minister and Act Party leader
Middle East Eye
17-06-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Oxford Union defies trustees' threat to shut it down over pro-Palestine speech
The Oxford Union, founded in 1823, describes itself as the most prestigious debating society in the world. The student-led organisation at the University of Oxford says its "roots lie in free speech". It has hosted scores of world leaders and multiple British prime ministers. William Gladstone, Edward Heath and Boris Johnson were once union presidents. But now, the institution has been plunged into chaos over a debate it held last year on Israel's war on Gaza. Students are clashing with the union's trustees, who have threatened to shut the institution down if it publishes a video of a speech by Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Middle East Eye can reveal that the union's standing committee voted on Monday to publish the full video of Abulhawa's speech - but some union officials fear the president will not do so under pressure from trustees. "The Oxford Union was one of few places where we could have debates like this without the influence of moneyed interests," a senior union official who asked to remain anonymous told MEE. "Students are supposed to organise debates without being influenced by power and money. But now the trustees are pressuring the committee. "This is censorship of pro-Palestinian speech." 'Apartheid state responsible for genocide' In November 2024, the union voted by an overwhelming majority that Israel is an "apartheid state responsible for genocide". The debate made national headlines but the real scandal was yet to come. On 5 December, the union published a speech from the debate by Susan Abulhawa, a renowned Palestinian-American author, on YouTube, where it racked up hundreds of thousands of views within a few days. But in under a week the video was removed from YouTube without explanation. At the same time, another version of the video, with 73 seconds of Abulhawa's speech removed, was uploaded. Sources told MEE the decision was taken under intense pressure from the union's board of trustees, and after the president who presided over the debate, Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, finished his term as president. Censored speech In the censored sections of the speech, heard by MEE, Abulhawa discussed the Israeli military's documented use of booby-trapped toys and systematic rape in Israeli prisons. She argued that Zionists feel divinely favoured and entitled and that they are unable to live with others without dominating them. Oxford Union declares Israel an 'apartheid state responsible for genocide' Read More » Abulhawa said the censored parts of the speech were "factual information". A union member who attended the debate told MEE on condition of anonymity that "everything Susan said was measured and factually accurate. She is a great and experienced writer." "Editing her speech is censorship of an important piece of literary work." Abulhawa brought a lawsuit against the union on 3 March, accusing it of discrimination and copyright infringement and alleging they had breached a contract signed before the debate. Sources told MEE that the union's elected standing committee, which is made up of students and serves as the institution's governing body, recently decided to publish the full, unedited video. But the Oxford Literary and Debating Union Trust (OLDUT) - the charity board that oversees the society - reportedly threatened to shut the union down if it published the full video. "Trustees were telling members of the standing committee that they would go to jail," a senior union official said on condition of anonymity. "But there was nothing illegal in the speech and no one was contacted by the police after the debate - including the speakers." In a dramatic turn this week, and in apparent defiance of the alleged threats by trustees, on Monday the standing committee held a vote on whether to "upload the full, unedited speech of Susan Abulhawa". A senior union official told MEE that nine out of the 20 committee members resigned to avoid voting. In the end, the remaining members of the committee voted to publish the video. Oxford college referred to charity regulator over £1m investment in Israeli settlements Read More » The union president, Anita Okunde, was given 48 hours to publish the video. The deadline is 8:30pm on Wednesday. In a bizarre twist, a senior union official told MEE that some members of the standing committee want the president to hold another vote or simply refuse to implement the vote's result. "Some on the standing committee are claiming the vote was invalid or that the president can ignore it," the official said. "The Oxford Union is on its knees under pressure from the trustees. "This has never happened in the history of the society." MEE has contacted the Oxford Union for comment. Abulhawa told MEE that "this is part of a widespread pattern of silencing Palestinian and pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide voices in western institutions, media and political life." Now, all eyes are on the Oxford Union's president - and on the society's YouTube channel.
India Today
12-06-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Chief Justice's judicial terrorism caution amid government's overreach charge
Chief Justice of India BR Gavai said that while judicial activism remains an enduring aspect of India's democracy, it must not cross the line into 'judicial terrorism.'Speaking during an informal interaction with Indian students at Trinity College, Oxford Union, Chief Justice Gavai addressed the ongoing debate surrounding the judiciary's 'intrusion' into the legislative domain."Judicial activism is bound to stay. At the same time, judicial activism should not be turned into judicial terrorism. So, at times, you try to exceed the limits and try to enter into an area where, normally, the judiciary should not enter," he said in response to a The Chief Justice's remarks come at a time when the government has accused the judiciary of overreach. Gavai clarified that the judiciary would intervene if the legislature or executive failed in their duty to safeguard fundamental rights, but that judicial review should be used sparingly."This power has to be exercised in a very limited area in very exception cases, like, say, a statute, is violative of the basic structure of the Constitution, or it is in direct conflict with any of the fundamental rights of the Constitution, or if the statute is so patently arbitrary, discriminatory," he stated. "The courts can exercise it, and the courts have done so."Gavai's comments echoed the note of caution sounded by Justice Surya Kant during his keynote address at the 'Envision India Conclave' in San Francisco earlier this week. Kant had stressed that courts must not supplant the role of the legislature or override the will of the they must act as facilitators of democratic dialogue - strengthening participatory governance, protecting the vulnerable, and ensuring rule of law prevails even in moments of political uncertainty," Kant had said. "Judicial overreach risks unsettling the delicate balance of power."Chief Justice Gavai, who is the second Dalit and first Buddhist to hold India's highest judicial office, characterised the Constitution as a "quiet revolution etched in ink." He described it as a transformative force that not only guarantees rights but actively uplifts the historically Chief Justice also urged Indian students studying at British universities to return and contribute to nation-building."The only appeal to you is that after you complete your studies, you do not remain here. Come back to India. Give your services to make our Bharat strong and one of the most important powers in the entire globe," he said. "So, Bharat needs you, respond to that need."With PTI inputs
