Geoffrey Howe

The Rt Hon Geoffrey Howe
File:Howebudget.jpg Sir Geoffrey Howe delivering the budget of 1981.
Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 24 July 1989 – 1 November 1990
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	William Whitelaw
Succeeded by	Michael Heseltine
Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council
In office 24 July 1989 – 1 November 1990
Preceded by	John Wakeham
Succeeded by	John MacGregor
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
In office 11 June 1983 – 24 July 1989
Preceded by	Francis Pym
Succeeded by	John Major
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 4 May 1979 – 11 June 1983
Preceded by	Denis Healey
Succeeded by	Nigel Lawson
Personal details
Born	(1926-12-20) December 20, 1926 Port Talbot, Wales, UK
Political party	Conservative

Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon, CH, PC, QC (born 20 December 1926), known until 1992 as Sir Geoffrey Howe, is a senior British Conservative politician. He was Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet minister, successively holding the posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and finally Leader of the House of Commons and Deputy Prime Minister.

His resignation on 1 November 1990 is widely thought to have hastened Thatcher's own downfall three weeks later, in perhaps the most dramatic period of British Conservative politics in recent times.

Early career

Geoffrey Howe was born in 1926 at Port Talbot in Wales. After leaving Winchester College he did National Service as a Second Lieutenant in East Africa, by his own account giving political lectures in Swahili about how Africans should avoid communism and remain loyal to "Bwana Kingy George". Having declined an offer to remain in the army as a captain, he went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read Law and was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association, and on the committee of the Cambridge Union Society. He was called to the Bar in 1952 and was made a QC in 1965. He became chairman of the Bow Group, an internal Tory think tank of 'young modernisers' in the 1960s, and edited its magazine Crossbow.

Heath government

Howe represented Bebington in the House of Commons from 1964 to 1966, Reigate from 1970 to 1974, and East Surrey from 1974 to 1992. In 1970 he was knighted and appointed Solicitor General in Edward Heath's government, and in 1972 became Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, with a seat in the Cabinet, a post he held until Labour took power in March 1974.

Opposition, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister

In Opposition between 1974 and 1979, Howe contested the second ballot of the 1975 Conservative leadership election, in which Margaret Thatcher was elected, and then was appointed by Thatcher as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. He masterminded the development of new economic policies embodied in an Opposition mini-manifesto The Right Approach to the Economy. Labour Chancellor Denis Healey described being attacked by Howe (at the time his Conservative shadow Chancellor) as "like being savaged by a dead sheep".

With Conservative victory in the 1979 general election, Howe became Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. His tenure was characterised by radical policies to correct the public finances, reduce inflation and liberalise the economy. The shift from direct to indirect taxation, the development of a Medium-Term Financial Strategy, the abolition of exchange controls and the creation of tax-free enterprise zones were among important decisions of his Chancellorship. Some commentators regard him as the most successful Chancellor of his era.

After the 1983 general election Thatcher appointed Howe Foreign Secretary, a post he held for six years. He became in effect the ambassador for a Britain whose international stature had been revived by the growing success of the 'Thatcher revolution'. He played an important part in reasserting the role of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and developed a strong working relationship with US Secretary of State George Schultz, paralleling the bond of Reagan and Thatcher. His tenure was made difficult, however, by growing behind-the-scenes tensions with the Prime Minister on a number of issues, first on South Africa and then on Britain's relations with the European Community. In June 1989, Howe, and his successor as Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, secretly threatened to both resign over Thatcher's opposition to British membership in the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System.

In the following month of July 1989, the little-known John Major was unexpectedly appointed to replace Howe as Foreign Secretary, and the latter became Leader of the House of Commons, Lord President of the Council and Deputy Prime Minister. In the reshuffle, Howe was also offered, but turned down, the post of Home Secretary. Although attempts were made to present it positively, Howe's move back to domestic politics was generally seen as a demotion, especially after Thatcher's press secretary Bernard Ingham belittled the significance of the Deputy Prime Minister appointment at his morning lobby briefing the following day. The personal insult to Howe was compounded by having to give up the Foreign Secretary's country residence Chevening. The sceptical attitude towards Howe in Number 10 weakened him politically — even if it may have been driven to some degree by fear of him as a possible successor — a problem compounded by the resignation from the Treasury of his principal ally Nigel Lawson later in the same year. During his time as Deputy Prime Minister, Howe made a series of coded calls on Thatcher to re-position her administration, which was suffering rising unpopularity because of opposition to the Poll Tax, as a 'listening government'.

Resignation

With pressures mounting on Thatcher, Howe resigned from the Cabinet on November 1, 1990 — in the aftermath of the Prime Minister's speech at the Rome European Council, at which she had declared for the first time that Britain would never enter a single currency — writing a letter of resignation in which he attacked Thatcher's overall handling of politics in the European Union. After attempts by Number 10 to claim that there were differences only of style, rather than substance in Howe's disagreement with the Thatcher, Howe chose to send a powerful message of dissent. In the famous resignation speech in the Commons on November 13, he offered his cricket metaphor for British negotiations in Europe: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease, only for them to find, as the first balls are being bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain". He called on others to "consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long". Although Howe said subsequently that his intention was only to constrain any shift in European policy by the Cabinet under the existing Prime Minister, his dramatic speech is widely seen as an important catalyst in the leadership challenge of Michael Heseltine a few days later, as well as her subsequent resignation as party leader on November 22, 1990, after failing to win an outright vote on the first ballot.

Retirement

Howe retired from the House of Commons in 1992 and was made a life peer as Baron Howe of Aberavon, of Tandridge in the County of Surrey. He published his memoirs "Conflict of Loyalty" (Macmillan, 1994) soon after. In the Lords, Howe has continued to speak on a wide range of foreign-policy and European issues, and more recently led opposition to the Labour government's plan to convert the second chamber into an appointed body.

Howe has taken on a number of non-executive directorships in business and advisory posts in law and academia, including as international political adviser position to the American law firm of Jones Day. His wife Elspeth Howe, a former Chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, was made a life peer in 2001 as Baroness Howe of Idlicote.

Lord Howe is a patron of the UK Metric Association.

He was a close personal friend of Ian Gow, the former MP, parliamentary private secretary, and personal confidant of Margaret Thatcher.

He was often portrayed as a supremely boring individual on the satirical TV show Spitting Image.

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