Denis Healey - Member of Parliament and In Government

Member of Parliament and In Government

Healey was elected to the House of Commons as MP for Leeds East at a by-election in February 1952 with a majority of 7,000 votes, after the incumbent MP Major James Milner left the Commons to accept a peerage.

He supported the moderate side in the Labour Party during the series of 1950s splits. He was a supporter and friend of Hugh Gaitskell and, when Gaitskell died in 1963, he was horrified at the idea of Gaitskell's volatile deputy, George Brown, leading Labour, saying "He was like immortal Jemima; when he was good he was very good but when he was bad he was horrid". He voted for James Callaghan in the first ballot and Harold Wilson in the second. Healey thought Wilson would unite the Labour Party and lead it to victory in the next general election. He didn't think Brown was capable of doing either. He was appointed Shadow Defence Secretary after the creation of the position in 1964. When Labour won the 1964 election Healey served throughout the government as Secretary of State for Defence. He cut defence expenditure, cancelling the TSR-2 aircraft and withdrawing from East of Suez commitments. He authorised expulsion of Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago and allowed building of the United States military base at Diego Garcia. He remained defence secretary for the party's near six years of Government and was Shadow Defence Secretary after Labour's defeat in June 1970.

Healey was appointed Shadow Chancellor in April 1972 after Roy Jenkins resigned in a row over the European Economic Community (Common Market). At the Labour conference on 1 October 1973, he said, "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". In a speech in Lincoln on 18 February 1974, reported in The Times the following day, Healey went further, promising he would "squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak" and said Lord Carrington, the Conservative Secretary of State for Energy, had made £10m profit from selling agricultural land at prices 30 to 60 times as high as it would command as farming land. He was later widely reported as saying that Labour would "tax the rich until the pips squeak", which Healey denied. When accused by colleagues including Eric Heffer, left-wing MP for Liverpool Walton, of putting Labour's chances of winning the next election in jeopardy with his tax proposals, Healey said the party and the country must face the consequences of Labour's policy of the redistribution of income and wealth; "That is what our policy is, the party must face the realities of it".

Healey became Chancellor of the Exchequer in March 1974 after Labour's narrow election victory. His tenure is divided into Healey Mark I and Healey Mark II. The divide is marked by his decision, taken with Prime Minister James Callaghan, to seek an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan and submit the British economy to the IMF supervision. The loan was negotiated and agreed in November and December 1976 and announced in Parliament on 15 December 1976. 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 betrayal. Healey's policy of increasing benefits for the poor meant those earning over £4,000 per year would be taxed more heavily. Healey’s first budget was strongly progressive, with increases in food subsidies, pensions, and other benefits.