Member of Parliament
Heseltine contested the safe Labour seat of Gower in 1959 and in 1964 the marginal constituency of Coventry North, which he lost to the Labour incumbent Maurice Edelman by 3,530 votes. Heseltine was eventually successful in 1966, becoming the Member of Parliament (MP) for the safe Conservative seat of Tavistock in Devon. After the abolition of the Tavistock constituency he represented Henley from February 1974.
Following the Conservative victory in the 1970 General Election Heseltine was promoted to the Government by the Prime Minister Edward Heath, serving briefly as a junior minister at the Department of Transport before moving to the Department for the Environment where he was partly responsible for shepherding the Local Government Act 1972 through Parliament. In 1972, he moved to the Department of Industry, which he subsequently shadowed, now as a member of the Shadow Cabinet - during the subsequent spell in opposition.
As Minister for Aerospace in 1973, Heseltine was responsible for persuading other governments to invest in Concorde and was accused of misleading the House of Commons when he stated that the government was still considering giving financial support to the Tracked Hovercraft when the Cabinet had already decided to withdraw funding. Although his chief critic Airey Neave disliked Heseltine as a brash 'arriviste' Neave's real target, in the view of Heseltine's PPS Cecil Parkinson, was Heath, whom Neave detested and later helped to topple from party leader in 1975.
Heseltine was Shadow Industry Secretary throughout the Conservative's 1974-79 time in opposition gaining notoriety following a 1976 incident in the House of Commons during the debate on measures introduced by the Labour Government to nationalise the shipbuilding and aerospace industries. Accounts of exactly what happened vary but the most colourful image portrayed Heseltine seizing the mace and brandishing it towards Labour left-wingers who were celebrating their winning the vote by singing the Red Flag. The Speaker suspended the sitting. Heseltine subsequently acquired the nickname Tarzan and was thereafter depicted as such, complete with loin-cloth, in the "If" series drawn by satirical political cartoonist Steve Bell. During the 1980s this macho image was reinforced by the satirical TV puppet show Spitting Image, which portrayed him as a camouflage wearing psychopath reminiscent of the 1960s white British mercenary of the Congo "Mad Mike" Col. Mike Hoare. This was after an occasion when, as Defence Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's government, he had been persuaded to don a camouflaged anorak over his suit while inspecting troops in the rain on 6 February 1985 when he deployed 1500 police and soldiers to fence off RAF Molesworth to prevent anti-nuclear protesters from entering the cruise missile base.
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