Edward Heath

Edward Heath was born in Broadstairs, Kent, in 1916 to a carpenter and a maid, and won a place at Balliol College, Oxford. Travels in Europe in the 1930s, including to Spain during the civil war, shaped his support for European unity. He served as an artillery officer in the Second World War and entered Parliament in 1950. He led Britain's first attempt to join the European Communities, vetoed by France in 1963, and became Conservative leader in 1965. He won the 1970 election, and his government decimalised the currency and reformed local government. Miners' strikes in 1972 and 1974 led to the three-day week, and he lost office after the February 1974 election. Margaret Thatcher defeated him for the leadership in 1975. He stayed in the Commons until 2001 and died in 2005.

Supporters see Heath as the leader who secured Britain's place in Europe, a one-nation Conservative who opposed unemployment on moral grounds and tried to build power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Critics on the right regard his 1972 U-turn as a failure of nerve that left inflation and union power unresolved, while critics on the left opposed his union legislation. In Northern Ireland, internment and the Bloody Sunday shootings of January 1972, in which soldiers killed 13 civil rights marchers in Derry and a 14th man later died of his injuries, badly damaged relations with the Catholic community. Opponents of European integration continue to cite him as the Prime Minister who took Britain in.