Geoffrey Howe was a great patriot, and a great mind, few in the history of our country have served in Parliament with greater distinction. Lord Howe was a founder and then Chairman of the Bow Group in 1955-1956, he introduced and edited the Group’s “Crossbow” magazine, which is still published today. After a long and illustrious career in the Commons and in government, he was elevated to the Lords in 1992 and became Senior Patron to the Bow Group to commemorate our 60th Anniversary in 2012.

For most conservatives and supporters of Margaret Thatcher, there will always be a part of the consideration of Lord Howe’s career that is overshadowed by the events of the final months of the Thatcher government, which brought a sad and untimely ending to both her career in government, and his.

It is often said that all political careers end in failure, but even this ending, tantamount to Greek tragedy, could not possibly overshadow the service of a man for whom it would be uncontroversial to address as one of the greatest Parliamentarians in Britain’s history. 

Geoffrey Howe, with a few fellow Cambridge alumni, founded the Bow Group in an East London pub as a talking shop for like-minded individuals to challenge the post-war socialist consensus.

Then, no one would have dared predict that the ideas debated by that group would form the foundation for decolonisation of Africa or the 1979 Conservative election manifesto, and that the Bow Group would become a nursery from which some of the subsequent government’s greatest ministers would be drawn. With mild-mannered persistence, Lord Howe spent 30 years breaking down the British establishment and political consensus, and driving forth the bloom of a thousand flowers in the movement we know now as Thatcherism. He was a gentle revolutionary.  

In conversation with Lord Howe, his considered pauses would regularly slip into lucid recollections of his time fighting and teaching in Africa (with nothing more than a saucepan to his name), the great value of grammar schools and National Service in tightening the national fabric across class lines, the unfailing combination of a soft step and a big stick in international affairs, and always the importance that politics must be underwritten by ideas and principle. 

Though latterly in his Cabinet career he was often marked as a “wet”, his reforming zeal as both Chancellor and Foreign Secretary were the foundation of the Thatcher government. In my last meeting with him he described the Prime Minister’s plans to push Same Sex Marriage through the Commons as “madness”, and bemoaned the Conservative Party’s refusal to commit to Grammar Schools. He remained wedded to Britain’s membership of the European Union, despite concern over the level of accountability in Brussels, and felt that Britain’s diplomatic approach to Europe had been “too unilateral and aggressive”. 

Of the two great political figures that ultimately brought down Margaret Thatcher’s government, Geoffrey Howe & Michael Heseltine, I have no doubt that Geoffrey’s motivation was principle, as opposed to Heseltine’s raw ambition.

Not in any historical accounts, nor in his seminal memoirs, “Conflict of Loyalty”, nor even when spending time with him was it possible to reach any conclusion other than that his drive in politics came from a sense of public service rooted in Christian values.

Unlike others among his peers who were undoubtedly driven by power and greed, Lord Howe’s quiet determination did not terrify his opponents or colleagues into submission, but slowly and gently changed the world.