Delegates arrived along the south coast for the 1984 Conservative Party conference on 8 October. A packed out hall in the Brighton Hotel played host to fringe events, panels of major Tory figures and, on Friday, the leader's speech. Though the IRA signalled a willingness to be more active on the UK mainland, security for the gathering was rather lax. Many older party members voiced support for the Whitelaw leadership and condemnation of Norman Tebbit as civil war had been raging in Parliament. Chief whip David Waddington, a loyal rightist, reached out to colleagues on the backbenches in a bid to mollify them over policy and strategic concerns. Evening of 11 October saw the conference representatives mingle at a lively drinks reception. Political players moved around the room, testing unpredictable weather. After an hour of socialising with guests, Mr Whitelaw retired to the Grand Hotel in order to practise his words for the next day. Hiking up to the podium in front of a blue backdrop and the sea of party faithful, the ageing war horse concealed a nervous anxiety. The audience applauded. His frontbench team, never short of ambition for the spokesmen of a party holding just 108 MPs, congratulated each other at the front row. Stars of the reactionary Monday Club and unrepentant monetarists in the Conservative Workers' Group perched like vultures from across the hall. Whitelaw thanked dear friends and began the speech, championing the virtues of his own "experience" over the years and party "loyalty" wedded to a sense of public duty. Much as he'd worked with Norman Fowler to tilt Tory opinion away from laissez-faire economics, Mr Whitelaw now attempted to compensate and bring the party together after the divisive Thatcher years. "We did have considerable success in cutting down inflation. Now don't let's deny that, of course, there's a great worry with unemployment." The leader was careful to suggest in his remarks that his project was not a pale imitation of the Alliance's and called the lingering distinction between wets and dries absurd. "What I do know is that I have views, naturally, about the priorities from our law-and-order stance; very strong views about creating jobs in the north, where I come from."
Whitelaw attacked previous governments for spending beyond the nation's means to earn revenue. This cheered some monetarists within his team. His party would make British firms globally competitive and improve economic growth. "That is why we had to make a change," he argued, embracing the record of a polarising, rather experimental administration in which he served as Deputy Prime Minister and Home Secretary. "You could always buy cheap popularity in politics; but what matters is, will it be right for the party? Much more important, will it be right for the country? In two or three years' time? Will we have done what is right for Britain? That's what matters." Nigel Lawson led a standing ovation, joined principally by Geoffrey Howe and Leon Brittan. Support from these men boosted Whitelaw's legitimacy by pulling other fiscal conservatives into the fold. His next segment intimated the unhappiness many had shared when unemployment, poverty and decline mushroomed out of control during their last spell in office. As Tories, every member needed to provide society with "the right way", instead of "easy answers". Reaffirming the concept behind his unity pitch for the leadership of "steadying the boat", Mr Whitelaw invited people from all sections of the party to design a compromise position on the economy, as well as other issues. Few proposed positions found favour from the militant wing. Conservatives on the front bench were making "excellent" progress, submitting ideas to: "unite the nation" with public and private investment; reconstruct industry using modern business practices; "support the most needy and vulnerable" using adequate welfare; reinvigorate the Keynesian promise by sticking to healthy finances with subsidies here and there; welcome immigration from the Commonwealth; promote European integration; and foster "peace and reconciliation in Ulster" by accepting the possibility of Irish reunification.
Here, the speech fell apart. Dozens of CWG and Monday Club figures, on hearing the leader's words, stormed out in protest. Whitelaw had failed to include ultra-conservative social traditionalists and free-market fundamentalists within the big tent. Electoral ruin blamed on monetarism and 'little England' isolation allowed - even, forced - shadow ministers to ditch Thatcherite economics, seeing no recourse but to adopt the liberal centrism of Francis Pym and Michael Heseltine. SDP president Ted Heath, once a close ally of Whitelaw's and now a bitter rival, gleefully told the BBC his former party was unravelling in a doomed effort to please everyone. The ex-PM had said of Paul Williams and the Monday Club: "I thoroughly disagree with his views. I always have and I suspect I always will. They are not the view of the modern Tory party, nor the views of the great majority of people in this country." Once he had wrapped up the address and conference ended, Mr Whitelaw re-shuffled his team to promote trusted associates. From the floor of the House of Commons, MPs watched 24 hard-right Conservatives renounce the party whip and sit as independents next to Enoch Powell, fellow Ulster Unionists and the DUP. These defectors were: Norman Tebbit, Tim Brinton, Ivan Lawrence, Nicholas Budgen, Tim Eggar, David Porter, John Moore, Barry Porter, Jill Knight, Rhodes Boyson, Peter Griffiths, Mark Lennox-Boyd, John Biggs-Davison, Anthony Berry, Nicholas Winterton, Marion Roe, John Townend, Bill Walker, John Wilkinson, George Gardiner, James Spicer, Peter Hordern, Carol Mather and William Clark. Mr Tebbit decried the party's "slide into socialism" as justification. Such dramatic events badly wrong-footed the Tory leadership and, most especially, broadcasters of the evening news who raised obvious comparisons with the SDP breakaway from Labour in 1981. The Conservative parliamentary bloc had lost a fifth of its members - a grave setback in anyone's book, spelling disaster for things to come.