Healey went to Bradford Grammar School, and in 1936 he won a type of scholarship known as an "exhibition", which gave him enough money to take a degree at Balliol College, Oxford. At Oxford University he got involved in politics, and he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1937. In 1939, not liking the party's policies, he changed his mind. From that time on, he supported the Labour Party, even though one of his best friends at university, Edward Heath, supported the Conservative Party. 