Edward Heath the Liberal Party. Despite losing a second general election in October that year, he vowed to continue as leader of his party. In February 1975, Margaret Thatcher challenged and defeated him to win the leadership. Returning to the backbenches, Heath became an active critic of Thatcher's leadership. He remained a backbench MP until retiring at the 2001 election, serving as the Father of the House for his last nine years in Parliament. Outside politics, Heath was a world-class yachtsman and a talented musician. He died in 2005, aged 89. He is one of only four British prime ministers never to
Racism in the UK Conservative Party fringes became a bastion of ugliness that the present-day party is still trying to distance itself from". He goes on to argue that this campaign had two legacies — initially, the degradation of race relations in the UK, which consequently "poisoned the debate over immigration" in the UK by "drag[ging] politics into the gutter". The racialised debate and discourse over immigration in British politics are said to have become popularised by Conservative MP Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech in April 1968, and the clamping down on postwar "new Commonwealth" non-white immigration while allowing concessions to the white-majority "old Commonwealth"