CABINET MINISTER CITYSLICKER

At just 39 years of age Peter Walker (right) holds a key position in the Tory government-as head of the Department of the Environment with its multi-million pound budget.

He is now known as the architect of the attack on council housing and rents and as a ruthless businessman who helped create the Slater Walker financial empire.

Back in 1948, when Walker was only 16, the man who was later to help Edward Heath win the fight for the leadership of the Tory Party against Reginald Maudling was to be found in the General Accident Assurance offices near Gloucester.

Young Walker was the office boy in charge of tea, sugar, milk and biscuits who switched the standing order from a local, small-time grocer to the Co-op and packeted the dividend.

A couple of years later Walker made his break into business. As a sergeant in the education corps, stationed in the Lake District, he spent his call-up peddling insurance to squaddies. At the same time he completed the Insurance Institute's exams.

Why selling insurance? Well, sO the story goes, when the Walker family lived in a semi in Harrow, young Peter was very impressed by a family friend who freelance life assurance salesman. You see, he only one with a car in that street!

Out of the wretched army Walker decided set up his own business. Nothing bold, though. The capital of £200 he borrowed from his mother. Assets: one room, an old typewriter and a few • bits of utility furniture. Still a long way from the Cabinet office.

His mother did the typing while he went out selling policies. Apparently he did very well with police officers.

Neverthéless, it was hardly big-time stuff, running the streets Hogging investments against death. But the break into highfinance was not long coming. For in the middle 1950s there was talk in the City of London of raising that spectre of the 1930s —unit trusts.

Here was an honourable way to raise vast sums of money by enticing small investors with the possibilities of sharing in the fortunes being made by big corporations. The man investigating such possibilities at the time was other than Edward du Cann, later to become chairman of the Conservative Party.

Walker immediately teamed up with du Cann with the job of raising the necessary finance to begin the lucrative operations. Already his mind was turning fast. He invented Equitas, insurance policy linked with unit trust. It didn't do too well, but his business was booming anyway.

From his early • days Peter Walker was determined to combine politics with money, which could only mean the Conservative Party. His mother and father had done their job well—bringing him up to be a true blue.

'Peter would always ask questions and I would always try to answer fairly and didn't bias him. I'm not so hardened that I think socialists are wicked people. I may be biased, but I have very good friends who are socialists, Rose Walker said last year.

From his early youth Walker went out canvassing for Tory candidates. At school he became obsessed with the politics of the nig so insn English master and far to take refute an argument that poverty is the crime of the state.

After losing at Dartford twice, Walker stood for Worcester in 1961. Undoubtedly inspired by presidential-style elections, was seen leaping over garden fences, running down streets and ındulgıng in massıve bouts of handshaking. The 'Running Walker', as he came to be known was moving fast and was elected Tory MP.

Another event occurred in 1961 to confirm that Walker had arrived on the scene. The London 'Evening News' published 27 articles starring whiz-kid businessmen under 40. Walker was among them; and so was Jim Slater.

The following year he managed to deepen still further his entry into the world of high finance. Until 1962 Peter Walker had been denied access to the world's largest insurance market, Lloyd's. But some sort of merger took place around that time with of Lloyd's oldest broking firms, Rose, Thomson, Young. Walker was in.

In 1964 Walker formed with Jim Slater, then one of Leyland's brightest accountants, firm which eventually led to the Slater-Walker merchant bank and conglomerate. Walker was deputy chairman from 1964 to 1970. When he left to join the Tory Cabinet, the firm had built reputation for the fastest wheeling and dealing City had ever seen. And Walker had made a fortune in the process. When the Tories won the june 1970 General Election, Walker was in a powerful position. One month later he was made Minister of Housing and Local Government. Shortly after this he was to show what a man of the people he was and what was meant by standing on your own two feet.

He visited some slums in Lambeth which has 12,000 names on the council waiting list. One house he went to had 18 West Indians living there, with one lavatory and no bathroom. Children were huddled against a wall which was soft with damp.

The bed slept four of the residents and there was no ventilaOutside, the brave Minister looked visibly shaken - and white-faced. When he was Shadow Minister of Housing he wrote: 'In replanning our cities we must respect rights, freedoms, desires and tastes of the individual. We must communities of local authority tenants.' Late in 1971 he introduced a Bill which would destroy councilhouse building in Britain, double rents and force tenants like those in Lambeth out on to the streets.

Meanwhile, the Environment Minister was seeing to his own humble surroundings. He announced he had spent thousands of pounds renovating the £80,000 house and farm he had bought in his constituency. Of course, he just had to have a £10,000-plus limousine to go with it Towards the end of 1971, when he brought in the Housing Finance Bill, Walker involved in the notorious scandal in his Department around the planting of parliamentary questions to stifle Labour opposition questions.

The reactionary nature of this 'new-style' Tory Minister is confirmed by listening to what he has to say about the bourgeois philosopher Edmund Burke.

Walker declared that Burke's views on the American colonies progressive and forward looking: 'Whereas his views on the more revolutionary aspects of the French Revolution-some people say that this is in contrast but I think it was the perfect balance. He saw what are the most sound motives progress encouraged and what were sort tructive elements in society, desThe 'dangerous', 'destructive elements' he is talking about are the working class. It makes you wonder what is really going on in his so-called Environment' Ministry. rather than collecting clients appear as the concern got more ing themselves as they expanded. pushing through the