Suffering under Socialism

Who is feeling the pinch in taxation these days? The answer, according to Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the Opposition leader, is—Mr and Mrs Average.

Mrs Thatcher, in her role as MP for Finchley and Friern Barnet and very much on home ground at a lunch at St. Mary's church hall, Hendon Lane, Finchley, spelt out a few facts and figures for a Conservative audience.

There may not have been the razzmatazz of her North American excursion, but 100-plus Tory women, and a few assorted males, gave her as enthusiastic a reception as she has been used to in recent weeks.

STATURE

The talk was about her new international stature, and there were several confident references to the likelihood of her moving in to No. 10 Downing Street.

I was the only Press representative at the lunch and was one of the “mere males” in a true blue Tory women's world where more than 200 eyes scrutinised every move made by the Opposition leader.

I didn't manage a general canvass, but I reckon the ladies gave her high marks for appearance and content of speech.

There is one interesting sidelight to her visit to the States—everyone there now knows where Finchley is, said Mrs Thatcher.

Her theme was private enterprise, with a tilt at her critics who accused her of “knocking” Britain when she was in the USA and Canada.

And she drew an interesting comparison between her visit to the private enterprise world over the Atlantic and her recent trip to Rumania.

Mrs Thatcher was relaxed and confident, not just because she was on home ground and speaking to the converted, but possibly because of the hurdle she overcame in establishing herself in the United States.

She scored a good point with the mainly middle income audience when she got on to the taxation theme.

Labour, she said, had always threatened to soak the rich through taxation when they got back into power. But there were few rich people left.

The burden now fell on Mr and Mrs Average, she said to approving nods from her audience. In 1963 Mr and Mrs Average paid 5 per cent of their income to the Government. Now they paid over 20 per cent.

That, in turn, led the average chap—her word, not mine—to ask for more money to try to keep pace.

Did Mrs Thatcher “knock” Britain when she was abroad? Before she went to the USA, she said, there were a number of stories printed about this country. One was headed Bye, bye Britain.

STURDY

The Americans and Canadians wanted an assurance that Britain had a future. Labour critics had accused her of “knocking” the country. But it was the Socialist Government that provided the “knocking” with a 25 per cent rate of inflation and growing unemployment.

“I had to show that we had a future,” said Mrs Thatcher, expounding her now widely publicised theme that Britons were still the same sturdy, people they always had been.

Britain was the home of freedom and the home of ideas. If the country perished it would not just be 55m. people going under—the blow would affect the whole world.

She made the not unreasonable point that her job in America was to preach that Britain had a future and not to plead the case for Socialism.

Labour, she said, had withdrawn money from the people for government. They had taken it from private businesses, industry and private enterprise.

And governments, she said, were not as good at running businesses as people in touch— “that is why we are in difficulties.”

FACT: 97 per cent of Britain's exports came from private enterprise, said Mrs T. “It doesn't make sense to lose it,” she added. “but build it up—not do a Benn on it.”

FACT: Nationalised industry had lost money every year except 1969.

FACT: America's 215m. population have collected 142 Nobel Prizes. Britain's 55m. have collected 72—more than France, Belgium and Holland combined.

She spoke of British inventiveness and referred to a brain-scanning machine she had seen in Chicago—made in Britain and “selling like hot cakes.”

SOCIETY

When she visited Rumania, she said, everyone spoke of the numbers of tractors or road machines they produced. They expressed pride in what they achieved.

In countries such as Britain and the USA, where there was greater prosperity, people told you about what went wrong.

Mrs Thatcher's verbal flag-waving for the free society— “you don't need to put a wall round it to keep people in” —ended with a message about the diminishing freedom in this country.

The real danger of an inflationary situation was that people might lose confidence and the Left Wing would claim that the Capitalist system has failed.

Mrs Thatcher does not think it has. And she is equally clear that much as the Labour Party might look divided there is not much division of opinion between their Right and Left.

“They want the same,” she said. “They go there at different speeds.”

The Finchley and Friern Barnet Women's Advisory Committee chairman, Mrs. Margaret Tiplady, summed up the general feeling of the audience when she said, “America now knows what we have known for some time—that Margaret is something special.”

The constituency chairman, CouncillorJimmy Sapsted, said the “militant Left wing” of Finchley derided Mrs Thatcher's “walk tall” message, and they would like everyone to be Socialist pigmies.”

Mrs Betty Damant former secretary of the WAC, who has moved from Finchley, was presented with a book about Mrs Thatcher. And Mrs Doris Lowry, who was celebrating her birthday was presented with a cake.