Callaghan decision against nation's interest—Mrs Thatcher
The Prime Minister's decision to postpone the general election was condemned by Mrs Thatcher, Leader of the Opposition, when she heard the news at the Little Barrow Hotel, Lichfield, where she was resting after an intensive west Midlands tour yesterday.
She said: “I believe the Prime Minister has made a mistake and his decision is against the nation's interest. He has lost his majority and with it the authority to govern. He should now properly seek the verdict of the people.
“There are indeed many problems to be tackled in industry, commerce, jobs, the social services, Rhodesia and defence. They need long-term solutions, not short-term expedients.
“They need a government with a clear mandate from the people and several years' life. Only that would restore confidence. As it is, we shall now have a long period of election fever. The country belongs to the courageous, not to the timid.”
Mrs Thatcher said she was not angry, merely disappointed. Mr Callaghan 's announcement came at the end of a day when she had had one of her most successful “walkabouts” , visiting factories in west Gloucestershire and the west Midlands; and, finding a remarkable response from women working in factories, it looked as if the woman's vote was likely to be in her pocket.
When she was asked where she went from here, she told me that she would try with the full force of the Opposition to bring down the Government on the last day of the debate on the Queen's Speech.
She added that what would happen depended on the minority parties, including the Liberals, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. Presumably, she thought, the Prime Minister was playing for the nationalist vote in the Commons by promising that the referendums would be held for the creation of the Scottish and Welsh assemblies.
She described herself as very calm, although anybody who has been travelling with her knows she is deeply disappointed.
Mrs Thatcher admitted that she had been misled by the insistence of the media that Mr Callaghan was meeting the Cabinet yesterday to propose an early election. In the new circumstances, she said, “I must carry on” .
In effect, she accepted that a December or January election was not likely unless there was a defeat on the Queen's Speech compelling a dissolution of Parliament, but she did not see how the Government could manage to struggle on through the whole of a parliamentary session on the basis that Mr Callaghan described in his broadcast.
Clearly there is an important sense in which Mr Callaghan and the Cabinet have caught the Conservative Party napping. Mrs Thatcher and her party managers have invested a lot of money in a publicity campaign on the assumption of an autumn election.
Addressing a rally of Conservative Party workers in Lichfield last night, Mrs Thatcher said: “The longer this government clings to office the greater will be the victory of the next Conservative government. If a Prime Minister shows he is afraid to go when he is in a minority then when the time comes that he has to go he has to be dispatched with all possible speed.”
Mrs Thatcher's audience liked that, as they liked it when she said that, in his Gregorian chant to the Trades Union Congress on Tuesday, James Callaghanhe was “dilly-dallying on the way” . Her own choice of tune would be: “I want to wash that man right out of my hair.”
She said the Conservative Party would really like another 13 years of government to set the country on a new course, although not in the direction of a quiet life.