Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Finchley Conservatives (Association annual dinner dance)

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Selborne Hall, Southgate, North London
Source: Finchley Times, 2 February 1978
Editorial comments: 1830.
Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 304
Themes: Conservatism, Economic policy - theory and process, General Elections, Labour Party & socialism

This is General Election year. The year the Conservatives return to power.

This was the mood of Finchley and Friern Barnet Conservative Association's dinner dance at Selborne Hall, Southgate, on Saturday, and the mood of optimism was led by the MP.

The election cannot come a moment too soon, said Mrs Margaret Thatcher, pictured making the speech.

“When it does come we are confident of victory,” she said.

But, she warned, it will be a watershed election and a battle for the British way of life. And the electorate had to see the Labour Government for what it was.

Her constituency chairman. Councillor Jimmy Sapsted, proposing a toast to Her Majesty's Opposition coupled with the name of the MP for Finchley and Friern Barnet, also looked at the British way of life.

“I never thought I would see the day when British workmen withdrew their labour to leave you to burn, to turn off the heat and light for the old and sick,” he said. “This is not the way of life in Great Britain. We have hit hard and troubled times.”

Ovation

Mrs Thatcher, who received a standing ovation from the guests, said Labour claimed inflation was coming down. But, by the end of 1978, the Wilson and Callaghan regimes would have halved the value of the pound.

Labour's ambition was to get taxation down to where the Conservatives left it four years ago. They could do that only with the aid of North Sea oil.

What would happen if Labour got back at the next election? They would, said Mrs Thatcher, rely on a Tribune group of 80 Left-wingers and Marxists.

People wanted Conservative policies. Every free society was a private enterprise society. If enterprise was killed, so was freedom. Britain had more Socialism than anywhere in Europe, said Mrs Thatcher.