Today's big question: Has Maggie anything to give to Merseyside?

At first sight (the lady herself would no doubt prefer “superficially” ) Margaret Thatcher and Merseyside don't seem exactly made for one another.

True, last year her party won control of Merseyside County Council and made gains in this year's recent local government elections. (Though the Labour Party has, in recent times, rather cornered the market in Parliamentary seats).

But it's the images—her's and Merseyside's—that don't mesh.

As the purveyors of the conventional wisdom constantly remind us, she has “Made in the Home Counties” stamped all over her. She stands accused (highly educated, middle-class media women most prominent in presenting the prosecution case, interestingly enough) of the high political crime of speaking ‘poshly’ and always appearing well-groomed in public.

Merseyside's image—at any rate, that aspect of it that may be discussed in decent company—is of lusty, rough, working-class Northernism. Not very promising Thatcher country, you would think.

There are several potent objections to this line of thinking, and just a few of them are Walsall North, Workington, Ashfield and Birmingham, Stechford. You may recognise them. They are seats in “Labour's traditional heartland” (Northern, too, with the exception of [end p1] Stechford) and they were all won by massive swings to the Conservatives in by-elections over the last 18 months or so.

They were victories that sent the political map-makers scurrying back to their drawing boards to change the lines they had so confidently drawn to show the supposed boundaries of Thatcher country.

Margaret Thatcher is, understandably, unimpressed by current expert thinking on where is or is not promising Thatcher country: she would merely point to the map of the British Isles.

So she has no doubts that her particular Conservative appeal will find a ready response on Merseyside. And on the eve of to-day's visit she had this message for Merseysiders: Try a Thatcher Government—you will have a lot to look forward to.

But, there'll be some changes made, particularly in the way a Thatcher government would go about “helping” Merseyside overcome its chronic unemployment problem.

Mrs. Thatcher has made clear her view that Britain has been ill-served by the ruling belief that Government's can provide the long-term solutions for the problems of particular areas and communities.

So turning her mind to the recent spate of closures and redundancies, she said: “Government's have been trying to bale out areas such as Merseyside for some years now, and have failed. And don't forget, the recent closures and redundancies have occurred after a very long period of socialism, and it isn't working.”

“At the moment you are getting money pumped into Merseyside without any results to show for it. The money, therefore, is being wasted in many cases. You must put money into a region in a way that will get results, and this Government is not.”

The Thatcher answer for Merseyside is to Prompt a re-awakening of the wealth and job creating potential of the whole country, while giving short term aid to areas of particular hardship.

What then would she say if a delegation from Merseyside came to a Thatcher-run 10, Downing Street, demanding Government aid for the region?

“Two things. First, we have got to have policies which make sense in the long run. In the long run it makes no sense to protect people doing jobs making things other people are not prepared to buy. If we were to have a system of protecting every job as it is we should still be making and stockpiling hansom cabs.

“We can't have what I would call a ‘hansom cab policy’ in the day of Fords, Vauxhall and British Leyland.

“Second, while waiting for the right long-run policies to work out, I might have to do a temporary relief operation, because you can't stand by and watch people suddenly thrown out of work without anything else to go to. It is far better to have a gradual run-down and a change-over to a new operation.”

Her first priority, should she find herself in power, would be “getting the economy right” . And for his she promises a two-pronged attack on what she is convinced are the two main brakes on our economic recovery: the high, disincentive rates of direct taxation and the mass of regulation that deters small businessmen from employing extra staff or building up their concerns.

“We have got to see if we can get direct tax down as fast and as far as we can. You can't suddenly have an enormous drop, but we have got to make it clear that we are moving in a different direction.”

“And we have got to have a look at some of the legislation which is stopping the taking on of more people: We will repeal some parts of the Employment Protection Act, mitigating some of the more obstructive parts. Small businessmen reckon they could take on at least another 250,000 people if it were not for the hinderance of high taxation and the effects of the Employment Protection Act.”

“It all boils down to our having to create a healthy economy so that genuine and lasting jobs, not artificial ones, are created. And that means giving incentive to people who themselves work hard, or have an extra skill, or who are the sort of people who can start off in business on their own.”

I put it to Mrs. Thatcher that despite her own strongly held views about the right approach for Britain, her Party's policies, for which, of course, she is ultimately responsible, fail to come over to people strongly and unambivalently. She denies, with a passable imitation of heat and outrage, that this is the case.

“There's nothing ambivalent about our taxation policy; there's nothing ambivalent about our law and order policy: there's nothing ambivalent about our defence policy; there's nothing ambivalent about our policy to allow the sale and purchase of council houses!”

In any event, Mrs. Thatcher promises a long hot summer of Conservative propaganda as the party mounts its campaign for the expected October election.

“But I'm not going to make a mass of lavish promises—I reckon the electorate are fed up of them;

“We will have some specific promises, some that we have made already: to help the police, on defence, on the sale of council houses, to repeal compulsory comprehensive education legislation, and on reducing direct taxation.”

And election day, as she had often said, can't come soon enough for her. The Lib-Lab pact thwarted, perhaps permanently, possibly her best chance of winning power. How had she borne the months of frustration, watching the apparent resurgence in the Government's popularity (as indicated in opinion polls) threatening her progress to 10 Downing Street?

“Life comes one day at a time and you just do the best for each day, though, of course, you've always got your eye on the distant objective but unfortunately life doesn't come four years at a time.

“So whatever frustrations I may have felt, life still only comes one day at a time.”