Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Letter to Finchley Times (press freedom)

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Unknown
Source: Finchley Times, 21 November 1975
Editorial comments: Item listed by date of publication.
Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 712
Themes: Media, Trade unions

Threat to the Press

The threat to Press freedom—that is how the Conservative leader, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, sees the argument over the Government's Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill.

In a covering letter to the Editor on her thoughts on the subject, the MP for Finchley and Friern Barnet wrote: “I hope you will agree that it makes our position quite clear.”

The full text of her letter is:

How is it that in Russia today the people still do not know the extent of their Government's enormous grain purchases from America?

How is it that in China the people there did not learn of Americans setting foot on the moon until long after it had happened?

Because in both countries the freedom of the Press is dead. In both countries, individual liberty is dead.

How has this happened? It was not the intention of the Russian revolutionaries in 1918 to have a Press in chains, nor of the Communist revolutionaries in China. But in both countries—as in others where there is no opposition—the Press is in chains because one body has succeeded in taking control of the Press.

It has succeeded in gaining a monopoly over every outlet of news and information. That is over every radio station, every television station, every newspaper, both national and local, and every magazine in the land.

Is there not a lesson in this for Britain? Are we so sure our liberties are safe when extremists are so active on all sides? Have we still not learnt the lesson of history that giving absolute power to one body, however well-intentioned, in the pious hope that they will use it wisely for all time, is a fantasy?

For this is the question that is really raised in the debate on the freedom of the Press at the moment, and of the amendments—which are no more than safeguards, and minimum ones at that—made by the Lords to the Government's Trade Union and Labour Relations Bill.

It is not that we doubt the good faith of the overwhelming majority of journalists in the one union—the National Union of Journalists—that aims to gain a monopoly over journalists' jobs in every newspaper and magazine in Britain.

It is because we should consider what might happen in the future. What might happen if control over the hiring and firing, and the writing by all those engaged in the supplying of news and information to the people of this country did get into the hands of one group and then, at some future date, that group decided to use its power unwisely. There would be no going back then. It would be too late.

The one factor which distinguishes our society above all others from those countries behind the Iron or Bamboo Curtains is that in ours the individual has the maximum liberty of choice.

That is what capitalism and our entire society is all about—the right of the individual to choose for himself where he wants to work, what he wants to read, what he wants to write and which union he wants to join.

Above all in matters affecting the freedom of the Press, we should be vigilant in seeing that power does not pass into the hands of a single body that could possibly one day determine all that it thinks we should, or should not, be told.

For at the moment, imperfect as our Press may be, a journalist who is aggrieved by one newspaper may turn to another run by a different proprietor. A writer who cannot get his work published by one group can turn to a different one. That is the way it should be:

But if one body was able to take absolute control no journalist who was aggrieved by one paper, or writer whose work was banned by one magazine, could hope to turn to an alternative, because the same body would be controlling the lot. And no journalist—no matter how brilliant—who, for whatever reason, chose not to belong to the one body, or who was dismissed from it, would ever again be able to practise his profession in this country.

The right to earn a living should be an inalienable right—it should not be in the hands of a single body however eminent. It should be safeguarded. It must be safeguarded. For if this country is to remain free, our Press must be free—and that means our editors and our journalists must have the protection that the Lords have proposed.

Otherwise, we could one day be no better than Czechoslovakia, where one union not only controls all the means of communication, and all that the people are to be told, but even insists that every member signs an undertaking that he approves of the Soviet invasion of the country.