‘No incomes policy’ vow by Thatcher

Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the Tory leader, said last night that a Government led by her would never introduce a statutory incomes policy.

She told a meeting of the National Federation of Self Employed at Prestatyn, Clwyd, at the end of her two-day tour of North Wales that she was not looking for confrontation or confliction with the unions.

“I do not want any head-on clash with the unions and it is perfectly possible for the unions to work with a Conservative administration.”

“After all, we worked with the unions very well for 13 years and the only clash came over the introduction of a statutory incomes policy. I do not intend to have a statutory incomes policy again.”

The pledge came after Mrs Thatcher rejected a suggestion that the trade unions would not work with a Tory Government.

“They know as everyone knows that their future and that of their children is bound up in the same thing in the end—the prosperity of the enterprise.”

Mrs Thatcher said that after dealing with the number one priority of the economy a Conservative Government would cut taxation for all people who work.

(2) Liverpool Daily Post, 27 November 1976: [end p1]

Our first priority—by Maggie

The self employed small businessmen of Britain who had travelled to Prestatyn from all over North Wales and the North of England to question her were wooed by Tory leader Mrs Margaret Thatcher at the end of a long, eventful day last night.

“I want to make it very clear that we are pro the self employed. I can promise I will certainly try to deal with many of the grievances of the self employed during the lifetime of a normal Parliament,” she pledged.

But how soon any relief for the self employed could be implemented depended on the financial situation of Britain when the Conservatives took office, and she could not, she said, be able to forecast the length of time that would take place between the first and second phases.

The first priority of a Tory Government would be to deal with problems caused by overseas borrowing and then would follow the “tax incentives to those who work jolly hard in this country.”

Asked whether the Conservatives would be able to get on with the unions, Mrs Thatcher said that for 13 years Conservatives had enjoyed good relations with the unions when in office. The breakdown had come over a statutory incomes policy. “I do not intend to have a statutory policy again.”

Earlier Mrs Thatcher had spent two hours with party workers from the Western half of North Wales at Llandrillo Technical College,

Shotton Steelworks Action Committee yesterday decided that it will accept the invitation to send representatives, Arthur Davies and Danny Fellows, to discuss the future of Deeside steel with Mrs Thatcher at Deeside Leisure Centre today.