Maggie gets a warm Welsh welcome

Conservative leader Mrs Margaret Thatcher chatted and charmed her way across the North Wales coast yesterday as she made her first tour of the region an object lesson of how to win friends and influence people.

There were no major speeches but time and time again in brief addresses to party workers and to voluntary workers, the role of the individual, his family and his local community were stressed.

From the time she set out at 9 a.m. at the Men factory at Holyhead, one of the success stories of Anglesey industry, until her final engagement last evening at Rhyl, Mrs Thatcher concentrated on people.

At the Holyhead factory she saw and chatted to many of the girls making switches, before extending a scheduled 20 minute walk about in the town's main street into an hour-long triumph.

Referendum

At Caernarfon, where earlier she had been met by the chairman of the County Council, Councillor R. Glyn Williams, and greeted in Welsh, by the prospective Conservative candidate, Mr Roy Owen, the audience was different—an invited audience of voluntary workers, whom she thanked for becoming involved in such work.

The efforts made by them in helping the less fortunate and the handicapped she described as being [end p1] equal to the efforts of international athletes when seeking medals.

Mrs Thatcher toured the Hotpoint factory at Llandudno Junction and spent some time chatting to assembly line workers.

Her buffet lunch at Bangor Conservative Club was interrupted by an impromptu Press conference—and even so she had to rush off before finishing even her first cup of coffee.

“Food does not matter on a day like this,” she said.

During the morning she had heard the problems facing North Wales people. Many had expressed a desire that there should be a referendum before devolution.

“It appears that most of them are not very keen on a Welsh assembly,” she said. People were concerend about unemployment and trying to get jobs, and frustration that advance factories were still empty, and perhaps these were not the answer to help this region.

Others worried about taxes, especially the elderly and people who work hard.

The housewife in the High Street was concerned about rising prices and worrying how to make ends meet, and those in local government were extremely worried about the impact of rates.

She would not commit herself to any promises to a specific region adding that the first priority was to get industry and commerce going to create the wealth necessary to regenerate Britain.