Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Southampton Conservatives ("Labour and the Marxists")

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Polygon Hotel, Southampton
Source: Thatcher Archive: CCOPR 160/77
Editorial comments: Embargoed until 1230.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 433
Themes: Conservatism, By-elections, Privatized & state industries, Labour Party & socialism

Labour and the Marxists

Last Tuesday I tried to persuade the James CallaghanPrime Minister to say whether he was for or against Marxism, and whether the Labour Party welcomed or condemned the support of the Marxists.

I confess that I was not greatly surprised when he refused to answer.

If he welcomed the Marxists he would, he knew, deeply offend the great majority of the electorate.

If he condemned them he would, he knew, deeply offend those elements in the Labour Party who keep his government in power.

So, in the negative spirit characteristic of his political career, he did neither.

But last year his party—the party with the Trotskyite youth officer, the party whose Marxist fringe has denied re-nomination to two moderate members of Parliament, the party of high spending, high borrowing and high taxation—produced a policy document, “Labour's Programme 1976” . [end p1]

That document called for “a new and powerful Socialist economic and industrial strategy” . It claimed that “only direct control, through ownership of a substantial sector of growth industries will allow a Labour Government to achieve our essential aims …” It advocated nationalisation of banks, insurance companies, the ports, parts of the construction industry, food manufacturing, brewing and the pharmecutical industries—and others.

Now that's a Marxist programme if ever I say one. What did the Prime Minister say about this programme devised by Labour's National Executive?

He said it was “in essence the total sum of all their hopes … Its scale and perspective stretch well into the 1980s.” Not many months later it was endorsed by the Labour Party Conference. So now you know what you will get if you vote Labour again.

You may know that the Tories also produced a policy document last year. Our approach was very different.

We said what more and more people are thinking and saying themselves. We said that the policies of the Socialist Government were ruining Britain and that the way back to prosperity was through effort and incentive. We promised to encourage thrift and enterprise. Above all we promised to restore to the people the power to run their own lives, to determine their own future powers which this Government is taking away from them day by day.

A few months later we won the by-elections at Workington and Walsall. Truly we had the “Right Approach” .

We promised patriotism and common sense. We promised what our country needs. Soon, now—perhaps very soon—we will rid the country of the evasiveness, the extravagances, and the dogmas of all kinds of Socialism.