Signs of chastening after remarks on ending immigration

New Mrs Thatcher ignores backbench bait

Is there to be a new self-restrained Mrs Thatcher? The question was posed at Westminster yesterday, two days from the third anniversary of victory over Mr Heath, as the Leader of the Opposition three times refused to rise to the taunts of Labour backbenchers during Prime Minister's question time. Only a week ago she was easily drawn to the dispatch box, sometimes bobbing up so frequently that Labour backbenchers groaned that she was hogging the time.

Yesterday she seemed to hold herself back. Others at Westminster said, that they had found her politely but resolutely refusing to be drawn into policy elaboration, especially on immigration, lest she might somehow be misinterpreted.

Clearly the events of the past two weeks, after her controversial television interview remarks about “a clear end to immigration” have been a chastening experience, at least in terms of public utterance.

Not that she is understood to be withdrawing anything not has she been put off by letters to her said to be now more than three thousand over the fortnight, and running overwhelmingly in favour of what she said about immigration control.

But evidently someone, perhaps she herself, has made clear to her that the colloquial style in such matters can be disastrous. Certainly that is asserted privately by at least a couple of her colleagues in the Shadow Cabinet, although whether they have put it to her face is not clear.

She has tried hard on television, after initial difficulties in getting herself across, to be natural and conversational, talking to those sitting at home. She has made her statements, from the suddenly dropped idea of having national referendums to her remarks on immigration controls, without thinking as if she were talking from a draft and perhaps occasionally, although she would not be the first to admit it, without proper forethought. Her classic defence has been that if she is asked a straight question she will give a straight answer.

Perhaps no longer. An unnatural guardedness has come over her, a stubborn refusal to go beyond what is written policy, at least on immigration. It will be interesting to see whether she can maintain iron control at the “question time” that usually follows the party leader's speech, which she will make on Sunday at Harrogate to the Young Conservative conference. Certainly the officers of the Federation of Conservative Students have expressed disquiet over Mrs Thatcher's approach.

Mrs Thatcher's formal immigration position resides, until the Shadow Cabinet has decided on proposals for new entry controls in some weeks' time, in a letter she wrote two days ago to Mr Andrew Faulds, Labour MP for Warley, East.

It leaves troubling questions unanswered, and which will apparently stay unanswered if Mrs Thatcher can maintain silence until the Shadow Cabinet decides. The principal point is whether the Conservatives, once in office, would consider themselves bound to admit the dependants of former illegal immigrants amnestied since the Conservatives were last in office.

Recalling to Mr Faulds the speech made to the 1976 Conservative conference by Mr William Whitelaw, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Thatcher wrote in a very carefully drafted letter: “As far as future immigration is concerned, Mr Whitelaw said that we were committed to admit two groups only for permanent settlement: the United Kingdom passport holders in East Africa and the dependants of those heads of families who were here legally on January 1, 1973. By dependants Mr Whitelaw made it clear that we meant only the wife and young children of the head of family … we accept our commitments to those two groups.”

Amnesties in 1974 and 1977 applied only to those who were illegally in Britain before January 1, 1973, although by the amnesty the “illegals” gained the full rights and entitlements of those legally here by that day, according to the Home Office.

Attempts to elicit Conservative confirmation that that was their understanding were rebuffed. It was pointed out that the second of those amnesties came after Mr Whitelaw's speech.