In one respect, 1979 is virtually certain to bring good news. We are required by law to have a General Election before the year is out!
This will not only end the terrible feeling of uncertainty about our nation's future by which almost everybody is now afflicted; it will, I am confident, bring the Tories back to power.
I do not base this optimism simply on the calculations which the psephologists are so fond of making about such probabilities as the collapse of the Liberal vote.
Nor do I base it simply on the Government's terrible record of failure, registered not only in statistics but in the daily lives of the people—the massive unemployment, the paralysing of production, the collapse of all the Government's pet panaceas like the “social contract” , the rising crime figures, the crisis in the health and educational services.
It would be a malign sort of miracle, indeed, if a party with all this to its discredit were to be given another term of office.
No—my real reason for confidence is a change which I have noticed in my visits up and down the country in the attitude of ordinary people.
I can best describe it by saying that mere frustration and exasperation are giving way to hope, to a realisation that the kind of mess we are in can be ended by bold personal enterprise. [end p1]
People are not only heartily sick of being confined and tripped up at every point by State regulations; they have cottoned on to the truth that it is these regulations which are producing the very troubles, like poverty and unemployment, which they are supposed to remedy.
Ordinary men and women in business, on the land, on the factory floor and in the professions are clamouring for the right to start working out their own destinies, to free themselves from the apron strings of the “governess State” .
This is exactly why Labour is desperately trying to frighten us with such phrases as “a free for all” . But the public well knows that freedom and responsibility are dependent upon each other.
The choice, not only in economics but over the whole range of our home affairs, is not between liberty and order, but between State despotism and freedom under the law.
I believe we shall succeed in translating these feelings into a massive Tory victory. So let's walk through the gates of the year with a spring in our step.
Good luck to you all!