Maggie's law

Taxation and law and order. Those are the issues that ought to decide next week's by-election in Liverpool's Edge Hill.

That was the view of Tory leader Margaret Thatcher, speaking yesterday at a reception in Liverpool for party workers supporting the Edge Hill Concervative candidate, Mr Nick Ward.

“Less personal taxation and more law and order are just exactly what the people of this area are wanting,” she said.

“Most people in Britain are thinking the same way as we Conservatives, but not quite enough of them realise that they are Conservatives at heart.”

Mrs Thatcher was on a whirlwind tour of the Edge Hill area in preparation for next Thursday's election.

She visited the Littlewoods Pools office in Edge Lane where she talked to women workers on a walkabout led by managing director Mr Cyril Morton.

Mrs Thatcher added her name and address to a computer-linked machine and from now one she'll get a weekly coupon through the post.

She told workers at the company: “I am not an expert at filling in pools coupons. I have never filled one in so I have never been a winner. But I think I am going to have a shot from now on.”

Mrs Thatcher added that her son would fill in the coupon if she didn't.

Next she went to St Margaret's School, Anfield, to launch its centenary year, stopping on the way to talk to voters and buy groceries in Kensington.

Then she went to the party workers' reception and a press conference in Balmoral Road.

At the conference she said: “There is a feeling in Liverpool that somehow people's own interests in the city are not really being looked after.

“It seems as if the heart has been taken out of the place, and we do not really know why.”

She said that the only way to rebuild a city for the people of the city would be to consult the people and let them get involved in a city centre revival.