Create not destroy

In the second article by one of the main party leaders before Thursday's election, Margaret Thatcher puts forward the aims of the Conservatives: to take Britain away from the clutches of those who destroy wealth, and hand it back to those who create it

This election is about two groups of people. Creative people and destructive people.

The great majority of us, it seems to me, are entitled to call ourselves creative. We may not make masterpieces, but we like to do our job well. We feel we are performing a useful service or producing goods other people are glad to pay for.

We don't mind hard work—and we expect to be rewarded accordingly. We strive to put a bit by—and see it grow. Our aim is to stand on our own feet, to do the best we can for our families, and if possible to ensure that our children have wider opportunities and better prospects than we had ourselves.

These are the ordinary, healthy ambitions of naturally creative people. And these are precisely the aims the Conservative Party is striving for. High wages for hard work. Just rewards for inventiveness, energy, foresight and special skills. Incentives for saving. The creation of real jobs paid in real money—not confetti.

We are against the slack society, where over-manning, restrictive practices and work—avoiding by the few add to the burdens of the rest of us. We are against the strike society, where men and women are prevented from working and earning by endless stoppages, most of them avoidable, many indeed called before the ordinary disputes procedures have been tried.

All these abuses have to be paid for by the creative majority. So does the huge apparatus of central and local government. Some of the services provided are essential, others not. Wherever possible, Conservatives believe people should be given back control over their own earnings. At present there are an awful lot of things the State does—badly and expensively—which creative individuals want to do for themselves.

Ever come across an example of council waste? Of course you have. Know any cases of unfairness, blundering or extravagance by the Government department? I bet you do. Conservatives think ordinary people are better judges of how to spend their money than politicians—that's why we intend to set about reducing that hefty slice the taxman takes out of your wages.

We have a simple rule to guide us. Whenever there's an argument about whether the State or the individual should decide, we given the benefit of the doubt to the individual. We believe that the very essence of freedom is individual responsibility—and we trust the creative majority to take sensible decisions for themselves and their families.

But we don't intend to forget the destructive minority. It is, thank goodness, only a small minority, but it is a well-organised and powerful one and, what's worse, it sometimes seems to have the law on its side. To some extent it does have the law on its side, thanks to Acts of Parliament passed by Labour Governments, notably in 1974-76, when Labour still had a Parliamentary majority and could do what it wished.

Earlier this year we saw the destructive minority at work: shutting down schools, preventing essential supplies reaching hospitals, disrupting the ambulance service, piling up rubbish mountains in our streets, telling lorry drivers where they could and could not go—even stopping the burial of the dead.

For several weeks, we came frighteningly close to government by picket. For many of these cruel, callous and dangerous activities are perfectly legal as a result of the extraordinary privileges Labour Governments have heaped on the trade union militants.

The truth is we give far too little freedom to the creative majority—and too much licence to the destructive minority. The results are inevitable and obvious. If we go abroad, we see for ourselves how much better our neighbours are doing.

Living standards here would be still lower, but for North Sea oil. Labour has treated it as an invitation to spend, spend, spend. But the oil will not last for ever. It should be invested to replace present assets by future assets or to get us out of the low productivity, low wages economy in which we are trapped. Instead, the Government has used it to conceal the full and devastating truth about ourselves. Much of it has already gone, with nothing to show.

Britain's decline does not seem to worry our opponents. They tell us: “Let's just carry on as we have been doing.” But most of us want change. We are ashamed of hearing Britain called “the sick man of Europe.”

We want to restore our good name as a hard-working, reliable, inventive, competitive and go-ahead country, whose voice is listened to with respect. And to do this, we must take Britain away from the clutches of those who destroy wealth, and hand it back to those who create it.