Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Article for News of the World ("Difficult and dangerous maybe, but this must be our Dynamic Decade")

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Source: News of the World, 30 December 1979
Editorial comments: Item listed by date of publication.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 917
Themes: Economic policy - theory and process, Trade, Trade unions

As you raise a glass to the Eighties tomorrow night, says Mrs. Thatcher, drink with me to the future. The future of us all.

Difficult and dangerous maybe, but this must be our Dynamic Decade

At Midnight tomorrow we enter the 1980s. We all hope that they will see a turning point in Britain's fortunes.

What are the choices facing us as we enter the new decade?

Through sheer lack of effort and will, we could let Britain slide ever further down the international prosperity league.

We could over-spend and over-borrow, painting over the cracks in our crumbling economy.

Or we can confront the dangers to our prosperity, to our safety, to our freedom and to our way of life. And we can overcome them.

In the seven months since I formed the present Government nothing has struck me more than the desperate need for Britain to shake itself out of the apathy of the last decade.

We have let our competitors abroad catch up and pass us, while we paid ourselves more, spent more and borrowed more than ever before.

Yes, our standard of living has risen: but it has no solid and lasting basis. It has been shored up by unsound fiscal policies, by the temporary oil boom of the North Sea, and by the cosy notion that we can somehow get it all for less work.

Even the language of our economic life has taken on a fairy-tale quality.

We talk of our “borrowing requirement” instead of our debt. We talk of “public expenditure” when there is no such thing. It is the taxpayers' money.

Now at the beginning of the eighties we have to wake up

It will be difficult and dangerous—but both are better than the delusions that have dominated the decade.

Let me give you a graphic illustration of what I mean.

You are probably reading this [end p1] sitting at home, maybe with your family around you.

In the living room there is almost certainly a television set, probably a colour model.

In the kitchen there is more than likely to be a washing machine and almost definitely a fridge. And there is about an even chance you will have a car outside.

First: How many of these items were made in Britain?

And second: How many of them or their equivalent did you or your parents have 20 years ago?

The answer to both questions holds the key to our present crisis.

We are being priced out of more and more of the markets in the goods which the world wants. Yet we all go on expecting higher and higher standards of living.

By 1990 most of the rest of the industrial world will no doubt regard video sets, computer-linked TV games and microwave ovens as being just normal bits of household equipment as the colour television and the fridge are now.

But will we be able to afford them?

The world does not, and never has, owed us an easy living. We cannot have a German standard of living or German standard of hospitals and social services without a German standard of work.

No amount of Government handouts, of protective legislation, no amount of state cushioning or international borrowing can conceal the truth.

Once we were the best. We built well and sold well. We delivered on time, people bought British because British was best.

We did not fear technological change. We had the best scientists, the best engineers, the best businessmen, and the best labour force in the world.

Then we started to slip. In the last 15 years it became a disastrous slide. But now it is time to tackle the problems which have been neglected for years.

It is time to change people's approach to what Governments should do for them, and what they do for themselves. It is time to persuade ourselves that only by our own efforts can we halt our national decline.

The Government has already started the battle to control inflation; we have cut taxes, we have slowed our vast overspending of tax on public services.

But it is time also that we learned the inescapable link between prosperity and production. It is so simple and self-evident that you wonder why some of our union leaders appear not to have grasped the lesson.

And while it remains beyond them will we have yet another winter of industrial discontent?

Do we all have to suffer as group after powerful group smash in and grab for bigger pay rises for little or no more work?

Those who want to take ever-increasing wages out of the economy must first put more effort in. It has to be a two-way street.

The days when a strike hurt only employers are long gone. Today one man's strike is a whole community's hardship—a closed hospital or school, no raw materials for the work bench, no components for a car factory.

And one union's excessive wage settlement is a whole nation's hardship.

And who cheers? The few mindless militants? Yes, but also the worker in Japan, Germany, America and France. They get the business that should have stayed in Britain.

Since the election last May I have met the political leaders of three-quarters of the entire world's population. Some of our talks have been amicable, some acrimonious. But there is one thing they have all told me.

They all expressed their goodwill and interest in what we are trying to do. Whatever their politics, they want us to regain our former economic prominence and play a full part in world affairs.

I believe we can do it. And this is not just a job for Government. It is for each and every one of us. Everyone can do something to help our country to recover.

So as you raise a glass to the eighties tomorrow night, drink with me to the awakening of Britain. Our enjoyment of the years ahead depends on our ability and willingness to work for it.

If it is to be a “Dynamic Decade” for us all, these will be difficult and dangerous years. But we are drinking to a country with a future. Our future.