Glyn Mathias
Prime Minister, congratulations again on your victory. I last saw you outside Conservative Central Office at four o'clock in the morning. How are you feeling now?
Mrs. Margaret Thatcher
I'm feeling fine—and you?
G. Mathias
Well, not too good. Did you manage to get some sleep?
Mrs. Thatcher
Just a little. Enough.
G. Mathias
Now last night you said that this was an historic election. Now what did you mean by that?
Mrs. Thatcher
I think it's the first time that a conservative Prime Minister has been re-elected, having been elected the first time, since the last century. That's very important.
G. Mathias
One way of looking at it is that the conservatives got a smaller share of the national vote and yet have come out with this massive majority. That doesn't seem really fair does it?
Mrs. Thatcher
I think it's inevitable with the fragmentation of the parties. Once you've got another quite big party coming in you are bound to have greater fragmentation of the vote and if it were to go on and you had more parties you'd get more and more fragmentation and that would lead to weak government, ages to form a government: sometimes on the continent they have an election and it can take six months to form a government and if you get too much fragmentation it does lead to weak government. But this time our vote was very decisive.
G. Mathias
But it's a pretty unfair system. Isn't it, which gives the alliance, for instance, 25%; of the vote but only about a couple of dozen seats?
Mrs. Thatcher
No, I don't think it is and neither did they when it gave them victory.
G. Mathias
So you don't see any argument for change there?
Mrs. Thatcher
No. If you go to proportional representation it makes for very weak government. As you get more and more parties, I know sometimes in Belgium and Holland it can take a very long time after an election to form a party and you know what happens: they fight a campaign on certain principles and then they go behind locked doors and do horse-trading deals, compromising every principle they've fought for and you need some countries with strong, clear, decisive government.
G. Mathias
What shape is your strong, decisive government going to take this time? What are your priorities?
Mrs. Thatcher
Well, I think we shall have to make up our minds about the Cabinet very quickly because otherwise the press will discuss it all for we and I'd rather do it myself first.
G. Mathias
How quickly can we expect an announcement?
Mrs. Thatcher
Well, I hope by the end of the weekend.
G. Mathias
So by Sunday we'll have a new Cabinet. But will there be any of the so-called wets like Mr. Prior and Mr. Pym still in the Cabinet?
Mrs. Thatcher
I think you must just wait a little more patiently. After all. Not all the results are in yet. [end p1]
G. Mathias
But will it be an extensive radical change in the shape of the Cabinet?
Mrs. Thatcher
Many. Many people will stay where they are. There will be some changes, just like an ordinary shuffle.
G. Mathias
When you came to Downing Street in 1979 you quoted St. Francis of Assisi—you talked about replacing discord with harmony. Now many of your opponents said it didn't really live up to that pledge. Are you going to give an equivalent kind of pledge this time?
Mrs. Thatcher
We carried on with our manifesto proposals, we carried those out. I think neither we, nor other Western nations, were to know the depths of the world recession that would hit us and of course it made things more difficult but in fact it made the programme we had even more urgent because unless we got industry in a very, very much better—fitter condition. We shouldn't have had a hope of coming out of the recession with a share of world trade of the kind we need. So although it was difficult. The kind of policy we were following was made the more vital by virtue of the world recession.
G. Mathias
What are going to be the main features of your legislative programme in the coming session?
Mrs. Thatcher
Of course we shall have to bring in once again some of the bills that fell in the last session and of course we shall have to restore the finance bill and extend the home ownership as we were about to in the last session and we shall have to bring in another trade union bill in accordance with our pledges in the manifesto and a rates bill and the reorganisation of local authorities. In accordance with the pledge to abolish the metropolitan counties. That will be quite a heavy programme and of course we have the state opening fairly quickly and then not another one in October so we have quite a long first session.
G. Mathias
Finally, Prime Minister if there's one thing you will want this next administration to be remembered for, what would it be?
Mrs. Thatcher
I think for having clear policies with a purpose and for steadfastly carrying them out and for being stalwart for freedom and justice.
G. Mathias
There was a period in the last government when it looked as if you might be blown off course. That was the period before the Falklands war when there was a lot of argument about your economic policy. Do you see yourself as not being blown off course this time?
Mrs. Thatcher
No, I didn't think I'd be blown off course. The commentators thought I'd be blown off course.
G. Mathias
So a steadfast purpose in your own phrase.
Mrs. Thatcher
Yes indeed.
G. Mathias
Thank you very much indeed, Prime Minister
Mrs. Thatcher
Thank you very much.