Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Radio Interview for BBC Radio 4 Today (visiting Hungary)

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Government Guest House, Budapest
Source: Thatcher Archive: COI transcript
Journalist: Brian Redhead, BBC
Editorial comments: MT gave the interview at 0715 local time; it was broadcast in Britain at 0810.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 1112
Themes: Defence (arms control), Trade, Foreign policy (Central & Eastern Europe), Foreign policy (USSR & successor states)

Brian Redhead

Ten minutes past nine here in Budapest where the Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, arrived last night and at this very moment she's laying a wreath on the Hungarian heroes monument in Hero Square in Budapest. Within the next five minutes she will be in the first of a series of what they're calling ‘eye to eye meetings’ with Hungary's political leaders. Well, earlier this morning, before she set off on her busy programme for the day, I talked to her.

Was there not a danger, I asked her, that people will ascribe to her visit here a greater purpose than she can hope to achieve, or even attempt?

Mrs. Thatcher

I think you're right in one respect, their expectations might be too high. You know when you embark on trying to reach a new understanding with people who come from an alliance who have a different philosophy from oneself, it is quite a long process in trying to reach a better understanding and this is really the first step.

B. Redhead

Now does this represent a change in your attitude towards a socialist country, a change that you've really been signalling in the past two or three speeches you've made?

Mrs. Thatcher

I think it represents a new phase, it was not possible to talk in this way because other events precluded it, as you know, during the last few years. Now we really are, I feel, at a rather serious stage. The Soviet Union have left the disarmament talks, there seems to be a good deal of uncertainty in the Soviet Union about their next strategy or tactics and of course it's rather alarming that one doesn't quite know about Mr. Andropov, how fit he is and so on. Now once you've got uncertainty, that itself is dangerous and you really just have to start to talk, to re-establish contact, they're doing that in stockholm, but you want also to talk between heads of government.

B. Redhead

Now why then have you chosen to come to Hungary, is it because you think Hungary is different from other socialist countries?

Mrs. Thatcher

I think each and every one of them is different, they're different because of their history, they're different because of their character and really I suppose a nation is composed of three things: its fundamental beliefs, of which ours are freedom, justice and democracy, the fundamental character of their people because so much of British history has been shaped by its character and its institutions have been shaped by its character and then also all the history it's gone through. Now that's so of us and I think it's so of each of the countries which belong to the Warsaw pact in Europe and Hungary is a very interesting one. They also have been to visit us and we were asked here, so we had a warm and open invitation and we've now taken it up.

B. Redhead

And you will have heard about their second economy which is described in words which will be music to your ears, words like ‘initiative’, ‘enterprise’, ‘private sector’?

Mrs. Thatcher

Yes and it's doing well and also the market economy and that isn't some great theory of economists, it's just trying to make goods that people will buy and that really is the time … line missing [end p1]

B. Redhead

Now will you be concentrating more upon strictly relations between Britain and Hungary, or will you roam much more widely into the whole world of East/West tensions?

Mrs. Thatcher

Oh, I think one's got to do the whole thing. There are a number of bilateral things between Britain and Hungary. We have been trying to help with a number of financial things, we are interested in doing more trade, quite a number of our companies are working here and as you know they're having something called Hungarian days in April in Britain, but obviously the dominant thing at the moment in the world is East/West relations and it affects us all and we really want to try to get to grips with that as to what we can do next, how we see the future of central Europe, how we see trying to improve relations between East and West and the impact that has on the wider world.

B. Redhead

Now that makes it sound much more diplomatically intense than people had been expecting, I think people were thinking more that you would just talk around things, get an understanding of each other's points of views, just relax slightly your … you know, your postures.

Mrs. Thatcher

I don't think that would be enough. I think one's got to try to be very very much more constructive because of this hiatus somehow in contact between East and West at the moment, because of the walk-out of the disarmament talks, because of the need to get them going again, because of the feeling that no-one has seen Mr. Andropov very much recently and therefore that induces a further element of uncertainty. You know, we must try to be constructive. You may not be able to see that far ahead, but if we can try to say—well, what are we going to do in the next six months or year to improve things—that would be a help.

B. Redhead

So that although the immediate objective is quite modest, nonetheless you have great expectations of this being the first step towards something?

Mrs. Thatcher

There's almost a fundamental contradiction isn't there? I hope that this will be the first step of quite a long journey. Don't put expectations too high in the sense that I think we shall achieve what we came to achieve, but there won't be obvious results flowing from it immediately. What I am talking about really is to try to get across the fundamental thing that the West genuinely wants disarmament, to us it doesn't need to be got across but I think when you see some of the propaganda that comes out in, for example, the Soviet Union about the West, then it does need to be got across, I mean to us democracies are naturally peace-loving. We're not a danger to anyone, we're basically defensive, but I don't think that that's always the line which is put across in the warsaw pact countries.

B. Redhead

Well, they of course would probably say precisely the same, that what we put across about their point of view is wrong too.

Mrs. Thatcher

Yes, but, brian, without being too specific, we do have to look at the history.

John Timpson

That was the Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, talking to Brian as you will have gathered, in Budapest earlier this morning.