Prime Minister
I am aware that you have got deadlines, so I will take it at a fairly brisk pace, but I would like to make a statement first, before questions.
This meeting of the Commonwealth, to review the Nassau Accord, has ended with a further substantial demonstration of our collective disapproval of the indefensible system of apartheid.
This has not been an easy conference, but we have been able to reach agreement on how, in our different ways, we should register our abhorrence of apartheid and the urgent need for further reform in South Africa.
During our discussions, I made a number of points.
First, no-one can claim that the British Government is easy on apartheid. It has not been and it is not going to be. The system is just wrong and must go.
Second, the scale of our involvement together with that of Europe in South Africa means that even a relatively few measures impart a sharper shock than a much longer list of measures taken [end p1] by the Commonwealth as a whole. Moreover, some of us have legal obligations as members of other groups. For example, we can only move on trade matters if the European Community as a whole agrees to move with us.
Third, however, I do not believe that further sanctions will bring about internal change in South Africa. On the contrary, I very much fear they will be counter-productive. Nor do I care to defend sanctions in the face of unemployment, poverty and famine among black families in South Africa where, it should be remembered, there is no social security welfare.
It was however, even bearing those three points in mind, perfectly clear that others round the table took a different view. They were bent on further action against South Africa in the genuine belief that only this would move President Botha, and so it was in that situation—our beliefs and their beliefs—that we decided first, that if in the autumn, the European Community decided to introduce the measures mentioned in The Hague Communique of about six weeks ago, we would accept and implement them. That would mean that we, along with the EEC as a whole, would ban imports of coal, iron and steel, over and above a ban on the import of gold coins, which we have already brought into operation.
And second, that we are prepared to agree now to introduce a voluntary ban on new investment in South Africa—the only other measure mentioned in The Hague Communique—and a voluntary ban on the promotion of tourism to South Africa. Both of those measures are mentioned in paragraph 7 of the Nassau Accord.
Our readiness to take these steps, most of which, of course, represent the measures discussed by the European Council in June, was intended to demonstrate Britain's commitment to the Commonwealth and to the European Community. [end p2]
Our Commonwealth colleagues whose links with South Africa, apart from the Front Line States, are in many cases less substantial, were prepared to implement a considerably longer list of measures. That, of course, is open to them. The Commonwealth does not impose binding obligations on its members, but has demonstrated its ability in confronting many crises over the years to show understanding for the different interests and perspectives of its members.
We continue to believe that the goal of dismantling apartheid and establishing democracy in South Africa will be reached in the end by negotiation. It is that goal, in the context of a suspension of violence, which we seek. Racial justice with peace, not amid an economic wasteland, but the growing prosperity which a non-racial South Africa could enjoy.
Ladies and Gentlemen, your questions. [end p3]
John Dickie (Daily Mail)
Prime Minister, the other six members of this Conference saw you move some distance towards them. Why could you not have moved more, for example on the three extra measures they have added since the Nassau meeting?
Prime Minister
I have indicated that the measures I think which we take in concert with our European partners, should that be decided, will have considerably greater impact than a number of the other measures in the Commonwealth Accord.
You know my views on sanctions, and I have indicated that in spite of those views, the fact that other people in the same organisation took a different view was a fact I could not ignore.
It is important that we also work with the Commonwealth and also work with the Community, and I thought we have got the list just about right. If the European Community takes the decision at the end of September to implement those measures, this will be a very substantial step.
John Dickie
Just one supplementary. Why are not consular services being withdrawn?
Prime Minister
I think in South Africa we probably have more people entitled to British passports than any other country in the Commonwealth. You will have heard the figure before. There are about 800,000 people in South Africa who either hold British passports or are entitled to hold British passports. I think that makes consular [end p4] services really rather more important for us than it might for other people.
Michael Evans (Daily Express)
Since, Prime Minister, the British Government appears to have gone one way in this communique and the rest have gone further or another way, is it in any sense damaging to the unity of the Commonwealth?
Prime Minister
No, I do not think it is damaging to the unity of the Commonwealth. What it is, is recognition that each of us have different positions and different perspectives.
Obviously, what we do with regard to South Africa could have a much bigger impact and what we are doing and expecting to do as a virtue of this agreement could have a very much bigger impact than in the case of many many Commonwealth countries, and I think it recognised the different weight attached to the different measures according to the country, and the different perspectives.
Paul Carding (News of Canada)
Prime Minister, after the Nassau Conference, you characterised your movement with a pair of words that have become quite famous in this whole context. Would you care to characterise how you feel your position has shifted during the last few days?
Prime Minister
I think I have already indicated, in answer to a previous question, that should the European Community agree on the measures which we have indicated when it comes to the next relevant meeting [end p5] in The Hague, namely to consider a ban on the import of coal, iron and steel—and the Community has not, as it happens, done Krugerrands and other gold coins—that that would be a very considerable step with considerable impact on the South African economy. That leaves aside, of course, whether that impact would bring about internal change or not—but it would be a very considerable step.
John Battersby (South African Morning Newspaper)
How would you like President Botha to respond to this package in the first instance, and how would you expect him to respond to it, given his public position, which he has made very clear to your Foreign Secretary?
Prime Minister
I am not going to venture into territory of how President Botha would respond. That is for him. I think he knows full well that we believe that apartheid must be brought to an end. We would like it to be brought to an end as soon as possible. We continue to believe that it will have to be brought to an end by negotiation, and that remains our position.
Ian Henderson (ABC TV News, Australia)
Mrs. Thatcher, I am sorry if this question is something of a repeat.
Prime Minister
That is all right. You want it to go out on your television, I expect. [end p6]
Ian Henderson
Do you believe that the fact that there has not been a united position reached here today will damage the fabric of the Commonwealth and Britain's influence within it?
Prime Minister
No, I think there has been a very realistic position. Members of the Commonwealth have a very very different interest, in practice, in South Africa. We, by history, have a very considerable number there, and we have very large investments, and we have very large trading interests.
Other members of the Commonwealth will have very little investment or trading interests in there and practically no people.
What I think this communique does is to recognise those differences and recognise that the measures proposed would affect us differently and that we, who appear to be taking fewer measures than the rest of the Commonwealth, those measures that we are expecting to take will nevertheless have a very much greater impact than the larger number of measures on the part of some of the other Commonwealth countries.
I do say that the Front Line States themselves are in a different position from all of the rest of us and what happens could affect them very much.
Gillian Langdon (Daily Mirror)
Prime Minister, if you do not think that sanctions are right and believe that they would have the reverse effect, why have you in fact changed your position today and agreed to further measures? [end p7]
Prime Minister
I do not believe that sanctions are effective to bring about internal change, and that is our objective—to bring about internal change.
They could, of course, have a considerable effect on the South African economy and that of itself our colleagues believe might give a considerable jolt to the position. The fact that they believe differently from the things we believe is a fact which we have to take into account in the Commonwealth context and in the European context and therefore we have to do things which certainly are a compromise but which take our membership both of the Commonwealth and the Community into account, and it is in the British interest that we do so.
Question (Edwin Roth, Newspapers in Germany and Austria)
Prime Minister, you just said something rather interesting. You said that you believe your measures will have more effect than the measures of other people. Could you perhaps enlarge on that? Why will those measures have more effect?
Prime Minister
Because our investments in South Africa are considerable and therefore a ban on new investment is of considerable effect; because Europe, should it choose to implement these measures, is quite a big buyer of coal and therefore that will have a very considerable effect.
Now, for countries who have virtually no investment, a ban on new investment is of no importance. For countries that buy no coal or iron or steel, then that ban on the import is of virtually no importance or significance. [end p8]
For a country who does not have many people in South Africa and whose people do not go to South Africa for holidays, it has little effect for them to try to introduce a voluntary ban on tourism. We have a lot of people in South Africa, as I have indicated, who have British passports, who have title to them, and therefore a voluntary ban on promoting tourism would have greater effect.
It is recognising the underlying position of the economic relationship historically between ourselves and South Africa and recognising the underlying position that there are still a lot of people who have British roots and therefore are entitled to a British passport.
Edwin Roth
What is a voluntary ban, Prime Minister? This is something entirely new; the concept of it. Does it not mean that people who do not want to go, who do not need to go, will not be forced to go?
Prime Minister
No. It is a voluntary ban on the promotion of tourism. It means that we would do everything in our power to persuade the travelling organisations not to promote tourism. It has to be a voluntary ban—by exhortation, by persuasion. We have no powers whatsoever under legislation to introduce a compulsory ban. We have no powers whatsoever under legislation to have a ban on the South African Tourist Office in London.
I am sure you will understand, Mr. Roth, that that is what freedom means. [end p9]
Question (Gentleman from Amsterdam)
Prime Minister, you say that you want to end apartheid by peaceful negotiation. Does that mean that Sir Geoffrey Howe or you are going to take an active part in those negotiations?
Prime Minister
No, no. It is not for us to take a part in those negotiations. I think that has been recognised ever since the Nassau Accord. It is up to us to try to do everything we can to help to bring about that dialogue, but not to take part in it—neither to take part in the dialogue nor the larger negotiations between all the peoples in South Africa. The negotiations are a matter for them.
We had hoped that we would be instrumental in helping to bring about a dialogue.
I myself think that the Eminent Persons Group was very near to doing it and their negotiating concept, which was referred to I think in Mr. Pindling 's press conference and is referred to both in the Eminent Persons Group and the Communique today, was an excellent one and very nearly succeeded. That is why Sir Geoffrey HoweSir Geoffrey went again to South Africa representing the Community, to try to see if we could pick up where they left off.
Well, we did not succeed immediately, but I am quite certain that the arguments he deployed, the clarity with which he pursued them, and the persuasiveness and calm with which he pursued them, will have been bound to have had an effect on all whom he met.
Question (World Report, New Delhi)
Mrs. Thatcher, now that you have decided to dismantle apartheid in your own way, different from the other Commonwealth [end p10] countries, might you make another trip to South Africa to try and persuade President Botha, after Sir Geoffrey's famous visit?
Prime Minister
We cannot dismantle apartheid. It is the South African Government and people who have to dismantle apartheid. We do all we can to persuade them in that direction.
I have no plans for a trip to South Africa.
Question (The Telegraph of Calcutta)
It seems to some of us that Britain, at this summit as well as in the Commonwealth in general, is rather isolated and therefore I was wondering does it not bother you that Britain, which has given rise to the Commonwealth, is today isolated in the Commonwealth?
Prime Minister
But I think your charge does not stand up. We are right in the heart of the European Community and the things which I have been proposing today that we would accept and implement should the Community agree are Community things. We are one of twelve members of the Community.
Some of the things which we are implementing are some of the things which have been mentioned in the United States. I am not quite sure how the relative purchases vary between Europe and the United States. I suspect that Europe buys more of the things upon which it is thought that there might be a ban on importation than the United States.
I hardly think that you would find a common factor between the United States and ourselves, and we in Europe, which must be [end p11] unanimous to act at all, amounts to isolation. You will find that it amounts to us being right in the heart of things.
Question (Same Man)
… . the Commonwealth?
Prime Minister
Yes indeed, but I have already indicated that I think if those things in the European communique should turn out to be implemented, you will find that the effect of the steps that we are taking—the practical effect and the practical reality because of the volume of purchases of Europe and because of the tremendous industrial interest of this country in South Africa—the actual practical effect of the fewer measures will turn out to be greater than the practical effect of the larger number of measures accepted by the larger number of Commonwealth countries.
Richard Green (Toronto Star, Canada)
Prime Minister, as you know, nobody at this meeting proposed general or punitive economic sanctions of the kind that you have criticised. You yourself have thirteen measures now in place and as a result of your decision will soon have sixteen measures. Now, I do not know how many measures makes a sanction, but I wonder why, for the sake of what Sir Robert Hawke called “the credibility and unity of the Commonwealth” and says the issue is not sanctions doctrine but individual judgment over sanctions, why you did not move towards the Six.
Prime Minister
I think it is a matter of what one believes the effect of [end p12] sanctions will be. Our aim is to help to bring about internal change in South Africa.
I have already mentioned—not merely mentioned but specified—that we do not believe that sanctions do bring about internal change. Nevertheless, sanctions do have some effect and therefore we have gone along with the Commonwealth and with Europe.
The ones that we have chosen are ones that we can do. They will, as I have indicated I believe, have more practical effect in concert with Europe than some of the others—the greater number of sanctions which the Commonwealth itself has agreed to.
Graham Leach (BBC)
You have explained your opposition to sanctions, in part because of the harm they will do to black people in Southern Africa generally, and yet today you have lent your support to one form of European action—namely the ban on coal imports from South Africa—just a few days after the South African authorities have made it absolutely clear that in the event of sanctions they will fire and expel tens of thousands of migrant black mineworkers. How do you reconcile those two positions?
Prime Minister
That has been very much not merely in my mind, but in my argument throughout, and that is why I have been very very reluctant to come to the decision which we have taken, and the decision which as far as Europe was concerned was a possibility from the time of The Hague communique.
Yes, I am reluctant. Yes, I do not like the idea that here in Marlborough House we can in fact decide who shall be out of a job. I am already aware of the difficulties caused with our own [end p13] miners, some of whom have to do without a job. Fortunately, they will have considerable redundancy payments and good social security payments.
Yes, you have hit upon the argument that I myself have used and will continue to use, which is why what we have proposed is limited, and it is one reason why I would utterly recoil from going to the larger one of imposing a ban on agricultural imports, because as you know, there would be some 200,000 black South Africans in rural areas on the farms which would be infinitely more devastating than what we are proposing.
Yes, it is with reluctance, Mr. Leach, but I do think that it matters to British interests that we move some way, because of the Commonwealth and because of the European Community, because we have to work in concert with them on other things. That is a factor in British interests and that is a factor which I must take into account and that is a factor in negotiation.
But you are absolutely right. You have hit on what for me is a very very sensitive thought.