Thatcher bandwagon rolls in
PM takes a look at high-tech industries
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went into week two of the election campaign with a tour of Welsh high-tech industry yesterday.
In election 1987 the traditional hustings have been replaced by the photographic set-piece and Mrs Thatcher spent a busy afternoon creating “photo opportunities” .
Speaking during her first stop at Lion Laboratories in Barry, the Prime Minister denied she had come to fight Labour leader Mr Neil Kinnock on his own territory.
“It is part of my usual tour which I always do in time of elections,” she said. “I was here comparatively recently, in North Wales.”
“We don't comment on the opposition, we just carry on doing our job and producing our positive policies.”
Mrs Thatcher had flown into Cardiff Airport with a travelling bandwagon of security staff and Press, before boarding the blue Conservative campaign coach accompanied by Welsh Secretary Mr Nicholas Edwards.
A small cavalcade of coaches and police vehicles then followed her to the small Barry plant, where she was joined by Vale of Glamorgan Tory MP Sir Raymond Gower and his wife.
The firm produces breath and blood alcohol measuring instruments, including the well-known Intoximeter, and in 1980 won the Queen's Award for Technological Achievement.
The Prime Minister came out firmly against random breath-testing for drivers as she toured the company, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary.
As she tried-out breath-testing equipment, the Prime Minister was asked if she agreed with a public opinion poll favouring the introduction of random tests.
“I favour the law as it is,” she replied.
The NOP poll, published yesterday, showed that three people in four favoured random testing.
Mrs Thatcher registered a zero when she blew into the breathalyser machine.
But the accompanying group of photographers straining for the breath-test pictures caused chaos at the factory.
The travelling army of cameramen, reporters, TV crews, party officials and bodyguards outnumbered the 70 employees.
Lion's chairman and chief executive Dr Tom Jones checked Mrs Thatcher's reading on the intoximeter equipment and announced, “I can testify you have not been drinking today.”
She replied, “Quite right.”
Asked by reporters about an opinion poll showing Labour closing the gap, she said, “I don't pay too much attention to the polls. We just keep doing our job, putting forward our policies and showing how we view theirs.”
As she left, Mr Jones presented her with a portable breath-test machine.
“I am so sorry Denis is not here—I would not try it on him but I think he might take it to the golf club now and again,” said Mrs Thatcher.
A group of about 20 impromptu demonstrators shouted and jeered as the Prime Minister arrived at the new headquarters of the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation in Mount Stuart Square.
The corporation will mastermind the ambitious multi-million pound facelift of Cardiff's docks, a partly derelict area of more than 2,700 acres.
Its headquarters is in the heart of former Prime Minister Mr James Callaghan 's Cardiff South and Penarth constituency.
Corporation board chairman Mr Geoffrey Inkin showed the Prime Minister and other visitors, including Cardiff West Conservative candidate Mr Stefan Terlezki and Cardiff South and Penarth candidate Mr Gareth Neale, around the office in Cambrian Buildings and the view from its roof.
The Prime Minister's third port of call was the Bio Technica Ltd. plant in Llanishen. Cardiff, which employs 50 people in the commercial use of microbes.
Accompanied by Cardiff North candidate Mr Gwllym Jones, Mrs Thatcher donned a white coat to tour the laboratories of the firm and was shown round by research director Professor Howard Slater.
Built in 1984, the laboratories now employ 61 people and have plans to double the workforce.
A chemist in her university days, Mrs Thatcher peered down a miscroscope to try her hand at isolating microbes used in a farm silage accelerant. She was shown the fermenting area where the bugs are grown for agricultural use.