Mrs T comes ‘home’
(1) Nottingham Evening Post, 26 May 1987Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher touched down at East Midlands Airport yesterday to a rousing welcome from the party faithful.
Lengthy applause greeted her as she stepped from the BAC 111 aircraft into a sea of extravagant blue rosettes.
Then she declared how nice it was to be back on home ground in the East Midlands—and launched into a stinging attack on Labour defence policy.
“People can't trust a party which would give up nuclear weapons unilaterally and substitute some kind of guerrilla band for them,” she said at an impromptu rallying gathering in the domestic departure lounge.
“You can't have guerrillas until you've been occupied. That's what it seems to me they were talking about.”
Mrs Thatcher—whose visit only edged on Nottingham and the county before she headed off into Leicestershire—said she was confident the Tories would be back after the General Election.
Nottingham's three Conservative candidates, Michael Knowles, Richard Ottoway and Martin Brandon Bravo, joined city councillors and local party members to see Mrs Thatcher.
Yesterday's itinerary was kept secret until shortly before Mrs Thatcher's arrival and close security was in operation, with a posse of detectives discernible from the massive media circus only by their lack of photographic and recording hardware.
In that respect it differed from the hyper-low-key arrival of deputy Labour leader Roy Hattersley at a hidden-away party club in Long Eaton, where he was decanted from a red Ford Escort with little ceremony.
But Mr Hattersley—whose visit precedes by a week another from Labour leader Neil Kinnock to the Erewash constituency—was as confident as Mrs Thatcher, albeit of the exact opposite result.
He told Long Eaton Labour Club members: “There's going to be a Labour Prime Minister in Downing Street in the next three weeks.” [end p1]
(2) Leicester Mercury, 26 May 1987
N-Weapons ‘have kept the peace’
Immediately after landing at East Midlands International Airport, Prime Minister Mrs. Margaret Thatcher lashed into Labour's defence policy, claiming it would reduce Britain's Armed Forces to a “band of guerrillas.”
She said she had three points for voters:
Industry was recovering and doing well. People realised this.
People liked the wider ownership possible under the Conservatives, which was the essence of Tory philosophy and belief.
But the voters did not trust Labour's plans to give up nuclear weapons. The issue of defence would play a larger part in the election campaign.
The safety of Britain and NATO depended on nuclear defence. History showed that conventional arms did not prevent war.
But world peace had been kept by the nuclear deterrent, and this would continue in the future.
Mrs Thatcher said a return to a Socialist administration would mean an end to trade union legislation and Britain would again be controlled by Government and the unions.
But members of the unions would no longer control their organisations, and would be denied what Tories regarded as their birthright.
She urged supporters to take the message to the towns and villages that in the coming election “every vote is vital.”