David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
&dubellip; what sort of century or millennium would you like to see them growing up in the world, specifically in Britain?
How would you like to see Britain by the year 2000?
Prime Minister
It is quite a long way to go, isn't it? It is longer to get there than I have been in power and, you know, one has to remember that.
If you start to think about a new millennium, you think first that the thing that affects people most of all, although it is not perhaps the first thing they think of - it is something they assume - is that there will continue to be peace in the world, and a peace under which, nevertheless, we have freedom and justice, and most of us would wish that freedom and justice to be extended to peoples that have not got it.
I think that means that we simply must keep up our defence. There are many things which I am able to [end p1] welcome and many great historic experiments that one is able to take a fantastic interest in and really wish well, not merely with words but with practical encouragement, because I know that the policy of this Government is that our defence shall be sure, so if you get something suddenly unexpected happening or something falls apart in a world in which the time it takes to get new weapons into production, we can only afford to have a defence now which is sure and which steadily automatically modernises so that it deters any would-be aggressor. So that would be the first thing - that peace in the world is kept, but not a peace at any price, but a peace with freedom and justice - and that means keeping one's defence sure.
And it also means, if I might say so, keeping a pretty close relationship between the United States and Europe. It has been a very profitable relationship throughout history for them and for us. It is not that I think of it as America and Europe; I think of these two great countries either side of the Atlantic and one stretching right over to the Pacific really as the centre of the Free World, being round the Atlantic Basin, and our first duty is to protect that freedom and then to try and enlarge it to other countries. [end p2]
Having said that - that is the most important - the second thing is Europe.
By the time we come to the year 2000, the Channel Tunnel should be working. Do not underestimate the difference that is going to make for our young people and the opportunities it will give. It is going to be a historic thing.
I hope that it will mean that we become much more proficient in learning other people's languages because we will have much more occasion to do so. Right now, you do not have the chance to practise. You forget your words, you forget your vocabulary, because they are things you do not use every day. You just do not remember.
Also by the year 2000, it would not surprise me if by that time we found with the Channel Tunnel what we find with roads - that the moment you build a new one, it is not big enough, but that you need to build another one because of the amount of traffic that it in fact attracts. So it would not surprise me if we are well on the way to a new one by then.
It is all part of the same thing. It is part of Europe learning to live more closely together, still with separate nations, because historically we are separate and if ever you try to drive something [end p3] fundamentally against people's instincts, you will not succeed, and our instinct is that we are really rather proud of being British. We think we have done quite a lot for the world for the service of freedom. We think we have done a great deal for the rule of law. We think we have shown the outer world beyond Europe what good administration and an impartial legal system is, and we are really rather proud of being British. We will go on being proud.
Equally, the French are proud of being French. Each has its historic background of culture and if you try to go against that, you will not get it. To try to live together knowing that you have got these differences, but you have a common interest, is important. That is the second thing.
And you will have a much more genuine Common Market. Young people with their qualifications which they have arsquouired here, would get much more equivalent qualifications, so we would get much more interchange.
The third thing - the great thing - is are we going to see by the year 2000 in the Soviet Union and the countries beyond the Iron Curtain an enlargement of liberty, that people are freer? It seems to be that already they are freer to say what they think, which [end p4] is a great advance in itself. Are they really going to have so much freedom and circulation of ideas, you know, periodicals being able to get in? Are they going to have much more freedom of movement and far more of the things which we take for granted?
Mr. Gorbachev has embarked on a really historic experiment. I sometimes wonder whether people appreciate the enormous magnitude of it, and I most earnestly hope that he succeeds. I am pretty certain in my own mind that he is very determined and that he will go on determined to succeed.
The difficulty with having a massive change of that dimension when the people have only been allowed to do what they have been told to do and all of a sudden they are told, “You have got personal responsibility and must use it and initiative!”, is that coupled with much freer speech, the criticism and the difficulties tend to emerge first - it always does when you are having major economic as well as other changes - and therefore you have to keep going to break through that barrier of difficulty and to get across it to see the enormous scope which it offers in the future. If that goes well, the really good results should be showing by the year 2000 and we should have many more contacts. [end p5]
I think one still has to keep up one's defence. As I said, you have always got to be sure of that, but we should be steadily working with many many more contacts and a little bit of breaking down of this frontier of freedom which goes right across our continent, but it will not come as a great flash. It comes by steadily working together.
I know you will have to cut this down, but shall I just go on, because by the year 2000 so much could have happened? Can I go right over to the Far East?
China - the largest country in the world, working a little bit more towards freedom and the market approach, understanding that people work better when they have incentives - and after all, the greatest motivating, driving force in human nature is to work for your family. The Chinese are very family-minded and some of that should be coming too, peace and prosperity there.
And also - which I wanted to say to you - 1997 of course is a very important year for Britain and China because at that time the lease of Hong Kong will come to an end and China promised that it will be ‘one country - two systems’, provided the second one is small, and we shall still be there just about the year 2000 in the Joint Committee which is going on for three years after that. [end p6]
But China is the largest country in the world. Heaven knows how talented her people are. The beauty of their artistic work, which was so far ahead of others. It was highly cultured when we were still in wode. So many of the fundamental scientific things were discovered there: the compass, the turbine used really as a prayer wheel, dynamite, and I am always pleased that Europe is now keeping close to China because it can be an extremely interesting period, both for China and an influence on the wider world.
I have not the slightest shadow of doubt that Japan will, I believe, continue to be a democracy greatly advanced in her technology.
Can I just come to Africa for a moment?
It is a country in which one has to try to do two things simultaneously. First, try to do everything one can to help them to raise the standard of their living. They must never be treated as some people try to treat them as a sort of permanent pensioner from the food surpluses from Europe. That is not what they want, what they seek or the way they are going nor the way they wish to be as a matter of pride. They wish to be steadily more and more independent in their food production, possibly exporting some, and Kenya where I went, is really doing extremely well. [end p7]
But at the same time, you are very conscious that you must not interfere. So many of us, having been ex-colonial powers, you have to be really super tactful that you do not interfere, but I was most impressed with Kenya. It takes a time and they have their own different culture. They are not only building up their capital; they are finding what way of government suits them, but obviously we are concerned that justice should always be there and the liberty, and they should work towards that.
Why have I started on foreign affairs?
First, because peace affects all of us more than anything else.
Secondly, because it really has come to me very vividly in the last eighteen months to two years that we are living far more in a kind of global village than was ever so even ten years ago, and I think it has come to ordinary folk that foreign affairs are not something that concerns the Foreign Office and those lofty people up there; they are something which affects our daily lives.
I would hope enormously that apartheid has by that time in South Africa gradually more and more been broken down. It is industry that is leading the breakdown - that is the other great thing in Africa. [end p8]
But all of it is a global village and the trade is much more interconnected, interrelated. Our standard of living depends upon having much more freer trade - not having more constrained trade.
So you have got your foreign affairs in connection with your peace, your defence; you are working together much more with Europe; you are working together with countries like China; you are thoroughly supporting, as a great historic epic, what Mr. Gorbachev is trying to do in the Soviet Union and wishing it well.
We are quite lucky in a way - quite fortunate - to live in an age when there is so much positive going on, moving further forward and that Britain, because of our history, because of what we have done and contributed in many ways to the world, is taking quite a prominent part in that forward movement the world over.
Whenever I talk to other countries who also have a world role, those of us who think beyond our shores always notice some countries in things you talk about are always looking inward, always saying: “Oh well! Our electorate are not interested in foreign affairs! Our electorate will not take that!” and you know, our electorate is one which looks outwards, because that, again, has been our history from the time of Elizabeth the First. [end p9]
Internally, we have returned to being an enterprising country and taking responsibility for our own future. In other words, we are beginning more and more to act with the grain of the British character. Remember, I said before you could never go fundamentally against the grain. Our grain has been that we have a certain independence of status, a certain independence of mind. That, I think, was being thoroughly eroded by socialism that said you looked to government for what shall be done, you looked to government and they will take more and more of your money and know better than you.
We have had a restoration of the British spirit of enterprise, the British character, and the British sense of duty - never forget that! It is a compound thing: yes, we are enterprising; yes, we take responsibilities; but the great thing about Britain was that as we prospered coming up after the Industrial Revolution, if you look at the burgeoning of all of the great voluntary organisations then, if you look at all of the new things that happened then which affect the whole social life of the community, they turned their money to building schools; they build extra churches; they set up the voluntary organisations; they looked after even the welfare in prisons; they built the cities. It was not enough just to have municipal [end p10] buildings and to start schools and have a church; yes, they wanted orchestras, the great orchestras of the north - Liverpool; they wanted choirs, the great choirs of Huddersfield; they wanted art galleries, the great art galleries - Liverpool, Manchester.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Do you see this coming again?
Prime Minister
Yes. Somehow, those inner cities which were built because of the commercial geography and the commerce of the time, they did not keep up with the time and that is how they retreated.
But now, what we have done is to uncover the enterprise that was there, the sense of duty, the sense of responsibility that was there, releasing it with incentives. It is never enough just to get down inflation - people need incentives. Releasing it with incentives and coming back to that motivating force, that power: “Yes, I want to have enough to look after my own family! Yes, I want to have enough money to help my own parents who did not have maybe the chances that I did! Yes, I want to have enough to help the great voluntary spirit! Yes, I want to have enough to participate in the arts, to travel, to see the riches of the world!” [end p11]
Now, this is enterprise, incentive, sense of duty and it was that that Shaw called “the great middle class morality of Britain” - this sense of duty. For years, people thought “duty” was a cold word. It is quite absurd. “Duty! You do not only do it because of duty!” Actually, if you do it because of duty, it means that somewhere within you - even if it is not always apparent without - there is an understanding that the community is a kind of web of the lives of people interwoven and that you do have a sense of responsibility to them, and there is something very much in free peoples in which they want to know not only that what they are doing will earn them a good living - most people want a good living; nothing wrong with that; people call it a materialist motive; it is not wrong to want to do better for your family; it is not wrong to want to have enough to give something to good causes - they want to know not only that what they are doing will earn them a reasonable living and better prospects; that what they are doing is, broadly speaking, “right”.
I do not mean “right” in the sense that you have got to tick off every one of the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins, etc., but generally, that it is right, because people recognise when things are, broadly speaking, going right - not in connection with anything particular, but broadly speaking right - that is very [end p12] much part of the British character.
Mind you, we must not strike away our future. We must work for the future. You do not get anywhere by striking away your opportunities - you merely give them to someone else. But I think that what we have got at the moment is just a small aberration and that people realise at rock bottom you do not strike away your opportunities - you merely give the jobs to others.
So I do believe we have an opportunity steadily to increase the standard of living and by the “standard of living”, yes, I do mean all of the other things that go with it.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Better housing?
Prime Minister
Yes, better housing.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Less crime?
Prime Minister
Less crime comes with, I think, the wider capital ownership, the wider responsibility. As you have some more of your own property, so I think you come to respect others. [end p13]
Now, that does not get to the roots of violence, because there is evil in every one of us and if you go deeply into the roots of violence, well, let me say this: that I think historically over the years, we have become a less violent society on the whole and I do think that there has been a much greater public consciousness of the fact that these things matter. It is no earthly good having a highly prosperous society if you are afraid to walk the streets at night and I think in the last five years or so there has been a much greater understanding - again it is part of the British character - that these are not things you can leave wholly to the police. They are things in which we are involved too.
I think one has to recognise that at a time when young people have far more freedom and far more money than we had in our young days, so they come up against far more temptations. You add to that there has been less kind of discipline - not meaning the hefty, heavy-handed discipline - but we went through a period when parents were not quite sure whether they should impose a discipline. We are coming through that period, you know. Young people are complaining sometimes: “Are there no rules really any more?” and wanting them, and I think you are having a return of rules by which to live. [end p14]
So you will get, I think, the increasing prosperity. I hope that we are getting now an increasing partnership between police and public; that if a child is in difficulty, you just cannot wait for the step of the bobby on the beat down the street. You know that child is your neighbour and you have to take account, so we have got the opportunity, steadily, of better times in which the individual gradually will know that in a life of technology it is still the individual that counts, because it is he that makes a difference between the purpose, the effort, the sense of duty, the sense of kindness. That is the difference between just a high standard of living and a high quality of living.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Is the Thatcher Revolution a professional revolution or do you think there are certain things you can do?
Prime Minister
One calls it a “Thatcher Revolution”, but I did not create the enterprise. I did not create this British character. I did not create this fundamental sense of duty. I did not create this fundamental belief. [end p15]
Yes, we have done great things, particularly in the rule of law, the development of the Common Law is something unique to Britain - something of which we should be immensely proud.
I said: “Look! We have done all those things! Someone has overlaid them and battened them all down with a whole lot of iron hoops of controls - crosswires of steel and battened them all down!” We took away some of those things and so the great qualities are being released and in the end, you are in politics - certainly on my side - because you believe every single person has good or bad in them, but on the whole the good, the decency, the honourable, there will enough of it to triumph over the doubt, enough of it to triumph over the bad things that go on, and if we did not have that belief I think we would not go on.
I suppose deeply at rock bottom it is what you fundamentally believe about human nature. The bad things will go, but there are enough good things to overcome them.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
What are you going to do specifically in the next few years to stimulate the decent family values on which you place such high store and which in fact will have to obtain unless we are going to leave the global village? [end p16]
Prime Minister
I think we did quite a lot already and will continue in that direction.
Your family values: first, it is the matrimonial home, and we are doing a great deal about that. More and more owner occupation, more and more home ownership, and where people either want or have to live in rented property, we are giving them far more choice because the post-war period has been to build great big blocks of rented property under councils and people in rented property have not really had the choice of being anything very much other than a tenant of a municipal landlord and sometimes that has been used partly politically. So we are trying to free them from that. It is all the more choice in the kind of home you want.
Secondly, to build your own security for the future, because the security you build for yourself gives you a fantastic interest not only in your own old age, but in what you can do for your children. That is really the genuine extension of the capital-owning democracy.
And Mr. Montgomery, that not only affects this generation, but for the first time, by the end of this century, almost everyone in our land can look forward to some expectations from their family, because there will be possibly a family house; there will be some shares; [end p17] there will be more savings; because people have been left with more of their own money by a policy of lowering direct taxation that has two things about it:
First, it gives you the incentive to do more.
Secondly, people will take advantage of that incentive and have savings for the future - for their own future - and something to give to their children.
And the third thing is it is a fundamental belief about the way you run your country.
The Chancellor has not a penny piece to give away at the Budget, not a penny piece! What the Chancellor does is to decide how much he takes away from people in order to carry on the defence, the law and order, the great duties of the State, the National Health Service, Education, and so on, and he says: “If I want people to live for their own families and for the community, the greatest incentive is that the harder they work, the more they earn, the better they can do for their families!” That is not only a belief in family life, but the more families we have like that the better the life of the nation.
That is the whole economic policy, but it is founded on a deep belief, and so you will find that is what we will do for families, and then it is very much up to themselves. [end p18]
We are involving many more people in neighbourhood watches - they are coming forward - and in doing all of these things.
We are constantly involving more small businesses, and larger ones, in saying: “Look! You have the task to train young people!” We could not have done the Youth Training Scheme without the partnership between Government and business and business is also, because of this partnership, doing more in the community.
You know the work of business in the community. Again, that is doing tremendous things and now, with the new training scheme, we are saying: “Look! Young people, there will not be as much semi-skilled work as there has been, because that is taken over by machines!” The great mechanical revolution - when things went from being personally done to great mechanical revolution by the big, heavy, clanking machinery in the factory - was the creation of a massive amount of semi-skilled work. A lot of doing things personally went. It created far more semi-skilled work because you had the great new products that came out, all the great new castings for great cars and mass production. A lot of that semi-skilled work is not now there and it has gone to more highly-skilled work because the work on the machines, the maintenance, the creation of new design of machines - well look, you see it in your own business - the [end p19] computers, the design, the marketing, that is much more highly skilled. Even in unemployment, we have a lack of skilled workers. In building, there are not enough bricklayers, there are not enough plasterers, there are not enough carpenters, there are not enough electricians.
So we have got our new scheme going on training and all of that, again, is saying: “Look! We will do some training involving the schools, the technical colleges, but we have got to involve the companies much more because young people have got to be trained for the commercial world!” All of that is going on, but it is all part of a piece - it is part of a piece that we believe in people's enterprise.
We have got to keep right up front in science and technology and we have got to keep up front in training.
It is two things: it is extension of the capital-owning democracy and the enterprise on the economic side; and it is the extension of opportunity. That is the thing which matters tremendously, that we are doing this Parliament, concentrating on education. We are doing things like a Community Charge, altering local authority rates because there are local authorities that are anti-enterprise and they are stopping the very jobs coming into their cities and the very enterprise that we need. [end p20]
So we are getting the extension of opportunities, of education and through training and then we are saying: “Right! Now, over to you. We will do everything we can to help you and then, of course, as ever, it is over to you! We respect the dignity of the person, that he or she will want to do their own thing, and we will help you to get started! And we will have a safety net too to catch you when you fall!”
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Undoubtedly, the role of women in all walks of life [sic]. As we see in politics there are very few women for instance; still in the hundred biggest companies in the country there are only seven women who are managing directors or chief executives. They are not fulfilling, I would say, an equal role in society at every level.
Is there anything that you see that will happen in the next few years that will stimulate the involvement of women?
Prime Minister
I agree with you that one is disappointed, for example, in the number of women who come into public life because we have had generation after generation of women who are just as well educated as men, women who [end p21] are getting degrees. It is not only those, but they are not coming into public life as much as we had hoped and it makes those of us who are in public life rather more conspicuous than we ought to be. You know, they say: “a woman editor”, “a woman Member of Parliament”, “a woman minister”.
How can one explain it? I think it is because the tone of family life is still set by the mother. She is still the manager of the household. In a way, that is a satisfying job, because you make your own decisions. There is quite a lot of management in the household, when you are constantly making decisions. That is a great responsibility, and you will find that there are many many women who have very considerable ability and who go out to work because they want to use their talents and ability and they also want the independence it brings and they also want to know that at the end of the day they come back and have their own experiences to contribute to the family discussion, but they still have this fundamental responsibility for the home when their children are still there and therefore you will find there are many women in teaching, many women perhaps in nursing, many women in business, but when it comes to applying for the top jobs - the head teacher, the top jobs in business - they are saying: “I do not think I can yet do that, because I have still got great responsibilities at home, my children are now in [end p22] their teens!” The teens is a time when they need a lot of attention. I would not go back to the teens again. It is a time when things are changing in their lives and they need a lot of attention. They need to give time to be with their children and their families - both parents - and therefore you find that period when they are not working up to the full limit of their talent and ability in their chosen work because they have these other responsibilities.
Then it tends to come later, but then the question is: do they really make the leap into public life or into the top job? If there is a family business, I sometimes think it is an easier leap to make.
As far as the parliamentary aspect is concerned, I am the first to say that I think that had Denis Thatchermy husband's job been in Glasgow, in Durham, in Liverpool, in Exeter, I do not think that I would have left my children when they were young on a Monday morning to travel down to London, to travel back over on the Thursday night, because I would have felt that they were missing me, I was missing them, and somehow was I letting them down by not being with them more, and I think the same thing happens to many women here and in the United States and that is why you do not get more women. As it was, my home was in London and I know I had to make that choice. [end p23]
I think we are breaking down any prejudice barriers. I think they have very nearly gone.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
But what about women that are available? I mean, you do not have any women in your Cabinet.
Prime Minister
There are very few, and we have as many women in the Government proportionate to the women in the House, but there will come a time when there are more women in the Cabinet.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Your Cabinet?
Prime Minister
I hope so! We put a lot of women in the House of Lords. Janet Young was in our Cabinet, as you know, for a time, who come in on merit, not because they were women. They come in on merit and therefore one has to look right across the merit board.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
What advice would you give to a woman who wanted to started a career either in politics or business? [end p24]
Prime Minister
Advice? Whatever is your aptitude, your talent, your ability, you work at it, you go on working at it. You work really hard, because if you want to climb the ladder you have got to like and enjoy your work and like it so much that you do more than the job itself will demand. Then, there are some jobs whose demands are endless. You constantly enlarge your understanding and then you take whatever chance comes, and that is the only way that I learned.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Some people say a woman has to be twice as good and work twice as hard.
Prime Minister
No, I do not think that. I do not think that is necessarily so. I think we really are coming up to when you are judged on your merit.
Certainly, from my own experience, if a woman has a young family one of the things that I would enquire if someone came would be: “Have you got proper arrangements for the children and are you lucky enough to have a mother round the corner or a great family [end p25] friend or an aunt or something so that if the children come home early from school or are not well or when they come home from school there is someone to be there to get a meal for them and to welcome them?”
Many women who stay in their home town and so therefore mother is there, if mother does not work these days, can make these arrangements, but what we are always fearful of, knowing the importance of the feeling of security to a child, is that the greatest thing is that its home life is secure. So that is both something which encourages you and is your refuge. Well it is just your nest. What else can I say? It is where you can always go. Of course, where a child belongs.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
From what you are saying, you seem to favour the traditional role of women in the home and in parenting and it would encourage them too much to come out and be independent, to be working mothers; it might undermine …
Prime Minister
No. I am constantly saying to women who want to go out and work: “Please! When you are married and have children, you are always able to make some [end p26] arrangements, even through your own earnings, which enable you to go out even part-time to keep in touch with what was your skill or your ability. If you do not keep in touch, whether it is in journalism, whether it is in being able to do beautiful things in crafts - in hairdressing it is easier, sometimes you can do it from home - if you are a technical person working in a laboratory, keep in touch; do it only part-time if need be, but do keep in touch, because otherwise you will find that when you want to return you have lost touch, lost expertise!” Usually it is possible for a woman to make arrangements that someone can come in. Again it has to be someone in whom the children have confidence, but you simply can never deny the fundamental relationship between mother and child - nor should you. It is quite possible for you to do both, usually by either having a family friend or making arrangements with another woman who is in the same position, but you work differently, but I am constantly saying that it is possible to do both. If you have your family in at the same time it is easier; otherwise you have to make arrangements. But then, you will be much more ready and able to return to fuller time when the children go to school if you kept in touch. This is very much for a woman who has some kind of technical or professional qualifications and for others who want to [end p27] go out for social reasons, you know, to have their own interests. Quite possible.
Do not let the fact that you maybe cannot go out full-time stop you from doing some part-time work. That is one reason why I am very keen there should continue to part-time jobs for women. It suits many of them very well.
May I say there used to be a married women's shift in factories, started at 6 o'clock to 10 o'clock, and usually when the husband got back and the mother had the early evening meal and she went to work in the factory. Now, there are many women who go out in the hotel and catering world in the evening. There is a wide variety of jobs available and I think their own independent earnings, I think it gives them that little bit extra. I think they like to feel they can make their own contacts as well and that depends on keeping quite a lot of part-time jobs going and employers are doing it because they like it too. It is all fitting together.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
The trade unions. Are you worried that they are flexing their muscles more …
Prime Minister
No, not necessarily. In the end, I have great faith in the common sense of the majority, nor indeed [end p28] am I in any way perturbed that we gave them a vote. We gave them a vote so that we knew that they knew what they were doing. If they went out on strike, they were presumed to intend the consequences of their action.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
If it came to a choice of taking inflation or higher unemployment, how &dubellip;
Prime Minister
That is not a choice. If you have higher inflation, you will jolly soon have higher unemployment, but you cannot compete with others.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
What about the Land Rover strike?
Prime Minister
We must assume that they intend the consequences of their own action. Very soon they will be looking around and saying: “Gosh! All we are doing is giving jobs to the Japanese!”
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
There will be no bail-out for them? [end p29]
Prime Minister
… and the managing director are in charge, but the tax-payer, through the Government, has given £2.9 billion - £2,900 million - to the British Leyland Group as a whole. Let me put it this way: the British Leyland Group has competed with the Health Service for tax-payers' money. It has not contributed to it. People like Ford have. They made a profit. They contributed to it.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
So you do not see any more Government money?
Prime Minister
The Government is not going to put in more money when it has already put in that much!
We have ballots so that people can choose. Yes, if they opt to go out on strike, they must face the consequences of their action. If they go out on strike and they realise that they are undermining the belief in their product because people are not going to order unless they can be certain they are going to get it, then I am sure that will dawn on them soon. [end p30]
George Bernard Shaw - “Freedom incurs responsibility!” That is why many men fear it. If you take the freedom, you have got to take the responsibility. You have got to take the consequences. I think common sense will prevail, because I think there is the overwhelming common sense. That is why I think this is an aberration, rather more than anything else.
Range Rover is a super product. Land Rover is a super product, but it is no earthly good if you cannot buy one and someone else is coming along and offering you a four-wheel drive Japanese product saying: “You know, we will not go on strike!” You have to take the consequences of your own action. That is what being a self-respecting individual is all about. You do not have to be told.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
On hanging, are you in favour of Roger Gale's amendment to the Common Law Justice Bill?
Prime Minister
Look! I have consistently believed and voted for capital punishment, believing that it should be a sentence available to a judge for a particularly awful callous, cold-blooded, heartless, sadistic murder, and [end p31] that the people who are prepared to go out and perpetrate those murders at the moment know their own life is not forfeit. They should not have that certainty.
People already serving a life sentence in prison should know that, if they hit out at a police officer or a prison officer, their own lives might be put in jeopardy as they are prepared to put the lives of others in jeopardy.
People against that try to make out that it would be a mandatory penalty. It would not. I myself believe the death penalty should be available. Some of the things are so terrible, one wonders how any civilised person can do them.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Would you be in favour of there being another form of execution apart from hanging?
Prime Minister
I have always said capital punishment. I do not necessarily tie that to a particular form of execution apart from hanging?
Prime Minister
I have always said capital punishment. I do not necessarily tie that to a particular form of execution.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Do you think a lethal injection is more … [end p32]
Prime Minister
I would be prepared, if it was brought back, to obviously have a look and see what would be the best form.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
What about your intended aim of getting socialism off the political agenda? Do you think you have succeeded enough or do you think Britain is suffering from the lack of a cohesive Opposition at the moment?
Prime Minister
I do not think it is suffering from the lack of cohesive Opposition. If you answer where I do on Tuesday and Thursday, there is plenty of very noisy opposition.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
That is only half an hour a week.
Prime Minister
Well it is effective. Is it not a pity that it cannot take place against a genuine interest in the questions and answers? [end p33]
No, I do not think it is suffering from that. We still have to entrench the new spirit of enterprise, capital-owning democracy, responsibility, initiative. They still have to be entrenched and it is going well, but it needs quite a lot longer. It is second nature to think that way.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
So socialism is not dead yet?
Prime Minister
No, not yet.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
You are working on it?
Prime Minister
I think some parts of the Labour Party are working on it! I think that they are being held up by others and I think the “others” are becoming the bigger proportion, but I do not think the British people like it and there are many who do not vote for me, who voted traditionally Labour because in days gone by they thought that Labour was what I call a general underdog party, who firmly believe in every single thing I am [end p34] doing, firmly believe in it, and hope to goodness it will go on and will hold fast to our course of action and in holding fast to their future. That is to the future which they can now see stretching out in front of them.
Yes, they can leave their children something. That is marvellous. You do not have a one-generation society thinking only of self; it has started to think of future generations.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
You approve very effectively of the … work for the people who subscribe to it, but you have to be one of …
Prime Minister
&dubellip; beginning to.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
But surely you have to be one percent ahead, you have to be &dubellip; management &dubellip; to take the initiative is that really happening or are you satisfied over the management? [end p35]
Prime Minister
Good management is coming back. Do not forget it had a decade when it was not allowed to take decisions, was not allowed to, either on prices or on pay, and differentials were squeezed and management got squeezed out as governments said: “We will make the decisions in conjunction with the heads of industry and the heads of trade unions!” and management totally disregarded, so they stopped getting used to managing. It has come back. That too is something which is turning.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
How do you answer critics who say that like all &dubellip; you live in a bunker mentality in Downing Street, you are not in touch with the common people?
Prime Minister
I am often out and about in my constituency perhaps as much as any Prime Minister has ever been in his or her constituency. I am not here perpetually. I am constantly out and about as you know.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
You are not authoritarian? [end p36]
Prime Minister
I am not authoritarian but I know the direction in which I want us to go. I believe in it and I shall continue to do everything I can to ensure we march forward steadily in that direction into the next century, millennium.
David Montgomery and Chris Buckland, Today
Is it true you are going to be a grandmother?
Prime Minister
I do not enquire about these things. It is for Mark Thatchermy son and daughter. I think nothing is worse than mother-in-law making enquiries too often! It is not right.