Denis ThatcherMy husband thought the song [ “Accentuate the Positive” ] was so good, he wanted to hear it again, but I thought we might perhaps just have a few words now.
You have heard—and know—the historic links between your school and your county and my country and that means something very special to me, but I am also so very pleased that you have thought fit to come and sing this song with the whole idea of be positive.
It was written in 1944. It was very important at that time to take a positive view about the future. It is not surprising that it is a song which is so typical of the United States of America, because in order to build a very great country like this you had to be very positive, you had to be very bold, you had to be very courageous and when things went wrong, you had to believe enough in your country and what you were trying to do to take you through the difficult times, so the early history of the United States had to be positive—to accentuate the positive—to build a great nation. That is the first and perhaps most important thing and a thing which every schoolchild should learn—the tremendous history of how their nation came to be such a great country and the wonderful things it has done. [end p1]
The other thing is that as Prime Minister, it is a little bit different from your President. I have to go to our Parliament—or your Congress—frequently in the week, but certainly twice every week, to answer questions and the questions come thick and fast. I do not know what they are going to be, but they are usually complaining that something has gone wrong.
You can imagine this is not always welcome to prime ministers, and then sometimes, when you look around, the news you hear is not about things that have gone right, but a rather bigger proportion of things that have gone wrong.
When I was your age, we did not have television so it did not come into our living rooms as vividly as it comes into yours, and I have always been a little bit worried that you might get things a bit out of proportion and think that there is so much going wrong that you really do not give enough attention to all the great and good things that are going right, such as your school, probably many of the things in the county in which you live, such as your family life and all the positive things you do.
So although we try, of course, to correct the things that go wrong, it is really what I would call the great builders of life who build a country, who build a town, who build schools, who build a chair, who build houses, who build all of the things we enjoy and sometimes take for granted and it was the great politicians and early statesmen of this country that built its institutions of which you are so proud, the Presidency and Congress on Capitol Hill. [end p2]
And so, when suddenly asked in an interview by a newspaperman—and you know, there are quite a lot of those about and very glad we are to have them, otherwise we should not get our message across—what song I really rather liked, I remembered this one from my own childhood and how important the message is.
It also has another meaning for me. I was once Secretary of State for Education and so it was up to me to do what I could for the future of our pupils in our schools and again, it was always concentrate on the positive things. No, it was not the motto of my school. That was a slightly different motto, but it was a very very interesting one. It was: From this place take ye true inspiration—and I hope that you will take true inspiration from your school and that you will go on to achieve your greatest ambitions.
We loved the way you sang the song. It is quite a catchy tune as well as the words being important. Thank you very much for accompanying it. Thank you very much for the flowers, for the pendant and we will certainly find a place for that in No. 10. It will rather be like it coming home won't it from Queen Anne 's County School into No. 10 Downing Street? [end p3]
And may I wish you well in this great country and may I hope that you and your school and your county in particular will try to do what we at home do—say that it is very very important that the United States of America and the United Kingdom always stand for the same things and always are great friends with one another and try to act together for a better world.
My thanks to you, my congratulations and congratulations to the staff who have taught you so well and we should be very pleased if we could hear that song once again (song followed by applause).