Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Radio Interview for IRN (Houston G7)

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: George R. Brown Convention Centre
Source: Thatcher Archive: COI transcript
Journalist: Nick Peters, IRN
Editorial comments: Between 1255 and 1450.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 1782
Themes: Agriculture, General Elections, Monetary policy, Energy, Environment, Trade, Foreign policy (development, aid, etc), Foreign policy (USSR & successor states)

Interviewer

Prime Minister, the communique from the seven leaders was full of praise for Mr Gorbachev 's political courage and tenacity, are you not rather leaving him out on a limb though by not providing the hard cash that he needs to transform Soviet society?

Prime Minister

No, the first point is that we cannot take over Soviet society, 280 million people, eleven time zones, a massive land mass which goes from tropical regions right up to the Arctic area. We cannot take over, we can only help them to do the things which they must do, help them to help themselves. Now already individual nations are doing that, some of us have know-how funds and get their managers over to learn to manage here, or sometimes they are medical teams and we learn something from them and they from us. Also some of us have our own line of credit, Germany has just announced a very big one, she should have a bigger one than other people because of the consequences of unification for the Soviet Union. We have had a line of credit for some time provided by the banks and covered by Export Credit Guarantees—that has not yet been fully used, there [end p1] are still about 1.3 billion dollars outstanding.

So Mr Gorbachev is not without help or support and we offered, as you know, in our first declaration issued yesterday to give all the drafting help necessary on new criminal law, new civil law, new company law, law on private property, law on contracts, all the fundamentals of the law of a free society. So he is not without help.

Interviewer

Is there not something rather contradictory in the signals being sent when you are talking about technical assistance, you are not talking about economic aid, and yet there are derogations not only on the Soviet Union but also on China, Japan is allowed or has got the nod if you like to offer yen loans to China, Germany and other countries got the nod to offer aid to the Soviet Union, is there not something rather contradictory in the feel of that?

Prime Minister

They did not need a nod to offer a line of credit to the Soviet Union, we did not need a nod to offer a line of credit to the Soviet Union, we are free sovereign nations. Certainly immediately in the aftermath of Afghanistan we were consulting between ourselves because as you know the Soviet Union is now out of Afghanistan. So we do not have to apply to one another as to what we shall do.

Between us we could provide some extra aid, not a great deal because what we can do is small compared with their problems, but it could be carefully targeted. Let me give you an example. The first time I met Mr Gorbachev, which was a long time ago now, he [end p2] told me that the problem was not that they produced too little food in the fields, it was that about 30 per cent of their agricultural production never got to market, it was badly stored, it was never transported right, they just did not get there. That is ridiculous, we could help with that, we could help with how to run transport systems, how to run wholesale systems, how to do food processing. That is one example, there are other things.

The Soviet Union is not a poor country, she is rich, she has got oil, she has got gas, she has got gold, she has got platinum, various mineral resources, and a rich soil, the Ukraine used to be the bread basket of the whole of the Soviet Union. So it is a question of teaching her how to put those resources to good use, not that she has not got them.

Interviewer

You bring up the subject there and of course perhaps the most contentious issue at this Summit meeting was agricultural export subsidies, a rather prosaic title but something very vital for everybody in Britain and the rest of the world when it comes to their food. Is there not some irony that it took George Bush to help reform the Common Agricultural Policy, to push the Community into doing that?

Prime Minister

Yes, but you see each of the nations there subsidises their agriculture very considerably, the United States does, the Community does and Japan does, very considerably, and we each blame the other sometimes because we cannot get into their markets and they cannot [end p3] get into ours. And if any of us subsidises exports it is not fair on those poorer nations who cannot subsidise their exports and food is the only thing which they can export. Australia has got her subsidies right down and so has New Zealand.

Now we could act together, we would be reluctant to act separately, what we chose to do was act together. If you are going to get down your export subsidies you usually need to get down your internal support as well and it is the action together that we are taking.

Interviewer

Do you think that assuming the final agreement is made in Geneva embodying what you have agreed here, will it mean cheaper food, more variety of food in future for the British consumer?

Prime Minister

At the moment the British consumer pays quite a lot extra over the world price of food because once you start to protect inefficient production then obviously it comes through in price to the consumer. I think we have a very wide variety of food, I do not think we shall have any greater variety, I often marvel at the variety, and in some cases I really long for the days when we could not get strawberries throughout the year, you know strawberries came in at a season, other things came into a season, I do not like having chrysanthemums in March and April and I long for the days when the seasons worked more effectively. So we have an enormous variety, I do not think that is in danger in any way. [end p4]

Interviewer

But the cost, do you think the cost would come down?

Prime Minister

One would always be a very bold person to say that the cost actually would come down. I think that it might stop the cost from rising. Unfortunately food costs have risen rather more than we expected in the last year and I think what we are out to do now is to stop them from rising by the action which we shall be taking.

Interviewer

The communique talks about a legacy that the world has to pass on to children and grandchildren, a legacy of a world that is healthy and beautiful and economically sound. On the question of the environment, do you believe that the agreements reached here actually back those fine words with action?

Prime Minister

Yes, they do, and do not undermine the action that has already been taken, the action when we discovered that the ozone layer was in danger, we had conferences, we got together and we had the most recent conference in London and I think eighty countries are now signed up to take the necessary action and all the chemical industries are trying to find alternative chemicals.

One thing that we can do is to see that we do our level best to maintain the world's tropical forests, it is important both for the natural forests themselves, 90 per cent of the world's species are locked up in those forests and we wish to conserve those, and also they absorb most of the carbon dioxide. [end p5]

But we cannot just say they must be conserved unless we are also able to help the people who live there to make a really good living for maintaining those tropical forests. That we can do, we are spending £100 million on it over the next three years, there are all sorts of pharmaceuticals that can come from those trees which would be of very great use in medicine, with those and some of the beautiful flowers which you find there and some of the other produce, they can be taught to maintain those forests and still make a good living from them.

On the greenhouse effect, well first we would not be here unless there was some greenhouse effect to this earth. If it gets too hot then obviously it would have quite devastating effects on life and we are putting so many gases up into the air which have an effect that in any case we really ought to try to cut them down because some of them come from using the world's resources in a profligate way, they use oil in a profligate way, sometimes gas, sometimes other resources in a profligate way and we must try to see that we do not.

We must be efficient in our use of energy, efficient in car engines and so on, efficient in industrial production—all of those things can go on but they would go on the better if we make targets together to keep those emissions down.

Interviewer

Do you think the United States has been brought into line on this, because after all the US was seen as being somewhat at one end of the spectrum? [end p6]

Prime Minister

No, I think what we have done is to say that there are still scientific uncertainties, we do not know at the moment what proportion of the increased greenhouse effect is due to natural causes and what proportion due to man-made causes. But we cannot wait to find out precisely because it is going to take a time, but in any case we ought to take some precautionary steps.

For example, we have got to watch very carefully the seas because the sea also absorbs a good deal of carbon dioxide and we must watch the food chain in the sea. We want to know a lot about ocean circulation because that has an effect on the temperature differences. All of these scientific things will be going on but in the meantime we must take action together to see that we use the world's resources very economically and that we do not pollute the atmosphere and that we pass on this marvellous inheritance which has been given to us.

Interviewer

One final point, parts of the communique reference market economies and free movement of trade, parts of it sound rather like a Conservative Party manifesto, are you perhaps a little disappointed that at this stage when the world appears to be adopting many of the doctrines that you espouse, that our own economy is suffering from high inflation and high interest rates? [end p7]

Prime Minister

Our own economy has higher inflation and we are getting that down by high interest rates. We are suffering because we got growth going too fast and if it goes too fast then you do tend to get inflation. It is going so strongly, as my American friends constantly tell me, so strongly with such initiative that it is hard to slow it down. And that is testament to the strength of the economy which of course we also get from the number of jobs we are creating and from the high standard of living.

And so we are taking the necessary action to slow it down, it takes a time to work through, we shall do that but when we have achieved that we shall, I believe, have a rate of sustainable growth and then I think really that there will be no stopping the progress which the United Kingdom will make.

Interviewer

It sounds time for an election at that point?

Prime Minister

I think there will be one within the next two years.