Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Birmingham Conservative Women

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Birmingham
Source: Birmingham Post, 24 March 1965
Journalist: Margaret Cooper, Birmingham Post, reporting
Editorial comments: Afternoon? The Birmingham Evening Mail has an additional fragment on immigration: "In defence [sic]to our standards, which we are trying to improve, and to those of immigrants already here, the [1962] Act was more than justified".
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 280
Themes: Leadership, Race, immigration, nationality

Problems that could not be ignored

Whatever their ideals no Government could have continued to ignore the tremendous pressures on housing and the social services caused by unlimited immigration, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, Conservative M.P. for Finchley, said in Birmingham yesterday.

Whatever problems the country was facing now, they would have been worse if the Conservative Party had not introduced its bitterly opposed Commonwealth Immigrants Act.

“We had to defend the standard of living which we and the existing immigrants had, and which we are always trying to improve,” she said.

Mrs. Thatcher was speaking at the annual meeting of the Women's Central Council of the Birmingham Conservative and Unionist Association.

Party's leader

Turning to the question of the leadership of the Conservative Party, she said: “In Sir Alec Douglas-Home we have a man of ability and of very considerable standing in the world. If our leader's followers are as good as our leader we should have an excellent organisation with which to fight a General Election.”

Mrs. Thatcher, who is the Front Bench Opposition spokesman on pensions and national insurance, said that the Government did not like being criticised.

“It must be made to realise that it is answerable to questions about what it is not doing”

Dame Edith Pitt, M.P. for Edgbaston, presided at the meeting. Mrs. F. May Smallwood, who has been chairman of the council, resigned after the completion of her three years in office, and Coun. Mrs. Winifred Easey was elected in her place.