Michael Brunson
Prime Minister, at the end of the last summit in Brussels you said that if necessary you would come here and bang the table to get what you want, how hard did you have to hit it?
Mrs. Thatcher
Well, we spoke very very forcefully indeed, we did very very tough negotiating. Indeed some of the toughest I've ever done.
M. Brunson
Are you satisfied with the result?
Mrs. Thatcher
The result exceeds anything I had expected to achieve here at Stuttgart. First when we came here no-one was prepared to put anything on the table at all and we sent the foreign ministers out of the meeting to try to agree what would be an acceptable result for Britain: they came back unable to agree even to offer a single pound and so we had to start right from nothing. They offered some £200 million, that was ridiculous, I'm talking in terms of European ecu. We got up to £400 million and we got stuck there. Absolutely stuck and someone suggested we put in 500—’—as a provisional figure and I knew that if we agreed a provisional, they'd say, oh all right, that's settled and I said that if we can agree next month—at the end of this year we can agree now. And we had to fight it all the way up. It was hard going.
M. Brunson
What do you do in a situation like that though when you're offered something and you're presented with that sort of figure. Starting with nothing and then it gradually creeps up, I mean how do you actually behave … .?
Mrs. Thatcher
Well, you just argue in fact your case because don't forget Labour left me with making very high contributions to the Community without any arrangement of any kind for a rebate, and therefore I had to fight right at the outset, from year 1980 and in the year 1980 the rest of the Community accepted that what we had to face was unacceptable and therefore we must have rebates and they said for three years. In 1980 they agreed that those rebates should be of the order of two-thirds of our contributions would be rebated, two-thirds of our net contributions would be rebated. The actual figure was 65.9 per cent. Taking the average of over four years. What we've got is 65.4 per cent. Not bad! now you fight it out on the grounds of reason and they fight it on the grounds of what they can afford. I must say Chancellor Kohl of Germany and Mr. Lubbers of the Netherlands, were very helpful in saying that we had a fair case and it must have a fair result. Very helpful indeed.
M. Brunson
You mentioned there the sort of thing that the Labour government has done and yet Labour politicians today are saying that what has been agreed here is a humiliation for Britain.
Mrs. Thatcher
Well that's ridiculous. They didn't get a penny piece, they didn't arrange for us to have a penny piece back, they just … the arrangements they left after their renegotiations … . left us with these enormous net contributions with no redress at all.
M. Brunson
But Prime Minister, I know that you say that on the average we've come out at about two-thirds, isn't though the fact that you have achieved here far less than you wanted when you came here? [end p1]
Mrs. Thatcher
No, I have always based our case on being fair and equitable. Britain is a fair and equitable country and we expect other people to act in a fair way towards us. Now if I take that view about what I expect back then I have to take a fair view about what we've had back under the agreement which I negotiated. You can't demand fairness without being fair. We demand fairness—we are fair. We have got a total amount which over four years amounts up to £2,500 million, that is fair.
M. Brunson
But if you take just this year is it not only 40%;?
Mrs. Thatcher
If you take just this year it is 40%;, but then you go and look at other years and it is over 90%;. Now I can't just ignore the 90%;, if I'm saying you've got to be fair to me, they say but you've got to be fair to us. Britain, as I'm constantly telling them, is a fair country. We expect to receive fairness, we expect to mete it out. If we ask for the one we must give the other.
M. Brunson
But isn't there a danger that they will come back next year and say—ah, Mrs. Thatcher, you've had a very good run in the past, I'm sorry, you're not having any more.
Mrs. Thatcher
It will be hard pounding, I hope that by the time we have next year we will have got a much fairer method of contributing because that's the aim of the long term budget that we're trying to arrange.
M. Brunson
But suppose these negotiations which are now going to take place run if I may say so true to Common Market form and you haven't got something by the end of the year, what happens then? We're out in the cold again in '84 aren't we?
Mrs. Thatcher
You don't have to say it like that! You're quite right, it may happen, may happen, they've got an extra spur for it not to because they're running out of cash and there's no spur greater than that to come to a new arrangement. As things are at the moment their expenditure would exceed their income, they can't have that so they've got to look at their expenditures. They've also then got to have a look if they want any more at how they do all of their promises right across the board because if they are economical they may not need any more resources, so they've got a spur that they haven't had before. They might even then not do it, if not we have to go right back to the beginning again and we have to fight again, yes, and it will be difficult.
M. Brunson
Despite all that you've said I'm sure there are going to be some people who will still say it wasn't a very good weekend here.
Mrs. Thatcher
Well they're the people who usually did not arrange for Britain to get a penny piece back in rebate, so you can say to them—sour grapes!
M. Brunson
What sort of a weekend do you think it was?
Mrs. Thatcher
Excellent! I got far more than I expected both in the taking the whole pattern, the whole pattern together it's been a very good weekend for Britain.
M. Brunson
Thank you very much indeed.