Thatchers begin tour with a ‘shopabout’
What Harold Wilson once did for the Gannex, Mrs Thatcher set out yesterday to do for the Drizabone, an ankle-length oilskin worn in the Australian Outback.
Having tried on the garment in a Perth firm of outfitters, Mrs Thatcher issued what sounded like a warning of another impending Cabinet reshuffle, to exclude all but the Dries.
“Don't get wet, any of you,” she admonished the assembled company. Then she promised that when R.M. Williams and Co open up to sell the Drizabone in Britain “I'll recommend that everyone in the Cabinet gets one. We'll make it full Cabinet issue.”
Mr Denis Thatcher appeared equally pleased with a broad-brimmed Akubra bush hat. The prime ministerial verdict was less flattering: “D.T., you look like a bandit.”
The store owner presented Mrs Thatcher with a pair of specially hand-crafted miniature leather boots, bringing a brief, grandmotherly gleam into her eye. He also gave her a bronze statuette of an Australian stockman and his blue heeler cattle dog. That had been announced as the plan in an advance press release with no mention of handing over a hat and a Drizabone. But when the Thatcher entourage swept them up, they became gifts too.
On the first day of her Australian tour, after a 2,400-mile flight from Singapore, Mrs Thatcher also called at a Perth branch of Laura Ashley. But she did not try on anything there, perhaps because the window was dressed in a finely striped red-and-white outfit which came out pink, not really her colour.
After visits to a Marks and Spencer's franchise operation and to Mothercare in Singapore, where Mr Thatcher kept his end up nobly amid the bibs, bouncers and booties, the Prime Minister is certainly doing her bit for British chain stores. Even the bag in which the lampshade gift for the Sultan of Oman was transported was a Sainsbury's plastic carrier.
Mrs Thatcher was cheered and applauded in a Perth shopping arcade, though there was a handful of “hands off Ireland” placards and protesters. The crowds had clearly come to cheer and there was many a shout for “Denis” to shake a cluster of out-stretched hands.
Mrs Thatcher had been welcomed to Australia by a telephone call from Mr Bob Hawke, the Prime Minister. But she was welcomed personally in Western Australia by Mr Kim Beazley, the Defence Minister, who said that even if Captain Cook had gone the wrong way, Mrs Thatcher had started at the correct end of Australia.
She did, of course, have someone to pilot her. The house she stayed in for the night in Perth is the home of Lord McAlpine, the Conservative Party Treasurer and a man rarely parted from his Garrick Club tie.
Having met some of Australia's leading businessmen in the afternoon, Mrs Thatcher told a state dinner in the evening that they were household names in Britain too. “In return we have sent you Alistair McAlpine, who is absolutely marvellous.”
Earlier, she confessed that Britain had not paid enough attention to Australia in recent years.
She urged on Australians the advantages of Britain as a partner, and is assuring Australian leaders that there will be many more government contacts and ministerial visits in the future. Her visit is designed to revive old links and to seek co-operation in exploiting the markets of Asia and the Pacific.
She told a banquet last night: “Perhaps we have both failed to do all we could to make the most of (historical ties), but I hope my visit will correct that, and set us on a new path of working together.
If, as the Prime Minister opened a turbine components factory, she had felt the low-key welcome at Perth airport something of a let-down after Gulf state panoply, the managing director of Westintech, who will run the plant in a joint venture with Rolls-Royce, demonstrated that Australians too can deal in superlatives. He described her as “a leader who in a few short years has become a world legend” . And Drizabone with it, he might have added.