Leader of Tories recalls schooldays

After distributing prizes at the annual speech day of Bungay High School yesterday Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, Conservative leader, recalled some of the prizes she won at school.

Headmaster Mr. G. W. J. Franklin, in his report had mentioned one incident, recorded in a recently published biography, when Mrs. Thatcher, having been awarded a school prize at speech day, was told by the headmistress that she had been lucky in gaining it.

Mrs. Thatcher's reply no doubt surprised her headmistress, said Mr. Franklin.

It was, “I was not lucky, I worked for it.”

Mrs. Thatcher said yesterday all her school prizes had been won by hard work.

In her early days she had been fond of Kipling's books. She had looked up again one of her school prize books by Kipling and in a poem had read the line, “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

Jocularly, Mrs. Thatcher said she must have had this line in mind in her career.

She had come across another poem by Kipling on “the secret of the machines.”

When Kipling wrote about the secret of the machines he had been absolutely right. Machines had done tremendous things for us, but sooner or later we came back to the solution of our problems—human-beings.

The problem was how to get the best out of every single person.

Mrs. Thatcher was presented with flowers by student Hilary Cutts and another student, Francis Goodwin, presented her with a bowl made in the school's woodwork room.