Thank you very much for doing me the honour of readopting me as your parliamentary candidate.
These can be somewhat anxious occasions. After all, had you chosen to end the arrangement, the job prospects of a suddenly unemployed politician are not bright.
And who can say what chance I would have had in an appeal to an Industrial Tribunal?
I thank you warmly for your trust in me and your continuing support.
I think you know by now that, whatever the future holds, I shall do everything in my power to ensure that all the specific local interests of this constituency (of all its members, whoever they vote for) are faithfully represented in Parliament. [end p1]
However, and word may have reached you of this, I do have certain … . other responsibilities. These may bulk quite large in the course of the next few weeks.
So you will, I know, understand why I shall not be able to be here as much as I would wish to be.
But I promise you this.
Wherever I am, as I move about the country, I shall be drawing strength and confidence from the knowledge that here I have the truest, firmest, most loyal friends of all.
During the next few weeks I know I can rely on you to make sure that the Conservative case is clearly and honestly stated on every doorstep here in my home constituency. [end p2]
Tonight, at the beginning of our Election campaign I want to present to you the Conservative case.
You may feel that this task has become rather superfluous. Last Autumn, you will remember Mr Callaghan, after an agony of indecision drew back from the brink, a prime example—a Prime Ministerial example—of deciding that discretion was the better part of voting. Since then, over the last few months, he and his Government have provided us with the most damning documentary of a Socialist society in full flood.
Who will ever forget the sick denied admission to hospital, the rubbish piled high in the streets and squares, the children locked out of their schools, the mourners unable to bury their dead? [end p3]
A nightmare dreamed up by some wicked Conservative propogandist?
No.
Labour Britain last winter.
“Labour The Better Way” —says their election slogan.
“Labour—The Bitter Way” would be more accurate—And all this under the protection of Labour's much-vaunted “special relationship with the Unions” . [end p4]
You'll remember that at the height of these troubles I said to the Prime Minister, “Let us see how far we can go together in getting things right” . I believed that was the best approach for creating a proper framework of law within which the Unions would be free to do their rightful job, but would not be free to hold the community to ransom.
It seemed to me that this urgent national task could best be done if the political parties supported each other in getting through Parliament some simple amendments to the law.
All the evidence suggested it would be overwhelmingly approved by the people.
The offer was turned down. The Government would do nothing to alter the legal power and privileges of the Trades Union Movement. [end p5]
And so there was highlighted one of the crucial issues of this Election.
We say that, as history teaches, excessive power—in no matter whose hands—will always be abused and should therefore be subject to legal restraint.
They say that they can persuade the unions who today enjoy this power, to stop misusing it, out of respect for their wishes and the solidarity of the Labour Movement.
How will they do this? By means of a piece of paper, called by some a Concordat.
Other words have been used for it, not all of them entirely polite. [end p6]
But whatever it is called, it is no more than a piece of window-dressing.
What do you think would have been the result if Lord Shaftesbury, instead of pushing through the Factory Acts had tried to negotiate a “Concordat” , a voluntary code about child labour with the mill owners and colliery owners of the last century?
Try as they may, Labour can't rub out the record of this winter—and three quarters of the nation is convinced that an essential step to halting the decline of our country is to make some changes in Trade Union Law. Beginning of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 0000 12 April 1979
What we want to see drawn are not immense details but certain legal boundary lines, within which the Trade Union Movement can fulfil its proper role. And its proper role, I believe, is this—that of ensuring a fair return for the work of its members. [end p7]
And I use the phrase ‘fair return’ advisedly. I don't believe you should get more by muscle. I believe you should only get more by merit and effort and work. A fair return from what you put in. That I believe is their true roles. They were formed to get justice and a fair return for their members and that I believe is the role of the trade unions and I would think it very much better if they spent a little less time on politics and a little more time on carrying out their … (Unintelligible)(applause). End of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 0000 12 April 1979. Beginning of section checked against BBC Campaign Report 2305 11 April 1979.
Now, Mr Chairman, I don't think we should wait until there's another industrial crisis to bring about the changes that everyone knows are needed.
So we have spelled out in our Manifesto, in rather more detail than hitherto, the key points with which we must deal. They are the law on picketing, and I know that many, many… End of section checked against BBC Campaign Report 2305 11 April 1979.
They are the law on picketing, the closed shop, and secret ballots.
A majority in all parties see the need for these reforms in the interests not only of the nation but of the Trade Unions themselves—and especially their members.
I have put this crucial question of unions first tonight because I want to make it plain that the Conservative Party will not turn back from the commitments we have made. [end p8]
But it is in no sense the whole or even the heart of the Conservative message.
Trade Union law reform, urgent, essential as it is, will not by itself put life back into our declining economy.
After all that has happened, does anyone doubt that what our country needs today is a change of direction, a fresh and kindling sense of purpose?
Let me outline some of the practical steps a new Conservative Government will take.
A first target, one on which everything else depends, is honest money that holds its value. [end p9] Beginning of section checked against IRN Report 12 April 1979
Today inflation is again hovering on the 10%; line.
Now, you'll remember that at the last election, Mr. Healey said—October 1974— “It's all right, brothers, it's only 8.4%;.” On his basis—and it was a slightly artificial basis of calculation—it's already back to 13.3%;.
The tragedy is that it is rising again, and to counter this scourge of our age, we must, in fact, stop living a financial lie.
We must stop printing more money than is backed by goods and services, because if we do that, we are giving ourselves the illusion of wealth we don't have. End of section checked against IRN Report 12 April 1979.
Second, given the base of a sound currency we must reduce direct taxation; the tax on earnings, the tax on savings, the tax on talent, the tax on skill.
We must do it in stages but we must do it substantially. [end p10]
This means waging a major war on waste. It means cutting out unnecessary public spending, wherever we find it.
Also, it will almost certainly mean transferring part of the burden of taxation from direct to indirect taxes. We must put the accent on pay-as-you-spend rather than pay-as-you-earn. (V.A.T. does not, of course apply to food, fuel, housing, public transport or children's clothes.)
Only in this way can we give people a choice about what they are going to do with their money.
Only in this way can we give them a proper spur to saving. [end p11]
Taxes must and taxes will come down.
Now let me bury the myth that Labour cares more and does more about unemployment than the Conservatives. For years we have been fed on stories that the Conservatives were responsible for the dreadful unemployment of the 1930's. That they were callous about it and it was only Labour who cared about the sufferings of people on the dole. Last night the present James CallaghanLabour Leader was at it again.
Anxious as ever to get away from his Government's record, he spoke of Conservatives “putting 1,200,000 jobs at risk” . Let's just turn to the record.
Under the last Conservative Government unemployment fell. We left it below 600,000. Today, after five years of Wilson/Callaghan it has risen to more than 1,300,000. [end p12]
It really is rather unwise to throw stones when you're living in the largest glass house since the Crystal Palace.
The answer to unemployment is not to go on creating more artificial jobs.
Like artificial flowers, they have no root, they produce no seed.
The answer is to set the wheels of the economy moving again, and to give people an incentive so that small businesses will expand and new ones start.
That is where real, genuine jobs for the future must come from.
That is the Conservative way. [end p13]
We have done it before with brilliant success (remember the Fifties): We shall do it again.
Only when you have released people's energies in this way, only when you have given them faith and confidence in the future will you create the wealth needed to care for those who need help.
Let me offer an example. When William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, was building up Morris motors, he may have become rich himself, but he was creating a new and flourishing business that give jobs and prosperity to thousands of people who would never had had them otherwise.
The tax he and his workers paid, and the Trusts he founded, helped to build schools and colleges and hospitals throughout the land. [end p14]
That was free enterprise in action: as well as genuine jobs, it provided practical help for the young and the old and others in need.
Today it is to the State that most people look, to provide their medical care and education.
This is a fact of national life which imposes on any government a heavy responsibility.
It imposes on us, first the need to build an economy which will provide the money to maintain these services.
But it also imposes on us the duty of seeing that they are run in a way which pays proper respect to the feelings and the wishes of those who use them. [end p15]
Here is a whole vast area for the reformist zeal of our party, which has always believed that politics is about people.
As this country begins to regain its old self-confidence and becomes once again a prosperous nation, as every citizen is allowed to keep more of what he earns, an increasing number of people will want the right and the opportunity to make their own arrangements for the well-being of their own families.
I have spoken so far mainly of our economic policy, because unless we are successful in managing the economy we shall have neither confidence at home nor respect abroad.
Our neighbours in Western Europe have learnt that lesson. [end p16]
They have forged ahead while we stood still.
We are now starting to pay the price, the inevitable price of stagnation.
Five years ago, we put ourselves in shackles.
It is in our power to throw the shackles off, not simply by changing our laws but by changing our ways, by a few years of sustained effort and quiet, practical commonsense.
You know we can do it and so do I. [end p17]
But we all know that our economic ills are only half—and possibly in the long run not the more important half—of the lost years of Labour Government.
Everywhere there has been a loosening of national standards, a weakening of the bonds which hold us together as a people, a decline of manners, of morals, of shared beliefs.
Most alarmingly, this appears in the increase of crime among the young, and in the view of some that the law is not the cement which unites us as a people but an inconvenient body of rules that they are justified in getting round whenever they can. [end p18]
This view is the result of over-government, of government taking decisions which people should be allowed to take for themselves. This has been the distinguishing mark of Labour's administration.
The state that tries to do everything ends by doing nothing well.
The State that tries to control every detail of our lives proves powerless to keep the muggers off the streets and the vandals off the Council Estates.
The answer is not some sudden melodramatic rush towards some opposite extreme. It is not an overnight return to what (a little unjustly) people call Victorian discipline. What we must return to is a simple belief that, when you have made all possible allowances for our misfortunes, everyone of us has a choice between good and evil from which nothing can absolve us. [end p19]
We must teach that in our schools and, if that fails, we must act upon it in our Courts.
I want to live in a land where laws are comparatively few and simple.
I want to live in a country where what ordinary people call fair dealing is the way of life.
I want to live in a society where those laws are enforced impartially on the rulers as well as the ruled.
I want to live in a land of law and order. [end p20]
It is precisely this idea of freedom under the law for which our country has stood in the world throughout most of her history.
This heritage of ours has not gone beyond hope of recovery but the threat to it, the danger, is with us, and not only at home.
We and our European allies live under the shadow of a military menace.
The Labour Government has responded to that threat by dismantling our defences to an extent which has gone beyond danger point.
In their Manifesto Labour have actually pledged themselves to dismantle them still further. [end p21]
Our first duty to freedom is to defend our own. The restoration of those defences will be a first charge on the budget of any Government over which I preside.
Such, then, are some of the principal policies the new Conservative Government will follow, for the benefit of all our people. I believe we will have the support of the quiet majority. ([Manuscript addition by MT] Hard work, pay their taxes, live within their means, don't demonstrate, don't strike, who are law-abiding citizens.)
I seek confrontation with no-one. But I will always strenuously oppose those at home whose aim is to disrupt our society and paralyse our economy, just as I will always stand up to those who threaten our nation and its allies with attack from abroad.
You do not serve the cause of peace and social harmony by shrinking from such challenges. [end p22]
On the contrary, those who do so make conflict and defeat more probable.
But let me make this plain: our Conservative message is one not of strife but of reconciliation.
The things we have in common as a nation far outnumber those that divide us.
We want not to uproot or destroy, but to rebuild.
In that task we believe that we shall carry the country with us, not only on Polling Day but through the difficult and challenging years that lie beyond. [end p23]
The key to the future, a surer and safer future for ourselves and our children, waits to be turned.
Let us turn that key and go to meet the future together, a United Kingdom and a united people.