Margaret Thatcher On Honest Money

Remember Margaret Thatcher on Honest Money?

One of my favourite political moments was the Panorama interview with Margaret Thatcher as the 1987 election loomed. She was asked about her policy on inflation.

Maybe the Q and A were somehow choreographed? The camera panned in to close-up as she replied "I believe in honest money".

Phew.

A simple yet philosophically profound answer. How many of the current political elite in the West either think about Honest Money – or dare say they do?

Such powerful answers as that require rare command of thought and language.

Sharp thinking and sharp language – one and the same thing?

I am in hot pursuit of the video link to this remarkable moment. For now I am pleased to say that my memory did not play tricks with me. Here is the transcript from that part of the programme (my emphasis) via the good work of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation:

Q We hear of Thatcherism. What does it mean?

A Sir Robin, it is not a name that I created in the sense of calling it an ism.

Let me tell you what it stands for. It stands for sound finance and Government running the affairs of the nation in a sound financial way. It stands for honest money—not inflation.

It stands for living within your means. It stands for incentives because we know full well that the growth, the economic strength of the nation comes from the efforts of its people. Its people need incentives to work as hard as they possibly can. All that has produced economic growth.

It stands for something else. It stands for the wider and wider spread of ownership of property, of houses, of shares, of savings. It stands for being strong in defence—a reliable ally and a trusted friend.

People call those things Thatcherism; they are, in fact, fundamental common sense and having faith in the enterprise and abilities of the people. It was my task to try to release those.

They were always there; they have always been there in the British people, but they couldn’t flourish under Socialism. They have now been released. That’s all that Thatcherism is.

Magnificent.

Not to forget this, relevant in Wisconsin and elsewhere, as public sector and other workers defend collective bargaining and ‘demand’ by force of intimidation wealth created by other people:

Q Under Thatcherism—your critics say—the nation is not one nation but a divided nation.

A Let me answer that very deeply because I feel very strongly about it.

The greatest division this nation has ever seen were the conflicts of trade unions towards the end of a Labour Government—terrible conflicts. That trade union movement then was under the diktat of trade union bosses, some of whom are still there.

They used their power against their members. They made them come out on strike when they didn’t want to. They loved secondary picketing. They went and demonstrated outside companies where there was no dispute whatsoever, and sometimes closed them down. They were acting as they were later in the coal strike, before my whole trade union laws were through of this Government.

They were out to use their power to hold the nation to ransom, to stop power from getting to the whole of manufacturing industry to damage people’s jobs, to stop power from getting to every house in the country, power, heat and light to every housewife, every child, every school, every pensioner.

You want division; you want conflict; you want hatred. There it was. It was that which Thatcherism—if you call it that—tried to stop.

Not by arrogance, but by giving power to the ordinary, decent, honourable, trade union member who didn’t want to go on strike. By giving power to him over the Scargills of this world.

That is one conflict. That has gone.