Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [181]
I left after the press conference for my first campaign tour, which was in the West Country. At 10.45 a.m. we drove from Central Office to Victoria Station, and from there went by train to Gatwick to catch the flight to St Mawgan in Cornwall. A group of around 40 or 50 journalists joined us, sitting together at the back of the plane. It was a pleasant rural day. I visited the fish market at Padstow Harbour and went on to Trelyll Farm, near Wadebridge. There I was caught out by the press. I was standing on a heap of cut grass and the Daily Mirror photographer asked me to pick some up. I saw nothing wrong with that, and so I obliged. He took his photograph — and the picture duly appeared the following day with the caption ‘Let them eat grass’. It does not do to be too co-operative.
It was on Monday 23 May (D-17) that my campaign began in earnest. We started as usual with a briefing meeting for that morning’s press conference where we spent some time discussing the Party’s advertising. Saatchi & Saatchi had devised some brilliant advertisements and posters in 1979. Most of those they produced in 1983 were not quite as good, although there were exceptions. One compared the Communist and Labour Party manifestos by printing side by side a list of identical commitments from each. It was a long list. A second poster set out 14 rights and freedoms that the voter would be signing away if Labour was elected and carried out its programme. Another poster aimed at winning us support from ethnic minorities with the slogan ‘Labour Think He’s Black, Conservatives Think He’s British’ caused some controversy. But I thought it was perfectly fair. I did, however, veto one showing a particularly unflattering picture of Michael Foot with the slogan: ‘Under The Conservatives All Pensioners Are Better Off’. Maybe that was a fair political point too: but I do not like personal attacks.
My speech that evening was at the Cardiff City Hall. It was a long speech, made a little longer but much more lively when I broke away from the text, which always seems to help the delivery. I covered all the main election issues — jobs, health, pensions, defence — but the lines I liked best related to Labour’s plans for savings:
Under a Labour government, there’s virtually nowhere you can put your savings where they would be safe from the state. They want your money for state socialism, and they mean to get it. Put your savings in the bank — and they’ll nationalize it. Put your savings in a pension fund or a life assurance company — and a Labour government would force them to invest the money in their own socialist schemes. If you put money in a sock they’d probably nationalize socks.
I had returned early to No. 10 from Tuesday’s daily tour in order to prepare for a Question and Answer session with Sue Lawley on Nationwide. This unfortunately degenerated into an argument about the sinking of the General Belgrano.
The Left thought it was scoring points by keeping the public’s attention focused on this, exploiting minor discrepancies to support its theory of a ruthless government intent on slaughter. This was not only odious; it was inept. The voters overwhelmingly accepted our view that protecting British lives came first. On the Belgrano, as on everything else, the Left’s obsessions were at variance with their interests. But I found the whole episode distasteful.
Wednesday 25 May was a difficult day for both the major parties, though we suffered far less damage than Labour. The Labour Party was so ineffective during the campaign that the newspapers, in desperation for stories, concentrated heavily on leaked documents. The main interest on this occasion was the leaking of a draft report of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, which attacked our economic policies. Cecil Parkinson contacted Edward du Cann, the Committee Chairman, who promptly issued a statement drawing attention to the fact that the report had not been approved by the committee. It was typical of the Labour Party