Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [352]
My task in this year’s speech was to provide a trailer to the arguments on which we would fight the election and to give a thematic unity to the various reforms of the ‘Next Move Forward’. What would prove to be the single most important element in our victory — namely the rising prosperity achieved by our economic policies — was more a back-drop than a theme in the conference and my speech. Our second campaign theme was foreshadowed in my fierce attack on the Labour Party’s defence policy.
The Labour Conference had voted for a non-nuclear defence policy, including the closure of American nuclear bases in the UK. Mr Kinnock had also made it clear that there were no circumstances in which he would ask the United States to use nuclear weapons in the defence of Britain. This, of course, went further than Labour had ever done before, because it meant that from the first day on which a Labour government took power Britain would be regarded by the Soviets as no longer under the American and NATO ‘nuclear umbrella’. I said:
Labour’s defence policy — though ‘defence’ is scarcely the word — is an absolute break with the defence policy of every British Government since the Second World War. Let there be no doubt about the gravity of that decision. You cannot be a loyal member of NATO while disavowing its fundamental strategy. A Labour Britain would be a neutralist Britain. It would be the greatest gain for the Soviet Union in forty years. And they would have got it without firing a shot.
But my main positive theme which was to be at the centre of our manifesto too was contained in the section of my speech entitled ‘power to the people’. This drew attention to the wider home and share ownership attendant on privatization and looked ahead to the manifesto reforms of education and housing designed to give ordinary people more choice in public services. I said:
The great political reform of the last century was to enable more and more people to have a vote. Now the great Tory reform of this Century is to enable more and more people to own property. Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation. We Conservatives are returning power to the people.
When all is said and done, however, a speech is a theatrical as well as a political event. Just before 2.30 p.m. on Friday 10 October I walked onto the platform amid the usual uproar, which increased when people saw that I was wearing a rose on my lapel. I began by saying:
There is just one thing I would like to make clear. The rose I am wearing is the rose of England.
ELECTION PREPARATIONS AND THE MANIFESTO
When Parliament reassembled the Party was in a quite different frame of mind than it had been just a few months earlier. We had a brief legislative programme on the advice of David Young, so crucial legislation would not be abandoned if we went for an early election the following summer. Our position in the opinion polls had begun to improve. The Strategy Group and the policy groups were meeting regularly. Norman kept me informed of the work which was going on in Central Office to prepare for the election when it came. Already, on 2 July, he had given me a paper setting out his view of possible election dates.
The compilation of documents which constitute the Party’s plans for an election campaign is traditionally called the ‘War Book’. On 23 December Norman sent me the first draft ‘as a Christmas present’. I was not unhappy to see the end of 1986 but I felt a new enthusiasm as I considered the fresh policies and the battle for them which would be required in 1987.
On Thursday 8 January I discussed with Norman and others the papers he had sent me about the election campaign. We met at Alistair McAlpine’s house in order to escape detection by the press, which