Forget-me-nots
Richard Holdsworth recalls a memorable meeting.
The day I met the Iron Lady
AIDES buzzed around, each more agitated than the last. Some tapped watches and gesticulated to Mrs Thatcher, and her response was typical.
“Can’t you see I am busy talking to these two young business people?”
It was November 1978 and Mrs T had not yet been elected as the first female Prime Minister, let alone be dubbed The Iron Lady.
Yet she did not mince her words. She was talking to Heather, my Australian wife, and myself, two entrepreneurs in the motor caravan manufacturing industry and she wanted to hear what we had to say.
It was the Earl’s Court Caravan Show and she had done the official opening and was now on the obligatory walk round.
While we were a relatively small company on the old Woodley Airfield near Reading, we had begun to make our mark and Mrs T wanted to know what made us “tick”.
As the moment for her to sweep around the corner approached, the aides had rushed on to our stand with one message.
“She is running behind schedule . . . you have been allotted four minutes . . . detain her no more than two.” She stayed for 20! Mrs Thatcher strode on to our stand, hand outstretched.
“Now tell me all about yourselves and what you do. I want to make sure
you get maximum encouragement when we come to power.”
We greeted her with glee, of course. I had met various politicians before and, quite frankly, had not been much impressed. This was different. Clearly Mrs Thatcher was interested in us, not simply going through the motions.
We had invested heavily in a new model based on the Ford Transit, being built at Southampton – or rather, not being built as the plant was suffering one of the regular strikes.
“That is dreadful!” said Mrs T. “A strike based on the show of a few hands whipped up by militant union officials. When we come to power we must introduce secret ballots so all the men get a vote without intimidation.”
We agreed. It was well known that UK manufacturing was ruled by the militant union officials. Strikes were called on the pettiest of things.
Worse followed. Older readers will remember the days of flying pickets, militants employed for secondary picketing in which an innocent company – not associated with the strike – was brought to a halt because it supplied parts to the striking factory.
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Mrs Thatcher. “That sort of conduct must be outlawed as well. I cannot believe in a civilised society all the workers are prevented from working by a militant few. That’s not what this country is about.”
As I look back on the days when we ran our manufacturing operation producing campers, I wonder if the bosses weren’t as much to blame as the unions.
What was needed was reasonable, yet firm management, and it worked for us. Anyone who had a gripe was encouraged to put tit to me or my works manager. As a result, the union trying to get a foot-hold was repelled.
I had worked closely with Volkswagen and Mercedes-benz in Germany and had seen union members on the management boards who shared decisions – they were as responsible for the running of the company as the bosses and it worked.
Margaret Thatcher was as good as her word on that cold day in November at Earl’s Court.
Her government brought in secret ballots, secondary picketing was banned and so was the closed shop.
As for our company, we got our supply of Ford Transit vans from Southampton, our men got work and were well paid and the company prospered.