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as well as at that time I was a supporter of Mrs. Thatcher and it was a very interesting and active time politically in Britain as she effectively de-socialized the country. How well did you know her? I got to know her very well. She was my sponsor in the House of Lords and she and Dennis came to our wedding party and they often came to dinner with us. So you went to, you lived in Britain after you were in Canada. How, it’d be interesting for me to hear how you would contrast the cultures. What was it like being in Britain? I mean I know you were in a very fortunate position when you moved there and so you entered in the upper echelons of society but you had a chance to see Britain from the inside and to contrast it with Canada and with the U.S. to some degree. So what did you observe and what did you conclude? Well it was a country being renewed. I mean Britain at the time that Thatcher was elected, very narrowly elected in 1979, was a country with tight currency controls, top personal tax rate of 98 percent. So there’s a lot of tax cheating going on and the British don’t like that. You know I mean the real problem with Britain and Europe was not immigration. It was the authoritarianism of directives from Brussels and you know the French and the Italians essentially ignored the government as much as they can anyway and they don’t care what these directives are. They’re not going to pay much attention to them unless they absolutely act it and the French in particular are not going to take seriously anything that comes from the Belgians and or at least from within Belgium and the Germans are the leading power in Europe and they’re accustomed to regimentation so it doesn’t bother them but the British like to be law abiding. They like to obey the law but they have to be sensible laws and they have to be imposed by people that are accountable so if you don’t like what they’re doing you can throw them out at the you know the voting place and that was the problem. Well that in addition to the economic stagnation finally finally you know boiled over when Thatcher and her friends Keith Joseph and others pushed out Ted Heath, Sir Edward Heath and took the conservative party of Great Britain, conservative and unionist party to the right not the extreme right but to a level of conservatism that conservative fiscal policy and tax policy in particular and attitude to labor unions that the conservative party had not occupied really since the early days of Stanley Baldwin and it wasn’t back to them but it was ideologically a similar position but obviously refined to reflect changes in society over that period of more than 50 years and so it was very interesting to see and she was successful. I mean I was there for her third election victory. She was the first prime minister since before the first reform act in the early 1830s to win three consecutive full terms majority terms as prime minister and she did it on the basis of radical change to the country and it was quite exciting. Now at that time I was that was in the late 80s. Now Brian Mulroney was an old friend of mine. He was I mean your question didn’t deal with politics only but that given my position as a newspaper business politics had a lot to do with this. Brian was doing something about it. Canada as old was operated you know much closer to the middle of the field. You know it never got that far left and he didn’t move it as far as Thatcher moved Britain and in any case that you know it’s not a unitary state like Britain. It’s a much different system but they you didn’t have I mean I thought Brian was a good prime minister but you didn’t have that sense of profound change and radical change and exciting policy formulation. I mean it was one of the few periods in my life where I sort of transmogrified into a into a sort of semi-policy wonk you see because we had the positions and all this stuff and the other aspect that was the cold war was still going on and there was still some controversy in Britain in that there there was always in the left wing of the Labour Party especially and the far out old imperialist wing of the Tories as well. This antagonism to the United States and when I moved there it was in the latter Reagan years and of course he was an important president and had an eventful period as president and I had happened I knew him too and I’d known him before he was president and so I you know I wasn’t under the illusion that I was at the centre of things I wasn’t but I was I was actually pretty close to the centre in Britain because my first trip there as the chief shareholder of the telegraph company the prime minister invited me to lunch on Saturday at Checkers and she said look here you know we need you we can’t win without you are you with us and I said oh yeah I’m with you all and and I said but let me ask you something and this was right after Mr Murdoch had you know had had made his big changeover and moved to a new plant and decertified and basically dismissed the old you know the the old pre-print and printing unions that used to shut the papers down all the time arbitrarily and the shop foreman would have a you know lose a game of darts in his pub or something and come in call all the workers it was almost as bad as that and and and she since Murdoch was acting within the law she ensured that his titles could be produced I said look I don’t think we’re going to get to the point that Rupert’s at or but you know we’re putting through voluntary retirements but you don’t know and if we need to import people from other countries to help get our papers out she interrupted me and said I’ll sign the work permits myself and that was it as Charles Polo her long-serving chief secretary very distinguished public servant in Britain wrote politically speaking it was love at first sight I mean he was there at that lunch and we just got on like smoke and did right to the day she died well she was a little non-con non-convincementous laterally but uh you know she was I knew her well I knew her very well and as I said at our at our barber’s and my wedding party I thanked her and said if you know I I never would have come to this country or wished to do business in this country if it wasn’t for you and that was true so what what made her able to do what she did I mean she was a woman in a sea of men she was a radical leader in many ways obviously on the conservative front she had apparently had tremendous strength of character like what did you see in her that made her able to do what she did she was an extremely courageous person and she was that type of person who focused exclusively on relevant sequential facts in analyzing a problem and and she you know she had been a I believe the education secretary in the heath government 70 to 74 and and and was the co-founder of the center for policy studies she came to the conclusion along with a number of others some of them were intellectually more frankly sophisticated than she was but she was like keith joseph that that britain simply had to change that what was called the athle settlement where where it was colloquially written called butscoism after rab butler and hugh gateskill who was gateskill was the leader of the labor party between clement atley and harold wilson and and rab butler was the deputy prime minister for and and all was the runner-up to leader all through the churchill eden macmillan years into the heath period and and and and uh uh uh uh srolic that was cheating also and it was it was kind of a look-alike government where they agreed most things and margaret concluded this isn’t working britain is falling behind our standard of living is not keeping pace with the germans or the french or the americans and um and and this is why and we’ve got to change and she was absolutely right but you know sometimes just stating home truths in simple ways is so far from what people are used to it sounds more radical than it is what she was saying wasn’t in fact all that radical she was saying things like we can’t have just completely irresponsible work stoppages work stoppages we can’t have capricious middle-level union officials just calling everybody out for the fun of it whenever they you know have had a bad night or something and and and and we can’t take 98 percent of people’s income i mean it’s nonsense i mean it’s just nonsense it’ll it’ll cost 99 cents to collect the 98 cents i mean your collection costs get too high cheating becomes outrageous rich people move away it’s just nonsense and um and she had a way of putting it very clearly and very persuasive and and that group was was an ideal team for that time she had she had some people nigel lawson for example was a former editor of the spectator senior writer for the financial times academic economist but but a fine debater and and he could he he put through absolutely radical budgets where you know they they cut the top tax rate between jeffrey howe and nigel they cut it from 98 to 40 percent and and and and you know she had she had a group that could argue it in parliament and in the country she had an academic group led by keith joseph and her center for policy studies group uh uh kenneth minogue i don’t know if you know these people well-known academic economists and specialists in other areas who could put it forward in a way that was where they could defend it against you know the best debaters of the left and she was a powerful leader who kept the whip on the backs of the tory party and said this is what must be done and this is why we have to do it and and uh you know when she said the lady’s not for turning and sacked africa government and so forth uh she showed i mean she was right but but but there’s no doubt that at times traditional opinion within that party and the tory grandees didn’t approve of her and they never liked her and they stabbed her in the back in the end but even those who were involved not had to admit that she made a tremendous difference and and the best of them for example michael hezlton very able man uh i’m a very good defense secretary and then came back in other roles but uh he uh he agreed with her policy he couldn’t stand her person and she couldn’t stand him but but he but he was he was no slacker when it came to the to the policy she was the right person for the right time now unfortunately um as so often happens when when people in democratic countries have held an elected office for a while she started to lose her sense of political self-reservation