Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Bhattacharyya Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bhattacharyya]

My Lords, the tributes paid to Baroness Thatcher demonstrate the huge impact she had on our national life—and rightly so. No matter what our political views today, so many of us are Thatcher’s children. I will be very brief and simply share my memories of witnessing first hand Baroness Thatcher’s famous drive, conviction and determination as she worked to save and revive Britain’s industries.

Margaret Thatcher was that rare creature, a scientist-politician, as many noble Lords have just mentioned. She liked to get the facts and most definitely did not like waffle. Those of us who worked with her witnessed some memorable hand-baggings, conducted with a very British, forensic politeness. Sadly, there was much to be forensic about when Baroness Thatcher became Prime Minister. Manufacturing dominated the economic landscape but in both government and private hands, our industries were underinvested, uncompetitive and unsustainable, which made them dependent on life support from government. Our manufacturers were industrial basket cases, yet it seemed a political necessity to protect the jobs that they represented. Our shop floors, such as Longbridge, had become global symbols of industrial anarchy.

Baroness Thatcher knew that this was not merely the fault of the workforce. British managers were poor. They had no understanding of global competitiveness, product development or design. They spent their time not managing companies, but managing their unions. By the 1980s, Japanese technologies and products starkly demonstrated the fundamental uncompetitiveness of British industry. As Britain’s first professor of manufacturing, I had the honour of having my advice sought as the Government searched for solutions to this crisis. It was pretty bleak at times. I remember when it was first proposed to privatise Longbridge, nobody even wanted to buy it. However, there was a solution: hard work for British pride. British businesses had to start working with foreign companies. Some resisted that, but not Baroness Thatcher. She always understood the importance of working better, working smarter and then working harder.

Baroness Thatcher was never anti-worker, as people think she was. She certainly hated restrictive practices, barriers and compulsion, but she truly wanted to give workers a chance to achieve and improve their lives. That is why she came to encourage us to connect with industry, support advanced technology and give industrial workers new skills and opportunities, which we did.

What is Baroness Thatcher’s legacy to British manufacturers? Through some very tough times, and despite much criticism, she built a framework for prosperity by giving British businesses the freedoms they needed to manage, invest and trade. The removing of the shackles made a huge difference. What we did not do, after she left, was capitalise on this. From Birmingham to Sunderland, British and foreign companies which invested in the future demonstrated what could be done. For example, as a result of Baroness Thatcher’s reforms, we now have a thriving automotive industry. Yet too rarely have we seized the chance of industrial success that Baroness Thatcher’s reforms gave us. For Governments and business alike, the lure of easy, unearned money was perhaps too great, and that happened for two generations. It is perhaps ironic that the freedom that Baroness Thatcher so cherished meant that we suffered from the financial speculation that she personally regarded with distaste. She preferred older, purer values: hard work, getting on and earning your place in the world.

The whole world heard those values. Everywhere I travel, from China to India to Singapore and to this very Chamber, I hear echoes of Baroness Thatcher. The voice is familiar and firm. I suspect that the noble Baroness would know exactly what to say to those responsible for our industries and leave them in no doubt what they needed to do to get Britain growing. We talk about rebalancing the economy; she would have done this 20 years ago. That polite, insistent, forensic voice will be long missed by all who heard it.