Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I should like to express my thanks to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition not only for their good words and tributes but for the amount of time that they have spent in the Chamber today when I am sure there is an awful lot going on outside.

I do not want to spend a great deal of time talking about the fact that Mrs Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister, or about the high regard in which she is held by the veterans in Plymouth, from where part of the taskforce set sail for the Falklands. Nor do I particularly want to talk about her training as a research scientist, which enabled her to understand the effect of chlorofluorocarbons on the environment and the ozone layer, or about her time as a tax barrister, which enabled her to understand that the amount that people were taxed had a significant impact on the economy and on our pockets. No, in the next few minutes, I want to talk about the slight part that I played in the 1980s and very early 1990s, because as a Conservative party agent in the highly marginal constituency of Mitcham and Morden, I felt that I was able to play a small part. It was a pleasure not only to be in her campaign team, but to ensure that we won and held on to the Mitcham and Morden seat in 1983, 1987 and 1992.

While I was thinking about what I was going to say today, I spoke to a very good friend of mine, Michael Love, who used to be Mrs Thatcher’s agent. He told me a very amusing story—I thought it amusing, others may not find it so. On the eve of the Conservative party conference, the Prime Minister and party leader used to make sure that she addressed the Conservative agents. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister continues this great tradition, which, I am told, she started. She said to Mike, “Could you kindly give me some pointers that I might be able to use?” He said, “Yes, one of the things that you should understand”—a secret I might share with the House—“is that agents see all parliamentary candidates as the ‘legal necessity’.” She duly took notice and included it in her speech, saying, “I do know that some of you think that we, as parliamentary candidates, are nothing more than legal necessities, but I have to tell you that some of us are more important than just legal necessities.” I think that went down incredibly well.

During the course of the 1983 general election, I had to organise her visit to Mitcham and Morden. It was a marginal seat and we needed to ensure that we held on to it. We were going to take her to Morfax, which manufactured wheelbarrows used to blow up bombs in Northern Ireland. We suddenly realised that we could not take her there, because it was also responsible for creating bits of the Exocet 2, which were used during the course of the Falklands war. Instead, we took her to Renshaw, which manufactured marzipan. She was told in no uncertain terms that she had to wear a hairnet, and that everybody else, including the press and the media, had to wear a hairnet. She was brilliant and did so superbly. As one can imagine, however, members of the press and the media took no notice whatever of the health and safety regulations and decided not to, and so the whole morning’s production had to be thrown in the bin, as the company was concerned about hair in the Christmas cakes.

I just want to say thank you very much indeed; it has been a real privilege to have had the opportunity to serve the Conservative party and to have been a part of that campaign. Mrs Thatcher empowered individuals by making sure that they had the right to buy their own homes and through the local management of schools. There was the national curriculum. Putting money into people’s pockets was a magnificent thing to have gone and done, and a lesson we have to learn. We on the Government Benches need to recognise that we must be loyal to our Prime Minister—that is the one thing the Conservative party did during the course of the 1980s. We must back our leader and ensure he has our full support, because if we do not, we will be in trouble. Mrs Thatcher was an inspiration who made sure we are in a position to do that.