Thatcher: "No! No! No!"

A heavily edited version of Margaret Thatcher's statement of 30 October 1990 to the House of Commons on the European Council meeting at Rome held on 27/28 October.

The Council was meant to discuss the Uruguay Round on General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which was due to end in a few months but for which the EC had not developed a policy (alone out of the trading blocs). However the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, decided that the Council would refuse to discuss the GATT and instead push for the final stage in European Economic and Monetary Union in an attempt to get Thatcher to either agree or to force her to say "No" and thereby bring about her downfall by Europhile members of her party. Thatcher's hostility to a federal Europe led to Geoffrey Howe resigning from the Government on 1 November and to his fellow federalist Michael Heseltine's bid for the Tory leadership which brought down Thatcher on 22 November.

As Howe later said: "I wanted to change the policies, not the leader. But if that meant the leader had to go, then so it had to be". After the Rome Council a French official was asked whether it had failed. He answered: "On the contrary, the Council had been an outstanding success, since it had re-established an eleven-to-one situation in the Community and destabilised Thatcher at home".

Includes Eurosceptic interventions by Norman Tebbit (Con.), David Owen (Ind.), Ron Leighton (Lab.), Tony Favell (Con.), and Tony Benn (Lab.).

MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM MARGARET THATCHER:

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Any woman who understands and experiences the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists’ morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.

I owe nothing to Women’s Lib.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.

“If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.”

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.

“Pennies don’t fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.

“I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society — from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.

“No. No. No.” — House of Commons, Oct. 30, 1990 (On UK joining the Euro)

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