Trudy Gold
Book Launch: “Inside Thatcher’s Last Election”
The Right Honourable Lord David Young in Conversation with Trudy Gold | Book Launch Inside Thatcher’s Last Election | 06.16.21
- Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. It is my great pleasure to welcome David, Lord David Young, Welcome David. Such a pleasure to have you with us today.
Very happy to be here. Thank you.
[Wendy] Thanks. Yes, thank you. I would like to say a hi to Lita, David’s wife, and to my parents Natie and Francis, who I know will be be on our Zoom presentation this afternoon. So…
The right honourable Lord Young of Graffham, David, has had a very distinguished career after graduating from University College London. After practising as a solicitor for a year, he entered the world of business, founding the first of many enterprises in 1961. In 1979, he joined the government leading on programmes to alleviate youth and adult unemployment. He entered the cabinet in 1984, later becoming Secretary of State for employment. and then trade-in industry until 1989, when he returned to private life.
In 1990, he became executive chairman of Cable & Wireless PLC until 1995 when he retired, founded Young Associates where he remains as chairman. In 2010, Lord Young was appointed advisor to the Prime Minister on Enterprise and served for the whole of the Coalition Parliament in number 10, publishing a number of reviews on the relationship between government and small firms and enterprise and education. In 2015, new year honours list, he was appointed a Companion of Honour.
Lord Young is married with two children, six grandchildren, two great grandchildren. That’s fantastic. And is an avid photographer whose work has been featured in a number of exhibitions. And actually, his work, we own too. So now, what I’d like to to do is I’d like to turn the floor over to Trudy Gold and to David Young. They will be discussing “Inside Thatcher’s Last Election” A book that was written by David. Thank you very very much, David, and welcome.
Thank you very much, Wendy. David, it’s such a pleasure to have you here. And, can you hear me?
Can hear you perfectly at this time. It’s a quite a joy to see you.
David, it’s wonderful to have you here. And of course, you are here, and I’m very proud that you have given us this of the first book launch of your great book. And I’m going to show it. Let’s publicise it. “Inside Thatcher’s Last Election”. It’s a brilliant read and Danny Finklestein gives it a wonderful review. He said, “It’s a brilliant description of what it’s like working at the centre of a national election campaign.” So, before I get onto book though, David, you’ve had such an extraordinary life, and you’ve agreed that I can talk to you about that. So really, I want to start at the beginning. And I want to talk to you please about your family who of course came from Minsk. So, I’m handing over to you because what is an extraordinary story is the story of your family, the Jewish family, and what you achieved. So, over to you, David.
Yes , of course.. My father was born in a village called Yurevich, 10 or 15 kilometres from Minsk. And he was, they were forced out by the bombs in 1905. He was five-years-old and he came to London. My mother was actually born in London, but her parents came to Trybunalski, they were the borders of Poland and Germany. And they met in the twenties. They, of course, at the beginning, and I’ve heard so much and read so much about their particular family when they landed in London and finally got to the Mecca, if I can put it that way, of safety.
They met my great aunt, Bessy, who was working in a cigarette factory, 14 hour day, six days a week. And that was not uncommon. And the Szlachta people had to go to make a living. It was quite remarkable. Anyway, they prospered. And they married, my parents married in the middle twenties, and in ‘32, I appeared. And two years later my younger brother, Stuart appeared. And we lived in the city, pre-war life.
And then I started reading stories because I was a bit pretentious about Hitler. I would hear my parents stop talking as we would come in the room. And two days before the war started, we were evacuated with our school. Now, in the intervening period, when my father arrived here, his name was Joseph Yankelowitz. He then became Joe Young. So, we still kept at the tail end of the alphabet. So, when we evacuated with our school, believe it or not, we were the last two names in the list and we, there were two places short.
So, we went off, we never saw our friends again. And it’s good for you actually, too. At a very early age too, to stand on your own two feet. We came back in time, and we lived in London, the central of London. And we did for the whole of the war, so… As young boys, we became experts on fighter planes, on bombers, on V1s, on B-2s. And that’s how we passed through it.
And both you and your brother, have had incredible careers. They’ve given so much to Britain as well. Where did the kind of drive come from?
Oh, I can remember, I wanted to be a film director. And I was going to be it. Apprentice for seven years, believe it or not. But there was some crisis in the film which it nearly got cancelled. My children refuse to believe this story, but I swear to you it’s true. Came home from school and the father said, “Boys, David, Stuart, what are you going to do when you leave school?” I was about to leave in two weeks. So, I said, “I don’t know.” Then he said, “You’ll become a solicitor, and your brother will become an accountant.” Yes, we did.
And I spent the next six, seven years qualifying. I really did not enjoy being a solicitor in practise. Seemed to me, you were spending your time telling your clients what they couldn’t do. And I wanted to tell people what they could do. So… And I think I have to tell this story cause my wife, Lita, whom we’ve been married 65 years now, and she’s been my partner in everything. She wanted to marry a suburban lawyer, and she wanted to have a risk free existence. And she did.
But at our wedding, we’re going to be married in two hours, Isaac Wilson came up to me, he heard me speech. It was intended the first speech I ever made in my life. And asked me to come and see him. And when I came back I thought, goodie, I’ll get some work. Instead of which he offered me a job. And the moment he offered me a job, I realised I did not really enjoy the law. So, I left the law at that point. And my poor wife has been married to an entrepreneur ever since.
Can you, very widen that we’ve got an international audience. Could you say a little bit about Isaac great universal stars because it was extraordinary.
Isaac Wilson was the biggest retail mail order at great university stores. It was an enormous business. The mail order and catalogues, which would come out twice a year were about three inches thick. It was an incredible business that would sell everything. At the beginning, there wasn’t even credit allowed legally in the country. And he had the idea and formed a club of 20 housewives would get together, they’d all agreed to put in six months of shilling, whatever it is a week. Then they draw lots. So, the winner would get their goods the first week, and the poor, the loser at the bottom of the list would have to pay everything off before he got his. But it grew enormous.
And in fact, it was the largest retail business, the shops and everything. And I worked there and I loved it. And I ended up after a couple of years becoming his PA. And we used to buy a business a week. At a time where nobody, a normal business would think of getting in because nine until 10 in morning, because of the way UK was, I had to be in at quarter to seven. And I would reach about eight or 8:30.
You think entrepreneurship’s in your blood?
I think it is, yes. I’m afraid so. I’m hopelessly optimistic.
Yeah, that comes over very strongly. Ok. You were also very heavily involved in Jewish charities, weren’t you? And then you were involved in junaid. How did you, What impelled you towards this? For being so involved in Jewish charities, because you’ve done so much.
Well, at that very meeting, of which my father asked me what we wanted to do, he then said to us, but he said, “We’re all only here because this country let us in. So, whatever you do in life, you’ve got to promise me you’ll give back.” And of course, as dad once said. And so we’ve done. So throughout, my brother and I were always involved in different chapel. In the Jewish community in the wider community. And I spent a lot of my life in that.
And Stuart, he became the accountant. He set up his own firm, which became a very successful firm. And then he started doing more and more work in the government, voluntary, likely. And he ended up as chairman of the BBC in the days when the BBC really was a power in the land.
I mean, you two brothers, it’s such an extraordinary story. And will you talk a bit about ORT? Cause that’s really your first line into government, isn’t it?
[Lord David Young] Yes. Well you see, I’m a great believer if you actually do work outside your business, your business prospers. And I used to think of one time, maybe that’s cause I’m being good. But then I realised, the more you spread yourself, the more you meet different people, the more opportunities come along.
Anyway, ORT, Organisation for Rehabilitation through Training started in the 'Pale of Settlement’ in Russia 1880. And it’s the world’s largest vocational educational establishment. Where it’s approaching half a million students throughout the world. And I was chairman of British ORT. And in the 70s, and I’d like to say a word about the 70s. In the 70s, I used to fly British minister, minister to Paris, where was three old schools, which there weren’t any in the UK, to try and persuade them in something about our current educational system.
Because of that, when I started school, Keith Joseph was the guru of the Conservative Party. He was the future Cabinet minister, and had been a Cabinet minister. And he set up the tentative policy studies, which was the, I became director of that. And we had this terrible decade of the 70s, which, if you lived through it, you never wanted to live through anything like it again. It started off with a three day week. There was so many strikes, that there wasn’t enough energy to go down, to carry on the country ran out of money. The IMF had to come to help. Strikes multiplied and multiplied because they were very limited. They wanted to take over the country.
And in the middle of the, there was a winter of discontent, a time for six weeks, when every public sector union went on strike. And literally, bodies were fell. And in the middle of that, Keith came to dinner. Keith Joseph came for dinner. And I promised him that if he’d won the next election I’d take two years off. And at that time, to help privatisation. Well, they won the election. The first day of their term, I turned up. I started off as a deputy secretary in the civil service. I worked my way up and after a year, I came up to the top floor. And the following year, The Manpower Services Commission, by far, the biggest government agency had to deal with mounting unemployment and trading.
I became Chairman. I did that for a couple of years. And then I began to see more of Margaret. Unemployment was the biggest political problem. So, I see her very frequently. Then she asked me to come into cabinet minister with our portfolio to deal with employment. And the next year for education. And then 18 months later, I go to see her, she’s very worried about the election. She asked me come in and get it organised. So that night, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I should tell you, I’ve never ever asked anybody to vote. I have never even been to a political bid. I have nothing but total contempt for politicians. I changed my mind a bit about some of them anyway. And suddenly, I was going to asked to do it. You couldn’t be a bigger newbie than that.
And I woke up in a blue fun, in the middle of the night. And then I realised I just got to get down and do it. And I also made up my mind because this would be eight weeks or so for the election, that I might know of it, in my life, I’m going to be the guy. And every night, I get home, get to bed about one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning. Before I went to bed, I dictate for 10, 15 minutes. Anyway, through the trials and tribulations of the election which the book recommend is very well thought.
It’s superb. It’s such a good read. I’ve got lots to ask you about that. Go on, please.
Then at the end of it, we won the election. I became Secretary of State for the trade industry. We forgot all about the tapes. You know, I was onto a new thing now. And then, two years later I decided, I told her, I’d been on holiday for 10 years. It’s about time I went back to the living because I was an unpaid volunteer. I owe the governance of this country and I couldn’t, anyway.
Then I had to take a year off because of all the bizarre things. They thought that the Secretary of State, in the trade industry knows what’s going on. Little did they know, I knew nothing what was going on. But I had to take a year off. So, I take a year off and then I remember the tapes, I got them transcribed. I got somebody to put in post-script or footnotes is to make it despicable. Put them away. And then forgot about them for 31 years. I forgot about them entirely until the first lockdown happened here. March, April, May, first year.
And one day, wait, sorry, I should explain, we’ve been living for 15 months at a house, in the country, not in London itself. And one day, I see a box file, I open it up and there’s the book. And for the very first time, I read it. And I sent it to somebody who I trust. They sent it on to a publisher. I had to write forward and afterwards. And Charles Moore, who wrote the attritional biography of Margaret. And it was published. Now published inside Margaret Thatcher’s collection.
And the real reason, and I’ll tell you the real reason for it. For Churchill, ran a very good world. He made everything a command accordingly. There wasn’t a factory in the country that wasn’t devoted to the war effort in some way. The Germans weren’t nearly as patient as we were as it happened. When 1945, the Labour Party won the election, they weren’t so much as social as regulars. And they put regulations and there was a time where you couldn’t spend more than five pounds on the home decorations without gain the government. And so, the economy had gone down and down. Tax was, if you earned over twenty thousand pounds a year, probably 80,000 pounds a day, tax was 83%. And you had any dividend or interest, there was a surcharge of 15% to 98%. 103, but I won’t talk about that.
The result was that we became a black economy company. If you ran a small business, there was no way you could pay yourself salary to live happily, easily. You couldn’t pay the dividend. So, what did people do? They cheated. And everybody then, small, medium-sized businesses became lifestyle businesses. They paid to go fishing, play golf, they do things that’s not worthy about. That’s fine. But then, the state uses were extremely high. And then somebody had a family business, major shareholder or a large shareholder passed away. The whole thing would’ve been bizarre.
So, moving forward to the time I was working for Wilson, I would buy up to a business a week. People would up kill to come to sell because there was no capital gains tax. I don’t know why, but there was none. And the capital, at least they had, they could spend and they can live on it, they could take it out of the country. And we lost the entire middle, the entire middle all disappeared. At large companies, we had little things. And if I go forward now to when I started to work for the department in 1979, ‘80. I hadn’t been there a few months, I was originally privatisation.
I hadn’t been there a few months when the officials came to me and said, did I know that small firms have been declining for the last 20 years? And they were now down to 650,000 small firms in the country. I should tell you there were seven million before Covid. So, I started the first schemes to help small firms. I remembered all my old stuff. I got the Manpower Services Commission during formal. And I should start off now as the book starts off, Margaret Thatcher won three elections. The first election broke the mould. The first woman prime minister of the major country in Europe. Conservatives were back. And it was a slightly different conservative department. She was–
May I interrupt you, please? I’d really like you to talk to us about Margaret Thatcher, because you knew her, you worked with her. And she’s a whatever, the first woman Prime Minister, hugely controversial figure. What was your take on her?
Well she’s only controversial with those, in light, really, I don’t know whether or not she was. But only those who were very left wit. She grew up in the shop at Graffham that her father kept. She learned about business sitting around the dining table, listening to her parents speak. She knew from the core of her being, that people need self respect of earning your own living, than taking handouts from government destroyed. And what she wanted more than anything else is to have a country to own its own living.
Now, I should tell you, when the war ended, we were one of the big three. United States, United Kingdom and what the big two in those days. And gradually, as the decades went by, being declined and declined until in the early seventies, she went to Jewish Town. And we joined with the Israelis, we went to work. Now, the Americans told us to don’t be silly. Stop your toys, go home, behave yourselves. And we did. At the loss of self-confidence in this country. Now, Margaret came at the beginning. She stood up for these values. The previous labour government have been so pathetic that I think even a donkey could’ve elected anybody far better.
And at the beginning it was very tough. People weren’t used to the fact they’d have to stand up for their own self respect. And she got saved by General Galtieri of the Argentine when he invaded the Falklands. Cause here was this country that had been told by the Americans to go home. American Secretary of State said Britain lost an empire. It’s current for her role. And then what Margaret did, she got the ability together. And over one weekend, she sent out an expedition that reached out to 8,000 miles to the other side of the world. Forced and lied and rescued British citizens living in the Falklands. And I can still remember that shock in the arm this gave every person.
We suddenly started a war tour. We had back some of our self respect. And indeed, throughout the whole of the ages, we were talking about putting the Great back in Britain. But it was a marvellous time. So, when the '83 election came along, Margaret had until the year before that, had a very tough time. There were people really trying to undermine her in her own cabinet. She only controlled five or six, or had supervisors, five or six. And it was very different. But the election, but then came Galtieri and the Faulklands. And nothing could touch her. She became the Iron Lady. And the election, we won by 154 seats. It was alleged. And then, she could do whatever she wanted to do. That was '83.
I came in from '84, when she got control of the cabinet. And in those years, lot of my early had started, employment was coming on. I’ll give you example of how simple. We had one scheme, oh it was a large scheme. That many said if you’ve been unemployed for over three months, you could beg for over perfectly not steal a thousand pounds. And you had no idea if you wanted to work. We would pay you unemployment benefit for 12 months without any obligation of looking for work. The simplest scheme involved 315,000 businesses. And suddenly, rediscovered Victorian entrepreneurs. And more and more the businesses were going, startups were coming, people training was happening, people were getting employed. And then the third election came.
Neil Kinnock and the Labour Party, published three main things. There were no strikes specifically, we got rid of the strikes almost overnight merely by saying that of course you can strike. But if you want to, you have to have a secret vote for it. And every time they went to the workforce, they didn’t want the strike. And the strike almost destroyed this. And neighbour had said, this is what they came for, give the union back their privileges, making the stall tax rate. Tax from 83 to come down to 40. And there were no surcharges in '83. And we’re going to all the broken down nationalised industries, we privatised, we’re going to take them back. The Government.
So this, they’d already been in power for eight years. This was the crucial election. But, I didn’t know that everybody else in the country knew is that we were going win it. But inside, it’s entirely different. And if you look at what I’ve written, I mean, I blush the way I behaved over that period. But in the end,
And to keep a diary. I mean, what made you decide to write down so much about that election? Was it, you thought you were living through history or?
No, I just knew I would never spend two and a half months like this again in my life. I mean, I have never, ever. And after, when I left Graffham, I’ve never got involved in politics again. It’s just not me. But here I was and I had to be in the heart of it. And you know, when I did it, I thought so little about it. And I did, I forgot about it.
It’s extraordinary that you’ve made this, this recollection because it’s exciting. You feel like you’re at the heart of power, and that was amazing. But what is obvious for me, reading it, your entrepreneurship really fitted in with her dreams, didn’t it? The fact that she wanted Britain back on its feet, you wanted Britain back on its feet. But that wasn’t the end of the story, was it? Because you went back to advise David Cameron, didn’t you?
It’s bit bizarre, really. I retired in '89. I got off the month. We were talking to the top ten of the first three hundred.
You can’t call on retirement, David, you build a huge business. Sorry.
And then, I said we went back to my first love which is being started up. I was involved, I continued to being involved in charities for the wider community, for the Jewish community. I became the Chairman of Council for University College London. For ten years, I was running precisely. And then, and I should go back.
One of the things I did, because I run businesses and business, when I was the governor minister, I ran a very big department. In those days, ETI was responsible for the city, for insurances, for overseas trade, for manufacturing, for small firms. For absolutely everything. And we had a large number of minutes. And I knew that we had to communicate. So, I used to give a lunch, have a lunch every Thursday. Free line they have stood up. And we would talk about nothing in particular but everything because people kept in touch with each other. Way down, long way below us all, was a young man from central office. So, I paid absolutely no attention to him.
Anyways. And then, 21 years later, it turns out that young man was David Hamill, and he was about to become prime minister. And I was convinced I’d never met him before then, cause I hadn’t had much to do with politics. Anyway, I get a call when I go and see him. And when I walk in and see him, I immediately recognised this young man, and he asked me to come and help him get it configured. And the health and safety, and then I became the secretary of enterprise. And we did startups and we held firms. The story of my time since. But to go back 21 years after you left,
It must’ve been very strange and a very different conservative party, of course.
That’s great of the Conservative Party and I’m not. There were different problems Because we’d had the financial crisis. There I am, back again and there’s unemployment back again. We managed to do each and every,
You’ve been very involved with Jewish charities, Jewish care. Was it almost a natural crossover for you to use the expertise from art, from Jewish care? And the other thing I wanted to talk about is education. You were passionate about education, vocational education. For me a very important question. What do you think has gone wrong? Because I think all of us in education who really care are breaking. I’m going to put it as profoundly as this, we’re breaking ours standards and what’s going on. I’d love your views on that if you’re prepared to talk.
Yeah, absolutely. Because look, we have a 19th century educational system. We have three terms. There’s a long summer holiday. Why do we have a long summer holiday? Because the universities have a long summer. Why do the universities? Because to bring the harvest in.
250 years ago, literally, 250 years ago, they used to send everybody home, they could bring the harvest in, and then come back. We have exams, we don’t need exams. You could have continuous testing, we’ve got the technology now. We could really modernise education in a way. But unfortunately, the Department of Education, in those countries, it staffed by very intelligent people who come out of Oxbridge and the universities, and they like it as it is. You know, if you’re part of a system, you can’t see what’s wrong with it. And we did do something about it. It is… I tried but too long to go into the story now. But I,
And do you think entrepreneurship, the idea of entrepreneurship as well, that seems to be dying doesn’t it? The people actually going out there.
I disagree there. That has come back very strongly. It still comes back. And the numbers started coming up as well.
So, that’s making a positive. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is really, the ideology of the Labour Party. There’s a by-election with that being spend. What do you think about having an opposition such as we have with the extreme left of the Labour Party really taking over as they did in the days of Michael Cooks.
Yes, but, first of all, it’s democracy. And it’s for the people. So if you have, if people are so inclined, the fact is I think labour is on the way. I think in two elections time we’ll be worrying about the Greens. Because the Greens also elective party, but they’re not union. But they are also concerned with the environment. And young people today, they quite like, are very concerned about global warming. Global warming can hardly affect me, but they do affect my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren. And so, I–
One of,
You know, that has changed.
[Trudy] Okay. One of the things that I find worrying about the by-election is that the issue of Palestine is becoming an issue of British politics. And I don’t know if you want to comment on that.
There is a great dilemma, and I’m not sure anybody can see the way out. Israel is a nation surrounded by one or two or three enemies, but they’re got dedicated enemies in Milan and so much. The rest of the world, you see in the last, how much started they fired rockets over, the Israelis fell for it, because I think it was employed, and they went, they warned people, but they bombed them. And children were killed. And all our young people see these pictures of young babies and young babies and Israelis as seen as the victors, the aggressors. And the others, the underdogs. I think and you cannot expect the Israelis to worry about the diaspora. They’ve got enough looking after themselves. And I’m not sure how it’s capable since.
It has to be. Yeah. David, can I just say before I’m opening it up to questions. This book is a really, really fabulous read. As I said, it takes you to the height of, it does take you to the height of power. It was an exhausting time for you, obviously. I mean, you must have just collapsed into bed every night. But was it exciting?
I mean, I’m so glad I actually kept those tapes because you forget so much of life goes by. But, you are on your nerves the whole time. It was something. However, when I got to the end of it, I made myself a solemn promise. This is the last election for me.
[Trudy] Yeah. What an extraordinary career you’ve had. In fact, I was reading, one of the areas I was researching was antisemitism on the extreme left. And when your brother was Chairman of the BBC, and of course, you were in government, they talked about the Jewish Kabbalah. Mainly you. I mean, you know, you and your brother go into it to quote your father because you want to give something back to England. And honestly, your family’s given an awful lot back to England. And at the same time, you’re a proud Jew. So, it’s been such a pleasure talking to you. And I’m going to hand over to questions. I’m going to look at the questions, and see what we’ve got. Oh yes, this is a lovely one. May I ask you this one?
Q&A and Comments
Q: What do you think of Boris Johnson? Does he tell the truth? A: Of course, he, no politician tells the unvarnished truth. You know, it you know, we put the gloss on things, that sort of thing. Boris is the very antithesis of Margaret. And Margaret worked all day, and night. And she used to have two, three hours of sleep every night. Boris takes the view of themselves. Boris delegates and trusts people to actually do it. But, he also gives leadership. And what Boris, and we do have a lot. All these silly stories that are going on about how bad the government did it in the vaccine programme because as well as Israel. All that his popularity has hardly changed.
Margaret was, I think Margaret Thatcher, though, she was really conviction politician, wasn’t she?
Yes.
And I think that’s a big difference, isn’t it? I mean, do you want to comment on that?
Well she knew to the core of her being, that people get respect by looking after themselves, looking after their families, looking after others. I don’t want to get locked up and put in the tower if I say anything about Boris, but he is not and does not have that conviction. But he’s good in a different way. He gives back And that is equally as important, particularly at a time like this when Covid looks like it’s coming back again.
Oh, there’s a nice comment here. It said that Maggie had more Estonians than Etonians in her cabinet. Do you want to comment on that? Because there were a lot of Jewish advisors. Was it, could I, was it cause she felt herself to be an outsider? She was a woman. She was the gross’ daughter from Grantham. Unbelievably bright. Is that one of the reasons she found companies with Jews?
If anybody who’s reading that book, there’s only one woman in it. Or two or three secretaries. One or two others.
[Trudy] Yeah.
But otherwise, there was hardly anybody. There was a BBC programme on the series. And there’s a wonderful picture that showed she had just become leader of the opposition. She’s sitting at a table, with 35 other pale males disapproving people looking down on this one solitary woman. And that’s what she had to go. There were half dozen more that supported. The fact is at that time, it was a very, it transformed. You know, homosexuality was a crime. It’s changed all recognition.
Do you… You have given so much to Britain, you’re a proud Brit.
Q: Can you completely reconcile that with your Jewishness and your support for Israel? Because this is one of the problems that we’re being accused of at the moment, isn’t it? A: Well, yes. I don’t think we’re particularly accused of this. You know, one of ploys undermined our society is not 20 years old and people don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. And that’s social media. Social media has been able to do things that they could never do before. All of my life, I was known, I was brought up, I was told in school that nobody should take seriously an anonymous letter. If you See it’s not signed, tear it up. That’s it.
[Trudy] Mhm.
All those tweets are the norm. Cause people don’t say who and which has entered our society in all sorts of ways. And now, it’s been translated into woke culture. People are getting cancelled. I mean, it’s ridiculous.
Q: Do you think we have a government strong enough to do something about woke culture? A: I think we’ll have to work its way through. You know, we don’t run a dictatorship. If we were in North Korea, yes, then there’s no question. Today, if you look at employment outside Korea, you’ll be killed. No, but I think it will earn its way up. I couldn’t believe political correctness. It all comes in from the east of the United States.
- There’s a question, there’s a question, David.
Q: Was there opposition to the Faulklands war in the cabinet? A: Yes, there was opposition at the beginning because these were people who didn’t believe we could do anything. But it was a minority opposition. But, had we failed, had us all failed and had casualties and didn’t do anything, she would’ve been gone.
- There’s a question from Norma Levy asking,
Q: Why was Thatcher voted out of office? Why did they get rid of her? A: Because we can’t do this, and she’s been in for so many years. Let me put it this way, at the beginning, she was a minority in the cabinet. Obviously 21 of us. And instead, four for 21 at different times were Jews. But, of the 21, at the beginning, she controlled five or six or seven. The election before I came in, which was the ‘83 election, she probably got close to Paris, but she was always a minority. And sometimes even later when she had a majority, she couldn’t get out of that mind frame. And sometimes when she wanted to get something that she knew there’d be some opportunity. She introduced it and sum up the same time. And then looked around and said, “Is that all right?” And two or three times everybody got caught. Said they said yes and she got to go.
After a while, she couldn’t do that anymore. And after a while, you know, you can’t do a job for too long. 16 years she leaded in power. 11 years as Prime Minister. Remember, as Prime Minister you get woken up in the middle of the night. And you could be told, a Russian bomber is flying our way where it’s 25 miles coming. What do we do? And there was enough. Some of the things. And it’s an enormous amount. She did more work, I suspect, than any prime minister who’s come before her.
She was famous. You pointed out that she needed very little sleep. How many, when you were in government, when you were working so incredibly hard, how much sleep did you need?
Oh, whatever I got. I used to sleep the weekend. But I would be up till two, three in the morning and get up at 6:30.
[Trudy] Sure. That’s one of the keys of, that does seem to be one of the keys to success, doesn’t it? To have that kind of ability, to cram more hours into a busy day.
[Lord David Young] Yes. But the weekends, I was hardly awake.
Oh, that must’ve please Lita. Right. Looking back, your book, which, as I said, I already advised people to read. It gives them an incredible insight into government and power. When you look back on an incredible life, what for you, in your business life, in your political life are the high points?
For me, one thing, and it’s business politics. When I started off my first person, and I’d go out in the evening, I would not tell friends that I worked for myself. Because in those days, profit was theft. That if you made money, somebody lost money. And it was somehow disreputable to be working for yourself. Oxbridge, as graduates would go to the civil service, the BBC, but no one would think of working. Starting in the 80s, we transformed that. That so many young people seen working for themselves the way to a better life. The more interests they have. That’s, I think, great.
That’s what it was. Actually, to get her spirit back. Now, let me just see…
Q: A question about Maggie Thatcher’s relationship with the Queen. Can you comment on that? A: We can comment cause nobody knows. But, as I’ve known both, although I must confess, I do know Margaret Thatcher far better than the Queen. But I met the Queen quite a few. I suspect, they get along very well together. I mean, the Queen is the most remarkable human being.
She has the, I mean, the duty. The duty. Both of them believed in duty, didn’t they? And I think that, and that in a way is so important, isn’t it? What your father said, it really moved me what your father said. You come to a country that’s good to you, you give back to it.
Yeah. But you see, the interesting thing is by giving back, you gain more. And that’s the thing that everybody forgets, that by helping, going into different activities, I would meet people I’d never meet in a million years any other way. And that helped my business. Anyway, whatever it is, it made my life more enjoyable
Q: Are there any work ambitions, political ambitions to be fulfilled? A: No political ambitions, no. Any normal human one, we have about our family, wives.
Yeah, course. And does Lita mind, that you stopped being a lawyer?
I think…
[Trudy] I was afraid. I heard that.
And then, you know, we’ve had an interesting life.
Oh, I can imagine. And there’s one last question.
Q: Do you believe that standards in public office have deteriorated since your time? A: In a way, they’ve improved enormously because some are more transparent. And in other ways they haven’t. It’s like human beings, where none of us are perfect. None of us are totally imperfect. People now know so much. The pressures of politicians today, are so much higher than they were on me.
I remember towards the end time of my time, really getting bad temper about having to give to Sky News. I said, who is Sky? Why do we need Sky? We’ve got BBC, ITV. Today, we have so many different news channels. One opened up only last week. We have so much in Tweets, and so much. Every bit of our life is now, is now people inquired about. There was a time even after the last war, when politicians would visit their constituency once, before each election.
You can’t get away with that. David, thank you so much. It’s been such a privilege to interview you. And I think I will hand over to Wendy.
David, thank you very, very much for the really inspiring and very interesting presentation. What an interesting life you’ve led. I mean, I’ve had the privilege of learning offline. You know, you’re such a close friend of the family, both you and Lita. So, you know, so it’s wonderful to have you with us tonight. And for you to be part of our faculty, now. I would very much like to congratulate you on your new book, “Inside Thatcher’s Last Election”. Where can people find it, please?
The easiest place is Amazon.
Amazon, right? And who are the publishers?
Oh, Biteback.
[Wendy] Okay.
Biteback, certainly. But as I say, if you want to get it tomorrow, go for it.
[Wendy] Very good. Thank you. And congratulations on being married for 65 years. That’s amazing.
It is isn’t it? But it doesn’t seem that long. Anyway.
Sorry?
[Lord David Young] It doesn’t seem that long. I can still, you know, I don’t know where the time has gone, but that’s like everything now.
Well, you are a wonderful couple. And it’s always a joy to be with both of you. It’s always so upbeat and fun to be, and inspiring and interesting. So, thank you very, very much. Lovely to see you. Thank you, Lita. It was lovely to have our chat earlier on. Thank you for participating with us, even if you’re in the background. Where are you? Where’s Lita?
In the background, yes.
[Wendy] Has she run away?
I’m always in the background.
There she’s on.
There’s the lady of the moment. Good to see you. You know, doing a great partnership. A happy wife is a happy life, as they say. Yeah. And a great, great partnership. And a very successful life. So, thank you for sharing all of that with us. And Trudy, thank you for being such a wonderful presenter and an interviewer.
Thank you, Wendy. Thank you.
Always good to have you with us. And, Shauna, thank you for facilitating this too. And to all our participants, thank you for being with us.
Good night, Wendy, and God bless.
[Wendy] Night, night. Thank you, God bless all of you too.
[Trudy] Bye.
Bye.