Professor Terrence McDonough:

As the Deputy was speaking I was trying to remember where I was in 1987. I think I was teaching economics in Buffalo, New York. I remember, quite vividly, some friends of mine in an industrial union trying to leaflet a windscreen wiper plant in the city which was threatened with being moved to Mexico at the time of the maquiladora investment programme. As they tried to hand out leaflets people ran from them as they did not want to be seen accepting the leaflets, believing they would be the ones to be laid off when the plant moved most of its operations to Mexico. In this period there was a sharp decrease in the bargaining power of labour and that was expressed in the policy which the Thatcher Administration pursued. This policy was watched extraordinarily closely here and there would have been a dereliction of duty had it not been.