Mrs. Thatcher adamant on economic policies

In one of her bluntest speeches in 15 months of office, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said Britain's long postwar decline "arises more from our own shortcomings than from anything else." She insisted she will not budge from monetarist policies designed to right Britain's economy by cutting the annual inflation rate, not at 16.9 percent, and rejected Labour leader James Callaghan's demand for the recall of Parliament to debate the unemployment problem. Mrs. Thatcher's monetarist policies, the most severe of any industrialized nation, are widely blamed for a jump in unemployment to 8.3 percent and growing numbers of bankruptcies.