Category: Speeches

Madam President, as I walked through the Winter Gardens during Conference Week, I passed the bookstalls and what do I see, I see memoirs, memoirs to the left of me, memoirs to the right of me, memoirs in front of me, volley, volley and thunder. Madam President, let me say right away I’m not about to write my memoirs, not for a long time.

There’s a job to be done, a job of service to this nation and I believe in service. There’s a job to be done, a job I was elected to do and I propose to go on doing it. Madam President, there’s one aspect of the memoirs that I may write in future that you needn’t wait for – I can tell you now, straight away, precisely what I think of my Cabinet.

Do you think any of them look worried? Apprehensive? Touch concerned? They needn’t be, they’re a first-class team, they’re steady under fire, they’re united and they’re serving Britain superbly.

And isn’t it good to see Michael back?

Did you see those exercises? I dare say they’re going to enliven quite a few Cabinet meetings in the future.

Madam President, I’ve been coming to this conference on an off for about 30 years. It’s a very great event in the political calendar, but it’s something else as well. It’s a family gathering and like all families, from time to time, we have our squabbles. So today, before I turn to other matters, I want to say something to you, specifically as leader of the Conservative party. Our party has served our country in Government more often and better than any other democratic political party in the world. We’ve done so because we’re the broadest based political party this country has ever seen. Our support comes from all classes, all income groups and all parts of the United Kingdom. Madam President, I know our party. It can bear many things – unpopularity, deep controversy, setbacks – we’ve seen it all before, but there’s one thing that demoralises our workers and that breaks apart our support in the country and that is disunity.

We’ve always known where it leads, and so, in this private gathering we have today, we might as well state it plainly. Disunity leads to opposition. Not just opposition in Westminster, but in the European Parliament and in town halls and county halls up and down this country. Of course we won’t agree on every single aspect of policy. No one expects that. We’re a democratic party with a whole range of lively ideas. But I think you’ll agree with me upon this – people look to us for commonsense and for competence and we have a responsibility to you and to the people who put us in Parliament to show those qualities day after day. And that means we have to have our agreements in public and our disagreements in private.

And if agreement is impossible, and sometimes on great issues it is difficult, if not impossible, then I believe I have the right, as leader of this party, to hear of that disagreement in private and not on television, in interviews, outside the House of Commons.

Madam President, the last year has shown how hard every part of our party can fight for what it believes in. Let the next year show that we can channel all that energy together in a common effort against our opponents and for the policies we care about.

This week, an unusual week, this week we had two conferences for the price of one. First, there’s the one we’ve been at.

And then there’s the one we read about.

You know, I’m not absolutely sure that everyone’s caught up completely with the current mood of our party, so I’m going to ask you three questions and I want to hear the answers loud and clear so that no one can doubt where you stand. They’ve very simple questions and very straightforward.

Aren’t you fed up with people running our country down?

Aren’t you fed up with people writing our party off?

When people ask, “Will the Conservatives win next time?”, what do you say?

I didn’t quite catch that.

Yes. Yes. And yes again. And you don’t need shorthand to get that down.

You see, Madam President, this is a family gathering, just as I said. But now I want to reach out a little further to speak not just to you, but to those outside this hall who may be listening. I want to share some thoughts with you and see if they strike a chord with your own experience. I think that many people, particularly those of you who are older, see things around you in the streets and on your television screens which are profoundly disturbing. We live in a world that sometimes seems to be changing too fast for comfort. Old certainties crumbling. Traditional values falling away. People are bewildered. Week after week, month after month, they see a tax on the very pillars of our society – the Church, the law, even the Monarchy, as if 41 years of dedicated service was not enough. And people ask, “Where’s it going? Why has it happened?”. And above all, “How can we stop it?”.

Let me tell you what I believe. For two generations, too many people have been belittling the things that made this country. We’ve allowed things to happen that we should never have tolerated. We have listened too often and too long to people whose ideas are light years away from common sense.

In housing, in the ’50s and ’60s, we pulled down the terraces, destroyed whole communities and replaced them with tower blocks and we built walkways that have become rat runs for muggers. That was the fashionable opinion, fashionable but wrong. In our schools we did away with traditional subjects – grammar, spelling, tables – and also with the old ways of teaching them. Fashionable, but wrong. Some said the family was out of date, far better rely on the council and social workers than family and friends. I passionately believe that was wrong.

Others told us that every criminal needed treatment, not punishment. Criminal behaviour was society’s fault, not the individual’s. Fashionable, but wrong, wrong, wrong.

Madam President, on all these things, received opinion with the wisdom of hindsight, received opinion was wrong. And now, we must have the courage to stand up and say so and I believe that millions and millions of people are longing to hear it.

Do you know, the truth is, much as things have changed on the surface, underneath we’re still the same people. The old values – neighbourliness, decency, courtesy – they’re still alive, they’re still the best of Britain. They haven’t changed, and yet somehow people feel embarrassed by them. Madam President, we shouldn’t be. It is time to return to those old core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting a responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.

Madam President, I believe that what this country needs is not less Conservatism, it’s more Conservatism of the traditional kind that made us join this party.

This week, this week we’ve made a start. Now we must see it through. It’s time for this party to return to its roots. Madam President, our economic roots are clear. We’re the party of Adam Smiths, not John Smith.

And Adam Smith was the apostle of free markets and that is why we regard the present world trade talks as so important. At meeting after meeting, we have battled to keep those trade talks alive against difficulty after difficulty, because nothing will do more for growth, nothing will do more for jobs, nothing will do more for confidence in our future than agreement in those trade talks. But if other governments don’t play their part, if they hold back, if they won’t face up to their domestic difficulties, then those talks could collapse and the dangers of that happening are devastating. They could unlock protectionism, poverty and unemployment on a scale that we have not seen since the 1930s. A great deal is at stake. And because a great deal is at stake, I don’t believe we ought to be mealy-mouthed about the dangers. Today, on this issue, is not a time for holding back. So let me say to some of our European colleagues, “You’re playing with fire”. Or, to put it more bluntly, “Get your tractors off our lawn”.

People accuse us – accuse us – people accuse us of being the business party. Well, you bet we are. We’re for small business and we’re for large business. We’re for more business, not less business. When business booms, Britain booms, so we’re for private enterprise and we’re proud of it.

Over the last three years, the whole country has sweated and slogged and suffered to turn this economy around. Now, steadily, it’s happening. Recovery is under way. That’s the message from British business. The economy’s growing. You may not see it yet, but it clearly is growing and it will show. And as the economy grows, the family budget will follow, so people have every reason to begin to start feeling better again. Inflation’s down. Interest rates are down. Exports are up. Productivity’s up. Retail sales are up. Manufacturing output is up. And the number of people in work is up. Madam President, it’s the opportunity cocktail we’ve been wanting for years and it gives this country a head start on prosperity for the rest of this decade.

So, let’s try and build up that confidence, instead of forever seeing it knocked down. Why don’t we try something different? Why don’t we tell people about Britain’s successes? And let me tell you about them, in the strictest confidence…

… so they’re sure to leak out.

Who says we can’t make things in this country? Manufacturing industry is one of our great national assets.

Three weeks ago – sometimes it seems longer – three weeks ago I was in Japan, the industrial wonder of the world, and there with me were British manufacturers, selling solutions to problems that Japan hadn’t solved. Successful British firms, international leaders in their own fields, firms at the leading edge of technology, selling successfully to the world technology leader. Two days later, I was in Malaysia, and we came back with £1 billion worth of orders for British companies. They didn’t buy British to do our companies a favour. They did it because we made what they wanted and we made it better in this country than anyone else in the world.

Fourteen years ago, Britain was going nowhere. Now it’s going everywhere and selling everywhere. We’re making goods, making profits, making waves, right across the world. But despite that, despite the growth we’ve had there and the growth to come there, I must warn you, it’s still going to be tough and everyone in business here today, or everyone who listens to what I say today, knows how hard they have to compete. At present, Europe, our biggest market, is stuck deep in recession. It’s held back by social costs it can’t afford. It’s losing markets to Japan and to America and to the Pacific Basin. And that, Madam President, that, amongst other reasons, is why I refuse to accept the Social Chapter. It’s not a chapter of rights, it’s a charter for unemployment and we don’t want it here.

What we do want is more of our best brains going into manufacturing industry. Let’s see them give politics, the City, journalism a miss and go into manufacturing industry where their skills can be so badly needed.

And let’s see our great manufacturing centres humming with activity as we move towards the millennium. Let’s turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars, marks, and yen for other people. Ministers are told, whenever they go abroad, part of your job these days is to open the door for British business. We’re backing exports with cheaper credit, more Government muscle and a new breed of diplomat – people who know as much about exports as they do about etiquette.

At home, at home we’re taking the ridiculous burden of red tape off business and off citizen alike. And I can tell you, in the next session of Parliament, there will be a big deregulation bill to show how seriously we take that.

Here’s a good old British maxim you can all remember: if the price is right and the goods are good enough, then sell abroad and buy at home. That’s the way to make sure that British industry continues to boom.

But there are other things we need to do for industry. Industry isn’t asking us for handouts and special help. It’s asking us, as the Government to play our part in creating the right economic environment for industry to let loose its own energies and compete on a level basis with the rest of the world. So here, Madam President, is another ambitious target for our country: not months but years and years and years of sustained growth without the curse of inflation. That is at the heart of our economic policy for the 90s. It’s a prize for which British Governments have struggled for 30 odd years and yet now, it’s within reach and we are not going to throw it away.

Just remember, only three years ago, inflation was over 10%. Now it’s under 2% and it must be kept low. Inflation is in check but it’s never in checkmate. Back in the 70s, soaring prices destroyed savings. We all remember that. We all want to make sure it never happens again. But to do that, to make sure it never happens again and destroys businesses and livelihoods and savings, sometimes we may have to hold back our ambitions for tax and spending.

Madam President, let me get one thing entirely clear. Our views on tax are different from those of the other parties. What the Conservative Party is aiming for is a Government that lives within its income and without your income. Other parties tax because they want to. We tax only because we have to. So come rain or shine, taxes will always be lower under us than any other kind of government.

But success has another vital ingredient, getting public finances back under control. At the moment, largely because of the recession with the great collapse in come than that created, we have a huge gap between what Britain spends and the tax we take in. We have to narrow that gap. It is true – Government has spent more over the last two years. We had to help the weak and protect the vulnerable through the recession. And that, Madam President, is an important part of Conservatism as well.

But now Britain’s recovering so we have to cut the deficit. We all agree on that but it’s no good agreeing on the principle unless you take the action and it’s no use people urging us to take the action unless they are prepared to back us when we have taken it for it may often be difficult.

There are tough choices ahead and we must make them and we will make them because it is in the interest of our country to make them and we have that responsibility.

Of course, people’s opinions will differ. Some say tax more, some say tax less, some say spend more, some spend less but stay out of my backyard. All that’s perfectly okay for the opposition but it won’t do for the Government party. We can’t have a lobby against every difficult decision. Decisions are what government is for and we have to take them.

So, once the debate is over, once Ken Clarke has announced out budget proposals, we Conservatives must work together and take that message to every single part of the country. But there is one thing I can tell you that you can take with it: high income tax is no part of this party’s programme.

It never has been and, as far as I’m concerned, it never will be.

Madam President, high on every Conservative list is raising standards in our schools. That’s why John Patten’s first concern is with what parents think and what our children need. There are tens of thousands of excellent teachers up and down the country and I’m proud to pay tribute to all they do on behalf of our children. But there is bad teaching as well and many parents and many pupils know that only too well. Our children must be taught what they need to know. That’s why we need a national curriculum. It’s why we need national testing. Not just for the sake of it but to find out what our children have learnt and what they have failed to learn. And when we know what they’ve failed to learn, we can put it right. But without those testing, we fail those children because we never learn what they haven’t understood at an early stage in their school career.

The principle of tests is not negotiable. We don’t need reams and reams of complex papers that take hours for teachers to handle. What we do need is those simple pencil and paper tests that this party has always asked for and that is what John Patten is going to deliver for us. Because unless we teach a child to read, to write and to add up, then we hobble that child for the rest of his life. Take John Prescott. For the audience at Brighton last week, his speech was a religious experience, mainly because it passes all understanding.

But push him to one side. I saw a letter recently from over 500 university teachers of English. And they say in their letter that it’s disastrous and harmful to teach standard English, great literature and Shakespeare in our schools. Apparently, teaching Shakespeare threatens to reduce a living language to a dead one. They say – and believe it or not, this is a quite – they say, “It would do serious damage to the moral and social development of our children and to the cultural life of society as a whole and all who are concerned with such matters should oppose in the strongest possible terms.” What claptrap!

Well, I’ll answer them in words, perhaps, they might approve of. Me and my party ain’t going take what them on the Left says is okay, right.

Madam President, over the past few months, in meetings with party workers – many of them I think will be here today – I’ve made it clear in private that the attack on crime would be the centrepiece of next year’s legislation. On Wednesday, after one of the best conference debates I have ever heard, Michael Howard delivered the first instalment. Lord Archer, if I may call him that…., made it clear how much we’ll have the support of the whole country in that programme. But don’t let’s pretend that we’ve been idle over the last 14 years; we haven’t. We’ve increased sentences, built more prisons, spent more, recruited more police, and those police have served us magnificently. And no other party would have done as much.

But we know now, it was not enough. In many parts of the country, crime figures have risen remorselessly. Crimes once confined to the cities have spread out into the rural areas, bringing alarm where alarm was never before. And that is the reason for our new approach. We have tried being understanding. We have tried persuasion. Madam President, it hasn’t worked.

I know criminals are a problem in a cell but they’re much more of a problem on the street. And policy must be dictated by the needs of justice, not by the number of prison places we happen to have available on any given day. If someone belongs in prison, when that is where they should be and that’s why we’re building more prisons. Better the guilty behind bars than the innocent penned in at home.

Let me tell you how I see things. We need tougher rules on bail and no bail for the worst offenders. An end to the right to silence, as Michael Howard announced earlier this week. And more information for the police from DNA testing. We’re going to use science to help catch the criminal and not let silence protect the criminal.

Here too it’s back to basics. For some, punishment seems to be a dirty word. Well, you’ll find it in my dictionary and I strongly suspect that it’s in yours.

Some time ago, I said we should condemn a little more and understand a little less. And I meant that for this reason; if we let young people at an early age think crime is a normal part of growing up, if we let them off with a caution, a caution and a caution, it is small wonder if they feel there is no peer pressure turning them to law and order, and they turn to bigger crime later.

And if we extend those parameters of leniency so far, we betray our children, for we do not give them the values that we expect them to live up to when they become an adult part of our society.

There’s one other issue in the range of measures that Michael announced in his remarkable speech the other day that didn’t find room for it, for there was, even for the Home Secretary, a limited amount of time at this conference. But it’s an issue upon which I feel very strongly and I can tell you today that we plan a big crackdown on the loathsome trade in pornography that offends so many people in this country.

There will be new powers of arrest and search, new powers to seize videos and other material, and – something I personally particularly support – a new offence to make the possession of child pornography a crime that can lead to imprisonment.

Yes, Madam President, it’s tough. And so it should be. There’s no place in a civilised society for that sort of exploitation of our children.

But don’t let us delude ourselves. Fighting crime is not just a matter for the police or for the Government. We can legislate, we can provide the resources. We can do all that and the police can perform miracles on the resources they have. But Governments can’t make people good. That is for parents, for churches, for schools, for every single citizen.

Like many people in this hall today, as a boy I knew people who had nothing, who expected nothing. They didn’t commit crime because they did have something. They had values, dignity, pride, respect for their neighbours, and, above all, respect of the old.

And in the long-term battle against crime, that respect needs building every bit as much as Michael Howard’s new prisons. Madam President, let me make it clear beyond a doubt. I simply do not accept that crime can be excused and under this Government, I give you my word, it never will be.

Madam President, from the serious to the less serious: our opponents. Our opponents can’t string two policies together but they can cook up a scare. And of course there’s a ready market for scares. Every day I’m told what I think that I don’t think, what I’ve done that I haven’t done, what I’m planning that I’m not planning. Hearing the news day after day is a voyage of discovery for me.

Voyage of discovery for me, but very unsettling for many others, many of them elderly, more of them, not very rich, and most of them very worried. So let me offer some reassurance, not rumour, fact. Next time Labour and the Liberals say we’re going to charge for visits to the doctor, you can tell them confidently, “No, we won’t”.

Next time they say we’re going to charge for stays in hospitals, tell them, “No, we’re not”.

And when they say we’re going to introduce prescription charges for pensioners, you can get right out on the doorsteps and tell them, “No, we’re not”.

They say we’re going to force older people to go to the bank, not the post office, to collect their pensions. Well, really. I have 500 square miles of Huntingdonshire in my constituency and heaven knows how many rural post offices. I know their value to local village life. I know their value to the community. I know how much pensioners rely on them and that’s why I promise you they’ll be able to go on picking up their pensions at the post office.

So go out and knock all that nonsense on the head. And yes, I know the concerns – nobody could possibly have missed them – the concerns that people have about their fuel bills. They believe they’re going to face massive rises. They aren’t. And the most vulnerable fear they’re going to be left without compensation. They aren’t. Kenneth Clarke made that clear yesterday and I’m happy to repeat it today.

This nation owes a huge debt to its pensioners. it’s something this Conservative Party will never forget. So, it’s our duty to keep our country a place in which they feel both safe and secure.

So when you hear people saying this, that or the other, don’t always swallow it wholesale. Remember, in the immortal words of Sporting Life in Porgy and Bess, “It ain’t necessarily so”.

Madam President, scares take me naturally to the Labour Party. I’m not going to be savage about Labour, I think the people of this country would welcome an end to the bad-mouthing between politicians.

So, as a man damned every Sunday for his moderation, I think I shall stick to my own civil instincts. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a bit of fun. Did you hear John Smith’s speech last week? He’s a good man, is John, but Lord doesn’t he go on about it?

He rather reminds me of a Scottish Buddha, the very essence of immobility with a faint smile of perfect self-contentment upon his face. And the Buddha has watched his Shadow Chancellor, Gordon Brown, Labour’s gift to melancholia, he’s watched him run from not sure about taxes, to no more taxes, to lots and lots more taxes in just six weeks, and there’s a long time before the next election. And the Buddha said nothing. The Buddha has left his Northern Ireland spokesman say, “Stop tests, cover up school results and scrap A Levels”, and what did he say? The Buddha said nothing. One hears that the only sign the Buddha ever gives is a slight shake of the head… if anyone proposes a new idea.

Madam President, we saw something rather remarkable in Brighton last week. They called it a “famous victory”. Famous victory? I would call it John Smith’s political Munich. Here it is, composite – I beg his pardon, composite 55 and 56. Let me read you the victory roll – the trade unions will now only make 70% of policy and choose on third of the leader.

Which one third is unclear. Perhaps they don’t think it matters. After all, they’ve long had the bit above the neck.

What we have out of last week is a minor reduction in union influence in the Labour Party and the promises of a huge increase in union power in Britain, if there was a Labour Government. One small step for the Buddha, one giant step leap for the brudders.

Whatever the trade unions ask for, they got. And they asked for was unconditional surrender. Remember what Mr Smith said, “The country needs strong unions today, as never before”. Madam President, after all we fought for over the last 14 years, I think this conference would beg to differ with that judgment.

Madam President, there’s another strange party in British politics. It gives a different answer to the same question in Cornwall or London, in Ryedale or Eastbourne, on Monday or Tuesday. They’re against VAT on fuel in the morning, and for a carbon tax in the afternoon. But they are consistent about two things, the first of them is tax. They are the other high tax party – income tax, local income tax, carbon tax, regional tax, Scottish tax, Welsh tax, and given half a chance, Euro tax as well. If they thought it would raise money, they’re produce revenue from syntax and tin tacks.

And the second thing they’re consistent about is federalism. Centralism in Europe. The Liberal Party is a federal party. Don’t take my word for it, this is their conference agenda – “The autumn”, it says, “the autumn conference of the federal party” – that is the Liberals in their own words. And look what they called for in this conference for a federal Europe – turn to page 99, though I would not recommend to you pages 1 to 98….

This is what they called for on page 99. They called for sensible application of the social protocol and they had an amendment – “delete sensible” was the amendment.

I agree. Sensible stands out like a sore thumb in every Liberal conference. But their leaders are fanatics for federalism. They have been out of government for so long, they have forgotten how to take decisions. The only decision they can take is that they want someone else to take the decisions for us in this country.

Next June, we will have European elections in Britain. Let me say to all our candidates who are present, and everyone here who will work in that campaign, that will be a national campaign. We are going to fight those elections on a clear and distinct British Conservative manifesto for the future of Europe.

Madam President, I have risked and sacrificed more than most for what I passionately believe in, a strong Britain playing a leading role in a strong and growing Europe, a wider Europe, a free trade Europe, a less intrusive Europe, our vision of an independent confident Britain, giving leadership with our partners in the European Community. And in our elections, in this country, next year, we will be the only mainstream party that is not prepared to move towards a centralised Europe and take that message to every doorstep in the country.

And tell them this too, tell them that any vote against us, for whatever party – Labour, Liberal, makes no difference – any vote against us for whatever party would be seen in every capital in the Community as a signal that the British people want a centralised Europe. We know they don’t. You know they don’t. They know they don’t. We must make sure the people of Britain vote to show the rest of Europe that we don’t.

The Liberal leader says, rather nervously I thought, that the guns are turning on him. Too right they are, and not before time. Let the Liberals loose and the prospect of a federal Europe could be a reality again. In this country, they are federalism’s fifth column. Away with them next June in the elections.

Madam President, before I leave the Liberal leader, I want to say a word about his posturing on Bosnia. I find it distasteful. No, no words suffice for the sheer dreadfulness of Bosnia.

The violence that has torn apart what used to be Yugoslavia has deep and bloody roots. They go back to the Middle Ages and beyond. People there have suffered great wrongs and unimaginable cruelties. We have given, as we always will, help, food, medicine, technical aid. We have sent British troops with humanitarian aid; the first country to do so. And those troops have saved literally hundreds of thousands of lives, men, women, children who would be dead from cold and starvation, are still alive, thanks to the activities, the skill and the bravery of those troops we sent to Bosnia.

Madam President, right at the start of this war, I said that I was not prepared to put British troops into combat to hold the various sides apart. It’s my responsibility, my responsibility as the Queen’s first minister, to advise when soldiers should be sent to fight and to risk being killed. It’s all very well to call from the sidelines for a huge military commitment to Bosnia but I listen with respect to the views of the senior professional soldiers and airmen. They know the depth of the problem. They know what we would be asking their men to do. They know that while the threat of air strikes is a good deterrent, you cannot finally settle a guerilla war by bombing. They know that. We saw it in Iraq after the biggest Armada of bombing for week after week after week. it was not until we sent in ground troops that Saddam Hussein finally lost. And those senior servicemen warn me against trying to separate three sides, three sides that hate each other, in a cruel civil war, in some of the wildest hill and forest country in Europe.

There is another form of intervention, which we may have to contemplate. Intervention, not to impose a settlement on parties at war, but to implement a negotiated peace. Right now, alas, the peace prospects are thin and speculative. Too speculative to risk the life of a private in the Cheshires or the Prince of Wales’ Own. The negotiators will go on trying. I earnestly hope they will succeed, but I shall not ask a British private to risk leaving his mother without a son his wife without a husband unless there is a real settlement.

Unless there is a real will by the people of Bosnia to stop fighting, not some ploy to suck outsiders in and then start the war again. I have never been in doubt about Bosnia. Though one cannot always speak one’s mind plainly, I have understood that to intervene is to risk an intolerable number of British dead. A war is easily started. The boys are always going to be back for Christmas, but wars, particularly wars in the Balkans, have other ideas.

So, let me make clear. I leave the talk of a quick away-day outing for the commandoes with everything sorted out in a couple of weeks to the commentators, and to the royal corps of columnists. Yugoslavia is tragic. I consider all the options but I must think first of the lives of British soldiers.

And I will not put them at risk for the sake of talking big and striking attitudes. I will not rush into war.

Emotion says yes, logic says no. I say no.

Madam President, an unstable Yugoslavia is one thing. An unstable Russia would be quite another. So, let me say a few words about the events of the past week. We should be under no illusions about the real motives of the rebels in the Russian Parliament. They were out for blood, the blood of democrats and reformers and, had they won, the consequences for Russian and for the rest of the world would not have borne thinking about. Yesterday morning, Boris Yeltsin told me that the courts would now deal with his opponents. Madam President, that is not how they wanted to deal with him.

The Russian people have twice voted for President Yeltsin and for reform. Now he plans further election, free elections, not rigged Communist elections. He invited me, yesterday, to send British observers to ensure those elections were fair. I agreed and promised that we would certainly do so. Those elections in December will be the surest test that democratic reform remains on track. We backed Boris Yeltsin against the 1991 coup. We were the first to do so. We backed him last weekend and I promise you this, we shall go on backing reform in Russia in the months ahead.

When we speak of the threat of violence, there is one other place that is never far from our minds. Each day, every day this week, whilst we’ve been gathered here in Blackpool, thousands of young men and women risk their lives in the Army and in the security services in Northern Ireland. They stand in the defence of democracy and of the rule of law. Under a Conservative Government, they will continue to have all the support that they need.

Northern Ireland is part of our democracy. We are not going to bargain away the people’s democratic rights, or any part of them, in order to appease those who seek to rule by bullet or by bomb.

Do to do, to do so, would betray the people, and, in particular, those of every party, many of them brave, who take a part in constitutional politics in Northern Ireland. So, no Government that I lead will negotiate with those who perpetrate or those who support the use of violence.

There is only one message for them to send. We have finished with violence for good. Madam President, we are and we will remain the Conservative and Unionist Party.

At the heart of our philosophy is an abiding belief in the right of the people of Northern Ireland to determine their own future. Unlike the Labour Party, we are not in the business of securing the break-up of the United Kingdom.

For us, the union and all it means is immensely important. In all parts of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, the union has the decisive support of those who live there. So, I give this assurance to the brave and resilient people of Northern Ireland, for our part, we will always back your democratic wishes.

Madam President, before I sit down, I want to congratulate all of you in the hall, all of you who are the backbone and the strength of our party, for your cool, your warmth and yes, your resilience during a remarkable and, how shall I put it, most diverting week in Blackpool.

Throughout the 1980s, the political energy of this country came from the Conservatives. That energy must go on through the 90s and not only go on, but grow and develop, driven not just by those in Government but by you who work on our behalf for our philosophy, for our party, in each and every part of the United Kingdom. And if you feel, as I do, refreshed and recharged by our work in Blackpool this week, then go home and help us restore the fortunes of our party, through hard work and a passionate belief that what we Conservatives stand for is more true, more deep, more enduring, more in touch with the basic instincts of the nation we love, than all the words of all the other political parties rolled together. We stand for self-reliance, for decency and for respect for others, for wages that stay in the pay packet and don’t drain away in tax. We stand for money that keeps its value, for a country united around those old, commonsense British values that should never have been pushed aside.

The message from this conference is clear and simple, we must go back to basics. We want our children to be taught the best, our public services to give the best, our British industry to be the best and the Conservative Party will lead the country back to those basic rights across the board. Sound money, free trade, traditional teaching, respect for the family and respect for the law. And above all, we will lead a new campaign to defeat the cancer that is crime.

Carry out that message. Reach out, not only to those who already think as we do but to all those with no special party allegiance who care for what we care for and who love this country as we do, for the same reasons we do. Do that. The fight goes on, the waverers will return and yes, a fifth victory will be ours.

And one final word. Thank you, thank for for something that has been quite fantastic, your loyalty to this party and your loyalty to me.

Well it hasn’t exactly been a dull week has it? What we have seen has been democracy in action. And this Party is stronger and healthier for it.

Mr President, someone – I forget who it was – said that nothing that’s good is ever easy. I’m beginning to know what they meant. Politics is a rough, tough, unpredictable business – and troubles come in bunches. But you have to keep your nerve. And remember that when you come out of the teeth of the gale you’re tougher, more battle hardened and the weather is better.

Mr President, in this stormy period, some people seem to have forgotten something rather important. Just six months ago this very day this Conservative Party won the General Election. We did so against all the odds. Everyone said we didn’t have a chance. The opinion polls – and in those days people actually believed them! – they were against us. The pundits were against us. They said history was against us. They all got even more egg on their faces than I did. Because they left something out of their calculations. 14 and a half million British people were with us. We got more votes than ever before in any election in the whole of British history.

So why was it that those television exit polls were so wrong? Why didn’t the commentators see? Why didn’t the experts see? For that matter, why didn’t the BBC?

There were two reasons why we won that record level of support. First, it was the principles we all stood for – the principles we stand for still. And second, it was the people who worked for that victory. You. And thousands like you. Who did so much, gave so much, campaigned so hard together. Mr President, there is one lesson we should never forget. When the Conservative Party is united, it is an irresistible political force.

We Conservatives have great hopes and dreams for our country. But to make them reality we must win the battles we care about. Lift our country back into growth. And, in all we do, create the society we want for our children and the future.

But before I turn directly to the great decisions that face us, I’d like to say something about someone not with us today – Chris Patten. We planned the Election in the early days of January. We knew we would go into it behind in the polls – and we were confident we’d come out of it ahead. But we knew, too, that for Chris to run the Election and hold Bath would be desperately difficult.

So it proved. He’s a huge loss, not just to us, but to British politics. It was typical of him to decline a by-election, turn down a peerage, and take one of the toughest jobs in the world – as Governor of Hong Kong.

Chris, win for Hong Kong, just as you won for us. And when you come back, come and join us. In Government. Because you’ll still be welcome and we’ll still be there.

Someone else was a tower of strength through that Election. Norman Fowler. He was always at my side. Always there – with everything from beef burgers to wise advice.

But every time I went out with Norman, something very curious happened. People threw eggs at him. But they kept missing him and hitting me.

There are moments when great truths become evident. And this was one. A man who could duck so fast so often was clearly the right man for Central Office. Norman – it’s good to have you back.

But, above all, I must thank someone who is not a politician. Someone to whom my debt is too personal to express fully. She is here today – just as she was on every day of the Election Campaign. I mean of course, Norma.

Her role was even bigger than you may think. If I hadn’t met her on April 9th 1970, I might never have picked April 9th 1992. All those oceans of ink guessing the election date! Wasted! If only they’d asked Norma!

Mr President, in all our Conferences there is theatre. You expect to hear us expose our opponent’s policies. Expect none of that today. For Labour and the Liberal Democrats are utterly irrelevant. let us leave them on the sidelines – where they are and where they deserve to be. I intend to address myself to the country, the Conference and the Conservative Party.

Mr President, debates over our place in Europe have always touched raw nerves – in our Party and in our country. I don’t find that surprising. There are gut issues at stake. Opinions are passionately held. It is right to speak plainly and directly, even if for some it is uncomfortable. People must know exactly what’s at stake. The great dangers for our country and – as Douglas Hurd pointed out so graphically on Tuesday – for our Party if we make the wrong choices. And the right choices can only be based on facts. They can never be built on fears.

Of course, emotions run high. We saw that from both sides in the great Conference debate earlier this week.

For many of you, I know, the heart pulls in one direction and the head in another. There is nothing that can stir the heart like the history of this country. It is part of us. Nothing can change that. But it’s a different world now.

Our families are growing up in a different age. They know we can’t pull up the drawbridge and live in our own private yesterday. They know we live in a world of competition – and we can’t just wish it away. Change isn’t just coming, it’s here. I want Britain to mould that change, to lead that change in our own national interest.

That’s what I mean by being at the heart of Europe. Not turning a deaf ear to the heartbeat of Britain. But having the courage to stand up and do what we believe to be right.

Right for British industry, right for British jobs, right for British prosperity.

During the summer, when I was in Cornwall, a lady came up to speak to me. “Mr Major” she said, “please, please don’t let Britain’s identity be lost in Europe”. She didn’t tell me her name. But she spoke for the anxieties of millions. She spoke for this country. She spoke for me.

So let me tell this Conference what I told that lady in Cornwall. I will never – come hell or high water – let our distinctive British identity be lost in a federal Europe.

Let no-one in this Conference be in any doubt, this Government will not accept a centralised Europe.

And if there are those who have in mind to haul down the Union Jack and fly high the star-spangled banner of a United States of Europe, I say to them; you misjudge the temper of the British people. And you do not begin to understand the determination of this Prime Minister to put the interests of this country first, now and always.

Mr President, it’s true, the European Community has centralised too much. It has talked too much about European directives, and thought too little about Europe’s direction.

But at Maastricht we began to reverse that trend. And at Birmingham and Edinburgh we will carry that further.

So let me say to the European politicians; if you don’t heed that, you will never build the European Community you want. You will break up the European Community you have.

You cannot go forward by browbeating Denmark.

And to those who offer us gratuitous advice, I remind them of what a thousand years of history should tell them, you cannot bully Britain.

Mr President, I speak as one who believes Britain’s future lies with Europe. But, when I hear assertions from others in Europe, that we or the Danes should sign up on their terms. I’ll tell you what I think. I think they should keep their advice to themselves. Sign up on their terms? Before I was born, if this country hadn’t fought on our terms there’d be no free Europe to sign up to.

All these are frustrations. They cause great anger. But emotion must not govern policy. At the heart of our policy lies one objective and one only – a cold, clear-eyed calculation of the British national interest. What is right for Britain. What is right for our future. And from that calculation I will not be budged.

Let me come directly to the issue that has caused such controversy. The Treaty of Maastricht seems to have become enshrouded in myth and legend. Certainly, the Treaty I hear about is not the one I negotiated.

What are the fears people have about Maastricht? We heard many of them in our debate this week.

A Single Currency! Under the Maastricht Treaty, Britain is not committed to a single currency.

Immigration? Immigration policy is specifically excluded under the Maastricht Treaty.

Jobs and working conditions? I refused to sign up for the Social Chapter.

Education? The Treaty explicitly rules out any Community interference in what is taught in schools or the way education is run.

Defence? Defence is kept out of the control of the Community.

Citizenship? We are British citizens and we will always remain British citizens.

Conference, if I believed what some people said about the Treaty, I would vote against it. But I don’t. So I’m going to put the real Treaty, the one I negotiated, back to the House of Commons.

There is one great prize in the Treaty. For the first time we have reached agreement on developing the community in voluntary cooperation between independent nation states. That means outside the Treaty of Rome, outside the jurisdiction of the European Court, outside the competence of the European Commission. We have wanted this principle established for years. And we now have it in the Treaty I signed.

It is time the distortions were put to one side. It is time to return the debate to reality and away from myth.

In the Treaty, there was give and take – there has to be in any partnership. But in the end we got what we wanted. Not the agreement our partners signed up to: a better agreement. We obtained for Britain the flexibility and freedom which others signed away.

When I hear some of the criticisms of the Treaty I think of Don Quixote – you may remember him. He read too many old books and got carried away, fighting imaginary battles. He tilted at windmills in the belief they were giants. He saw things that weren’t there. There has been a lot of that in the current debate on Maastricht.

Yes, we made concession. But so did our partners. What would they now think of a British Prime Minister who fights a tough negotiation, gives firm undertakings, and then comes back and breaks his word? What would we think of someone who did that to us?

Who would ever trust Britain again? We would have broken faith. A demeaning position in which no British Government should ever be placed.

But, far more than that, what is at stake is something practical and hard-headed.

We wouldn’t just be breaking our word. We would be breaking Britain’s future influence in Europe. We would be ending our hopes of ever building the kind of Europe that we want.

And we would be doing that, just when across Europe the argument is coming our way. We would be leaving European policy to the French and the Germans. That is not a policy for Great Britain. It would be an historic mistake. And not one your Government will make.

Let us not forget why we joined the Community. It has given us jobs. New markets. New horizons. Nearly 60% of our trade is now with our partners. It is the single most important factor in attracting a tide of Japanese and American investment to our shores. It is absolutely vital for businesses, big and small – and for our prospects of economic growth.

There isn’t a single business leader who believes Britain’s interests lie outside. And I hope they will make their views clear – and public.

But the most far-reaching, the most profound reason for working together in Europe I leave till last. It is peace. The peace and stability of a continent, ravaged by total war twice in this century. Today images of violence and exile are being acted out on the shores of the Adriatic. Where only two years ago the children of a million tourists laughed and played, young men of Europe are locked in a bloody civil war.

That’s why I want Britain to work in the ’90s for a wider and wiser Community, embracing the new democracies of the East. That is the vision we have for the next generation. And it’s vital for our own security. But it is a vision we will only make real if we’re in there arguing for it, not scowling in the wings.

Mr President, I’m not starry-eyed about Europe. If I’m starry-eyed, it’s about this country. Britain has always grown and prospered when it has looked outwards – from the time of the First Elizabeth, right through to the Second. Let us then not turn away and put up the shutters – but do what we believe – with faith, and courage and conviction. In the name of the present, and in the name of the future, we cannot sit this one out.

Some take the view that we must choose between Europe and our friendship with the United States. What total nonsense. Britain is the indissoluble link between the United States and the continent of Europe. We have growing ties of commerce and trade with Europe, but we have blood ties over many generations with our friends in America.

We in this party will preserve and strengthen our special relationship with America. It is longstanding. Tested in many battles. Reinforced by ties of kinship, language and shared values. Britain and America have stood side by side many times in many theatres of war against tyranny and oppression. On that line we must always take our stand and will, together.

Eight weeks ago, we decided to send some 2,000 troops to Yugoslavia under the flag of the United Nations. They will bring aid to the victims of that terrible civil war. Without this common effect, we would be seeing in a few months time hundreds of thousands of people – men, women and children in Bosnia – in Europe – dying of starvation, of cold and lack of medicine.

Britain is already the largest supplier of medicines. And, amidst all the dangers, our RAF Hercules have played a leading part in the airlift into Sarajevo. Those young men know the risks; but they have met them, just as the young men who will keep open the land corridors know the risks and will meet them. We can be proud of them – and we are.

The safety of these troops will always be first in our minds. They are there for humanitarian reasons. They are not there to hold the combatants apart – and they will not be asked to do so. They are there to fight only in self-defence and then they have authority to use all the force they need.

We are asking a lot of them. But they know what we know – and what our soldiers in Northern Ireland who stand in the front-line against terrorism also know. There is a duty to be done. I believe it is a duty that this Conference, gathered here in Brighton, would not want Britain, of all nations, to shirk. In these difficult and dangerous tasks they deserve, and will get, this Party’s full support.

Mr President, I have spoken of our plans for Europe, and our beliefs about Britain’s place in the world. We now have to lead Britain through difficult times at home, as we have done so often in our history.

You know the things I care about – we all care about – the things I dreamt about as a boy. The chance to get on in life. To acquire knowledge, security, the prospect of a better future – and a life fulfilled. A corner of life that you can call your own. That’s what people struggle for and sacrifice for when they watch their children grow.

If we’re going to meet those hopes, fulfil those dreams – then we must build a strong economy.

And looking around the world, we can see even more clearly what makes an economy strong. A Government that secures two things; low inflation and the right climate for business to succeed.

It is people who create wealth.

People, not Government. Business, not bureaucracy. Enterprise, not interference.

But business can’t succeed if Government doesn’t play its part.

Low taxes – low inflation. Leaving people more of their own money to spend and save. Protecting them from those robber barons of the twentieth century. Inflation and the state.

I believe – I know – that it was for those tasks that the British people elected us to govern again.

They didn’t trust anyone else to control inflation. They didn’t trust anyone else with their taxes. They didn’t trust anyone else to keep the state of industry’s back.

Mr President, we must – and we will – deliver upon that trust.

But today even the world’s most successful economies face difficulties. In the United States. In Japan. Throughout Europe – yes, and in Germany, too.

And here in Britain I know how great is the personal hardship that many people are facing. Some have lost their jobs; some their businesses; some their homes. We must pursue policies that will bring hope back into their lives.

I know how hard people are hit by the misfortune that befalls home after home, family after family, in a recession. Unemployment is a bitter experience. I don’t want a temporary cure. I want a lasting recovery. To come out of this recession safe from the threat of its repetition. If there is one thought that goes through my mind wherever I see this recession Mr President, never again! That’s why we’re looking for long-term solutions. That’s why we’ll take no risks with inflation. And that’s why we will continue to do everything possible to create the prosperity that is the hallmark of a Conservative Government.

But we must not forget what has been achieved and is essential for lasting recovery.

Inflation – down from nearly 11% to just over 3.5% in the past two years. And today I can tell you that even the underlying rate – that hard core we have found so difficult to reduce – has come down to 4%.

Interest rates – down from 15% to 9%. The starting rate of income tax – down from 25% to 20%. Mortgage payments down, on average, 80 pounds a month. All putting more of people’s own money back in their own pockets.

And, yet, despite that progress, it’s been taking such a long time for things to get going. I know hos frustrating that is. Here as abroad, debt has made people cautious. Slow to spend. That’s made things tough for small businesses. Tough for industry, too.

That’s what makes British industry’s successes all the more remarkable. Exports – close to record levels. Manufacturing output rising – and productivity at record levels. Investment began to rise in the spring. And even in the High Street, sales have been picking up again.

It is not enough. It is only a beginning. But now, I believe, we can aim for more.

With a low inflation rate, we can compete with the best in Europe.

Let’s not forget how we managed to bring inflation down and the man who did it – Norman Lamont. As he reminded us yesterday, for nearly two years it was the discipline of the ERM that helped us do so. But last month, we faced turmoil in the markets and rising interest rates across Europe. Germany’s troubles had driven European interest rates so high that the mechanism was no longer the servant of Europe’s prosperity.

But let us not waste time looking back. We have to deal with the world as it is. Let’s take advantage of our circumstances to win new success for Britain.

With a lower exchange rate, we have a new competitive edge in Europe. And provided we don’t blunt it with inflation, it gives us a real opportunity, in a single European market of 330 million people.

A market for British computers. British cars. British televisions. British textiles. British services. British skills. The biggest free trade area in the world.

That’s the market in which British enterprise must succeed. And the Government will back British business all the way.

Let us return to that old and vivid slogan: British means business. And let me say a little more about what I believe Government can do to make it true.

First, low inflation. Down to the point where it no longer interferes with the decisions people and businesses have to make in their daily lives.

Second, we must create an economic environment in which more people are willing to invest their effort, their savings, their skills in new businesses because of the rewards that exist.

Those who risk their savings should know that if they build up wealth by their efforts, they will be able to keep more of it. What families have worked a lifetime to create, the taxman should never be allowed to destroy.

Those who build up new businesses must be confident they won’t be stifled by taxation. And we know what that means for Government – it means standing firm against all those pleas for extra public spending. All so attractive to someone – so disastrous in combination.

Where more is really needed we will spend more. Our plans allow for that. But more for some programmes may have to mean less – for others. Because we have set our limits – and we will stick to them.

Mr. President, it’s going to be a tough spending round. All my colleagues know it. But they also know they’ve got to do what business does. Protect the quality – cut the cost. We can keep improving our public services – if the public sector doesn’t pay itself what the taxpayer can’t afford.

It’s too easy – when spending is under pressure – to forget the long term. To let the burden fall on private industry alone.

We must work with industry, to see whether the public and private sectors working together can do more to invest in our future. More to improve the infrastructure of this country. I know the problems. But it is time to look afresh at whether we can find new solutions.

But that’s not enough. We must also see what more we can do to help our exporters win for Britain. In the single market – and in the world trading system.

We are battling for free trade – and to make sure we take the best advantage of it. I want to see British enterprise succeeding across the globe. Winning contracts. Creating British jobs. Generating our future prosperity.

And as part of this we must do more to lighten the burden of government regulation. Government should stand behind business – not in its way.

Mr President, this is a battle we’ve been fighting since 1979. But it’s a battle that is never won. And now is the time to mount a new offensive.

We’re already on the march against the Eurocrat and his sheaf of directives. But you know, it isn’t just Brussels that rolls out the red tape.

It’s Whitehall. And town hall. Everyone likes to tie another knot. Admirable intentions – disastrous combinations. Piling costs on industry. Mr President, that must stop.

It’s not just big business that suffers. Far too often, it is the small firms who really suffer. Small firms – fed up with filling in the forms – who feel that it is just not worth being in business at all.

Of course, we want to have confidence in the safety of the food we eat, the homes we buy, the place we work in, the people who take charge of our children. But when this reaches the point where you may need 28 separate licences, certificates and registrations just to start a business, then I say again, this sort of thing must stop.

I have asked Michael Heseltine to take responsibility for cutting through this burgeoning maze of regulations. Who better for hacking back the jungle? Come on, Michael. Out with your club. On with your loin cloth. Swing into them!

You know, deregulation isn’t just about making life better for business. It’s about making life easier for everybody. Take the bureaucratic controls which mean Whitehall decides whether you have the chance to stop off the motorway. Every parent knows what I mean. Next services, 54 miles – when your children can’t make 10!

They’ve got to go. And so those rules have got to go!

Or take the system that keeps air fares far too high. It’s absurd that international air travel is regulated under rules set out before the jet airliner was even invented.

And why should so many people, from all over Britain, have to come to London when they want to fly abroad? I want to see more flights directly out of Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham and all our regional airports. That’s better for the people who live there – and better for London too.

Mr President, it is vital that we get the economy back into strong – and sustainable – growth. We can do it. We must do it. But that is only the first of our ambitions for the course of this Parliament. The manifesto that won the Election set out a full programme for five years. Now we’re going to put it into action.

Ladies and gentlemen, the year 2000 is less than a hundred months away. That, at any rate, is the latest Treasury forecast. I want Britain’s example, its ingenuity, its decency and principle to be in the forefront as we cross that threshold.

In all we do we must speak to the instincts of the British people. For 300 years, the Conservative Party has reflected those instincts in a way that no other political party has ever been able to match.

So let’s go out and tell the people about the things we’ll be working for, and fighting for, in the next four years of Conservative Government.

We’ll be fighting for better public service.

For services that put the parents, the patients, and the passengers first. Fighting bloody-minded and petty bureaucracy wherever we find it. That’s what the Citizen’s Charter is about.

We’ll be fighting for good local Government, closer to local people. That’s why in Wales it’s set to be goodbye to the likes of Clwyd and Gwent and back to Pembrokeshire and Anglesey. In Scotland, the Scottish Secretary will be consulting the public on change – but I rather suspect it could be an Ian Lang farewell to monstrosities like Strathclyde.

In England we will give everyone the chance to put their views on the future of councils like Cleveland or Avon. I can’t predict the outcome. But can you imagine Len Hutton walking out to bat for Humberside?

We’ll be fighting for better health and social services.

For a Health Service run by local people in patients’ interests. For more GP fundholders and more of our successful hospital trusts. We want better care for the elderly and vulnerable in the home and the community – wherever they choose to be. And we must make sure local councils respect the wishes of those who do go into homes. People in their last years are entitled to as much choice and dignity as anyone else. Not less choice and no dignity.

And Mr President, we have all been deeply shocked at the reports of scandals in some social security departments. It’s terrible when children are involved. That’s why we are going to set up regular independent inspection of social work in every council. We will not let vulnerable people and children be put at risk.

We’ll be fighting to strengthen the rights of ordinary trade union members.

They must have freedom to join the union of their choice – and fairness in union ballots and finances.

And, under the Citizen’s Charter, we’re going to give you – all of you – a new right. To take direct action in the courts against those who disrupt public services through unlawful strikes, and hold the country to ransom.

And we’ve already blown the whistle on one of the last bastions of the closed shop – student unions. The days in which they march and demonstrate at the taxpayer’s expense and numbered.

When it comes to education, my critics say I’m old-fashioned. Old-fashioned? Reading and writing? Spelling and sums? Great literature – and standard English grammar? Old fashioned?

Well, if I’m old-fashioned, well, so be it. So are the vast majority of Britain’s parents. And I have this message for the progressives who are trying to change the exams. English exams should be about literature, not soap opera. And I promise you this. There’ll be no GCSEs in Eldorado – even assuming anyone is still watching it!

I also want reform of teacher training. Let us return to basic subject teaching, not courses in the theory of education. Primary teachers should learn how to teach children to read, not waste their time on the politics of gender, race and class,

I don’t know if you feel as I do, but I think it is intolerable that children should spend years in school and then leave them unable to read or add up. It’s a terrible waste of young lives.

We want high standards, sound learning, diversity and choice in all our schools. But, in some – particularly in those inner cities – Isaac Newton would not have learned to count and Anthony Trollope would never have learned to write.

We cannot abandon the children in schools like these. And we will not. So if local authorities cannot do the job, then we will give the job to others.

In the place of the local authority which has failed, new Education Associations will be set up to run and revive these schools. Governments have always shied away from it. But I am not prepared to any longer.

Yes, it will mean another colossal row with the educational establishment. I look forward to that. It’s a row worth having. A row where we will have the vast majority of parents – and the vast majority of good, committed teachers – squarely on our side. They believe what we believe – that children must come first.

Mr President, there was a time when Britain was a watchword for good behaviour across the world. I want to restore that good name. People are horrified when they see mindless vandalism; old people attacked by young thugs; drunken louts on the rampage, blackening Britain’s reputation abroad. Not only horrified, they’re ashamed.

Mr President, to excuse crime may seem understanding. But it’s wrong. Sympathy doesn’t curb crime. If society wants to protect itself it must condemn crime, not condone it. We must create a climate in which people know the difference between right and wrong and yours and mine. We must spell out the truth. Crime wrecks lives, spreads fear, corrupts society. It is the fault of the individual, and no one else.

We are cracking down hard on crime – particularly violence. And that includes – as I promised last year – tough sentences for those who cause death by dangerous driving or drunken driving. Nothing can excuse those who kill in this way. We are taking action. And I hope the courts will respond.

There’s another problem we are dealing with – the illegal occupation of land by so called “new-age travellers”.

You will have seen the pictures on television or in the newspapers; if you live in the West Country and Wales you may have seen it on your doorstep. Farmers powerless. Crops ruined and livestock killed by people who say they commune with nature, but have no respect for it when it belongs to others.

New age travellers? Not in this age. Not in any age.

They say that we don’t understand them. Well, I’m sorry – but if rejecting materialism means destroying the property of others; then I don’t understand. If doing your own things means exploiting the social security system and sponging off others, then I don’t want to understand. If alternative values mean a selfish and lawless disregard for others, then I won’t understand. Let others speak for these new age travellers. We will speak for their victims.

Mr President, the things I care most about are the long term things – stability and security at home and in Europe; rebuilding standards in education; the long-term strength – economic and moral – of our nation. Preserving Britain’s pride and purpose and belief in itself. That’s what I care about. That’s what I stand for.

Isn’t that what we’re all about together in this Party? That’s what our forebears worked for when they built it, when they sent its roots down deep – right into the very heart and marrow of Britain. That’s why we are all in this Party together – you and I.

That’s why I fought so hard in the Election to keep our country one. For me that is the highest and greatest of our causes – to defend the unity of the United Kingdom, and all that binds our nation together. For unless we stay united, unless we stand together, as a Party and as a nation, this country will never prevail. There is not a man or a woman in this hall, or listening outside, who doesn’t know in their heart that is true.

So let’s be confident at home and in Europe. Let’s not turn away and say “It’s all too difficult”. Let’s not hang back because we don’t believe our voice will be heard. Right across Europe, now, in this critical hour, people are looking and listening to us and to what we have to say.

It won’t always be easy. It won’t always be comfortable. But in all we do, there is one thing I will never forget. This is our country.

What we do, we do for Britain. What we do, we do for the future of our children and for generation yet unborn. For their prosperity and their security, and never for short term political advantage.

Let us have faith, and courage, and pride. Britain’s interests will come first – for me, and this Party. First. Last. Always.

Earlier this week this Conference welcomed Mrs Thatcher. You gave her the most tumultuous reception. She deserved it. She led our country for over 11 years, our Party for over 15. We owe Margaret a great debt.

The Britain she left us is immeasurably stronger than the Britain she found. Above all, she helped others to believe in us and us to believe in ourselves. And on those foundations she laid three great Election victories.

It’s good to applaud; it’s grand to cheer. But the greatest tribute we can pay her is to do as she did. To win, and win, and win again. At this Conference – and what a successful Conference it’s been – you have heard how the next Conservative Government will secure the best future for Britain.

We’ve heard some cracking speeches this week. From the right team. A young team – in fact the youngest Cabinet this century. A professional team.

Just think for a moment. When the going gets rough in international affairs, who would be the first person you would send for? Gerald Kaufman? No. He would be the second person. The first person would be anyone but Gerald Kaufman. But far and away the best person would be Douglas Hurd, one of the finest Foreign Secretaries this country has ever had.

Of course, Labour’s Captain tries to talk up his team. “A winning team” he calls them. After three election defeats? Well, it goes to show that there must be more than one way to look at history. Take waterloo. You thought Wellington won Waterloo? No, Waterloo was a smash hit for Napoleon. But we can help Labour to win one thing – the record for the longest run of election defeats. Played four. Lost four. And a probable vacancy for team captain.

Last week at Brighton we had speech after speech about a fairy-tale future for the British people. In Labour’s Never-Mind-the-Cost-Never-Never Land. Then there was singalongaleader. It was all good fun if you like that sort of thing.

But while this was happening out front, there was something thoroughly nasty seeping from under the platform. I refer, of course, to what Labour pretends to believe are the Government’s plans for the National Health Service. There’s only one way to deal with a lie: nail it to the wall of truth, as William Waldegrave so conclusively did yesterday. We have all been brought up with the Health Service. We use it. We cherish it. We are proud of it.

I know that for millions of people in this country the National Health Service means security. I understand that. Because I am – and always have been – one of those people. I know that even when you’re fit and well, it brings peace of mind – just to know it’s there. It is unthinkable that I, of all people, would try to take that security away. A genuine belief I can respect, even when I profoundly disagree with it. But deliberate lies – repeated, repeated and repeated – merely diminishes its authors.

The Health Service has been in existence for over 40 years. And who has been in Government for most of that period? We have. For 29 of those years it has been a Conservative Government. It has been under Conservative Governments that the National Health Service has been built up, enlarged and improved. And our reforms will carry that right through into the 1990s. So let me say now, once and for all, and without qualifications – under this Government the National Health Service will continue, to offer free hospital treatment to everyone.

And so that no-one can misunderstand the position – and I hope the whole country is listening – let me make it even clearer. There will be no charges for hospital treatment, no charges for visits to the doctor, no privatisation of health care, neither piecemeal, not in part, nor as a whole. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not after the next election. Not ever while I’m Prime Minister.

And if, after all I have said, there are still those who set out to frighten the vulnerable, the weak, and the old, with carefully calculated smears, then the public will know where to find them – in the gutters of public debate. Such people are not friends of the Health Service. They are the parasites that live on its back.

No Conservative need be defensive about the Health Service. On the contrary, every Conservative has the right to share my disgust at what is said. Go to your local hospital. What do you find? You’ll find Conservatives. In the hospital shop. Serving with the League of Friends. Working on the wards. They are not just friends of the Health Service. They are part of the Health Service.

The National Health Service doesn’t belong to the Labour Party. As its name makes clear, it belongs to the Nation. And – in both senses of the phrase – Labour isn’t going to get away with it. The Health Service is not a political football to be kicked around in the hope that, somehow or other, it will reopen the door of Downing Street to a Labour Government. It won’t. Neither by hook or by Cook.

This is the first Conference I have addressed as Leader of the Conservative Party. It is hard to explain how I feel about that. It is a long road from Coldharbour Lane to Downing Street. It is a tribute to the Conservative Party that that road can be travelled.

Perhaps at the back of this hall today there is another young man or woman who stands where I did 30 years ago. Who knows few people here. Who feels it is a long road to this platform, too.

They should remember the last two leaders were a builder’s son from Broadstairs and a grocer’s daughter from Grantham. We don’t need lectures in the Conservative Party about opportunity. We are the Party of opportunity.

This Party is open to all. And to all those who may be watching, wherever you come from, whatever your background, I say simply this, “Come and join us”. There are no barriers in our Party, just as there will be no barriers in the Britain we are building together.

Some people ask whether we will have a different sort of Conservatism in future. Of course we will. We all bring our own beliefs, our own instincts, and our own experiences to politics. And I am no exception.

But the fundamental beliefs of the Conservative Party, those beliefs that brought me into this Party, are the beliefs that Chris Patten expressed so brilliantly on Tuesday. They remain as strong today as ever. Old though our Party is, the values behind it are older still. They are rooted in the instincts of every individual. And it is through our policies that we make them come alive.

What is it that we offer? A strong Britain, confident of its position; secure in its defences, firm in its respect for the law. A strong economy, free from the threat of inflation, in which taxes can fall, savings can grow, and independence is assured.

I want to give individuals greater control over their own lives.

– Every mother, every father, a say over their child’s education.

– Every schoolchild, a choice of routes to the world of work.

– Every patient, the confidence that their doctors can secure the best treatment for them.

– Every business, every worker, freedom from the destructive dictatorship of union militants.

– Every family, the right to have and to hold their own private corner of life; their own home, their own savings, their own security for their future – and for their children’s future.

Building the self-respect that comes from ownership. Showing the responsibility that follows from self-respect. That is our programme for the 90s. I will put it in a single phrase: the power to choose – and the right to own.

Do you know what Labour believes? That choice is something for them. They just can’t accept that choice is something most of us can be trusted with. You might make mistakes, they say. What arrogance. As if the State have never made mistakes, in our name, with our money. Try telling that the tenants of the crumbling tower blocks that disfigures our cities.

And tell that to the citizens of Eastern Europe, who have risked their very lives for these freedoms, for the right to own, and for the power to choose. Ordinary values – for which ordinary people have, in our time, fought an extraordinary fight.

During the summer I did quite a bit of travelling – Headingley, Edgbaston, Trent Bridge, Lord’s, the Oval. Also Moscow, Peking, Hong Kong and Kennebunkport. Wherever I went abroad, I found the same story. Britain is respected again. We don’t always realise the admiration and affection for Britain abroad.

We’ve earned it, because when others have hesitated, we have always stood firm and given a lead. As we did again this year. In defence of freedom in Kuwait. We didn’t want that war, its waste, its suffering, its grief. But to achieve greater security in the world, we had to reverse the annexation of Kuwait. And to keep that security we must destroy Iraq’s nuclear weapons capacity. They are still trying to cling to it, still cheating, still lying.

They cannot be permitted to succeed. One way or another that nuclear capacity must go. I hope it will go peacefully. If not, it must go by force. But go it will. In January I flew by helicopter over our army in the Gulf. I can still see the scene below me. A great convoy of troops and heavy equipment moving forward across the sands. For mile after mile. You could only marvel at the organisation and planning involved.

But down on the ground, I had a different impression. Dug into position each unit seemed almost alone. Young men – mostly very young – thousands of miles from home in the wastes of the desert. Let me tell you what was in my mind when I met them. What would they think? Here was a new Prime Minister, unknown to them, untried, asking them to prepare for battle, perhaps not to return. How would they respond to that? And would they understand the reasons why they were there?

Whatever doubts I had soon disappeared. They knew why there were there. They knew the cause was right. And they knew that they could do the job. They asked only to be allowed to get on with it. And, when they did, my goodness, how they proved their point. They really were the best of British.

I learned something else from that extraordinary war and especially from that precision bombing that amazed the world. It’s this. If our troops are to do the job we ask, it is absolutely vital that their equipment and their training are the best.

That is why in the last few weeks we have bought the new anti-submarine helicopter from Westland – the best. Why we are moving ahead with the new Challenger tank from Vickers – the best. And that’s why we will keep our own independent nuclear deterrent, Trident. The best security for Britain.

And we will take with just a little pinch of salt the conversion of those who campaigned for CND for the past thirty years – and then suddenly let their principles ….what was the word? … lapse? What principles? First, peace at any price. Then power at any price. I know what this country will say to that. Never at any price. For a man who with no fixed view on the defence of Britain, there can be no fixed abode in Downing Street.

As we saw again in the aftermath of war, a confident Britain is a force for good in a troubled world. If we had not created those safe havens in Iraq, hundreds and thousands of Kurdish people would have died last winter in bitter, freezing mountains. We spoke out strongly for human rights in Peking and spoke out first against the return of tyranny in Moscow.

Alone among all the nations of the world we stand at the hub of three great interlocking alliances. Of NATO, which is and must remain the core of our defence. Of the European Community. And of the Commonwealth, which meets in conference next week. There we must persuade 50 nations, some – frankly – with a chequered political history, to a formal commitment to democracy and human rights.

And in the 1990s I hope to see one former member of the Commonwealth once more take its rightful place. We have always fought for an end to apartheid. But we have worked just as consistently for the long-term goal of a fully free and prosperous South Africa. I believe that both goals are now in sight. And when they are reached I want to see South Africa back where she belongs – as a fully-fledged member of our Commonwealth of nations.

A great debate is now underway in Europe. One in which the Conservative Party can speak with authority. Harold Macmillan first sought to take Britain into the Community, Ted Heath finally led us there, and Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act – with its vision of ever closer union between states. Closer union between states. Not a federal merger of states. That is still our policy.

I believe strongly in partnership in Europe. Britain, as a great European power, has gained from our membership of the Community. That is the verdict of those people in our country who live by business, banking and trade, the very people on whom our prosperity and jobs depend. But it must be the right Europe. Let me set out for you the objectives that I have in mind, the principles that I will fight for, and the propositions I will resist.

First we want a Community that will in time embrace the new democracies of the East. We have the chance to heal the scar that divided and disfigured Europe for two generations. The nations of Eastern Europe – Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic States – need to know now that when their economies are ready for the Community, the Community will be ready for them.

Second, I want a genuine single market, open for business right across the Community. It must have common rules. And these rules must be obeyed. When we sign up to something, we put words into actions. Some of our partners, I fear, are keener on making new rules than on keeping them. We need a system that can deal effectively with those who call themselves good Europeans, but who hijack lorries or hold up free trade.

We are now negotiating new Treaties on political and economic union. I am always ready to listen to new ideas. But they must be workable ideas. Ideas that make sense for Europe, and for Britain. There are vital issues at stake. They involve hard judgments of where our true interests lie. The idea of a single European currency is one with enormous ramifications, both practical and political. At best it is an uncertain prospect. And treaty must provide for a separate decision to be taken – not now – but at a future date by the British Government and the British Parliament. It’s our decision. A single currency cannot be imposed upon us. And I would not accept, on behalf of Britain, any treaty which sought to impose a single currency – at however distant a date.

We already work closely with our European partners in financial affairs. So, too, in foreign policy and defence. When national interest and Community interest coincide, then common action is only common sense. But in no circumstances – not now, not at Maastricht – will a Conservative Government give up the right, our national right, to take the crucial decisions about our security, our foreign policy and our defence.

We are working to reach an agreement at Maastricht in December. But I cannot guarantee that our negotiations will succeed. For it is no easy task to get 12 nations to agree. And for my part, I shall put the interests of our country before any agreement. Not any agreement before the interests of our country.

I hope we can reach agreement. If we do, I will submit that agreement to parliament. For it is here in Britain that the crucial decisions must be taken. Not in the European Parliament. Not in the Council of Ministers. Not in the Commission – certainly not in the Commission. It will be for Parliament to decide on behalf of the people of Britain who elected it.

So far I have spoken of alliances. Of how much we can achieve if we work with other nations. But when it comes to the search for new markets, even our closest allies remain our competitors. I have never accepted the craven argument that Britain can’t compete with Germany or Japan. And I have contempt for the defeatists who run down our country and write of its future.

Those who said we couldn’t compete in Europe when we led Britain into the Exchange-Rate Mechanism.

Those who said that we would have to push up interest rates. And that our inflation was bound to stay far higher than the rest of the Continent.

All that was just a year ago this week. And look what has really happened since.

We have cut interests rates – eight times.

Our exports to the rest of the Community have shot up. Our imports have fallen. Our trade deficit with Europe has been almost wiped out. And in case you haven’t heard this morning’s news, our inflation rate has fallen to just 4.1%. For the first time in a generation we have brought inflation down to German levels.

They said we couldn’t do it. We did it. And in just one year. Let me remind the sell Britain short brigade of just a few facts. We attract more American investment than any other European country, and twice as much investment from Japan.

Only two years ago, this country had a 17,000 million pound deficit on manufactured trade. This summer, we had a surplus. Our manufacturers sold more abroad than ever before. They didn’t sell Britain short. They sold for Britain. And they had to fight for their markets when the going was hard.

I know times have been tough. Unemployment has risen. Many people have faced great difficulties. I know how they feel – what it’s like for a family when a business collapses. What it’s like when you’re unemployed and when you have to search for the next job.

I have not forgotten – and I never will.

It is because of that that I will never play fast and loose with the economy. Many have pressed us to do so this past year – siren voices, urging us on to the rocks of inflation, and off the course to recovery. The Chancellor and I ignored those voices. And, as he told you, we can now see the way ahead out of recession, to the recovery that will bring investment. To the investment that will bring jobs.

And the clearer the signs of recovery, the louder the Labour Party complains.

Look how they rounded on the Governor of the Bank of England. All because he dared to confirm what everyone else was saying. That recovery is on the way. When he said there was a recession – they cheered him. When he said it was coming to an end – they called for his head. What are they going to do with those hundreds of businessmen telling the CBI exactly the same thing? Will Labour threaten to sack them too? All of them?

Do Labour realise what their policies would do to business?

– Stab it in the back just when it’s winning the battle for trade

– Impose new levies

– Pile on new costs

– Bring back union power.

It may be true that a Labour Prime Minister would no longer get his marching orders over beer and sandwiches at No 10. In these days of designer socialism, he’d get them over a G&T – down at the Old T&G.

A minimum wage would create the very unemployment they claim to care about. New burdens would drive business out of markets. Higher taxes would drive business talent abroad. Above all, inflation would drive our economy out of the future and back to the past.

Remember who suffers from inflation.

– Infant businesses

– People on fixed incomes

– Pensioners

Inflation is a tax paid by those least able to protect themselves. It is Labour’s invisible tax. It wouldn’t come through the letter box, though there are plenty that would.

They have eight new taxes lined up already.

Well, that’s not surprising. We’ve costed Labour’s spending promises. 35 billion pounds extra and still rising. Of course, they say there would be hardly any more tax for hardly anyone. But that’s hardly credible.

The next Labour Manifesto will be the biggest tax demand in history. They love nationalisation. High taxes nationalise choice. It won’t be a case of ‘you pays your money, you takes your choice’. It will be – they take your money, they take your choice.

High taxes would enrich the businesses, the laboratories, the the universities of American and the rest of Europe at the expense of the businesses and universities of Britain. We’d be back with something we haven’t heard of for twelve years – the brain drain. Our low tax policies have built up a brain bank for Britain.

Our Party has always kept personal tax rates down. And in the next Parliament we will go on doing so.

Lower taxes don’t just mean richer people. They mean a richer life. A life with wider horizons, in which people can develop their interests. Support their favourite charity, pursue their hobbies. Go fishing or to a football match, the theatre or the cinema, or just save up for a holiday.

But lower taxes give people more powerful choices, too. The chance to save for the long-term, to invest in the future. Building up a pension. Starting a business. Giving their children a good start in life – and passing on to them the fruits of a lifetime’s work.

In the 1980s we began a great revolution. Our aim was a life enriched by ownership, in which homes, shares and pensions were not something for others, but something for everyone.

We can now see the lifeblood of ownership – of wealth – running through the veins of the country. Nearly four million more families now own homes. And eight million people more own shares. And four and a half million people now have personal pensions.

But this revolution is still not complete. In the 1990s we must carry it further. We must extend savings and ownership in every form. And we now have the chance to make enduring change. For people in their middle years are inheriting homes, businesses, farms on a scale never before seen. The pioneers of the property-owning democracy are the parents of the capital-owning democracy to come.

We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored.

So, in the next Parliament, I believe that we must go much further in encouraging every family to save and to own. To extend every family’s ability to pass on something to their children, to build up something of their own – for their own.

Labour have their eyes on the money stored in the homes in which millions of people now live – and in the businesses they have created. But I believe that what people have worked to build up in life, the State should never destroy.

As Harold Macmillan once memorably put it, people walk in public gardens, but they tend their own. I want to build a pride in our common inheritance of town and city, coast and countryside. In the very fabric of our nation.

I want to foster ownership in its widest sense. In making people feel that public property belongs to them. Giving them more say – at the local level – in how things are run. Giving them a choice. Putting them in control.

That’s the idea behind our Citizen’s Charter – about which Francis Maude spoke so well yesterday. It will be a centrepiece of our policies for the 1990s. I want to see public services in which the passenger, the patient, the parent can have confidence. And in which public servants can have pride.

I see that Labour are now trying to copy my ideas. I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised at that. Even the Labour Party has to have some good ideas amongst all the bad. It’s just that they filch the good ideas from us. The bad ones of course they think up for themselves. They don’t even hide it when they steal some of my clothes. Did you see how many of them were wearing grey suits last week? Have they no shame?

The test for Labour will come in the next session of Parliament. We will be legislating on the Citizen’s Charter. We shall be giving parents a greater say in schools. Making the big utilities more responsive to customers. And as Michael Heseltine promised us yesterday, exposing incompetence in the council chamber.

And how do you imagine Labour will vote? With us? For the charter? And for the consumer? Or against us? For the trade unions? For the old ways? For the past? But it’s not just a matter of changing the way we run things. It’s a matter of breaking down the false and futile divisions, based on class and envy, that have been around for generations. They are wholly artificial. Labour fosters those divisions. It thrives on them. Our task is to end them for good.

I spoke of a classless society. I don’t shrink from that phrase. I don’t mean a society in which everyone is the same, or thinks the same, or earns the same. But a tapestry of talents in which everyone from child to adult respects achievement; where every promotion, every certificate is respected, and each person’s contribution is valued.

And where the greatest respect is reserved for the law. There can be no harmony in a lawless society. The recent outbreaks of violence in some of our council estates involved a brutal disrespect for other people and their property. Such behaviour cannot be excused and will not be tolerated. In the face of such violence, I know that this Party will give the police the support that we always have. We admire the bravery and the professionalism of those young policeman and women who have been the front line against violent attacks. This Conference must leave no shred of doubt. Rioting is a crime – a serious crime. And it will be dealt with as such.

But dealing with crime is not just something for other people – the police, or the courts, of the Government. It’s a challenge to everyone. And the way to fight crime is to change the attitudes that lie behind crime.

The attitudes of people who say that theft of vandalism are somehow less serious. They call it property crime. Property crime? Tell that to the widow who has been robbed of treasured mementoes of her past life. That’s not a property crime. It’s a personal wound which can never be healed.

This Government is going to crack down on crime, as Ken Baker made clear this week. Let me give you an example. What the irresponsible call joy-riding, we know as simple theft; dangerous driving, a disregard for human life, and the destruction of other people’s property. Some of these people are too young for a licence. We will ensure that when they reach driving age they can be banned from the road.

As for those parents who stand by and watch while their children commit crimes, they are going to be held responsible for their children’s actions. Those in authority – parents and teachers as well – should use their authority to teach a sense of respect for others, for their rights, not just your own; for their opinions, their welfare and their possessions. Without respect for others, there can be no proper respect for the law.

We don’t help our children by excusing bad behaviour, we betray them. And we lead them into worse behaviour. Sometimes it’s right to say no.

A great deal has been written about my education. Never has so much been written about so little. Perhaps that’s why I am so keen on the subject. I believe that Ken Clarke’s programme of reform is a turning-point in education. It will mean that parents and pupils come first, that the key subjects are studied properly, and that the status of teachers is restored.

Some have said that Ken Clarke and I are wrong to insist on simple pencil and paper tests for children in schools. Well, I’ll tell you what marks I would give to people like those. Nought out of ten for concern. Nought out of ten for interest in our children. Nought out of ten for commonsense. And, so long as there is a Conservative Government, they’ll get nought out of ten for influence in our schools.

What Labour Governments did, and what all too many Labour Councils are still doing, is unforgivable – the years of levelling down; the destruction of good schools; the harassment of good teachers; the kicking away of the ladder of opportunity by those who climbed up it themselves; the setting of the union rule book above all other text books; the neglect even of spelling. That is where the long march of the Left in education has led us. Well, we are now rooting these ideas out. We are giving parents more influence in schools. If we want them to exercise responsibility for their children, we must give them a say in the education of their children.

I will fight for my belief in a return to basics in education. The progressive theorists have had their say. And they’ve had their day.

In the last twelve months we have seen the Socialist philosophy collapsing in ruins. Who will ever forget those days of high drama in the Soviet Union last August? Or the three young men in Moscow who gave their lives for reform.

When I visited the place where they died, I was struck by the number of young people who pressed in around me. They had copied Western fashions, wore Western gear. For decades they and their parents had been taught that Socialism was the destiny of their future. That the Soviet Union would bury the West. But it wasn’t the West that the Socialist system had buried, it was the hopes and dreams of their own people.

Socialism has gone in Czechoslovakia, gone in Poland, gone in Hungary, gone even in Sweden. And here in Britain, I’ll tell you what you’ll see over the next few months. You’ll see the Red Flag dying here. It’s going. Going. Gone. Suddenly, it’s just so old fashioned, so irrelevant, so out of date.

What I owe to this country and to its people is difficult to put into words. My greatest wish now is to give back something of what I have been given.

I want to work for a Britain that is the best educated and the best governed.

Where schools and universities are the finest and accessible to all. Where inner cities don’t mean deprivation, but communities that bind and belong. And where no-one has to go in fear at night.

I should like to live in a world where opportunity is for everyone, where peace is truly universal, and where freedom is secure.

If that is what you believe in, then go back to your constituencies. tell them what we stand for. Tell them what we care for. And ask them to choose.