Tag: Gordon Brown

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 7 July 2004.

Can I say what a pleasure it is to have the privilege to deliver the annual British Council Lecture.

To celebrate this year an exceptionally successful seventy years of an institution which has played and continues to play such an important part in British society and in Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world.

Now last month in a speech at the Mansion House, I argued how in the last half of the last century post imperial Britain came to be defined to the world by perceptions of national economic decline.

And I said that in the first years of this new century we can begin to identify how:

• a once stop go British economy is now stable;
• a once corporatist British business and industrial culture is seen now as more enterprising and more flexible;
• a country once characterised by high unemployment now enjoys record employment;
• a country which can now, on a rising tide of confidence, aspire to become one of the great success stories of the new global economy.

But if we are to fully realise the economic potential of Britain my view is that we need something more.  For the twelve years I have been Shadow Chancellor or Chancellor, I have felt that our country would be better able to meet and master the challenges of ever more intense global competition if we could build a shared sense of national economic purpose. Indeed, over half a century, Britain has been damaged by the absence of agreement on economic purpose or direction: lurching for narrow political reasons from one short term economic panacea to another, often public sector fighting private, management versus worker, state versus market in a sterile battle for territory, that deprived British businesses and British workforces of confidence about the long term and held our country back. So when in 1997 I made the Bank of England independent my aim was to build a consensus across all sections of society about the priority we all attached to economic stability.  A shared purpose not just across macroeconomic policy but across the whole range of economic questions is, I believe, even more essential now not just to face up to global competition from Asia as well as Europe and America but if we are to have the strength as a country to make the hard choices on priorities that will determine our success.

Creating a shared national purpose also reflects a deeper need: to rediscover a clear and confident sense of who we are as a country.

I believe that just about every central question about our national future – from the constitution to our role in Europe, from citizenship to the challenges of multiculturalism – even the question of how and why we deliver public services in the manner we do – can only be fully answered if we are clear about what we value about being British and what gives us purpose and direction as a country.

Take the vexed question of Europe. I believe it has been a lack of confidence about what Britain stands for that has made it difficult for us to feel confident about our relationship with, and our potential role in, Europe.  And as a result led many to believe – wrongly – that the only choice for Britain is between splendid isolation and total absorption. As with the debate over all international questions, the debate over Europe is, at root, about how the British national interest is defined and what we should stand for as a country.

Take our constitution and all the great and continuing debates about the nature of the second chamber, the relationship of the legislative to the executive, the future of local and central government.  Our approach to resolving each of these questions is governed by what sort of country we think we are and what sort of country we think we should become.

Take devolution and nationalism. While the United Kingdom has always been a country of different nations and thus of plural identities – a Welshman can be Welsh and British just as a Cornishman or woman is Cornish, English and British – and may be Muslim, Pakistani or Afro Caribbean, Cornish, English and British – the issue is whether we retreat into more exclusive identities rooted in 19th century conceptions of blood, race and territory, or whether we are still able to celebrate a British identity which is bigger than the sum of its parts and a Union that is strong because of the values we share and because of the way these values are expressed through our history and our institutions.

And take the most recent illustration of what challenges us to be more explicit about these issues:  the debate about asylum and immigration – and the debate about multiculturalism. Here the question is essentially whether our national identity is defined by race and ethnicity – a definition that would leave our country at risk of relapsing into making a misleading ‘cricket test’ or, worse, colour the determination of what it is to be British.  Or whether there are values which shape our national identity and which all citizens can share – thus separating citizenship from race – and which can find explicit expression so that they become a unifying and strengthening force.

And this is important not just for tackling these questions – central as they are – but for an even larger reason.

In a growingly more insecure world people feel a need to be rooted and they draw strength from shared purpose.

Indeed if people are to cope successfully with often bewildering change then a sense of belonging is vital.  And that, in turn, depends on a clear shared vision of national identity.

And I want to suggest that our success as Great Britain – our ability to meet and master not just the challenges of a global marketplace but also the international, demographic, constitutional and social challenges ahead – and even the security challenges facing a terrorist threat that has never been more challenging and demands upon those charged with our security never greater – depends upon us rediscovering from our history the shared values that bind us together and on us becoming more explicit about what we stand for as a nation.

But if these issues around national identity are so important, my starting question must be: why over decades have we as a country singularly failed to address them and yet we see – as Jonathan Freedland has so eloquently described – other countries, principally America, successfully defining themselves by values that their citizens share in common?  The real answer, I believe, lies in our post war history – in a loss of self confidence and direction, even a resignation to national decline, a loss of self confidence that is itself now becoming part of our history.

I was born in mid century in what you might now call middle Scotland – 1951. And while much was changing around us, Britain was still a country of fixed certainties that – echoing Orwell’s ‘Lion and the Unicorn’ – were well understood, virtually unquestioned and barely stated.

The early 1950s was the world of Sir Winston Churchill, a coronation that was reported with almost religious enthusiasm, an unquestionably United Kingdom, and around us symbols of an imperial Britain.  I grew up in the fifties and sixties on maps of the world with a quarter of it pink and on British books and comics and then films which glorified the Blitz, the spitfires, Sir Douglas Bader and endless reruns of the Guns of Navarone.

This was, of course, a Britain whose confidence was built – unlike the USA – not on aspirations about the future but on real achievements of the past:

• the Britain that could legitimately make claim to be the first country in the world to reject the arbitrary rule of monarchy;
• the Britain that was first to make a virtue of tolerance and liberty;
• the Britain that was first in the industrial revolution;
• the Britain that was centre to the world’s largest empire – the global economy of its day;
• the Britain that unlike continental Europe was never subject to revolution;
• the Britain that had the imperial mission which made us a world power and then a ‘defence of the West’ mission which appeared to justify a continuing sense of ourselves as a world power;
• the Britain that – unlike America which as a country of immigrants had to define itself by its belief in liberty and opportunity for all – did not feel its exceptionalism called for any mission statement, or defining goals, or explicit national ethos. Indeed we made a virtue of understatement or no statement at all.

This is a long way from the image of Britain of recent decades  – what now goes for ‘post war Britain’ – that long half century of uncertainty:

• the Britain of managed decline – at home and abroad
• of failing corporatism
• of sterile self defeating struggles between public and private sectors, management and unions, state and market.  (In the fifties it was said we had managed decline, in the sixties mismanaged decline, and in the seventies we declined to manage).
• the Britain
  • of doubts and hesitations about Europe
  • of the growth of secessionist movements in Scotland and Wales
  • of, as immigration rose, a retreat by some into defining Britishness through race and ethnicity, what was called the ‘cricket test’
  • and then, as the sun set on the empire, the failed attempts to root our post 1945 identity simply in the longevity of our institutions alone – indeed in the idea of unchanging institutions.

It was almost as if we looked backward with nostalgia because we could not look forward with hope.  And so as the gap between imperial myth and reality grew, so too the view grew that Britain was not, in fact, underpinned by any strong sense of Britishness at all.  And it led to a questioning of the very existence of Britain, right across mainstream opinion. Indeed Andrew Marr now the political editor of the BBC choose to entitle his ‘state of the nation’ book ‘The Day That Britain Died’, writing ‘I have a profound belief in the likelihood of a British union dissolving within a decade.’

For Neil Ascherson from the liberal left all that remains of Britishness is ‘a state, a flag and armed forces recruited from every part… just institutions…not social reality’.   And with a similar eloquence his fellow Scottish writer Tom Nairn has argued that because there was little that is British left to underpin Britain, what he called ‘The Break Up of Britain’ was inevitable.

Professor Linda Colley whose ground breaking historical research had demonstrated that the ‘United Kingdom’ was founded on great but ultimately transient historical forces – the strength of anti French feeling, the bonds of empire and Protestantism  – concludes:

‘The factors that provided for the forging of the British nation in the past have largely ceased to operate.  Protestantism, that once vital cement, has now a limited influence on British culture, as indeed has Christianity itself. Recurrent wars with the states of continental Europe have in all likelihood come to an end, so different kinds of Briton no longer feel the same compulsion to remain united in the face of the enemy from without. And crucially both commercial supremacy and imperial hegemony have gone. And no more can Britons reassure themselves of their distinct and privileged identity by contrasting themselves with the impoverished Europeans or by exercising authority over manifestly alien people.  God has ceased to be British and providence no longer smiles’.

And the historian Norman Davies, even lists 18 British institutions which according to him have defined Britishness and which he now suggests have lost their authority, putting the existence of Britain in doubt.

And this view of decline and decay – and then a profound sense we have lost our way as a country – is, if anything, held more forcibly today by writers and thinkers from the right – Roger Scruton (whose highly challenging study of Englishness is entitled ‘An Elegy’) Simon Heffer, Ferdinand Mount.   For them the final nails in the coffin of Great Britain are not just devolution but Britain succumbing to multiculturalism and to Europe. For Mount, quoting Orwell that ‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality’, our nation could become  ‘one giant cultural mall in which we would all wander, free to chose from a variety of equally valuable lifestyles, to take back and exchange purchases when not given satisfaction or simply to window shop’.   And Melanie Phillips concludes ‘the big political divide in the country is now clear…it is over nothing less than the protection of liberal democracy and the defence of the nation itself’.

Yet as I read these writers and thinkers I detect that beyond the battleground on individual issues – our relationship with Europe, devolution and the constitution, asylum and immigration – some common ground does exist: it is the recognition of the importance of and the need to celebrate and entrench a Britishness defined by shared values strong enough to overcome discordant claims of separatism and disintegration.

Take David Goodhart’s recent contribution to the multiculturalism debate. In questioning whether there is an inherent conflict between the need for social cohesion and diversity he argues that he wanted to emphasise that what we need is ‘a core set of social norms…who are we does matter’.

And while Melanie Phillips argues that a culture war is raging she has a remedy rooted in shared values of Britishness. There is hope, she says, because ‘if citizenship is to mean anything at all Ministers must sign up to an overarching set of British values’.

Interestingly while Sir Herman Ousley, former Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, directly assails her views and indeed those of David Goodhart, he too returns to that same starting point – that there are British values all can share. Echoing Orwell’s ‘England My England’ his biographer Sir Bernard Crick argues British ‘people should have a sense of allegiance, loyalty, law and order and political tolerance’. Even Tom Nairn writes of Britishness that ‘there is a residual and yet still quite comfortable non-smallness about the term’.

But when we ask what are the core values of Britishness, can we find in them a muscularity and robustness that neither dilutes Britishness and British values to the point they become amorphous nor leaves them so narrowly focused that many patriotic British men and women will feel excluded? Of course, a strong sense of national identity derives from the particular, the special things we cherish. But I think we would all agree that we do not love our country simply because we occupy a plot of land or hold a UK passport but also because that place is home and because that represents values and qualities – and bonds of sentiment and familiarity – we hold dear.

And it is my belief that out of tidal flows of British history – 2000 years of successive waves of invasion, immigration, assimilation and trading partnerships that have created a uniquely rich and diverse culture – certain forces emerge again and again which make up a characteristically British set of values and qualities which, taken together, mean that there is indeed a strong and vibrant Britishness that underpins Britain.

I believe that because these islands – and our maritime and trading traditions – have made us remarkably outward looking and open, this country has fostered a vigorously adaptable society and has given rise to a culture both creative and inventive.  But an open and adapting society also needs to be rooted and Britain’s roots are on the most solid foundation of all a passion for liberty anchored in a sense of duty and an intrinsic commitment to tolerance and fair play.

The values and qualities I describe are of course to be found in many other cultures and countries. But when taken together, and as they shape the institutions of our country these values and qualities – being creative, adaptable and outward looking, our belief in liberty, duty and fair play – add up to a distinctive Britishness that has been manifest throughout our history, and shaped it. ‘When people discard, ignore or mock the ideals which formed our national character then they no longer exist as a people but only as a crowd’, writes Roger Scruton. And I agree with him.

For there is indeed is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual standing firm for freedom and liberty against tyranny and the arbitrary use of power.  It runs from that long ago day in Runnymede in 1215 to the Bill of Rights in 1689 to not just one but four Great Reform Acts within less than a hundred years. And the great tradition of British liberty has, first and foremost, been rooted in the protection of the individual against the arbitrary power of first the monarch and then the state.

But it is a golden thread which has also has twined through it a story of common endeavour in villages, towns and cities – men and women with shared needs and common purposes, united as neighbours and citizens by a strong sense of duty and of fair play.

And their efforts – and that sense of duty and fair play – together produced uniquely British settlements that, from generation to generation, have balanced the rights and responsibilities of individuals, communities and state and led to a deeply engrained British tradition of public service.

First, liberty. It was Montesquieu who wrote in the 18th century that ours was ‘the freest country in the world’.  I would suggest that it is because different ethnic groups came to live together in one small island that we first made a virtue of tolerance, welcoming and included successive waves of settlers  – from Saxons and Normans to Huguenots and Jews and Asians and Afro-Caribbean’s, and recognising plural identities. Today 85 per cent believe a strong sense of tolerance is important to our country’s success. And I would suggest that out of that toleration came a belief in religious and political freedom – illustrated best by Adam Nicholson’s story of the creation of the King James Bible: different denominations coming together in committee to create what was called ‘irenicon’, which means a symbol of unity for the whole nation.

Liberty meant not just tolerance for minorities but a deeply rooted belief – illustrated early in our history by trial by jury – in the freedom of the individual under the law and in the liberty of the common people rooted in constantly evolving English common law.  When Henry Grattan – the 18th century Irish politician  – attempted to sum up our unique characteristics, he said that you can get a Parliament from anywhere but you can only get liberty from England. Indeed so powerful were the ideas continued in the 1689 Bill of Rights which led to liberty associations all over Britain that both sides in the American War of Independence fought ‘in the name of British liberty’ and before America took the word to be its own, liberty was, in fact, identified with Britain.

Of course liberty is, in Matthew Arnold’s words, ‘a very good horse to ride, but to ride somewhere’. And history is strewn with examples of how we failed to live up to our ideals. But the idea of liberty did mean, in practice, that for half a century it was Britain that led the worldwide anti slavery movement with engraved on the badge of the anti slavery society a figure of a black man and the quote, ‘Am I not a man and a brother’.  Indeed at home no slave was ever permitted and abroad the Royal Navy searched the world to eradicate slavery.

And this view of liberty not only produced the Bill of Rights and the anti slavery movement but caused Britain to lead the way in restricting the arbitrary power of Monarchs and then onward to the far reaching democratic reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

And at every point this British belief in liberty has been matched by a British idea of duty as the virtue that reinforces neighbourliness and enshrines the idea of a public realm and public service.  A belief in the duty of one to another is an essential element of nationhood in every country but whether it arose from religious belief, from a ‘nobless oblige’, or from a sense of solidarity, duty in Britain – for most of the time an unwritten code of behaviour rather than a set of legal requirements – has been, to most people, the foundation of rights rather than their consequence.

And the call to civic duty and to public service – often impelled by religious convictions – led to the mushrooming of local and national endeavour, of associations and clubs, a rich tradition of voluntary organisations, local democracy and civic life.

From the guilds, the charities, the clubs and associations – which bred amongst other things the City of London’s unique structure  – and from the churches, to the municipal provision of public amenities like libraries and parks and then to the mutual insurance societies, trades unions and non governmental organisations, the British way is to recognise and enhance local initiative and mutual responsibility in civil affairs and to encourage and enhance the status of voluntary and community organisations – Burke’s ‘little platoons’ – in the service of their neighbourhoods.

Alongside that a passionate commitment to duty, Britishness has also meant a tradition of fair play. We may think today of British fair play as something applied on the sports field, but in fact most of the time it has been a very widely accepted foundation of social order:  treating people fairly, rewarding hard work, encouraging self improvement through education and being inclusive.  In his last speech to Parliament in March 1955 – the speech that urged the British people to ‘never flinch, never weary, never despair’ – Churchill described the essential qualities of the British people and at the forefront was fair play. For other nations, he said, ‘the day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell’.

And this commitment to fair play – captured in Orwell’s word ‘decency’ – has animated British political thought on both left and right over the centuries, right through to the passion for social improvement of the Victorian middle classes and the Christian socialists and trade unions who struggled for a new welfare settlement in the 20th century.  It was a settlement – making opportunity available to all, supporting the most vulnerable in society, inclusive, and ensuring what we would today call social justice  – which over nearly half a century brought forth agreement across party and across social classes.

So the British way has always been more than self-interested individualism.  Even in the heyday of free market philosophy society was always thought to rest on something greater than harsh organised selfishness. In his Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith described the ‘helping hand’ that matched the ‘invisible hand’ of his ‘wealth of nations’. And he believed that the drive for economic success should be combined with traditions of social obligation, public service and a broad moral commitment to civic improvement. And this has brought forth tens of thousands of local neighbourhood civic associations, unions, charities, voluntary organisations – the space between state and markets in a Britain that has always rejected absolutism and crude selfish individualism – that together embody that very British idea – civic society – that was discovered in Britain long before ‘social capital’ ever entered our dictionary.  And it is an idea that Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks captures eloquently for our times when he talks of British society and citizenship not in terms of a contract between people that, in legalistic ways, defines our rights narrowly on the basis of self interest but a British ‘covenant’ of rights and responsibilities born out of shared values which can inspire us to neighbourliness and service to others.

So while we talk in economics of the Anglo Saxon model – the pursuit of economic individualism through free markets – Britishness has always been more than just the ‘freedom from’ restraint but also stands for civic duty and fairness  And these two qualities of British life – the notion of civic duty binding people to one another and the sense of fair play which underpins the idea of a proper social order – come together in the ethic of public service. And this gave rise to great British public institutions admired throughout the world  — from the National Health Service and our army, navy and air forces to our universities, including the Open University, and the expression of civic purpose and social inclusion in culture and arts – our great national and municipal art galleries, museums and the BBC – not least the BBC World Service and the British Council.

Alongside these values have been found what I regard as essentially British qualities: an ability to adapt, and an openness to new ideas and new influences which have made us, as a country, both creative and internationalist in our outlook.

To have managed change for three hundred years without violent revolution is unique.  I find it extraordinary that some appear to believe that it is somehow British to defend the idea of a constitution that never changes.  It is precisely our ability to evolve our constitution that characterises the British way. So stability in our society does not come from rigidity:  it comes from the ability to accommodate and master change.  ‘A state without the means of some change’ Edmund Burke famously declared ‘is without the means of its conservation’. ‘Change is inevitable’ Benjamin Disraeli said in 1867, ‘in a progressive society change is constant’. And a willingness and ability to adapt enabled Britain to embrace the opportunities of the industrial revolution with unprecedented vigour and success and, more than a century later, to mobilise from peace to war to survive and triumph in two world conflicts.

And our very openness to new ideas and influences also means that at the heart of British qualities are a creativity and inventiveness – from the first agricultural revolution to the pioneering work of Babbage and Turing that made possible the computer and information revolution; in science discoveries from DNA to cloning; in engineering the work of Brunel and the inventions from the steam engine to the TV; and in medicine from penicillin to interferon – an inventiveness that has ranged right across medicine and science to the arts and music.  And so it is not surprising that as we rediscover these qualities, British dynamism is leading the world in some of the most modern and creative industries – communications, fashion, film, popular music, art, architecture, and many areas of science and the environmental technologies.

And out of that same openness to new ideas and influences, an outward looking internationalism that made us not just the workshop of the world but as a country of merchant adventurers, explorers and missionaries the greatest trading nation the world has ever seen. Many people have made much of the fact that Britain was a set of islands.  But unlike some other island nations British history has never been marked by insularity.  We are an island that has always looked outwards, been engaged in worldwide trade and been open to new influences – our British qualities that made us see, in David Cannadine’s words, the Channel not as a moat but as a highway.  An island position that has made us internationalist and outward looking and not – as other islands have become – isolationist and inward looking.

Of course all nations lay claim to uniqueness and exceptionalism and many would choose or emphasise the qualities of the British people in a different way from me. And in highlighting this view of British history – one which places what I regard as intrinsically British values and qualities at its centre  – I do not want to claim moral superiority for Britain nor romanticise the past. And I do not gloss over abuses which also characterised our past. Nor do I claim the values and qualities I have described are not to be found in other nations. But I believe that they have shaped our institutions and together they have been responsible for the best of our past — creating a distinctive British identity that should make us proud, and not reticent nor apologetic, about our history. But most of all these values and qualities should inform any discussion of the central questions affecting our future.

In fact the two ideologies that have characterised the histories of other countries have never taken root here.  On the one hand an ideology of state power – which choked individual freedom making the individual slave to some arbitrarily defined collective interest – has found little or no favour in Britain. On the other hand an ideology of crude individualism – which leaves the individual isolated, stranded, on his own, detached from society around him – has no resonance for a Britain which has a strong sense of fair play and an even stronger sense of duty and a rich tradition of voluntary organisations, local democracy and civic life.

And this is my idea of Britain today.  Not the individual on his or her own living in isolation sufficient unto himself but a Britain of creativity and enterprise which is also a Britain of civic duty and public service.  And in this vision of society there is a sense of belonging that expands outwards as we grow from family to friends and neighbourhood; a sense of belonging that then ripples outwards again from work, school, church and community and eventually outwards to far beyond our home town and region to define our nation and country as a society.

And we should not only be explicit about our British values but express them fully in way we organise our institutions. Let me suggest the agenda that flows from this.

First, start with Burke’s ‘little platoons’ which reflect both a British desire for liberty and a strong sense of civic duty and fair play.

If the British way is to encourage and enhance the status of voluntary and community organisations in the service of their neighbourhoods then we should recognise that aspects of post war centralisation fell short of our vision of empowered individuals and vibrant communities. The man in Whitehall never knew best; the woman in the WRVS and local community service usually knew much more. And so the question is how from the foundation of British values we refashion the settlement between individual, community and government.

Today in Britain, there are more than 160,000 registered charities, more than 200,000 non-charitable voluntary and community organisations, around 400,000 in total, one for every hundred of the adult population – defining Britain as such a thing as society: an estimated 16 million people who do some kind of voluntary work – and nearly two adults in every five who give of their time to help others at least once in the year – and we best reflect our British traditions of civic duty and public service by strengthening our community organisations and making them more relevant to the challenges of today.  Take community service by young people. If America has its Peace Corps and now its Ameircorps, South Africa its National Youth Service, France its ‘Unis-Cite’, the Netherlands its ‘Groundbreakers Initiative’, Canada its Katimavik programme, should not Britain – with far greater and deeper traditions of voluntary and community service – be building on those traditions to engage a new generation of young people in service to their communities?  And should we not be doing far more to provide nationally and locally the means by which young people find it easy to participate?

I am sure that following the Russell Commission on young people, we will wish to consider establishing a national youth community service; to ensure that poverty should not be a barrier to a gap year option for a young person; to promote a range of opportunities nationally and internationally that back up the marvellous work already done by volunteering organisations; and to secure a business engagement in this that can translate the widespread social concern that exists among employers and employees alike into effective action for the common good.  And I am sure we will also want to do more to translate community values into meeting new needs through new means like the internet and community television and so carry on the British tradition of voluntary service into the next generation. Take mentoring – underdeveloped in Britain – where I can envisage a new initiative for the future of Britain where through the internet, TV, local organisations and personal contact, we could establish a new network of mentors to befriend, advise, support and link those who need help and advice to those who can help.  And because sporting activity as so important to defining our country’s view of itself I believe we should also look in detail at the proposal to revive and expand participant sports in our country for a new National Sports Foundation.

It follows secondly that if the British way is to restore and enhance local initiative and mutual responsibility in civic affairs we should be doing far more to strengthen not just voluntary organisations but local institutions of government. Rather than asking people to look upwards to Whitehall to solve all their problems, the British way is surely to encourage more and more people, from their own localities, to take more charge of the decisions that affect their lives.  Today with devolution, elected mayors and new local energy and enthusiasm, many cities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are undergoing a renaissance and as they become centres of initiative influencing our whole country, the whole of Britain can learn and draw from the energy of each of its parts.  And a reinvigorated local democracy can, I believe, emerge to empower people in their own neighbourhoods to deal with the challenges they face:

• anti social behaviour where the engagement of the whole community is paramount;
• schooling, where the participation of parents and the local community is vital;
• the health service where the direct involvement of patients and prospective patients matters.

Third, a Britishness that thrives on a strong sense of duty and fair play and a commitment to public service means taking citizenship seriously. And like David Blunkett who will also focus on these issues in a speech today, I would welcome a national debate on what the responsibilities and rights of British citizenship means in practice in the modern world. I believe strongly in the case for citizenship lessons in our schools but for citizenship to matter more, these changes to the curriculum must be part of a far more extensive debate  – a debate that, like the wide ranging debate we see in America about what it is to be an American and what America stands for, includes our culture and history as well as our constitution and laws. And I believe we would be stronger as a country if there was, through new literature, new institutes, new seminars, new cross party debate about our Britishness and what it means.

And what of the institutions and symbols that best reflect citizenship and thus give importance to national identity? These must be symbols that speak to all our citizens so I believe that we should respond to the undermining of an inclusive citizenship by the British National Party by not only fighting their racism but by asserting at every opportunity that the union flag does not belong to a vicious minority, but is a flag for all Britain – symbolising inclusion, tolerance and unity; and that England, Scotland and Wales – whose celebration of national identity is to be welcomed and encouraged – should also honour not just their own flags but the union flag for the shared values it symbolises.

There is also a more substantive issue about the importance of integration set against respect for diversity. Of course we live in a multiethnic as well as multinational state but because a multiethnic Britain should never ever have justified a crude multiculturalism where all values became relative, surely the common values that we all share should be reflected in practical measures such as those David Blunkett is outlining today to avoid religious hatred and to encourage – and in some cases require – the use of the English language.  Take an economic example.  Because many cannot find work because of language difficulties it is surely right to pilot mandatory language training for those jobseekers whose language needs are preventing them from getting jobs.

Upholding British values summons us to do far more to tackle discrimination and promote inclusion. And I believe that there should now be greater focus on driving up the educational attainment of pupils from ethnic minorities and a more comprehensive New Deal effort to tackle unacceptably high unemployment in areas of high ethnic minority populations.

If I am right, the British way is to develop a strong cohesive society in which in return for responsibility there is opportunity for all. And our British belief in fairness and our commitment to public service makes the NHS founded on health care based on need not ability to pay one of the greatest British institutions – an NHS that both reflects the values of the British people and is being modernised for our times in accordance with these very values. And we should never lose sight of the importance of the NHS not just to our view of Britishness but to the worlds view of Britain. If, in the twenty first century, we cannot make the NHS work in Britain we must ask what hope there is for millions in developing countries struggling with ill-health and disease who cannot afford private health care. But if we can show that the NHS, health care based on need not ability to pay, is indeed the best insurance policy in the world then we give to the developing countries a model of modern health care – and hope.

Rediscovering the roots of our identity in our shared beliefs also allows us to address complex questions about our relationship with the rest of the world.

This is not a subject for today – not least because it will be discussed endlessly for many months to come – but a far more detailed speech. But two observations follow from my remarks today. The first is that globalisation is fundamentally changing the nature of Europe. In the past European integration was built on the idea of a European trade bloc dominated by European flows of capital, European wide companies and European brands. Today we are in a completely different world of global movements of capital, global companies and global brands. As a result, the old integrationist project – the single market and single currency followed by tax harmonisation, federal fiscal policies and a quasi federal state – the vision of a trade bloc Europe – is fatally undermined. For to succeed economically Europe must move from the old model – the trade bloc or fortress Europe – to a new globally oriented Europe that champions economic liberalisation, a reformed social dimension and a more open rather than protectionist approach to trade with the rest of the world.

The second observation is that while we must continue to learn from successes in other European countries, British values and qualities -particularly our outward looking internationalism that led us to pioneer free trade – have a great deal to offer in building the Europe of this new global era.  Indeed British qualities and values can play a leading part in shaping a Europe that must reform, be flexible, be competitive, be outward looking and build better trading and commercial relationships with the USA. So being fully engaged in Europe need not threaten Britain with subjugation inside an inward looking trade bloc but can mean Britain and British values playing a full part in leading a global Europe.

A Britain that thinks globally not only builds from our traditions of openness and outward looking internationalism but builds upon huge British assets and strengths – the British Council itself, the BBC, the World Service, our universities and our long felt sense of obligation to the world’s poor.  And in addition to our well known proposals for international development  – including debt relief and the International Finance Facility for development – that represent a new deal between the richest and the poorest countries, I believe with you that we should build on the great success of the British Council internationally and do more to put one of our greatest assets – the English language, now the language of the internet and business – at the service of the world. 1.5 billion people now speak English. Our aim should be that that no one in any continent is prevented by poverty, exclusion or educational disadvantage from learning the English language.

Thinking globally in an insecure world – and more important in the world since September 11th – requires us of course to take necessary steps to discharge a British government’s first duty – the defence of its citizens, the people of Britain.  And as we look forward to next week’s spending review, I will make available the resources needed to strengthen security at home and take action to counter the terrorist threat at home and abroad.  Those who wish to cut in real terms the budget even for security will need to answer to the British people.  We will spend what it takes on security to safeguard the British people.

I started this lecture by asserting that the British way is to embrace not fear reform and the challenge of the 21st century is not just to express our Britishness in the evolutionary reform of individual institutions but to continue to evolve towards a constitutional settlement that recognises both our rights and aspirations as individuals and our needs and shared values as a community. But as we discuss how our evolving British constitution can best reflect our British values, what is very clear to me is that even if a significant section of the Conservative Party has ceased to see itself as the Conservative and Unionist Party, our Labour Party must stand resolute as the party of the Union. And indeed all decent minded people should, I believe, stand for and champion a Union that embodies the very values I have been discussing: a Union that, because it reflects shared values, has achieved – and will in future achieve – far more by us working together than we could ever achieve separate and split apart.

So, in conclusion, there are good economic reasons for a new and rising confidence about the future of Britain.

There are social and cultural reasons too for a new British optimism, a rising British confidence.

We should think of Britain as a Britain discovering anew that its identity was never rooted just in imperial success or simply the authority of its institutions, nor in race or ethnicity.

We should think of a Britain rediscovering the shared values that bind us together. Indeed the ties that today bind us are the same values and qualities that are at the core of our history…the values that should shape our institutions as they adapt, change and modernise to meet and master future challenges.

So standing up for Britain means speaking up for British values and qualities that can inspire, strengthen and unify our country. And we can stop thinking about a post war Britain of decline – the Britain that was – and start thinking about the Britain that we can become: Britain, a great place to grow up in.

A Britain believing in itself;

A new era of British self confidence;

Not just a Britain that is a beacon for economic progress but a Britain proud that because of its values and qualities, progress and justice can advance together, to the benefit of all.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in London on 15 November 2004.

Let me say first of all that when a year ago we discussed creating Britain’s first ever national Enterprise Week, no one could have foreseen its scale:

• the engagement of 427 organisations and in every region and nation of the UK;
• the 1086 events celebrating enterprise in schools, colleges, universities, workshops, local community centres, even football clubs;
• and the range of the innovative ventures that are flourishing from Inner City 100, young entrepreneur of the year competitions, mentoring classes, networking events, enterprise roadshows and workshops with established entrepreneurs.

And so at this the first event marking the start of Enterprise Week let me begin by thanking all of you – businessmen and women, trade unionists, teachers, think tanks, voluntary organisations, regional development agencies, policymakers from central and local government – for your own contribution to national Enterprise Week. That an idea that started with only a few people and little financial support should become in such a short time such a big campaign involving thousands across the country is itself a tribute to the spirit of enterprise in this country.

Your successes, your achievements and your enthusiasm for this campaign – which I share – clearly show that if young people are given the chance they will respond and seek to turn their ideas into reality.

And in particular I want to acknowledge the tireless work done by Kevin Steele, George Cox and all the individual members of Enterprise Insight – including the British Chambers of Commerce, CBI, Institute of Directors and Federation of Small Business – who have come together for this week and who have created not just an organisation but a movement that I think will go from strength to strength in years to come.

Our starting point is the importance of enterprise to the future of our country.  For my mission for Britain – indeed the key to our future economic success and social cohesion – is a country where enterprise is truly open to all, a nation of aspiration and ambition united in encouraging and celebrating innovation and enterprise.

More than a century and a half ago John Stuart Mill one of our greatest philosophers defined enterprise not narrowly in terms of finance or commerce but as widely as the theme of Enterprise Week – ‘Make your Mark’ – does.

He defined enterprise – and I quote – as:

‘The desire to keep moving…to be trying and accomplishing new things for our own benefit or that of others.’

He spoke of:

‘The striving go ahead character of England and the United States…[as the] foundation of the best hopes for the general improvement of mankind…’

And this is exactly what this campaign is based upon.

We know from Enterprise Insight’s research that:

• young people want to have the chance to develop potential;
• young people want to be creative;
• young people want to do something real and tangible;
• young people want to make their own decisions.

Indeed twice as many people under 35 are thinking of starting a business as those over 35.  But often they don’t have the confidence or the help and support they need to turn their ideas into reality.

We also know from Enterprise Insight’s research that networks matter.

That the best inspiration is to see other people who have made ideas happen.

It’s easier for young people who know other people who’ve started a business to do the same.

It’s harder for those who don’t have people they can turn to for support and advice.

And that’s why the involvement of more established business men and women helping to enthuse young people is so important.

Some of you here today are already mentoring young people thinking of starting up a business:

• convincing them that they really can do it;
• advising as they take their ideas forward;
• supporting them through setbacks;
• giving honest feedback;
• building confidence;
• providing expert practical support.

And let me thank you – all the businesses here and all the mentors – for all you do.

So what is our role as a Government in helping young people develop the confidence to believe that although starting up and running a business is not always easy, they can do it; in encouraging the belief that they can – in the words of your campaign – ‘Make their Mark’?

First, new entrepreneurs need a good economic environment and so the British enterprise renaissance must be built upon our platform of economic stability. And my promise, now and in the future, is that Government will not play politics with inflation or interest rates.

Second, we can do more to put in place the right incentives to support and reward enterprise. In our first years in government, even with other priorities including the NHS, we cut capital gains tax – now down from 40 pence to 10 pence for long term business assets – and we have cut rates of corporation tax and small business tax. In the coming Pre Budget Report we will make it our business to examine and remove the tax and regulatory barriers to enterprise – such as those that hold back university spin-off companies from turning research excellence into business success.

Access to funds is crucial and at every point I want to be on the side of businesses as they look for start up finance, look to set up their first payroll, look to make investments and look to get equity into their company – and in each area we are looking at the incentives we can offer.

And we are ready to do more.

To prove that in high unemployment areas enterprise is the best solution to poverty we are creating 2,000 new enterprise areas with new tax incentives.  And to encourage an entrepreneurial approach by local authorities, we are rewarding them for new businesses they attract or help create.

And showing we are serious about breaking down regulatory and tax barriers to enterprise extends to what we argue for in Europe. This morning, Alan Wood, the Chief Executive of Siemens, will report – and tomorrow I will raise this in Brussels, standing up for Britain and British interests – how fair competition in the awarding of government contracts is being held back in many EU Member States, penalising enterprising and innovative companies.  In the interests of competition and enterprise, Europe must change and I will also push for urgent reform of the expensive state aids regime.

In Britain we have much to do.

As a whole business creation is half that of the USA.

And in some areas the rate of business creation is one tenth that of the USA.

Yet in the new global economy wealth creation and job creation through new business creation is the way forward.

We know already that the greatest number of future jobs will not come from a small number of large businesses but a larger number of small businesses.

And so from today and throughout the coming decade our objective must be American levels of business creation.

And the key to the enterprise renaissance is a cultural change in Britain that starts in the schools and stretches right through our communities from classroom to boardroom – a cultural change that is more than the sum of any one set of initiatives.

In recent decades it was not businesses, but benefits offices, that mushroomed in high unemployment communities.  Even in the enterprise revival of the 1980s it was too often seen as something for the elite – too many men and women of ideas, drive and flair too easily discouraged by a stop-go economy and a fear of failure. Many concluded that the Britain that pioneered the industrial revolution and taught American about commerce had lost its taste and drive for enterprise.

People used to argue that in Britain you could have enterprise but at the cost of fairness – or fairness but at cost of enterprise. So for decades political parties that emphasised enterprise at the cost of fairness vied with parties that emphasised fairness at the cost of enterprise.  But I have told the Labour Party we must break with this unenterprising past.

I have said to the Labour Party we must forever renounce these old stereotypes and that our duty is to forge a new national economic purpose: that enterprise open to all – and breaking down the barriers to wealth creation – is the right way forward for communities and our country as a whole.

What does that mean?

It means breaking down the barriers to opportunity for young people, for women, for ethnic minorities, for all who have found it difficult in the past to starting a business.

And it means changing our attitudes to risk. It is often said that the transatlantic divide in entrepreneurial attitudes is that Europe seeks economic security, while America was built – as Alan Greenspan suggests – on people willing to take greater risks. With reformed insolvency laws Britain is turning its back on the culture that frowned upon those courageous enough to take risks and, instead, is encouraging those who, having failed at first, try again.

Because we know the starting point is the school I am pleased to see so many teachers with us today.

When I was young, my fellow school and university students shied away from commerce in favour of the professions.

Now – with Charles Clarke’s support for enterprise in our education system – it is changing.

More than 1500 schools are now offering their pupils enterprise education.

Many schools are running enterprise competitions where young people set up their businesses.

Others are offering pupils the chance to do work experience in successful local companies or be mentored by local businessmen or women. And one thousand enterprise advisers are already working in schools in our most deprived areas.

What’s being achieved is impressive but it is not enough.

We cannot have a deep and wide entrepreneurial culture if just half of schools offer their pupils enterprise education.

We cannot be an enterprising nation if less than 1 per cent of college or university students are engaged in entrepreneurial activity.

That’s why, from next year, the Government has provided the resources so that each school will be able to offer every pupil not just work experience but 5 days of enterprise education too.  And I want to see every school – and then every college and every university – twinned with a local company who becomes their ‘business champion’, helping to forge a stronger enterprise culture amongst the students.

British universities, once slow to respond, are now fixed on working with businesses, expanding university spin offs, licensing technologies and teaching students about enterprise.  I can tell you that funds are now available for the new National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship to sponsor tailored training and support through their ‘Flying Start’ programme for the first 150 student entrepreneurs across the country.  Working with the Kauffman Foundation, the Council will also hold an international conference on how we can do more to put enterprise at the centre of the university curriculum.

And when the US Treasury Secretary John Snow visits Britain tomorrow we will agree a new transatlantic enterprise partnership so that through exchanges and the sharing of experience between our two countries we can build a stronger enterprise culture, especially in our schools and universities.

But we must do more.

Take opportunities for women – denied the chance to make the most of their business potential for too long.

It is because less than 15 per cent of businesses in the UK are owned by women, compared to 30 per cent in the US, that Patricia Hewitt – who I know is speaking to you later today – and I announced last month a new drive to encourage the next generation of women entrepreneurs – including appointing a new Women’s Enterprise Panel to champion female entrepreneurship.

So there is much to do for both men and women.

I’ve already emphasised the importance of mentoring.  And on its 21st anniversary I want to congratulate the Prince’s Trust who are using their local, on the ground, person to person approach to successfully help some of our most disadvantaged young people develop the skills and confidence to consider starting up a business of their own.

And the Government is also extending funding for the British Volunteering Mentoring Initiative – a national mentoring network which is already linking over a thousand established business men and women who want to mentor with business start ups that need help and advice.

In the future I hope to see many more business men and women becoming role models for young people in their communities, helping to inspire the business leaders of the future.

And building on the business clubs already being formed up and down the country, I am urging more businessmen and women to join together to share their experiences and expertise with new entrepreneurs.

Britain has huge inherent advantages – our creativity, our stability, our outward-looking internationalism.  Now we must build on these strengths and foster a new national spirit of enterprise.

So its all of us together – young people with ideas, teachers, lecturers, business mentors, local authorities, Government, communities in support.

And I believe that – working in partnership – we can begin to tap the immense skill and entrepreneurial talent that exists in Britain to the benefit of us all, and change the whole culture of our country.

Indeed the message is that there is no no-go area for enterprise in twenty first century Britain. And as this morning as we look forward to the events of Britain’s first national Enterprise Week, let us also look forward to creating a new national consensus that is the way forward for Britain:  a shared, patriotic vision of Britain’s economic destiny as a nation united in celebrating aspiration, ambition and enterprise.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 16 November 2004.

Let me, on behalf of my colleague Hilary Benn and myself, start by thanking for both organising this event – and for all its work – the BBC World Service Trust.

And let me thank the Trust, started in 1999 to promote development through better communications, and the BBC World Service itself – great British institutions which play a unique role in relationships between Britain and the world, that express Britain’s outward looking internationalism and our responsibilities to the world.

Let me in particular congratulate the World Service Trust for its less widely publicised but highly innovative work:

– your pioneering HIV/AIDS campaign which in India alone has helped 7 million;

– your pioneering public health work as in Kenya where you have engaged 4 million young people;

– and your pioneering distance learning programmes which in Somalia alone has attracted 10,000 into education and attracted thousands elsewhere.

And let me thank you especially for holding this conference now, here, on what I believe is the most important issue of our generation – world poverty – and looking forward to its most important year for our generation – 2005.

For while Hilary will talk specifically about the role of broadcasting I want to emphasise in my opening remarks the importance of the coming year.

It is the year when, five years after setting the Millennium Development Goals to address world poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy, world leaders will meet in the United Nations Millennium Summit to examine progress on world poverty.

In January a special report – the UN Millennium Project report on poverty.

In February under UK Chairmanship the G7 Finance Ministers meet to examine what the G7 can do on debt and finance for development.

In March a personal report by Kofi Annan on world poverty.

In April then June special meetings of G7 finance ministers to prepare a final paper on debt and development.

In July Britain playing a special role hosting the G8 summit preceded by the report of our Africa Commission.

In September the UN Millennium Summit.

And then it is only a few weeks before December in Hong Kong the world trade talks – what was to be the development round for trade – resolving the other great development issue of our time.

And already in Making Poverty History more than a hundred aid, development, and trade organisations and anti poverty organisations are coming together in probably the biggest expression of public opinion in demonstrations, campaigns, petitions to make poverty the issue of the year.

2005 is thus a year of opportunity and a year of challenge.

A testing time as to whether the world can wake up to the scale of the tragedy of poverty and its implications.

Whether we can come together as never before to fashion a new relationship between rich and poor countries and peoples.

The year when also in the shadow of failed states and terrorist threats as well as global poverty we will be asked whether the richest countries can summon up a similar level of inspiration and vision as was shown fifty years ago and agree a modern equivalent of the Marshall Plan.

Whether we can be as bold in our statesmanship as we were in 1945 with the formation of the World Bank.

And it is the year as I shall explain this morning when I have hopes that:

– we finally make a reality of our pledge to wipe out 100 per cent of debt to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries;

– we can have the first trade round the world has ever seen that is professedly shaped in the interests of the poorest countries;

– and central to this is our British proposal for a new covenant between the developed and developing world to tackle poverty based on a new deal in international finance — and I want to explain how I believe it can be done.

Today is also the time for politicians and broadcasters each doing our very different jobs and performing our every different roles to take stock – think back on and to learn from, both in terms of achievements and failures, what has been a long journey in the discussion of development issues since twenty years ago – 1984 and 1985 – and what we achieved and didn’t achieve.

Live Aid was that extraordinary moment when, through the power of television, everyone in the world realised here was an issue that wasn’t just a matter of opinion.

Live Aid was about communicating the self-evident truth that we cannot be this rich and see people that poor.

That when we see people starving to death on TV right in front of our eyes we cannot sit there and do nothing.

Indeed, a recent survey stated that the majority of young people growing from youth to adulthood in these years agree that Live Aid was the single most memorable moment in their lives.

And Live Aid started with the exposure by journalism – Michael Buerk’s reports from Africa.

And when Amartya Sen wrote some years ago of the difference between the history of famines in China and India and exposed the difference between the old China – where because there was no free press and no multi-party democracy no one reported the deaths no one ever knew the nameless, forgotten, unmentioned people who died – and the old India – where because there was openness, the authorities were forced to react he was describing in the case of India where the role and responsibility of the media in development starts – through better communications to promote better development. As US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant’

But this is also the time to realise how – despite that exposure, good works, demonstrations, a stronger public opinion than ever before, how much has been achieved in international conferences – how we fell short and how much has still to be done.

Return to Ethiopia after twenty years and as Hilary Benn explained to me there are 70 million people and today just 2,000 doctors, life expectancy of less than 50 and children have only a one in ten chance of surviving until the age of one.

Return to sub-Saharan Africa and find life expectancy less than 50 indeed 46.

Visit 32 countries which still have an average life expectancy of less than 50.

Visit 24 countries where one in every ten of children die before the age of one and the everyday story is mothers struggling to save the life of their infant children and in doing so losing their own.

Let us recognise that since 1984, despite the massive publicity, aid to Africa, which was $33 per person ten years ago, is just $19 per person now – halving of the aid per person.

Yet while aid is less, I believe we are today challenged more than in 1985.

In a world where we are, thanks to your communications and media, the first generation to know the numbers, the scale, the sheer extent of the tragedy facing us in Africa and other developing countries.

And we are, thanks to the development of science, medicine and technology, the first generation to know it to be preventable.

The achievements of twenty years look modest

The effect of sunlight has not been a bright new world

It is hardly surprising that in your survey people think no world leader, no politician has achieved anything as much as Bono and Bob Geldof.

And here in 2004, twenty years on, after twenty years of relative failures not success, we have to ask ourselves: what are our respective responsibilities moving forward?

For a measure of our challenge is that the very weapon to tackle poverty – the Millennium Development Goals – the international community’s targets to halve poverty by 2015 – 72 per cent of your survey said they had never heard of them.

And I believe that our greatest responsibility looking forward to 2005 is:

– a mission to get to beyond the shock horror, sensationalist, in and out – and to be consistent over time where the challenge is indeed making development issues simple to understand without being superficial;

– to examine and bring to the public’s attention not just the surface and immediate manifestations but the underlying forces at work and the causes of the problems developing countries face, including challenges of corruption, transparency and governance.

The urgency is that next year – 2005 – is in my view not only a year where there is a calendar for action on development but make or break year for the world community.

It is not just the chance to review progress after 20 years of Live Aid.

It is also when the developing world will ask from January to December – and especially at the UN Millennium Summit – whether the promises to right the great wrongs of our time are to be met:

– the promise that by 2015 every child would be at school;

– the promise that by 2015 avoidable infant deaths would be prevented;

– the promise that by 2015 poverty would be halved.

In other words promises that rich countries would work with the poor to right the great wrongs of our time.

And as a spur to action it is the year when Britain’s G8 and EU Presidencies will focus on development and it is the year when the Africa Commission reports.

The Millennium Development Goals were not a casual commitment .

In 2000 every world leader signed up.

Every international body signed up.

Almost every single country signed up.

This commitment was a bond of trust, perhaps the greatest bond of trust pledged between rich and poor. But already, so close to the start of our journey, we can see that our destination risks becoming out of reach, receding into the distance.

For at best on present progress in sub Saharan Africa:

– primary education for all will be delivered not in 2015 but 2130 – that is 115 years late;

– the halving of poverty not by 2015 but 2150 – that is 135 years late;

– and elimination of avoidable infant deaths not by 2015 but by 2165 – that is 150 years late.

Martin Luther King spoke of the American Constitution as a promissory note.

And yet – for black Americans – the promise of equality for all had not been redeemed.

And he said that the cheque offering justice had been returned with ‘insufficient funds’ written on it.

And in this way he exposed on racial equality the gap between promises and reality.

And in the same tragic way, the Millennium Goals which were a promise that became a commitment, a timetable and a pledge, are now at risk of being downgraded from pledge to just possibility to just words.

Yet another promissory note, yet another cheque that has barely been issued but is already being returned with the phrase ‘insufficient funds’ marked on it.

And the problem is not that the promise was wrong, the pledge unrealistic, the commitment unnecessary but that we have been too slow in developing the means to honour and fulfil them

That is why in my view we need to urgently summon up the inspiration, vision and commitment in a manner akin to the Marshall Plan of the 1940s when America boldly transferred not 0.7 per cent of its national income but 2 per cent of its national income to war ravaged Europe and by transferring resources and stimulated world trade ushered in decades of world economic growth.

What should we do?

Put simply, the UK Government’s proposal for 2005 is for nothing less than what Jonathan Sacks calls a ‘new covenant’ between developed and developing countries…..that as developing countries devise poverty reduction plans and do so to expand their own development, investment and trade, we the richest countries must take three vital steps:

– first, writing off not just all of the historic debt owed by the poorest countries to the richest but also all of the historic debt they owe to international organisations;

– second, dismantling our damaging trade barriers and providing the investment needed for the poorest countries to build capacity to trade and protect their most vulnerable citizens;

– and third, providing the resources that are urgently needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals by increasing development aid on the road to 0.7 per cent of national income and by immediately creating an International Finance Facility.

And out of this I believe we could achieve not only a major assault on poverty in the poorest countries but pave the way as the Marshall Plan did for greater trade and higher and longer-term world economic growth benefiting us all.

Let me just summarise what I believe can be achieved by our measures.

First, on debt relief.

In 1997 just one country was going to receive debt relief.

Now 27 countries are benefiting with $70 billion dollars of unpayable debt being written off.

But when many countries are still being forced to choose between servicing their debts and making the investments in health, education and infrastructure that would allow them to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we know we must do more.

That is why in 2005 we must break new ground, go much further than we have gone before, and why we are proposing a new set of principles to govern the next stage in debt relief.

First, that the richest countries match bilateral debt relief of up to 100 per cent with multilateral debt relief of up to 100 per cent so that all debts are covered.

Second, that the cancellation of debts owed to the International Monetary Fund should be financed by using IMF gold.

Third, that instead of waiting for countries to contribute as we used to do to a World Bank trust fund, countries make a unique declaration that they will repatriate their share of the World Bank and the African Development Bank’s debts to their own country.

And so that is why Britain has announced that Britain will relieve those countries still under the burden of this debt to these banks by unilaterally paying our share – 10 per cent – of payments to the World Bank and African Development Bank as we urge other countries to do so.

Alongside more debt relief, 2005 is the opportunity that may not easily return if missed to agree a progressive approach to trade.

You know the damage that rich countries protectionism has done to entrench the poverty of the poorest countries. We spend as much subsidising agriculture in rich countries as the whole income of all the 689 million people in sub Saharan Africa taken together. And for every dollar given to poor countries in aid, two dollars are lost because of unfair trade.

So 2005 is the time to send a signal and to agree a new policy.

First, it is time for the richest countries to agree to end the hypocrisy of developed country protectionism by opening our markets, removing trade-distorting subsidies and in particular, doing more to urgently tackle the scandal and waste of the Common Agricultural Policy show we beehive in free and fair trade.

Second, it is time to move beyond the old Washington consensus of the 1980s and recognise that while bringing down unjust tariffs and barriers can make a difference, developing countries must also receive support, including additional finance, so that they can carefully design and sequence trade reform into their own poverty reduction strategies.

And third, because it is not enough to say ‘you’re on your own, simply compete’ we have to say ‘we will help you build the capacity you need to trade’ – not just opening the door but helping you gain the strength to cross the threshold. We have to recognise that developing countries will need additional resources from the richest countries both to build the economic and infrastructure – capacity they need to take advantage of trading opportunities – and to prevent their most vulnerable people from falling further into poverty.

And our discussion of debt relief and trade leads to a far more important point, the essential challenge of 2005, that our deal with the developing countries must involve a transfer of resources.

I said that since the 1980s aid to Africa, which was $33 per person ten years ago, had halved to just $19 per person now.

And that indeed where aid has been increased in recent times it has simply been in the form of debt relief.

The truth is that the scale of the resources to tackle disease, illiteracy and global poverty is far beyond what traditional funding can offer, even in the best case scenario.

In the spending review the Government raised UK overseas aid to 0.47 per cent of national income by 2008, including £1.25 billion a year for Africa, and we reported that UK aid was on track to rise beyond 0.5 per cent after 2008 and to 0.7 per cent of national income by 2013. And I urge all nations yet to reach 0.7 to move further and faster to higher aid levels and on towards that target.

But we know that even if one or two of the G7 could overcome fiscal constraints and go to 0.7 per cent tomorrow, we still would not reach the scale of resources needed – at least $50 billion extra a year.

And even if all announced a timetable – as they should consider like us – for 0.7, that timetable would be in the future and would still leave the question of how we provide urgently needed additional resources now.

That is why the UK Government has put forward its proposal for stable, predictable, long-term funds frontloaded to tackle today’s problems of poverty, disease and illiteracy through an International Finance Facility.

The IFF is in the tradition of the Marshall Plan of 1948, indeed modelled on the founding principles of the World Bank in 1945 where nations provided resources to an international institution that then borrowed on the international capital markets.

And let me just explain what the IFF could achieve for the world’s poor.

The IFF is founded upon long-term, binding donor commitments from the richest countries like ourselves.

It builds upon the additional 16 billion dollars already pledged at Monterrey.

And on the basis of these commitments and more it leverages in additional money from the international capital markets to raise the amount of development aid for the years to 2015.

By locking in commitments from a wide range of donors, the IFF would enable us to front load aid for investment in development, enabling a critical mass of predictable, stable and coordinated aid as investment to be deployed over the next few years when it will have the most impact in achieving the Millennium Development Goals – saving lives today that would otherwise be lost.

The IFF would enable us to invest simultaneously across sectors – in education and health, trade capacity and economic development – so that instead of having to choose between urgent emergency disaster relief and long term investment the impact of extra resources in one area reinforces the investment in another.

And the IFF will allow us to attack the root causes of poverty not just the symptoms – focusing on developing the capacity and the dignity people need to help themselves.

Aid as investment for the future not compensation for being poor.

And let me tell you the scale of what I am proposing.

As a result of all campaigns taken together international aid is rising from 50 billion dollars a year four years ago to around 60 billion dollars – a huge achievement.

But our proposal for next year is to raise development aid immediately not from 60 billion to 65 billion or even 70 billion but effectively a doubling of aid to over 100 billion dollars per year.

With one bold stroke: to double development aid to halve poverty.

So the practical benefits of the IFF are:

– we provide grants to help ensure a sustainable exit from debt;

– we provide the support poor countries need to invest in infrastructure, education, health and economic development so they can benefit from access to our markets;

– we make primary schooling for all not just a distant dream but a practical reality – meeting these needs and rights now and not deferring them to an uncertain future;

– and we meet our global goals of cutting infant mortality and maternal mortality, eliminating malaria and tuberculosis and treating millions more people who are suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Of course, we will have to convince a sceptical world that money for development will not be wasted so in the Commission for Africa report Professor Nick Stern will provide the examples of how the Poverty Reduction Plans are making aid more effective and how countries can absorb much more aid. And making better use of aid – reordering priorities, untying aid and pooling funds internationally to release additional funds for the poorest countries – is essential to achieve both value for money and the improved outcomes we seek. But – in addition to these reforms – the fact is that unless we adopt the IFF or a similar mechanism immediately there is simply no other way of meeting the Millennium Development Goals in time.

Of course we are ready to look at other means – international taxes, more resources direct to development banks, the IMF and the World Bank – but the fact is that no matter how much we praise country by country initiatives and announcements, existing commitments on their own will not get us there.

Existing mechanisms on their own will not get us there.

We can see this now.

We need not wait a decade to make this judgment.

And adopting the IFF now will give us momentum today instead of putting action off until tomorrow.

Indeed, frontloading is not just better way but perhaps the only way of avoiding catastrophe.

And let me Just give an example of what – because of the IFF – is already possible

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation and the Gates Foundation is interested in applying the principles of the IFF to the immunisation sector – donors making long term commitments that can be securitised in order to frontload the funding available to tackle disease.

If, by these means, GAVI could increase the funding for its immunisation programme by an additional $4 billion over ten years, then it would be possible that their work could save the lives of an additional 5 million people between now and 2015.

So in one fund, with one initiative, we can glimpse the possibilities open to us if we act together. If we could do the same for health, for schools, for debt, for the capacity to trade, a doubling of aid to halve poverty within ten years is within our grasp

And let me just add.

The recent breakthrough which for the first time gives us a vaccination to prevent malaria that could be ready in three to four years time is a revolution in our time. The challenge is in an area where there are insufficient purchasers with funds we need to ensure that the vaccine does go into commercial production and is available at affordable prices. And therefore I can announce that the British Government working with other Governments is ready to enter into agreements to purchase these vaccines in advance to ensure a secure market and that the vaccines are available more cheaply – and thus avoid many of the 1 million deaths from malaria each year.

So when people ask is it possible, I say:

– people thought the original plans for the World Bank were the work of dreamers

– people thought that the Marshall Plan unattainable

– even in 1997 when we came to power people thought debt relief was an impossible aspiration and yet we are wiping out 100 billion dollars of debt

– people thought no more countries would sign up to a timetable for 0.7 per cent in overseas development aid and yet year this year alone five

countries have done so.
Each of us of course have our respective responsibilities, our very different duties, as broadcasters, politicians, aid organisations.

A measure however of the opportunity of 2005 is that:

in the survey published today three out of four people said they were very interested or interested in learning more about poverty in developing countries; and 86 per cent said there was not enough or too little media coverage of poverty in developing countries.

So for all of us – politicians and broadcaster – each doing our very different jobs, an even greater measure of the potential is that in 2000 first hundreds, then thousands, then millions of people first in one country then in one continent, then in all countries, and in all continents came together to demand debt relief and in doing so changed the world.

And even now that coalition is not just being reformed but growing in strength.

More people in development organisations than ever before.

100 organisations coming together in the new coalition – Make Poverty History.

The most amazing coalition of people coming together – and I congratulate Bob Geldof, Bono, Richard Curtis and all the churches and faith organisations who do so much good and have come together to make a plea for action in 2005.

I quoted Martin Luther King a few months ago in saying the arc of the moral universe is long but it does bend towards justice.

This was not an appeal to some iron law of history nor a demand that journalists act in a particular way but to remind people that by their own actions they can and do change the world for good.

And I believe that:

with the scale of the challenge revealed;
with the organisation of public opinion now happening in Britain and in other countries;
and if there is a determination among world leaders to be bold;
the arc of the moral universe while indeed long will bend towards justice in the months and years to come.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 30 November 2004.

The longer I am a Member of Parliament the more I realise that to resolve the challenges of the present and to equip yourself as a nation for the future we must have a deeper understanding of our past – of our history and of our society.

Indeed – as I say in the British Council pamphlet published today – the nations that will succeed in the modern world will be those that have a stronger sense of who they are, what they strive to achieve and – in the face of terrorism – what they are defending.

It is only by understanding that Britishness is founded not on race or ethnicity or even on unchanging institutions but on shared values that you are best placed to solve questions of racial integration and then asylum and immigration. And David Blunkett and I are agreed that lessons in citizenship should involve teaching about the values that underpin British history.

It is only by understanding that our values are based on liberty, tolerance and civic duty that we can evolve for our time the checks and balances of a modern constitution best suited to Britain’s needs and British peoples aspirations.

It is only by understanding what it is to be British and that to be British involves being outward looking, internationalist and Pro-European that we can solve the vexed question of Europe for our generation.

So instead of marginalising our history or apologising for our history we should be rediscovering in our history our essential genius – the values of liberty, civic duty, fair play, enterprise and internationalism that shape our institutions. And in receiving this award let me make a proposal that on a non-partisan basis, across academia, politics, and journalism – we can debate Britishness and interested people will establish a new Institute and Forum for Britishness studies examining the forces at work in shaping the future of Britain.

Indeed, the theme of the Pre-Budget Report will be that the next decade can be a British decade, that Britain’s success and destiny depends upon understanding and building upon our historic strengths our stability, our openness to the world, our scientific creativity, our world class universities – and then understanding and addressing our weaknesses – the need to invest long term in science, enterprise, education and in the potential of every young person and adult.

So at the heart of the Pre-Budget Report is a patriotic vision of Britain’s future as a country of ambition and aspiration – how we make Britain the best place to grow up in, the best place to study, the best place to start a business and to work – as we build a Britain that makes us even more proud to be British.

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 8 December 2004.

To be asked to address you tonight, to be part of this great lecture series in memory of Pope Paul VI is both humbling and challenging.

It was Pope Paul VI who as early as the 1960s alerted the modern world that the old evil of poverty had to be addressed as an unacceptable scourge of the new global economy.

It was Pope Paul VI who in 1967 in his ‘Encyclical Populorum Progressio’ – ‘Development of Peoples’ – urged upon the richest countries their sacred duty to help the poorest.

And it was Pope Paul VI who set out, for our generation, the obligations that we all have a duty to meet: obligations that arise from – as he said in his own words:

– Our mutual solidarity;
– The claims of social justice;
– And universal charity.

In his book ‘The Power of Myth’ Joseph Campbell describes a hero as someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than him or herself.

And today I want to honour not just the legacy of Pope Paul VI but all of you here tonight – missionaries, aid workers, supporters, contributors campaigners – as our modern heroes. For just as surely as some of our greatest heroes of history, your religious faith, your moral anger at poverty, your sense of duty, has led you to fight for great causes, stand for the highest ideals and do God’s work on earth. And let me on your behalf thank Cardinal Murphy O’Connor whom I and the British people admire so much for his leadership not just in this country but throughout Europe; Chris Bain for leading CAFOD and for his crucial, catalytic role in bringing the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign together; and all members of CAFOD.

The reward you seek, as you have always said, is not recognition nor status nor titles nor money but that the coming generation – who never even knew you – enjoys a better life thanks to your courageous work.

And I also want to pay my personal tribute to the work of CAFOD over forty years and your leadership in achieving, by your determined campaigning, what many thought impossible – 100 per cent bilateral debt relief.

You led a coalition whose voices rose to a resounding chorus that echoed outwards to the world from Birmingham, then from Cologne, then from Okinawa – a clarion call to action speaking not for yourselves alone but for the hopes of the whole world.

And you led a coalition that achieved more standing together for the needs of the poor in one short year than all the isolated acts of individual governments could have achieved in one hundred years.

Reminding us that as CAFOD campaigning for justice for the world’s poor you have for forty years:

– Changed the way we think about giving;
– Deepened our commitment to serving others;
– Demonstrated that duty and obligation are more powerful than selfishness or greed;
– And in doing so brought the world closer together.

Now, it is the churches and faith groups that have, across the world, done more than any others – by precept and by example – to make us aware of the sheer scale of human suffering – and our duty to end it.

Indeed, when the history of the crusade against global poverty is written, one of its first and finest chapters will detail the commitment of the churches in Britain to help the world’s poor.

And my theme tonight is what this generation working together, each and all of us, can do – that we are not powerless individuals but, acting together, have the power to shape history.

And each of us, building on the individual causes we cherish – from work on debt relief to education, from fair trade to clean water, from blindness to TB, from AIDS to child vaccination – can together not only make progress for our direct concerns but also turn globalisation from a force that breeds insecurity to a force for justice on a global scale.

Today I want to sketch out for you a vision of a new deal that demands a new accountability from both rich and poor countries.

A new compact between those to whom so much is given and those who have so little.

More than a contract – which is after all one group tied by legal obligations to another – and nothing less than what the author of ‘The Politics of Hope’ called a ‘covenant’ – the richest recognising out of duty and a deep moral sense of responsibility their obligations to the poorest of the world.

And I want suggest that at the same time as developing countries devising their own poverty reduction plans, we the richest countries must take three vital steps:

– first, agreeing a comprehensive financing programme – that is we achieve a breakthrough to complete 100 per cent debt relief; find a way to persuade others to join us in declaring their timetables on increasing development aid to 0.7 per cent of national income; and immediately raise an additional $50 billion dollars a year, doubling aid to halve poverty, through the creation of a new International Finance Facility;
– second, with this new finance, that we advance to meet the Millennium Development Goals on health, education and the halving of poverty; use this unique opportunity to drive forward the internationalisation of AIDS research and the advance purchase of HIV/AIDS and malaria vaccines; build the capacity of health and education systems; and deliver to the 105 million children who do not go to school today, two thirds of them girls, our promise of primary education for all;
– and third, that we deliver the Doha development round on trade, and make it the first ever world trade agreement to be in the interests of the poorest countries.

Indeed, because progress on each of these is dependent on progress on all of these, we must during 2005 advance all of these causes together.

Exactly five years ago in New York and in a historic declaration every world leader, every international body, almost every single country signed up to a shared commitment to right the greatest wrongs of our time.

The promise that by 2015 every child would be at school.
The promise that by 2015 avoidable infant deaths would be prevented.
The promise that by 2015 poverty would be halved.

This commitment was a bond of trust, perhaps the greatest bond of trust pledged between rich and poor.

But already, so close to the start of our journey – and 20 years after the problems were first exposed to this generation through Live Aid – we can see that our destination risks becoming out of reach, receding into the distance.

And at best on present progress in Sub Saharan Africa:

– primary education for all will be delivered not in 2015 but 2130 – that is 115 years too late;
– the halving of poverty not by 2-0-1-5 but by 2-1-5-0 — that is 135 years too late;
– and the elimination of avoidable infant deaths not by 2015 but by 2165 — that is 150 years too late.

So when people ask how long, the whole world must reply:

150 years is too long to wait for justice.
150 years is too long to wait when infants are dying in Africa while the rest of the world has the medicines to heal them.
150 years is too long for people to wait when a promise should be redeemed, when the bond of trust should be honoured now in this decade.

Martin Luther King spoke of the American Constitution as a promissory note.

And yet – for black Americans – the promise of equality for all had not been redeemed.

He said that the cheque offering justice had been returned with ‘insufficient funds’ written on it.

He said, ‘we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

And he said the time had come to ‘cash this cheque which would give upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice’.

And in this way he exposed on racial equality the gap between promises and reality.

But in exactly the same way today’s Millennium Goals – a commitment backed by a timetable – are now in danger of being downgraded from a pledge to just a possibility to just words.

Yet another promissory note, yet another cheque marked ‘insufficient funds’.

And the danger we face today is that what began as the greatest bond between rich and poor for our times is at risk of ending as the greatest betrayal of the poor by the rich of all time.

As a global community we are at risk of being remembered not for what we promised to do but for what we failed to deliver, another set of broken hopes that break the trust of the world’s people in the world’s governments.

And when we know the scale of suffering that has to be addressed, the problem is not that the promise was wrong, the pledge unrealistic, the commitments unnecessary but that we have been too slow in developing the means to honour, fulfil and deliver them.

In the past when we as a global community failed to act we often blamed our ignorance – we said that we did not know.

But now we cannot use ignorance to explain or excuse our inaction. We can see in front of our TV screens the ravaged faces of too many of the 30,000 children dying unnecessarily each day.

We cannot blame our inaction on inadequate science – we know that a quarter of all child deaths can be prevented if children sleep beneath bed nets costing only 4 dollars each.

We cannot defend our inaction invoking a lack of medical cures – for we know that as many as half of all malaria deaths can be prevented if people have access to diagnosis and drugs that cost no more than twelve cents.

The world already knows we know enough. But the world knows all too well that we have not done enough. Because what is lacking is will.

So if we are to make real progress we must – together from this meeting room this evening – and then from countless other centres of concern and endeavour, go out into this country and other countries and show people and politicians alike everywhere why it is morally and practically imperative that we not only declare but fight and win a war against poverty; why we must not only pass resolutions and make demands but move urgently to remove injustice; why lives in the poorest countries depend upon converting, in the richest countries, apathy to engagement, sympathy to campaigning, half hearted concern to wholly committed action.

In short we must share the inspiration we have of the power of the dream of a better world – and why it is now more urgent than ever that people everywhere are awakened to the duties we owe to people elsewhere whose hopes for life itself depend upon our help, duties not just to people who are neighbours but to people who are strangers.

So that even when we know that our sense of empathy diminishes as we move outwards from the immediate, face to face, person to person relationships of family outwards to neighbourhood to country to half a world away, we still feel and ought to feel however distantly the pain of others – and why it is right to believe in something bigger than ourselves, bigger even than our own community as a wide as the world itself.

It has been written that, ‘if we answer the question why we can handle the question how’.

And this evening I am going to put forward three propositions:

– that our dependence upon each other should awaken our conscience to the needs not just of neighbours but of strangers;
– more than that, that our moral sense should impel us to act out of duty and not just self interest;
– and that the claims of justice are not at odds with the liberties of each individual but a modern expression of them that ensures the dignity of all – and there is such a thing as a moral universe.

First, does not Martin Luther King show our responsibilities to strangers, to people we have never met and who will never know our names, when he describes each of us as strands in an inescapable network of mutuality, together woven into a single garment of destiny?

Indeed just as the industrialisation of the eighteenth century opened people up to a society which lay beyond family and village and asked individuals who never met each other to understand the needs of all throughout their own country, so too the globalisation we are witnessing asks us to open our minds to the plight and the pain of millions we will never meet and are continents away but upon whom, as a result of the international division of labour, we depend upon for our food, our clothes, our livelihoods, our security.

I recalled a poem in my Labour conference speech:

‘It is the hands of others who grow the food we eat, who sew the clothes we wear, who build the houses we inhabit; it is the hands of others who tend us when we’re sick and lift us up when we fall; it is the hands of others who bring us into the world and who lower us into the earth’

When I talked of the hands of others, I meant our dependence upon each other – the nurse, the builder, the farm worker, the seamstress – not just in our own country but across the earth. We are in an era of global interdependence, relying each upon the other – a world society of shared needs, common interests, mutual responsibilities, linked densities, our international solidarity.

And since September 11th there is an even more immediate reason for emphasising our interdependence and solidarity. Now more than ever we rely on each other not just for our sustenance but for our safety and security.

Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, states: ‘What poverty does do is breed frustration and resentment which ideological entrepreneurs can turn into support for terrorism in countries that lack the political rights, the institutions, necessary to guard the society from terrorists. Countries that are lacking basic freedoms. So we can’t win the war on terrorism unless we get at the roots of poverty, which are social and political as well as economic in nature’.

And President Bush said on the eve of the Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey: ‘Poverty doesn’t cause terrorism. Being poor doesn’t make you a murderer. Most of the plotters of September 11th were raised in comfort. Yet persistent poverty and oppression can lead to hopelessness and despair. And when governments fail to meet the most basic needs of their people, these failed states can become havens for terror. In Afghanistan, persistent poverty and war and chaos created conditions that allowed a terrorist regime to seize power. And in many other states around the world, poverty prevents governments from controlling their borders, policing their territory, and enforcing their laws. Development provides the resources to build hope and prosperity, and security’

So does not everything that we witness across the world today from discussing global trade to dealing with global terrorism symbolise just how closely and irrevocably bound together are the fortunes of the richest persons in the richest country to the fate of the poorest persons in the poorest country of the world even when they are strangers and have never met, and that an injury to one must be seen as an injury to all?

But is not what impels us to act far more than this enlightened self-interest?

Ought we not to take our case for a war against poverty to its next stage – from economics to morality, from enlightened self interest that emphasises our dependence each upon the other to the true justice that summons us to do our duty – and to see that every death from hunger and disease is as if it is a death in the family?

For is there not some impulse even greater than the recognition of our interdependence that moves human beings even in the most comfortable places to empathy and to anger at the injustice and inhumanity that blights the lives not just of neighbours but of strangers in so many places at so high a cost?

It is not something greater, more noble, more demanding than just our shared interests that propels us to demand action against deprivation and despair on behalf of strangers as well as neighbours – and is it not our shared values?

It is my belief that even if we are strangers in many ways, dispersed by geography, diverse because of race, differentiated by wealth and income, divided by partisan beliefs and ideology, even as we are different diverse and often divided, we are not and we cannot be moral strangers for there is a shared moral sense common to us all:

Call it as Lincoln did – the better angels of our nature;
Call it as Winstanley did – the light in man;
Call it as Adam Smith did – the moral sentiment;
Call it benevolence, as the Victorians did; virtue; the claim of justice; doing ones duty.
Or call it as Pope Paul VI did – ‘The good of each and all’

It is precisely because we believe, in that moral sense, that we have obligations to others beyond our front doors and garden gates, responsibilities to others beyond the city wall, duties to others beyond our national borders as part of one moral universe – precisely because we have a sense of what is just and what is fair – that we are called to answer the hunger of the hungry, the needs of the needy the suffering of the sick whoever and wherever they are bound together by the duties we feel we owe each other. We cannot be fully human unless we care about the dignity of every human being.

Christians say: do to others what you would have them do to you.
Jews say: what is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man.
Buddhists say: hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
Muslims say: no one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.
Sikhs say: treat others as you would be treated yourself.
Hindus say: this is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.

Faiths that reveal truths not to be found in economic textbooks or political theory – beliefs now held by people of all faiths and none – that emphasise our duty to strangers, our concern for the outsider, the hand of friendship across continents, that say I am my brother’s keeper, that we don’t only want injustice not to happen to us, we don’t want injustice to happen to anyone.

Indeed the golden rule runs through every great religion – or what the Bible calls righteousness or what you and I might call justice – and the words of Gandhi reinforce this golden rule:

‘Whenever you are in doubt apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]…. Then, he said, you will find your doubts melt away.’

So we are not – morally – speaking in tongues. And while there are many voices from many parts and many places, expressed in many languages and many religious faiths, we can and must think of ourselves coming together as a resounding chorus singing the same tune – and as a choir achieving a harmony which can move the world.

So our interdependence leads us to conclude that when some are poor, our whole society is impoverished.
And our moral sense leads us to conclude, as we have been told, that when there is an injustice anywhere, it is a threat to justice everywhere.

But can we not also say – and this is my third point – that, even when we are talking about the needs of strangers, the claims of justice – that we should do our duty to ensure the dignity of every individual – are now more powerful than ever? It is because the dignity of the individual is at the heart of our concerns about human beings, that those claims of justice are not – as many once argued – at odds with the requirement for liberty but are essential for the realisation of liberty in the modern world.

In her recent book Gertrude Himmelfaarb shows that, when the 17th and 18th centuries brought a revolt against outmoded forms of hierarchy, there was understandably a preoccupation not with justice or duty but with liberty. In 1789 ‘liberty’ literally came before ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’.

The call for freedom from outmoded forms of hierarchical obligations was then the only path to ending the power of absolute monarchs and repealing old mercantilist laws.

But although the great Enlightenment philosophers marched under the banner of liberty, rightly wishing to prevent any ruler invading the freedom of the citizen, a closer reading of these writers shows that, for them, the march of individual freedoms did not release people from their obligations to their fellow citizens and fulfilling the duties they owed to each other. For them liberty was not at odds with justice or duty but liberty and duty advanced together.

One of the greatest tribunes of liberty, John Stuart Mill, stated categorically that ‘there are many positive acts to the benefit of others which anyone may rightfully be obliged to perform’.

And Rousseau wrote that ‘as soon as men ceased to consider public service as the principle duty of citizens we may pronounce the state to be on the verge of ruin’.

And as Adam Smith – often wrongly seen as the patron of free market capitalism without a conscience – put it: the philosophy of ‘all for ourselves and nothing for other people’ was a ‘vile maxim’. ‘Perfection of human nature was to feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfish and indulge benevolent affections’. And in that spirit and as he died Smith, not just the writer about the ‘invisible hand’ but about the ‘helping hand’, was writing a new chapter for his ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ entitled ‘On the Corruption of our Moral Sentiments’ which is occasioned by ‘the disposition to admire the rich and great and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition’.

So the great apostle of freedom believed passionately in justice and in duty to others and saw no contradiction in saying so. And in our century this should be our focus. We should be asking not just what rights you can enforce on others but asking what duties we can discharge for others.

Selbourne says duties without rights makes people slaves but rights without duties makes them strangers.

Moral strangers demand rights without duties.

Moral neighbours say that every time one person’s dignity is diminished or taken away through no fault of their own it is an offence against justice.

And if the dignity of a child or adult is diminished by poverty, or debt, or unfair trade, we are all diminished.

Enlightened self interest may lead us to propose a contract between rich and poor founded upon our mutual responsibilities because of our interdependence. But it is our strong sense of what is just that demands a covenant between rich and poor founded on our moral responsibility to each other – that even if it was not in our narrow self interest to do so it would still be right for every citizen to do ones duty and meet the needs, and enhance the dignity, of strangers.

My father used to tell me we can all leave our mark for good or ill – and he quoted Martin Luther King saying everyone from the poorest to the richest can be great because everyone can serve.

That all of us, no matter how weak or frail, or at times inadequate, can make a difference for good is emphasised by a story told by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writing of the film ‘About Schmidt’. Schmidt – played by Jack Nicholson – describes a futile life of family estrangement ending in an equally meaningless retirement endured with an overriding sense of failure. In the film Schmidt says:

‘I know we’re all pretty small in the big scheme of things what in the world is better because of me? I am weak and I am a failure there’s just no getting around it…soon I will die…maybe in twenty years, maybe tomorrow, it doesn’t matter…when everyone who knew me dies too, it will be as though I never even existed…what difference has my life made to anyone? None that I can think of…none at all.

But then he receives a letter from the teacher of a six year old in Tanzania whom in a small charitable gesture Schmidt has been paying for schooling and health care.

The young boy cannot yet write, the teacher says, but he has sent Schmidt a drawing instead. It shows two little line figures, one large and one small, obviously the boy and Schmidt.

And the drawing shows them holding hands together as the sun shines down upon their friendship.

And so the film ends with Jack Nicholson’s character slowly grasping that he has done one good deed in his life – for a stranger – a young child far away whom he has never met.

The duty to others done by Schmidt giving his life meaning.
Proving that one generous act can redeem a life.
So we do live in one interdependent world.
We are indeed part of one moral universe.
Even the meanest of us possesses a moral sense.
What really mattes is the compassion we show to the weak.
And you value your society not for its wealth and power over others but by how it can empower the poor and powerless.

Now that moral sense may not, be ‘a strong beacon light radiating outward at all times to illuminate in sharp outline all it touches’ as James Q Wilson describes ‘The Moral Sense’ so brilliantly. Rather the moral sense is like ‘a small candle flame flickering and spluttering in the strong winds of passion and power, greed and ideology’. As Wilson says ‘brought close to the heart and cupped in ones hand it dispels the darkness and warms the soul’. And even when it burns as a flicker it is still a flame and a flame that can never be extinguished.

So we do not wipe out the debt of the poorest countries simply because these debts are not easily paid.

We do so because people weighed down by the burden of debts imposed by the last generation on this cannot even begin to build for the next generation.

To insist on the payment of these debts offends human dignity – and is therefore unjust.

What is morally wrong cannot be economically right.

In the words of Isaiah – we must ‘undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free’.

So let me set out the agenda that flows from our moral sense.

In 1997 just one country was going to receive debt relief.

Now 27 countries are benefiting with $70 billion dollars of unpayable debt being written off.

And it is thanks to your campaigning on debt relief that:

– with debt relief in Uganda, 4 million more children now go to primary school;
– with debt relief in Tanzania, 31,000 new classrooms have been built and 18,000 new teachers recruited;
– with debt relief in Mozambique, half a million children are now being vaccinated against tetanus, whopping cough and diphtheria.

But like me, I know you are less interested in what we’ve done than in what is still to do.

And when many countries are still being forced to choose between servicing their debts and making the investments in health, education and infrastructure that would allow them to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we know we must do more.

That is why in 2005 we must break new ground, go much further than we have gone before, and why, having heard the proposals you put to us, we are proposing a new set of principles to govern the next stage in debt relief.

First, that the richest countries match bilateral debt relief of up to 100 per cent with multilateral debt relief of up to 100 per cent so that all debts are covered.

Second, that the cancellation of debts owed to the International Monetary Fund should be financed by using IMF gold.

Third, that instead of running down the resources available internationally for development donor countries make a unique declaration that they will cover their share of the World Bank and the African Development Bank’s debts on behalf of eligible developing countries.

And so that is why Britain has announced that we will relieve those countries still under the burden of this debt to these banks by unilaterally paying our share – 10 per cent – of payments to the World Bank and African Development Bank as we urge other countries to do so.

Next, to put our duties to each other at the centre of policy, we also insist on a progressive approach to trade.

And fair trade is not just about the financial gains, its also about giving people dignity – enabling people to stand on their own two feet and using trade is a springboard out of poverty.

You know the damage that rich countries protectionism has done to entrench the poverty of the poorest countries.

We spend as much subsidising agriculture in the European Union as the whole income of all the 689 million people in Sub Saharan Africa taken together.

The money that the US spends just in subsidising 25,000 cotton farmers dwarfs the total income of Burkino Faso where 2 million people are dependent on cotton for their livelihoods

And for every dollar given to poor countries in aid, two dollars are lost because of unfair trade.

So 2005 is the time to send a signal and to agree a new policy.

First, it is time for the richest countries to agree to end the hypocrisy of developed country protectionism by opening our markets, removing trade-distorting subsidies and in particular, doing more to urgently tackle the scandal and waste of the Common Agricultural Policy shows we believe in fair trade.

Second, it is time to move beyond the old Washington consensus of the 1980s and recognise that while bringing down unjust tariffs and barriers can make a difference, developing countries must also be allowed to carefully design and sequence trade reform into their own Poverty Reduction Strategies.

And third, because it is not enough to say ‘you’re on your own, simply compete’ we have to say ‘we will help you build the capacity you need to trade’ – not just opening the door but helping you gain the strength to cross the threshold. We have to recognise that developing countries will need additional resources from the richest countries both to build the economic and infrastructure – capacity they need to take advantage of trading opportunities – and to prevent their most vulnerable people from falling further into poverty.

And our discussion of debt relief and trade leads to the essential challenge of 2005, that our new deal with the developing countries must involve a transfer of resources.

Not aid as compensation for being poor but aid as investment in the future. And so like debt and trade this is about enhancing the dignity and potential of each individual.

Since the 1980s aid to Africa, which was $33 per person ten years ago, had halved to just $19 per person now.

So we need a new financing programme.

Thanks to your campaigning, we are the first UK Government to be able to announce a timetable for 0.7 per cent.
And over the next year we plan to ask other countries to join us and nine others in becoming countries which have set a timetable towards 0.7.

But the truth is that the scale of the resources needed immediately to tackle disease, illiteracy and global poverty is far beyond what traditional funding can offer today.

That is why the UK Government as part of the financing package to reach the Millennium Development Goals has put forward its proposal for stable, predictable, long-term funds frontloaded to tackle today’s problems of poverty, disease and illiteracy through the bold initiative of a new global finance facility.

The International Finance Facility is in the tradition of the Marshall Plan of 1948, when to finance the development of a ravaged post war Europe, the richest country in the world – the USA – agreed to transfer one per cent of their national income each and every year for four years – a transfer in total of the equivalent in today’s money of $75 billion a year.

And it is modelled on the founding principles of the World Bank in 1945 where nations provided resources to an international institution that then borrowed on the international capital markets.

Let me explain what the IFF could achieve for the world’s poor.

The IFF is founded upon long-term, binding donor commitments from the richest countries like ourselves.

It builds upon the additional $16 billion dollars already pledged at Monterrey.

And on the basis of these commitments and more it leverages in additional money from the international capital markets to raise the amount of development aid for the years to 2015.

By locking in commitments from a wide range of donors, the IFF would enable us to front load aid for investment in development, enabling a critical mass of predictable, stable and coordinated aid as investment to be deployed over the next few years when it will have the most impact in achieving the Millennium Development Goals – saving lives today that would otherwise be lost.

The IFF would enable us to invest simultaneously across sectors – in education and health, trade capacity and economic development – so that instead of having to choose between urgent emergency disaster relief and long term investment the impact of extra resources in one area reinforces the investment in another.

And the IFF will allow us to attack the root causes of poverty not just the symptoms – focusing on developing the capacity and the dignity people need to help themselves.

And let me just explain the scale of what I am proposing.

In all our campaigns taken together we have managed to raise international aid from 50 billion dollars a year to 60 billion.

Our proposal is to raise development aid immediately not from 60 billion to 65 billion or even 70 billion but effectively a doubling of aid to over 100 billion dollars per year.

With one bold stroke: to double development aid to halve poverty.

An extra 50 billion that will allow us to attack the root causes of poverty not just the symptoms, and to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

The aim of the International Finance Facility is to bridge the gap between promises and reality.
Between hopes raised and hopes dashed.
Between an opportunity seized and an opportunity squandered.

Of course we will continue to look at other means – international taxes, more resources direct to development banks, the IMF and the World Bank but the practical benefits of the IFF are:

– we provide the support poor countries need immediately to invest in infrastructure, education and health systems, and economic development so they can benefit from access to our markets;
– we provide grants to help ensure a sustainable exit from debt;
– we make primary schooling for all not just a distant dream but a practical reality – meeting these needs and rights now and not deferring them to an uncertain future;
– and we meet our global goals of cutting infant mortality and maternal mortality, eliminating malaria and TB and treating millions more people who are suffering from HIV/AIDS.

I thank the Holy See and the growing number of countries who have indicated support for the IFF – including, of the G7, France and last week Italy.

And let me give an example of what we can do today and now if we work together.

Let me give an illustration of what – because of the IFF model – is already possible.

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation – who have immunised over the last five years not a few children but a total of 50 million children round the world – is interested in applying the principles of the IFF to the immunisation sector – donors making long term commitments that can be securitised in order to frontload the funding available to tackle disease.

If, by these means, GAVI could increase the funding for its immunisation programme by an additional $4 billion over ten years, then it would be possible that their work could save the lives of an additional 5 million people between now and 2015.

So in one fund, with one initiative, we can glimpse the possibilities open to us if we act together. If we could do the same for health, for schools, for debt, for the capacity to trade, for research and advance purchasing of drugs to cure malaria and HIV/AIDS, think of the better world we can achieve.

So with next year – 2005 – the year of the UK’s G8 Presidency, the push for G8 progress starts now.

You have set a challenge for 2005, with 2005 a make or break year for development, a moment of opportunity for development and debt relief, a challenge Tony Blair, Hilary Benn and I know we must, for the sake of the world’s poorest, not squander but must seize. An opportunity to make a breakthrough on debt relief and development, on tackling disease and on delivering the Doha development round on trade.

We must rise to the challenge and we accept that we will be judged by what we achieve.

So the task for Government now is to replace talk by action, initiatives by results and rise to the challenge – pledging to strive for urgent progress both on the priorities of finance for development and trade. And as you take forward your 2005 campaigns, I know you will hold us accountable as you have done so far, that you will challenge us, be the conscience of the world, be the voice that guides as at this crucial crossroads.

Toni Morrison said that ‘courage is to recognise and identify evil but never fear or stand in awe of it’.

And let that be our inspiration as we think of Africa.

30,000 children will die needlessly today.
If this happened in our country we would act now immediately together.
We would indeed conclude it should never be allowed to happen anywhere.

Yet today 30,000 children will die.
Each child a unique personality.
Each child precious.
Each one loved, almost every one who could live if the medicines and treatments available here were available there.
But each one of those 30,000 children will struggle for breath – and for life – and tragically and painfully lose that fight.

And I know what you are thinking.
If I could this day help one single child who might otherwise die live.
If I could today and tonight prevent one avoidable death.
If I could prevent a single child from needless suffering.
If I could turn the despair of a mother worried about her child from desolation to hope
Then it would make everything I do worthwhile.
But if we could together by our actions help thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions.
And if we could with all the power at our command, working together, collectively change the common sense of the age so that people saw that poverty was preventable, should be prevented and then had to be prevented, so that we met the Millennium development Goals not in 2150 but in 2015, then all else we do in our lives would pale into insignificance and every effort would be worth it.

As Bono has said – It’s not enough to describe Everest. We have to climb it. And it’s not enough to picture the New Jerusalem. We must build it.

But when people say debt relief, trade justice and finance for health and education is an impossible dream, I say:

– people thought the original plans for the World Bank were the work of dreamers;
– people thought that the Marshall Plan unattainable;
– even in 1997 when we came to power people thought debt relief was an impossible aspiration and yet already with your support we are wiping out up to $100 billion dollars of debt;
– people thought no more countries would sign up to a timetable for 0.7 per cent in Overseas Development Aid and yet year this year alone five countries have done so.

So when the need is even more urgent and our responsibilities even more clear; and even when the path ahead difficult hard and long, let us not lose hope but have the courage in our shared resolve to find the will to act.

Let us hear the words of Isaiah ‘Though you were wearied by the length of your way, you did not say it was hopeless – you found new life in your strength’.

And let us answer with Isaiah also as our motto for 2005: that we shall indeed ‘renew our strength, rise up with wings as eagles, walk and not faint, run and not be weary’.

A few weeks ago I cited a famous saying of more than one hundred years old – that the arc of the moral universe is long but it does bend towards justice.

This was not an appeal to some iron law of history but to remind people that by our own actions we can and do change the world for good.

And I believe that:

– with the scale of the challenge revealed;
– with the growth of public pressure you have started in Britain and in other countries;
– and if there is a determination among world leaders to be bold;
– building upon our moral sense, the arc of the moral universe while indeed long will bend towards justice in the months and years to come.