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  • John Prescott – 1970 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by John Prescott, the then Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, in the House of Commons on 14 July 1970.

    I crave the indulgence of the House so that I may embark on the ritualistic ordeal associated with maiden speeches which I hope will be neither too lengthy nor too boring.

    Commander Pursey, whom I have the honour to succeed, made a distinct impression during his 25 years’ service in the House. He was an orphan who joined the Royal Navy as a rating where his ability was quickly recognised. He was promoted eventually to the rank of commander—a considerable achievement in those days. This experience, combined with a period in journalism when he wrote on naval affairs, gave him an unparalleled range of experience and detailed knowledge of naval matters, from anchors and chains to the broader philosophy of naval policy. He was able to use this to great effect in debates in the House on naval matters. Divorced of personal ambition, he sought to use his skill and energy to improve the lot of those less fortunate. Many will remember his efforts on behalf of orphans in the debates on the Royal Naval School for orphans at Greenwich.

    The House may not fully appreciate the extent of Commander Pursey’s constituency work, which included his efforts, against tremendous opposition, in bringing about the raising of the banks of the River Hull, whose continual flooding caused a great deal of anxiety and misery to people in the East Hull constituency. He was both colourful and controversial, and his presence will be sorely missed in the House.

    Kingston upon Hull is the home of Britain’s largest port. It is third in the value of tonnage handled and is surrounded by a diversity of industries of national and international repute. Their importance has been recognised by the number of awards which have recently been made to them for their export performance.

    Hull is equally renowned for its advance health and welfare services, well-established comprehensive education and architecturally-awarded council housing estates built by its own direct-labour department. They are the evidence of the foresight and planning of a post-war Labour local authority.

    However, Hull’s greatest asset is its people whose warm Yorkshire hospitality and generosity and shrewd judgment of character and appreciation of value are universally renowned. Never was this so amply demonstrated than in the recent General Election when the Labour candidate was elected with no evidence of the national swing against the Labour Party. I like to think that this was due to the personal qualities of the candidate, although I am prepared to accept that the advent of Hull’s first 12 months of rule by a Tory council since before the war in which rents were raised from £3 to £9 a week played no small part.

    Kingston upon Hull has a consistent record of electing Members with seagoing experience and understanding. As long ago as 1890, it offered Samuel Plimsoll the opportunity to represent it in this House. Commander Pursey served his period in the Royal Navy, whereas I served for 10 years as a seaman rating in the Merchant Service. In fact, I am the first seaman sponsored by the National Union of Seamen to be elected to the House. Of that I am particularly proud. I will endeavour to put the point of view of the British seafarer and that of the East Hull constituents, many of whom are seamen, particularly on legislation affecting the welfare of seafarers and the shipping industry. Indeed, I shall be pressing the Government to implement legislation to correct many of the faults which have been made obvious in the recent Reports of the Rochdale Committee of Inquiry into shipping, the Pearson Inquiry and the more recent safety report.

    May I also advise the Government that the seamen sincerely hope that they will honour the promise of the previous Government, who in their much-awaited reform of the Merchant Shipping Acts promised to review the penal clauses within a three-year period. The seamen will not tolerate those penal clauses remaining in the Acts. I hope that the Government will take due note of this, particularly as this was the running sore which led to the problem of the 1966 strike.

    It is fortunate and appropriate that I have been given the opportunity to make my maiden speech on a Bill directly affecting the future of Hull. No constituency is so dependent on the future growth and development of its port. Much of the local industry is in some way or other, directly or indirectly, associated with the development of a transport economy and the port of Hull.

    The port covers seven miles of river bank, 12 miles of quays and 11 docks. The new £7 million container berth, which is evidence of its desire for greater trade, was recently opened by Her Majesty the Queen. It is situated on a major undeveloped estuary, recommended for consideration as a maritime industrial development area, ideally suited as the gateway to Europe and serviced by canals which transport over 50 per cent. of its exports and imports to the industrial heart of the Midlands and Yorkshire. It enjoys a potential not unlike that of Rotterdam 10 years ago. The Port of Hull has all the assets but is prevented from success, like Cinderella, by her ugly sisters, represented in this case by the lack of capital and imaginative co-ordinated planning.

    The Government could go some way in using their powers to raise the loans referred to in the Bill to correct some of the glaring examples of the failure to co-ordinate the overall planning of a port system and an overall transport network. Ports are purely the links between internal transport systems and sea transport systems. These sectors are part of a vertically integrated industrial system in which each part is vital to the operation of the whole.

    Failure to appreciate that important principle has led to the building in Hull of a container berth which is required to pay for itself without the essential requirement of a container crane. Indeed, the Rochdale inquiry into the docks, reporting in 1962, pointed out in paragraph 280 of its Report that the ports of railway origin, of which Hull is one, should provide a choice of transport. Those who have taken the decisions concerning the development of Hull’s port have taken this extremely literally and have proceeded to rip up all the railway lines on the dock, losing the vital traffic of coal and timber and providing no rail line on the new container port, which is one of the essentials of a container transportation system, resulting in the rundown of the railway and the shutting of workshops. The excuse which is continually given for these activities is a rundown of traffic, which is the direct result of faulty planning decisions. We have recently heard that a restriction is to be placed upon the freightliner centre, which is situated on the wrong side of the city. We are now, apparently, to lose or to have the freightliner services very much restricted. We shall certainly be saying something about this to the Minister.

    The Port of Hull is serviced by, possibly, one of the worst road systems facing any port in the country. We will be pressing to have something done about the infrastructure, which includes the roads, on which the Government were elected. We hope to enjoy the benefit of road works. It is essential that we have immediate access to the industrial hinterland, from where we must draw the cargoes for the very survival and expansion of the port.

    In 1962, Lord Rochdale recommended the provision of a bridge crossing the river and said that this should be provided if the Midlands continued to expand and exports to Europe continued to develop. Both these things have happened. We therefore look to the Government to make a definite statement about a Humber bridge, which is essential to regional development and to the port.

    In giving the Minister that advice, however, I must confess that it would fail to meet the essential ingredient which has been so lacking in the past: that is, developed, co-ordinated planning, which could be envisaged only by a National Ports Authority with executive powers. In presenting the Bill, the Government have made it clear that, as they promised, they intend to reject the essential provisions that were embodied in the previous Government’s Bill and were designed to tackle the fundamental problems facing port development.

    I should, therefore, like to point out to the Government that in their consideration of the alternatives, they should give due weight to the innate conservatism which bolsters traditional attitudes with little prospect of change among those who have mismanaged this vital sector of our economy. To my mind, this can be changed only by a fundamental reorganisation of the industry, beginning with public ownership and accompanied by the implementation of industrial democracy, so that the vast knowledge and experience of the port workers are fully utilised and there is a breaking-down of authoritarian management’s attitude which is typical of both ports and shipping industries.

    It is no coincidence that the criticisms made of the port industry by Lord Rochdale in his 1962 Report on the ports were followed and repeated almost word for word by the recent Rochdale Inquiry on shipping. Both industries are fragmented by both growth rates and the multiplicity of ownership, documents and procedures, contributing to their visible decline, and accompanied by bad industrial relations and low wages for dock workers until they were recently changed by a Labour Government.

    It is not my intention to discuss the present dispute, which is a further manifestation of the organisation of these industries. It should be noted by the Government that almost exactly the same problems are peculiar to both docks and shipping and, I suggest, for exactly the same reason. Both have a history of casual labour, controlled in the supply by the employer, disciplined by means of fines and penalties, plagued by a higher record of occupational accidents and deaths and further soured by the lack of welfare facilities and amenities. The means of trade union representation through shop stewards, so fiercely resisted by both these industries, has only recently been implemented.

    As labour has become less cheap, both industries have found means of securing cheaper labour, with the exploitation of Asiatic seamen for shipping and, in the case of the Port of Hull, by the diversion of cargoes to fly-by-night non-registered ports such as Flixborough, Howden Dyke, New Holland and Whitby, using cheap labour, unsafe working practices and little capital investment which is required by the major ports to develop.

    The Rochdale Inquiries on both ports and shipping found that one of the cardinal reasons explaining the failure of both these industries could be traced to the general low quality of management in those sectors. This has recently been confirmed ten years later in the Report on shipping. Private management has visibly failed in both these important sectors of our economy.

    The only solution is to take both industries into public ownership in the interests of the nation. As a first step in regard to the docks, I suggest that the Government should implement Sir Arthur Kirby’s recent suggestion to rid the docks of the private employers and go on further, I hope, to take the docks into public ownership. Those are the only sort of actions that will solve the major problems in both docks and shipping.

  • John Patten – 1979 Maiden Speech to the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by John Patten, the then Conservative MP for Oxford, in the House of Commons on 24 July 1979.

    I am grateful to be called, though I am conscious that the time is never right to make one’s maiden speech and I know that this afternoon, when so many others wish to speak, that must be especially so. One of my noble predecessors as Member for Oxford, Viscount Valentia, clearly thought that the time was not right to make his maiden speech for a very long time. He took his seat in 1895 and uttered his first words in the House 11 years later in 1906. I decided that in my case 11 weeks or so is about the right length of time to leave it.

    I am honoured to have many noble predecessors in Oxford, and one, my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, once described the city and constituency of Oxford as nothing but the Latin quarter of Cowley. There is more than a grain of truth in what my noble Friend said, for, great university though it contains, and a notable polytechnic, amidst an urban landscape that makes it one of the most beautiful cities not only in this country but in Western Europe, it depends for a great deal of its prosperity, not only in the city but in the region around, on the prosperity of the British Leyland plant at Cowley.

    I am extremely glad that in recent months—indeed, for about the past year—the people who work at the BL plant at Cowley have shown such splendid increases in productivity and splendid increases in the quality of the motor cars which they have been producing. At a meeting I had this morning with the chairman of British Leyland, Sir Michael Edwardes, he was pleased to make that point.

    My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry, in reply to a question after his statement last week on the future of the National Enterprise Board, said that he praised the management of BL for the changes in attitude that they had been able to bring about in that company. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will recognise also that those changes in attitude are possible only with the full-hearted co-operation of all who work at Cowley and at other BL plants, and I am glad to see that that has been as forthcoming as Government support has been forthcoming.

    If there is a financial burden on the Government and a practical burden on management, there also must be a strong moral burden on trade union leaders, in my constituency and elsewhere, to make sure that in a company such as BL—which has had more than its fair share of troubles—increases in productivity, changes in manning procedures and de-manning happen all the more easily.

    Both the university element of Oxford, the university, the polytechnic and the great teaching hospitals—the gown side—and the motor industry side—the town side—have been extremely fortunate in those who have represented them in the House. I wish to refer not only to my immediate predecessor but to his predecessor, my old friend and mentor Monty Woodhouse. He worked hard on behalf of Oxford, as did his successor, Mr. Evan Luard. Their epic battles for victory in Oxford in the general elections of the 1960s and 1970s may have resulted in something that sounded rather like a football score—Woodhouse three, Luard two. I should like to reassure Mr. Luard that, although he may have won fewer general election victories over the past 20 years than did Mr. Woodhouse, his services are greatly appreciated by all those in Oxford who were his constituents, including myself, over the past 10 to 15 years.

    Oxford has never been, and I hope that it will never be, an assisted area. In that sense, it is an extremely fortunate part of the country. It has never had any assisted area status, although I freely recognise that BL has had considerable direct Government assistance. Oxford has a low rate of unemployment compared to many of the constituencies represented by other hon. Members.

    Oxford is approximately in the middle of England, and that location allows me to look north and south rather more dispassionately than can some hon. Members on either side of the House. I shall restrict my remarks on regional policy to England, as I do not feel that I have the experience to comment on other parts of Britain.

    It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened to the regions and to regional development in England had the Special Areas (Development and Improvement) Act 1934, and the legislation that followed it, not taken place. The preamble to the 1934 Act—I am speaking only from memory—talks not only about economic development but about social improvement. It is critical to today’s debate that we look not only to economic development but also to social improvement.

    Looking back at that Act is a fairly gloomy experience, because the first schedule to it, which lists all those places in England and other parts of Britain which were to receive regional aid, demonstrates how clearly our regional policy over the past 45 years has failed. The present list of areas receiving assistance in one form or another from the Government is, with a few notable additions such as Merseyside, more or less the same.

    Therefore, whatever else we may say about our regional policy over the past half-century, it can hardly be said to have been especially successful in all its ramifications. If we stand back from it, we can see that we are dealing with a historic problem and we will have to use historic solutions to try to solve it. It would be hopeless to think that we could solve it in a very short time.

    Looking at the history and geography of England and the rest of the United Kingdom, we see that the sort of regional problems that we are dealing with have a historical inevitability all their own. Throughout the history of England, it has always been in the southern part of the country that the majority of people, for better or worse, have preferred to locate most of their economic activities, except for that brief period in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the early twentieth century, when coal was king and the whole axis of development turned north-south.

    What we are discussing in the debate and trying to deal with in the Government’s regional policy is picking up the tabs from the legacy of that movement. If we stand back from the history of regional development, looking not at last year’s changes or at whether regional employment premium was put on or taken off or whatever but at the problem in its total historical and geographical context, that must be seen to be true.

    We shall, I think, see the northernmost regions of England, in particular, remaining in need of substantial assistance from Governments of whatever colour for a substantial time, just as they have needed it for most of the last half-century. Conscious as I am of the need in a maiden speech not to be controversial, I say at once that I do not thereby belittle for one moment the continuing economic, social and cultural benefits that flow from those regions. But we must take a long-term view of those most depressed areas, especially in the northern, north-eastern and north-western parts of England, while, I suggest, using an entirely different strategy for other parts of England—and, I dare say, other parts of the United Kingdom—which have less deep-seated economic and social problems. In the strategy that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry has begun to unveil, I can see a much more sensitive attitude towards and identification of the true nature of the problems and, therefore, of their solutions.

    I was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend in his introductory remarks point to the importance in regional policy of taking into account not only economic but social desiderata, just as the preamble to the 1934 Act had it. In that respect he is exactly right. He is only too well aware of the effects that changes in policy have upon the economy and the society of the regions that are affected. He has it exactly right in loading such help as is available on the regions that need it most. That is economically sensible and it strikes me as being extremely socially correct.

    That is the sort of attitude that we have learnt to expect from my right hon. Friend. I risk praising someone on the Government Front Bench in my maiden speech as I know that it will be the only time that I shall be able to do so without Labour Members shouting “Give him a job.”

    I believe that my right hon. Friend is a most compassionate man. The elements of regional policy that he is outlining are economically correct and socially compassionate. We need to look long and hard at the real problems of regions and regional development and not imagine that they will be solved merely by an endless amoeba-like growth of assisted areas.

    There are different problems in different parts of the country. There are the really depressed regions and other regions that have more disparate problems. I agree that assisted area strategy is economically and socially correct for the areas that have the deepest-set problems, but for other areas—for example, the areas from which the Government are withdrawing—I suggest that other types of aid under the Industry Act 1972 and other forms of Government assistance are much more applicable. It may be that we shall see regional policies taking off in two separate directions, each fitted to suit the problems more than some ideology or idea.

    The right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Silkin) concluded his remarks by quoting my right hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior). In a recent speech my right hon. Friend said that we must not create two nations in the United Kingdom. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend and with the right hon. Gentleman. It strikes me that the way of preventing the two-nation concept becoming not merely a threat but a reality is to load such help as we can offer from entirely limited national resources, in an economy which for the moment is growing but slowly, on the areas that need help the most.

  • Liam Fox – 2004 Speech to Conservative Party Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by Liam Fox at the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth on 4 October 2004.

    Welcome to Bournemouth to this, our last conference in Opposition.

    At this conference, a renewed and reinvigorated party will set out a clear and hopeful alternative for our country – one that promises freedom and security.

    And we begin by reclaiming as our party colours the red white and blue that reflects our pride in our country. We will never surrender the colours of our flag to those on the dangerous fringe of British politics. We are the party of all Britain and all Britons.

    Under the leadership of Michael Howard, we have become by far the biggest party in local government. On June 10th when millions of voters went to the polls, we pushed Labour into a humiliating third place. We triumphed in the London Assembly with our best performance since the early 90s. We have more women in local government. office than any other political party. And recently we showed that we can win again in the cities, for example, in Millwall in London, our first seat in Tower Hamlets for 40 years.

    All talk and no action

    Over the past year our membership has grown so that we now have more members than the Labour Party and the LibDems combined.

    Remember what he said? 24 hours to save the NHS. Yet despite spending billions of pounds of your money look what’s happened. There are too many managers, too many filthy hospitals, too many people waiting for treatment – and you can’t even find an NHS dentist.

    Remember he said education, education, education? But Labour have wasted billions on bureaucracy. There is too much paperwork for teachers and too little discipline for pupils.

    He said tough on crime tough on the causes of crime but guess what he forgot. He forgot to be tough on the criminals, so crime, especially violent crime, is out of control. And to make matters worse, too many sentences are far too lenient.

    Too many people live in fear in Blair’s Britain, a Britain crying out for more respect, more discipline and decent values.

    And what about our security? At a time of greater threats from abroad what do we get from Labour? Cuts to the Army. Cuts to the Navy. Cuts to the AirForce. We will soon have a smaller navy than France for the first time since the seven years war ended in 1763.

    And isn’t it shameful that this Government sent our servicemen and women to Iraq to fight without the proper equipment to protect them and keep them safe?

    Then there’s asylum. Labour have lost control of asylum. Under Labour, Britain has become a soft touch. People look to us, the Conservatives, to get a grip on the system.

    Of course, if you are Prime Minister, if you get five summer holiday freebies and spend more time out of Britain, these things might not matter to you .

    But all these things do matter. They matter to all the people who have seen Tony Blair break his promises. Pensioners, patients, parents, pupils, taxpayers, students, our servicemen and women. Each and every one betrayed by Tony Blair.

    No wonder people no longer believe a word he says. He is all talk and no action. No matter what he promises at the next election, nobody in this country will be able to trust him.

    The LibDems

    Of course, if you can’t trust Labour you could always try the Lib Dems.

    They want to ban smoking but legalise soft drugs.

    They want to license prostitution, but ban the sale of goldfish.

    They want the age of criminal responsibility to go up but the age at which you can buy pornography to come down.

    And they want prisoners all to have the vote – presumably because every inmate would support them.

    They want a tax on zoos and a tax for regional assemblies. One MP wants cocaine to be sold from licensed premises.

    They haven’t changed. They’re still a Party that likes to get high – high on taxes but low on integrity.

    But a LibDem vote is not just a wasted vote, it is a dangerous vote.

    Their crazy law and order policies would be even softer on crime than Labour. And their European policy would sell Britain out with a single currency, a single constitution and a single European defence policy.

    They know they can never win office in Britain. But what they can never achieve in this country they would conspire to impose upon the British people from Brussels.

    Michael Howard

    It will fall to Michael Howard and the Conservative Party and everyone here in this hall to restore trust in British politics.

    Let me tell you about Michael Howard. He gave me my first political job. Come to think of it, he may have given me my last one.

    Michael is not always the easiest person to work with. He knows what he thinks and what he believes in. He likes a good argument – a very good argument.

    He wants evidence and fact, not supposition and prejudice – and when he makes up his mind, he can be one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met.

    But not only is he one of the most fair and decent people I’ve worked with, but his case will always be based on reason and he will always put his country before his party.

    What a contrast to our current Prime Minister, whose moral vanity means that he believes he is always right. Even his own Party can now see through the lame excuses from the lame duck Prime Minister.

    The scale of our task

    This Conservative Party last threw out a failed Labour Government under the brave and historic leadership of Margaret Thatcher. We owe her so much.

    We were faced with a broken economy crippled by socialism. Our task this time will be just as great.

    Not only will we have to restore trust in politics itself, We will have to restore the balance of power between the government and the British people.

    Over the last seven years Labour have eroded more and more of our freedoms. They have created a pocket money society where the government takes more and more of our money to make more and more decisions on our behalf and they leave us with less and less income and less and less control over our own lives.

    New Labour have hit us with new taxes. New taxes on pensions. New taxes on homeowners. New taxes on business.

    And it is not just more taxes. They now intrude into every nook and cranny of our lives. They tell you how to do your job and how many hours you are allowed to do it for. How to bring up your child – even what to feed them. They extended means testing, so that pensioners who have spent their lives trying to be independent of the state now have to declare their savings to the ever more intrusive taxman.

    This is not the nanny state – that makes it sound too cuddly – this is the intruder state, which is eroding our historic liberties, strangling our self- reliance and suffocating our freedoms.

    Is this the sort of Britain we want ?

    Where professionals are told how to do their jobs?

    Where there is a speed camera round every corner not to make us safer but to lighten our pockets?

    Where the rights of the countryside are decided by the bigotry of urban class warriors? Is this what we want?

    New Labour have created a society where people increasingly feel that there is a growing gap between the law and justice. People feel that their burglars will never be caught, but they will be if they drive at 35 in a 30 zone.

    And they wonder what is the point of the law if, when you fail the tests for asylum, you are still allowed to stay in this country.

    Worst of all, New Labour have created a tyranny of political correctness. A tyranny where decent, ordinary people feel intimidated. They know there are things that need to be said, but they are afraid to say them.

    Well, we are not afraid.

    I thought it was outrageous for the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to tell us that “gang rape” is a politically incorrect term . Apparently it should be called group rape. Well, frankly, I couldn’t care less about the sensitivities of rapists – what about the sensitivities of the victims of rape?

    If a husband kills his wife in their home it’s not ” a case of domestic violence”- it’s murder. Let’s call it that.

    And drunk youngsters on street corners who threaten old people are not guilty of “social disorder”, they are yobs, they are thugs and they are hooligans.

    Its time to start saying things as they are.

    A Conservative alternative

    Britain is crying out for a new direction and this week we will give it. People are tired of Labour’s words. Tired of soundbites and empty promises. They are tired of being preached at.

    They want action. And this week we’ll tell them what the next Conservative Government will do – and how we will make a difference.

    Andrew Lansley will show how we will get our hospitals clean, get money through to doctors and nurses and give patients the opportunity to choose where and when they get their treatment.

    David Davis will show how we will cut police paperwork, put more police on the beat and stop the early release scheme that puts the public at risk by letting dangerous criminals out too soon.

    Tim Collins will show how we will restore discipline in schools and give parents the opportunity to choose the best school for their child.

    We will show how we will stop Labour’s reckless defence cuts and make sure we have the armed forces to do the job.

    And we will set a firm timetable for a referendum on the European constitution. If we win an election in May we will hold a referendum before we meet at next year’s Party Conference- a pledge that only the Conservative Party can deliver. We will campaign for a No vote. And we will get a No vote.

    We will show that you can get a grip on asylum and stop Britain being a soft touch. It is not ” a lurch to the right” but an overdue response to the real anxieties expressed by the British people. If we do not deal fairly and clearly with these issues then there are those on the shadowy extremes of British politics who would love to exploit them.

    We need a fair but firm system that helps genuine refugees. We will introduce a points system like they have in Australia. It will give priority to those who want to come to Britain to work hard and make a positive contribution to our country.

    And, for the first time, we will set a ceiling on the number of people who can come into the United Kingdom each year.

    Cleaner hospitals, discipline in schools, an end to political correctness, police on the beat, support for our armed forces, control of our borders and the British people controlling their own future in Europe.

    A Conservative Government delivering freedom from fear and the security to enjoy our liberties.

    A timetable for action

    People are fed up with talk. They want action. They don’t want vague promises. They want to know exactly what a Conservative Government would do – and when.

    That is why, that at this Conference, will do something that has never been done before. We will set a timetable for action. We will set out what we will actually do in our first day, our first week, our first month in office. So that people will know how to judge our performance, so that we can be held to account – so that we can restore trust between the government and the people of our country.

    Natural Conservatives

    We will show that there are huge differences in the way we see our future. Political parties are not all the same.

    I don’t know about you, but one thing that makes me mad is when people say Tony Blair’s really a Conservative. He’s even had the nerve to compare himself to Margaret Thatcher. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, we know Margaret Thatcher, we worked with Margaret Thatcher – Mr. Blair, you’re no Margaret Thatcher.

    Tony Blair has raised tax and wasted our money. He has presided over an explosion in crime. He has lost control over the asylum system. He has failed to deliver his promises on health and education and he will sell us out on the European constitution. He’s no Conservative.

    There is a fundamental difference between us and Tony Blair. On tax, we’re right and he’s wrong. On crime and asylum we’re right and he’s wrong. And on health, education and especially on our future in Europe, we’re right and he’s wrong.

    All across this country, there are natural conservatives looking for leadership, for a place to go. They have forgotten what we stand for because we have stopped telling them. So, for those who wonder if they are natural conservatives, let me say this with all due respect to the Governor of California.

    If you believe that the first duty of the government is defence of this country, then you are a conservative.

    If you believe that you should keep more of your own hard-earned income, then you are a conservative.

    If you believe that those who save for themselves and their families should be rewarded not penalized, then you are a conservative.

    If you believe that government should give us the tools, get off our backs and let us get on with our lives, then you are a conservative.

    If you believe the law is for the security of the law abiding and to punish not to excuse criminals, then you are a conservative.

    If you believe that we are a nation of individuals whose talents and diversity should be encouraged, you are a conservative

    And if you believe that the British people should have control of their own destiny, then you are a conservative.

    We must tell these things to the British people with clarity and courage. We can restore trust in politics.

    There is an alternative.

    You can make a difference.

    Less talk, more action.

    For the sake of this country the fight starts today.

  • Liam Fox – 2004 Liberty and Authority Speech

    Below is the text of the speech made by Liam Fox at the Conservative Policy Forum Swinton Lecture in Bournemouth on 4 October 2004.

    For seven years, the people of this country have been strung along with promises of action. Promises which they no longer believe, from a Prime Minister they no longer believe.

    Tony Blair’s decline is, above all, a decline in his reputation for honesty. The constant promises but lack of delivery in public services began the process, the contempt for commitments made, such as those on tuition fees, exacerbated the feeling, and the Iraq war was the final straw. The public, remember, initially backed the war strongly. It was the Prime Minister’s justifications for the war, veering wildly with alarming rapidity and no consistency, which has done the damage to his reputation, possibly forever.

    The political process, for both politicians and the public, requires certainty. Yet certainty has been undermined by a Government that seems to have no answers, apart from those we have learned not to take at face value. This uncertainty manifests itself in disturbing social trends and unspoken fears, in particular the growing disenchantment with, and distrust of, the political process.

    Unfortunately, this isn’t just a problem for Tony Blair and his Government. Arguably it is we in opposition who have the biggest problem. In Government one can, at least, pull the levers of power, which will, if nothing else, operate the smoke and mirrors that provide the appearance of action. However, until such time as it wins power, an opposition must be taken at its word. And, after seven years of spin, the word of a politician doesn’t count for much. We might not think that’s very fair. After all, we’re not the ones in charge of the spin machine. But it is the reality. Tony Blair has so debased the language of politics that no politician may speak and automatically expect to be believed.

    Thus we must make our words meaningful. We must convince the public that we can make a difference. We must explain exactly what we would do in government, when and how. Which is why the theme of this conference is a timetable for action. Between now and the next election we will present detailed plans for delivery on health and education, crime and immigration, and all the other issues that matter most to the British people.

    Now that New Labour’s smoke has blown away, their mirrors crack’d from side to side, what the voters want is certainty. They demand a Government with policies that work and are seen to work. And this isn’t just a matter of competent administration. The people of this country want leaders who believe in what they do, and do what they believe – because belief is the essential counterpart to action, without it there is no direction, and therefore little point in taking action.

    The first question

    So what do we believe?

    I believe the Conservative Party must change and is changing. But we must never be like New Labour who have achieved so little because they believe in so little. That is not to say that I preferred Old Labour whose problem was not a lack of belief, but belief in the wrong thing.

    Socialism is a credo opposed to our own not only in content, but also in style. Whereas socialism is theoretical, revolutionary and pseudo-scientific, conservatism is experiential, evolutionary and instinctive, something more easily felt than described. That is why, in a century of struggle with socialism, we came to be defined more in terms of what we didn’t believe than in what we did. People voted for us because we didn’t believe in punitive taxation or a centrally planned economy or the dominance of the unions. And we still don’t. Of course, these days, very few people do – a testament to the outcome of our struggle with socialism, but also to the start of a new struggle to define ourselves in terms of what we do believe, rather than what we don’t.

    So, the question remains, what do we believe in?

    Liberty and authority

    On one level the answer is straightforward; and was defined, even before the modern Conservative Party came into existence, by Edmund Burke: Conservatives believe both in the individual and society; aspiration and community; freedom and responsibility. In other words, we believe in both liberty and authority.

    These are the twin pillars of Conservatism. And yet, as Burke was at pains to expound throughout his life’s work, liberty and authority, though co-dependent, are in tension. It is a tension that persists to the present day and that we, in the Conservative Party, feel keenly; and which our enemies would wish to portray as a battle between modernisers and traditionalists, or, if you prefer, mods and rockers. But authentic Conservatism is not about a choice between liberty and authority, but a balance between the two – allied to a distrust of an over mighty state which compromises both.

    This is the true path for our Party and always has been, it stretches back to Burke, and forwards into the 21st century and beyond. Achieving that balance is not easy. And, sometimes, the road ahead can feel more like a tightrope. Nevertheless how we tread that tightrope, how we strike that balance, is what defines us as a party.

    And the subject of this lecture.

    Sacrifice or investment?

    There is such a thing as absolute liberty, and, for that matter, absolute authority. Respectively, they are represented by the extremes of anarchy and tyranny, which as moderates we reject. Across the mainstream of politics, it is accepted that we need to exchange some, but not all, of our liberty, so that the authorities can act on our behalf, achieving collectively what we cannot achieve as individuals. Those of us on the centre-right seek to tip that balance in favour of liberty, while our opponents on the centre-left try to push the equilibrium back towards authority. But that is not the only difference between us, or even the most important. After all, there have been circumstances, such as times of national crisis, in which Conservatives have had to shift the balance away from liberty. What really counts is the ultimate purpose we have in exchanging liberty for authority.

    Is it for its own sake? For instance, for the glory of an empire, the righteousness of a theocracy, or even the New Jerusalem of the welfare state? Or is it so that the collective achievements of our society might provide the basis for yet greater and more meaningful personal liberty? In other words, is the exchange of liberty for authority a sacrifice or an investment? Labour demands sacrifice; Conservatives prefer investment – that is the essential difference between us.

    It is a difference made all the clearer in the principles by which we seek to facilitate such investment:

    The principles of balance

    The five principles I want to set out today are those of respect, morality, democracy, localism and identity.

    Respect

    On the eve of the second gulf war, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins roused his soldiers with some remarkable words: “We go to liberate not to conquer” he said. He spoke of the long history of Iraq, urging his troops to “tread lightly there.” He spoke of the qualities of the Iraqi people, urging his troops to “show respect for them.”

    It is an attitude that the powerful should always take when intervening in the lives of ordinary people – whether abroad or at home. While it is in the nature of Labour Governments to think of themselves as the masters, the next Conservative Government will strive to tread lightly, to show respect for the people we govern.

    A government that respects the people should only impose its will where necessary, allowing society to operate on the basis of consent wherever possible. That is why we believe in free markets, it is also why we are determined to give the voluntary sector the biggest possible role in our communities and public services. We are equally determined to put fat government on a diet, to strip away the bureaucracy that serves no purpose but to tread heavily in the lives of ordinary people.

    When we do ask people to make an investment of their liberty, it must be in proportion to the return. If a rule, regulation or tax is not worth it in the long run, then we must get rid of it now. If the incentives created by the tax and benefit systems are just plain perverse, then we must reform them now.

    During a recent visit to a nursing home in London I met a charming elderly lady who was 103 years old. She was extremely up to date with politics and said it was a pity that I had been unable to meet her daughter. On further enquiry I discovered that her daughter was 82 years old and living on the third floor of the same home. “Young man” she pointed out, “we are only 10 years away from three generations of my family being in care – who is going to pay for it?” It is a good question, but one which will not be answered while the system punishes those that save for their old age. That is why Conservative policies on pensions, savings and care for the elderly will reward those who take responsibility for the future.

    Of all the old certainties, none is more important than the confidence that the authorities will respect you for doing the right thing. But people feel increasing disrespected by Government. For instance, people feel that the law is only really enforced against the law-abiding. The police are happy enough to enforce speed camera fines against ordinary motorists who have their cars properly registered. And yet as many as one in five cars have been found to have no tax or insurance or no proper registration to a responsible owner at a correct address. What is being done about that? Clearly, it is harder work going out and finding the owners of unregistered cars than collecting easy money speed camera fines from the law abiding.

    Then there are the nation’s taxpayers, who surely have a right to expect a return on their contribution. It may be that the greatest danger facing Labour, enmeshing Gordon Brown as well as Tony Blair, lies in the stubborn refusal of the public services to yield improvements despite the huge increase in spending and taxation. Having tested to destruction their theory that more money would be the answer, Blair and Brown must be perplexed that health, education and transport have not noticeably improved. Their answer is more taxation which will certainly come if Labour is returned to power. But people have their limits. They have lives to live in the here and now. They cannot give up everything in the present for a better future, especially when that future never comes. A Government that treads lightly must be one that reduces the burden of taxation on Britain’s hard working families.

    Morality

    These are moral values. And it is morality, by which I mean a sense of right and wrong, that must guide our efforts to find the balance between liberty and authority.

    There are those who consider themselves above such considerations, who’d prefer politics to be a value-free, technocratic exercise. No doubt they consider themselves to be terribly liberal, but they are nothing of the kind. Theirs is the condescending bigotry of political correctness, a supreme arrogance that believes its positions to be beyond question and thus deserving of permanent, unaccountable power.

    That power is exercised through quangos, inquiries and supranational structures hidden from public scrutiny. Only one viewpoint is allowed, with utter distain shown for the principles by which ordinary people decide what is right and what is wrong.

    It is no surprise that the same unaccountable elite should have such disdain for Parliament, and have sought to circumvent its authority. But that will change under a Conservative Government. We will restore the historic role of Parliament, so that the big decisions are made in full view of the people, who can judge for themselves the morality of our actions.

    Democracy

    When the people judge their politicians and find them wanting, they must be able to act upon that judgement and throw the rascals out. Though not perfect, democracy is the only system of government in which liberty may be balanced against authority, without some elite imposing its values on everyone else. It is the only system in which right may prevail over might. As such, it is our hope for all mankind, and why we will argue the moral case for democracy in the face of the bigots who believe that certain cultures are suited only to dictatorship.

    But overt tyranny, and those who would appease it, are not the only foes of democracy. When their might cannot openly prevail, elites have a habit of insinuating themselves within ostensibly democratic systems so that they may exercise power unaccountably, which is why we need to understand democracy in its fullest sense. That means never leaving people at the mercy of such elites. One way or another, authority in all its guises must be held accountable.

    Sometimes this accountability will be that of the social market – a dialogue between the providers of our public services and the people who depend upon them. That is why we believe in the right to choose for parents and patients. So that they will always have a proper choice of schools and hospitals.

    In other situations it may be impossible to give individuals a choice of institutions. For instance, there can only be one system of law and order, only one police force in any one area. But we cannot go on as we are. There has never been a wider gap between people’s ideas of justice and what they expect the law to deliver. The root cause is that our justice system is now less accountable than it has ever been to ordinary citizens and to local communities. Instead, it is answerable only to the centre. In practice, its priorities are set by a metropolitan elite whose ideas about justice are far removed from those of the ordinary citizen. The solution is direct democracy. Under the Conservatives, every police authority will be directly elected by local people. We will give everyone the chance to vote for the kind of policing they want on the streets where they live.

    Localism

    Localism is vital to all of this. And by localism I don’t just mean the balance of power between different levels of government. I mean that the balance between liberty and authority must be struck on a case-by-case basis, preferably by those that must live with the consequences.

    Because each case raises its own specific issues it should, with due reference to precedent, be considered on its own merits. In this way, a true democracy can reach and sustain a balance through countless considered adjustments, made with local knowledge – as opposed to the rigidity of some grand scheme imposed from above. This is the way of Britain’s tradition of common law, one which we will defend from the incursions of European law and the growing power of an unaccountable judicial elite.

    It’s not only the law to which this principle applies. Anywhere, and any situation, is local to the people that live and work there. Therefore true localism is about respecting the independence and the experience of the people that keep this country going – the business people who create the nation’s wealth, the professionals who provide our public services, the volunteers who hold their communities together, the parents who raise the next generation. Our working assumption is that they know better than the politicians and should, wherever possible, be empowered to take the decisions.

    Identity

    Of course, not every decision can be made locally. That is why we need politicians who as representatives of the people make decisions on their behalf. If such decisions are to strike the balance between liberty and authority, then they are best made on the basis of common interests, common values and common inheritance – in other words, common identity.

    Earlier, I spoke of the civilisation on which the development of greater and more meaningful liberty depends. But civilisation is not something made anew every few years, but something which is inherited, built upon and handed on by each generation. This is why so many of the biggest decisions have to be made collectively, because our liberties depend on an inheritance we receive not as individuals, but as members of a greater whole.

    Thus the basis of individual freedom is inextricably linked with those group identities through which we inherit our traditions, be that the family, the community or the nation; and therefore wherever liberty needs to be balanced with authority, that authority must reside alongside identity within the group. That is why Conservatives will always defend those group identities to which we owe a natural loyalty, above all our country. We will not give up our currency, we will not submit to a foreign constitution, we will never agree anything that compromises the ultimate right of the British people to be in control of their own destiny.

    Upsetting the balance

    Ladies and gentlemen, our principles are under attack. Our country suffers under a government with no regard for respect, morality, democracy, localism and identity.

    The attack on identity

    New Labour is hostile to all forms of identity that it cannot control. Thus European integration is valued above national sovereignty; regional government is used to undermine local identities; and even our parish councils are on New Labour’s hit list.

    The attack on localism

    For New Labour there is no duty to push power downwards, rather it is a privilege that can only be earned by doing what the Government wants you do anyway. Where we aim to localise, they have centralised. The institutions and professions of our public services have suffered a sustained assault as power is sucked away from communities and into Whitehall. Even in Whitehall the independence of the civil service is undermined. As is Britain’s constitution which they call unwritten, but which is, in fact, written in centuries of common and statute law, the legal embodiment of our culture of governance.

    The attack on democracy

    Make no mistake, this is a government that believes in grand schemes of its own devising, not in the organic development of our common life. Their modus operandi is the circumvention of the democratic process. Their desire is to emasculate Parliament, handing over its powers to unaccountable structures be they home-grown quangos or EU institutions like the Commission or the Central Bank.

    The attack on morality

    Tony Blair once said “what’s right is what works”. What he didn’t say, but clearly believes, is that an oligarchy of appointees is best qualified to decide what works. Thus decisions once the province of the electorate and their representatives, are now increasingly made by a hand-picked technocracy of the great and the good. Except that the decisions they make are never great and rarely good. Indeed, the sheer poverty of New Labour’s moral code leaves little room for considerations of good and evil, right and wrong. What’s right is what works, and what works is what works best for Tony Blair.

    The attack on respect

    As a result, New Labour is uniquely ill equipped to tread lightly in the lives of the British people, still less to show respect for them. This government is creating a society in which many people feel singled out or left out. Like the police force in some banana republic, this Government is never there when you need them, always there when you don’t. The sheer cynicism of the Labour’s attack on rural Britain is an example of the former, while, in our inner cities, the latter are represented by decent law abiding citizens who find them themselves under siege from those allowed to ignore the law.

    Tony Blair is upsetting the balance between liberty and authority. Not one way or the other, but both ways at once, creating uncertainty and achieving the worst of both worlds.

    Conclusions

    In this lecture I have not only argued for a balance between liberty and authority, but set out the principles by which a Conservative equilibrium may be achieved. Those principles – of respect, morality, democracy, localism and identity – are all we need to unite us as a party.

    But perhaps we imagine that they are so generally accepted that the only question that remains is whether to nudge the balance in favour of liberty or authority, one way or the other. If so, we would imagine wrongly. Our principles are under attack as never before. New Labour has made its position clear on the forces of conservativism. But ultimately it is liberalism that is in danger.

    The mission of the next Conservative Government is to restore the balance on which our freedoms depend. We must govern in a way that respects the hopes and fears of ordinary people, we must have the moral courage to distinguish right from wrong, we must be resolute in our defence of democracy, visionary in our advancement of localism and proud of the nation we seek to lead.

    It has sometimes been said that the British public are more concerned with being led than where they are being led. While this is a gross (and condescending) oversimplification there is no doubt that voters like to feel that their leaders have a clear understanding of both their problems and the potential remedies. Tony Blair’s philosophy has always been uncertain, but his current lack of a political compass and his reputation for evasion and dishonesty are leading this country astray.

    But for the first time in a decade the Conservatives look more thoughtful about Britain’s problems than Labour and under Michael Howard’s leadership more trustworthy and honest. We have a uniting message. It can be different. There is an alternative.

  • Oliver Letwin – 2004 Speech to Conservative Party Conference

    Oliver Letwin

    Below is the text of the speech made by Oliver Letwin, the then Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Conservative Party Conference on 4 October 2004.

    Do you remember?

    Do you remember when Tony Blair offered us a new kind of politics? Do you remember that?

    Well, we’ve had a new kind of politics.

    It’s a kind of politics where nobody any longer trusts a word that politicians have to say.

    We’ve had a new kind of politics.

    We have a civil service, bigger than Sheffield. We have!

    We have more officials in one department, the Department of Work and Pensions, than there are soldiers in the whole of the British Army. That’s a new kind of politics.

    A new kind of politics, where a pensioner in my constituency is spending a third of her entire disposable income on council tax. That’s a new kind of politics.

    Or the young person whose trying to get a foot on the ladder, trying to get a house for the first time, buying a house for £60,000 and 1 pence and they’re paying £600 of stamp duty.

    Or the family expecting to inherit an ex-council house, and they’re paying death duties. That’s a new kind if politics.

    It’s a new kind of politics.

    When the Prime Minister, the first Lord of the Treasury hasn’t a clue what’s going on in the Treasury. Has to smuggle officials through the back door of No 10 to find out. That’s a new kind of politics.

    Do you remember something else? Do you remember when they told us there was going to be justice for all? Social justice.

    So when that pensioner in my constituency is paying a third of her income, her disposable income, on council tax, is that social justice? No.

    Or when that young person, trying to get their foot on the ladder, is clobbered with £600 of stamp duty, is that social justice? No.

    Or when that family expecting to inherit that ex-council house is paying inheritance tax, is that social justice? No.

    You know what makes it all desperately unfair, so unjust, is that these people aren’t even getting value for money.

    Do you remember the story of the woman who found that her rubbish was being collected half as often as before? The government said is it was some kind of directive, and the council said it was some kind of directive and they couldn’t do it anymore as well as they used to. And what did she do? She was probably a Conservative. She went out. She hired a private firm and she charged her neighbours and they were happy to pay. They pay all that council tax and then pay, on top, to have their rubbish collected.

    Is that value for money?

    Or when you’re sitting in a traffic jam, and you’re thinking of all those taxes you’re paying, is that value for money?

    Or the parent who desperately wants to send their child to the school of their choice, and they’re appealing, and they know that 80% of the appeals in inner cities are turned down. Is that value for their taxpayer’s money?

    Or your grandmother. The grandmother whose trying to get into hospital. She’s waiting 6 months and after paying taxes all her life. She gets in. She gets MRSA. Is that value for her taxpayer’s money? No. No.

    And can we do something about all this? Can we take action to change things, to make a difference? You bet we can!

    We can thin down this fat government by getting the money, from the taxpayer, the frontline where it’s needed. We can give the taxpayers of this country, something that they haven’t had these last seven years.

    We can give the taxpayer value for money.

    We’ve shown what that means. You saw the video.

    You saw how line by line, department by department, we’ve been working through the fat bureaucracies. Working out how we can thin them down. Just last week Nicholas Soames and I announced what that means for frontline defence. By saving on the fat bureaucracies elsewhere in Whitehall, and by slimming down the bureaucracy within the Ministry of Defence, we can bring £2.7 billion more to frontline defence between now and 2008 than Labour plans, and that means we can save our regiments.

    There is somebody else who’s heard about all this. Somebody who gets most of his best ideas from our programmes. You guessed it, Tony Blair.

    So, he rings his neighbour next door, the neighbour from hell.

    So it’s our Tony and our Gordon.

    And Tony says to Gordon: “Gordon these guys, these Conservatives, they seem to be on to something. Couldn’t we do something to thin down the fat bureaucracies you’ve created?” Note the “you”.

    And Gordon says: “Tony, give us a break. We’re Labour, we specialise in fat bureaucracies.”

    And Tony says to Gordon: “Well Gordon, couldn’t we at least pretend that we’re going to do something to slim down the fat bureaucracies. Give us a hint Gordon.”

    And Gordon says to Tony: “Now you’re talking. I can say we’ll cut 104,000 jobs out of the bureaucracy. 20,000 of those, well they’ll be in the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales. We don’t have to do anything about them. 11,000? They’ll be reallocated. They won’t go anywhere. And to make up for the remaining 73,000, well, I’ll make up for them by hiring another 200,000 bureaucrats over the next 3 years, so we’ll end up with more than we started with.”

    It’s a sham.

    It’s a pretence.

    And it means just one thing. It means Labour’s third term tax rises.

    It means council tax on the average home rising to £2,000 a year.

    It means £900 more of national insurance from the average earner.

    It means Labour’s third term tax rises.

    And can we do anything about that? Yes, indeed we can.

    By thinning down those fat bureaucracies. By sticking within my tight spending plans. We can fill in Gordon Brown’s black hole and prevent Labour’s third term tax rises.

    And by sticking to my tight spending plans, we should enable ourselves to do more.

    We should enable ourselves to do something serious. To give us a simpler and a fairer tax system.

    We should enable ourselves to give this country a serious remedy, for that pensioner who’s paying a third of her disposable income on council tax.

    We should enable ourselves to give that family which has a person in it, a young person trying to get on the housing ladder, paying that £600 of stamp duty, some relief.

    We should enable ourselves to give to the other family that’s expecting to inherit the ex-council house, some relief from the inheritance tax.

    Yes. We should expect to be able to do something serious for those people.

    Now, I know what many of you expect me to say next.

    I know what some people in some sections of the media think it would be courageous if I said next.

    They think it would be courageous if the next thing I said is: I promise you to cut taxes by so much and such-and-such a day.

    It wouldn’t be courageous at all. It would be very easy.

    I’d say it. You’d cheer. We’d all leave, and no one out there would believe us at all. Because there have been too many broken promises on tax, from too many politicians.

    The sad truth is when we were in office, we made promises on tax we couldn’t keep.

    And everybody knows what happened when Tony Blair said he had no plans to increase tax at all and then raised them 66 times by stealth.

    So no more broken promises on tax.

    Instead of promises, actions

    Instead of words, deeds,

    The next Conservative government will act to make a difference, to make Britain better.

    On the first day of that government I will freeze civil service recruitment.

    In the first week of that government I will lift the controls those wretched best-value, comprehensive, performance, assessment regimes of Labour government.

    And in the first month of that Conservative government I will delivery a budget which will implement the James reforms, and begin the thinning down of those fat bureaucracies and set Britain on the path to a lower tax economy.

    Actions. Measurable, accountable actions to make this country a better place to live in.

    Shouldn’t be any kind of surprise to hear Conservatives talking about actions.

    As we go forward into the next election, as we face that great test and meet that great challenge, let’s remind ourselves who we are.

    We are the party of action.

    We are the party of Shaftesbury who first took action to bring compassion into British politics.

    We are the party of Wilberforce who freed the slaves.

    We are the party of Disraeli, who elevated the condition of the people in order that he could make a Britain one nation.

    And yes, we’re the party of Margaret Thatcher, who gave people the right to own their own homes, and gave Britain back her freedom and her security.

    And now, our party, under the leadership of Michael Howard, as the next government of this can set Britain free again.

  • William Hague – 2001 Speech at Welsh Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made by William Hague, the then Leader of the Conservative Party, in Cardiff on 14 May 2001.

    It is always a pleasure for me to be back in Wales. Wales gave me some of the happiest years of my parliamentary career – although, of course, that’s not all I took away from my time here.

    And it is a great privilege to back among so many friends in the Welsh Conservative Party. I know that at this Election Welsh Conservatives are thirsting for the fight and are fighting to win.

    We can win because of the leadership of Nick Bourne and his brilliant team in the National Assembly, Nigel Evans at Westminster and Jonathan Evans speaking up for Wales in the European Parliament.

    We can win because of the hard work and dedication of Conservative Councillors across Wales.

    We can win because of all of you in the Welsh Conservative Party have never wavered in your commitment to the Conservative cause and your determination to see the end of this miserable Labour Government.

    And that is what all of us are going to do – ensure that Tony Blair is given his marching orders from No 10, put Welsh Conservatives back in Westminster and the Conservative Party back into Government.

    To come back to Wales is to find myself again among real people: not the politically correct commentators and radical lawyers Tony Blair has in mind when he talks about “the people”. But real men and women leading real lives.

    People who are more interested in how much they are paying for petrol than in how much Cardiff council is paying its leader. People who are more concerned about their child’s GCSE results than about what method of election should be used in the Assembly. People who are more interested in whether their daughter can walk safely at night than whether she should serve in the front line.

    People who understand that you can be proud to be Welsh as well as proud to be British, and value what the nations of the United Kingdom have achieved together. People who Labour sometimes dismiss as old-fashioned because they still believe in personal responsibility and patriotism and the importance of family.

    People and communities all over Wales, who are starting to wonder whether any politicians are in touch with their concerns. People not unlike those like those I grew up with in the Rother Valley.

    My classmates at Wath-on-Dearne Comprehensive had fathers who worked in mines and in steelworks and on farms. Like all parents, they wanted their children to have the best possible start in life. They wanted their families to be financially independent. They wanted a secure old age. And, without ever making a fuss about it, they loved their country.

    Even back then, they were considered unfashionable. The last thing the Labour Party wanted was to give them independence. Much better to keep them in the industrial working class. Take away their freedom of choice. Tell them where to live. Tell them where to send their children to school. Make them join a trade union. Don’t give them their own pension. Make them depend on the state for every rise in life.

    Our party changed that. We gave people the opportunity to take back control over their own lives. And they seized that opportunity with an enthusiasm that astonished the world.

    Now the children I was at school with have families of their own. Their jobs are in computer firms, in high-street banks and call centres; they’re nurses and teachers and self-employed builders. They own their own homes, and they’re saving for pensions. And the girls in my class are struggling to balance the pressures of being a good mother and holding down a good job.

    Those are the people who motivate me. People who are beginning to wonder whether ministers will ever listen to them. Our party is in it for them, and others like them throughout the United Kingdom.

    Let me be honest: when I was here as Welsh Secretary, I made a number of friends who told me they were voting Labour. They had a variety of motives. Some of them actually believed all that rhetoric about a new Britain. But most of them simply felt that Labour deserved a fair crack of the whip.

    They weren’t expecting miracles. They wanted decent schools for their children, safe streets and the opportunity to prosper by their own effort. It wasn’t much to ask. But, four years on, they’re feeling let down and conned.

    They were promised lower class sizes; but they’ve seen class sizes rise in secondary schools throughout Wales.

    They were promised a cut in NHS waiting lists. But, although in-patient waiting lists have fallen in Wales by 2,000, outpatient waiting lists have risen by a staggering 57,000.

    They were told that taxes wouldn’t have to go up. But they’ve been taxed for marrying, taxed for driving, taxed for wanting to own their home, taxed for trying to put a little aside each month, taxed for growing old. They’ve seen council tax soar in Wales, with Band D houses now paying £215 more than when Labour took office.

    And they’re wondering – as we are all wondering – where all the money is going. You’ve paid the tax, but you’re still waiting for your operation. You’ve paid the tax, but you’re still waiting for news of your train. You’ve paid the tax, but when was the last time you saw a police patrol on your street?

    Those people I met as Welsh Secretary, who were so keen to tell me that they were voting Labour, expected a Government that would be tough on crime. But they’ve seen police numbers cut while prisoners are let out of jail early.

    They believed that the priority would be “education, education, education”. But they’ve seen teachers bent double under paperwork and classroom discipline undermined. They’ve class sizes increase and children sent home because of staff shortages.

    And now they’re wondering whether any politician will ever listen to them. They’re beginning to think that nothing will ever improve. That taxes will only ever go in one direction. That violent crime can only get worse. That there will always be failing schools. That no one will sort out the chaos on our roads and railways. Even that the drift into a European superstate is inevitable.

    Well I say that none of these things is inevitable. I’m not promising to have all the solutions. No politician can. But things can improve. There is no excuse for giving up.

    I won’t give up on the families, the savers, the pensioners whose taxes are rising faster than anywhere else in the world. It doesn’t have to be this way. The only reason that our taxes are shooting up is that the Government has chosen to raise them.

    Of course decent public services need to be properly funded. People don’t object to paying tax when they can see that the revenue is being well used. But they do object when the money going into the NHS is not spent on patient care, but on preparing accounting systems for the euro. They object when up to £47 million is to be spent on a new Assembly building. They object to being taxed to recruit new armies of clerks and officials and regulators and licensors and inspectors and bureaucrats to the state apparatus.

    And they’re right to object; you’re right to object. None of us minds paying for roads and schools and hospitals. But do you really feel the same about paying £4 million to take on more Labour spin-doctors? Do you really want to spend £1.4 billion in Wales on scrapping the pound?

    The fact is that we have become used to a level of service from the state that we would never accept in any other walk of life. We put up with poor schools and cancelled operations and a bad return on our pension contributions because we feel we have no choice. But we shouldn’t have to.

    If you wanted to book a holiday in Spain next month, and went to the travel agent, and were told that your holiday would have to be in two years time and had to be in South America, you’d use a different travel agent. If your local supermarket never stocked the goods you wanted, but charged you through the nose all the same, you’d want a refund.

    Well I say you should have that refund. If the Government has enough of your money left over to spend millions of pounds on advertising to tell you what a good job it’s doing, then it’s taxing you too much.

    Taxes in this country are beginning to spiral out of control. It isn’t selfish to think this: it’s responsible. People know that you can’t spend more than you have. And they know that, at a time when our competitors are cutting tax, Britain can’t afford to drive away investment.

    I don’t believe that things have to be this way. Other countries are reducing taxes without cutting services. For twenty years Britain has been the lowest taxed country in Europe. That has brought us more jobs, more investment, more trade and more economic success than any other country in Europe. Yet Mr Blair is throwing all this away. He is increasing taxes and regulation while the rest of the industrialised world is going in the opposite direction. He is out of touch with the British people who know they are paying too much for too little – and he is out of tune with the needs of global competition.

    Future jobs and growth will come to countries which cut taxes, not those which keep on increasing them. Mr Blair can try, Canute like, to turn back the tide of those who want and need lower taxes – but he will not succeed. Tax cuts are an idea whose time has come.

    Michael Portillo and I have shown how we can cut taxes by £8 billion. We have shown how we can fulfil our plans to reduce taxes.

    Last Friday I challenged Tony Blair to repeat the pledge he made at the last election when he said that he had “no plans to increase tax at all”.

    That was four days ago. What have we heard from the Prime Minister? A deafening silence.

    What is the problem? It can’t be that he’s lacked the opportunity to repeat his promise. He could have told one of the callers on GMTV that he would not increase their taxes – after all, they told him they were paying too much already. He could have told David Frost that would not increase taxes. He could have told John Humphrys this morning that he would not increase taxes.

    When it comes to tax increases, the best policy Tony Blair has been able to come up with is to keep mum.

    He hopes the British people won’t notice that he has turned Trappist.

    Too bad, Tony: we’ve noticed alright.

    We all know why he won’t answer.

    We all know that his spending plans require another round of stealth taxes to pay for them – £10 billion according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

    That’s equivalent to increasing the price of petrol to nearly £6 a gallon, or £1.30 a litre.

    We know why he won’t answer, and what’s more he knows.

    He won’t answer because he can’t answer.

    No wonder Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are rowing.

    The Prime Minister has boxed in his Chancellor. Gordon Brown needs to raise taxes, but Tony Blair won’t let him say so.

    So the compromise they’ve reached? A conspiracy of silence.

    If we were in America and Tony Blair was asked a straightforward question on tax, he’d plead the Fifth Amendment. You know the one – that’s the one that protects people from incriminating themselves.

    Watch out for Labour. They’re going to try the same deceit at this election that they tried at the last.

    They’re going to tell you that they won’t raise the rate of income tax.

    But you know that is just a piece of spin. They said that last time and then increased income tax for millions of people by abolishing tax allowances and dragging more people into higher taxes.

    I repeat my challenge to the Prime Minister. Be honest with the British people. Give it to them straight. Will you increase taxes if re-elected, yes or no?

    The Conservative Party has worked out the most detailed plan ever produced by an Opposition, showing exactly how we can make savings in Government spending without taking a single penny from hospitals, or schools or the police or the Armed Forces.

    It’s not going to cure everything. But it will allow us to deliver tax cuts for small businesses and married couples and savers and pensioners and people with children.

    And it will allow us, in our first year in office, to reduce the cost of petrol by 27p a gallon and that will be welcomed by the elderly, disabled people and millions of others for whom the car is not a luxury but a necessity.

    People are not expecting the Earth. Just for the chance to live secure lives without having to rely on the state. It isn’t much to ask.

    Pensioners want the dignity of independence in their old age. They’ve paid tax throughout their lives. They shouldn’t have to go on paying in retirement. That’s why the next Conservative Government will raise the state pension and, at the same time, raise pensioners’ tax allowances by £7.50 a week, which would take a million pensioners out of tax altogether.

    And for those at the other end of their careers, those just starting out in the work place, I say: you should have the opportunity to build up your own pension fund without having to rely on the state.

    People want to do the right thing: to put aside a little each month to provide for their retirement, or for their children or grandchildren. They’ve already been taxed for earning the money; they shouldn’t be taxed again for wanting to save it. The success of our economy depends on encouraging investment. That’s why the next Conservative Government will abolish taxes on savings and dividends.

    And there’s no excuse for giving up on marriage. Married people provide stable homes for children. They should be rewarded, not penalised. That’s why the next Conservative Government will introduce a transferable allowance for married couples worth up to £1,000. And we will offer special help and training to women who take time out to look after their children, but who want to return to work when their children are older. Let’s not be afraid to say it: we believe in marriage.

    There’s no excuse for giving up on our roads. John Prescott seems to think that driving is a vice. But just because he treats his two Jags as a luxury, that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can do the same. For women who don’t want to walk home from the station after dark, or for families trying to manoeuvre small children to school and back, or for small businesses needing to shift their goods, or for people who live in rural Wales, driving is a necessity.

    Mr Prescott may regard petrol duty as an ethical tax. But I don’t see anything ethical about a tax on women and children and small businesses and the countryside. That’s why the next Conservative Government will cut fuel tax by 6p a litre, that’s 27 pence a gallon.

    And we need to do it now. Because in Brussels today they’ve been discussing a plan to harmonise fuel prices across Europe. Stephen Byers admitted it this morning. And don’t think for a moment they’re planning to cut petrol tax in Britain to the European average. It’s a one way street. They want to lock in higher petrol taxes here and prevent them from ever being cut again. That’s why Britain’s drivers are saying to Labour and to Brussels at this election: hands off our fuel.

    And there’s no excuse for giving up on the crime problem. It’s just not true to say that rising crime is inevitable. During the early 1990s, crime rates started to fall. But now we’ve seen record rises in violent crime, especially in the kinds of offence that tend to ruin lives: assaults, rapes, muggings.

    When you spend too long looking at crime figures, it’s easy to lose sight of what each one of those recorded offences means in terms of human misery.

    When a pensioner has her handbag snatched by a lout on a bike, it may not register as a major offence. But, for that pensioner, it can be a life-changing experience. She may never again feel comfortable walking along the street where it happened. She may never again feel safe outside her home.

    When a family come back from their holiday and find that their home has been broken into and ransacked, the statistics simply notch up one more burglary among the thousands that take place every month. But that family’s home has been soiled and violated: it will never feel quite the same again.

    There is nothing inevitable about this crime wave. It hasn’t just happened spontaneously. It has happened because police numbers have been cut, and because those officers who remain in the force feel blamed and demoralised. And it has happened because nearly 35,000 serious criminals have been released early. Police taken off the streets, criminals turned on the streets.

    Think, for a moment, about what this means. Serious criminals – muggers, burglars, sex offenders, even attempted murderers – have been allowed home early. Over a thousand of these have breached their curfew conditions, and some have disappeared entirely. Many more have committed crimes while on special early release: more muggings and burglaries, more assaults on police officers, more rapes.

    This did not need to happen. And it doesn’t need to happen. Mistaken policies can be dropped. It is possible to begin to put things right.

    The next Conservative Government will stop early release. We will introduce tougher sentences for violent and sex offenders, tougher sentences for drug pushers, tougher sentences for burglars. And we will make prisoners serve their full sentences.

    And, while they are in custody, we will make prisoners do a full working day: not artificial schemes, but paid employment. And we will see to it that some of their wages go to compensate the victims.

    And the next Conservative Government will reverse Labour’s cuts in police numbers. It’s not just a question of attracting young men and women to serve in the police force. It’s a question of keeping them there. Police recruits join up because they want to serve their communities. They want to be out on patrol, not handcuffed to their desks. And they want to know that, if they stop and search a suspect, his word will not automatically be taken over theirs.

    There is no excuse for giving up on crime. With resolve and a little imagination, with proper sentencing and with visible policing, it really is possible to turn things around. It has happened elsewhere. It happened in New York, where a properly motivated and resourced police force transformed what used to be one of the most violent cities in the world. It could happen here.

    And I refuse to give up on the Welsh countryside. Labour ministers seem to have no grasp of how serious things have become in Wales. It’s not just hill-farms that are suffering. Livestock and dairy farmers in Wales have seen their income fall by 25 per cent in four years. Seventy-three farming jobs are lost each week in Wales, as families who have managed the land for generations are being forced to sell up. When I say that we are witnessing the asphyxiation of rural Wales, I am not choosing my words lightly.

    The countryside doesn’t just need an injection of cash. It needs a vibrant and successful economy.

    Coming on top of all the other problems, Foot and Mouth has been a disaster for the Welsh countryside. For so many farmers years of hard work has been destroyed in a matter of weeks. Rural businesses have seen their turnover collapse. And there have been animal welfare problems of a kind we never expected to see in Britain.

    The priority of the next Conservative Government must be to help the countryside recover. So immediately we take office, and working with the National Assembly at every stage, we will implement our Strategy for Recovery, containing steps to stamp out Foot and Mouth once and for all, to help our struggling tourism industry and other rural businesses and firm action to prevent this terrible disease entering Britain again.

    The next Conservative Government won’t just offer the Welsh countryside a one-off transfusion. We will aim to restore its long-term health. Our proposals come as a package: cuts in the business rate for rural shops, pubs and garages; support for village post offices; an end to Labour’s housing targets; more use of brownfield land for development; 6p a litre off the price of petrol; help for village schools; an extension of rural homeownership.

    In the long term, if agriculture is to remain a viable industry, we will have to change the entire basis of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. If I sat down today and tried to come up with the most expensive, least efficient, most Byzantine farming system I could, I doubt I’d get close to the CAP. Every family in the United Kingdom pays three times over for the CAP: first, to support the production of food for which there is no market; then to pay for its storage, and occasionally its destruction; and then all over again as consumers to prop up artificially high prices.

    So with all this money sloshing around, you’d expect some of it to be going to our farmers. But, because Britain is a food importing country with relatively a relatively efficient agricultural sector, we do very badly out of the subsidy system. In other words, our taxpayers and consumers are coughing up, not to support British farmers, but to subsidise their Continental competitors!

    This cannot go on. Our farmers are among the most dedicated and innovative in the world. On a level playing field, they’d acquit themselves against all comers. But they cannot compete properly as long as they are confined by the current Common Agricultural Policy.

    The next Conservative Government will re-negotiate the Common Agricultural Policy so that many decisions currently taken at EU level would be taken by the governments of individual member states. The voice of the Welsh Secretary will be vital in speaking up for the interests of Welsh agriculture.

    Above all, there is no excuse for giving up on our schools. I was lucky as a boy: I went to a first-rate comprehensive. But there were other children in the neighbourhood who were less fortunate than I was: who went to schools where they were never stretched, where their ambition was never kindled, where their potential was slowly poured into the sand.

    No parents should be forced to send their child to a failing school simply because of where they live. It was wrong then and it is unacceptable today. In a society as wealthy as ours, there should be no such thing as a sink school.

    Tony Blair, with his customary attention to detail, promised to give us “education, education, education”. Well, I want to be a little more specific than that with my own aims. I want discipline, standards, choice.

    Schools should be answerable to parents, not to politicians. That’s why the next Conservative Government will set our schools free: free to set their own admissions policies, free to decide their own rules, free to spend their own budgets. If our children are to realise their potential, we need to release the energy and enterprise of those who work in education. It can be done.

    I’m not going to promise to set everything to rights. But I can promise that the next Conservative Government will clear its desks to focus on improving our education system. And I can promise that we will push more resources out to our schools.

    We will set Welsh schools free from red tape and bureaucracy and allow the National Assembly to provide funding directly to schools. The Assembly will then work with local authorities to improve school standards across Wales.

    We have calculated that if the National Assembly paid money direct to the schools themselves rather than through the LEAs, we can place an extra £540 a year at the disposal of heads and governors.

    We recognise that LEAs provide additional functions other than funding. These will still be carried out by individual Local Authorities, but it will be for the National Assembly, as the body with responsibility for local government, to oversee these functions.

    But under Conservative plans head teachers will be able to set their own priorities. Just think of how far even a part of that extra £540 could go when it comes to upgrading school facilities, or taking on extra staff, or offering children more opportunities for sport or drama or music.

    But none of these things is possible if we give up on our national independence; if we give up on Britain. I have faith in this country and its people. We can prosper as a self-governing nation.

    People often say to me: “Yes, I want to keep the pound. But it’s all inevitable isn’t it? We’re going to be dragged into the euro one way or another.”

    No, it’s not inevitable. It’s up to you. You can vote Lib-Lab or Plaid, and see the pound abolished within two years. Or you can vote Conservative to keep the pound.

    Labour may not have confidence in this country. They may not believe that Britain is strong enough to survive on its own. But I do. We’re the fourth largest economy in the world. We’re the fourth military power on Earth. We’re one of five members of the UN Security Council, one of the Group of Seven industrialised nations, we have unparalleled links with the United States, the Commonwealth and the rest of the English-speaking world. How much bigger do we have to be before we’re able to run our own affairs in our own interests?

    Don’t let anyone tell you that the euro is inevitable.

    And don’t let anyone tell you that believing in an independent Britain is anti-European or xenophobic. We are a European country. But we can never be only a European country. We are tied by our history and our geography to other continents.

    Welsh people through the ages have settled across the seas. To this day, people throughout the United Kingdom have friends and relatives in North America, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand and the Indian sub-continent. It’s not we who are the isolationists; it’s those who want to lock our country into a European bloc.

    And don’t let anyone tell you that we’re going to be dragged into a European Superstate.

    The Conservative Party wants to be in Europe, not run by Europe. We want the EU to do its job, and to do it well. But there are plenty of policies that could and should be returned to the nation-states.

    Look at the record of the Common Agricultural Policy, which has pushed up prices and taxes across Europe while leaving Welsh hill farms and the Welsh countryside devastated. Look at the pettifogging rules that have choked so many of our small businesses.

    Labour’s policy is to take the EU institutions that have done all this, and put them in charge of our money, of our defence policy, even of our criminal justice.

    Our policy is that Brussels should do less and do it better. That’s why the next Conservative Government will pass a Reserved Powers Act, to prevent EU law from overriding the will of Parliament in areas which Parliament never intended to transfer to the EU. We want our children and grandchildren to inherit the same freedoms that we inherited from our parents.

    I trust our people. I am proud of this country: comfortable with its past and confident about its future. I don’t believe that we have to go along with every new Brussels initiative simply because others are doing so.

    So let me make one thing clear today. If other members of the European Union want to go ahead with political integration, if they want to merge themselves into a larger union, a Conservative Britain will not be part of it. We shall cheer them from the sidelines: they will always be able to rely on our open markets, on our diplomatic support, on our military alliance.
    But we will never compromise our democracy; we will never bargain with our independence.

    And so to everybody who shrugs in despair at politics, who thinks that nothing can be done about higher tax and more crime and European federalism and the asylum crisis, I say: something can be done. We don’t promise miracles. But we can make a start.

    We are ready to govern for all the people. For people in the countryside, who have almost given up on ministers ever understanding them. For people in our inner cities, struggling to bring up families on crime-ridden estates with failing schools. For people in towns and suburbs in Wales, and all over Britain, who are watching their green spaces disappear inexorably under concrete.

    We will govern for taxpayers wanting to see some return on their taxes. For nurses and teachers and policemen who want to get on with their jobs, not be snowed under with paperwork. For people who believe that the countries of the United Kingdom have achieved more together than they would separately, and who refuse to feel ashamed about our history. We are in it for all the people.

    To parents who want the best for their children, who believe that teachers who run disciplined classrooms should get our support, not end up in court: we’re in it for you.

    To pensioners who have already done their bit, and who don’t understand why they are still being taxed: we’re in it for you.

    To people who live with the daily reality of crime, who feel that their town centres are closed to them on a Friday night and who can’t remember when they last saw a policeman on their street: we’re in it for you.

    To parents with young families, struggling to make their budgets stretch that little bit further: we’re in it for you.

    To all the small businesses and self-employed people who are wasting more time than they can afford to on complying with regulations: we’re in it for you.

    To people who work hard, save hard and try to be independent of the state: we’re in it for you.

    And to everyone who believes in an independent Britain: we’re in it for you. Come with us, and we will give you back your country.

  • Julian Amery – 1950 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Julian Amery, the then MP for Preston North, in the House of Commons on 18 March 1950.

    The natural diffidence which any man must feel who speaks in this House for the first time is heightened in my case by the apprehension that some of the things I want to say today may be thought more controversial than is becoming in a maiden speech. If so, I can only hope that the sense of deep and urgent conviction which alone leads me to speak today will justify the House in granting me that measure of indulgence which is traditionally accorded to a maiden speaker.

    As I see it, the central fact of the international situation today is that we are at war with Communist Russia. It is still a cold war, thank God; but it is a war none the less; and unless we recognise it as such we are unlikely either to secure a satisfactory peace or to prevent it from deteriorating into a shooting war. In these circumstances it seems natural that we on this side of the House should ask the Government to tell us what is their plan, what is their strategy, for the conduct of this cold war. The Minister of State has taken us on a round of interesting and important problems, but I was not myself able to disengage from his speech any coherent plan or strategy for confronting the dangers that loom on the international horizon.

    I have heard the Government’s policy sometimes described as one of containment—containment of Russia. I confess that it seems to me to be rather stretching the meaning of words to apply the term “containment” to a policy which has already permitted the Sovietisation of half of Europe and the whole of China. Was it containment when we allowed our warships to be mined in the Corfu Channel with impunity, and, four years later, are still awaiting compensation for the deaths of 40 British sailors? Was it containment when we permitted the murder of Petkov, the imprisonment of Cardinal Mindszenty, and the overthrow of democratic and constitutional life in Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary, in direct contradiction of the armistice terms to which we were a party? Was it containment when we allowed the Czechoslovakian democracy to be overthrown and our friend and ally Mikolajezyk to be driven into exile in direct contradiction of the Yalta Agreement? Was it containment when our Government stood by and did nothing when the Communist armies overran the whole of China, including British interests which, at the present rate of the pound, cannot be valued at much less than £400 million?

    It seems to me that the term “containment” is not one which can be applied to the policy which the Government have pursued. At times, indeed, their policy has seemed suspiciously like one of scuttling away from our responsibilities behind a smoke screen of bluster. It may be that the Foreign Secretary has acted in the hope that, if only we could trade space for time and delay bringing matters to a head for long enough, unforeseen developments might divert the Soviet rulers from their aims of world domination. In the past, when we stood at the summit of the world and enjoyed an immense margin of power, there was much to be said for waiting upon events, but today, as the weakest of the three great Powers, we must anticipate events if we are to survive them. By all means let us hope and pray that the Chinese dictator may turn out to be a second Tito, or that there will be a palace revolution in the Kremlin; but to base your policy on the hope that “something will turn up” is to degrade yourself to the level of Mr. Micawber.

    Recrimination has its uses if it prevents the repetition of errors, but I do not want to dwell on the errors of the past. Instead, I should like to make one or two constructive proposals about our conduct of the cold war. The first point I wish to make concerns the general defence of Western Europe. I am one of those—and I believe we are a majority on both sides of the House—who believe in the conception of a United Europe, not merely as a means of defence against the Soviet Union but as an end in itself.

    Much can be done—something is already being done—to secure European co-operation in the economic sphere; but it seems to me that in present circumstances, in the face of present dangers, there is an even greater opportunity to secure closer European relations, closer European co-operation, in the sphere of defence. For this reason it seems to me to be a matter for regret that the staff set up at Fontainebleau under Lord Montgomery has not yet developed into the supreme command of a genuine European army. No national differences or personal rivalries ought to be allowed to stand in the way of such a development.

    The sooner a European army exists the easier it will be to raise those German contingents without which we cannot hope to defend Europe against attack. This whole question of Germany is so intimately bound up with that of the union of Europe, and this union of Europe depends, in turn, so much upon matters of defence that it seems to me a pity that the whole subject of defence should have been excluded from the purview of the Council of Europe. Here is a matter which might well be reconsidered.

    The next point which I want to make is this: you cannot win wars, whether they are hot wars or cold wars, by remaining permanently on the defensive. At some point you have to go over to the attack. So far we have followed purely defensive tactics, and the results have not been very encouraging. Surely the time has now come—indeed, is overdue—when we must carry our ideas beyond the Iron Curtain and seek to break the Communist monopoly of Eastern Europe and of China by encouraging opposition, and the setting up of resistance movements, on the other side of the Russian front.

    This, after all, is only what the Soviets have been doing for four-and-a-half years in Western Europe and South-Eeast Asia. The Soviet Union has divided Europe and divided Asia by the cold war. We shall only re-unite them if we also take the initiative in the cold war. It will be objected, I know, that such a policy as I describe—one of taking the offensive in the cold war ourselves and building up resistance movements beyond the Iron Curtain—would lead to war. I do not believe it. If Stalin wants war, there will be war; but he is not going to be provoked into starting a war just because we give him a taste of his own medicine.

    The truth is that if the Russians have not pressed matters even further than they have it is because they are afraid of a war, and they are afraid of a war because they still believe they would be defeated; and they fear defeat because of their temporary inferiority in atomic weapons. So long, indeed, as the United States had the monopoly of the atomic bomb there was no danger of war at all. The military superiority of the West was absolute. Now, however, that the Russians have also discovered the atomic bomb, that superiority has become merely relative. The Russians may never catch up with the American lead in this one weapon. Equally, it may not be long before their smaller stock of atom bombs matched to an otherwise superior military machine may give them an overall superiority. If that day comes, and please God it never will, it will mean a shooting war.

    For some time, however—and, as the Leader of the Opposition indicated, it may be a long time—American atomic supremacy, reinforced by the discovery of the hydrogen bomb, will still stand between the Red Army and the conquest of Western Europe. So long as this situation exists, we can negotiate with the Russians from strength. It must be the task of statesmanship, therefore, to insist upon a settlement with the Soviet Union while there is still time.

    What should be the conditions of such a settlement; what, in fact, should be our war aims in the cold war? The root of the trouble—the cause of the cold war—lies in the enormous expansion of Russian power. In the past five years, as Commissar Malenkov pointed out in a speech last October, the Soviet rulers have increased the population under their direct or indirect sway from 200 million to 800 million. They have secured the services of German and East European scientists, officers, technicians and skilled workmen. Their resources have been enriched by the addition of Silesian industry, the Skoda works, the Roumanian and Austrian oil wells, the mineral deposits of Poland and the Balkans, the uranium of Saxony and Czechoslovakia, and the coal and iron of Manchuria. If we add to this the strength of the Red Army and the Red Air Force and the subversive power of the Communist parties all over the world, the conclusion to be drawn is that the Soviet rulers already possess so great a strength that, but for their temporary deficiency in atomic power, their dream of world conquest might already be in sight.

    In these circumstances, surely, the essential condition of peace must be to reduce the power of Russia within proper bounds. We do not wish, and we cannot want, to dismember the Soviet Union or even to smash her regime. What we do want is to see her power reduced within proper bounds. This means that the Red Army must get back behind the Curzon line and that the monopoly of the Communist parties of the countries of Eastern Europe must be broken. Of course, it is not enough merely to compel the withdrawal of the Russian Armies and to break the monopoly of the Communist parties; we have to fill the vacuum created by the destruction of Germany. We have got to build a Europe, not just the truncated Western Europe of today but a whole Europe which will embrace all the countries which by tradition, by history and by interest look to the West.

    How are these aims to be fulfilled? Plainly, the first step must be to convince the Russians that we are determined to accept nothing less than the reunion of Eastern Europe to the body politic of Western Europe as it stands today. This calls for negotiations at the highest possible level. If such negotiations should prosper, they will bring immense blessings to all mankind; if they should fail, then, at least, we should all know where we stood and could make our plans accordingly. Nothing but good, it seems to me, can come from such initiative, and that is why, along with many others, I must join in deploring the action of the Foreign Secretary in describing as a “stunt” the proposal made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition in his speech at Edinburgh.

    The Prime Minister has told us that such negotiations should be conducted through the usual channels: that is the United Nations. But the negotiations with the United Nations have been going on for four-and-a-half years, and they have brought us to the brink of war. There is no more dangerous and perhaps no more fatal error in politics, and especially in foreign affairs, than for a Government or a Minister to remain tied to the carcass of a dead policy.

    The Leader of the Opposition, in the first volume of his memoirs, described the Second World War as “the unnecessary war.” The war into which the Socialist Government are slowly drifting might be called with equal justice the “inexcusable war.” For four years the Foreign Secretary has known the nature of the Russian danger. In association with his American colleagues he has possessed the power to conjure that danger away. So far, he and they have lacked the will to act. Sooner or later—and the time may not be so far removed—he will also lack the power. Such persistence in error is termed by Christian moralists the sin against the Holy Ghost. In the whole catalogue of sins it is the hardest to excuse. All sins, of course, may be forgiven if repentance comes in time, but time is the essence of the situation. Last year, I was discussing these things one day with a friend while walking up and down a garden. We stopped for a moment to look at an old sun dial and on its edge I read this motto, and I commend it to the Foreign Secretary: “It is later than you think”.

  • Michael Ancram – 1974 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Michael Ancram, the then Conservative MP for Berwick and East Lothian, in the House of Commons on 14 March 1974.

    I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech at such an early stage in this Parliament. It is with a great respect and awe for the traditions and history of this House that I do so. I am grateful, also, for the opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, Mr. John P. Mackintosh. He is a man of great ability, with a great knowledge of the democratic institutions of this country. He will long be remembered in the constituency which I now represent for the hard, diligent and conscientious way in which he attended to his constituents for the eight years that he represented them. He is also well-remembered and well-liked by hon. Members. I hope that they will all join me in wishing him well in the future.

    I have the honour to represent a constituency which could well be described as a microcosm of the country. It contains 56,000 electors and comprises a majority of the facets of Scottish life. Although it has no coal mines, it contains several mining communities, which reflect well the problems and aspirations of the coal mining industry. It has a thriving fishing industry, but one very conscious of and sensitive to rising costs, especially the rising costs of fuel. As a vital part of our food industry it rightly looks to the Government for assistance.

    Berwickshire and East Lothian has also a growing tourist industry with a great potential for increasing the prosperity of the area, consisting as it does of some of the most beautiful countryside and coastline in the Scottish Lowlands and the borders. I sincerely hope that the commercial value of the environment in my constituency will be kept firmly in mind by the Secretary of State for Scotland when he has to decide upon detailed planning applications for the construction of nuclear power stations within the constituency.

    Over the past few years Berwickshire and East Lothian has developed industrially, mainly in terms of light and specialised industries, which have been successful in reversing the previous trends of depopulation and unemployment. There has been created over the past few years—I say this without complacency—the basis for a stable local economy but, at a time of economic difficulty as there is at present, such industries are the most vulnerable, and I hope that the Government will make strenuous efforts to cushion them from any stringent policies that they may adopt.

    The constituency is also a rural and agricultural one, and it is on that subject that, with the House’s indulgence, I shall speak. Before I do so there is one matter on which I hope to receive an assurance from the Minister. On Tuesday the Prime Minister while speaking on the Government’s plans for oil referred to assisting passenger transport services within rural areas through adjusted selling prices for petrol and diesel oils. Be that as it may, having recognised the particular needs for such areas and the disadvantages under which they exist in terms of transport, would it be possible for the Government immediately to give financial support towards improving the public transport system in such areas, at least to meet the present needs?

    I come now to the question of agriculture. It appears that hon. Members on both sides of the House are concerned about the position of low-wage groups, among whom farm workers must be a comparative example. Their position needs to be improved, and I had hoped—and still hope—that they might be assisted by the relativities machinery of the Pay Board. But farm workers work in a fractionalised industry, where each man ultimately depends on the viability of the farm on which he works. Their relatively low position is now threatening a shortage of such labour, which in turn could severely threaten home food production unless the relative position of farm workers is recognised immediately. Of one thing we can be certain: the betterment of a farm worker’s income ultimately depends on the economic viability of the farm on which he works, and many sectors of the farming industry, certainly in Scotland, are facing severe economic difficulties.

    We have heard in the debate that horticulturists, and especially those in the glasshouse sector of the industry, are threatened and are already suffering from unpredictable rises in the price of fuel. I was grateful to hear from the Minister that the Government intend to take speedy action on this matter, and I hope that action will indeed be speedy, for the situation is urgent.

    Pig producers, too, are facing an impossible position. During the election campaign the previous Government announced that they had placed the problem of pig farmers under urgent review. I urge the new Government to complete this review with all possible speed before this sector of the industry severely cuts back on production. Pig farmers simply cannot go on producing at a loss. In my area that loss is recognised to be about £5 per pig. No producer can carry on in this way. If pig producers are driven to cut production that must inevitably increase our national import bill.

    Urgent measures are also needed to assist beef producers. They are getting between £2 and £3 per cwt. less than the suggested price last year. Apart from any question of end price support, there are more immediate ways in which help can be given to mitigate some of the producers’ costs.

    Despite any difficulties arising from our membership of the EEC, I hope that the Government will review the position of subsidies on fertilisers and lime, as suggested by the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Howells). Retention of these subsidies—in particular, the subsidy on lime—would be of general assistance to most of the farmers in Scotland. It would help them to restrict their costs to a level at which they could hope to see a reasonable return on their farming operations.

    I also urge the Government to consider the possibility of making cheap money available to farmers for expansion projects. It appears to be generally agreed by hon. Members that expansion in the agricultural industry is necessary and, indeed, that is made clear in the Gracious Speech. But that can be achieved only by providing incentives to farmers to expand their production. Although it involves an apparently debased word, that can be done only by encouraging farmers’ profits. I hope that the Government, in the national interest, will now determine to ensure the profitability and the security of the agriculture industry as a whole.

  • Theresa May – 2017 Statement on Barcelona Terror Attack

    Below is the text of the statement made by Theresa May, the Prime Minister, on 17 August 2017.

    I am sickened by the senseless loss of life in Barcelona today. The Foreign Office is working to establish if any British nationals were involved in this appalling incident and we are in close contact with the authorities in Spain, who have our full support.

    Following the attacks in Manchester and London, Spain stood alongside the British people. Tonight, Britain stands with Spain against the evil of terrorism.

  • Alan Duncan – 2017 Speech on Turkey

    Below is the text of the speech made by Sir Alan Duncan, the Minister of State for Europe, in Turkey on 17 August 2017.

    Well Minister Omer, if I may, My good friend Omer Celik.

    Thank you very much indeed for your warm welcome and I’m delighted to be back here, as you say, for the fifth time since the coup attempt. I hope that illustrates not only my personal commitment to Turkey but also that of the entire United Kingdom government.

    The world is a difficult and dangerous place and I think that the friendship between the United Kingdom and Turkey is an essential relationship in that difficult world. And we work together as friends and we speak to each other as friends, sometimes directly on issues that matter, some difficult issues. But always on the basis of trust.

    I went just now to the Parliament building, which I went to straight from the airport when I visited just a couple of days after the coup attempt last year. And on that occasion a year ago I saw the bombed out bits of the Parliament building and I went back just now to the very same place in order once again to reaffirm the United Kingdom’s understanding of what you went through during the coup attempt and indeed the steps that need to be taken following the coup attempt to restore civility, order and secure a government in the country.

    We of course are clear in our view that we want to see proportionate and sensible responses to the challenges you faced within the context of a properly working judicial and democratic system. And that is what we have said from the start and will of course continue to say.