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Our exports to the rest of the Community have shot up. Our imports have fallen. Our trade deficit with Europe has been almost wiped out. And in case you haven't heard this morning's news, our inflation rate has fallen to just 4.1%. For the first time in a generation we have brought inflation down to German levels.
They said we couldn't do it. We did it. And in just one year. Let me remind the sell Britain short brigade of just a few facts. We attract more American investment than any other European country, and twice as much investment from Japan.
Only two years ago, this country had a 17,000 million pound deficit on manufactured trade. This summer, we had a surplus. Our manufacturers sold more abroad than ever before. They didn't sell Britain short. They sold for Britain. And they had to fight for their markets when the going was hard.
I know times have been tough. Unemployment has risen. Many people have faced great difficulties. I know how they feel - what it's like for a family when a business collapses. What it's like when you're unemployed and when you have to search for the next job.
I have not forgotten - and I never will.
It is because of that that I will never play fast and loose with the economy. Many have pressed us to do so this past year - siren voices, urging us on to the rocks of inflation, and off the course to recovery. The Chancellor and I ignored those voices. And, as he told you, we can now see the way ahead out of recession, to the recovery that will bring investment. To the investment that will bring jobs.
And the clearer the signs of recovery, the louder the Labour Party complains.
Look how they rounded on the Governor of the Bank of England. All because he dared to confirm what everyone else was saying. That recovery is on the way. When he said there was a recession - they cheered him. When he said it was coming to an end - they called for his head. What are they going to do with those hundreds of businessmen telling the CBI exactly the same thing? Will Labour threaten to sack them too? All of them?
Do Labour realise what their policies would do to business?
- Stab it in the back just when it's winning the battle for trade
- Impose new levies
- Pile on new costs
- Bring back union power.
It may be true that a Labour Prime Minister would no longer get his mraching orders over beer and sandwiches at No 10. In these days of designer socialism, he'd get them over a G&T - down at the Old T&G.
A minimum wage would create the very unemployment they claim to care about. New burdens would drive business out of markets. Higher taxes would drive business talent abroad. Above all, inflation would drive our economy out of the future and back to the past.
Remember who suffers from inflation.
- Infant businesses
- People on fixed incomes
- Pensioners
Inflation is a tax paid by those least able to protect themselves. It is Labour's invisible tax. It wouldn't come through the letter box, though there are plenty that would.
They have eight new taxes lined up already.
Well, that's not surprising. We've costed Labour's spending promises. 35 billion pounds extra and still rising. Of course, they say there would be hardly any more tax for hardly anyone. But that's hardly credible.
The next Labour Manifesto will be the biggest tax demand in history. They love nationalisation. High taxes nationalise choice. It won't be a case of 'you pays your money, you takes your choice'. It will be - they take your money, they take your choice.
High taxes would enrich the businesses, the laboratories, the the universities of American and the rest of Europe at the expense of the businesses and universities of Britain. We'd be back with something we haven't heard of for twelve years - the brain drain. Our low tax policies have built up a brain bank for Britain.
Our Party has always kept personal tax rates down. And in the next Parliament we will go on doing so.
Lower taxes don't just mean richer people. They mean a richer life. A life with wider horizons, in which people can develop their interests. Support their favourite charity, pursue their hobbies. Go fishing or to a football match, the theatre or the cinema, or just save up for a holiday.
But lower taxes give people more powerful choices, too. The chance to save for the long-term, to invest in the future. Building up a pension. Starting a business. Giving their children a good start in life - and passing on to them the fruits of a lifetime's work.
In the 1980s we began a great revolution. Our aim was a life enriched by ownership, in which homes, shares and pensions were not something for others, but something for everyone.
We can now see the lifeblood of ownership - of wealth - running through the veins of the country. Nearly four million more families now own homes. And eight million people more own shares. And four and a half million people now have personal pensions.
But this revolution is still not complete. In the 1990s we must carry it further. We must extenbd savings and ownership in every form. And we now have the chance to make enduring change. For people in their middle years are inheriting homes, businesses, farms on a scale never before seen. The pioneers of the property-owning democracy are the parents of the capital-owning democracy to come.
We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored.
So, in the next Parliament, I believe that we must go much further in encouraging every family to save and to own. To extend every family's ability to pass on something to their children, to build up something of their own - for their own.
Labour have their eyes on the money stored in the homes in which millions of people now live - and in the businesses they have created. But I believe that what people have worked to build up in life, the State should never destroy.
As Harold Macmillan once memorably put it, people walk in public gardens, but they tend their own. I want to build a pride in our common inheritance of town and city, coast and countryside. In the very fabric of our nation.
I want to foster ownership in its widest sense. In making people feel that public property belongs to them. Giving them more say - at the local level - in how things are run. Giving them a choice. Putting them in control.
That's the idea behind our Citizen's Charter - about which Francis Maude spoke so well yesterday. It will be a centrepiece of our policies for the 1990s. I want to see public services in which the passenger, the patient, the parent can have confidence. And in which public servants can have pride.
I see that Labour are now trying to copy my ideas. I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised at that. Even the Labour Party has to have some good ideas amongst all the bad. It's just that theyr filch the good ideas from us. The bad ones of course they think up for themselves. They don't even hide it when theyr steal some of my clothes. Did you see how many of them were wearing grey suits last week? Have they no shame?
The test for Labour will come in the next session of Parliament. We will be legislating on the Citizen's Charter. We shall be giving parents a greater say in schools. Making the big utilities more responsive to customers. And as Michael Heseltine priomised us yesterday, exposing incompetence in the council chamber.
And how do you imagine Labour will vote? With us? For the charter? And for the consumer? Or against us? For the trade unions? For the old ways? For the past? But it's not just a matter of changing the way we run things. It's a matter of breaking down the false and futile divisions, based on class and envy, that have been around for generations. They are wholly artifical. Labour fosters those divisions. It thrives on them. Our task is to end them for good.
I spoke of a classless society. I don't shrink from that phrase. I don't mean a society in which everyone is the same, or thinks the same, or earns the same. But a tapestry of taalents in which everyone from child to adult respects achievement; where every promotion, every certificate is respected, and each person's contribution is valued.
And where the greatest respect is reserved for the law. There can be no harmony in a lawless society. The recent outbreaks of violence in some of our council estates involved a brutal disrespect for other people and their property. Such behaviour cannot be excused and will not be tolerated. In the face of such violence, I know that this Party will give the police the support that we always have. We admite the bravery and the professionalism of those young policeman and women who have been the front line against violent attacks. This Conference must leave no shred of doubt. Rioting is a crime - a serious crime. And it will be dealt with as such.
But dealing with crime is not just something for other people - the police, or the courts, of the Government. It's a challenge to everyone. And the way to fight crime is to change the attitudes that lie behind crime.
The attitudes of people who say that theft of vandalism are somehow less serious. They call it property crime. Property crime? Tell that to the widow who has been robbed of treasured mementoes of her past life. That's not a property crime. It's a personal wound which can never be healed.
This Government is going to crack down on crime, as Ken Baker made clear this week. Let me give you an example. What the irresponsible call joy-riding, we know as simple theft; dangerous driving, a disregard for human life, and the destruction of other people's property. Some of these people are too young for a licence. We will ensure that when they reach driving age they can be banned from the road.
As for those parents who stand by and watch while their children commit crimes, they are going to be held responsible for their children's actions. Those in authority - parents and teachers as well - should use their authority to teach a sense of respect for others, for their rights, not just your own; for their opinions, their welfare and their possessions. Without respect for others, there can be no proper respect for the law.
We don't help our children by excusing bad behaviour, we betray them. And we lead them into worse behaviour. Sometimes it's right to say no.
A great deal has been written about my education. Never has so much been written about so little. Perhaps that's why I am so keen on the subject. I believe that Ken Clarke's programme of reform is a turning-point in education. It will mean that parents and pupils come first, that the key subjects are studied properly, and that the status of teachers is restored.
Some have said that Ken Clarke and I are wrong to insist on simple pencil and paper tests for children in schools. Well, I'll tell you what marks I would give to people like those. Nought out of ten for concern. Nought out of ten for interest in our children. Nought out of ten for commonsense. And, so long as there is a Conservative Government, they'll get nought out of ten for influence in our schools.
What Labour Governments did, and what all too many Labour Councils are still doing, is unforgivable - the years of levelling down; the destruction of good schools; the harassment of good teachers; the kicking away of the ladder of opportunity by those who climbed up it themselves; the setting of the union rule book above all other text books; the neglect even of spelling. That is where thje long march of the Left in educaton has led us. Well, we are now rooting these ideas out. We are giving parents more influence in schools. If we want them to exercise responsibility for their children, we must give them a say in the education of their children.
I will fight for my belief in a return to basics in education. The progressive theorists have had their say. And they've had their day.
In the last twelve months we have seen the Socialist philosophy collapsing in ruins. Who will ever forget those days of high drama in the Soviet Union last August? Or the three young men in Moscow who gave their lives for reform.
When I visited the place where they died, I was struck by the number of young people who pressed in around me. They had copied Western fashions, wore Western gear. For decades they and their parents had been taught that Socialism was the destiny of their future. That the Soviet Union would bury the West. But it wasn't the West that the Socialist system had buried, it was the hopes and dreams of their own people.
Socialism has gone in Czechoslovakia, gone in Poland, gone in Hungary, gone even in Sweden. And here in Britain, I'll tell you what you'll see over the next few months. You'll see the Red Flag dying here. It's going. Going. Gone. Suddenly, it's just so old fashioned, so irrelevant, so out of date.
What I owe to this country and to its people is difficult to put into words. My greatest wish now is to give back something of what I have been given.
I want to work for a Britain that is the best educated and the best governed.
Where schools and universities are the finest and accessible to all. Where inner cities don't mean deprivation, but communities that bind and belong. And where no-one has to go in fear at night.
I should like to live in a world where opportunity is for everyone, where peace is truly universal, and where freedom is secure.
If that is what you believe in, then go back to your constituencies. tell them what we stand for. Tell them what we care for. And ask them to choose.
The Rt Hon John Major MP.