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Conservative Party Conference Speech 1993
Madam President, as I walked through the Winter Gardens during Conference Week, I passed the bookstalls and what do I see, I see memoirs, memoirs to the left of me, memoirs to the right of me...
... memoirs in front of me, volley, volley and thunder. Madam President, let me say right away I'm not about to write my memoirs, not for a long time.
There's a job to be done, a job of service to this nation and I believe in service. There's a job to be done, a job I was elected to do and I propose to go on doing it. Madam President, there's one aspect of the memoirs that I may write in future that you needn't wait for - I can tell you now, straight away, precisely what I think of my Cabinet.
Do you think any of them look worried? Apprehensive? Touch concerned? They needn't be, they're a first-class team, they're steady under fire, they're united and they're serving Britain superbly.
And isn't it good to see Michael back?
Did you see those exercises? I dare say they're going to enliven quite a few Cabinet meetings in the future.
Madam President, I've been coming to this conference on an off for about 30 years. It's a very great event in the political calendar, but it's something else as well. It's a family gathering and like all families, from time to time, we have our squabbles. So today, before I turn to other matters, I want to say something to you, specifically as leader of the Conservative party. Our party has served our country in Government more often and better than any other democratic political party in the world. We've done so because we're the broadest based political party this country has ever seen. Our support comes from all classes, all income groups and all parts of the United Kingdom. Madam President, I know our party. It can bear many things - unpopularity, deep controversy, setbacks - we've seen it all before, but there's one thing that demoralises our workers and that breaks apart our support in the country and that is disunity.
We've always known where it leads, and so, in this private gathering we have today, we might as well state it plainly. Disunity leads to opposition. Not just opposition in Westminster, but in the European Parliament and in town halls and county halls up and down this country. Of course we won't agree on every single aspect of policy. No one expects that. We're a democratic party with a whole range of lively ideas. But I think you'll agree with me upon this - people look to us for commonsense and for competence and we have a responsibility to you and to the people who put us in Parliament to show those qualities day after day. And that means we have to have our agreements in public and our disagreements in private.
And if agreement is impossible, and sometimes on great issues it is difficult, if not impossible, then I believe I have the right, as leader of this party, to hear of that disagreement in private and not on television, in interviews, outside the House of Commons.
Madam President, the last year has shown how hard every part of our party can fight for what it believes in. Let the next year show that we can channel all that energy together in a common effort against our opponents and for the policies we care about.
This week, an unusual week, this week we had two conferences for the price of one. First, there's the one we've been at.
And then there's the one we read about.
You know, I'm not absolutely sure that everyone's caught up completely with the current mood of our party, so I'm going to ask you three questions and I want to hear the answers loud and clear so that no one can doubt where you stand. They've very simple questions and very straightforward.
Aren't you fed up with people running our country down?
Aren't you fed up with people writing our party off?
When people ask, "Will the Conservatives win next time?", what do you say?
I didn't quite catch that.
Yes. Yes. And yes again. And you don't need shorthand to get that down.
You see, Madam President, this is a family gathering, just as I said. But now I want to reach out a little further to speak not just to you, but to those outside this hall who may be listening. I want to share some thoughts with you and see if they strike a chord with your own experience. I think that many people, particularly those of you who are older, see things around you in the streets and on your television screens which are profoundly disturbing. We live in a world that sometimes seems to be changing too fast for comfort. Old certainties crumbling. Traditional values falling away. People are bewildered. Week after week, month after month, they see a tax on the very pillars of our society - the Church, the law, even the Monarchy, as if 41 years of dedicated service was not enough. And people ask, "Where's it going? Why has it happened?". And above all, "How can we stop it?".
Let me tell you what I believe. For two generations, too many people have been belittling the things that made this country. We've allowed things to happen that we should never have tolerated. We have listened too often and too long to people whose ideas are light years away from common sense.
In housing, in the '50s and '60s, we pulled down the terraces, destroyed whole communities and replaced them with tower blocks and we built walkways that have become rat runs for muggers. That was the fashionable opinion, fashionable but wrong. In our schools we did away with traditional subjects - grammar, spelling, tables - and also with the old ways of teaching them. Fashionable, but wrong. Some said the family was out of date, far better rely on the council and social workers than family and friends. I passionately believe that was wrong.
Others told us that every criminal needed treatment, not punishment. Criminal behaviour was society's fault, not the individual's. Fashionable, but wrong, wrong, wrong.
Madam President, on all these things, received opinion with the wisdom of hindsight, received opinion was wrong. And now, we must have the courage to stand up and say so and I believe that millions and millions of people are longing to hear it.
Do you know, the truth is, much as things have changed on the surface, underneath we're still the same people. The old values - neighbourliness, decency, courtesy - they're still alive, they're still the best of Britain. They haven't changed, and yet somehow people feel embarrassed by them. Madam President, we shouldn't be. It is time to return to those old core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting a responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.
Madam President, I believe that what this country needs is not less Conservatism, it's more Conservatism of the traditional kind that made us join this party.
This week, this week we've made a start. Now we must see it through. It's time for this party to return to its roots. Madam President, our economic roots are clear. We're the party of Adam Smiths, not John Smith.
And Adam Smith was the apostle of free markets and that is why we regard the present world trade talks as so important. At meeting after meeting, we have battled to keep those trade talks alive against difficulty after difficulty, because nothing will do more for growth, nothing will do more for jobs, nothing will do more for confidence in our future than agreement in those trade talks. But if other governments don't play their part, if they hold back, if they won't face up to their domestic difficulties, then those talks could collapse and the dangers of that happening are devastating. They could unlock protectionism, poverty and unemployment on a scale that we have not seen since the 1930s. A great deal is at stake. And because a great deal is at stake, I don't believe we ought to be mealy-mouthed about the dangers. Today, on this issue, is not a time for holding back. So let me say to some of our European colleagues, "You're playing with fire". Or, to put it more bluntly, "Get your tractors off our lawn".
People accuse us - accuse us - people accuse us of being the business party. Well, you bet we are. We're for small business and we're for large business. We're for more business, not less business. When business booms, Britain booms, so we're for private enterprise and we're proud of it.
Over the last three years, the whole country has sweated and slogged and suffered to turn this economy around. Now, steadily, it's happening. Recovery is under way. That's the message from British business. The economy's growing. You may not see it yet, but it clearly is growing and it will show. And as the economy grows, the family budget will follow, so people have every reason to begin to start feeling better again. Inflation's down. Interest rates are down. Exports are up. Productivity's up. Retail sales are up. Manufacturing output is up. And the number of people in work is up. Madam President, it's the opportunity cocktail we've been wanting for years and it gives this country a head start on prosperity for the rest of this decade.
So, let's try and build up that confidence, instead of forever seeing it knocked down. Why don't we try something different? Why don't we tell people about Britain's successes? And let me tell you about them, in the strictest confidence...
... so they're sure to leak out.
Who says we can't make things in this country? Manufacturing industry is one of our great national assets.
Three weeks ago - sometimes it seems longer - three weeks ago I was in Japan, the industrial wonder of the world, and there with me were British manufacturers, selling solutions to problems that Japan hadn't solved. Successful British firms, international leaders in their own fields, firms at the leading edge of technology, selling successfully to the world technology leader. Two days later, I was in Malaysia, and we came back with £1 billion worth of orders for British companies. They didn't buy British to do our companies a favour. They did it because we made what they wanted and we made it better in this country than anyone else in the world.
Fourteen years ago, Britain was going nowhere. Now it's going everywhere and selling everywhere. We're making goods, making profits, making waves, right across the world. But despite that, despite the growth we've had there and the growth to come there, I must warn you, it's still going to be tough and everyone in business here today, or everyone who listens to what I say today, knows how hard they have to compete. At present, Europe, our biggest market, is stuck deep in recession. It's held back by social costs it can't afford. It's losing markets to Japan and to America and to the Pacific Basin. And that, Madam President, that, amongst other reasons, is why I refuse to accept the Social Chapter. It's not a chapter of rights, it's a charter for unemployment and we don't want it here.
What we do want is more of our best brains going into manufacturing industry. Let's see them give politics, the City, journalism a miss and go into manufacturing industry where their skills can be so badly needed.
And let's see our great manufacturing centres humming with activity as we move towards the millennium. Let's turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars, marks, and yen for other people. Ministers are told, whenever they go abroad, part of your job these days is to open the door for British business. We're backing exports with cheaper credit, more Government muscle and a new breed of diplomat - people who know as much about exports as they do about etiquette.
At home, at home we're taking the ridiculous burden of red tape off business and off citizen alike. And I can tell you, in the next session of Parliament, there will be a big deregulation bill to show how seriously we take that.
Here's a good old British maxim you can all remember: if the price is right and the goods are good enough, then sell abroad and buy at home. That's the way to make sure that British industry continues to boom.
But there are other things we need to do for industry. Industry isn't asking us for handouts and special help. It's asking us, as the Government to play our part in creating the right economic environment for industry to let loose its own energies and compete on a level basis with the rest of the world. So here, Madam President, is another ambitious target for our country: not months but years and years and years of sustained growth without the curse of inflation. That is at the heart of our economic policy for the 90s. It's a prize for which British Governments have struggled for 30 odd years and yet now, it's within reach and we are not going to throw it away.
Just remember, only three years ago, inflation was over 10%. Now it's under 2% and it must be kept low. Inflation is in check but it's never in checkmate. Back in the 70s, soaring prices destroyed savings. We all remember that. We all want to make sure it never happens again. But to do that, to make sure it never happens again and destroys businesses and livelihoods and savings, sometimes we may have to hold back our ambitions for tax and spending.
Madam President, let me get one thing entirely clear. Our views on tax are different from those of the other parties. What the Conservative Party is aiming for is a Government that lives within its income and without your income. Other parties tax because they want to. We tax only because we have to. So come rain or shine, taxes will always be lower under us than any other kind of government.
But success has another vital ingredient, getting public finances back under control. At the moment, largely because of the recession with the great collapse in come than that created, we have a huge gap between what Britain spends and the tax we take in. We have to narrow that gap. It is true - Government has spent more over the last two years. We had to help the weak and protect the vulnerable through the recession. And that, Madam President, is an important part of Conservatism as well.
But now Britain's recovering so we have to cut the deficit. We all agree on that but it's no good agreeing on the principle unless you take the action and it's no use people urging us to take the action unless they are prepared to back us when we have taken it for it may often be difficult.
There are tough choices ahead and we must make them and we will make them because it is in the interest of our country to make them and we have that responsibility.
Of course, people's opinions will differ. Some say tax more, some say tax less, some say spend more, some spend less but stay out of my backyard. All that's perfectly okay for the opposition but it won't do for the Government party. We can't have a lobby against every difficult decision. Decisions are what government is for and we have to take them.