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In the first seventeen months this government has laid the foundations for recovery. We’ve undertaken a heavy load of legislation, a load we don’t intend to repeat because we don’t share the socialist fantasy that achievement is measured by the number of laws you pass. But you know there was a formidable barricade of obstacles which we had to sweep aside; and for a start, in his first budget, Geoffrey Howe began to restore incentives to stimulate the abilities and inventive genius of our people. Prosperity comes not from grand conferences of economists but by countless acts of personal self confidence and self-reliance.

Also, under Geoffrey’s leadership Britain has repaid three thousand six hundred million dollars of international debt, debt which had been run up by our predecessors -- and we paid quite a lot of if before it was due. In the last twelve months Geoffrey has abolished exchange controls over which British governments have dithered for decades. Our great enterprises are now free to seek opportunities overseas, and this well help to secure our living standards long after North Sea oil has run out. This government thinks about the future. As you know we’ve made the first crucial changes in trade union law to remove the worst abuses of the closed shop, to restrict picketing to the place of work of the parties in dispute, and to encourage secret ballots.

Jim Prior has carried all these measures through with the support of the vast majority of trade union members. Keith Joseph, David Howell, John Nott, and Norman Fowler have begun to break down the monopoly powers of nationalization. Thanks to them, British Aerospace will soon be open to private investment. The monopoly of the Post Office and British Telecommunications is being diminished. The -- The barriers to private generation of electricity for sale have been lifted; for the first time nationalized industries and public utilities can be investigated by the Monopolies Commission -- a long overdue reform.

Free competition and road passenger transport promises travelers a better deal. Michael Heseltine has given to millions -- yes, millions -- of council tenants a right to buy their own homes.

It was Anthony Eden who chose for us the goal of a property owning democracy. But for all the time that I’ve been in public affairs that has been beyond the reach of so many who were denied the right to the most basic ownership of all -- the homes in which they live. They wanted to buy. Many of them could afford to buy. But they happened to live under the jurisdiction of a Socialist council which would not sell and did not believe in the independence that comes with ownership. Now Michael Heseltine has given them a chance to turn a dream into reality; and all this, Mr. Chairman -- and a lot more -- in seventeen months. The Left continues to refer with relish to the death of Capitalism. Well if this is the death of Capitalism I must say it’s quite a way to go.

But Mr. Chairman all this will avail as little unless we achieve our prime economic objective: the defeat of inflation. Inflation destroys nations and societies as surely as invading armies do. It’s the parent of unemployment and it’s the unseen robber of those who’ve saved. No policy which puts at risk the defeat of inflation, however great its short term attraction, can be right. But Mr. Chairman our policy for the defeat of inflation is in fact traditional. It existed long before Sterling M3 embellished the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin or monetarism became a convenient term of political invective.

But you know some people talk as if control of the money supply was a revolutionary policy. Yet it was an essential condition for the recovery of much of continental Europe. Those countries knew what was required for economic stability because previously they’d lived through rampant inflation. They knew it led to suitcase money, the massive unemployment, indeed to the breakdown of society itself. They determined never to go that way again. And today, after many years of monetary self-discipline, they have stable, prosperous economies better able than ours to withstand the buffeting of world recession.

So at international conferences to discuss economic affairs, many of my fellow heads of government find our policies not strange, unusual, or revolutionary; but normal, sound, and honest; and that’s what they are. Their only question to me is this: "Has Britain the courage and resolve to sustain the discipline for long enough to break through to success?"

Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have and we shall. This government is determined to stay with the policy and see it through to its conclusion and that -- and that is what marks this Administration as one of the truly radical ministries of post-war Britain. Inflation is falling and should continue to fall.

Meanwhile, Mr. Chairman, we’re not heedless of the hardships and worries that accompany the conquest of inflation -- and foremost among these is unemployment. Today, our country has more than two million unemployed.

Now you can try to soften that figure a dozen ways. You can point out -- and it’s quite legitimate to do so -- that two million today doesn’t mean what it meant in the ‘30s; that the percentage of unemployment is much less now that it was then. You can add that today many more married women go out to work. You can stress that because of the high birthrate in the early 1960s there is an unusually large number of school leavers this year looking for work and that the same will be true for the next two years. You can emphasize that about a quarter of a million people find new jobs each month and therefore go off the employment register.

And you can recall that there are now nearly twenty-five million people in jobs compared with only about eighteen million in the 1930s. You can point out that the Labour Party conveniently overlooks the fact that of the two million unemployed for which they blame us nearly a million and a half were bequeathed by their government.

And when all that’s been said the fact remains that the level of unemployment in our country today is a human tragedy. Let me make it clear beyond doubt: I’m profoundly concerned about unemployment. Human dignity and self-respect are undermined when men and women are condemned to idleness. The waste of a country’s most precious asset -- the talent and energy of its people -- makes it the bounden duty of government to seek a real and lasting cure.

  If I could press a button and genuinely solve the unemployment problem do you think that I would not press that button this instant? Does anyone imagine that there is the smallest political gain in letting this level of unemployment continue? Or that there is some obscure economic religion which demands this level of unemployment as part of its grizzly ritual?

Mr. Chairman, this government is pursuing the only policy which gives any hope of bringing our people back to real and lasting employment. Indeed it’s no coincidence that those countries of which I spoke earlier, which have had lower rates of inflation, have also had lower levels of unemployment.

Now I know, Mr. Chairman, that there’s another real worry affecting many of our people. Although they accept that our policies are right, they feel deeply that the burden of carrying them out is falling much more heavily on the private than on the public sector. They say that the public sector is enjoying the advantages but the private sector’s taking the knocks; and at the same time maintaining those in the public sector on better pay and pensions than they themselves enjoy.

I must tell you that I share this concern and understand the resentment; and that is why I and my colleagues say that to add to public spending takes away the very money and resources that industry needs to stay in business, let alone to expand; that higher public spending, far from curing unemployment, can be the very vehicle that loses jobs and causes bankruptcies in trade and commerce. That’s why we warned local authorities that since rates are frequently the biggest tax that industry now pays, increases in them can cripple local businesses. Council’s must therefore learn to cut costs in the same way that companies have to.

And that’s why I stress that if those who work in public authorities take for themselves large pay increases, they leave less to be spent on equipment and new buildings. And that in turn deprives the private sector of the orders it needs, especially some of those industries in the hard pressed regions. So those in the public sector have a duty to those in the private sector not to take out so much in pay that they cause other’s unemployment. And that’s why we point out that every time high-wage settlements in nationalized monopolies lead to higher charges for telephones, electricity, coal, and water. They can drive companies out of business and cost other people their jobs.

If spending money like water was the answer to our country’s problems, we would have no problems now. Because if ever a nation has spent, spent, spent, and spent again -- ours has. And today that dream is over. All that money has got us nowhere, but it still has to come from somewhere. And those who urge us to relax the squeeze, to spend yet more money indiscriminately in the belief that it will help the unemployed and the small business man, they’re not being kind or compassionate or caring; they’re not the friends of the unemployed or the small business; they are asking us to do again the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.

Now we’ve made these points repeatedly. Indeed, Mr. Chairman, I am accused of lecturing or preaching about them. I suppose it’s the critic’s way of saying: "Well we know it’s true but we’ve got to carp at something." I don’t care about that, but I do care about the future of free enterprise: the jobs and exports it provides and the independence it brings to our people. Independence? Yes, but let us be clear what we mean by that. Independence doesn’t mean contracting out of all relationships with others. A nation can be free but it won’t stay free for long if it has no friends and no alliances. Above all, it won’t stay free if it can’t pay its own way in the world. And by the same token an individual needs to be part of a community and to feel that he is part of it. There’s more to this than the chance to earn a living for himself and his family -- essential though that is.

Of course our vision and our aims go far beyond the complex arguments of economics, but unless we get the economy right we shall deny our people the opportunity to share that vision and to see beyond the narrow horizons of economic necessity. Without a healthy economy we can’t have a healthy society and without a healthy society the economy won’t stay healthy for long.

Mr. Chairman, but it isn’t the State that creates a healthy society. For when the State grows too powerful, people feel that they count for less and less. The State drains society not only of its wealth but of initiative, of energy, the will to improve and innovate, as well as to preserve what is best. But our aim is to let people feel that they count for more and more. If we can’t trust the deepest instincts of our people, we shouldn’t be in politics at all.

And Mr. Chairman, some aspects of our present society really do offend those instincts. Decent people do want to do a proper job at work; not to be restrained or intimidated from giving value for money. They believe that honesty should be respected not derided. They see crime and violence as a threat not just to society but to their own orderly way of life. They want to be allowed to bring up their children in these beliefs without the fear that their efforts will be daily frustrated in the name of "progress" or "free expression." Indeed, that's what family life is all about.

There isn’t a generation gap in a happy and united family. People yearn to be able to rely on some generally accepted standards. Without them, you haven’t got a society at all; you have purposeless anarchy. And a healthy society isn’t created by its institutions either. Great schools and universities don’t make a great nation any more than great armies do, because only a great nation can create and involve great institutions of learning -- of healing, of scientific advance; and a great nation is the voluntary creation of its people, a people composed of men and women whose pride in themselves is founded on the knowledge of what they can give to a community of which they in turn can be proud. If our people feel that they are part of a great nation and they’re prepared to will the means to keep it great, then a great nation we shall be and shall remain.

So Mr. Chairman, what could stop us from achieving this? What then stands in our way? The prospect of another winter of discontent? I suppose it might.

But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learned from experience, that we are coming slowly, painfully to an autumn of understanding. And I hope it will be followed by a winter of common sense. If it isn’t we shall not be diverted from our course.

  To those waiting with baited breath for that favorite media catchphrase the "U-turn," I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to: The Lady’s not for turning. And I say that not only to you but to our friends overseas as well, and also to those who are not our friends.

In foreign affairs we’ve pursued our national interest robustly while remaining alive to the needs and interests of others. We have acted where our predecessors dithered. And here may I pay tribute to Lord Carrington. When I think of our much-traveled foreign secretary I am reminded of the advertisement -- You know the one I mean -- about "the peer that refreshes those foreign parts that other peers can’t reach."

It seems I got that right. Long before we came into office, and therefore long before the invasion of Afghanistan, I was pointing to the threat from the East. I was accused of scare-mongering but events have more than enough justified my words.

Soviet Marxism is ideologically, politically, and morally bankrupt. But militarily the Soviet Union is a powerful and growing threat. Yet it was Mr. Kosygin who said "No peace loving country, no person of integrity should remain indifferent when an aggressor holds human life and world opinion in insolent contempt." We agree. The British government is not indifferent to the occupation of Afghanistan. We will not allow it to be forgotten. For unless and until the Soviet troops are withdrawn, other nations are bound to wonder which of them may be next.

Of course there are those who say that by speaking out we are complicating East-West relations, that we are endangering détente. But the real danger would lie in keeping silent. Detente is indivisible and it is a two-way process. The Soviet Union can’t conduct wars by proxy in South-East Asia and in Africa, foment trouble in the Middle East and the Caribbean, invade neighboring countries and still expect to conduct business as usual. Unless detente is pursued by both sides, it can be pursued by neither -- and it’s a delusion to suppose otherwise.

And that’s the message that we shall be delivering loud and clear at the meetings of the European Security Conference in Madrid in the weeks immediately ahead. But we shall also be reminding the other participants in Madrid that the Helsinki Accord was supposed to promote the freer movement of people and ideas. The Soviet government’s response so far has been a campaign of repression worse than any since Stalin’s day. It had been hoped that Helsinki would open gates across Europe. In fact, the guards today are better armed and the walls are no lower.

But behind those walls the human spirit is unvanquished. And the workers of Poland in their millions have signaled their determination to participate in the shaping of their destiny. We salute them. Marxists claim that the Capitalist system is in crisis. The Polish workers have shown that it’s the Communist system that is in crisis. But the Polish people should be left to work out their own future without external interference.

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