Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (142 page)

With the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people declared to the world that we
have
the necessary energy and conviction to defend ourselves as well as a deep commitment to peace.

And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.

Nell Kinnock, the youngest leader in the history of the British Labour party, brought his socialists back from the brink of leftist, unilateralist politics in the late eighties but could not topple the Tories’ Margaret Thatcher. His oratorical style came to the attention of Americans when a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1988, Senator Joe Biden, was accused of having plagiarized a Kinnock speech—which, it turned out, he had. The American’s candidacy might have been saved by a simple willingness to attribute; nobody minds what speechwriters call “heavy lifting” as long as the source is acknowledged.

Kinnock’s appeal to the heart and conscience of the voter was worth stealing: universal in its theme, personal in its presentation. In his stump speech, delivered without notes at the Wales Labour party conference in Llandudno on May 15, 1987, the Labour leader ripped into Thatcherism as a heartless philosophy that was more concerned with the stock market than with the whole economy, cared not for the worker’s needs, and brought back the law of the jungle. His passionate speech, with minor changes, could be delivered with great effect by a liberal against a conservative anywhere in the world.

***

THANK YOU VERY
much for that warm welcome. I couldn’t wish for a welcome other than one that came from a man of Aberdare, Roger Vallis, a good comrade and friend for over twenty years, a man who I admire for every reason, as does the whole Labour movement in Wales.

I am happy to report that we are definitely in the last month of Thatcherism. We are in the last few weeks of that job-destroying, justice-trampling, oil-wasting, truth-twisting, service-smashing, nation-splitting, bunch-of-twisters-under-one-person government. The last few weeks.

But apart from that they’ve got a great record. Well, they must be a great record! Mrs. Thatcher’s told them to fight on that record; to fight with pride, she said. She’s been telling her party, “Fight with pride on our record.” I hope they do. Oh, I hope they take some notice of her there. I hope they do fight on their record—I hope they do fight with pride. “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” And so, surely, fall they will on June the eleventh. They certainly deserve to. After eight years in government, a three million unemployment figure is not seen as the badge of shame; it’s not seen as a cause of disappointment. A three million unemployment figure to them is a source of “celebration.” Lord Young leads the cheering; Norman Tebbit does the lap of honor; Nigel Lawson, who couldn’t do a lap of anything, he’s just poppin’ the corks, celebrating the fact that there are only three million unemployed; and the prime minister has decided to mark the event by becoming immortal!

On Tuesday, I read it in the papers: “Fourth-term target for Thatcher—on to the twenty-first century.” Well, I suppose that fits. She’s been lecturing us about the nineteenth century; now she’s talking about the twenty-first century—all she’s missed out is this century, the one that we’re living in! That’s all she’s missed out!

But I’ve been watching her on TV this week. Apparently that’s all I’m going to be able to do, ’cause she won’t debate with me face-to-face on the issues. I’ve been watching her. I saw her on Wednesday night, and I realized that in addition to all the great reasons and great causes for getting rid of the Thatcher government, of displacing Mrs. Thatcher from Downing Street, there was another reason—one of humanity, one of compassion, one of consideration—we have to do it for Denis [Thatcher] as well!

But it was Monday night’s performance that I found most interesting. She said she was full of ideas for continuing in the direction that they’ve been going. Full of ideas for continuing in the direction they’ve been going—well, we know what she means. New ideas like privatizing schools! New ideas like decontrolling rents! New ideas like paying for health care! What wonderful “fresh,” “new” ideas! What a great way to greet the dawn of the twenty-first century, with these wonderful “new” ideas. But anybody attracted by those “ideas”—the privatization ideas, the decontrolling ideas; the flog-off, the sell-off ideas—had better ask themselves one question. They’d better ask themselves why every single one of those “new” ideas was abandoned fifty and more years ago. If, if the payment for schooling was such a wonderful idea, why was it abolitioned, treated as a great leap forward for the people of this country? If uncontrolled rents did so much for housing, so much for families, why
were they ever controlled? What malicious government ever decided that the landlords couldn’t be left to deal with these things in their mercy? And when it came to paying for health care, if that was such a blessing, why was the ending of that system hailed as the greatest step forward in civilization, in postwar history? Believe me, the reason is simple, very simple. The system that existed before those changes, the very system that Margaret Thatcher wants to reintroduce in this country was wrong, and it was wretched, and it was squalid and brutal; it was rotten with injustice, and with misery, and with derision. That’s why they got rid of it! That’s why it was discarded—by popular demand! And that is why it must never be restored by prime ministerial demand.

That’s why this election has come just in time! Just in time for those whose lives and skills are being wasted by unemployment. Just in time for the children in a school system that is deprived and derided by a secretary of state for education who won’t send his own child to local schools. The election comes just in time for the old, who are being cheated out of pensions, and housing benefits, and much else. It’s come just in time for our health service, with its three-quarters of a million people in pain on the waiting list. And it’s come just in time, too, for all those who are not poor. Those who do not have children going through the schooling system. Those who are not old and anxious, not young and unemployed, not badly housed, not waiting for an operation—it’s come in time for those people, too. All the people who are not badly off, but who know that Tory Britain is a more divided, deprived, and dangerous place now than it has been for decades past! All those people—the election has come just in time for them. Because they know, as you know, that when Britain has a prime minister that has allowed unemployment and poverty and waiting lists and closures and crime to go up, and up, and up, that is a prime minister who must not be allowed to go on, and on, and on.

Listen, comrades. Our country has taken a beating in the last eight years, from a government with an “on your bike” employment policy, a “stay in bed to keep warm” retirement policy, a “flag day” health service policy, and a “jumble sale” education system policy.

People all over this country know that Britain couldn’t take thirteen years of that. Britain can’t take thirteen years of Thatcherism. Britain can’t serve such a life sentence without it becoming a death sentence for even more industries, and communities, and hopes—yes, and people, too! Because unemployment and poverty are not just “ailments,” not just misfortunes! They are mortal afflictions, as every experience and figure shows. Not that it bothers the prime minister. It doesn’t seem to influence
her at all. She will have us think that we are in the middle of a great “recovery.” Difficult to see the evidence, unless of course you wait until the end of the news.
There
you can see the recovery! The stock market is up! There’s the evidence for recovery! Unemployed? Don’t worry, stay at home and watch the stock market going up on the television! Worried about redundancy? Don’t worry, you can pass your time by looking at the Financial Times Share Index!

It strikes me very often, you know, that the reason that they put the stock market reports on the back end of the news alongside all those thrilling items about gerbils having triplets is because it’s got just about as much relevance to real life, as the gerbil incident. But there’s, there’s the evidence for the great recovery!

“Recovery” is an awful funny word to use about eight years in which manufacturing production hasn’t got back to the 1979 levels. “Recovery” is a very strange term to describe an economy that hasn’t had an
increase
of two million unemployed since 1979. “Recovery” is a very peculiar label for a situation in which manufacturing investment is 20 percent
lower
than it was in 1979. “Recovery”—it’s hardly the word to describe a country that in 1979 had a three-billion-pound
surplus
in manufacturing goods, and in 1987 has got an eight-billion-pound
deficit
in manufacturing goods! Buying more finished goods from the rest of the world than we’re selling to the rest of the world for the first time in all our history—and that is a “recovery”? Is it a recovery when one in five of sixteen- to twenty-five-year-olds haven’t got a job? Is it a recovery when you can hardly buy anything with a “Made in Britain” label in any shop, in any high street in this land? Is it a recovery when scientists are leaving in droves? Does that all become a recovery? I don’t think it’s much of a recovery.

Of course, there’s been a little recent “speeding-up”; a slight “late thaw.” It isn’t recovery; it’s a small remission in the condition of the economy that has gone through eight years of uninterrupted decline. And how has this little boomlet come about? How has it been ushered in this spring? Is it because the Tory policies are working? Is it because, for instance, at last they’ve achieved success with their strict monetary control? No, it can’t be that, because we’ve got absolutely
record
credit and debt. There is no monetary control. So has the improvement come about because another policy’s worked? Is it because they’ve cut taxation? Well, it can’t be that, because the tax burden on the national economy is 18 percent higher than it was in 1979, and the tax burden on the average family is 10 percent higher than it was in 1979. So it can’t be the great tax cuts. Is it because of strict controls on public expenditure? Has Willy Whitelaw’s “Star Chamber” won at last? It can’t be that either, because
last autumn after years of talk about “strict limits” on public expenditure there was an
overun
on public spending by 2.5 billion pounds. But, all of a sudden, it didn’t matter any more. It was a sign of strength, instead of being an offense, directly, against the most cherished “nostrums” of Tory economic policy. Can this little boomlet be coming because the policy of letting the exchange rate find its own level, subject to market influences, eventually work? No. Because since last summer they’ve been spending
billions
on trying to control the exchange rate. So why has there been a slowdown in the rate of decline? Is it because their policies have worked? No. It’s the opposite. It isn’t because they’ve been
applying
their policies; it’s because in the last six months they’ve been
abandoning
their policies! That’s why we’ve got a slight recovery in the British economy at the present time.

They haven’t taken what they call “the next step forward”; they’ve stood on their heads. That’s what they’ve been doing. They’ve done it in a few other areas too. Remember, it’s only a few months ago when they couldn’t afford to spend on roads. They couldn’t afford to spend on nurses. They couldn’t afford to spend on the Air Bus. They couldn’t afford to spend on cancer screening or on hospital waiting lists. They couldn’t afford to keep small schools open. They couldn’t afford to make heating allowances for the old. But, all of a sudden, in the last couple of months,
everything
is possible! It’s not big. The Air Bus gets
half
of what it needs; the twenty-five million to cut the waiting lists—twelve and a half million of that will have to go on five thousand hip-replacement operations. So what are they going to get? A cut in the waiting lists of ninety-five thousand for twelve and a half million quid? They must be joking! I mean, small schools being kept open! It’s a lovely idea. I’m expecting the parents from Havergrenist Primary School in my area to come to me and say, “Mr. Kinnock, do you think you could drop a line to Kenneth Baker or Nicholas Edwards if you can find him, and say, Could we have our school back?” It’s rubbish! It’s not going to happen. They’re not going to keep those schools open; they have just given the impression that, suddenly, there is a great deal… of opportunity.

They haven’t been making this recovery because of the successes of Tory policy. They haven’t been operating Tory policy at all as the election approached. What they’ve done is to drop those policies, jettison them, put them into cold storage, stick them in the box. And they’ve done it because the Tories knew they couldn’t face the country, in an election, on Tory policies. They couldn’t face the country with their own policies. They knew that, faced with the oncoming election, and against the background of what they’d done in the previous years, they have to stimulate,
and soften, and sweeten. They have to show some concern. They knew they had to turn the stick into a carrot as the general election came along. That’s the total sum of the recovery….

We don’t think it’s a soft sentiment. We don’t think it’s “wet,” as Mrs. Thatcher calls it. We care all the time. We don’t think it’s a weak idea. We care all the time because we think that
care
is not weakness. Care to us is the very essence, the greatest demonstration of strength. That’s what makes us democratic socialists. That’s what makes us so categorically different from them. We believe that strength without care is savage, and brutal, and selfish. It’s the strength of the jungle. We believe that strength, with care, is compassion; the practical action that is needed to help people
lift themselves
, lift themselves to their full stature, their full potential. The strength to care. Not the strength of the jungle but the strength of humanity. That’s real care! It’s not soft, it’s not weak, it’s strong and tough, and efficient. And where do we get the strength to provide that care? Do we wait around hoping for some stroke of good fortune? Waiting for some benign giant to turn up to deliver the people? Do we look for some socially conscious Samson to provide the care? We are rationalists. We’re socialists. We’re realists. We know that if we are going to
get
and going to
give
the standard of care that humanity requires we’ve got to get on with doing it, together. So we cooperate. We collect together. We coordinate so that everyone can contribute and everyone can benefit; everyone has responsibilities, like everyone enjoys rights. That’s how we put care into action. That’s how we make the weak strong. That’s how we lift the needy. That’s how we make the sick whole. That’s how we give the talent the chance to flourish. That’s how we turn the unemployed claimant into the employed contributor—by that collective action. By all being contributers, and all being beneficiaries. That’s the sensible way to ensure that strength is translated into care. We do it together. We call it collective strength, collective care. And it’s whole purpose is individual freedom. There’s no paradox there.