The Rt. Hon. Sir John Major KG CH

Tag: Europe

  • Sir John Major’s Letter to The Times Newspaper – 18 April 2026

    The text of the letter sent by Sir John Major to The Times newspaper on 18 April 2026.

    Sir, I am pleased but not surprised that George Robertson (Thunderer, Apr 17) has opened up a serious discussion about the readiness of our armed forces. Defence cannot be an optional expenditure. The world has changed: it is more dangerous and less predictable. There is a war of conquest in Ukraine, a war of choice in Iran, and we cannot know how they will develop or what they foreshadow.

    The future of Nato is uncertain, and the European members of the alliance must face the possibility of conflict without the full-hearted support of the US which, for decades, has been the rock upon which democracy prospered. This was a heavy burden for America to carry, but we can no longer — with absolute confidence — depend on her now. We must deal with the world as it is.

    We are living in a belligerent environment, which may worsen. The UK — and Europe more generally — must be sufficiently equipped and able to defend itself. The argument that “we cannot afford it” will be irrelevant if Putin succeeds in Ukraine — and then, perhaps, moves on into Nato territory. If we and our European allies are not prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to protect our people and our sovereign territory, it will be a betrayal of our history and our future.

    Sir John Major
    London SW1

  • Mr Major’s Article on Europe – 15 October 2004

    The text of Mr Major’s article in the Conference Magazine – Conservative Group for Europe, published in October 2004.

    JOHN MAJOR:

    The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are at odds over Europe. There are Cabinet splits about the offer of a referendum. Dissent lurks on the backbenches. An anti-European fringe party threatens to elevate European policy into Party warfare while a largely hostile-to-Europe Press licks its lips, hungry to magnify the fall-out. This is European policy under a Labour Government in 2004. How hauntingly familiar.

    There are essentially three contrasting points of view upon Europe:

    (i) It can do no right – which is the view of extreme sceptics such as UKIP and the former Referendum Party – whom we might call the Ultras to distinguish them from those of more moderate scepticism;

    (ii) It can do no wrong – Federalists, extreme euro-philiacs; or

    (iii) That it is, on balance, favourable to the UK but that elements of policy frustrate and irritate. Like most of the British nation, I belong to the third – and majority – school of thought. I for one would like to make the EU more popular: but can it be done?

    Nothing, I suspect, will change the views of the Ultras – who are beyond arguing with over Europe: the worry is that they have begun to shift the centre of gravity towards arch-scepticism. This has the potential both to divorce the UK from Europe – which, for the Ultras, is the ultimate goal of their scepticism – and wreak havoc upon the British political system (especially the Conservative Party). Much the Ultras care: even those who call themselves Conservatives subordinate the Conservative Party’s interests to those of their anti-European cause. Indeed, some of the most prominent UKIP Members are former Conservative MPs who helped ferment the rebellions that crippled the last Conservative Government. No Conservative should expect help from them – and no Conservative should do any deals with them. Since nothing can be done with this group it is necessary to ignore their shrill message and direct policy to reassure the bulk of the electorate.

    What can be done to achieve this? It would be beneficial to have an honest debate among adversaries, but that is unlikely.

    It would be desirable to have a fair and balanced media, but that is unobtainable. The written Press especially, is as deeply entrenched in the dispute as the political adversaries. The pro-EU Press has an air of sanctimony in which all dissenters – and their arguments, even when valid – are grandly dismissed. And the anti-EU Press is relentless in its campaign and careless of the implications of it.

    If reason and commonsense could heal the rifts over Europe they would have been mended long ago. But words alone cannot do it; suspicion and unease have grown continually since the Single European Act in 1986 and nothing has assuaged it. Indeed, it has worsened since most European Treaties are the natural father of the successor Treaty.

    I recall that, throughout the negotiations on the Maastricht Treaty, I was constantly reminded that Margaret Thatcher had signed up to “ever closer Union” and a large extension of qualified majority voting (thus reducing the British veto). So why, I was asked, was I so obstinate over the Euro, the Social Chapter and a further extension of QMV?

    As a result of the growing collective influence of successive Treaties, the public tend to see European policy as a juggernaut that cannot be stopped and which tramples over every sensitivity. This is the most damaging perception of all and the root of much suspicion over Europe.

    Europe has now enlarged its membership to 25 Nation States, and when Giscard D’Estaing’s Committee was established to make recommendations that would update the practices and administration of the EU, I welcomed it. Europe needed reform to accommodate enlargement and many prizes loomed: consolidation of existing complex treaties; a more effective form of European administration and – above all – whispers that the recommendations would finally set out in Treaty form the limits of European imposition upon the authority of National Government. Against this yardstick, the European Constitution makes some helpful moves, but overall it is a lost opportunity for those of us who wished to minimise the existing suspicions about the direction of policy.

    Pro-Europeans should not fool themselves. It will not be easy to turn around the present hostility to the EU. For too long foolish myths have been, if not unchallenged, at least undestroyed. The reality is our European Partners are not concerned with “doing Britain down”; they do not all have a federalist agenda; they are less and less in the Franco-German camp. All this is true, but it’s hard to persuade a majority to agree. Indeed, among Member States, the Anglo-Saxon view of the EU has more supporters now than ever before, Margaret Thatcher and I would have warmly welcomed such reinforcements in earlier disputes. Europe can be made more acceptable to the British view, but only if the Ultras are put to flight. Since their myths are often the stuff of tabloid fancy, this will be hard pounding. Nor is it made easier by those criticisms of the EU that are well justified.

    What is the case for Europe for those prepared to be persuaded? It remains powerful. The EU is the largest, richest free trade area in history and spreads from Ireland in the West to the very borders of Russia in the East. In years to come, one can see those borders increasing ever further – to take in Turkey and, perhaps, other nearby States, and possibly even to reach an accommodation with Russia herself.

    But it is not just valuable for free trade. It has made a major European war inconceivable as the entangling of trade and investment build up common interests. It can provide an economic counter-weight to the power of the United States and the potential power of China. It offers opportunities to the rising generations that their forbears never enjoyed. These may be grand themes but they are indispensable to the well-being of individual Europeans.

    The fundamental problem, it seems to me – as a wellwisher who believes there is a limit to integration and that we are close to it – is that Europe’s true failings and its over ambitious agenda encourage any myth about it to gain currency.

    The wise European would be cautious about entering the Euro zone (which is plainly not in our short-term interest); very sniffy about parts of the new “Constitution” (which is a step too far in its present form – although it does have some good aspects); and would be determined to make an onslaught on fraud and mismanagement.

    Much is going our way in Europe and we need to rebuild domestic confidence in our membership of the European Union. To do so, we must neither fear to build upon developments in tune with our British instincts nor to resist those that go too far.

  • Mr Major’s Speech on Enterprise Europe and the Social Chapter – 4 February 1997

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech on Enterprise Europe and the Social Chapter, made to the European Policy Forum. The speech was made at The Conrad Hotel in Brussels on Tuesday 4th February 1997.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    A COMPETITIVE EUROPE – THE ENTERPRISE APPROACH

    Introduction

    Most politicians – across Europe and irrespective of political party – have in common some of the same aims and ambitions. They would like their country to be more prosperous and people to become better off. They wish to see economic and political stability. And everyone wants peace.

    In Europe, the greatest threat used to be war. Twice this century war has torn our Continent to pieces. It’s fifty two years to the day that the Big Three met at Yalta and set the course for Europe’s post-war history.

    Today, the notion of war between the countries of Western Europe is unthinkable. And the credit, in no small part, goes to the European Union. Peace is the prize that the project of Europe has won.

    We must build on that. That is why I believe that enlargement of the membership of the union – rather than more integration of existing members is the proper priority.

    But my theme tonight is not enlargement, or the IOC, nor even EMU, important as these issues are.

    The argument I advance today will not be new to my fellow heads of government. I have used it often enough in the European Council and privately. But I believe it needs a wider circulation.

    Today Europe faces a historic challenge – how to keep our companies competitive and our people in work in the face of intense global competition. Prosperity – that aim which every politician shares – depends on winning in that world.

    But Europe is not winning. 18 1/2 million people are unemployed – the size of Denmark, Finland and Sweden put together. We’re not creating enough new jobs.

    Over the last 20 years America has created 36 million new jobs, of which 31 million were in the private sector. In that time, the EU as a whole only created 5 million new jobs, of which only I million were in the private sector.

    Europe cannot brush that comparison aside. We have to ask why the private sector has not created extra jobs in Europe whilst it has elsewhere.

    We have to find the answer and act on it.

    I believe the answer lies in the policies Europe has followed.

    We are at a turning point. The choice is either to press ahead with policies that are causing unemployment, or change direction. Crudely, the choice is between two dramatically different economic philosophies – the enterprise approach, and the approach most people know as the European Social Model.

    It’s a debate in which the British Government is often portrayed as being out of step with her European partners.

    Up to a point, that’s true. We are out of step with the European social model. We believe it prevents job creation and creates unemployment. We believe that is politically wrong and economically wrong.

    But no-one should misrepresent our commitment to an enterprise approach to suggest we are against Europe.

    We are not. We are for Europe. Millions of Britons fought and died to defend Europe’s freedom. Our history is entwined with Europe. Our trade depends on Europe.

    Our arguments are not about Britain against Europe. Our arguments are about achieving success for the whole of Europe.

    When Britain disagrees with some policy or other our European partners often shrug their shoulders and say ‘Oh well, they’re only saying that because of the domestic debate in the UK. They’ll come on board in the end.’

    I understand why they say that – but they’re wrong on both counts.

    First when we oppose a policy it’s because we believe it’s a mistake – it’s not a public relations gesture. I don’t just mean a mistake for Britain. I mean a mistake for Britain and Europe as a whole.

    And second, our partners are wrong to believe we’ll come on board in the end. If we dislike the policy – we won’t.

    Because Britain has too much to lose.

    Britain’s Success

    I said earlier that unemployment is a European problem. It is. But it need not be.

    If Europe practised the enterprise policies it pays lip service to then it could become a dynamo.

    These policies aren’t always easy. Or popular. But they work. And because they work they put our people back to work.

    The evidence is easy to see.

    In other comparable European countries, unemployment rates are the highest for a generation – and rising. But unemployment in Britain is lower – and still falling. This is not just the economic cycle, it’s because over the years we’ve built a dynamic enterprise economy.

    Eighteen years ago, the British economy was a byword for failure. The state spent, taxed and controlled too much. It had all but snuffed out the flame of enterprise. That was Britain’s low point – and we changed direction.

    We decided that the only route to success was the enterprise model – curbing the power of the state, cutting back unnecessary regulation, and controlling spending so we could cut taxes.

    We put our trust in the free market, rewarded effort and success and, above all, made it worthwhile to create jobs.

    We broke the trend of rising state spending. The share of national income taken by the government has gone on rising in Europe. But in Britain, government spending will be down to 40% of national income next year.

    We cut income tax and corporation tax: we now have the lowest basic rate of tax for nearly 60 years, and at 33% the lowest main corporation tax rate of any major industrial country. And our overall tax burden is the lowest of any major economy in Europe.

    We privatised loss-making nationalised industries, bringing lower prices and better services and turning loss-makers into world-beaters.

    We tamed the power of the unions, and strikes have hit record lows.

    And we’ve kept up a constant battle against regulations that throttle businesses – particularly small ones.

    None of this has been easy. But it has meant Britain has been able to create more jobs in the last four years than all the other major countries of Europe put together.

    It’s not just British companies that are creating the jobs – though they certainly are.

    We’re now also drawing in billions of pounds worth of investment from around the world, one third of all inward investment into the European Union.

    And our near neighbours are investing in Britain too. In recent years Britain has been the number one destination for overseas investment by German business. Some 1600 German companies now have a base in the United Kingdom.

    The European Social Model

    But while we have put our faith in enterprise and the individual, others have followed the European Social Model.

    Britain apart, across the EU the state’s share of national income rose from an average of 45% of national income in the late 70s to 49% today.

    Many countries are now making Herculean efforts to bring it under control. They are right to do so. But they have a long way to go and tough problems to overcome, not least the mounting bills for state pensions next century.

    But public spending control is now one area where most European governments can agree on the direction for the future.

    The same cannot be said for labour market regulation. There is a sharp divide between Britain’s enterprise approach and attempts elsewhere in Europe to cocoon jobs by legislation.

    Protecting jobs by legislation sounds good. But it’s a fraud, a false security. It’s a case of bureaucracy defending the status quo as the quo inexorably loses its status.

    Yes, you can pass legislation to make it harder for a company to reduce its workforce. But if reducing the workforce is what is needed to survive, all you’ve done is to jeopardise the jobs of the entire workforce.

    It is a well meant but short-sighted policy.

    The harder it is for companies to adapt to change, the slower they will be to match the competition they face. The slower they react, the worse they do.

    Over-regulation damages growing industries too – the ones on which our security really depends. By making it more expensive to take on additional workers, it locks out the unemployed and adds to long term unemployment.

    It may sound responsible and caring. But the European Social Model is in fact fundamentally flawed.

    It deprives today’s companies of the chance to compete, and drives away tomorrow’s investment and new jobs.

    Over-regulation doesn’t work. And as a result, nor do millions of Europeans. The figures say it all.

    For every £100 paid in wages, in Germany non-wage costs add on an extra £31, £41 in France and £44 in Italy. In Britain, it’s only £15.

    Social Chapter

    When you look at those figures, it’s easy to see why Britain will not sign the Social Chapter.

    This is not some arcane dispute about a trivial statement of good intentions. The point is that if we signed it, the Social Chapter would be the mechanism to implement the European social model in all its aspects.

    It isn’t just what is in the Social Chapter today that matters. It is what will go in it.

    The fact that we have refused to sign it has acted as a brake on its development. But remove that brake, and new legislation will pile up fast.

    There is plenty in the pipeline already or under discussion.

    Shifting the burden of proof onto employers in sex discrimination cases.

    Extending full-time rights and conditions to part-time and temporary workers.

    Compulsory arrangements for informing and consulting employees at national level.

    Further restrictions on the dismissal of workers. New European rules on sick pay.

    All that and more proposals to regulate working time.

    That is why I will never sign it. Because one signature on the social chapter would mean ½ million signatures on the dole.

    All Britain would gain from the Social Chapter is a less competitive economy and more unemployment.

    First stop Social Chapter. Next stop social security.

    I have no doubt that if we signed the Social Chapter it would become a Trojan horse unloading on Britain the problems that brought us to a low point in the 1970s. The Social Chapter has the appetite to become one of the most far- reaching provisions in the Treaty covering everything from working conditions to union rights.

    And it’s no good pretending that once you’d signed up you could have second thoughts. It’s not some mail order mistake you can send back if you don’t like it.

    Once you sign up, you can’t opt out again. In the key areas there is no veto. Britain would be powerless to stop our businesses being burdened with all kinds of unnecessary regulations.

    Ever businessman in this room knows what the effect of that would be: one more burden on business, one more reason to set up somewhere other than Europe.

    Instead, I want the whole of Europe to wake up to the crying need for an enterprise approach so that Europe can get back to work and we can all prosper.

    This argument will be crucial at the IGC at Amsterdam. People will attack me for not signing the Social Chapter, and will question my motives: how can I disagree with the objectives of the Social Chapter – the promotion of employment and improved living and working conditions?

    Of course I share those aims: in Britain, we’re actually achieving both. But ill-considered burdens on business act against those objectives – not for them.

    To achieve those aims, we have to keep our businesses competitive. And we have to encourage enterprise and job creation and not penalise it.

    How is job creation helped by centralised, legally binding agreements between employers and trade unions?

    By mandatory works councils?

    Compulsory parental leave?

    What jobs does that create?

    What orders does it win?

    None.

    Some people try to shrug off the impact of new regulations by saying that large companies can afford the extra cost.

    That’s surely the wrong point. An extra 20 per cent or more on employment costs isn’t small change for any business. That money could better be used for fresh investment.

    And it’s worst of all for the small business. The owner manager with 10, 20 or even 100 employees. These are the companies that represent future employment. In the UK, for example, over half of all private sector employees are in companies with less than 100 employees.

    They don’t have the resources to fund huge personnel departments or employ compliance officers. So how are they supposed to find their way round the jungle of new regulations and absorb the costs? And if we’re throttling businesses like that where on earth do we expect tomorrow’s big companies to come from?

    This may be an unwelcome message in some circles. But it is one that is backed up by the IMF and the OECD, both of whom have drawn attention to the weaknesses in the EU’s labour market and the strengths of the UK’s performance. And of course it is backed up by business opinion.

    Only recently, the Chairman of Digital Equipment said:

    “It is no accident that unemployment in the UK is at a long time low. It is a lot easier to operate in the UK. The workforce is a lot more flexible.’

    The President of the German BDI made very similar points:

    “We have too rigid labour laws. We have too high social costs and taxes. We work the shortest week in Europe. The German government spends 50% of GDP as opposed to 42% in Britain. No wonder we have a problem”.

    The UNICE and the European Round Table of Industrialists want a moratorium on new EU social laws and oppose a new employment chapter.

    And a survey of small firms in the EU last year put labour and social laws second only to the availability of investment as the main constraint on expansion.

    In Britain, business is assessing the likely impact of the Working Time Directive. A recent survey by the British Institute of Directors showed more than half of their members believed the Directive would cost jobs in their businesses.

    The United Kingdom, of course, disputes the legal basis for this Directive, and will require our exemption to be firmly re-established in the current Inter-Governmental negotiations.

    But the Working Time Directive itself is not the point. The point is that the Working Time Directive is the thin end of a very large wedge.

    Business needs to speak up and say this. The facts are uncomfortable but they cannot be ignored. If Europe is heading in the wrong direction – and on this issue I believe it is- then we must face the problem and change the policy.

    Of course, this is difficult. I know anyone who points out the flaws in the social model can expect fierce criticism. But this criticism is generously laced with some contemporary myths. So let me address these myths that stand in the way of an enterprise Europe that could put its citizens back to work.

    The first myth is that without the new Social Chapter provisions workers would be open to exploitation.

    This is nonsense. Let me illustrate that by reference to Britain’s experience.

    Britain has comprehensive laws against racial or sexual discrimination, against unfair dismissal, and guaranteeing the right to trade union membership. Our health and safety legislation has resulted in one of the best safety work records in Europe.

    But the State should step in only where it is needed. Over-prescriptive legislation impedes a free labour market and adds to costs and not jobs.

    Proper negotiation between employer and employee is the best guarantee of workers’ opportunities and rights. We are now in the 1990s not the 1840s. Companies nowadays send young people on training courses not up chimneys.

    The second myth is that social legislation is necessary to protect workers from job insecurity.

    This is a simplistic and unrealistic view. In any modem developing economy there are always going to be some people changing jobs as the result of competition and technological innovation. That is just a fact of life.

    But what is important is that those who lose their jobs have a good chance of finding one again soon. The best way to guarantee that is to have a dynamic economy where job creation is encouraged.

    Making it more expensive for employers to take on new staff hinders, not helps, that process. All social legislation will do is to make it more likely that those who become unemployed stay unemployed. That is in no one’s interests.

    The third myth is that social legislation will help increase permanent employment rather than temporary jobs.

    Here too the evidence is clear cut. Britain has the lowest level of workers on temporary contracts of any major European country – 7% in Britain as against over 10% in Germany and France, and over 30% in Spain.

    And people get of temporary jobs and into permanent ones quicker in Britain too: 25% of employees on temporary contracts in Britain were in permanent work a year later, against just 14 ½% in Germany and only 9% in Spain.

    The truth is that it is the social model, not the enterprise model, that encourages temporary contracts. Employers use temporary work to avoid the red tape that comes with permanent jobs.

    In one European country, if you give an employee a permanent contact, you cannot dismiss him without first applying to the employment service. In two others you’d need permission from the works council. In yet another, large firms have to produce a “social plan” and may face lengthy appeals that can ultimately prevent restructuring.

    And in some other European countries – as many of you know from your own experience – dismissing an employee is virtually impossible. As a result, there is a bias against full-time employees, more are on temporary contracts and more are without jobs entirely.

    That is one illustration of the way in which the social model is well-meaning but soft-headed.

    Then there is the fourth myth: that without the Social Chapter we will only create low wage jobs and increase inequalities in society.

    I’ll let the facts speak for themselves.

    Britain has created over 900,000 new jobs in the last four years. Of these, 24% have been in professional occupations and 21% are managerial.

    Almost a quarter of a million new jobs have been created for managers, administrators and professionals within the financial services sector.

    So the truth is the British economy is producing good jobs. Skilled jobs and well paid jobs.

    But because we welcome full time jobs doesn’t mean we should scorn part-time jobs.

    Some opt for pan-time work because they want more leisure and can afford to reduce their hours.

    Many women or young people prefer a part-time job so that they look after their children or study more.

    Once people find work, albeit part-time work in some cases, our experience suggests that they are likely to see their earnings rise more quickly in a less regulated market.

    A recent OECD survey showed that in Britain over half of those in the bottom fifth of the earnings distribution had risen out of it within five years – a higher proportion than in any of the other countries surveyed.

    This underlines why a minimum wage would prove counter-productive. If it was above market levels it would price many first time jobs and part-time employees out of the labour force. It removes the bottom rung of the ladder. Where’s the social justice in that?

    And finally there is myth number five – the all-embracing myth – that a country without the social chapter is a ‘sweat shop economy’.

    That sort of overblown language is simply a substitute for real argument and fact.

    Yes, it does cost less overall to employ someone in Britain than in many other countries. But that is because of lower Government-imposed costs, lower personal taxes, and because prices are lower here. It doesn’t mean lower take- home pay.

    The ‘sweat shop’ economy myth is now so widespread that few people realise that a production worker’s take home pay is higher in Britain- in terms of what it will actually buy than in any other major European economy bar Germany. And of course, you’re more likely to have a job in the first place in Britain.

    The message for Europe

    So my message is clear.

    I am not seeking special arrangements to allow Britain to benefit at the expense of the rest of Europe. Our British interest is for Europe as a whole to succeed. We’ve nothing to gain if our largest export markets hobble themselves.

    My message is that Britain hopes Europe will succeed. But I believe it will only prosper in the long term if the enterprise model becomes the accepted way forward. Our arguments are serious. They are based on facts. They deserve careful evaluation.

    I believe Britain can help shape a Europe in which business can prosper. We are willing to play that role. It is in our interests to do so – and Europe’s interest as well. But we cannot win these battles alone. We need business across Europe to speak up as well before it is too late. Every day lost makes the battle harder.

    The British Government has made up its mind. Our enterprise economy is not negotiable.

    To me, the choice for Europe is simple. We can either stand up and be counted or lie back and be counted out.

    And that is no choice at all.

  • Mr Major’s Joint Press Conference with Helmut Kohl – 29 April 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s joint press conference with the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, held in London on Monday 29th April 1996.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I would like first to welcome Helmut to the United Kingdom, he is a very welcome guest and we have had, as we always do, some useful and wide-ranging talks on a number of issues most of which I will set out for you in the next few moments.

    Apart from detailed matter, of course we looked at wider strategic matters as well. We looked at the future development of the European Union; there are many areas in there where we are of a mind and some where we have differing visions but nonetheless we took the opportunity to examine those yet again this morning.

    Of immediate and contentious matters, of course we spent some time discussing the particular difficulties that there are in the beef market in the United Kingdom and of course in the beef markets right across Europe. We discussed both the problems and the prospects for the Agriculture Council meeting today that perhaps will extend into tomorrow. The Agriculture Council of course cannot make decisions on this matter, it can only make recommendations for subsequent decision. I indicated that what we are looking for out of these discussions are some positive signals of support for relaxing the ban that at present exists; certainly we are looking for specific movement on the lifting of the ban on gelatine, tallow and related matters and I indicated to the Chancellor that I hoped that would receive some support.

    There is a great deal occurring today in Brussels both in discussions and in bilateral contacts between the United Kingdom and our European partners and I hope we will be able to achieve some movement on this matter before long.

    We also took the opportunity this morning of looking again at the sheer scale of the commercial relationship between the United Kingdom and Germany. There has also at the same time this morning been a meeting between leading businessmen in British/German trade and they joined the Chancellor and I for a pre-luncheon reception.

    Britain is now Germany’s second-largest market around the world, Germany is Britain’s largest market for visible exports and a very important source of invisible earnings. There is a great deal of interdependence between our two economies, a very large number of German firms established here in the United Kingdom and a large number of British firms established in Germany. The trade flow between our countries is very large indeed and the mutual commercial interest is very great.

    On European matters, as we look forward to the inter-governmental conference, we discussed in particular subsidiarity, that is to say ensuring that decisions are taken at the lowest possible level and not automatically at the European level; we discussed the prospects for better employment across Europe and for enlargement of the European Union and on these matters we have asked our staffs to work together very closely so that we may concert positions that are very close.

    On competitiveness and deregulation the same circumstance applies: we are both concerned to improve competitiveness, we are both concerned to improve deregulation and there will be a high-level seminar on competitiveness later on in the summer.

    We talked about the prospects for monetary union. We do have differences in enthusiasm about that and an agreement upon the importance of the economic criteria before such a step could be taken and agreement that those economic criteria would need to be sustained. The British position is I think well understood by the Chancellor and we had an opportunity to discuss it this morning.

    We both agree very strongly on the need to sustain the transatlantic partnership and have decided to establish a new trilateral United Kingdom/Germany/United States-parliamentary forum. We think the importance of keeping the parliamentary opinion of these three countries in concert is extremely important both in the short and the long term.

    We discussed foreign affairs and followed up on our brief discussions at Moscow. We talked also about Moscow and about my visit to Ukraine.

    We discussed also Bosnia where the cooperation between Britain and Germany is excellent and where we have a joint view of present developments and a joint understanding of what we hope will be achieved later in the year.

    Defence cooperation with Germany continues to be both deep and wide-ranging.

    We discussed the prospects for the North Atlantic Council foreign ministers meeting in Berlin in June where one of the key themes will be the adaptation of NATO structures to deal with the evolving and changing nature of NATO.

    We also discussed the question of NATO enlargement where British and German views are very close indeed.

    We discussed also a number of other bilateral matters and in particular the joint wish that we set in train a couple of years ago to ensure that there were greater exchanges between young Britons and young Germans, one to the other’s country, to improve greater understanding for the future.

    We had a very wide-ranging discussion indeed which was conducted in the friendly spirit that I have come to expect in discussing matters, even contentious matters, with the Chancellor and I am delighted that we were able to have such a fruitful meeting.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    Allow me, if I may, to first of all use this opportunity to thank the Prime Minister most sincerely for the very warm hospitality with which we have been received, I myself and the members of my delegation, here in Downing Street. It is one of these visits that is part of our ordinary exchange of opinions but using the word “ordinary” does not actually correspond to the reality. It is more like a visit between very good friends because the relationship between the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany is an excellent one and the personal relationship between the Prime Minister, my friend John Major, and myself is excellent and because friendships between politicians and those who are responsible in politics do not automatically remove problems, I have never been under that kind of illusion. That may be true but on the other hand such a personal relationship – such a good chemistry as the Americans put it – between two people certainly helps to smooth the way a little bit, even in those cases where one may be of different opinions and it was actually purely a matter of chance but also a good occasion for me here at this Round Table because it afforded us a good opportunity to meet with representatives of the business communities of the two countries and the Prime Minister underlined once again how close, how useful, how important, particularly the economic relationship between the two countries is and in my statement to the Round Table I said that after all British Officers launched the initiative for the Hanover Trade Fair that now has become the largest industrial fair in the world and I was very pleased to learn that next year, the jubilee year of the Hanover Fair, the United Kingdom will be the partner country of the Hanover Fair and I think we have every occasion to turn this into a big bash celebrating the friendship that has evolved between our two countries and business communities over the years and this meeting between the two business communities has actually also served to underline once again that we are here on a very good course in further intensifying our economic relationship and our exchange of views. I must say that from our talks today I took away a number of hints as to where we can come to improvements.

    We talked about a number of issues that are of mutual interest. We exchanged views during this admittedly rather short meeting about a number of issues. We also mentioned obviously the governmental conference on Maastricht 2 which was, as you know, inaugurated in Turin and we talked about further developments. I must say that it is of tremendous importance to me that we should cooperate as closely as possible with our British friends in this particular stage of European integration and we talked in very concrete terms about how matters are developing and I would like to say this here most clearly because sometimes I read in the British papers the exact opposite. I would like to state quite clearly what my position is exactly.

    I am a champion – and a fervent one at that – of building this house of Europe at the turn of this particular century that has seen such great suffering, that we should make room in this European house for our partners and friends in Europe and that we should make room on a sort of permanent lease for our American friends. It is unimaginable for me that this common European house might be one house where the United Kingdom does not have a firm position and its place.

    I know that internally you have a lot of discussions going on here in the United Kingdom and certainly here would not be the place nor the time for me to barge into that but there are voices I sometimes hear in public here that there are people over there in Europe who want to push the British out of Europe. This is absolutely not the case and it does become any more true because people repeat it. I will certainly not act for a Europe where the British do not have their firm place and position but I do think that in building this European house we should bear in mind the different traditions, different historical developments, different geographical situations and also the different kind of roads that we have to travel to get to these goals and this is why I say it is so important that we should bear each other’s interests in mind, that we should not enter into an almost theological debate where we say we have the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the others are completely wrong in what they say but that we should come to a working together and cooperation that is characterised by common sense and I am very much persuaded that then we shall have a great opportunity to make headway, to take a big step forward. Obviously, there are areas where we have different opinions the British and German governments, and there are areas where we are very close together.

    With the European Union we may have a different opinion as regards the two of us and the other partners on subsidiarity for example. That is a word that I know many people simply do not understand the way we interpret it. I would define it in a very simple way. I would say that when building this common European house – using now Brussels as a synonym for the European Union – I think we should opt for Brussels taking only those decisions that can be taken at that level and can then benefit citizens the best and decisions that can better be taken on a national level, for example in London, Paris and then later on in Berlin, those should be taken on that particular national level and those decisions that are best taken at a regional level – in Germany for example on the level of the Laenders – should be taken on that particular level. That is an issue that obviously we need to elaborate on a little bit further and in Maastricht 2 we will also have to ask a question as regards the [indistinct] local authorities in the European Union.

    I only mention these few examples to illustrate that I do see very good chances for coming to a common kind of position and that I will tenaciously hold to the view that this is indeed a policy which is not aiming at isolating anyone but that this is a policy which serves as a policy of rapprochement of the British, of the French, the Italians and all the other partners in the European Union.

    I don’t want to go into another issue now at length but I think I should raise it at least, BSE. I think that today and tomorrow, from what we have heard, the Agriculture Council will discuss the proposals submitted by the British Government and I think that those proposals should be then discussed as quickly as possible by the Veterinary Committee of the European Union and I would wish for the Agriculture Committee not leaving matters at that tomorrow but coming to a decision as quickly as possible.

    I am very much looking forward to your questions and since you are very often writing about me, I would even more welcome you writing about me when I am actually here to answer your questions.

     

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

    QUESTION (Robin Oakley, BBC):

    Chancellor Kohl, you have frequently said that Europe cannot afford to travel at the pace of the slowest ship in the convoy. Have you persuaded the British ship, in your talks with Mr. Major today, to move any faster?

    Can I ask the Prime Minister whether he and Chancellor Kohl have agreed that there should be any relationship between countries which stay out of an inner-core single European currency, any exchange rate mechanism to link those who stay outside and those who form any inner core?

    Finally, could I ask Chancellor Kohl if he did eat beef for lunch today?

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    Just as my friend John Major, I had indeed beef for lunch and I ate it and I think that was probably the underlying purpose for this press conference – to answer your question!

    What you have said by way of your second question you quoted me correctly but then automatically transposed that to the United Kingdom. This was not my meaning, that was your opinion from the BBC. I did not automatically declare the United Kingdom to be the slowest ship in the convoy which is why I cannot give you an answer to that question.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me pick up those points.

    We had an excellent luncheon.

    As far as the slowest ship in the convoy is concerned, I am delighted that the Chancellor was able to respond to that because it isn’t the only occasion where a remark like that has been wrenched out of context domestically and there has been an assumption that it was the United Kingdom that was in either the Chancellor’s mind or whosoever may have made such a remark in the European Union. That isn’t the case. Indeed, one of the things the Chancellor and I have been discussing today is the desirability – the necessity – of a more flexible approach to Europe as Europe develops further and I think it is much to be hoped that people will appreciate that those are the sort of things that are under pragmatic and detailed discussion at the present time.

    We didn’t spend a great deal of time discussing the possibility of a fresh exchange rate mechanism, our finance ministers discussed that some time ago and I think the British position on that is well known and hasn’t changed so we didn’t spend any time particularly discussing that this morning. We did discuss the range of matters that I set out and the Chancellor set out.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I should perhaps mention and add to what the Prime Minister just said on this last point.

    We shall decide in the spring of 1998 on this matter and not a minute earlier and therefore I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense to enter into philosophical debate on what may or may not happen. In my day-to-day life as a politician, I am in many cases forced to take certain decisions but in Germany too a new form of penitence seems to have evolved. In former times, usually you had your sin first and penitence later; today, you have penitence and also the sort of penalty first and then the sin but I am actually one of the old school for that matter.

    QUESTION:

    You are never enthusiastic about this kind of building and you showed a certain reservation about enthusiasm in European development when you made your statement just now. Can you enlarge on this a bit?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I don’t think that there is any doubt at all about the British wish to see Europe develop. What the main debate is about is the nature, pace and style and the purpose of the development and there is a great misunderstanding I think often in this country – partly it is linguistic, partly it is simply modes of expression – as to what is often meant by what is said by our European partners. The Chancellor is here so he will want to add something to this.

    Often, when people talk about a “European house” in this country referring, to what has been said in Europe, there is an assumption that that European house is going to be centralised, that all the decisions are going to be taken at the centre and more and more is going to be sucked away from the nation state. That isn’t the sense in which it is frequently used.

    I cannot envisage a time in the future when the Germans aren’t Germans, the French aren’t French, the Italians aren’t Italians in all their instincts and the British aren’t British so I think we should actually look at what pragmatically we are discussing with the development of Europe.

    Where are the areas of development that are of importance? – The single market. Who were the proponents of the single market? The British and the Germans were the great proponents of the single market. What is another area of great development? Enlargement of the European Union in order to spread the opportunities that exist in a democratic free market further across Europe. Who were the great proponents of enlargement? The British and the Germans were the great proponents of enlargement. Who were the proponents of saying too much must not actually be centralised? You have just heard the Chancellor speak of subsidiarity; he and the British are very much at one upon those points.

    The area where there has been some difference is the question of a single currency and Germany are clear that Germany favours a single currency. I made it clear at Maastricht that we reserved our position on a single currency.

    We both want to see – if you wish to use the parlance – a European house, it is the nature of the construction that is a matter of legitimate debate and if I can make the point, it is a matter of debate. It is not a matter of artificial conflict as it is so often presented. Britain and Germany agree on many things, we disagree on some other things but I think I can say – and I think the Chancellor will confirm – that where we disagree we don’t disagree with animosity, we disagree because we both recognise that the other country has a legitimate point of view and to borrow the Chancellor’s comments of five minutes ago, different traditions and a different historical experience.

    In the discussions that I have had with the Chancellor and my European partners I have found that understanding. It doesn’t alter the fact that on some issues we have different policies but those differences aren’t the subject of unpleasant and nasty disputes. It is a question of how we develop in mutual interest and there will be differences about that and we will see those gradually solved as Europe develops.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    Allow me, if I may, just a brief remark on that particular issue. Let me be very frank with you. It is not a question that may be of any local importance from London or for Bonn, it is a Europe-wide issue. I don’t understand this discussion at all because it sometimes demonstrates an impatience that I find absolutely absurd. I remember my first EEC summit, as it was called then, in Copenhagen in 1982, at the time the word that was most widely used to characterise the European Community was Euro-sclerocis, a very bad disease that had befallen Europe. And now here had I in the December of that year been here in this room with you I would not have believed that we would have come so far as we have come and everyone told me at the time it will not work, the internal market won’t work, Maastricht 1 will never come about, and then all of a sudden the treaty was there, and then people said it will never be ratified.

    So again and again we overcame those hurdles and we did move forward and it is simply not true that we have taken too long. Just look at European history over the past 200 years and it is only then that you have a correct yardstick as to what sort of distance we have travelled.

    Let me mention one example where we do disagree, at least at this particular point in time. For example on the issue of Maastricht II as regards intensification of our cooperation in the area of internal and justice matters, now if it were the case that we will not be able to come to some sort of conclusion in Maastricht II, would it be such a terrible thing if we were to find a formula that allows us to look at this matter again in let us say 5 years time. And then in the meantime we try to come to some sort of common decisions on an intergovernmental level. And these decisions will come, no matter what we may say now, at the very latest in 5 – 6 years there will be no European government that will be able to stand for elections and win the election shirking away from combating the threat from international crime and taking a defensive stand on it. And we will see that we will not make any headway on this particular issue on a purely national level. And it will be just the force of the situation as it stands at that time that we have to come to some sort of European-wide settlement. Obviously we have incredible amounts of drugs, for example, that are being brought into the European Union. This is not the fault of our police, but we have to come to a European-wide solution for that.

    So perhaps let us first of all come to some intergovernmental agreements. But it won’t be the end of the world for me. The decisive thing is let us make a move in this particular direction. And I am a pragmatist and it is rather a strange occurrence that it should be a German all of a sudden who opts for pragmatism because we have always been accused of doing exactly the opposite.

    So I am for a step by step approach and we shall make progress in one field and perhaps not in the other field, so well then there are areas where for the moment we will not make any headway at all, but this common European house will be built perhaps with different stages of development, but it will come about.

    QUESTION:

    Chancellor, I was interested in that last answer when you talked about internal discussion in this country, would you accept that some of the difficulties are driven by what people see as a relentless timetable towards EMU in the treaty, though Britain has its opt-out, and your own great enthusiasm for political union and that worries people here, and could that perhaps go slower as you suggest that other things might go slower? And Prime Minister, could you ever accept a situation where individual candidates, standing in election, could say in their individual addresses no to a single currency when that will not be your position in the main manifesto at the next election?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    On the second question, I suggest you wait for the election. The government’s manifesto will be quite clear, our position on a single currency is quite clear. We have said repeatedly that we don’t have the information upon which to base a proper decision at this stage. It is the most important decision that anyone is going to take for very many years, it has to be right, the economics have to be right and it is folly to take a decision in advance of knowing what the circumstances may be, for a country with the trading tradition of this country and the importance of sterling at an international trading currency. So I don’t anticipate the problem that you refer to arising, I read about it in the press, I don’t anticipate it arising and I think the position we will set out in the manifest on a single currency is well known.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I must say I don’t see this, what you mentioned. Without this kind of planning, without this kind of timetable, we would have lagged significantly behind the sort of progress that we have achieved. Let me give you one example that applies to Ireland, but that actually in more ways than one applies to the rest of the European Union as well. Ten years ago, for example, I had a number of fights with Francois Mitterrand. It would have been inconceivable at the time that as regards the matter of convergence of economic policy we would have made the sort of headway that we have made, and the citizens in Europe, after all, have drawn a great benefit from that. I don’t know, as regards the EU average, as regards inflation, but I think generally in the UK it is between 2 – 3 percent, and I was told when I was a student at the university that this is virtually no inflation, and I think you have 2.3 or something, so that means it is the kind of social policy that is geared to those who have small incomes. So why don’t we talk about the positive results that this has yielded for individual citizens?

    QUESTION:

    Do you both think that you could win a referendum about the single currency in your countries?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Well we will have a referendum in this country if and when a British Conservative Cabinet decides to enter a single currency. If that were the case then we would clearly campaign for that. The answer, if you ask me whether we would win such a referendum today, is no we would not win such a referendum today, but then there is no prospect of us joining today so the situation does not arise.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    As far as I am concerned I have never been a great friend of this kind of democracy that is plebiscite because I am familiar with German history and up until 1933 it was not purely a coincidence that the fathers and mothers, as it were, of our constitution were very familiar with the Weimar Republic and later on very familiar with the concentration camps under the National Socialists who [indistinct] champions of democracy. And if we had this instrument in our constitution I would certainly not hesitate in using it, but if I use it for this particular area of politics I would have to use it for other areas of politics as well and I have great doubts whether that would actually lead and improve internal peace in our country because there are a number of issues, on for example immigration, that in many ways move people a lot in Germany and we don’t intend at all obviously to introduce that, it would mean changing our constitution and I have no intention of doing that. But if you ask me in concrete terms that if we held that, how would we decide, and I have no doubt at all that if we had this kind of referendum the majority of people who are well informed in our country would opt for it because they know that peace and [indistinct] of the 21st century depends on matters such as these.

    QUESTION:

    Chancellor, you have eaten British beef today and enjoyed it. Would you now tell the world clearly here today – eat British beef, it is safe and enjoyable?

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I ate British beef but I am not a marketing manager for British beef. I said what is going on in the Commission and you don’t honestly expect me to say something like this, a sort of advertising slogan.

    QUESTION:

    Can I ask you both would it be possible for a member state of the EU to go on enjoying the market advantages while resisting any deepening or further integration of European institutions?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I gave you the answer some time ago when I said we were talking about the problems that develop in the Community and the advantages of flexibility. The European Union is flexible now. There are a whole range of flexible instruments within the European Union. The two most obvious ones are the position of the Danes and the British, for example, on a single currency; the position of the British on the social chapter, but they are by no means the only illustrations. So the answer is yes.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I don’t have this kind of concern, I don’t have the impression that we have this particular kind of problem that no-one wants to get into the European Union, quite the contrary, I think we have rather the opposite problem, there are so many who want to come at the same time, so I don’t share your concern. Actually the European Union seems to be one of the places to be in the world. If you don’t believe me, go to Tokyo, go to the Wall Street Bank of New York and ask them, to Latin America, other parts of this world, why do all of these people want to do business with the European Union, why at this conference that both of us attended in Bangkok only a few weeks ago meet with such interest – because we are the place to be.

    QUESTION:

    You said before that you would urge the Agricultural Commission to speed up the decision on the beef ban. Do you also respond to the Prime Minister’s request for help and support in a partial lifting of the beef ban?

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I don’t think it would be entirely fair, I mean I am standing here as the German Head of Government and I am not part of those negotiations. My colleagues therefore are meeting there in Brussels today and tomorrow, they intend to look at the British proposals, they will submit it to the Veterinary Committee in order to examine it. The only plea I have is don’t let matters stand as they are but do it as quickly as possible and then there will be a concluding session where we come to a decision. But I don’t think it would be in any way a reliable or very serious answer that I could give at this point in time. After all, the debate will take place tonight when the individual Agriculture Ministers meet on that matter.

    QUESTION:

    Chancellor, Douglas Hurd said at the weekend that you no longer believe in a European super state, I just wonder if you could confirm that analysis or not. And Prime Minister, on the matter that Mike Brunson raised, are you worried that some people in your own party are now using the alleged electoral threat by Sir James Goldsmith to have one last push at making you rule out a single currency in the next parliament?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me answer that point first. I think you must ask other people what their motives are. I have made the position clear. We will decide upon a single currency when it is necessary for us to decide upon a single currency and we are not going to do that precipitately. I know many people think it would be extremely convenient if I were to say now, no we are not going to do it. But I think in the national interest I need to see what the circumstances are, I need the British voice in the negotiations right up to the time when the decision is made. I don’t want the British voice to be excluded from those negotiations.

    Whether we in the event turn out to be part of a single currency, or whether we in the event say we will not be part of a single currency, what happens in the development of that currency is important to the national interest in this country. If our European partners proceed with it, it is not a matter that we can just ignore, it will have its implications not only for those countries but for every country right the way across Europe. And frankly, for a country of the size and influence of the United Kingdom to exclude itself from the most important economic debate that Britain has had for 50 years, and will have for 50 years, does not seem to me to be in the British national interest.

    So we will not exclude ourselves. We will make a choice when we are compelled to make a choice and then we will decide upon the basis of what we think is right for this country at that stage. So there will be no change in our position upon that point.

    CHANCELLOR KOHL:

    I am not familiar with this particular quote from Douglas Hurd’s speech. If I understood you correctly, you said that he had said I was no longer a proponent of the European super state. If this is actually what he said, I don’t quite understand how he can say something like that because I have never been a champion of a European super state, perhaps he has read it in one of your papers here but it has certainly never been an opinion of mine. For a time perhaps there have been a few misunderstandings, because we actually adopted a sentence out of Churchill’s Zurich speech, it is a very beautiful speech and a very beautiful phrase, but I think it was a bit misleading for our people. At the time I was 17 years old and he appealed to the Europeans, to the Germans, the French, but to the Europeans generally speaking that they should build these united states of Europe and perhaps that was a bit of a misleading kind of slogan. I used it for several years and the association obviously was that people thought we wanted to build the United States of America on European soil, but this is something that we never wanted and we have always said we remain Germans, we remain British, we remain Swedes, and this is different than being from Texas, from Oregon, from Minnesota or New York. This is a misleading kind of comparison even though it may be from Winston Churchill and may sound very nice.

    I actually gave a speech a few years ago at a party meeting that because it was misleading we should no longer use this particular expression. I said we are building the European Union and the European Union, and again I think this is a bit misleading perhaps and may lead to different interpretations between the British and the Germans and I did try to define what I mean by mentioning this image of a common European house. It simply cannot be a centralised state and even though the British and the Germans may be of exactly the same opinion as regards the approach, we talk about federalism and for many people here in Britain in what we understand as federalism means quite a different thing.

    What we understand when we speak about federalism is exactly what you want, but it is perceived differently here. We are saying on the level of the citizens, on the local level, on the land level in many areas of Europe, on a regional level, this is where decisions should be taken that can best be taken there, this is what we understand when we speak about federalism, it is exactly the opposite of a centralised state. I have always been a very fervent champion of federalism in Germany. I would hold that one of the most important, and then subsequently most positive decisions by the parliamentary assembly when they drew up our constitution and basic law was that they sort of tried to make room for the sort of variety that has always existed in Germany, that the Lander, that the Bavarian, the man from the north will find that he has left an imprint on the constitution and that they all are part of one whole. So I have certainly not said at any time that [indistinct] super state.

    First of all I would like to thank Douglas Hurd for actually mentioning me at all because it is after all always an advantage. I have never been a man who has been a champion of federalism. I have always been, in the German sense of the word, how we understand it, not how you British understand it, a federalist. And actually those who think alike here in the United Kingdom should be creative and come up with a different kind of expression that exactly says that – this building of a common European house. So thank you once again. I will read your leading articles and will see what you come up with.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to 1995 Conservative Party Conference – 13 October 1995

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech to the 1995 Conservative Party Conference, held in Blackpool on Friday 13th October 1995.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Introduction

    Today is Friday the Thirteenth. Remember it. This is the day I’m going to tell you how we’ll win the next election.

    And if anyone is superstitious they shouldn’t be.

    This is Margaret Thatcher’s 70th birthday and she won three elections in a row.

    So the omens are good.

    Many happy returns to Maggie today, and it’ll be many happy returns for us at the Election.

    We’ve won four and we’re going for five.

    All elections are important.

    But the next is a watershed.

    Because whoever wins will inherit the strongest economy for decades.

    We built that economy.

    It wasn’t easy.

    And I don’t know about you but I’m not in the mood to hand it over to Labour to wreck.

    So, Mr Chairman, we’re going to mount the fight of our lives. And when the time comes, we’re going to deliver the win of our lives.

    Leadership

    But first a bit of housekeeping.

    As you know, in June I resigned as Leader of our Party and called a leadership election.

    I did so because speculation was drowning out everything we were trying to do.

    How could you argue our case on the doorstep with that sort of thing going on?

    Well of course, you couldn’t.

    It had to end – whatever the risk.

    I might have lost. If I had I would still have been at this Conference. Still offering my full support to the Party, I believe is best able to govern this country.

    But I won.

    And today, face to face, I’d like to thank you – for your support – when the going was rough.

    Thank you, too, to my campaign team led so ably by Robert Cranborne.

    And there’s someone else who has always been there when the stakes were high.

    She’s here today too.

    Of course – I mean Norma.

    Labour

    But, that was yesterday.

    Today, we meet united, healed, renewed – and thirsting for the real fight – with Labour.

    Last week the Labour leader predicted that we’d wave the Union Jack. Of course. This Party has never waved any other flag and we never will.

    To win, Labour must persuade people this country is on its knees. Clapped out. Beaten up.

    They shouldn’t find that too difficult. That’s the way it always is – under Labour.

    But they know it isn’t true under the Conservatives. And the world knows it isn’t true.

    The world knows the only way our country would match their deception would be if they were running it.

    I don’t question Labour’s patriotism.

    But is a funny patriotism to rubbish our achievements – how shall I put it? – before breakfast, before lunch, before tea and before dinner, and then get up and do it again before breakfast – on the Today programme.

    I don’t doubt Labour’s good intentions : the road to hell is paved with them.

    They say they want to help businesses – so they’ll clobber them with the Social Chapter.

    They say they want to help the unemployed – so they’ll destroy jobs with a minimum wage.

    They say they want to treat the unions fairly – so they’ll give them privileges even Michael Foot didn’t dream of in the 1970s.

    I think Labour has been re-reading “1984” – the book that introduced “Doublethink”.

    You remember – doublethink is the trick of holding two contradictory beliefs at the same tine – and accepting both.

    It was the brain-child of another public school-educated Socialist. His name was George Orwell.

    But actually it wasn’t. That was his pen name.

    His real name – was Eric.

    His surname?

    You’ve guessed it. It was Blair.

    Eric Blair.

    He changed his name. I can’t say the same thing about my opposite number.

    He’s changed everything else. His politics. His principles. His philosophy.

    But – to the best of my belief – he hasn’t changed his name.

    At least not when I got up to speak.

    But he’s abandoned so much, so fast you never know.

    The Liberal Democrats support all Labour’s nonsense.

    But they’re neither here nor there.

    Because as we saw the other day, they’re the only party in British political history that has had its entire battle plans wiped clean off the media – by a goldfish.

    The Great Divide – Us Versus Them

    Mr Chairman, around the world, people now believe Britain is winning.

    But don’t let’s fool ourselves.

    I’m looking to the future.

    There’s still a lot to be done.

    The new Millennium will bring longer, fuller lives.

    Shifts in world power.

    More and more competition.

    Changes in technology, fast and furious.

    And, even with growing wealth, new welfare problems.

    That is the Millennium challenge. We have to respond to it.

    Explain to people the opportunities within their reach. Tell them what can – and cannot be done – and what the price will be.

    By telling them I mean really telling them. I don’t mean insulting them by trivialising issues for instant media consumption.

    I believe the public will respond to the plain truth.

    I believe they’re as sick as I am of politics by soundbite, by nudge and wink.

    No wonder people are turned off politics. The way some politicians conduct the debate would disgrace a nursery.

    There are only two ways to the future. Labour’s way. And there’s ours.

    Scratch beneath Labour’s rhetoric and you see the reality. Prescott, Beckett, Blunkett, Dobson, Cook. They believe a socialist state can do it all.

    If that were true the past 50 years would have been quite different. Cradle to grave socialism – I always thought that rather constrained way to go through life.

    But the State can’t do it all – and, what’s more, the State shouldn’t do it all.

    Beat Labour one more time, and we’ve beaten socialism for good.

    Our way – the Conservative way – is very different.

    We believe the Government should choose what Government should do – and do it better.

    Beyond that we should help individuals shape their own future. Help them – but not nanny them.

    Conservatism is choice.

    Choice is liberty.

    Blazon it on your mind.

    We should offer choice whenever we can.

    But there’s one thing in our Tory tradition that has inspired me, it’s our historic recognition that not everyone is thrusting and confident and fit. Many are not: and they deserve protection. With a Conservative Government they will always get it.

    Individual rights will be defended.

    Ownership will be encouraged.

    And, above all, we will stand for – and will protect – one United Kingdom, unbroken and undivided.

    The Enterprise Centre of Europe

    We Tories often talk of business and the need for success.

    It’s worth remembering why. It’s quite simple.

    If business makes profit, it provides jobs and pays taxes.

    And those people with jobs pay taxes too. Taxes pay for our teachers, our nurses and our public services.

    So we must make business more successful.

    We are in Europe – and rightly so. It’s the richest home market in the world.

    Half of our trade goes there.

    But half does not. And both halves are equally important.

    That’s why Malcolm Rifkind will actively pursue the vision of Atlantic Free Trade – refreshing our vital links with the Americas.

    If we’re to compete with America, Japan and the Pacific Basin, we must be the unrivalled Enterprise Centre of Europe.

    Let me spell out precisely what that means.

    It means high spending and high taxes are no longer an option. The state spends too much of our national wealth. We must get that share below 40 per cent – and keep it there.

    The state spends too much of our national wealth. We must get that share below 40 per cent – and keep it there.

    If the State spends too much, it taxes too such.

    In the recession, we had to put taxes up to protect the vulnerable.

    Now the recession is over, as soon as prudent, we must get taxes down again.

    And – be in no doubt – I don’t only mean income tax.

    I mean the taxes that damage investment and stultify wealth creation. I mean inheritance tax. I mean capital gains tax.

    We must cut them, and then – when affordable – we should abolish them.

    We receive more investment into Britain than any other European Country.

    This very day, the Queen will open Samsung’s massive new development in the North East.

    Fujitsu, Daewoo, Nissan, Black and Decker, NBC, Siemens have all decided their future is here.

    You don’t hear Labour talk of this.

    Of course not. These companies didn’t invest in a socialist Britain.

    They set up here because it’s a Conservative Britain.

    And they’ll only be followed by others if we keep Britain Conservative.

    Labour say they know how to run a market economy.

    I asked Humphrey the cat about that.

    I’ve the first time I’ve seen him move so fast.

    It took all the resources of the Royal Army Medical College to get him over the shock.

    Labour have stood in the way of everything we’ve done.

    Where were they when we cut inflation?

    When we faced down union power?

    When we fed life back into the corpse of so many nationalised Industries?

    Humphrey could answer the question. Humphrey knows. Like Macavity, Labour wasn’t there.

    They were the advocates of the easy options and they opposed every tough decision we took.

    Interest Rates up? Disgraceful, said Labour.

    Interest Rates down? Not enough, said Labour.

    Interest Rates the same? The Chancellor must act, says Labour.

    Always, always, always the easy option.

    So when they criticise us, just remind them of this.

    If we’d followed their advice, we’d have been in Carey Street.

    Unemployment has been coming down for two and a half years.

    But it’s still far too high.

    The best route to more jobs is more small businesses.

    We are the Party of small business. When I was a small boy, my bread and butter was paid for by my father’s small business. He made garden ornaments 40 years ago and some fashionable people find that very funny.

    I don’t.

    I see the proud, stubborn, independent old man who ran that firm and taught me to love my country, fight for my own and spit in the eye of malign fate. I know the knockers and sneerers who may never have taken a risk in their comfortable lives aren’t fit to wipe the boots of the risk takers of Britain.

    When my father’s business failed – because his health failed – I saw the price the small businessman may have to pay.

    I know the sacrifice they make for the dreams they have.

    They don’t know whether they’ll succeed.

    But they work as hard as they can.

    That’s why, as Ian Lang told you, we’ve set up the biggest consultation with business ever seen in this country – to find out what more we can credibly do to help then.

    Frankly, Mr Chairman, I think they’re heroes.

    Europe

    I know one thing: we mustn’t pile burdens on business.

    So let me say this to our friends and partners in Europe.

    Don’t ask me to sign the Social Chapter. I won’t do it.

    I don’t look for popularity abroad – I prefer to protect jobs right here.

    Don’t misunderstand me. I’m for Europe, not against it.

    And I intend to argue for policies that will help it succeed. Pressure to stop arguing and go with the European consensus is strong. It’s difficult to set rational argument against the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth.

    We must be sympathetic, but we must stand our corner.

    We must ask our partners to understand our thinking and we must understand theirs.

    Against the background of the traumas Europe suffered over the past 60 years – war, dictatorship, civil war, military occupation – it’s not surprising to me that they look towards European unity as a guarantor of political stability. Of their decision never to go to war with one another again.

    Only twenty years ago, Greece, Spain and Portugal – new partners in Europe – were ruled by men in dark glasses and epaulettes.

    Now these countries are secure in the European Union.

    In a few years’ time – thanks in large part to British policy – they will be joined by Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and others, now liberated from Communist dictatorship.

    They are knocking on the door to entry and we want to tie them in to the democratic family of Nations.

    Because it’s in our British interest: a further guarantee that our children and grandchildren will never face the conflicts than cost the lives of so many of our fathers and grandfathers.

    Unoccupied, undefeated, the war left Britain with a very different perspective from the rest of Europe.

    If we want to persuade our partners that their policies for Europe are wrong – as I believe many of them to be – we must use our imagination to understand their feelings and their motives.

    We entered Europe,

    For prosperity.

    For co-operation.

    For a louder voice on that great Continent.

    But we did not enter it for a new tier of Government.

    We did not enter it for Socialism through the back door.

    And we did not enter it for a federal Europe.

    It wouldn’t work for us. Our partners must understand that it’s politically and constitutionally unacceptable.

    But that’s what Labour would agree to and I believe they are profoundly wrong.

    We will advance our arguments firmly and courteously in Britain and in Europe.

    For Britain for Europe.

    But underneath the rational argument we should not be misunderstood.

    If others go federalist, Conservative Britain will not.

    Welfare spending

    Mr Chairman, providing quality care for those most in need is a strong part of the Tory tradition.

    Shaftesbury and Disraeli were doing it when socialism was just a distant nightmare in most people’s minds.

    We are proud of our free National Health Service. We have fought to make it the best in the world in the next century. We have put more resources into health. Not just once, but year after year. And we are modernising it, so that it remains the best in the world.

    But, Mr Chairman, we are succeeding. People are living longer. And that success in health creates new challenges for our welfare system.

    The easy way out is to load the bills onto future generations – issuing blank cheques for our children to pick up.

    In other words, living on tick. I wasn’t brought up to do that. And I don’t think that it’s right for the country.

    We have already done more than anywhere else in Europe to build up massive pension funds.

    But because we live longer, we need to develop similar approaches to long term care – encourage new forms of savings, new kinds of insurance, more flexible use of pensions.

    That’s the next step forward in our welfare system, and one we are examining right now.

    We don’t have all the answers yet. But it is important that people know we’re addressing their long-term problems.

    It’s a huge challenge but it’s one we can’t duck and one we must get right. And it’s one that will only be met by recognising the money we spend has first to be earned through an enterprise economy.

    It’s a strong Tory tradition that you and I look after ourselves and our families before we turn to others to pay our bills.

    That’s why we need to target our welfare spending on those who need it.

    I don’t need anyone to tell me that the welfare system matters.

    I know what it’s like when the money for the week runs out by Thursday.

    But welfare should offer people a ladder back to the pride of self-reliance, not a trap for the poor.

    That’s why we’re designing a welfare system for the twenty-first century.

    Targeting benefits. Reforming pensions. And helping people from welfare back into work.

    But not tolerating those on welfare who won’t work.

    From next autumn, everyone who is unemployed will need to undertake a contract for work.

    A contract that makes it absolutely clear that they have obligations to accept paid work when it is available.

    Mr Chairman, we’ll continue to shape a welfare system that is generous to those in need. We can do no other.

    But it must be one that also reflects the basic Tory instincts of rewarding prudence, thrift and family responsibility.

    Education

    Education affects not just careers, but people’s whole lives. That’s why, when I became Prime Minister, I put education at the top of my agenda.

    I haven’t changed. But education has.

    Since then we’ve introduced regular tests. Made school inspection more rigorous. Given parents more choice and information.

    Today, three times as many young people become students as in 1979.

    Last year I told this Conference that we would make nursery education available to all 4 year-olds.

    We’re doing just that with vouchers: to put power and choice where it belongs: not in the hands of bureaucrats. But in the hands of parents.

    Choice. Choice. Choice. And all opposed by Labour.

    I still want to widen choice in education.

    Some years ago, we set up the Assisted Places Scheme. It helps children from low income homes to go to our best private schools.

    It’s been a great success.

    But Labour hate it.

    That’s true to form – they always claim to want to help people – but in return they demand that people know their place.

    And in Labour’s view there is no place for children of low income families in private schools. So they want to abolish the scheme outright. Labour’s message to them is: no choice for the poor.

    One of the schools that offers places to pupils on this scheme is in Edinburgh. It’s one of Scotland’s most famous private schools – Fettes.

    Quite a lot of famous politicians went to Fettes including – Iain Macleod.

    Iain Macleod was a One Nation Tory and wouldn’t he have been proud to see pupils of poor families at his old school – sent there by a One Nation Government.

    So am I. So I’m going to give more children that opportunity.

    We’re going to double the Assisted Places scheme.

    But I want to widen choice still further.

    So if parents want specialist schools, we should let them have them.

    And if they want religious schools, we should let them have them too.

    This isn’t a dogma. It isn’t elitist. It’s based on the belief that children are first and foremost the responsibility of parents: and they know what is best for their children.

    We also want excellence in education, so I believe we should let good schools expand.

    Bad schools should be closed.

    Of course, closing bad schools means a row. But it’s the right row to have and Gillian Shephard is prepared to have it.

    Not every child can benefit from the Assisted Places Scheme or private education.

    Real choice will come when every state school offers the highest standards – when every state school prizes discipline, when every state school puts learning before political correctness. Gillian is going to work with every good head and teacher to deliver that.

    Many parents believe they’ve found a way to higher standards already. They’ve chosen for their schools to become independent, self-governing schools: what we call grant maintained.

    These schools are in the state sector. Run by the Head and the Governors. They get their money from government to spend as they think fit.

    Their results have been outstanding.

    That’s why I want to enable all schools to become grant-maintained.

    But Labour want to destroy them – wipe out their freedoms and take away their budgets.

    These schools became self-governing after a ballot of parents. Parents chose independence. Labour want to wreck then without a ballot. Labour hate independence.

    So, parents at the next election – choice or no choice. That’s the choice.

    VE/VJ Day

    This year we have all remembered with gratitude the sacrifice our predecessors made for our forbears.

    VE Day and VJ Day were very special.

    Most of you would have attended some of the events or watched the remarkable television coverage.

    I was there. I found it immensely moving.

    The sense of pride was tangible.

    But Mr Chairman, unlike others, I didn’t hear people on VJ Day shouting out party political propaganda.

    For me, it was a day in which a free people paid tribute to those who kept them free.

    Back in June you will remember the huge commemoration which took place in Hyde Park.

    Let me tell you a story of that day.

    At the entrance to one stand was an elderly man trying to get in.

    He had no ticket – so the security guard was about to turn him away.

    But luck would have it, a brigadier was passing by. Not any old brigadier, but one of the organisers of VE Day. He saw something pinned to the chest of this elderly man.

    Not all of us would have known what it was. But the brigadier did.

    It was the highest award for gallantry in our armed forces: the Victoria Cross.

    The elderly man was immediately given a seat of honour on the platform.

    Later that day, I had the privilege of meeting him – and the other Victoria and George Cross holders.

    I learned that they receive a small annual payment.

    It was £100 a year. A figure set 40 years ago, before many years of inflation. It has never changed.

    It seemed to me that, in this year of all years, it should be changed;

    So to show that this country has not forgotten the bravest of the brave: it will be changed.

    From August this year that payment will be uprated to its original value. It will increase from one hundred pounds a year to one thousand three hundred pounds a year.

    Northern Ireland

    In the last year, life has changed in Northern Ireland.

    I want to make those changes permanent. To see the next generation there growing up in prosperity – and peace.

    Patience, determination and fairness have carried us a long way.

    No one has shown these qualities more consistently than Paddy Mayhew and Michael Ancram – Northern Ireland has been well served by them.

    But we’re not there yet. There are still some who, in one breath, say they’ve given up violence for good – and in the next warn that it could return. It needn’t, and it won’t, unless they themselves pick up the gun.

    But if it is to last, it must be a just peace. One that is fair to all sides.

    And a peace that is constructed away from the shadow of the gun.

    However long it takes, building this peace in this part of our United Kingdom will continue to stand at the top of our priorities.

    Britain in the World

    Mr Chairman, Britain has big interests in the world.

    We are the only nation at the hub of the European Union, the Commonwealth, NATO and the United Nations. We are a nuclear power and a member of the Permanent Five of the Security Council.

    Our armed forces are today serving in more than forty countries including Bosnia.

    I sent troops there in 1992. Not everyone approved but I believe it was right.

    They went to the Balkans for two reasons – to protect men, women and children from starvation, rape and genocide and to prevent a full scale war at the crossroads of Europe.

    They have succeeded superbly – often at great risk to themselves. We can be proud of what they have achieved.

    It now seems possible we may soon have an uneasy peace. I hope so.

    But our role will not end there.

    Help will be needed to monitor the peace and we will play our part in this.

    International influence creates international obligations – and we will meet them.

    The Constitution

    Mr Chairman, we can only continue to be a big player abroad if we remain one United Kingdom at home.

    We recognise that Scotland and Wales are Nations in their own right.

    Of course, if they insist they could ultimately go their own way. We could not properly stop them.

    At the moment there is a clamour for constitutional change as many see the Westminster Parliament as a long way away.

    Some say we would be more popular if we bent to this clamour: if in Wales we set up Labour’s expensive talking shop, or in Scotland we said:

    “OK. You want your own tax raising Parliament you can have it. Don’t blame us when it all goes wrong.”

    But that is not our way.

    We are the Conservative and Unionist Party.

    I will not trade easy votes today for constitutional chaos tomorrow.

    We are sensitive to people’s concerns in Scotland. So we are looking at more ways of giving people more say over decisions affecting their day to day lives.

    But it’s my duty to warn of the effect of Labour’s plans for the constitution.

    Labour are proposing changes to our Constitution for their own party political advantage.

    In Scotland they are running scared of the SNP – so they have promised to impose a tax raising Parliament in their first year.

    In Wales they are not so worried about Plaid Cymru so Wales would just get an Assembly.

    And in England they can’t make up their minds so there they might – or might not – impose regional assemblies.

    There is no demand for these in England. Labour only promise them in an attempt which fails to justify the over-representation of Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster.

    It is a straightforward gerrymandering and we might as well say so.

    In Scotland, the new Parliament would raise income taxes.

    I hope Scotland realises what this means.

    People in Scotland, uniquely, will pay higher income tax on the same income than people in England or Wales or Northern Ireland. To start with, a tartan tax of an extra 6 pounds a week for the average family.

    Let me ask you a question: if you were a businessman, wanting to invest and create jobs, where would you invest: in Scotland, where you’ll have to pay higher wages to compensate for higher taxes, or somewhere else? You know the answer to that.

    The Tartan Tax will do two things: it will pay for more bureaucrats and more politicians and it will begin the decline of Scottish prosperity. Neither of them are in the interests of Scotland.

    All that is only the start. Conflict with the Westminster parliament would be inevitable.

    And then – the siren voices of the separatists will foment mischief and demand an independent Scotland cut adrift from the UK.

    These are not distant problems. These are Labour’s plans for the first year of a Labour government.

    Mr Chairman, opinion polls tell us the Scottish people are not fond of the Government at the moment. But I’m fond of then and they are being deceived by Labour.

    Labour’s plans are an immediate threat to Scotland and a threat to the United Kingdom.

    We will continue to look for ways to improve the Government of Scotland. That is our duty.

    But we will resist these damaging plans with all our strength. That too, is our duty, and the Conservative and Unionist Party will fulfil it.

    Law and Order

    Mr Chairman, as I go round the country I talk to people about crime. What they want is to feel safe – at home and on the street.

    In the past two and a half years, recorded crime has fallen.

    Well and good. Now we must make sure that the fear of crime starts to fall, too.

    People want crime reduced and criminals caught and convicted. And so do I.

    So today, let me add to what Michael Howard told you yesterday.

    We’re going to step up the fight against crime. To hit it harder and harder and harder.

    Organised crime is big business on an international scale. And – at its centre – is drugs.

    When I see the sheer evil of the drugs trade I am devoid of sympathy for the men around the world who run it.

    They live lives of comfort, often of outward respectability, while they pour poison into the veins of millions.

    Today, no parent, however safe and prosperous their home, can be entirely easy in their mind that their children won’t be offered drugs.

    And that is true in some of our market towns as well as our big cities.

    Two weeks ago, here in Blackpool, a 17 year-old died having taken drugs.

    That boy’s whole future was snuffed out for profit.

    Let me tell you what we shall do.

    First, there can be no question of lifting our border controls. We are an island and we need them. Those controls are vital. They are not negotiable. And they are staying.

    Secondly, our tradition has always been to have local police forces.

    But local forces alone aren’t equipped for this sort of crime.

    So for the first time ever, we’re discussing with the police the establishment of a national squad. This will have one mission: to take on organised crime in this country and break it.

    The police will lead on this. They will have the support of the new National Criminal Intelligence Service, working with Customs, MI6 and GCHQ.

    But all our available skills are not yet involved in this battle.

    For many years the Security Service has protected us against espionage and terrorism.

    But they can’t help the police because it is illegal for them to do so.

    I think that’s absurd. And in an age when our children are more likely to be killed by a drug dealer than by an enemy missile, I think it’s indefensible.

    So this autumn, we will change the law. It’s time to let the Security Service into the battle for the public and against organised crime.

    Day by day, we are making more use of modern science against the criminal.

    We are already using Closed Circuit Television in public places across the country.

    This has been hugely successful. More cameras mean less crime.

    So over the next three years we will add 10,000 more cameras in town centres, shopping malls and public places in every part of the country. They will improve security for the shopkeeper and safety for the shoppers.

    But the most effective eyes are the policeman’s eyes.

    I want to make every street safe.

    Since 1979, we have recruited an extra 16,000 policemen – 500 in the last year

    That’s helpful. But not enough.

    I want to send an unmistakeable message to every criminal that there are going to be still more police on the streets.

    So let us tell Chief Constables now so they can plan ahead.

    So, Chief Constables, begin to plan. Because in the overall arithmetic of this year’s public expenditure settlement we have found the resources over the next three years to put, not 500 but an extra 5,000 police officers on the beat.

    Mr Chairman, I said we intended to intensify the fight against crime – and I mean it.

    Peroration

    Mr Chairman, after four terms, why a fifth?

    Because in a shifting world only we will build a safe future for our people and heal the scars of the past.

    Because we are building a more secure economy as the enterprise centre of Europe.

    Because we are reforming public service to make it more accountable to the public who pay for it.

    Because we stand for choice and excellence in education, and in the midst of the biggest revolution since Rab Butler.

    Because we will retain the old rock solid guarantee of the health service that care will be free at the point of delivery, and where improvement is necessary it won’t be treated as a sacred cow.

    Because defence and security of the realm and the safety of our streets are paramount concerns of our Party.

    We Conservatives are:

    – for the individual, not the state

    – for choice, not direction

    – for ownership, not dependence

    – for liberty, not control.

    These are the enduring things, the cornerstones of our beliefs. We have worked for them, cared for them, fought for them.

    We are building the greatest success for this nation that we have known in our lifetime.

    We will not surrender them to a light-weight alternative.

    We carry the scars of battle, yes, but they’re honourable scars. We know no other Party can win the battles for Britain that lie ahead.

    So when you go home – refreshed and uplifted, I hope, by our Conference – remember these things, and ask the people on the doorstep:-

    – Would taxes be higher or lower under Labour?

    – Would inflation be higher or lower under Labour?

    – Would there be more or less choice under Labour?

    – Would our defence be more secure under Labour?

    You and I only have to ask the question to know the answer.

    We stand for a wise and kindly way of life that is rooted in our history.

    Our hopes from our country are not tired.

    Our ambitions are not dimmed.

    Our message to our fellow country men is clear. Millions have still to make up their minds.

    The choice is theirs. Our Nation’s Future is at stake – and we stand ready to serve.

  • Mr Major’s Speech at the Cambridgeshire Euro-Constituency Business Lunch – 29 September 1995

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s speech at the Cambridgeshire Euro-Constituency Business Lunch, held on Friday 29th September 1995.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Europe is a Jekyll and Hyde for most people. There are some things about Europe that are undeniably frightening. But there are things that are undeniably right, such as the single market. A single market is immensely important. Half our trade goes to Europe. Half our trade these days actually goes to Europe. But we shouldn’t forget the half that doesn’t. The single market is a great achievement, a great bonus to British business and British commerce and a great opportunity to British prosperity. Though it isn’t yet a proper single market. It is still closed to telecommunications where by and large we lead Europe.

    We haven’t opened up the insurance and banking industries. The areas where we earn such huge invisibles and the City of London is still closed to much of Europe, that still needs to be overcome.

    We still need to do a great deal to turn the embryo single market that we have that broadly exists for manufacturers into a proper single market right across Europe. When that happens it will be an enormous bonus for overseas earnings and overall prosperity in the United Kingdom. Don’t ever underestimate it. Don’t underestimate either the importance where it is appropriate of Europe working together politically as well as economically. It is a typical criticism of the most federalist of our partners in Europe that all the United Kingdom has ever been interested in is a free and open market, but we are interested in a free and open market and they aren’t and we’re winning and they’re going to have to give way and we’ll get there.

    But that isn’t all we are interested in. We are interested in co-operation across Europe with our European partners. Co-operation on the basis of agreement and consensus. Not co-operation on the basis of a qualified majority vote against the interests of a nation state on matters of great importance.

    One of the issues that comes before the Intergovernmental Conference in a year or so’s time will be whether our common foreign policy should be determined by unanimity with every nation state freely agreeing to a common policy or whether it should give the qualified majority vote with every country being bound by the qualified majority vote. It sounds very communitaire to have a qualified majority vote on foreign policy but we have not agreed, and I will tell you why we will not agree. It is not because we are anti-European but I think the absolute and total absurdity that a common vote in Europe can change a British policy for Hong Kong is as stated in those terms, self-evident. In any event it is impracticable. Can by common vote in Europe mean that Europe can decide that British and French troops could go to Bosnia against perhaps the opposition of the British Prime Minister and the French President? You only have to think to see that it may be an idealistic aspiration and it is desirable for us to work together but the concept of that being imposed is absolutely and totally unworkable and unacceptable to us and I believe unacceptable to others in Europe. But so many of the other nation states in Europe used as they are to Britain fighting the good fight while they stand on the sidelines and say “Tut tut, how anti-community you are” while privately agreeing with us. It is very convenient to have Britain fighting on those issues and we will.

    That is one issue for the Intergovernmental Conference where the more federalist enthusiasts will argue that a common foreign policy – that is to say the present one – is not workable, whilst knowing in our hearts that there is not a snowball in hell’s chance that any British Conservative Prime Minister would agree to sacrifice the direct control of the British Cabinet and the British Parliament over foreign policy matters outside the United Kingdom. They might as well know that now, and I had the opportunity of mentioning it last weekend in Mallorca. But because we have these fears, do not get sucked into this feeling that everything that happens in Europe is against the British nation. It is not true.

    Let me make a couple of points not often made. Some of the nations in Europe 10 years ago, some of the nations inside the European Community are now becoming a good market for this country and embryo industrial nations such as Spain and Portugal. Fifteen years ago before they joined the Community they were governed by men in dark glasses and epaulettes. In fifteen years they have been brought into the Western democratic family of nations and prepared for industrial status in a democratised Western Europe. Don’t underestimate the importance of that to our security.

    Suppose we had, as we envisaged, extended the European Union some years ago further to the East across Europe beyond, for example, Italy. Imagine we had actually achieved the ambition of enlargement right across Europe. Suppose we had actually done it. Would Yugoslavia or Bosnia be such a mess today if it had been brought within a Western free trading area 15 or 20 years ago? Would we have hundreds of thousands of people brutally murdered? Would British, French, Greek, all sorts of other countries – though not the United States – have soldiers actually on the ground there in Yugoslavia if we had actually extended the concept of a free trade area and Western democracy further across Eastern Europe?

    The objective that will deliver the certainty of security in Europe not just for this generation but for our great-grandchildren and our great-great-grandchildren is to take the opportunity of developing the European Union much further across Europe. Wars this century started in Western Europe. Western Europe and Central Europe like Sarajevo and Bosnia. That’s where they started. Inconceivable for that to happen now in Europe if you can spread the inter-relationship of trade and political interest and influence further across the European Community through the Balkans, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania. Let us think that will happen in our lifetime. There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that it will. And there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that when it happens there are future generations that will be more secure in their lifetime that ever we could be in ours. That is the long-term point of our aim in British foreign policy to secure the safety and security of the British nation. Despite the disagreeable views of our press about Europe that is our goal.

    Let me talk about some of the issues. Why is the European Union that has helped safeguard democracy in Western Europe, that is helping to enhance the prosperity of security and democracy in Europe and has opened up the richest market, British business and commerce we have ever known, richer by far than the old Empire, why is it so unpopular? There are people whose ambitions are more visionary than most. I do not accept for one second that it would be sensible today or in 10 or 20 years time for us to have what many people feared we might have, a European Government taking most of the effective decisions involving Europe and taking them in Brussels and not taking them in Britain. For all its deficiencies and difficulties in Westminster where you can support the Government and your directly elected members and you can have direct contact with your MP. I do not believe we will ever accept such a transfer of fundamental authority but people fear and they see the changes that have been made and they say is there is a European government inevitable?

    I remember in the 1960s the feeling that existed at the time. Socialism was inevitable. I remember the argument ran very strongly until people actually saw what socialism was like and it became anything but inevitable. It has found itself out of government for 16 years already and I hope please God for a long time. So we are not going further down that road but it is because people fear that they poke suspiciously at everything that emerges from Europe and ignore as a matter of right all the things that are of interest and worth in it, that is essentially the competitiveness of Europe.

    How much more expensive it is to employ people in Europe. This is an argument I have repeated again and again. If you take the graph of unemployment across Europe for the last 25 years, it goes steadily down. For 25 years in good years and bad years, in boom and in dust, the underlying level of unemployment right across Europe and beyond is rising. There are 20 million European citizens unemployed, 20 million. In France, the country nearest and most comparable to us, there is just around 13 per cent unemployment and no sign of it decreasing. In the mighty German economy their unemployment is rising above us for the first time that most people can remember since the Marshall plan brought back prosperity to Germany. It is Britain that is bringing unemployment down in a changing world today. The labour skills of so many millions are no longer required in the way they were before. It is Britain that is providing them and the reason it is providing the new jobs is partly what Robert said earlier. It isn’t just the Social Chapter. Were we to sign the Social Chapter or were any future Government to sign it, all those social costs across Europe that at present lie outside the Social Chapter would rise. They would be brought into the Social Chapter and it would add something like 20-40 per cent to the average labour costs of more people in British industry.

    At the moment we are taking markets in Germany, taking markets in France, taking markets as we should for this is a competitive European Union right the way across Europe and beyond. Because we are more positive and efficient than the other nations. We want to stay that way and that means no Social Chapter. It means no other extra artificial burdens on employers because the burden on an employer means more people unemployed and out of work and that is the principal, single, economic problem of Western Europe.

    I despair sometimes when I sit around the European table and I hear my European partners talking about competition between France and Britain and Germany and Italy. Can they not understand that France and Germany and Britain and Italy must compete with the United States and Japan and the countries of the Pacific Rim? It is an argument we are determined that Europe accepts and wins. We understand it here and I have every intention of following policies here that will make Britain better, even if our European partners disagree with what we are doing and regard us as being very uncommunitaire for trying to keep our nation in work, while their coalition governments buy popularity for the majority of their people in work by giving them more benefits in work at the expense of the minority who are not in work who will be joined by others not in work and who will have less and less chance of getting work if they particularly go down that route.

    And then there is the single currency. I know of no issue that has so torn apart the sinews of British politics. In all our long history there are about two illustrations of the sort of deeply damaging divisions in our Party. First the corn laws of the 1840s and the second example is tariff reforms at the turn of the century.

    A single currency across the whole of the European Union will only work by changing the Union out of all recognition. So there is no question of a single currency across the whole of Europe. You may safely rule it out. All you would get is massive structural unemployment, social difficulty in for example Greece and a demand for huge transfers of money from the more wealthy Northern European nations straight to Greece to deal with that social difficulty and social unrest. Perhaps a small group of nations could go ahead with a single currency. They had ambition for 1997. I said I would not believe those ambitions would be realised. They had ambitions for 1999. I believe that when we get closer to 1999 they will increasingly see that is not safely achievable. In our discussions over the weekend at Mallorca, I believe I saw the dawnings of understanding of this. So perhaps 2001 or thereabouts might be possible? But only for a small minority.

    But the European Union must weigh the arguments very carefully indeed. It would be the biggest economic and political change in the structure of Europe that Europe has ever seen. Do not be in any doubt about the scale of change. If a small group of say six go ahead with a single currency, what does that do to the whole of the European Community? What does it do to the other 21, for we will be 27 nations within 15 years time? What will it do to the other 21 who are outsiders? How do you run a single market? How do you deal with structural funds? What happens if the countries outside the single currency devalue competitively against the single currency? Do they really believe that Greece and Portugal and the others are going to enter a new rigid, unmoving exchange [indistinct]. It cannot be done. Those are the problems. A huge number of problems. I can stretch them to the door and back again and then up to the far corner but have not remotely begun to be understood by the people who passionately care for the best of reasons about building a single Europe whose slogan is “If you have a single market you must have a single currency”. Economic codswallop. But not because we are anti-Europe.

    I think I can say in public and in private I have taken more pain because I am trying to take a middle road that I think is right for the long-term of this country on Europe than any other British politician in this country. So I think I have a right that almost nobody else has to lay out in crystal clear terms the problems that I actually see if they move down that road. It might one day be right. We would be mad to say it would never happen, one never knows what is going to happen in the future. We could not and should not rule it out for ever as some are urging us to do. But we should prod very cautiously at this beast with a very long stick, and we should not rush at it because of the impact it will have on every citizen in Europe.

    What would be the feeling in Scotland if we were to abolish the Scottish pound and replace it only with pound sterling? And yet that we are familiar with that example and situation. The Scottish pound is acceptable in Manchester as it is Dundee. I must say I look forward to the sight of French farmers as they finally realise the franc has gone for ever and I must say I find that extremely amusing. And what about the gentlemen of the Bundesbank when they realise that the mark is no more?

    We have got to discuss these things. They have been the undiscussable subjects of Europe. It has been politically correct not to say that the emperor just possibly may have no clothes. Or if he is not naked he is hardly dressed for a ball. And it was those matters that I was starting to put with delicacy and charm to my European colleagues in Mallorca. My arguments got more support there than many previously would have thought possible. For they know as I know. Is Belgium going to be in deficit and going for a single currency by the year 2000? It is no more enlightening than Old King Cole galloping out of his nursery rhyme to their rescue. And what about Italy? Or France?

    They will have to change. I passionately believe that because I wish Europe to succeed. But when I continue to raise these problems in Europe it will not be because I want Europe to fail. It will be because I want Europe to succeed.

  • Mr Major’s Speech to European Democratic Union Conference – 12 September 1991

    Below is the transcript of Mr Major’s speech to the European Democratic Union Conservative Party Leaders’ Conference, given on Thursday 12th September 1991.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Rt Hon John Major MP Thursday 12 September 1991 533/91

    Extract from a speech by the Rt Hon John Major MP (Huntingdon), Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, to the European Democratic Union Conservative Party Leaders’ Conference:

    Jacques Chirac and I met in London a few weeks ago. We talked, among other things, about the future of our continent. I valued that discussion. But neither of us could then foresee that within a matter of weeks, we would be witnesses to one of the most dramatic revolutions of the 20th Century.

    I do not need to tell an audience in this city about the perils, as well as the opportunities, of revolution. This new revolution brings tremendous opportunities. But it brings uncertainties as well. And risks. They combine into a tremendous challenge, but it is not just to the people of the Soviet Union. It is also to the governments and peoples of the whole of Europe. It is about that challenge that I want to talk today.

    For our parties of the centre right, the sudden and total collapse of Soviet Communism must be a special source of satisfaction. A dark and discredited ideology lies in ruins; rejected by the people it ensnared.

    It was an ideology which promised power to the people; but it drained power from the people. It promised prosperity; but it brought poverty.

    It did not cherish initiative; it did crush all personal economic aspiration. It replaced the inventiveness of the human imagination with the mumbo-jumbo of Marxist doctrine. It lived by tyranny, oppression and lies. And even the failed coup epitomised one of its most striking characteristics: enormous incompetence, even in the pursuit of its own misbegotten objectives.

    Brian Mulroney recently told me a story of a conversation with President Gorbachev during his visit to Canada. President Gorbachev asked: what was the secret of Canada’s success as a wheat producer? What did Canada have that the Soviet Union did not? The answer, Brian Mulroney said, was quite simple: the Canadian farmer worked, not for the party nor for the state but for himself and his family. Like farmers in all our countries, he was prepared to work from first light until after dark knowing that he could improve his lot and pass on something worthwhile to future generations. That was Canada’s ‘secret’.

    It is to the enormous credit of President Gorbachev that he saw clearly the flaws and injustices in the Soviet system. Ultimately, Soviet Communism was doomed to collapse because its foundations were rotten. But it was sustained by repression. It was President Gorbachev’s decision to move from repression to reform which opened the doors to freedom. They have opened first to the people of Eastern and Central Europe and now to the people of the Soviet Union. For this act alone, his place in history is secure.

    Today, there is no longer a Communist Party in the Soviet Union. It is an irony that while the Communist Party is actually banned in Russia, Communist parties survive in most of our countries. So where are they now going to look for their ideological lead? To Cuba, just as Soviet troops are starting to withdraw? Or China?

    I have just returned from China. I made that visit in the interests of the continued freedom and prosperity of Hong Kong. But I had another purpose too: to try to bring the influence of the free world to bear on the leaders of China, and to show the people of China that they are not forgotten by the West.

    Even under the harsh and baleful influence of Communist rule, China is changing. The province of Canton is in a ferment of free enterprise. Take a helicopter and fly over Hong Kong and you will see that, beyond the line of the border with China, the lights of commerce and industry burn almost as brightly. The people there have some of the freedoms of the market place. They can benefit from their own hard work and enterprise. But they do not have personal liberty – the most precious freedom of all. It may take time, but I believe that political and personal freedom must inevitably follow the liberation of market forces.

    In the meantime, we in the West must keep pushing at the door. I raised with Chinese leaders a large number of human rights cases. They did not dismiss them out of hand. They recognised that they had to listen and that they had to respond. They would prefer not to. But they did. A Hong Kong citizen who was in prison in China a week ago is back home in Hong Kong today.

    I believe we must keep up the pressure on them. If every visitor from the West reminds China of their obligations, as a member of the United Nations, and a Permanent Member of the Security Council in particular, then that pressure will produce results.

    The bastions of Communism have crumbled. But it still has its last outposts. No one can rule out desperate rearguard actions. But all the evidence is that we are now opening a new chapter. I am particularly delighted that our friends from the Baltic Republics are opening it with us. They have rejoined the European family – and not a moment too soon. Soon, with Britain’s support, they will become full members of the United Nations.

    None of these changes are easy. Yugoslavia is a vivid example of a country teetering between self-determination and self-destruction. It is a reminder too of our responsibilities as democratic Europeans.

    These are events of world significance. But, first and foremost, they affect our own continent of Europe.

    At the end of the Second World War, Europe was split into two. The countries that emerged from war into freedom and democracy took two great steps to defend their liberties. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was formed. The European Community was launched. The fact that so many other European countries have since sought to join the Community, or to form associations with it, is the greatest signal of its success. Now the part of our continent that was denied the political and economic renaissance that the rest of us have enjoyed is emerging into freedom and democracy. For the rest of us that poses a unique responsibility. We cannot and must not turn our back on them.

    We have the immediate, urgent duty to throw them a lifeline. We have already done this for the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Each of our countries individually is helping. We in Britain have, through our ‘Know How’ fund, started to help the countries of Eastern and Central Europe develop the infrastructure of a modern economy. We have helped with privatisation in Poland; with the Stock Exchange in Budapest; with the banking sector in Czechoslovakia. Polish-speaking civil servants from London are today at work in Poland’s Ministry of Labour in Kracow.

    Now we must do the same for the Soviet Union. Already, in July at the Group of Seven Summit, we agreed on:

    (i) Special Association for the Soviet Union with the IMF and the World Bank;

    (ii) Support for the Soviet Union and its republics from all the relevant international organisations;

    (iii) Intensified technical assistance – especially in the fields of energy, the conversion of defence industries, food distribution, nuclear safety and transport.

    (iv) Improved access to western markets.

    The greatest single obstacle to the implementation of that plan was indecision within the Soviet Union. Would the Soviet Union go down the path of reform – genuine reform – or would the Soviet Union still try to combine partial political freedoms with economic centralism? We now know the answer to that question. The coup designed to halt reform has failed. It is now the catalyst to accelerate it. Only the Soviet Union and its republics can determine their future course. But we can help, both in the short term and for the future. First of all:

    (i) We must assess their immediate needs urgently. They may need food aid to get them through this winter. If so, we and our partners will be generous with our help.

    (ii) The Soviet Union and its republics will need an efficient infrastructure for food processing and distribution. In Britain we have assembled a team of our major food producers and distributors. They will go to the Soviet Union in a few days’ time to discover how they can help with food processing and distribution. Other countries of the Group of Seven are sending teams of their own. We have all agreed to pool our assessment by the end of this month.

    (iii) We must speed up the implementation of existing food credits.

    (iv) We must accelerate technical assistance and ‘Know How’ programmes.

    (v) We must get the Soviet Union and the IMF into discussion so that the IMF can assess the Soviet economy and its requirements. I am pleased to say that a team from the IMF is already in the Soviet Union.

    (vi) And we must accelerate the special association of the Soviet Union with the IMF that was agreed at the G7 Summit;

    This will be a massive task. It is not a task for the Group of Seven alone, or the European Community alone. It is a task for all of us who enjoy prosperity and who have a stake in the Soviet Union’s new freedom.

    That is the lifeline approach. But we must look also to the longer term. The people of the Soviet Union will have to decide what political system they want. When I was there ten days ago, one could feel the ground of history shifting beneath one’s feet. There was much uncertainty. Boris Yeltsin told me that the future shape of the Soviet Union would not necessarily be a federation or a confederation but something new and unique. Already, however, certain points were emerging. Many of them were confirmed at last week’s meeting of the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies, notably single armed forces for the Soviet Union; confirmation of the Soviet Union’s adherence to its international obligations and treaties; central control of nuclear weapons.

    I pressed the Soviet leaders particularly on the issue of defence spending. For a country in dire economic straits, to spend 25 per cent of its resources on military expenditure is unsustainable and unacceptable. They must help themselves to be sure of our help. I have assurances from President Gorbachev, President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Silayev that defence spending is being cut – and will be cut further.

    We cannot determine the future of the Soviet Union. But we can help – or we can hinder. We must offer them a new deal – and not a raw deal.

    I would like to set out what I believe should be the basis of our relationship with the newest European democracy, or democracies.

    We want them:

    i) to create a genuinely democratic society;

    ii) to develop a free market economy;

    iii) to secure a stable and just system of government with protection for minorities;

    iv) to play a constructive part in world affairs;

    v) and to become an integral part of democratic Europe.

    The idea of a common European home was once a slogan. Now it can become a reality.

    We cannot allow one artificial division in Europe to be replaced by another. We in the European Community cannot say: ‘Here is our club.

    We have made the rules. And we will make new rules regardless of your interests’.

    Under the Treaty of Rome, any democratic European country can apply for membership of the Community. Eastern and Central European countries have made clear that they see full membership of the Community as their ultimate goal. I believe the Community should welcome them in as soon as they are ready politically and economically. We must be prepared to widen our horizons and widen our membership.

    Already, at British initiative, we are, in the European Community, speeding progress towards Association Agreements for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Of course, this involves some sacrifice. Association Agreements mean opening our markets to Eastern and Central European Countries. That means more competition – including in some agricultural products. But it is the right way ahead.

    There is no purpose in giving countries aid and denying them trade access. Such policies would leave them on a drip feed of dependence for ever. It would be absurd and potentially dangerous, to preach the virtues of the free market but to practise old-fashioned protectionism. I think there will now be a real effort in the European Community to reach an agreement by the end of this month on agricultural access for Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

    I have encouraged the Commission to be in urgent discussion with the newly independent Baltic Republics. They too will want a special relationship with the European Community. That may take the form of a Trade and Co-operation agreement leading, in due course, to an Association Agreement. In the longer run they may seek full membership. That possibility should be open to them too. And we should tell them so now.

    I believe the European Community must hold out the hand of friendship and cooperation also to Russia and other republics of the Soviet Union. It is too early to say what form the relationship will take. But we should not close off options. It is no use saying the Community would not be the same if Russia became closely associated with it. It might have to change. But then we do not live in an unchanging world. The Community will have to change with it.

    The Community’s strengths to date has come from its dynamism. We have not stood still. Nor can we now. That does not mean that we should neglect the development of the Community in its present form. But we must ensure that that development opens doors rather than closes them. We should be lowering barriers, not raising hurdles.

    We Europeans must heed the aspirations and choices of 400 million European citizens. There is an unmistakable feeling that our continent is coming together. European union will not be led by politicians. It will be led by people. Politicians must not create barriers for half of Europe to step over.

    In the West we already enjoy fundamental freedoms and human rights. Now we are extending their compass with new opportunities to work, trade and travel. We may have to work out new patterns of co-operation. The Soviet Union has the enormous task of adapting itself. We should be realistic. We should be practical. We should not push it in the direction of unrealisable objectives. Equally, we should not set artificial limits on its development. For years, the objective of a Single Market for the members of the EC was a far off dream. Now, it is becoming a reality. We should not close our mind to the prospect of the European Community embracing many of the newly emerging democracies. One day we shall surely do so.

    That is one side of the openness I am talking about. But there is another kind of openness we in the Community should bear in mind as we work out the shape of the new European union. We must heed the way the world is moving – towards more decentralised, more accountable structures. In our talks on political union, we must enshrine a principle which captures the spirit of the age: it is the principle that decisions should always be taken at the lowest practicable level, close to the people they affect.

    In security too, openness and trust must be our objectives. They are the new key words in the language – some would say jargon – of security. The disintegration of the Warsaw Pact presents new opportunities for confidence-building. The CFE Treaty offers us the prize of a proper verification regime. We should redouble our efforts to secure a ban on chemical weapons. We must strengthen the convention on biological warfare. And we must strive to set up a UN arms register to control the sales of conventional weapons to the Third World.

    These opportunities are there to be taken. And why are they there? They are there because the Atlantic Alliance has held fast. It has provided the security which is the prerequisite for our immense economic progress. Like the European Community, it has provided an outstanding model of co-operation. Like the Community, it offers us a solid framework within which to manage the process of change.

    It would be folly to suppose that the great changes of recent weeks justify neglect of our defence. There is too much uncertainty, too many nuclear weapons, too many countries with nuclear ambitions to allow complacency. Of course we Europeans should do more for our own defence. We have in the Western European Union the means to do it. Let us turn it into a real European pillar for the Atlantic Alliance. Let us use it to meet security threats from outside the NATO area.

    Recent developments make the continued American and Canadian commitment to our continent more necessary, not less. It is not doctrine which holds NATO together, but shared interests and needs. As we develop our growing European defence identity, we must ensure that it is compatible with, not in conflict with, our mutual obligations as members of the North Atlantic Alliance.

    Last, but not least, we should remember that trade is a peace maker – one of the most powerful and persuasive. Countries locked together in trade have mutual interests that prevent them being locked together in conflict.

    Trade is the lifeblood of the international economy. When trade is relatively free, the international economy grows quickly and vigorously and all countries benefit. When trade is restricted, individual economies suffer, even those of the would-be beneficiaries of protectionism.
    Free trade is vital for future world prosperity. It also provides vital underpinning for good political relations.

    The GATT is at the heart of the world trading system. The Uruguay Round is now at a critical stage. The hopes of the developing world as much as the industrialised world rest on a successful outcome. At the G7 Summit in July, we all undertook to make a successful outcome this year a personal priority.

    The EC is now the world’s largest trading entity. Together with the US and Japan it accounts for half the world’s trade. We have a central responsibility for maintaining a strong, open world trading system.

    We are already dismantling barriers inside the Community. That should be part of a wider process of opening up world markets. We should vigorously resist pressures for a Fortress Europe. And we should guard against trading blocs based on Europe, the USA and the Pacific. That would be deeply damaging to world prosperity – and to world stability.

    Openness in trade will be the test of our commitment to a real European union. For many of the countries represented here today, it will make the difference between prosperity and poverty. The Twelve should rise to the challenge, and that includes agriculture. The debate may be technical; but the underlying issues are fundamental. We talk of a new world order. It is fragile and flawed. But the idea is not unrealistic. If we were to fail to reach agreement on how the world is to trade and do business, we would deal a body blow to our hopes of a new world order. And the damage would be entirely self inflicted.

    Ladies and gentlemen, the open society is on the march. Not just in Europe, but in every continent. Different countries will have their own ways of pursuing reform. But the lesson of the 20th Century is filtering through: freedom is the precondition of a happier world – and free markets are the precondition of a more prosperous world. It falls to us Europeans to spread that simple message, and live up to it ourselves. To fail would be unforgivable. To succeed will bring prizes beyond calculation. There is no better place to start than here on our own continent. And no better time to start than now.