First may I congratulate everyone who has brought this great project to fruition today. It is very exciting. It seems to have been done in the minimum of time and with the maximum of co-operation from everyone concerned. It's very difficult for my generation no longer to think of Fleet Street as the home of the great newspapers because now Fleet Street is scattered from Battersea to Blackfriars Bridge, and East India Docks to the Isle of Dogs and from Rotherhithe to Kensington.
Perhaps more importantly even, than the scattering, is the fact that you've got the inspiration separated from the organisation. What that does to the inspiration of the writers I don't quite know. But you have a very big organisation here and I think it is absolutely terrific. There has indeed been a massive change in ten years, far more massive than we could ever have predicted at the beginning. Indeed had we set out to predict the things which have happened you really should have been accused of optimism, but they have come about. And they've come about here, Lord Rothermere, without trouble and with the maximum co-operation.
It always seems strange to me that this country which led the world in the industrial revolution should have gone through a period when it tried so ? engerly (? angrily) to keep up to date, so engerly (? angrily) to get out in front and so fearful of the future. Those times fortunately are gone and all that talent and ability which enabled us to lead in that previous century are enabling us once again to get right up front. Not only that, but, as you pointed out my Lord, also to become highly profitable. Of course that is the key to so many things. You're not profitable unless your product is good. You can't invest unless your profitable, you can't keep upright unless you invest. And so the cycle goes round.
And it is vital that in the market place of this century, one makes money and makes jobs, and creates newspapers and ideas by pleasing the public, not necessarily by repeating those opinions which they express because I watch very carefully how opinions change and I am one who believes, as you do, that they change when you lead them very vigorously with the convictions, the ideas and the views that you put forward. [end p1]
Indeed I watched and re-read the history of this newspaper. It is indeed fascinating. You have been a campaigning newspaper from the day you began on a certain 4th May, another 4th May, long ago in the last century. When you started as ‘the busy man's’ journal (that shows you how things have changed) according to the Interpretation Act 1934 then replaces [inaudible] … interpreted as the ‘busy women's journal’.
You had a great campaign during World War I, you thought that the ammunition the troops were getting wasn't good enough and you said so. You were vilified. You went on saying so, you were right.
You then went on a tremendous campaign between the wars for Hungary, when the boundaries of Hungary were redrawn and you had the great plea for Hungary, hence the Harmsworth March that we heard as we arrived today.
This has been and remains your old tradition. Great campaigns from conviction. Always believe in keeping up front and always stubbornly holding to the course you have chosen. If you'll forgive me, the sequence sounds familiar. Very, very familiar and leads me to think that we have a good deal in common.
Your latest product of course adds another feature. Not only superb organisation but clean hands. A very good thing for politicians to have. I know that some of the causes that you espouse would seem apparently not to be the ones which I appear to be espousing and you've very kindly arranged that I have quite a long interview with the Daily Mail, on the future of Europe, on Wednesday so I hope also to be occupying quite a number of column inches in your newspaper on Thursday. I just thought that because there seem to be one or two misunderstandings that I might do a little hors d'oeuvre today. Just a little hors d'oeuvre. I will make it brief, because women don't speak long, we notice that in the House of Commons.
I am a European idealist. I'm an idealist in most things. Indeed that's why I'm here. My ideal of a Europe is this. It was Europe that was the centre of great visionary and fundamental ideals. Europe and Christendom for a time were one. Europe was the centre of debate and discussion and finding the way forward through debate and discussion. So that was the centre and beginning of democracy. Europe was the place where we had the fantastic artistic renaissance which gives so much richness to all our lives and which brought a wealth of talent into Europe and took it all over the world. [end p2]
Europe was also the centre of great scientific discovery, but not only that, the only place in the world where that scientific discovery was turned to the advantage of people. There were many scientific discoveries in other parts of the world before, but they were kept just to a few, and people never thought that they could be adapted for the much, much wider use of the great populace.
All of those things happened in Europe. Europe was the centre and creation of a rule of law. The rule of Justinian and the Second Roman Empire. Most of our history, since 55BC, has been bound up with Europe and Europe gradually became the centre of the ideal of freedom under a rule of law. From Europe people went out, they were adventurous, they went out from the many countries in Europe to discover other countries the world over and we among them tried to take our ideals and sound administration and rule of law and democracy to many. We stood when freedom was challenged. We stood up and we fought for freedom and the liberation of Europe was mounted from our shores.
We would not have been liberated unless we had stood and unless America had come to Europe. That is the vision of unified Europe. That is what the battle is really about. Is that vision going to infringe on and inform the future as it has given so much to the world in the past or is it going to seep into the detailed bureaucracy of standardisation and harmonisation? No—it would be so ironic when Europe which used to include cities like Prague, like Warsaw, when those cities are retreating from their bureaucracy, from their stranglehold, if Europe went towards that. That is the real battle for Europe. It's not whether you're European. Europe is far older than the Community—it is the kind of Europe which we are going to have and on whether it honours that freedom under the rule of law. Well yes, of course we have to have a certain amount of regulations so that we have free and fair competition, that we accept. Certainly we have to work together but maintaining the infinite variety and richness that is Europe.
There is one other factor which I would like to put to you and it is this. Our Parliament is the mother of Parliaments. It is a Parliament started to restrain the executive and to give gradually more power to each layer of our population until the franchise became universal. All meant to restrain the power of the executive, all meant to see that the executive did not tax people too much and take too big a proportion of their income. All meant to see that the economy was run well and the tax system to the benefit of our people. [end p3]
It would be so very strange if that Mother of Parliaments, and let me just say there aren't many like it in Europe. I remember going to one Parliament in Europe, a democratic parliament, and talking to and being questioned and they said, “We're very pleased to see a Prime Minister willing to be questioned, we don't get the chance often.” Parliament, our Parliament, the idea of the Head of Government going out to be questioned is very much a British invention. It is this Parliament which has dominated the economy of this country which has brought it back, which was started to see that the taxation of the people never became too heavy. And so you will not be surprised that I think it right to keep the running of the economy of this country in this Parliament. That I think it right to keep the running of the taxation of this country in this Parliament and would resist very much any suggestion that it be taken away. And I think that's right.
And as you stand on Westminster Bridge what you see is the skyline of Parliament and there you see the architecture of liberty.
And finally, we should not be here either today or holding the position we do in the world, unless we kept firm and loyal to everything we believe in and turn and put it into practice. And it was with that little hors d'oeuvre that I raise the curtain for the kind of interview that we may well have in your great newspaper on Thursday.
… . [inaudible]
all you're doing and if I haven't converted you yet I'm sure I shall by the end of the interview.
May I ask you to rise and drink to the the future of these great newspapers, campaigning newspapers, campaigning for liberty, campaigning for a visionary [sic] of Europe.
Your health!