My Lord Mayor, Your Grace, Bernard WeatherillMr Speaker, Your Excellencies, My Lords, Aldermen, Sheriffs, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I am deeply sensible of the honour which the City of London has bestowed on me by placing me on its roll of Honorary Freemen.
As I look back across the years at my distinguished predecessors, I know that this is an honour not lightly conferred. For they have embodied the finest qualities of our nation and of the Commonwealth too. To be placed in such company is at once daunting and humbling.
In your most elegant address, Mr Chamberlain, you referred to my ten years as Prime Minister in most kindly terms. I am the first to appreciate too your tribute to my husband, Denis ThatcherDenis, every word was richly deserved. For once I know that I shall not hear him say from somewhere behind me his customary “Hear, hear.” [end p1]
Mr Chamberlain, you referred to what you called my convictions. I confess to one lapse in that regard, shifting allegiances more than you might expect. For I was born a grocer, was made a Thatcher by marriage, then became a Poulter, next a grocer again—my only U-turn—and finally, like you My Lord Mayor, a Glover.
Being a grocer is an honour I share with William Pitt the Younger whom I am happy to recall was Prime Minister for nineteen years. Indeed it is said of him that he wrote the minutes of Cabinet before the meeting, those were the days!
Of all my predecessors, the most reluctant was perhaps Lord Melbourne. He was in two minds as to whether to accept the Office of Prime Minister until his Secretary persuaded him with the immortal words: “Dawn it, such a position was never occupied by any Greek or Roman, and if it only lasts two months it is well worthwhile to have been Prime Minister of England.”
I agree, and how much more worthwhile after ten absorbing years. These ten years have included triumph and tragedy, joy and sadness. Above all they have been years of achievement for our country. You referred to them, Mr Chamberlain as: “a kind of revolution” . In a way they were for what we had to do was nothing less than redress the balance of power between Government and the citizen, in favour of the citizen; to limit the power of Government and enlarge the liberty of the people. [end p2]
The preparation began long before we took office. I received invaluable help from many colleagues but none more than Keith Joseph, himself the son of a Lord Mayor of London. Indeed it was in his father's term in 1943 that the Honorary Freedom of the City was conferred on Winston Churchill.
It is links like these which run like a thread through our country's history and give it a very special personal meaning. Our vision was, and remains, to rekindle the spirit of enterprise in our people, to bring back hope and opportunity to those who had lost it, to spread ownership evermore widely, to restore the authority of the rule of law, to use prosperity to enhance our sense of community, and at all times to be strong in the defence of liberty.
We were not the originators of these beliefs. We rediscovered them. What was different was that we applied them with a singleness of purpose until they were able to produce the results which justified our faith in them.
These thoughts were marvellously expressed by de Tocqueville when he visited this country in the middle of the last century. He wrote: “Do you want to test whether a people is given to industry and commerce? Do not sound its ports or examine the wood from its forests or the produce of its soil. The spirit of trade will get all these things and without it they will remain useless. Examine whether this people's laws give men the courage to seek prosperity, the freedom to follow it up, the sense and habits to find it and the assurance of reaping the benefit” [end p3]
These were the beliefs that inspired our policies and which have transformed our country. For we know that the pursuit of prosperity and the pursuit of liberty are inextricably bound together. For there can be no prosperity without liberty and without liberty prosperity has no purpose.
My Lord Mayor, these have been ten momentous years. But let us keep them in perspective. My own ten years and the 257 years of the Office I hold must be set against the 800 years of the Mayoralty which you celebrate this year.
It was 800 years ago in 1189 that Richard I came to the throne to launch his Crusade, a joint endeavour with other powers of Europe in defence of Christendom.
Nowhere is the role of history seen better than in this City of London, a London that has seen ebbs and flows in its fortunes, that had endured plague and fire and blitz, but which has always rebuilt and renewed itself. The City of London is a unique part of our heritage.
In the Court of Common Counsel lay the model of the Westminster Parliament. So if we are the Mother of Parliaments, I suppose that makes you the Grandmother of Parliaments.
As the Barbican Centre and the Guildhall School of Music demonstrate, the City is also a great benefactor of the Arts and a most generous host to world leaders, for whom a visit to the City and Guildhall is a great ambition, providing a stage from which to address their message to the wider world. [end p4]
In an age of prosperity, we value more than ever our inheritance, our standards, our quality of life. Our duty is to be the trustee of all that is best in our past, but adding to it our own bequest to the future.
My Lord Mayor, the last decade has shown that a country of Britain's size is still with influence in the world when it is guided by attachment to principle, consistency, loyalty to its allies and iron determination to do battle for Britain's interests and a resolve to defend our people, however far flung in the world they may be.
One sure rule of international affairs is that the unexpected happens. In the last ten years we saw it with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, with the Iran/Iraq war beginning in 1980, with Argentina's invasion of the Falklands in 1982, with the great upheavals taking place in the Soviet Union, in Hungary, in Poland and now in China.
But a country cannot vary its foreign policy with every changing fashion, with every shifting scene. You have to mark out your ground on the fundamental issues of defence, freedom and human rights, and stand firmly and unshakably upon it.
That is why Britain's reputation once again rides high. We stood loyally by our Allies when they needed our help, as when the United States decided to act against Libya's murderous terrorism. We did not falter when we had to recover our sovereign territory and defend our people's freedom in the Falkland Islands. We were [end p5] determined to obtain a fair deal for Britain in Europe, and we did. We fought successfully against comprehensive sanctions on South Africa, knowing that they would only inflict poverty, hunger and unemployment on those who we most wanted to help. We have remained steadfast in defence, everyone knows where Britain stands.
My Lord Mayor, in international affairs we are witnessing what is perhaps the greatest change for many decades—the failure of the Communist ideology and the meltdown of authoritarian regimes.
The attractions of democracy and free enterprise are evermore apparent, not only for the prosperity they create but because they give life dignity and meaning.
Can anyone now doubt that the tide is turning in the struggle for the hearts and minds of people the world over? Yet the transition from a system in which everything is ordained by the state, and nothing left to individual choice, is not an easy one to make. People who have never known liberty sometimes fear the responsibility which goes with it. We cannot expect them to reach in a few short years the sort of democratic society which it took us centuries to create as power passed slowly from Kings to Barons to Parliament and to people, all under a rule of law.
Moreover, economic change and especially its benefits, will take even longer to materialise than political change. Times of great change are times of great uncertainty. More than ever we shall need to keep our defences strong and sure in case the black clouds of tyranny should gather and spread once more. [end p6]
As we look to the future, My Lord Mayor, we shall have to learn to deal with new issues, like the problems of the global environment which affect all the world's nations. There will be new opportunities for trade and growth provided we really bring down the barriers worldwide and create genuine open markets like the one we see here in the City of London.
Opportunities too to solve not only the historic problems of the Middle East but other problems such as Angola, Cambodia, Central America, born of an earlier phase of confrontation between East and West. Opportunities also to tackle the great problems of famine, disease, drought and the destruction of forests.
Britain is not as powerful as once she was but the days when it was said that we had lost an Empire and not yet found a role are now behind us. Today, having won a reputation for steadfastness, integrity and success, we have an influence in the world which we have not enjoyed these past forty years. It is once again as Great Britain, with the mighty City of London at its heart, that we go forward, confident that whatever lies ahead, our country will not be found wanting.
My Lord Mayor, I am truly grateful for the great honour you have accorded me today in conferring the Honorary Freedom of the City upon me. I thank you My Lord Mayor, the Corporation, and all the citizens for your fine tribute and for this memorable day.