Mr Chairman, Sir Christopher CollettMy Lord Mayor, Deputy Mayor of Southwark and Ladies and Gentlemen, I am absolutely delighted that we have so many member of press and television this morning passionately interested in seeing the opening of workshops … . AND SO THEY SHOULD BE because it is the resurrection of enterprise opportunity which has really transformed and restored Britain over the last ten years. We didn't discover it, we always knew it was there and the thing was to try to find opportunity for it to flourish.
But first I want to say a word or two about LEntA because several years ago when I first went to the London Enterprise Agency they had got all of our ideas together, we knew there were lots and lots of young people who were very talented, very able and very good designers, very good at fashioning and making new things, inventing new things, and we knew full well that many of them didn't succeed because although they could do the designing and have the ideas, they never got together with people who could market or people who could manage or people who knew about finance and how were we to cope? Well, you couldn't exactly cope with government, you could give a certain amount of counselling but the real thing was to get these able young people to a place where they could get advice from those who had run businesses for years, who could say to them “Look, you think you have brought the best thing invented since sliced bread—if sliced bread was a good invention, which I doubt, but nevertheless—have you really marketed it, do you really know who will use it, the sort of [end p1] people who will buy it, have you looked at the cost? No, don't go into that building it is far too much for you” and I found that this Enterprise Agency was giving the most wonderful service, in many cases it stopped people from making a lot of errors and spending a lot of money which they hadn't got on making them and then it set them off on the right foot and gave them all the kind of advice to which they hadn't had access but with the generosity of people who joined the Enterprise Agency all of this was given free. Young people had the advice and it really gave a new lease of life to may people who have been very successful themselves and when you have been successful yourself you want above all to hand on your experience to others. Now I'll not forget that day. I gave some prizes to someone for the best business, it was called Rent-a-Teddy and it was a very good business and there was someone else who had set up an upholstery business, somebody else who had set up a beautiful business in scarves, someone else had started up a restaurant business and they have told me today that she has now got five restaurants and is ploughing back and helping others. So first we had the London Enterprise Agency and enormously successful it has been been. And then we have the business of providing space through LEntA Business Space and with that we have been extremely fortunate for it is doubly fortunate because first you need the finance, and two banks—as you know the Midland Bank and Barclays and two oil companies, Shell and BP—they have come in by providing the finance to restore these beautiful buildings and to create separate workshops in them to be rented at a reasonable rent for people who are starting. Now it is doubly good because you've got the finance and you've got the space— [end p2] that is the first beauty but the second beauty is they are saving so many of these beautiful buildings built in a different age. You only have to look at the beauty and the skill and the craftsmanship of the brickwork—it is wonderful. It would have been terrible to let it go, quite expensive to restore it, but isn't it interesting that today we still have the craftsmen who can do it and we still have a lot of young people who are interested in doing some like really skilled craft because it leads to such great satisfaction? So we do thank today all those from LEntA Business Space, the enormous co-operation for not only their finance but for their passionate interest in the project.
May I just say something for Government, because we put in half a million, which is only a little but sometimes you know it needs just a little bit of seed corn for others to come in and join. And so this is just one example, I have seen several others, I do congratulate on the work you are doing and not only is it LEntA Business Space but we've got the goodwill and active co-operation of the City of London—who are much older, the Lord Mayor—there are far more Lord Mayors of the City of London than have ever been Prime Ministers which really puts things in the right priority, doesn't it? The City has been in commerce and creating wealth for ages and on their 800th Anniversary Year they decided to give a 125 year lease of this building to the space agency so that everything has come together.
I think the third thing is this—the Foundry is an historic building in an historic area for in Blackfriars—it was called [end p3] Blackfriars because I think it was way back in about the 13th century that the Dominican friars first came here and set up here in Blackfriars (the Dominican friars were also called the Black Friars), so this really has a history. They came with a great mission in life and they called here. Much later, as you know, this was the foundry for casting the type for Fleet Street for the newspapers. In those days so much industry was dirty, clanking and heavy. Today it is modern, push-button and clean-working and so some of these old foundries were not used so they had to be transformed differently so that the new enterprise could take place. And so all of those three things have come together. You know your roots, other people have been here before with their mission in life, they've been here before to activate Fleet Street and we've come together with a new enterprise.
I think the last thing that I would wish to say is this. There is a new spirit of co-operation between business, commerce and industry and the whole community. Not only do people start to plough back into the community what they have managed to achieve in their profits but as they themselves are profiting they are turning round and saying “We have both a duty of showing and a duty I think of help for others” . It goes further than finance—it goes to being interested in the people as well and I am delighted to know that here there are contracts between industry and commerce and schools you know the Compacts are where the business says to the schools “Look, if so many of your children come up to standard each year twenty or thirty we will promise them jobs” . The pupils are pleased, the teachers are pleased the parents are pleased and so there is this whole new cross-co- [end p4] -operation. Well now, that is the way that I would describe the qualities that I am pursuing. They are working, they are working because they are based on the talent and ability of our people and the goodwill of those who have succeeded bringing together and creating the new enterprise and the new Britain of the future and what I have to say to you today is very relevant and is that although we may have had one or two changes yesterday which I was not in any way wanting to see—I am very sad that we have lost Nigel Lawson, he has done a wonderful job for six years with the same policies he has used and the new people at the top will continue those policies, each of them goes into a new department—John Major has been a Cabinet Minister for the Treasury is now the Chancellor, Douglas Hurd has been a Minister of State at the Home Office, he is now the Home Secretary and David Waddington has been Minister of State—I am very sorry Douglas Hurd is now at the Foreign Office and David Waddington at the Home Office has been a Minister there—each has achieved their ambition, and I come here to prove IT IS BUSINESS AS USUAL.
May I say to all of those who have taken these workshops—to all of them—we wish you every success and have great confidence in you and in the great endeavours to which you set your sights and and really, may I just finish there with, I think it was Drake 's saying or prayer— “When you have set your hand to any great endeavour it is not the beginning but the continuation of the same until it be well and truly finished which yieldeth its true glory” . I hope it will prove that for you today. I have great pleasure in declaring open these workshops.