Lady Howe, Ladies and Gentlemen: A sixtieth anniversary is always worth celebrating, but yours really spans a very special period, for the 1930s to 1990 has been a period of almost unprecedented social change and technological change.
I would like to be able to say that I remember when you started up. As a matter of fact, I do not quite, although in theory I could, but I was not interested in such things at the time.
But when you think of the boldness of starting up at the beginning of one of the biggest recessions we have ever had in our history and that you have survived, it says a great deal for the way in which you are prepared to adapt and always to find business and to fulfil a need.
If I were to refer first to the immense social changes that have taken place in that time, one sees the extend of the changes that have come about.
First, there were far fewer people employed—in particular there were far fewer women either in employment or even seeking employment.
And secondly, one of the reasons was because in those days women had a much more difficult task in the home, much greater drudgery. I think we women owe a very great deal to the technological changes that have enabled us in the kitchen and in the home to get things absolutely spick and span with a good deal of machinery and equipment, leaving us time either for more leisure or for part-time work or for full-time work.
It has been a massive change and, as a scientist interested in technology, I do as a woman say we owe technology a great deal for releasing us from drudgery to use our talents in a very much better way. [end p1]
That has been one of the massive social changes which has come about through the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and inevitably, with the increasing education of women and with the amount of time we have available, you will find an enormous amount of women want to work. I believe that is right for most of them because it uses their talents.
There are masses of women who went to university and have not used their talents since, and it is a great joy to me that women are able both to have a fulfilled married life and also to have the joy of working either full-time or part-time, and I am delighted at the number of women who have started up on their own and made a howling success of it and just showed that we can do every bit as well as other people.
Another social change will be coming shortly: we are all going to live longer. You may have noticed that one of the things Elspeth [Lady Howe] and I persuaded the men in our government to do was to abolish the earnings rule for retirement pensioners. By the end of this century, we are going to have nearly a million people who are over the age of eighty-five, and it is not going to be possible to retire at sixty or sixty-five. I am not saying that only because of myself!
It is not going to be possible to have a comparatively short span of work, say from twenty to sixty or sixty-five, and then leave for a pension so long after, so you are going to find that far many more people who come to retire in the normal way are going to want part-time jobs or different jobs. They are going to be very good people and they are going to be very reliable and you are going to have to put their expertise to good use because I believe there will be a great demand for them. That is going to be the new social change into which we are going.
The third thing that I indicated is the enormous, colossal, technological change. I can remember, just immediately after the Second Work War, a very telling book. It was Leon Bagrit 's ‘The Age of Automation’ and it was the beginning of computers. I must say that it is a great sorrow to me that computers were invented in this country but we never, in fact, got either the full credit nor indeed the full business from them that we should have. That is one thing we should look at because I am fed up with us inventing things and other people getting the credit.
But when I was working in a big organisation as a scientist, I remember some of the office workers saying “Goodness me—computers. That will take a lot of work away from us” . Now that was the fear, but throughout history, new technology at the beginning might have taken away some jobs but in the end it has created far more because it has enabled new products and new services to be introduced which people never thought of. That, too, is an account of technology which has led to social change. Every computer has, in fact, led to social change. Every computer has, in fact, led to far more jobs being created than it has ever led to them being reduced.
And the new technology will go on and on. We went from mechanisation [end p2] when you started in the 1930s, which enabled us to have the new big car industries and the new big mass-produced kitchen equipment, to automated production now, and that has meant we are having fewer people in the manufacturing industry. I don't know whether you have noticed today, even though we are getting more investment in manufacturing, so often that investment goes into a reduced number of jobs in actual manufacturing and a colossal increase in the number of jobs in the services. And that indeed you will find is a tremendous change. We are trying to accommodate that change in the difference in the curriculum we are doing in schools.
As I have gone round meeting you all, the thing that fascinates me is that you are able to put people into the job that wants them and the job they want, and you often find talents and abilities of getting on with people, and management and enterprise that you can never pick up in the schools. There are some things you cannot test for in schools—how to get on with others, whether or not you have enterprise or leadership, and you can so often do this.
I think the lesson is that, happen what may, we British are very adaptable, very enterprising, very steady and are able to adapt to that change and come out and still be a nation of both manufacturers and traders and do very well. I also think that there are probably more of us who are prepared to start up on our own than any other country, save perhaps the United States of America, which really is the home of enterprise.
You do a great job. We thank you, we congratulate you. You are the people who are absolutely at the interface between those seeking the right job and the employer who is seeking the right person.
I know it isn't always easy. We have a person in my office who went to an employment agency and said: “I have a degree in Byzantine History. Do you think you could find me a job commensurate with my talents and qualifications?” And you promptly found him one. For three weeks he did washing up in a West End restaurant: very, very good, something everyone should do! And then he came to work at 10 Downing Street, not at quite that job, but he was very good indeed.
Congratulations on your Diamond Jubilee. It has, as you look back, been one of the most exciting periods you could ever have chosen, but it is nothing like as exciting as the future sixty years are going to be.
You remember what I said about people wanting to work later and not retire: now that's just me. I will be here for your next anniversary after another ten years!