Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I come here first and foremost tonight to support our seven Edinburgh Conservative candidates in their fight to win their respective seats. And I also want to say how splendidly Teddy Taylor has led the Conservative Party at Westminster representing Scotland during his time as Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland [applause]. And we all very much hope that soon we'll drop the shadows [applause]. It is, I think, a particularly good omen that I come on a day when we've just won a seat on the District Council with a swing to the Conservatives of nine per cent [applause]. Many congratulations to Mrs Councillor McKenzie, and we'd very much like a swing of at least nine per cent when it comes to certain other election days which we're all looking forward to.
Now, you very kindly mentioned, Mr Chairman, the number of times I've been to Scotland. I've been fourteen times since I became leader of the Conservative Party, and, whenever I come here now, I know I can look forward to the warmest of welcomes from old and trusted friends. Now I speak to you tonight as leader of the Conservative Party and as a Unionist. And I make no bones about it: I'm a Unionist [applause]. I believe we're one family in this our United Kingdom. We may have our differences, even squabbles within the family. Even the best of families do that. There are proud and old nations, proud and old peoples within this kingdom, rightly insisting on their own say, control of their own lives, but the bedrock is, and must continue to be, the unity of the British family [applause]. From this comes the strength we can give one another. Down the centuries there's been the most splendid and invigorating flow back and forth between Scotland and England of people, of enterprise and of ideas. And form this two way traffic comes our sense of shared values and shared hopes. Above all, from this comes our security. I want people to be able to say, wherever they live in this land of ours, whatever they do, we are part of this greater kingdom. No matter what storms and setbacks may assail us, we are together, with our common heritage, our shared memories of past crises and how we saw them through, with our deep instinctive ties which no false doctrine can destroy, no twisted theories of class struggle can diminish or corrode.
Mr Chairman, we have a very great choice before us at this coming election. There will either be a Conservative Government or a Labour Government at the end of it. And let's face it, the only way to keep out a Labour Government is to vote Conservative [applause]. At by-election times sometimes different considerations obtain, but at general election times, we're not only electing a member for each constituency, we are having a say in the whole philosophy and way of life by which we shall be governed over the next five years. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about the choice which faces our people.
If you look back over the performance of Conservative and Labour Governments in the post war period, you'll find that consistently, Conservative performance has been better than Labour when we were in office. That holds, whether you consider [end p1] standards of living—it was we Conservatives who raised it far more for all the people than has ever been done under Labour. We've been far better at creating jobs. We've been far better at keeping prices down. We've been far better at increasing the numbers of people who have the chance to occupy and own their own houses. We've been far better at keeping shorter lists in the National Health Service. If you look at the record and the performance, we have it every time [applause].
I hope that many of our people, when exercising their choice, will take into account the changing nature of the Labour Party, because it is that changing nature which has made so many former Labour Cabinet Ministers leave the Labour Party, and we're proud to have some of them with us, because they find their former aspirations are now better represented by the modern day Conservative Party than by the modern day Labour Party [applause]. You will find that extreme left-wingers increasingly dominate the Labour party, and increasingly determine Labour policy. Whatever name those left-wingers choose to operate under, they all have the same aim. It is to destroy our present society in the hope that their brand of extremism will clamber to power on the wreckage. They want to build a State in which the freedom of the individual is utterly destroyed and his every action, including his choice of job, home, and school, is supervised by bureaucracy.
And should anyone think that I'm raising unnecessary alarm about the left-wing extremists increasingly taking over the Labour Party, just listen to what the James CallaghanPrime Minister said about it at the Labour Party conference in 1976. He said this: “I also draw the Party's attention to new factor creeping into the Party which I warn against, namely those elements which misuse the word Socialist and who seek to infiltrate our Party and use it for their own ends.” He went on and said, “I suggest to the National Executive Committee that they'd do well to examine those activities to see what is going on in the Labour Party and report back to it.” Well, the immediate response of the National Executive of the Labour Party, itself dominated by left-wingers, was to appoint an avowed Trotskyist to be Youth Officer of the Labour Party.
But at election time, all that goes under wraps. Of the actual case for voting Socialist we hear not a murmur. Where are their trumpeters proclaiming the Socialist case? Where is their Keir Hardie, their Nye Bevan? Labour's silence is all the more surprising when you think back to the beginning of this Government. There was Denis Healey promising to squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked. He did—only it wasn't just the rich he squeezed, it was all of us [applause]. Of course, they have a trumpeter of sorts. I understand his name was mentioned before I came on the platform tonight: Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn. The trouble was, he would play the wrong tunes and go his own way at rehearsals, so no wonder they're trying to keep him off the bandstand until the concert is over [laughter and applause].
But now, let us ask a few serious questions about the Labour Government's record, because, in making up their minds, the electorate should now ask the Labour Party the following questions on which they are entitled to have an answer, but have so far not received one. What are Labour's real intentions about prices? They've been in office for five years. In that time they've more than doubled prices. Would Labour now say [end p2] by how much prices would rise if they were in office another five years? Would they double them yet again? They talk of inflation being conquered, but prices are even now going up by almost ten per cent a year. What are the Labour plans to stop this happening? I'll give you ours later. They can't just be relying again on the Prices Commission, or the Prices Secretary under whom prices have more than doubled. People have a right to know what, if anything, Labour intends.
And second, people want to know a lot more too about the real job prospects under Labour. Unemployment has more than doubled in the last five years under Labour. Why does Mr Callaghan think he can succeed in reducing the level of unemployment in the next five years, when he couldn't do it during the last five years? [applause]. If he has a plan for doing it, why didn't he implement it before? So how many more businesses would we see closing down under Labour? How many more shutters would go up? How many more enterprising people who might start up on their own and give employment to others—how many will be driven abroad?
There are vital questions, too, to be answered on Labour and their attitude towards the law. What steps do they propose to tackle the appalling crime and vandalism more vigorously? None are outlined in the Labour manifesto. What answer do they have to the frightened elderly on this, or do they believe those fears are exaggerated? Why do they constantly attack the judges? Why do so many Labour MPs continually criticise the police? [applause].
But enough of that unhappy band. Let me turn to our Conservative positive proposals. And let me deal first with two issues of special concern in Scotland. Law and order, and one or two words about devolution of powers. The rise in lawlessness is a shadow over us all. The first responsibility of government in a free society is to protect that most basic of freedoms, the right of each one of us, our old folk and our children, to go about our lawful business without fear [applause]. Here in Scotland, I know how acutely worried you are about the crime wave and the thuggery. I give you this assurance. Under a Conservative Government, there will be no neutrality in the war against crime. Under a Conservative Government, there will be no resting in the task of making Scotland safe again. With a Conservative Government, the maintenance of public order and the protection of the law-abiding citizen will be the paramount duty of government [applause]. The challenge that the vandal and the hooligan pose to the well-being of each one of us, old and young, and to the civilised standards on which all depends will be met and repulsed with the utmost determination. As you know, the Conservative Party in Scotland has devoted its best energies to this problem, with Teddy Taylor in the forefront of the fight. Teddy and his team put this matter first, because they know what the real priorities are in everyday life in Scotland.
Now, I've already had a word or two about the unity of the kingdom, but there is a problem that makes many Scots deeply anxious. That is far too much central government. The problem of remote and over-mighty government causes special anxiety for you here in Scotland, which I fully recognise and understand. That anxiety has gone so deep that it's threatened the delicate balance within our national family. I don't underrate, nor do I lack sympathy for, the powerful emotions that have [end p3] been aroused. But, Mr Chairman, the Labour Government's botched Devolution Bill was about as wrong a way to set about putting things right as could be imagined [applause]. It was a bad incompetent Bill. It was constructed, not to heal and improve, not to offer new scope and freedom for the Scottish people, but as part of a tactic for winning votes in the House of Commons and clinging on to Labour's seats in Scotland [applause]. Had the Assembly come into being under that Bill, with its lopsided powers and its ill-defined relationship with Westminster, it would have been a certain recipe for unending bitterness and conflict within the United Kingdom and the start of a drift towards separation and national break-up.
We Conservatives are utterly resolved that that should not happen. When we take office, we shall start talks with all the interested parties, to see how you in Scotland can have more say in the management of your affairs. We shan't treat this as a party matter. We'll not seek party advantage from it. We say only that this is a task for a new Parliament with a fresh mandate from all the people and for all those in that new Parliament, whatever their party, who want to see the unity of the kingdom not only preserved but strengthened. And however we proceed, I give you this promise here in Scotland's capital tonight: we will never be party to a scheme which lumbers the Scots with fresh and costly layers of bureaucracy [applause].
The devolution in which we believe, above all, is the devolution of power away from politicians and the state to the people themselves [applause]. That's what generations of Scots have shown they believe. Wherever in the world the flag of freedom flies, you can be sure there will be a Scotsman to lead the cheering [applause]. And Scotsmen have always been to the forefront in enterprise, invention, industry and commerce, not to say finance. You, above all, know the need to create more wealth before it can be spent. It's not enough to have ideals. Translating them into practice costs money, and that money has to be earned by somebody, and it can only be earned by creating wealth.
It's no good a government ordering better schools, more hospitals and welfare services, higher pensions, help for homebuyers, and all the other worthwhile causes, unless its also practical about paying for them. There's no merit in being generous at someone else's expense. No merit in parading your ideals without knowing how to pay for them. That's sheer hypocrisy. That's where Labour goes wrong. They've got a great many very expensive ideas. Three years ago, Michael Foot told a Trade Union Conference, “It's no good saying to me in this Labour Government that we're opposed to public expenditure, because this Labour Government over the past two years, in spite of all our difficulties, has increased public spending proportionately more than any previous Government we've had in our history.”
What of course he forgot was, there's no such thing as public money. There's only tax payers money. And when he'd taxed the people to the hilt, and when people had paid rates to the hilt, and that still wasn't enough [a few claps] —yes, rates are a great bone of contention, aren't they? [applause]. Even after that, he had to borrow and borrow and borrow and put a great millstone of borrowing round the necks of our children for them to pay back. But even as he spoke those words about increasing public expenditure, the Government was tottering towards bankruptcy. And not long [end p4] afterward, Labour Ministers were forced to go on their knees to the bankers of the International Monetary Fund and beg for loans, more loans, to pay for their wild extravagances. Many of these debts are not paid off even yet, despite the windfall of North Sea Oil.
Mr Chairman, I was brought up to believe that it was unforgivable to acquire debts you can't repay and dishonest to make promises you can only keep at other people's expense. And to my mind, there is no essential difference between that old-fashioned family morality and the way in which governments ought to conduct national business. There are a few more [applause]… There are a few more noughts on the end, but the same rules of basic honesty apply.
And that's the policy of our Party too. We believe in creating wealth before getting down to the very agreeable task of spending it. We don't finance our ideals with dud cheques. No doubt the Labour leaders would like to do the honest thing too. Their difficulty is that they genuinely do not know how wealth is really created. They're obsessed by the belief that wealth flows from the state, and if the state only pumps enough money into a business they think it will flourish. We Conservatives, by contrast, know that the business of wealth creation is essentially a human process. It's based on the ideas of individual men and women, their skills, their energy, their inventiveness, and the sheer risk-taking courage with which they turn those ideas into factories and offices providing genuine jobs.
You know, real economic growth occurs when a small business is original and efficient enough to turn itself into a medium-sized business. And when a medium-sized business, by mastering the techniques of mass production and marketing, expands into a big one. That's when the new jobs mount up, and when the new wealth accumulates. And the best way a government can promote growth is to provide fair rules for trading, sensible laws for the employment and rights of labour, a tax system which rewards industry and encourages saving, and above all, an atmosphere in which the individual feels free to dare and to innovate [applause].
You can put it another way. Labour believes that wealth is created by investing in ideology. We know that it's created by people putting their own ideas to the test, putting your trust in people, in their originality and resourcefulness, is not just common sense. It's a form of idealism in itself. There are times when idealism and practicality merge together into sound policy, and this is one of them. Conservatives propose to combine the practical business of creating new wealth with the moral purpose of giving people the chance to realise their own potential. That's what we're here for. That's the purpose of life. And with the extra resources thereby produced, we can honestly and prudently improve our welfare services and fulfil our international duties. To coin a proverb, a country which trusts the talent of its people makes a sound investment indeed.
Now we will build real incentive for all into our tax system. Our tax for tax … our case for tax cuts is not only an economic case. It's a moral case too. It's the case for new jobs where there are now none. It's the case for effort rewarded. It's the case for responsibility assumed willingly and with pride. It's the case for a society with its [end p5] confidence and its vitality restored to it. People don't go out and work harder for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They work harder for their families, and a very worthy ideal that is [applause]. And so I assert without hesitation, we will cut the tax on work, we will cut the tax on savings, we will cut the tax on extra skill and extra effort. Only in that way, by stimulating people, shall we get a more prosperous economy. Only when we've got a more prosperous economy, can we recover our prestige in the world and can we do all those extra things for people who need help, extra things that we are so anxious to do.
Now, may I turn to one or two of the problems of creating genuine jobs and the figures on unemployment? And I'd like to make clear, we'll take no lectures from this Labour Government on unemployment [applause]. Labour's left Scotland as they left England, Wales, and Northern Ireland—with the most appalling unemployment since the war. Michael Foot said he wouldn't sit in the House of Commons as a Minister and preside over mass unemployment. He sat [laughter]. He presided, while beside him the Labour leader mumbled that he didn't know the answer. In Scotland, Willie Ross said, “When Scottish unemployment reaches 100,000, the honourable course for a Secretary of State for Scotland is to resign.” Under him, it reached 100,000. He didn't resign. Under his successor, it's over 170,000. Now Scotland has the chance to see that he does resign! [applause].
Jobs grow not out of windy promises and implausible targets. They spring from creative individual effort, combined with high skill and hard work. Give one man the chance, the incentive to start a business up on his own, and you soon give a dozen people the chance to work with him. Today's small business is tomorrow's big business, and we must provide the incentive to keep new small businesses starting and existing small businesses growing [applause].
A recent study, it so happens that it was in the United States, but I believe its findings are universally true, showed that two-thirds of all new jobs come from firms employing under twenty people. And four jobs in five, four new jobs in five, come from firms less than five years old. The truth is that a Party which has such heavy tax that it discourages new business, stops new genuine jobs. And that is the central lesson of the five Labour years. It's one that Labour can't grasp, because it goes right against the Socialist grain [applause]. A Party like the Labour Party, which penalises success, which maintains some of the highest income tax rates in the Western world, can't be the Party of small business, and it cannot therefore be the Party of jobs [applause]. But let's have a look at the record. It shows beyond dispute, that Labour policies create no real jobs, only artificial ones, and that isn't good enough for our young people. And the future, if there was one under Labour, would confirm that decisively.
Now, from jobs, so to prices. In prices as well, Labour Britain's done worse in the inflation stakes than any other major country except crisis torn Italy and Spain. For Labour then to turn to give us advice on prices is like a man who's just done five years in Peterhead or Barlinney giving us advice on how to go straight [applause]. Now, the honest way to tackle rising prices is to go right to the very root of the problem, and Government does have a responsibility. If it floods and [end p6] prints more money into the economy than is backed by goods and services produced, that extra money will find its way into rising prices. That's why Government must first look after the proper control of the money supply, and it can do that by curbing Government borrowing and State spending [applause]. See, if you're printing extra money, you're trying to have goods and services that aren't there. If you're borrowing tomorrow's money, you're trying to do exactly the same thing. And that's really why prices go up.
And the second thing is, if you want to keep costs down, you must expand output, and you're only going to expand output by those same incentives to enterprise and work that we've been talking about. And that means the tax cuts that we've been talking about. And third, you know, competition is the real way to keep prices down, and value for money up, and every family knows it [applause]. You know, Government could have kept prices down in nationalised industries, like British Airways, for example. But it wasn't Government that did it. It was the competition from Freddie Laker that made them bring down their prices [applause]. He showed what private enterprise could do under similar circumstances. But, of course, it was his own money, and that makes a difference [applause]. And every housewife knows it's firms like, well two, Tesco and Sainsbury's, which really help the consumer. And I'm not having a plug for either of those. There are many others, and it doesn't stop there. It's not just the big household names. In every High Street shop or family retail business and small business, there's more going on every day to give the shopper a fair deal on prices than in all the corridors of Labour power strung together [applause]. They have to please the customer. They have to give value for money. That's the only way they can stay in business. So competition must be vigorously maintained. It rewards the enterprising and efficient firms and those who work in them.
Now, Mr Chairman, I'm often asked another question. I'm often asked about how the Conservative Party and the trade unions will get on together. And, do you know, my first instinct is to reply, “Well, they got on together very well under those thirteen years of Conservative Government when Harold Macmillan did so tremendously well in raising our standard of living” [applause]. Today, I believe that most trade unionists want the things we want. A lot of them are our members. They want the same things. They want the right and the freedom to get on with and to do a good job. That's why so many of them favour our proposals for reforming the law, although that is, of course, only a part of our overall plan for restoring responsibility and making it worthwhile to pursue good and orderly industrial relations.
Now, it's said by some that a new Conservative Government, however mandated by the electorate, would find itself challenged by the unions. I don't believe this to be true. If it were, it would, of course, make nonsense of the whole concept of Parliament and the rule of law [applause]. It would mean that this general election, on which we are all now engaged, would be nothing but a mockery and a sham. That may be what the few destroyers want, but it is not what the vast majority want. It's not what millions of trade unionists want. I believe that the nation is ready to give a massive vote of support to a Government which, on behalf of each one of us, will deal [end p7] with the chaos caused by a tiny minority, and open a genuinely better way for all at work [applause].
Our policy, in whatever sphere, Mr Chairman, is to provide people, whatever their background, with opportunity. And one of the opportunities upon which we are putting so much emphasis at this general election is the opportunity for council tenants to purchase their own homes as of right at a very, very good discount from market value. I know that it is having a very good response in Scotland, where many people would never, never, never get that right from a Labour Government. I wonder why Labour attacks us so much for wanting to give council tenants the chance to buy their own home? Is it because the dream of families to own their own homes is a threat to the ‘Big Brother State’ to which Socialist policies lead? Is it that the Labour Party zealots hate home ownership—for others! [laughter and applause]. But selling council houses to the sitting tenants would reduce local authority housing debts, and it would help to keep rents down for the other tenants who want to continue to rent. But, best of all, it would give the tenants who want it, the chance of independence from the petty rules and restrictions the Socialists love, and that prospect alone is a threat to the true Socialist promised land, a land of dreary uniformity, in which the only freedom is the freedom to do as the man in St Andrew's House or the City Chambers orders [applause].
It is said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” What are the fruits of Socialism? Where is the caring society that we were promised? Where are the genuine jobs, the stable prices, the low taxes? Where is the money created by a thriving economy? Where is the thriving economy? Where is the money to spend on our schools, our hospitals, our pensioners, on the sick, the disabled, the needy? Labour promised a fairer and a more prosperous society, but it's not made society fairer. It's made it less fair. It's not made Britain richer. It's made it poorer. It's not distributed the rewards of achievement more widely. It's devalued them along with the currency. For five years, we've seen Socialism in action. We've had our fill of it. So let the message go out loud and clear tonight from Scotland: Enough is enough! [applause].
Inflationary policies, inflationary government, inflationary ministers, inflationary unemployment, away with them! Of all the high prices we've had to pay, none is the higher than the price of Labour in office. We've paid that price for eleven years out of the last fourteen. We can't afford it any longer. There must be a change [applause].
We Conservatives believe that when people have a greater say in their destiny, their instinct is not to think, “Now, what can we grab for ourselves? How can we take our own slice and go off on our own?” On the contrary, we believe that the vast majority want to work together, as partners in our society, bound together by common loyalty and a common resolve to do better for their families and for their country. Such is my conviction, such is my own faith in the future, such is the belief on which our great national Conservative and Unionist Party rests its policies and its intentions.
I can promise no smooth or easy ride, but somewhere ahead lies greatness for our country again. Look at Britain today, and you might think that an impossible dream. Listen to the clamour of rival interests. See the placards of protest, the struggle as [end p8] great organisations jostle with each other for power, and you might think it could never be. But there is another Britain which may not make the daily news, but each one of us knows. It's a Britain of thoughtful people, heirs to the wisdom of centuries, tantalisingly slow to act, yet marvellously determined when they do. Theirs are the voices which steady each generation, not by great oratory or argument, but by a word here, a reason there, a sudden flash of truth which makes men pause and think and say, “That makes sense to me.”
That's how the foundations of fairness, justice, and balance have been built up in this country, layer upon layer and brick by brick. By such a process, the law has grown, crystallising in each age what seems reasonable and wise and true. And today, if you listen, you can hear those voices again. They call not for upheaval, not for dogma, not for division, not for conflict, but for balance, a land where all may grow but none may grow oppressive. Their message is quiet but insistent. It comes from our half-formed thoughts, our memories, our hopes, our instincts, and it says this: preserve, conserve, so that we may build again. And for Britain there can be a new renaissance. Kipling said it better than I ever could:
So when the world is asleep and there seems no hope of waking
Out of some long, bad dream that makes her mutter and moan,
Suddenly all men rise to the noise of fetters breaking,
And everyone smiles at his neighbour,
[Prolonged applause.]and tells him his soul is his own.