BRITAIN'S SUPPORT FOR FREEDOM
Mr. Governing Mayor, Helmut KohlChancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for the very warm welcome you have given me here today. It is an honour for me to sign your Golden Book, on this my first visit to Berlin.
THE MESSAGE OF BERLIN
Your great city has profound significance for all mankind. No other place brings home so forcefully the realities of the world in which we live.
Berlin has two fundamental messages. [end p1]
The first is one of warning. This City reminds us — that we live in the shadow of a power dedicated to the denial of all that we believe in — that we must be vigilant, strong and determined in the defence of liberty and justice if our peoples are to continue to enjoy the way of life which they have freely chosen.
Here meet the ideologies of East and West. Here, men and women have demonstrated their passion for liberty by fleeing from one to the other, always at great risk, often at great cost. [end p2] You live but a short step from oppression, they a short step from liberty. Here, freedom is always at issue.
But if the first message is one of warning, the second is one of hope. It is nearly forty years since Greater Berlin was divided. Recently, your City has not escaped the effects of economic recession. Few have.
But Berlin has strong vitality.
Free Berlin has flourished. [end p3]
It is a centre of excellence in the arts.
It is renowned for scientific endeavour.
It is a living proof of what man can achieve when he will.
This success is a tribute to the character of the people of Berlin. In circumstances which are vulnerable and exposed you have remained steadfast, calm and confident over many years. That is why I and other Western leaders come to this City, not just as your guarantors, but as your admirers. [end p4]
THE WALL
Mr. Mayor, this afternoon, for the first time in my life I saw the Wall in all its menacing reality. Beginning of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 29 October 1982
It is a grim monument to a cruel and desolate creed. Every stone bears witness to the moral bankruptcy of the society it encloses. End of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 29 October 1982.
And yet hundreds of East Berliners have escaped by extraordinary routes which, had they been invented by a teller of tales, would have been dismissed as fanciful. They tunnel, they fly, they float, they sail, they swim, they drive, they even parachute to liberty. [end p5] Beginning of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 29 October 1982:
The Communists will stop at nothing to keep people in. They even flaunt their ruthlessness and barbarism in their desperate attempts to stop the flight to freedom.
The Wall is also an ever-present reminder that those who repress the liberties of our Eastern neighbours seek also to extinguish our own. Let us resolve that they must never succeed. (Applause) End of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 29 October 1982.
DEFENCE OF LIBERTY
For the defence of liberty, we need the means and the will. Both must be clearly evident if we are to deter our potential adversaries. [end p6]
As to the means, we must maintain the necessary level of conventional armed forces, and of nuclear weapons.
Over thirty years ago men of the Royal Air Force played their part in the airlift to Berlin. We had the means. We had the will. This afternoon, I have met some of the British Forces stationed here today. Their presence demonstrates the continuing commitment of Britain, with our French and American allies, to uphold the freedom of your City. They remain here because there is a vital task for them to do and because you want them to do it. [end p7]
We have our wider, collective responsibilities as members of NATO and of the European Community. We shall work to ensure that these cornerstones of western freedom continue to guard our way of life. Together we are stronger than when we act alone.
Mr. Mayor, if liberty is assaulted in one place, it is diminished everywhere. If we in Europe fail to stand by our commitments in one place, then our willingness to stand by them in another is questioned.
That is why, earlier this year, British forces sailed 8,000 miles to expel a foreign invader. [end p8] When the aggressor abandoned the path of negotiation and resorted to force, we had no choice. We could not accept that the liberty of British people to enjoy their chosen way of life should be extinguished.
There were those who argued that force should not have been used, that the liberty of a small number of people many miles away in the South Atlantic was not worth so much effort and sacrifice. That argument has a hollow ring, above all here in Berlin. You have a special need to know that Britain honours her obligations. [end p9]
STRENGTH LEADS TO CO-OPERATION
Berlin teaches us something else as well—that strength and determination not only keep the peace, the peace that we have already enjoyed for thirty-seven years, but they can lead to reduction in tension, to greater East/West co-operation. A paradox? No. It is weakness that tempts the aggressor. It is strength that leads to discussion and negotiation.
Thanks to the determination shown by the West and by the people of Berlin themselves, it proved possible to negotiate practical arrangements with the Soviet authorities in the Quadripartite Agreement of 1971. [end p10]
These arrangements reduced the tension which has has for so many years affected the life of this city.
again, because the western alliance is strong in capacity and resolve, the negotiations to achieve a balanced reduction in nuclear weapons and conventional forces have a better chance of success. We would welcome, indeed we seek, arms reductions which do not jeopardise our security or our way of life. The west must negotiate, patiently and tenaciously, to this end. [end p11]
We in Britain will continue to work for peace. Peace, not at any price, but peace with freedom and justice. And we shall seek improved relations between East and West. But this requires a two-way effort and greater respect for international law and human rights than we have seen in recent years.
As Chancellor Kohl said on 13 October, “walls, barbed wire and orders to shoot are not and cannot be the last word between east and west, in germany, europe and the world” .
THE FREE SOCIETY
There are forces more powerful and more pervasive than the apparatus of war. You may chain a man—but you cannot chain his mind. You may enslave him but you will not conquer [end p12] his spirit. In every decade since the war the Soviet leaders have been reminded that their pitiless ideology only survives because it is maintained by force. But the day comes when the anger and frustration of the people is so great that force cannot contain it. Then the edifice cracks; the mortar crumbles. That is the lesson of Poland.
There will be attempts to shore up the edifice but the world knows that in Poland things will never be quite the same again. The renewal and reform which the Polish people seek must come, or there will be no lasting stability or prosperity in that unhappy country. [end p13] The Polish authorities must change course. In the long run, they have no realistic alternative. Poland's history proves it. Beginning of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 29 October 1982:
Mr. Mayor, what the Berlin Wall really reveals is not so much how we are threatened by the Soviet Union and her allies but how they feel threatened by our ideals and values. End of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 29 October 1982:
Yet, as the great Austrian Chancellor, Metternich, is reported to have said: “It is useless to close the gates against ideas; they overleap them.”
Who better qualified to come to that conclusion than Metternich. [end p14] He devoted his long life to the preservation of autocracy. But the revolution of 1848 showed him that all his efforts to prevent the spread of liberty and the ideals of freedom had been in vain. Beginning of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 29 October 1982:
The Kremlin knows that when people are free to choose, they choose to be free.
One day, liberty will dawn on the other side of the wall. (Applause). End of section checked against BBC Radio News Report 1800 29 October 1982.