MT
Mr Chairman, Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Ron ThurlowRon, we've come to expect a marvellous speech from you to kick off the evening and you have done it again. Congratulations. [prolonged applause]
I would like to join you in saying thank you to the entertainments committee, thank you the association who supported us marvellously throughout the year. And can I too join you in thanking John Marshall for his wonderful service to us as our Euro member and note that from now he'll be able to do even more in the hoc [laughter and applause]
You very kindly pointed out that it's been a remarkable year. It has been a good year for business and industry. It's been a good year for most people. But I did come here towards the end of last year and we were all very much struck by one thing—that the terrible tragedies we had seen were both at home and worldwide showed us how small and insignificant are the problems that we have, compared with those that some people have unexpectedly had to face. And our thoughts and hearts were very much with them in their ordeal.
You mentioned that this year it will be thirty years since I had the privilege of representing Finchley and Friern Barnet in the House of Commons. Do you know it seems to have gone by in a flash? [laughter] The Young Conservatives will say … [words inaudible; laughter] … to them thirty years is an age. But for me it seems to have gone by so very quickly.
But I remember the first day that I arrived. Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister. We had not long been through the difficulties of Suez, with Selwyn Lloyd as Foreign Secretary, then of course to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. And it was fascinating to me that after I became Prime Minister and Harold Macmillan who came to see me, um, coming up to his ninetieth birthday, and I was able to recommend that he should become an Earl in their Lordship's House. It is very very strange. One couldn't possibly have foreseen anything like that that would have happened when I first went up there as your Member of Parliament so many years ago.
There were other things too, as it happened. Because I was a lawyer, as you know. I was a chemist—which is why I get the Royal Society—and [?] I was a lawyer. And two of my masters of law, one was a very famous judge, known as Fred Lawton, a very tough criminal judge, very good, the right sort of sentence—you know what I mean. [laughter and applause] … he had become a judge and I was able to … [words inaudible] … and then he came … [words inaudible] … for the Court of Appeal. And my master of law in Chancery—as anyone who is a lawyer will know, you really need training both in advocacy, so you get the gift of the gab, and in draftsmanship, so you get your documents right. And my master of law on the draftsmanship side was a person called John Brightman, who was a judge and who became a judge in appeal and then it fell to me to commend him, for sheer merit, to be one of the judges in the House of Lords. [end p1]
So really it was quite fantastic that one's, that one's whole life should have come together and so much should have happened since I have been Prime Minister at No. 10. I should tell you that there is here this evening someone who with me even earlier. Uh, Marcus [?] Steel, and Sid, all spoke with me before I came to Finchley because Marcus has an office in the constituency which I first fought and became a candidate in 1949. [laughter] I think I'm wearing quite well. [laughter and applause] And … it was all then a Socialist stronghold—Dartford, Erith and Crayford, all three were one constituency. But I'm very happy to say that under my Prime Ministership the Dartford and Crayford—two seats—are now held by Tories. [applause]
… [words inaudible] … to me another exciting year, another exiting few years. But when you look at the reason for the change—and the change has been colossal, because in 1979 we were pulling up from the verge of bankruptcy. So low had financial affairs sunk, that we were going to the IMF instead of providing credit for other people to go to the IMF. And we were coming from the verge of bankruptcy. And the terrifying thing was, that this country had accepted a declining role. Frightening isn't it, that Britain—the United Kingdom—should ever have accepted decline, a declining role? And you know it is very difficult to bring about change. So many get set in their old ways. And in a way this country had got set. It had got its mind set in the tramlines of Socialism. And if you're going on a road in tramlines it is jolly difficult to drive your car out of it and get back on to the road again. It was very difficult to bring about the change because too people, too many people are not prepared to make the effort because it wasn't worthwhile … [tape ends]