Mr. Ruben Gerorkians
Prime Minister, would you care to address a few words to the Armenian people following the earthquake of 9 December last year?
Prime Minister
Yes, of course. I remember first hearing about it very well. We had been expecting Mr Gorbachev to come to Britain for a visit, he was in New York at the time, and I turned on the early morning news and heard exactly what had happened. It was clear that Mr Gorbachev could not possibly come, he had to go home, and as the news unfolded, the magnitude of the earthquake, its sorrow, its tragedy, its desolation, the reporting got even worse of the events which had occurred.
The BBC were discussing on the radio what reaction they thought I would make so I simply picked up the telephone and said: “Please could you put me through to the programme because I can tell you my reaction instantly. We are horrified at what has happened. We share the sorrow with the people of Armenia. We understand why Mr Gorbachev cannot possibly come and of course we will do all we can to help, we offer things immediately to help and we will [end p1] send teams out, whether it be of doctors, whether it be of firemen, whatever you require we will do our best to supply it” .
I saw my Ministers very quickly that morning and we allocated a sum of some £5 million to it and then the people of Britain were also utterly appalled at the hardship, the loss, we all felt it. These feelings cross all national barriers, everyone thinks, “How would I feel if I had lost my home, I had lost my family? I would still be looking for them, they might still be buried under the rubble,” and you have a fellow feeling and you must do something.
So in addition many many organisations and friends tried to raise money and they raised another £5 million. We sent people out to help and we watched every day the pictures that came in.
We have never experienced that kind of earthquake and out of terrible tragedies sometimes you can try to rebuild a new city, a new life, new opportunities, new friendships.
And so the first instinct was to help to clear away and to help those who were immediately suffering and the second, what can we do to help to rebuild the city? We knew that the school had been destroyed, one of the primary schools, and so we thought people will be first thinking about the small children and about giving them an opportunity and so we used some of the designs that we have for primary schools in areas where, because there has been coal mining we suffer a certain amount of subsidence and we know how to build schools so that if we get subsidence the school does not suffer and we decided that it would be very nice if we could give a whole such school to the people of Armenia and I am actually speaking to you [end p2] from the room where both Mr and Mrs. Gorbachev were present when they later came to our country and had an enormous welcome and we had a model of the school and we formally handed it over in the model so that you will see what is coming and had several people here who had been concerned with doing that.
So if out of that terrible day's events we can forge a new future, a future with greater friendship both within the Soviet Union and between the Armenian people and other countries and the Soviet Union and other countries then out of that terrible day will come some good.
We hope most earnestly that will happen. We hope that the people of Armenia see hope in a new future. We know that there is now so much more freedom of speech in the Soviet Union and new prospects opening for them and that freedom is being enlarged and democracy enlarged too.
I would just like to say this to the people of Armenia. We felt very much for you in your sorrows, we tried to help through those, we tried to help with immediate comfort. We still feel for you and we still hope that you will build a new and better future for your families and children so that those who survive will look back not only upon their agonies but as a sign of new hope and a new beginning. We wish you well.