Thank you for this excellent lunch and your warm and generous words of welcome. We British feel a particular affection and affinity for Switzerland, and especially for this city.
Zurich became an imperial free city in 1218, just about the time of our own Magna Carta, which first set down our liberties as free people. We think of Zurich, too, as the city where Sir Winston Churchill delivered one of his greatest and most visionary speeches in 1946, as Europe rose once more from the ashes of war.
On a very much more modest scale, I remember Zurich as the city where I delivered my own first speech in Switzerland. It was in 1977, I was leader of the Opposition, and the speech [end p1] was to the Zurich Economic Society. I am rather pleased, with hindsight, about the theme which I chose: “The fundamental change in direction which is about to occur”.
One of the things that has changed greatly in that time is Britain itself and the British economy. It is far, far stronger than it was when I last spoke in this city. We have got rid of over-regulation and restrictive practices. We have curbed trade union power. We have reduced taxes. We have encouraged wider ownership and enterprise. The result has been one of the highest average rates of growth [end p2] in Europe over the last decade, together with record output, record productivity and the highest standards of health care and social services we have ever enjoyed.
We have not overcome all the problems. Our inflation rate is too high, but we are determined to bring it down. That is our first priority and we shall pursue the sound economic policies needed to achieve it. We have learned a very great deal from Switzerland and the principles you have followed in achieving your own prosperity, above all the importance of sound money.
Another great change has been in Western Europe. You may be surprised when I say that Britain is the most European of the members of [end p3] the European Community, because that is not the impression which is normally given. But when it comes to implementing the directives of the EC and abiding by its decisions: when it is a question of reducing barriers to trade and keeping the Community open to the outside world: when you look for leadership in establishing the Single Market: when it comes to accepting responsibility to defend Europe's interest in the wider world as we are doing now in the Gulf, then you will not find a country more European than Britain.
We are very pleased that, as part of EFTA, Switzerland is engaged in the negotiations to [end p4] create a European Economic Area with the European Community. We share a view with you of what Europe should be like. We want it to be open to all democratic countries. We want to see trade barriers, both the visible ones and the hidden practices and restrictions, eliminated. And we want the individual countries of Europe to be able to preserve their traditions and their nationhood, which have grown up over the centuries and make each one of us different.
The third change we have seen has been that which has swept Eastern Europe and now the Soviet Union, far greater than anything any of us ever imagined and full of hope for the future. But Britain like Switzerland continues to believe in the need for strong defence, [end p5] because you never know where the next threat may come from and you must always be prepared to face a new situation like that which now affects us in the Gulf. On that, may I say how very glad we are that Switzerland has joined with others in implementing sanctions against Iraq. There is a vital principle at stake that you must never let an aggressor succeed: and it is the task of the whole world community to ensure that Iraq is compelled to withdraw and the legitimate Government of Kuwait restored. We hope you will also join in providing aid to the countries most affected by sanctions. It is only right that, while some countries are playing their part in the great military effort to stop Iraq's aggression, others should contribute economic help. We all share an [end p6] interest in seeing aggression defeated and the free flow of oil maintained.
But one thing, I am glad to say, has not changed in its essence, and that is the relations between Britain and Switzerland. They have always been good, ever since the first British missionaries came here in the 6th century. I don't know what we would do without our British missionaries. They crop up in so many of my speeches, as the first people to establish contact with foreign countries! More recently, we take particular credit for transforming mountaineering into a worldwide sport with the founding of the British Alpine Club in 1857. We were also responsible for introducing skiing to Switzerland as well as toboganning and the Cresta Run - and I am glad [end p7] to say the Thatcher family has played its part over the years in maintaining the Swiss winter sports industry!
But the scale of our trade and economic relations has constantly grown. Britain is now Switzerland's fourth biggest market. We sell more to Switzerland than we do to Japan. And Switzerland invests more in Britain than Japan and indeed than the Federal Republic of Germany. Some of your greatest companies have been manufacturing in Britain for more than fifty years and we welcome that very much, because we are - with Switzerland - the freest country in Europe, the one which most welcomes outside investment. [end p8] So in conclusion can I say how delighted I am to pay the first official visit by a British Prime Minister to Switzerland - extraordinary though it is that there has not been one before. I hope it will strengthen what I believe is a very special relationship. It is nearly two hundred years since the great English Romantic poet, Wordsworth, wrote a sonnet “Thoughts of a Briton on the subjugation of Switzerland”, at the time when Napoleon BonaparteNapoleon had conquered Switzerland - although only temporarily. In his poem he identified our two countries as symbols of freedom and wrote:
“Two voices are there: One is of the sea, One of the mountains: each a mighty voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty.”[end p9]
That is a very poetic way of expressing it. Perhaps Sir Winston Churchill put it more simply fifty years ago when he wrote that Switzerland is “on our side”. The fact is: we are both on the same side, the side of right, the side of freedom.
(2) BBC Radio News Report 2400 22 September 1990:Reynolds
One of the major themes of the visits to all three countries was the future structure of the European Community. Mrs. Thatcher lost no opportunity of pressing her view that the Community should be an association of sovereign states co-operating together, and that it should be open to new members, including Czechoslovakia and Hungary one day. She told the Swiss that their neutrality was not a bar to membership.
At a final lunch in Zurich she also spoke of her own future. Told that the leader of the canton was serving a fourth term, she re-affirmed her intention of winning a fourth time as well. She said that she had given a speech in Zurich in 1977 as Leader of the Opposition, adding that it was a position she did not intend holding again. Downing Street officials said that this was a jocular remark intended to re-enforce her determination to win. It was not supposed to be a signal that she would resign as leader if she lost the next election.