Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, Children:
First, may I thank you for your very warm welcome and for the marvellous welcome we had here all the way from the airport to the school. It is a joy to be here at last, to take part in the opening ceremony of this school and although this is a day really for looking forward, I must start by recalling for just a moment the terrible earthquake of eighteen months ago.
The horror of it made a deep impression on people throughout the world. Night after night, television brought into our homes pictures of devastation and suffering on a scale almost beyond comprehension and, somehow, it was made worse because we were in the middle of preparing our own Christmas, with all the joy and happiness that that family festival brings. The appalling tragedy of the earthquake moved everyone to want to help—their response was immediate and overwhelming. I have never witnessed such universal compassion on that scale and of that intensity; nothing mattered any more but to get help through quickly; that is what everyone did, your own people, your Government, our people; people all over the world joined in, moved by the belief that what you were suffering was more than anyone could bear alone. [end p1]
The immediate task had to be helping you with the practical problems but we also then started to think what we could do to help with the longer-term task of reconstruction to enable you to make a new start and a new life. We saw how many schools you had lost and what a cruel blow to your community this was and particularly to the children, so my ministerial colleague, Kenneth Baker—who is here with us today on my right; he was then our Minister of Education and suggested that Britain's contribution to the work of reconstruction might take the form of a new school, so it is Kenneth you have to thank for the idea (applause).
That we are all here today, just over one year since work started on the school, is a tribute to the enormous skill and the dedication of all of those involved in building the school and I would like to thank and congratulate everyone who has played their part and I hope they are delighted with the result (applause)
We consulted very closely with your own architects and designers because we wanted to give you a school that would endure, no matter what should happen in the future. We also wanted the school to blend with the surroundings; we wanted your children to feel at home in the school; and we wanted it to have a bit of a British feel. I believe we succeeded.
Mr. Mayor, children are a country's hope and its future and its glory. In Armenia, you have always recognised the importance of education. The very first words to be written in Armenian script were:
“To know wisdom, to acquire learning, and to seek understanding” —that is what education is about.[end p2]
With this school and the opportunities it will provide for the children and young people of Leninakan, the people of Britain feel we are sharing in your future. I hope the school will also be open to the whole community of Leninakan to learn more about the English language and British culture, but we want the link that has been established by building this school to continue, so we plan to have an exchange between the Lord Byron School—this school—and a school near Byron 's home in Nottinghamshire in England, and their headmaster will be coming here to make the arrangements later this year so we can “twin” the two schools.
When the teachers and pupils start here in September, they will have with them the affection, the support and the good wishes of all British people and of the very many businesses who also contributed to make this school possible.
Today, we thank everyone—British, Soviet, Armenian—who have been involved with bringing this school to the state in which we see it today and to its opening in September. It is a great achievement—proof that out of disaster can come some good.
In conclusion, I must tell you that we have a tradition in Britain when a visitor arrives at a school—it is this, and I hope it will please the teachers and the children: it is the visitor's duty to ask the headmaster and the mayor if they will give the children one day's holiday a year to commemorate the opening. May I therefore respectfully suggest that you make Lord Byron's birthday—22 January—an annual holiday! [end p3]
On that very happy note, may I declare the Lord Byron School open (applause).