Appendices Appendix 1: Speech by the Rt

Appendices Appendix 1: Speech by the Rt. Hon. Dr David Owen MP, Leader of the Social Democratic Party, to the SDP Council for Social Democracy and Consultative Assembly, Harrogate, Wednesday 17 September 1986 1. Shirley, to whom we, and I, owe so much, friends, this has been the largest and best ever conference. We had the sun out for us in Torquay. I don't think any of us thought we could get as much sun as we have here in Harrogate. Someone up there seems to love us. [Laughter. Applause. Pause.] 2. I want to talk beyond this hall to the people of this country. I want to talk about achieving prosperity and ending poverty. 3. Let us hope for all of our sakes that the Election is not postponed until 1988. For the further away the Election, the more the decisions that are essential for our national well-being will be delayed. 4. We are already in the midst of a cynical pre-election consumer boom. In 1955 and in 1959, the Conservatives bought votes then only to take harsh economic measures once the Election was over. The message will be the same this time. 'Vote now and pay later'. 5. Will voters fall for it again? I doubt it. For this is going to be a very different Election from any that we have known since 1929. There are now three major contenders jockeying for position instead of two. 6. Repeated polls and, more importantly, by-elections, local and nation al, over the last few years all show a persistent three-way split in the minds of the electorate. 7. There is not now, and I suspect there will not be, even during the Election, a clear favourite or an obvious winner. Though, like all the other contenders, I would be, of course, preferring to be able to claim now outright victory for our Alliance, you know and even the other 199 200 Appendices parties know in their heart of hearts that the forecast of a balanced Parliament, with no one party holding absolute power, is the likeliest outcome. 8. Yet what a spectacle the Labour and Conservative Parties present, trying to pretend that nothing has changed in British politics. They act half the time in cahoots, desperate to hold on to their swing of the pendulum of power. They are like old entertainers trying to keep alive music hall routines in seaside halls. 9. Our new politics is about partnership, about sharing power, about co-operation not conflict in industry, and above all about national unity. 10. Now what about the Labour Party's new image? It first goes grey. It then pretends to haul down the red flag. And now it intends to bring back the socialist symbol of the 1960s, the red rose. Not the white rose, not the thistle or the daffodil. And what we have to remember is that behind that red rose is the clenched fist. As a party Labour are balanced only in the sense of having a chip on both shoulders. Today their defence policies are far more dangerous even than in 1983 under Michael Foot, and that's saying something. Labour now threatens the very existence of the Atlantic Alliance and they combine it with hostility to everything European. After the Election Labour's Parliamentary Party will be dominated by the hard Left, the bitter, neutralist Left. It's like a submerged iceberg. Labour, like the Titanic, is doomed to hit it. 11. Now what of the Conservatives? By the time of the Election, they will have had eight years in office. They can neither sing nor dance to a new tune, even if one was capable of being written for them. They have no option but to swallow and to digest their own record. The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. They have no option either but to defend their own record. The unbelievable proclaiming the indefensible. Now let's leave them alone. 12. All over the country the thing that people ask me most is 'What is the real truth, David, about the state of the British economy?' I tell you, the situation is neither as bad as Labour pretends nor as good as the Conservatives claim. Let's be objective. 13. New jobs are being created, but nearly half are part-time and the underlying trend of unemployment is still up. 14. Over-manning in British industry has been reduced, but unit labour costs are rising at twice the rate of our competitors. 15. Trade union power has been curbed, but there is little sense of partnership yet between unions and management. 16. The service industries have expanded, but manufacturing capacity is still shrinking. 17. Investment is up and so is productivity, but it is still woefully insufficient to make us internationally competitive. 18. So the true picture is that all is not gloom. There are rays of sunlight beaming in. Some brilliant scientific and technical breakthroughs, some excellent labour relations. But our underlying economic weak ness is alarming. We are still in economic decline. Now take North Sea Appendices 201 oil out of the accounts and our balance of payments would be more than £10 billion in the red, compared with a surplus of a billion in the Conservatives' first year of office. Our share of world exports remains stagnant at its 1979 level. 19. Productivity is rising at an annual rate of about 2 per cent in 1986, while average earnings have been increasing at 7 per cent. We won't continue to compete at home or abroad on that basis for very long. The truth is that no honest Conservative can claim that Mrs Thatcher has stopped Britain's underlying economic decline. We have now sunk to being the nineteenth industrial nation in the world when 35 years ago we were the third industrial nation. Last year Italy overtook us. If present growth trends continue Spain will have overtaken us in the early 1990s. Why is this happening to us? 20. We are not an idle nation. There is great inventiveness and imagina tion amongst our people that can still beat the rest of the world. How is it that we cannot harness the talent we know lies within our nation? A clue comes if one listens to the farmyard noises of the House of Commons. I am convinced that Social Democrats and Liberals are right to argue that a major part of our problem is the old-fashioned, rigid, unrepresentative parliamentary system in which we conduct our natioQal affairs. You know, outside the Communist countries, we are the most suffocatingly centralised nation in the world. Far from encouraging energy, enterprise and innovation, the dead hand of Whitehall and Westminster kills it - very often stone dead. 21. Why do we go on allowing Conservative and Labour controlled local councils and the national governments to impose their political dogmas on us when they can only command minority support amongst the voters? Are we afraid of change? I am convinced now, that the push for change will have to come from you, the voters. The tiny minority of people who form the hard core, left and right, who live, breathe and dream nothing but politics risk making our country one of the most ideological of all democracies. To the political zealot and zealots they certainly are - it is an offence to admit that any other party can ever be right. That sort of political play-acting is puerile waste of the nation's time. I refuse to say that everything that either Neil Kinnock says or Margaret Thatcher does is always wrong. Even David Steel is right [Pause. Laughter. Applause. Pause.] sometimes. [Laughter.] 22. Now we've got to stop this self-destructive dogmatism. We have damaged ourselves as a nation by our failure to sustain economic and social policies for long enough for them to show results. The chopping and changing of our economic and industrial policies prevents us meeting the challenge to our trade and our jobs from the newly industrialised nations, let alone the competition from Japan, the United States and Western Europe. We have got to stop being afraid of competition, whether in business or in our schools. There is no escape from the discipline of competition. Of course we can and should temper market effects from time to time. But we are, as a great trading nation, in business to generate more wealth. That should be 202 Appendices the dynamic behind all our economic policies. 23. It is our persistent lack of competitiveness that undermines our capacity to finance the caring services which shield the weak and strengthen the social cohesion of our community. 24. Violent crime, drug addiction, and vandalism are plaguing this country, the rich as well as the poor. The latest menace is the drug 'crack' poised to sweep into this country. Too many of our politicians and our pundits scoff at other countries' systems of government. Can we not learn? Can we not adjust and adapt to modern experience? Let us remind ourselves that most of our partners in the European Community have achieved far more for the standards of living of their people than successive British Governments in our post-war period. 25. Let us remind ourselves that, that whereas from 1940 to 1980 we had a bi-partisan defence policy, there is now a more bitter division between the political parties over national security than at any time since the Boer War. 26. Yet to us it is obvious that the only way to greater national unity and better government is Proportional Representation, decentralisation and freedom of information, but we have to persuade others.

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