Speech at Edgbaston (“our human stock is threatened”)NEWS SERVICERelease time: 2. Hours/ SATURDAY 1. OCTOBER 1. 97. 4 5. SPEECH BY THE RT. SIR KEITH JOSEPH BT MP (LEEDS NE). CONSERVATIVE SPOKESMAN ON HOME AFFAIRS, SPEAKING AT THE. GRAND HOTEL, BIRMINGHAM ON SATURDAY 1. OCTOBER 1. 97. 4. In the wartime army, they used to tell the story, apocryphal I am sure, about the regular army officer at the end of the first world war saying, . Yes, we have to get economics back into proportion, as one aspect of politics, important but never really the main thing. This may be unfashionable, indeed anti- fashionable, because it is the current intellectual fashions which have wrought so much havoc in this country. Great Expectations is a 1974 film made for television based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. It was directed by Joseph Hardy, with screenwriter Sherman. Tim Buckley: Lorca (Elektra) Nico: Desert Shore (Reprise) Third Ear Band: self-titled (Harvest). CACM, December 1974 When Communications of the ACM began publication in 1959, the members of ACM'S Editorial Board made the following remark as they described the. Were these two facts unconnected? The voter has faced three parties all of who claimed that they alone had the secret of fighting inflation, of achieving economic growth, of keeping down prices and providing benefits. This was the kind of auction in which Labour was bound to outbid us, because they are quite unhibited . Far from bringing well being, this economics- first approach has aggravated unhappiness and social conflict, as wall as over- straining the whole economic system to a point where it is beginning to seize up. Should we not deal with matters which concern the nation; respect for other people and for law, the welfare of young people, the state of family life, the moral welfare of all the people, cultural values, public- spiritedness or its lack, national defence, the tone of national life? These are at the centre of the public's concern. The economic situation is not an independent variable; it reflects the state of political life, the degree to which people are aware of realities, and the climate of opinion. You will only have a healthy economy in a sound body politic. It differs substantially from that of Socialists. I am not talking about people who happen to vote socialist, but the active Socialist members and the socialist intellectuals, those who have shaped current fashions regarding the economy, education, the arts, social welfare, the family. Our party is older than capitalism, and wider than any class. It grew up in the first place out of concern for liberties, traditions and morals. It has evolved a good deal in the past three centuries yet it has retained its essential character; its area of concern is the whole of public life and all matters which should be of public interest down to the treatment of every man, woman and child. We are opposed to using children as guinea pigs or spare parts for social engineers to experiment with. We are opposed to any policy that denies to parents the right to spend their own money on their children's education if they so choose. We do not believe that national unity implies homogeneity. They are the foundation on which the nation is built; they are being undermined. If we cannot restore them to health, our nation can be utterly ruined - whatever economic policies we might try to follow . For economics is deeply shaped by values, by the attitude towards work, thrift, ethics, public- sprit. We take the more traditional and still widely held view that men and women are born with a capacity for good and evil, to make the best use of their talents or to waste them; and that upon our early upbringing - the standards and the self- discipline to which we are brought up first at home and then at school - much of our whole future depends . They have preferred the permissive society, and, at the same time, the collectivised society. At first sight this paradox might seem inexplicable. Why should people who believe in strict state control over economic life, who disfavour private enterprise, independent education, private pension schemes, private medicine, so strongly favour what they call permissiveness in social life? How is it that those who claim to oppose the exploitation of man by man and what they call commercialism should favour the commercial exploitation of indecency, the commercial exploitation of woman by man? The Socialist method would take away from the family and its members the responsibilities which give it cohesion. Parents are being divested of their duty to provide for their family economically, of their responsibility for education, health, upbringing, morality, advice and guidance, of saving for old age, for housing. The Godfather: Part II movie clips: http:// BUY THE MOVIE: http:// Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr. 1974 – LIVE IN ZAIRE ===== 01 Intro – The Payback 02 Soul Power 03 The Boss 04 Make It Funky 05 Doing It To Death. When you take responsibility away from people you make them irresponsible. Hand in hand with this you break down traditional morals, the framework of behaviour, concepts of right and wrong; it is easier to subvert the social framework and replace it by their new monolithic edifice. We were taught that crime, violence, wife- beating, child- beating, were the result of poverty; abolish poverty, and they would disappear. Well, we may have been naive to believe it, since when you look back, some of man's most sublime moral achievements took place against the background of great economic stringency; but at least we acted in good faith. Has anyone of them stood the test? Some secondary schools in our cities are dominated by gangs operating extortion rackets against small children. Teenage pregnancies are rising; so are drunkenness, sexual offences, and crimes of sadism. For the first time in a century and a half, since the great Tory reformer Robert Peel set up the metropolitan police, areas of our cities are becoming unsafe for peaceful citizens by night, and even some by day. We know that some universities have been constrained to lower their standards for entrants from comprehensives, discriminating against more the talented . We see how the demand for absolute equality turns into the new inequality. Whatever we may have thought fifteen years or so back, it is our right and duty to question, in the light of experience, the rapid expansion of the universities, and the belief that by increasing the number of undergraduates we necessarily multiply the benefit either to the young people concerned or to the nation. But blind partisanship is the worst enemy of a cause. Left- wing ideology is so convenient for this purpose; it requires little knowledge and less analytical thought, just a compendium of all- purpose phraseology . Some will carry on an extended adolescence as teachers in schools and in polytechnics and in universities, helped by the like- minded, where they will co- operate with the left- wing gangs. But what has been the result? Drugs, drunkenness, teenage pregnancies, vandalism, an increase in drifting - now called by new names, but basically vagrancy. None of these phenomena is at all modern, or liberated; they are the very opposite of freedom which begins with self- discipline. But no one can love mankind if he does not love his own countrymen. Socialists who spoke most about brotherhood of man . Their well- orchestrated sneers from their strongpoint in the educational system and media have weakened the national will to transmit to future generations those values, standards and aspirations which made England admired the world over. That is why they believe in state ownership and control of economic life, education, health. Their wish to end parental choice in where and how their children shall be educated, in spending their money on better education and health for their children instead of on a new car, leisure, pleasure, is all part of the attempt to diminish self and self- discipline and real freedoms in favour of the state, ruled by socialists, the new class, as one disillusioned communist leader called them. I am not saying that we should not help the poor, far from it. But the only really lasting help we can give to the poor is helping them to help themselves; to do the opposite, to create more dependence is to destroy them morally while throwing an unfair burden on society. The populist rulers of Rome thought they had hit on a foolproof method of achieving a permanent curb on their patrician rivals when they created a dependent proletariat relying on them for bread and circuses; but in the end it destroyed the political stability of Rome, and so Rome itself fell, destroyed from inside. History is not made by abstract forces, or classes. If we have the moral courage to say what we believe to be true, right and good, the people will be with us. I do not accept all her ideas, she will not accept all mine. Yet we can see in her a shining example of what one person can do single- handedly when inspired by faith and compassion. An unknown middle- aged woman, a schoolteacher in the Midlands, set out to protect adolescents against the permissiveness of our time. On the one side, the whole of the new establishment, with their sharp words and sneers poised. Against them stood this one middle- aged woman. Today, her name is a household word, made famous by the very assaults on her by her enemies. She has mobilised and given fresh hearts to many who see where this current fashion is leading. Her book, Who Does She Think She Is? And I welcome the opportunity to express my admiration for another brave woman with us tonight, Mrs. Are we to place it all in the lap of the Government, the police, the courts? The arguments are on our side and we have good friends among the teachers, the sociologists, the psychologists, if only we will call on them, give the lead for them to follow . But we shall need intellectual as well as moral courage to grapple with the dilemmas inherent in the remoralisation of public life. A recent article in Poverty, published by the Child Poverty Action Group, showed that a high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world and bring them up. They are born to mother who were first pregnant in adolescence in social classes 4 and 5. Many of these girls are unmarried, many are deserted or divorced or soon will be. Some are of low intelligence, most of low educational attainment.
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