Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (148 page)

The speech excerpted here, with the domestic policy proposals edited out, was to his Labour party conference in Brighton on October 2, 2001, three weeks after the shock of September 11. The joint U.S.-British military response—first in Afghanistan, later in Iraq—was yet to come, but was presaged in this annual address to fellow party members, many of whom were to turn against him in his close alliance with the United States in pursuing the war on terror.

In terms of rhetorical technique, note Blair’s quick summarization of
the points made by advocates of delay, setting up his tough-minded response. Note, too, his four sentences beginning with “Today,” the last the longest, building a rhythm. He also involves the listener with “People ask me… My answer is.” In a device made famous by Franklin Roosevelt in his “I see an America where” speech, Blair begins six consecutive sentences with “I think of.” On a deeper level, he picks up the theme in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance—“with liberty and justice for all”—and concludes with an appeal for a combination of freedom and justice.

To focus on the need to act decisively during a tumultuous time, the prime minister concludes with an original and memorable image. A kaleidoscope is a tube-shaped optical instrument that delights youngsters as a toy, but is symbolic of colorful and rapid change as it breaks up and rearranges pieces of colored glass. “Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder the world around us.”

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IN RETROSPECT THE
millennium marked only a moment in time. It was the events of 11 September that marked a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind.

It was a tragedy. An act of evil. From this nation, goes our deepest sympathy and prayers for the victims and our profound solidarity with the American people.

We were with you at the first. We will stay with you to the last….

Be in no doubt: bin Laden and his people organized this atrocity. The Taliban aid and abet him. He will not desist from further acts of terror. They will not stop helping him.

Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.

Look for a moment at the Taliban regime. It is undemocratic. That goes without saying.

There is no sport allowed, or television or photography. No art or culture is permitted. All other faiths, all other interpretations of Islam are ruthlessly suppressed. Those who practice their faith are imprisoned. Women are treated in a way almost too revolting to be credible. First driven out of university; girls not allowed to go to school; no legal rights; unable to go out of doors without a man. Those that disobey are stoned.

There is now no contact permitted with western agencies, even those delivering food. The people live in abject poverty. It is a regime founded on fear and funded on the drugs trade. The biggest drugs hoard in the
world is in Afghanistan, controlled by the Taliban. Ninety percent of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan.

The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets.

That is another part of their regime that we should seek to destroy.

So what do we do?

“Don’t overreact,” some say. We aren’t.

We haven’t lashed out. No missiles on the first night just for effect.

“Don’t kill innocent people.” We are not the ones who waged war on the innocent. We seek the guilty.

“Look for a diplomatic solution.” There is no diplomacy with bin Laden or the Taliban regime.

“State an ultimatum and get their response.” We stated the ultimatum; they haven’t responded.

“Understand the causes of terror.” Yes, we should try, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this: nothing could ever justify the events of 11 September, and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could.

The action we take will be proportionate; targeted; we will do all we humanly can to avoid civilian casualties. But understand what we are dealing with. Listen to the calls of those passengers on the planes. Think of the children on them, told they were going to die….

There is no compromise possible with such people, no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror.

Just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must.

Any action taken will be against the terrorist network of bin Laden.

As for the Taliban, they can surrender the terrorists; or face the consequences and again in any action the aim will be to eliminate their military hardware, cut off their finances, disrupt their supplies, target their troops, not civilians. We will put a trap around the regime.

I say to the Taliban: Surrender the terrorists; or surrender power. It’s your choice….

Round the world, 11 September is bringing governments and people to reflect, consider, and change. And in this process, amidst all the talk of war and action, there is another dimension appearing.

There is a coming together. The power of community is asserting itself. We are realizing how fragile are our frontiers in the face of the world’s new challenges.

Today conflicts rarely stay within national boundaries.

Today a tremor in one financial market is repeated in the markets of the world.

Today confidence is global; either its presence or its absence.

Today the threat is chaos; because for people with work to do, family life to balance, mortgages to pay, careers to further, pensions to provide, the yearning is for order and stability and if it doesn’t exist elsewhere, it is unlikely to exist here.

I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in.

People say: We are only acting because it’s the USA that was attacked. Double standards, they say. But when Milosevic embarked on the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Kosovo, we acted.

The skeptics said it was pointless, we’d make matters worse, we’d make Milosevic stronger, and look what happened: We won, the refugees went home, the policies of ethnic cleansing were reversed and one of the great dictators of the last century, will see justice in this century….

We know this also. The values we believe in should shine through what we do in Afghanistan.

To the Afghan people we make this commitment. The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before.

If the Taliban regime changes, we will work with you to make sure its successor is one that is broad-based, that unites all ethnic groups, and that offers some way out of the miserable poverty that is your present existence.

And, more than ever now, with every bit as much thought and planning, we will assemble a humanitarian coalition alongside the military coalition so that inside and outside Afghanistan, the refugees, 4½ million on the move even before 11 September, are given shelter, food, and help during the winter months.

The world community must show as much its capacity for compassion as for force.

The critics will say: But how can the world be a community? Nations act in their own self-interest. Of course they do. But what is the lesson of the financial markets, climate change, international terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or world trade? It is that our self-interest and our mutual interests are today inextricably woven together.

This is the politics of globalization.

I realize why people protest against globalization.

We watch aspects of it with trepidation. We feel powerless, as if we were now pushed to and fro by forces far beyond our control.

But there’s a risk that political leaders, faced with street demonstrations, pander to the argument rather than answer it. The demonstrators are right to say there’s injustice, poverty, environmental degradation.

But globalization is a fact and, by and large, it is driven by people.

Not just in finance, but in communication, in technology, increasingly in culture, in recreation. In the world of the internet, information technology, and TV, there will be globalization. And in trade, the problem is not there’s too much of it; on the contrary, there’s too little of it.

The issue is not how to stop globalization.

The issue is how we use the power of community to combine it with justice. If globalization works only for the benefit of the few, then it will fail and will deserve to fail. But if we follow the principles that have served us so well at home—that power, wealth, and opportunity must be in the hands of the many, not the few—if we make that our guiding light for the global economy, then it will be a force for good and an international movement that we should take pride in leading.

Because the alternative to globalization is isolation.

Confronted by this reality, round the world, nations are instinctively drawing together. In Quebec, all the countries of North and South America deciding to make one huge free trade area, rivaling Europe. In Asia, ASEAN. In Europe, the most integrated grouping of all, we are now fifteen nations. Another twelve countries negotiating to join, and more beyond that.

A new relationship between Russia and Europe is beginning.

And will not India and China, each with three times as many citizens as the whole of the EU put together, once their economies have developed sufficiently as they will do, not reconfigure entirely the geopolitics of the world and in our lifetime?

That is why, with 60 percent of our trade dependent on Europe, 3 million jobs tied up with Europe, much of our political weight engaged in Europe, it would be a fundamental denial of our true national interest to turn our backs on Europe.

We will never let that happen.

For fifty years, Britain has, uncharacteristically, followed, not led, in Europe.

At each and every step. There are debates central to our future coming up: how we reform European economic policy; how we take forward European defense; how we fight organized crime and terrorism.

Britain needs its voice strong in Europe, and, bluntly, Europe needs a strong Britain, rock-solid in our alliance with the USA, yet determined to play its full part in shaping Europe’s destiny.

We should only be part of the single currency if the economic conditions are met. They are not window dressing for a political decision. They
are fundamental. But if they are met, we should join, and if met in this Parliament, we should have the courage of our argument, to ask the British people for their consent in this Parliament.

Europe is not a threat to Britain. Europe is an opportunity.

It is in taking the best of the Anglo-Saxon and European models of development that Britain’s hope of a prosperous future lies. The American spirit of enterprise; the European spirit of solidarity. We have, here also, an opportunity. Not just to build bridges politically, but economically.

What is the answer to the current crisis? Not isolationism but the world coming together with America as a community.

What is the answer to Britain’s relations with Europe? Not opting out, but being leading members of a community in which, in alliance with others, we gain strength.

What is the answer to Britain’s future? Not each person for themselves, but working together as a community to ensure that everyone, not just the privileged few, get the chance to succeed.

This is an extraordinary moment for progressive politics.

Our values are the right ones for this age: the power of community, solidarity, the collective ability to further the individual’s interests.

People ask me if I think ideology is dead. My answer is:

In the sense of rigid forms of economic and social theory, yes.

The twentieth century killed those ideologies, and their passing causes little regret. But, in the sense of a governing idea in politics, based on values, no. The governing idea of modern social democracy is community. Founded on the principles of social justice. That people should rise according to merit not birth; that the test of any decent society is not the contentment of the wealthy and strong but the commitment to the poor and weak.

But values aren’t enough. The mantle of leadership comes at a price: the courage to learn and change; to show how values that stand for all ages can be applied in a way relevant to each age.

Our politics only succeed when the realism is as clear as the idealism.

This party’s strength today comes from the journey of change and learning we have made.

We learnt that however much we strive for peace, we need strong defense capability where a peaceful approach fails.

We learnt that equality is about equal worth, not equal outcomes.

Today our idea of society is shaped around mutual responsibility; a deal, an agreement between citizens, not a one-way gift, from the well-off to the dependent.

Our economic and social policy today owes as much to the liberal
social democratic tradition of Lloyd George, Keynes, and Beveridge as to the socialist principles of the 1945 government.

Just over a decade ago, people asked if Labour could ever win again. Today they ask the same question of the opposition. Painful though that journey of change has been, it has been worth it, every stage of the way.

On this journey, the values have never changed. The aims haven’t. Our aims would be instantly recognizable to every Labour leader from Keir Hardie onwards. But the means do change.

The journey hasn’t ended. It never ends. The next stage for New Labour is not backwards; it is renewing ourselves again. Just after the election, an old colleague of mine said: “Come on, Tony, now we’ve won again, can’t we drop all this New Labour and do what we believe in?”

I said: “It’s worse than you think. I really do believe in it.”

We didn’t revolutionize British economic policy—Bank of England independence, tough spending rules—for some managerial reason or as a clever wheeze to steal Tory clothes.

We did it because the victims of economic incompetence—15 percent interest rates, 3 million unemployed—are hardworking families. They are the ones—and even more so, now—with tough times ahead—that the economy should be run for, not speculators, or currency dealers or senior executives whose pay packets don’t seem to bear any resemblance to the performance of their companies.