It is six years almost to a week since the Socialist Government came into office and we entered upon that melancholy period of eclipse and frustration which if it continues will lead to our decline and fall. What a contrast between our position at the end of the war and that to which we have been already reduced today. Not only were we victorious after all the hard toils and struggles but we were more honoured, respected and admired by friend and foe alike than we had ever been before.

And where do we stand today in the eyes of the world? For the time being we have lost our rank among the nations. There is hardly any country in the world where it is not believed that you have only to kick an Englishman hard enough to make him evacuate, bolt or clear out. Countries we have defended from Nazi and Fascist violence, countries we have rescued after they had been subjugated, countries which had found us strong and steadfast comrades and allies, are watching with astonishment a Britain which they think is in retreat or in decline. Egypt, Persia, Albania, the Argentine and Chile compete with each other in the insults and the humiliations they inflict upon us—and what is the cause? It is the attempt to impose a doctrinaire Socialism upon an island which has grown great and famous by free enterprise and valour and which six years ago stood in honour though not in size at the summit of the world. I say “though not in size” because a vast larger world is growing up around us. But never forget that fifty millions have come into being in Great Britain under the impulse and inspiration of former generations and now if our native genius is cribbed, cabined and confined these fifty millions will be left physically stranded and gasping, like whales which swum upon the high tide into a bay from which the waters have receded.

Almost every year we have some new crisis. Now this year we are heading for another. The gap between our imports and exports during the first six months of this year was £550 million. The position is worsening and for the month of June alone was nearly £150 million. The pound sterling which, when we came out of the Second World War, was worth 20s., has now in these six years fallen to 14s. 10d. What does that mean? Everybody’s salaries, pensions, wages and savings have been reduced by more than a quarter. Think of all the thousands of millions that that means when translated into the life of a great people. Surely this is a tremendous fact. All the boastings of the welfare State have to be set against the fact that more than what they have given with one hand has been filched back by the other. More than what they have given by benefits and improvements has been taken back by the reduction in the value of the money we use.

‘Oh!’ they say, ‘all this is due to Korea. If it had not been for Korea we should never have fallen into our present position.’ This is an utter untruth. The main reason for the fall in the buying power of our money at home and still more abroad is not Korea but devaluation. But devaluation did not come by itself. It forced itself upon our Socialist “Masters” as they call themselves by four years of grotesque, reckless squandering of our treasures and resources. They had got the control of the Government for their own party. No Government in our history has spent money to the vast extent and reckless manner as our present rulers. Apart from £2,000 million they have begged or borrowed from the United States and received from the Dominions, they have spent more than £11 million a day or €24,000 million in their six years. No community living in a world of nationalism and competition can possibly afford such frantic extravagances.

All this happened long before Korea or what is called “rearmament”. Devaluation was the child of wild profuse expenditure, and the evils which we suffer today from what I have called “the money cheat” are the inevitable progeny of that wanton way of living. The greatest national misfortune which we are now entering is the ever falling value of our money, or to put it the other way round, the ever increasing cost measured by work and thrift of everything we buy. Taxation is higher than in any country outside the Communist world. There they take all. There no one has anything except the salaries paid them by the privileged Communist aristocracy. British taxation is higher now than it was in the height of the late war—even when we stood alone and defied all comers.

Is not that an astonishing fact? Six years of Socialist Government have hit us harder in our finance and economics than Hitler was able to do. Look at the effects you face of devaluation abroad. We are an island with a population of fifty millions living on imports of food and raw materials, which we have to buy by our exertion, ingenuity and craftsmanship. We have to pay across the dollar exchange twelve hours of work, with hand or brain, to buy what we could before have got with eight hours. We are a hard-working people. We are second to none in ability or enterprise so far as we are allowed to use these gifts. We now have to give a third more of our life strength, energy and output of every kind and quality to get the same revivifying intake as we had before devaluation two years ago. ‘Korea’, they say, but this is a shoddy excuse, utterly divorced from fact or truth.

‘Rearmament’, they say, but it has hardly begun. No Government has ever had such generous provision for our national defence as has been made by Parliament with the full support of the Conservative Party during the Socialist reign. But when the Minister who called us “vermin” and the Minister who said no one else but the organized workers of his party “were worth a tinker’s cuss” woke up to the fact that we were again in gravest peril, it was found that we were almost defenceless. So then there was a panic programme a year ago of £3,600 million of military expenditure in three years. And then the revised programme nine months ago—because they seem to have added up their figures wrong—by which £4,700 million are to be spent over these current three years. We have supported the steps that they took and done our utmost to meet the demands that they have made, but that does not mean that we condone the grievous social, political and administrative blunders they have committed or that we bear the responsibility for the plight into which we are now plunged.

The whole social programme of which the Government boast was devised in conception and detail by a National Government resting upon a House of Commons with a Conservative majority of one hundred over all parties. Only one single new idea us of the fruits of our victory and mauled our daily life. Only one. You know the one I has been contributed by the false guides who have led us far astray, who have robbed have in mind. Nationalization. What an awful flop! Show me the nationalized industry which has not become a burden on the public either as taxpayers or consumers or both. There is hardly an industry in which the employees are contented with changing top twains for the hordes of all-powerful officials in Whitehall. And now our Socialist Utopians are getting fed back with their own tail in Persia and other countries, where we have in the past gathered or created valuable possessions. Others can play at that game too. It must be with many a prick of conscience that Mr. Attlee and Mr. Morrison and the band of misguided careerist intellectuals they have collected around them regard the meagre and mouldy harvest of nationalization which they have bought for us so dearly both at home and abroad. [Premier Clement Attlee, Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison]

But they are incorrigible. Obstinacy at the national expense seems to them a virtue. Even at this moment of all others when they are confronted with failure, fallacy and exposure—as they well know—of their scheme of thought, they try to brazen it out by nationalizing, of all others, the steel industry which in enterprise, planning, organization and efficiency has raised itself, in spite of all deterrents, to a pinnacle in British production. Not one of them believes that the nationalizing of steel is good for our country at this moment. In fact in spite of their boasting they have been forced to admit that they cannot possibly manage the business themselves. They have recoiled from the consequences of their own arguments and at this moment the two Socialist millionaires, Mr. Strauss, Minister of Supply, and Mr. Hardie, head of the Socialist Steel Corporation, have had to confess by actions which speak louder than words, their utter inability to manage the business or deliver the goods. They have had to leave the whole working and conduct of the steel industry in the skillful, experienced hands of the Steel Federation from whom they tried to take it. They have learnt the lessons here at home which at present they are trying to teach Persia, that it is one thing to nationalize a vast industry and quite another to manage it so that it works and pays and provides the livelihood for all its wage-earners and a decent service for the community which depends upon it. [Iran nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in March]

And now I come to the worst thing of all. We had a speech the other day from Communist Horner in which he said: “If a Tory Government is returned it is certain that there will be a national strike of the miners. ... It is only responsibility and loyalty to the Labour Government that has caused the miners to pull their punches.” This speech, which is, of course, only a part of the Communist conspiracy to bring Britain under the whole of the Kremlin, would not have counted if it had only been the mouthings of a Moscow lackey. But there, sitting at his side, was a Minister of the Crown—Mr. Griffiths. I give the Government credit for their hostility to Communism, though they are bringing it nearer by all they do. But fancy this Minister sitting there beside this Communist agent and not daring to open his mouth in protest or contradiction. And fancy that a week has elapsed without the Prime Minister or any other member of the Government disowning and denouncing the declaration which Mr. Horner made. Let us see exactly what this declaration means. If the people of Britain should at any time be allowed to have a General Election, and if the will of the people expressed through the universal suffrage electorate should return a Conservative Government to power, Mr. Horner says it is certain that there will be a national strike of the miners. This of course, if it happened, would paralyze the whole life and industry of our country.

Now I have always been a friend of the miners. Just over forty years ago I moved the Second Reading of the Mines Eight Hours Bill. I set up the system of mines inspectors drawn from the miners themselves which exists today as one of the main measures to ward off the perils of coal-mining. In 1925 as Chancellor of the Exchequer I provided $20 million to give a year for further negotiations to solve the difficulty in the mining industry and thus avoid a national or general strike. The only quarrel I have ever had with the miners was in the war when I had to forbid them from pouring out of the mines to join our armies in the field. Let them dismiss from their minds these malicious tales that a Conservative Government would be hostile to the mining community. I have always affirmed that those who work in these hard and dangerous conditions far from the light of the sun have the right to receive exceptional benefits from the nation which they serve.

But now the Communist Horner has stepped outside the sphere of industrial disputes, and threatens the whole British democracy, thirty million voters, with a national strike to bring the country down if they dare express their opinion and wishes at the polls. This is an insult to the will of the people which no free democracy could endure. The idea that one section, however worthy, in our island should claim the right to deny political liberties and rights to all the rest of us, is one which would never be tolerated and one which, in my belief, the miners themselves would be the first to repudiate.

But while these shameful menaces are uttered, the Socialist Government, intent on electioneering—and false electioneering as it will turn out to be—remains mum? Attlee doodles, Morrison gapes and only Mr. Bevan grins. [Aneurin “Nye” Bevan] Well, anyhow, we are going to have a General Election as soon as we can force these office-clingers to present themselves before their fellow countrymen. Then the people will have a chance to express their will. Great as are the difficulties of the time, ugly as the inheritance is which the Socialists will leave behind them, long as is the period of stable progressive government which will be required to remedy our misfortunes, and to rebuild national power and fame, I have no doubt that it is the duty of all those who are here this evening and of every man and woman in the land, to prepare themselves fearlessly and faithfully for the splendid opportunity they will have of reviving the strength and renewing the glory of our island home.