(I have attempted to write up what I said. This is a reconstruction of a spontaneous speech.)
It is an honour to speak at the fiftieth anniversary dinner of the Freedom Association.
The Freedom Association was established to campaign for individual liberty, freedom of expression and free markets. These have been the themes of my life in politics, as government adviser, Minister and writer.
Today they have never been more needed.
The forces of oppressive government, excessive laws, confiscatory taxes, bossy officialdom and the thought police are always threatening us.
They come from outside, from foreign tyrannies.
They come from inside, from government that places itself above the freedoms and wishes of the people it should serve.
Today we need to do more to restore our freedoms.
Our work is never done.
We remain under such grave threat to our liberties.
Freedom is our birthright.
Let us be proud of our country and all it has done to advance freedom in the wider world.
My grandfathers fought for our freedoms in the 1st World War.
My parents fought against German tyranny and conquest in the Second.
I have recently written a short book on what it was like to be a small boy growing up in a world of giants around me. Like most children it was a story of exploring and grasping freedoms. I remember land marks on the journey. Learning to walk unaided by an adult. The first time I went to buy something at a shop on my own. My first bike ride. The first time I had to stand up to my mother. Each brought a new freedom before I had the words and understanding to explain it.
If only those who now run our country would try out the equivalent steps of self government instead of hiding behind the international grown ups as they call them. Many in our establishment wish to infantilise us, transferring responsibility to international courts, to global institutions and to a mesh of international treaties.
I spent my youth reading too much history and playing too little cricket. I read enough to know that England pioneered freedom under the law from Magna Carta onwards. The UK led a progress to all men and women having a vote to determine who makes the laws and governs the country.
When I studied history we talked proudly of the UK having the Mother of Parliaments. We spoke of the English civil war fought to make Kings accountable resulting in the triumph of an elected Assembly. Depositions and Acts of Succession made even the kingship more like an elected post.
We remembered the successful wars against Imperial Spain to stop them annexing northern Europe. We read of the wars against Louis XIV’s and Napoleon’s France when they tried to expand and suppress free peoples by ruthless conquest. We studied the twentieth century wars to stop German domination of the continent. Our country was on the side of independent states, freeing them from aggressive neighbours. We were on the side of freeing slaves and enfranchising the workers. We cheered on the Great Reform Bill and the suffragettes.
Over the last sixty years the elites of western Europe have tried to create the unity that escaped them by conquest through imposing Union Treaties and common law codes. They have been building a Europe of lawyers, charged with regulating most aspects of our lives and business. It is all paid for by growing EU taxation, a money printing Central Bank and billions of debt. The UK elite was by large majority in favour of surrendering our freedoms by stealth, and placing us under the domination of international lawyers and a European bureaucracy with anti democratic views.
The UK public saw the dangers and once again proved themselves to be the allies of liberty and the champions of freedom. They voted decisively No to staying in the straight jacket of EU laws and taxes. They wanted a free country again.
Today we need to remind our government that the change we want does not include meekly submitting ourselves back under EU laws and control. A fundamental tenet of freedom is we the people decide who governs, and we the people can throw them out of office by our votes if they fail to do as we wish. A fundamental principle of the European Union is no country can change EU laws, decisions and governing personnel through a national election. European elections cannot change the Treaties or much else, given the power of bureaucracy and the reluctance to repeal. It is government by the lawyers, of the lawyers for the lawyers.
At home we see a daily erosion of our freedoms.
The elite want to remove the car from most of us. They see it as an environmental problem. We see it as our freedom to get to the shops, to get to work, to visit friends and go on holiday.
Those who most want to tax and ban us from the roads expect the chauffeured limo or the expensive taxi to be awaiting their trip to the next anti car conference. They replace freedom loving roundabouts with authoritarian traffic lights. They make us sit at a red light when nothing moves , instead of the freely chosen decisions of drivers ensuring a roundabout flows smoothly with no delay.
The elite want to stop people being self employed and innovating. Tax rules seek to make people stay as employees. EU style laws over product specifications and ways of making things impede change and block new ideas.
They seek to nationalise, to cut out what they wrongly see as the inefficiencies and extra costs of competition. Surely they must see that nationalised HS2 shows how state monopoly wastes time and money on an industrial scale? Do they really want more businesses to adopt the nationalised Post Office approach to employee management, sending innocent men and women to prison for alleged fraud?
So how do we restore our precious flower of freedom to this garden of England?
We do so by daily vigilance.
We need to challenge giving away our sovereignty, our birthright, to foreign institutions and lawyers each time it occurs.
We need to make again the case for freedom of speech.
We need to speak up for free enterprise, innovation and the importance of profits for success and investment.
We need to remind that wider ownership and savings creates a better society
We need to explain why the car is crucial to our personal freedoms
We need to explain how competition is always better than monopoly, offering choice and keener prices
We should uphold the idea that anything is lawful that is not expressly condemned by our statutes
We need to remember the rule of law is crucial to exercising our freedoms. It needs limited numbers of the right laws, leaving much to individual decision.
England was built on common law. We need to restore common law over Treaty law.
Long live freedom. Long live liberty. Long live the Freedom Association.
I