wfn.org | Speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair to Lambeth Conference

["Lambeth98" <storm@indigo.ie>]

ACNS LC059 - 29 July 1998

Transcript of speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair to Lambeth
Conference lunch,  Lambeth Palace-July 28, 1998

Introduction by the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey
Thanks by the Archbishop of Central Africa Khotso Makhulu

Introduction by Archbishop of Canterbury

It is a great pleasure to welcome once again Mr. Noel Tredinnick
and musicians and singers of All Souls' Church, Langham Place.
Prime Minister, you see all around you the colourful leaders of
the Anglican Communion. We represent 37 Provinces, shortly to
become 38, and work in more than 164 countries. We work among the
very poor as well as the very rich. We work among the most
disadvantaged as well as the most privileged. We are halfway
through our Conference and it seems that all is going very well
indeed. There is a real sharing of concerns, new friendships are
being made, needs are being shared.  Differences are being
confronted in a constructive spirit of Christian frankness, and
love. Lady Chalker and I only this morning met together with a
number of representative bishops, we met with the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, the Secretary of State for International
Development, a number of ambassadors and bankers to talk about
the problem of international debt which is very much on our
agenda.

Prime Minister, we are very grateful for the messages which you
and Cherie sent at the beginning of the Conference because that
act of thoughtfulness was greatly appreciated. But you are also
welcome not only as a fellow Christian and Anglican, but as
someone who has shown in your time as Prime Minster that your
commitment to the human family doesn't stop at the shores of the
British Isles. You are concerned by issues of world poverty,
human rights, justice and peace. You have shown and are showing
strong and compassionate leadership for which we thank you. And I
particularly am personally grateful that at very short notice you
agreed to speak to us. You are going to speak about the
challenges and opportunities, I understand, facing the human
family, and I invite you to address us now.

Prime Minister Tony Blair

Thank you very much indeed. Yet, I think this is quite the most
terrifying audience I have ever set out on in my life. Are there
really 750 Bishops here?

Well, I was very pleased that George said that all is going well
with your Conference, that was of course before the politicians
got here, but I don't, when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minster,
he was once musing aloud on what he might describe a collection
of politicians. And I have no idea how you would describe a
collection of bishops, he said, well, you have got a flock of
beasts and a herd of cows, he thought for a moment, and said, how
are we going to describe a collection of politicians? A lack of
principles probably!

Anyway, there is no shortage of principles or purple here today,
and I am particularly pleased and indeed honoured, actually, to
come along and address this Conference, with so many
distinguished people from around the world. And the subject of
your Conference, the day, could hardly be more important.

Which is, the subject of global poverty and the unpayable burden
of debt weighing down many of the world's poorest countries. But
I understand if I am right that the issue of debt was nominated
by all nine Anglican Communion Provinces, as the subject for
today's discussion and I think that is enormously powerful and
symbolic in itself.

And if I can say to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to all of
you who are engaged in the work that you are, I think, sometimes
the Church gets attacked a lot of the time, gets criticised a lot
of the time as you will all know, and indeed, we are pretty
familiar with that syndrome too in my business, but I do believe
that the Church does tremendous work, certainly in this country,
I know all round the world, in towns and villages, in cities, a
tremendous amount of work. Often unsung work, often work that
goes totally unnoticed by the vast majority of people in a
country, but it is work that is essential and has its own effect,
I believe, in awakening the moral conscience, not just of a
particular country, but indeed of the world. And I know not so
very far from here, there is a centre for the homeless that is
run by one of the Church charities, and to see the people there
working with some of the most deprived, poorest, often
psychologically disturbed members of the community, and to see
people from the Church do that through sheer love of their common
human beings, it is a tremendous signal to the whole country, and
I know, as you say, that you do get attacked and criticised from
time to time, but I think that the Churches in communities up and
down this country, and I know throughout the world, contribute an
enormous amount to the right spirit that should inform our
society and indeed our political debates as well.

I also know that the Church, the Anglican Church, has played a
great role as well, I would like to pay tribute to it, in peace
in Northern Ireland, which is something we have been working
very, very closely for, and indeed has worked with the other
churches there in order to bring about greater spirit of
reconciliation. And I think too, just before I come to my topic
and the detail of what I wanted to say to you today. I think as
well that one of the great things that a gathering like this can
do, is not just to send an international signal, but also to send
a signal of openness from the Churches themselves towards people,
churches, of other religions. And I often reflect upon the fact
that with all the differences in the world between Jews and
Muslims and Christians, we are, after all, all derived as
Abrahamic religions. We have actually got an awful lot in common
in the values system that we have, and sometimes gatherings like
this can send a very strong signal to that effect. These are the
universal values of human progress, and they are important that
we understand that and communicate that with people. I remember a
short time ago I went to visit actually a Hindu temple, and I saw
some of the phrases that were written up on the wall there and
some of the stories and parables that were there, and the stories
that were told, and I thought how many echoes there were with our
own religion. So, when a Conference like this meets, of course
you will discuss the affairs particular to the Lambeth
Conference, and of course you will discuss some specific issues
as well like debt and world poverty, but it is also a powerful
signal to the rest of the world.

Anyway, I am delighted to be here, very much indeed.

I talk about globalisation as a politician very often, in terms
of the trade liberalisation and the flows of capital, the opening
of huge new markets, the revolution in technology and
communications, and those are daunting challenges for the whole
of the world. There are tremendous opportunities there, we should
never forget that. I don't think we ever want to be people who
simply sit there and say, globalisation should stop, technology
is a threat and a danger, there are great opportunities opened up
for our people as a result of the new communications, the new
technologies, the greater trade in the world. But, they also
bring with it tremendous challenges, and I think the most
important thing that is happening in the world is that we don't
let that global change rule us, but that we drive and subordinate
it to the common good, and that the policies that we have as a
government, in order to open up the world in terms of technology
and trade, we are doing it deliberately and with a strategy that
ensures that we don't just open up opportunities for more trade
for one part of the world, when they are actually closing those
opportunities off for another part. Now, there is no reason why
that should happen if we get the right combination of policies to
make it happen.

We live in a world today where as you know, 1.3 billion people,
nearly a quarter of the world's population, two thirds of the
women, continue to live in extreme poverty with an income of less
than US$1 a day. Eight hundred million people end each day
hungry, 900 million people are illiterate, 30,000 children die
each day from readily preventable diseases and malnutrition.  The
causes of this poverty can be very complex. In some countries
people are poor, because they lack education and employment
opportunities, because they lack access to land, to markets or
technology. Elsewhere people are poor, because they live under
unjust or corrupt governments who misuse their countries'
resources and violate human rights. Then the poor often suffer
most from bad health or are victims of war or natural disasters,
and frequently the poor are forced to over-exploit their own
environment, destroying forests to get access to land, using
trees for fuel and therefore causing solaration and problems for
the environment.

The central point that we have tried to get across as a
government, when talking about issues of aid and development, is
that, of course, it is important to deal with these issues as a
matter of moral duty and compassion, but we also believe that we
have a common interest, mutually shared, in tackling these
problems of poverty and injustice.

In our rapidly shrinking world, the fates of peoples across the
world are more and more bound together. The new global
challenges, whether it is climate change, or crime or terrorism,
mass migration, these are problems that we solve together as one
global community or not at all. Sorry, I hope that is not
international crime and terrorism at our gates over there [PM is
interrupted by sirens]! But any of these issues can be solved if
we work together. Take the global environment. Global
environmental threats require co-ordinated global action. And
that means marrying together the agendas of environment and the
agendas of development. We know that developing countries fear
that industrialised countries may seek to impose environmental
controls which will prevent their development. It will be
impossible, however, to reach effective global agreement on those
major environmental challenges, unless we commit ourselves at the
same time to securing real progress in development for the
poorest countries. So the issues of environmental challenge and
the issues of development, are intimately connected together.
Again, you can see the same mutual interdependence in the area of
security. Poverty is itself a major source of instability. Most
of today's wars are fought within the poorest countries, and the
poor are the principle victims of those wars. But the effects of
that conflict are very rarely contained within the borders of one
state. They have got the capacity to spill over boundaries,
generate instability, refugees, further conflict, to demand for
humanitarian assistance, and eventually for external
intervention. So, there is a task there for peacekeeping and
security, which has again to tie in with the agenda for poverty
and development. One of the reason why we in our country, we
launched a major review of our defence forces, so that our
defence forces could be better equipped for today's world in
which as well as obviously defending the country they will be
intervening, often, in international situations of conflict where
we require a different type of defence force and a different type
of flexibility and mobility from before. The point that I am
making, however, is that our action, whether it is on the
environment or on poverty or on security is intimately linked
together. Development, giving people a stake in their societies
is, as Kofi Annan put it, the prevention of conflict begins and
ends with the promotion of human security and human development.
Now, it is for all these reasons that we have tried to strengthen
our commitment to international development. On taking office
last year we created a department for International Development.
Last November we published a White Paper on the Government's
policy for development strategy, and that put a new and strong
emphasis on the international poverty eradication strategy. A set
of internationally agreed goals for poverty reduction, which
derived from the great UN conferences of the past decade, they
commit us to halving the proportion of the world's population
living in abject poverty by the year 2015, and providing
education and health care for all by that date. Our aim then, as
a government, is to mobilise international support for the
achievement of these agreed targets and the policies necessary to
do so. It means building partnerships with developing country
governments, which are serious about reducing poverty, pursuing
sensible economic policies, and upholding human rights. However,
our policy on aid goes further than simply money. It is about
investing in health and education, particularly the education of
girls, it means promoting sustainable livelihoods, and it means
creating a fairer international system of trade. Our development
effort therefore, has gone far beyond merely the delivery of aid.

On trade we have tried to argue that the benefits of
globalisation need to be spread more widely, so that developing
countries feel that they, too, have a stake in the world's
trading system. And during our presidency of the European
Community recently we fought hard and successfully for a mandate
for the renegotiation of the Lome Convention that should protect
the trading interests of the 71 African, Caribbean and Pacific
countries, and that was a real achievement of our presidency.

Now, I know that today on debt Gordon Brown and Clare Short have
already set out the Government's policy in some detail. I believe
that we made some significant progress at the G8 conference in
Birmingham. I know that many people feel that it wasn't enough,
that is always the case, that is what you learn about being in
Government, it is never enough, but we are trying to do more and
we will try to do more, and this Government attaches the highes
priority to doing that. We are working to ensure that by the year
2000 all highly indebted poor countries have embarked on a
systematic process of debt reduction under the Mauritius Mandate,
we are taking the initiative in accelerating IMF assistance to
post-conflict countries, we set aside a special sum of money as a
supplement for individual donors amounting to £60 million, and we
must ensure that countries are getting the relief they need in
order to secure a lasting exit to the debt problems that so
dogged their development. So, on trade, again we have tried to
push the boat out and move further. But on aid, we also need
greater flows of official development assistance. That is why we
have made a commitment to increasing spending on development, so
that we are reversing a long period of years of decline, and we
have begun to move towards the UN target of 0.7% of national
income.

It will mean a cash increase in our aid and development budget of
some £1.6 billion over the next three years. I think that is a
clear measure of our commitment to development. This extra money
will be spent on achieving measurable progress against the key
international development goals. More access to primary
education, lower maternal and child mortality, reversing the loss
of environmental resources to a national strategies for
sustainable development. As a concrete example of what I mean by
this, we are today committing some £18 million to help eradicate
polio in East Africa over the next three years. That is
additional money. Working together with the World Health
Organisation, we shall provide immunisation for all infants in
Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Now, that is just one example of what
we can do to give a whole generation of children the chance to
lead healthier lives.

Sometimes, when we make the greater commitment, whether it is in
aid or development, or in resources necessary to promote policies
of sustainable development for the environment, people say to us,
well, the country doesn't want to spend money on these things.
People don't want to pay money out for these types of activity. I
believe that that is wrong. I think that the British people do
want Britain to provide a lead in the international efforts to
eliminate poverty, and they want to feel pride and commitment in
what we are doing, actually what they are doing through us to
help others throughout the world.

I know that from time to time people will argue against this and
say that it doesn't fulfil the purpose we have set out for it,
but I do believe that to be fundamentally wrong. I also know that
it will always be the desire of the Church to say, "You could do
more." There are other and better and different things you could
be doing, and that is always going to be the role of the Church
to warn and to criticise, to face power, if you like, with truth.

But I think that we are embarked on a different era of
international relations for the future. For a long period of
time, people did regard issues of aid and debt simply as issues
of compassion. And of course they are issues of compassion. We
want to make sure that we are making a commitment to people who
are in need, and we do that within our own society as well as
outside it. But just as I would argue in Britain today that if we
have a large group of young people who are permanently excluded
from the work force, or you have got groups of people growing up
in inner city estates without family stability, with crime and
drugs and poor educational opportunity and high levels of
unemployment, just as I would argue that in the end that problem
affects all of Britain and all of our society, so, I would argue
to you, that when we forget the needs of those countries that
desperately have to develop and change over a period of time to
become prosperous and do well, when we forget those needs we all
lose as a result of that. It is not a situation in which we have
to choose between the interests of our own country and the
interests of others. That extra commitment that we are making to
aid and development, is a commitment that I believe serves this
country well, as well as the countries to whom we are making that
commitment.

And that, after all, is the basic principle of community. It is
the basic political philosophy that informs my life, the idea
that we owe obligations to one another as well as to ourselves,
but more than that, that in part we fulfil our own talent and
potential through what we do with others. That essential guiding
concept, a belief in the dignity and worth of each human being is
not some platitude that we should dismiss. It is actually at the
heart of ensuring that our nation and our world have some sense
of purpose. You see, it is very easy today to be cynical about
these values, and I guess probably in the Church you meet as much
cynicism as you do in politics, and I don't say from time to time
we don't practice a bit. Certainly my branch of the profession,
if you like, but in the end the belief that there is something
more than me is the only basic belief that it is worth running a
society or country upon. And the fact that we have all these
people here today, and I don't doubt everyone will have a great
time in the week, as I was reading in the foreword to your little
pamphlet that you produced, the most important thing is that
people come from all different parts of the world, they share the
problems that you have, they see some of the common solutions,
and most of all they recommit themselves to those universal
values which inform the Church and indeed inform the best part of
any society. And the fact that we have the chance today if I
might say so, for religion to be seen not as some exclusive sect,
which is the worst part of the way that people see religion, but
as the possibility of opening up the world to other people and
sharing certain common values that bring people together. The
fact that we have that possibility today, should be a cause for
optimism. I am essentially, as we approach the 21st Century,
optimistic about it. I know that sounds very strange when we look
around the world today and we see all the poverty and the disease
and the war, but I am optimistic because I think we can leave
behind the prejudices that informed the worst part of the value
system that used to dominate all our countries in the world, and
we can leave in place and intact the best of the values of basic
justice, of belief in community, the notion of society being
important to advance the individual. So, when I look ahead and I
see all the challenges they are and I realise that my kids are
going to grow up in a completely different world to the world
that I inhabited, and if any of you have ever sat and watched
your own children in front of a computer terminal, if you are
lucky enough to have one, and you see a child operating that
computer, and you feel a deep sense of humiliation and
inadequacy. You know, they are going to grow up in a completely
different world, it is true. But the values that they will need
to make sense of that world are the values that people have used
to make sense of the world since time immemorial. That never
changes. And indeed, the more the world opens up, and the more
the opportunities there are, the more those values are important.
 And if we ever forget that, then, of course, that is when we
descend into the dark ages. The dark ages aren't a product of a
lack simply of technology or advancement, they are a product of
when people forget the basic values that make life worthwhile.

So, if I could just say to you, George, and to all your
colleagues, I am delighted and thrilled to come along here today
to tell you some of the things that we have been doing in respect
of aid and development. To say to you how immensely gratified we
are that you are here, to make you feel very welcome and to say
to you that we look ahead, let's feel that sense of optimism. I
think there is a lot to be hopeful for, and as you know better
than me, there is a lot more work to do.

Thank you.

Archbishop of Canterbury

Prime Minister, that applause indicates the warmth of our
response to that excellent speech. I am now going to call upon
one of our most significant leaders in the Anglican Communion,
the Archbishop of Central Africa, the Most Revd Khotso Makhulu,
to express on our, all of us, our grateful thanks. Khotso.

Reply by Archbishop of Central Africa Khotso Makhulu

Your Grace, Prime Minister, distinguished guests, when I was a
young man I went to a doctor's surgery and there was a lady there
singing the praises of her beautiful child. And the doctor said,
"Father, don't worry. Every mother sees beauty within the ugliest
child". And sometimes when I look at us in the Church, that is
how I feel God looks at us!

We are indeed most grateful to you, sir, for having come to
address us on such a very important subject, because what you are
really saying is what we are struggling with during our
Conference. Our different sections of the Conference are really
at best trying to address what it is that we can do to realise
the best in humanity. And so whether you speak of our
responsibility about justice in society, about peace in the
world, about community, ultimately, you are saying to us
something about the affirmation of people at every level. The
poor, the simple, the marginalised, the unloved, the ugly, the
beautiful, the plump, the slim, you are saying something about
their inherent dignity. When you talk of the global, whether it
be through trade or in the search of peace and other models of
good governance, you are also indirectly reminding us of the
global aspect of the Grace of God. Because that grace is indeed
about our betterment, about our affirmation, and if it is at all
possible to make the ugliest of us beautiful. So with these few
words, I would like to thank you and thank you for the
encouragement that your words bring to many of us, so that we can
look at the poor once again with a sense of hope, that, yes,
although Rome was not built in a day, there are things in place
that will do something to enhance quality of life, the betterment
of people and indeed to join with you in seeing children who are
able to switch on to a computer terminal, but much more
importantly, but to live in a world of peace where our children
can walk hand in hand, arm in arm, irrespective of race, colour
or creed for a better tomorrow.

Thank you.

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