SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRADE'S SPEECH FOR JAPAN
Japan and the United Kingdom are two great island nations.
Both of us are dependent for our very survival on world trade (10,000 miles separate our countries and perhaps as many thousand years divide our cultures). We are decidely quite different; but in our very
2
differences we share a common goal.
Over the past 100 years our two nations who at one time regarded one another with distant interest tinged with curiosity,
have had to come quite close together. Modern communications
and the development of interdependence in the Western World have
made that necessary. Today we compete but we compete as allies. During that century of time Great Britain has gone from being
the world's most powerful nation to being but one of several smaller countries that stand for freedom in a world of slavery.
If you asked what I mean by slavery I think of regimes where the
livelihood and welfare of the people take second place to the creation of a war machine and the aggrandisement of a power elite
of Party members. Such regimes are not rare in 1980, they are
commonplace, but Japan and the United Kingdom of course both believe in the overriding importance of freedom and democracy.
revolution
-
3 From being ourselves in England the innovator and stimulator
of industrial change indeed the creaters of the industrial
we have seen your perseverance, singlemindedness
and adaptability take industrial innovation and technology into
new fields. Undoubtedly your industrial base and I speak here
generally is now more up to date and flexible than ours. Possibly, this is not just the by-product of your great companies but of the much greater number of small companies in the Japanese
economy than in ours. But whatever the reason we meet and still compete against you successfully in third markets throughout the
The United Kingdom still has 9 per cent of world trade
world.