And these principles helped to inspire the movers of the two great revolutions of the 18th century. America and France found liberty along more turbulent paths.
All of us accept the basis of democracy in representation and the rule of law and that Western tradition has been consolidated over the past 200 years.
The Russian Revolution charted a new and separate course based on a radically and mistakenly different interpretation. Yet with our common heritage, we should be capable of establishing a common code of freedom for all Europeans.
That is the task we have sought to accomplish here in Vienna. To establish the rights and freedoms we have been championing since 1945, to set them on foundations firmer than those which were almost swept away in the years before.
Our starting point is a shared commitment to those principles, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act. But what does that mean in practice? It means surely that we share a responsibility to secure and uphold human rights and democratic freedoms. That requires not just commitment, but action, a change not just of style but of heart. After all, it is hardly progress for a cannibal to use a knife and fork.
In too many countries on our continent, Helsinki commitments are not being effectively implemented. Helsinki principles are reflected in constitutions but ignored or compromised in practice.
The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have seemed for many years to lack the necessary legal framework, to lack the political will to honour their commitments. Even in the last few days one of the participants in this conference has expressly disclaimed any commitment to observe the promises on which we have agreed. So, far from trying to live up to its word, it is bringing its words into line with its still lamentable performance.
Even as we meet, events in one of Europe's most beautiful capital cities show that elsewhere on our continent there remains an enormous gap between the aspirations of ordinary people and the willingness of some governments to respect them.
But the picture is changing. In the Soviet Union itself, and indeed in most parts of Eastern Europe, there are signs of a new readiness to take human rights seriously.
We welcome the concrete steps which the Soviet Union has taken to release prisoners, to permit more emigration. We are still justified in expecting even more than this. To enter fully into the common European home, the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe must undertake institutional change. Most of all that means enshrining human rights in national law.
Speaking last month at the United Nations, President Gorbachev promised new Soviet laws and regulations to improve the domestic conditions for the respect and protection of human rights. He also affirmed Soviet readiness to expand its participation in UN and CSCE monitoring arrangements.
These statements are encouraging and welcome. They are still to be put to the test. Our agreement here to a Moscow meeting on the human dimension of CSCE offers just such a test.
Only a short time ago a meeting of that kind in Moscow, so closely connected with human rights, would have been impossible to contemplate. My Government was for a long time deeply sceptical of this proposal. We did not want an event which would gloss over the unacceptable and let down those who have struggled so bravely and so long for human rights inside the Soviet Union. That remains our position.
But equally, we had no wish to ignore the real progress we have seen in Soviet performance, and the prospects are now more encouraging. So we have agreed to a Moscow venue for the last of the three conferences on the human dimension. Our vigilance and our concern for human rights in the Soviet Union is in no way diminished. Nor does our agreement mean we are satisfied with the progress we have seen so far.
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