Mr Bill Cash (Stafford)

It is with a sense of awe of this great Parliament and its history that I make my maiden speech in this debate. I shall try, as far as possible, to be non-controversial. I should like first to congratulate the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) on her excellent maiden speech.

It had not been my original intention first to address the House until some time after my election, but the subject matter of the motion and the issues that it raises played a considerable part in my by-election campaign and I have a significant number of constituents who are miners with mining families in mining communities. There are many others in the constituency of Stafford who are directly or indirectly affected by the motion. I spent much of my childhood in the years immediately after 1948 in a mining community near Sheffield and I saw at close quarters how they had to live.

Another compelling reason why I wish to speak now is to pay, in the House, a deeply felt personal tribute to my predecessor, Sir Hugh Fraser. He was a gallant and greatly respected Member of the House who was many times a Minister. He was greatly loved in the constituency of Stafford, which he represented with such distinction for 39 years. It is a great privilege to follow him in representing the constituency.

It was only yesterday that we commemorated the 40th anniversary of D-day. My father was killed in action outside Caen. For my part, it was the freedom which Sir Hugh and my father fought for in Normandy and after Arnhem at Pegasus, with many people from all walks of life, including the mining community, that underpins what we are debating today. It was not simply an abstract ideal of freedom for which they fought but the reality of freedom for ordinary men and women of the country and for the constituency of Stafford. I shall return to that point later.

My constituency comprises the town of Stafford and countryside largely towards the Shropshire border to the west and the Cheshire border to the north. Since 1983 and the boundary reviews, the constituency has included three wards of Newcastle-under-Lyme, which were substituted for the area of Stone. The town of Stafford, though tracing its origins to Roman times and earlier, is first readily identifiable as being settled in 913 during the wars against the Danes, when it became the county town. Ever since then it has held that position as the administrative and trading centre of the county.

In the 18th century it developed an important footwear industry which led to the modern inter-related industries of machinery, grindstones and adhesives, now represented by the famous companies of Dormans, Universal Grinding, Evode and Lotus Shoes. It has excellent communications; the railway first came to Stafford in 1837.

In 1900 Siemens became established in the town. In 1919 that company was acquired by English Electric, which merged with GEC in 1968. That company now employs about a quarter of the entire work force of Stafford. In 1926 British Reinforced Concrete moved into Stafford and Taylor Woodrow has a significant presence in the constituency. The country areas, with their beautiful hamlets and villages, provide a substantial agricultural industry, much of it in the dairy sector. It is a well balanced constituency of town and country, rich in heritage and medieval churches, with many new industries already deeply involved in the newly developing and fast expanding technologies such as computers.

In the public sector we have a new district hospital, officially opened only a few days ago by her royal highness the Duchess of Kent. We have the county police headquarters and the county and borough civic offices. We also have one of the largest maintenance store units for the RAF. A unique feature of the borough of Stafford is that James I was so impressed by the magnificence of its mace that he granted the burgesses special dispensation to carry it vertically.

Stafford first returned a Member of Parliament in 1258. Among my predecessors was Richard Sheridan, who represented Stafford for 26 years from 1780. Those were times of great international tension, revolution, great change, reform and extra-parliamentary agitation. It was at that time that the beginnings of real democracy in this country began to emerge, which culminated in the great Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867 and later, through which my great-grandfather's cousin, John Bright, with his friend Disraeli, brought the vote, and with it democracy, to the ordinary men and women of Britain.

Following Sheridan's maiden speech he asked the opinion of the parliamentary reporter, Woodfall, who replied, "Oratory is not in your line. You had better cleave to your literary pursuits." Disappointed Sheridan replied, It is in me, however, Woodfall, and by Heaven I will have it out", and that he did. I have much to learn both from him and from all those in the House. I can only promise that I shall do my best to follow the traditions, customs and conventions and to defend and protect the interests of the constituents of Stafford whom I have the honour to represent.

I said earlier that I would seek not to be controversial. I appreciate that that may be difficult in a debate on this subject. I only hope that what I am about to say about the mining dispute will be construed as being no more than an attempt to present a reasonable sense of perspective in the context of those freedoms to which I referred earlier and for which so many have fought and died. The main point that I wish to make is that we must uphold the freedom of people who choose to work and there must be no intimidation of those who make that choice.

The mining dispute is a tragedy. It is a tragedy for the miners themselves, for their families, their communities and the country. Miner has been set against miner. Violence has been substituted for democracy within the union and has disturbed the peace and good order of Britain. I have always believed, and said so in my campaign, that a national ballot should have been called. Then, at least, there would have been an opportunity for the consent of the miners to be properly sought one way or the other. In the midlands area of the NUM, which includes Staffordshire and my constituents, 73 per cent. of the miners there voted against a strike. I cannot believe that it is fair or right for their consent and their right to work to be subordinated to the wishes of the militants, or that those who wish to work should be intimidated from trying to do so.

While I was out canvassing in the by-election I had direct first-hand evidence of intimidation. I heard it from miners' wives and from miners themselves. Consent is the true foundation of our freedom and of our liberties. It is the essence of democracy in a union no less than in our Parliament. It is my duty and that of Parliament to uphold the right to that consent.

The denial of that consent is not the decision of the Government. The challenge which that denial represents is a threat to democracy. Nothing is more dangerous in a free society than the use of freedom in order to destroy it. The object of the law is to protect the reasonable use of freedom for all citizens and that object must be upheld. That law includes the right to belong to a union, the right to picket peacefully and the right to work.

I am reminded of the struggle for freedom in Poland—a country where the freedoms which we enjoy do not exist. Lech Walesa is engaged in a completely different struggle from that of the miners' leaders here. He has been fighting for freedom for his workers without the freedom to do so. I ask most earnestly that the miners' leaders remember what he said of his union colleagues—"Our greatest danger is ourselves. We must learn restraint and patience or we will tear ourselves apart." While miner is set against miner, severe hardship is being inflicted on miners, on mining families and on communities, but not by the Government. We seek a prosperous, secure and expanding mining industry. That is our plan and our hope in the future.

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