I am glad to have been called to take part in the debate because my family firm, established in 1845, supplied coal and then oil to the great woollen mills in the west riding. My grandfather was also called John Sykes. He joined the firm in 1914, taking it on to greater things. None of his friends could understand why he always travelled second class on the train from Slaithwaite to Huddersfield, until he told them that it was because there was not a third class.

We have survived, despite Labour Governments. These days we manufacture in Filey, near my constituency in Scarborough. I recommend the area to any prospective employer, at home or abroad, who may be listening. Let us make no mistake, many will be looking in on the debate. What will they make of the Labour party? Will they come to the conclusion that of all countries, ours is the one to be avoided at all costs? That is the message, for political reasons alone, which the little Jeremiahs on the Opposition Benches are peddling.

That is hardly surprising, coming as it does from a party many of whose members would sooner take from the church poor box than stand up for their country. This is the Labour party which crippled manufacturing industry with inflation rates which would have made even a south American banker reach for his pacemaker. .This is the Labour party which hated manufacturers with such venom that it wanted to make the pips squeak.

While on the subject of pipsqueaks, I am old enough to remember the last Labour Government. Opposition Members have the gall to complain about manufacturing today. I recall several leading and distinguished members of the Labour party, including even members of the Labour Cabinet, parading on picket lines during the 1970s, in the full glare of the international press, telling the world what they thought of their country and of manufacturing industry.

I recall that this was the Labour party which brought us the winter of discontent. As long as I draw breath, I shall never forget that winter, having to go before a strike committee in Barnsley in 1979 to beg it on bended knee to allow oil deliveries through to Redfearns National Glass because, without fuel, its kilns would have cooled and cracked and thousands in Barnsley would have been thrown out of work.

Yet the motion talks of a coherent strategy and measures to reduce unemployment. As long as I draw breath, I shall never forget the tanker driver who came to me in tears because his wife and family had received threats because he had driven through a secondary picket line. [Interruption.] I am in no mood to take lessons from the little Castros on the Opposition Benches, most of whom would not know a business if it jumped up and slapped them in the face. Most of them are teachers or lecturers and most of whom are sponsored by unions.

Let us take, for example, the Opposition spokesman on manufacturing, the hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett). That city expanded out of recognition during the 1980s as a result of Conservative policies. The hon. Gentleman was busy lecturing on the subject of industrial relations at Leeds university between 1971 and 1983. Is he aware of the tremendous trouble to which my company had to go, because of secondary picketing, to supply Leeds university with heating oil? If he is not, perhaps it is the first recorded case in history of the left hand not knowing what the left hand was doing.

This is the Labour party which is dying to bring in the 48-hour week. Labour Members know, or should know, that it would cost thousands of jobs. They should know that manufacturers need to work when the work is there, not when some Greek Commissioner says that it is there. This is the Labour party that pines for the social chapter, when its members know that even Jacques Delors says that it will make Great Britain a paradise for investment. Even the Fred Flintstones on the Opposition Benches acknowledge that investment equals jobs.

This is the Labour party that yearns to squeeze jobs out of industry with a minimum wage, a policy which has destroyed whole industries in France. The Labour party strains at the leash to cast away all our trade union reforms and longs for the return of flying pickets. This is the Labour party of closed shops and closed minds. Above all, this is a Labour party not even up to the task of the debate, a party for whom Opposition Supply day debates are the only certainty in its twilight days.