Speech by the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, at New York University, 14 December 2005

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Let me say first of all what a privilege it is to be awarded and to receive an honorary degree in this great city, from this great university with such a world renowned president, John Sexton;
and which by virtue of its location, by virtue of its philosophy - in and of the city - has become a global university of and for the world.

Let me also say, on behalf of the entire UK Government, which has been proud to be America's first and strongest ally from the first moment of the attack on the World Trade Centre, we salute, in the face of terrorism, the courage of America and the courage of New York

The British writer Samuel Johnson said that courage is the greatest virtue of all, for upon it all else depends.

And you - and all of New York - have shown by your bravery and resilience that while buildings can be destroyed, values are indestructible; while hearts can be broken, hope is unbreakable; and while lives have ended, the cause of liberty never dies.

It is a special honour to receive this degree alongside one of the greatest ever Americans --- Alan Greenspan, born in New York, schooled at this institution, and for two decades the economic leader of the world, the rock of stability upon which today's global economy is built. Today let me, on behalf of the British Government, pay tribute to his lifetime of service to America and the world.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in the US and Britain we speak of a 'special relationship' - our understanding, now many decades old, that our two nations are not only intertwined, but actually interdependent.

Today our entire world is interdependent. For what happens to the poorest citizen in the poorest country can directly affect the richest citizen in the richest country.

The new frontier is that there is no frontier.

There is a poem that sums up our dependence as a community upon each other for our food, clothing and livelihoods:

“It's the hands of others that grow the food we eat, sew the clothes we wear, build the homes we inhabit
It's the hands of others that tend us when we are sick and lift us up when we fall
It's the hands of others that bring us into the world and lower us into the grave.”

And starting from our world's interdependence and the need to build a world order grounded in our shared needs, interests, destinies and responsibilities --- I believe that it is time to summon our generation to a new sense of possibility about what we can achieve if we match the technology, the medicine, the knowledge now in our possession with a far-reaching and humane vision for the future --- of shared, global prosperity - not as an end in itself, but as an instrument of our common humanity.

My hope is that out of global dialogue, the search for consensus, and then partnership -- this fractured world can forge a new economic and social covenant, a global new deal between developed and developing countries, a modern Marshall Plan that not only strives to turn swords into ploughshares, but to envision a day when there will no need for swords ever again.

I believe our inspiration should be America's great achievement of the post 1945 era – the great visionaries who built out of the ruins of war for their time and for their generation a new political economic and social order.

These great visionaries, the architects of the post-war world understood, as we now do, that like peace, prosperity was indivisible: that to be sustained it had to be shared; and that to achieve this goal would require public purpose and international action on a global scale.

Indeed with the creation of the IMF and World Bank, NATO and the Marshall Plan such was the break with a past of protectionism and isolationism, that Dean Acheson recalled that he had been present at the creation.

Today, in 2005, like the visionaries of 1945 we confront a changing world - a world of disorder and despair; despite massive improvements in prosperity by participation in the global economy still a world full of poverty, ignorance and disease; and worsening environmental degradation - 110 million children not going to school today; one billion adults cannot read or write; one billion without safe water; utterly preventable diseases from TB to malaria will kill this year seven million children; and in South Africa and Botswana half of all 15 years olds die of Aids; agricultural protectionism so expensive that we spend more on subsidising a cow every day than half the world’s people have to live on live on.

Today, in 2005, like in 1945, we need a global plan for prosperity founded on new rights but also responsibilities demanded of poor and rich countries alike – not temporary relief that simply salves the wounds, but a broad and enduring assault on what General Marshall called 'hunger, poverty, illiteracy and disease' - a plan that offers not just help today, but hope for tomorrow.

And this should be our answer to globalisation and to the critics of globalisation.

Some critics say the issue is whether we should have globalisation or not. In fact, the issue is whether we manage globalisation well or badly, fairly or unfairly.

Globalisation can work for people or against people. Poorly managed, globalisation can create a vicious circle of poverty, widening inequality and increasing resentment. Managed wisely it can lift millions who participate in the world economy out of deprivation and become the high road to a more just and inclusive global economy.

So our answer to the critics of globalisation is not to retreat from it --- not an outdated protectionism that would deprive developing countries of what they need most - development itself. Our answer is to make globalisation a pathway to social justice on a global scale. Greater global cooperation not less; stronger, not weaker, international institutions;

In recent years anti globalisation protestors have fought pitched battles with those they understood to be defending an old fashioned consensus.

I remember anti globalisation protestors holding aloft a banner 'world wide campaign against globalisation.'

But while there are extreme views that cannot - and never should be - accommodated, there is, in my view, a broadening and deepening consensus that charts the way forward - a new paradigm, transcending the post war settlement founded, as Alan Greenspan has taught us, on low inflation and fiscal stability - the essential foundation for employment and growth.

But driven forward also by the pursuit of competition, respect for the rule of law, the importance as Asia has shown us of both private and public investment not least in education; the need for proper financial regulation as well as liberalisation; and the need for country owned, community owned assaults on illiteracy, disease, poverty and despair.

So the modern Marshall Plan - this global new deal - I propose is that in return for the pursuit by developing countries of transparent monetary and fiscal regimes, and in return for their producing country owned poverty reduction plans for attracting private investment and trade, and for tackling corruption; the richest countries accept new responsibilities for wider debt relief, for support for universal education and health and for ending our agricultural protectionism.

First, let us move the IMF forward from its old role for an old world of sheltered national economies addressing balance of payments crises, to a new role, in a world of global capital flows - to set out agreed codes and standards, the key to stability and private investment; Through surveillance to test countries against these standards; and let IMF surveillance become independent of the political process.

Second, the action we need on the liberalisation of trade is not long term but urgent --- Europe and America addressing agricultural protectionism. And because it is not enough to open the door to trade to poor countries - they need to have the strength to walk through that door - We should fund an aid for trade programme for infrastructure and education.

Third, the debt crisis will not be fully resolved until not just 38 HPIC countries but all 70 of the poorest countries secure 100 per cent cancellation . And let me say here in New York today - Britain will unilaterally lead this debt cancellation and we urge all to follow.

But as you look back on a year of humanitarian disasters here, but also the tsunami in Asia, famine in Africa, earthquakes in Pakistan - let the world agree a new coordination of humanitarian relief and let the UN agree when it meets tomorrow a fully financed, half a billion dollar, regularly replenished, UN humanitarian fund; and let this compassion be supported by all the worlds institutions - a new dedicated world bank reconstruction task force and a new 4 billion dollar loan and grant IMF shocks facility - so that a year which began by revealing the extraordinary power of nature to destroy can end by revealing the extraordinary power of humanity to build anew.

And we should begin 2006 with a new resolution , an urgent timetable for every continent, every country, to offer one of the greatest and most achievable gifts of all in every continent: universal free education for all children - a declaration of our faith in the future

The historic day that Kenya made primary school free, one million children who the day before had no education, turned up at school and started to learn, grow and develop: the total cost of free primary education 10 billion dollars a year - for each of us just one cent a day - perhaps the best investment the world could ever make

And by the world working together dreams can come true. A life saving preventive vaccine could soon be available for malaria that could save 1 million lives a year. So let us put at the service of the most innovative medical research, the most innovative financial mechanisms. And let us create the first global advance purchase commitment – the rich countries underpinning the development and bulk production of drugs, so that poor countries can obtain them at prices they can afford.

By providing long term predictable finance, by frontloading aid, and by immediately investing an extra 4 billion dollars in vaccinations for preventable disease, the path breaking international finance facility for immunisation – launched by Gates Foundation, European governments and Graca Machel - will save an astonishing 5 million lives between now and 2015.

And by reducing the price of drugs and by building health care systems, let us meet our promise that there be, by 2010, universal access to HIV/aids treatments.

Past generations could say:

If only we had the knowledge
If only we possessed the technology
If only we had discovered the medicine
If only we had pioneered the science

Yet today we have the knowledge, the technology, the medicine, the science, the financial system - all gifts, a capacity for change that no other generation has enjoyed.

And now we have no excuse.

No excuse not to act. No excuse not to heed the words of an alumnus of this university, Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, who said that 'our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.

I see all past history as - yes - the triumph of the human spirit, the flowering of great creative genius, but - yes - also - the tragic waste of too much human potential

And so I want to build a world where instead of developing only some of the potential of some of the people we do everything to develop all the potential of all the people

This great university NYU exists for this great purpose: to bridge the gap between what people are and what they have it in themselves to become

In the dark days of Nazism in the Europe of the 1930s, Winston Churchill, then in the political wilderness, complained of leaders resolved only to be irresolute adamant only for drift solid only for fluidity all-powerful for impotence.

So let a message of solid resolution ring out from New York today; let it be our generation that holds aloft a candle of hope that cuts through the darkness and shame of injustice, that alights even the bleakest places of the world, that illuminates a path to progress, and emblazons, for all humankind, a message of hope, of faith in the future