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On November 22 1979, Roy Jenkins delivered the BBC's annual Dimbleby lecture in which he pinpointed what he thought were the weaknesses in British politics and politicians.


"Our great failure, now for decades past, has been lack of adaptability. Sometimes this rigidity is a source of strength. It was very good not to be too adaptable in 1940. But overall it is a source of weakness. Some societies - France in the second half of the Third Republic, pre-revolutionary Russia, the Austro-Hungarian empire - have been still less adaptable than our own. But they hardly provide grounds for comfort. Compared with post-war Germany, post-war Japan, Fifth Republican France (industrially at least), the United States for virtually the whole of its history, compared for that matter with early Victorian Britain - modern Britain has been sluggish, uninventive and resistant to voluntary change, not merely economically but socially and politically as well. We cannot successfully survive unless we can make our society more adaptable; and an unadaptable political system works heavily against this. Politicians cannot cling defensively to their present somewhat ossified party and political system while convincingly advocating the acceptance of change everywhere else in industry and society. 'Everybody change but us' is never a good slogan.

The paradox is that we need more change accompanied by more stability of direction. It is a paradox but not a contradiction. Too often we have superficial and quickly reversed political change without much purpose or underlying effect. This is not the only paradox. We need the innovating stimulus of the free market economy without either the unacceptable brutality of its untrammelled distribution of rewards or its indifference to unemployment. This is by no means an impossible combination. It works well in a number of countries. It means that you accept the broad line of division between the public and the private sectors and don't constantly threaten those in the private sector with nationalisation or expropriation.

You also make sure that the state knows its place, not only in relation to the economy, but in relation to the citizen. You are in favour of the right of dissent and the liberty of private conduct. You are against unnecessary centralisation and bureaucracy. You want to devolve decision-making wherever you sensibly can. You want parents in the school system, patients in the health service, residents in the neighbourhood, customers in both nationalised and private industry, to have as much say as possible. You want the nation to be self-confident and outward-looking, rather than insular, xenophobic and suspicious. You want the class system to fade without being replaced either by an aggressive and intolerant proletarianism or by the dominance of the brash and selfish values of a "get rich quick" society. You want the nation, without eschewing necessary controversy, to achieve a renewed sense of cohesion and common purpose.

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