[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
[November 29, 1995]
[Pages 1795-1799]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in London
November 29, 1995

    My Lord Chancellor, Madam Speaker, Lord Privy Seal, the Lord 
President of the Council, Mr. Prime Minister, my Lords, and Members of 
the House of Commons. To the Lord Chancellor, the longer I hear you talk 
the more I wish we had an institution like this in American Government. 
I look out and see so many of your distinguished leaders in the House of 
Lords, and I think it might not be a bad place to be after a long and 
troublesome political career. [Laughter] My wife and I are honored to be 
here today, and I thank you for inviting me to address you.
    I have been here to Westminster many times before. As a student, I 
visited often, and over the last 20 years I have often returned. Always 
I have felt the power of this place, where the voices of free people who 
love liberty, believe in reason, and struggle for truth have for 
centuries kept your great nation a beacon of hope for all the world and 
a very special model for your former colonies which became the United 
States of America.

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    Here, where the voices of Pitt and Burke, Disraeli and Gladstone 
rang out; here, where the rights of English men and women were secured 
and enlarged; here, where the British people's determination to stand 
against the tyrannies of this century were shouted to the entire world: 
Here is a monument to liberty to which every free person owes honor and 
gratitude.
    As one whose ancestors came from these isles, I cherish this 
opportunity. Since I entered public life I have often thought of the 
words of Prime Minister Churchill when he spoke to our Congress in 1941. 
He said that if his father had been American and his mother British, 
instead of the other way around, he might have gotten there on his own. 
[Laughter] Well, for a long time I thought that if my forebears had not 
left this country, perhaps I might have gotten here on my own, at least 
to the House of Commons.
    But I have to tell you, now our American television carries your 
``question time.'' And I have seen Prime Minister Major and Mr. Blair 
and the other members slicing each other up face-to-face--[laughter]--
with such great wit and skill, against the din of cheers and jeers. I am 
now convinced my forebears did me a great favor by coming to America. 
[Laughter]
    Today the United States and the United Kingdom glory in an 
extraordinary relationship that unites us in a way never before seen in 
the ties between two such great nations. It is perhaps all the more 
remarkable because of our history, first, the war we waged for our 
independence, and then barely three decades later, another war we waged 
in which your able forces laid siege to our Capitol. Indeed, the White 
House still bears the burn marks of that earlier stage in our 
relationship. And now, whenever we have even the most minor 
disagreement, I walk out on the Truman Balcony and I look at those burn 
marks, just to remind myself that I dare not let this relationship get 
out of hand again. [Laughter]
    In this century we overcame the legacy of our differences. We 
discovered our common heritage again, and even more important, we 
rediscovered our shared values. This November, we are reminded of how 
exactly the bonds that now join us grew, of the three great trials our 
nations have faced together in this century.
    A few weeks ago we marked the anniversary of that day in 1918 when 
the guns fell silent in World War I, a war we fought side by side to 
defend democracy against militarism and reaction. On this Veterans Day 
for us and Remembrance Day for you, we both paid special tribute to the 
British and American generation that, 50 years ago now, in the skies 
over the Channel, on the craggy hills of Italy, in the jungles of Burma, 
in the flights over the Hump, did not fail or falter. In the greatest 
struggle for freedom in all of history, they saved the world.
    Our nations emerged from that war with the resolve to prevent 
another like it. We bound ourselves together with other democracies in 
the West and with Japan, and we stood firm throughout the long twilight 
struggle of the cold war, from the Berlin Airlift of 1948 to the fall of 
the Berlin Wall on another November day just 6 years ago.
    In the years since, we have also stood together, fighting together 
for victory in the Persian Gulf, standing together against terrorism, 
working together to remove the nuclear cloud from our children's bright 
future, and together preparing the way for peace in Bosnia, where your 
peacekeepers have performed heroically and saved the lives of so many 
innocent people. I thank the British nation for its strength and its 
sacrifice through all these struggles. And I am proud to stand here on 
behalf of the American people to salute you.
    Ladies and gentlemen, in this century, democracy has not merely 
endured, it has prevailed. Now it falls to us to advance the cause that 
so many fought and sacrificed and died for. In this new era, we must 
rise not in a call to arms but in a call to peace.
    The great American philosopher John Dewey once said, ``The only way 
to abolish war is to make peace heroic.'' Well, we know we will never 
abolish war or all the forces that cause it because we cannot abolish 
human nature or the certainty of human error. But we can make peace 
heroic. And in so doing, we can create a future even more true to our 
ideals than all our glorious past. To do so, we must maintain the 
resolve in peace we shared in war when everything was at stake.
    In this new world our lives are not so very much at risk, but much 
of what makes life worth living is still very much at stake. We have 
fought our wars. Now let us wage our peace.
    This time is full of possibility. The chasm of ideology has 
disappeared. Around the world, the ideals we defended and advanced are 
now

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shared by more people than ever before. In Europe and many other 
nations, long-suffering peoples at last control their our destinies. And 
as the cold war gives way to the global village, economic freedom is 
spreading alongside political freedom, bringing with it renewed hope for 
a better life, rooted in the honorable and healthy competition of effort 
and ideas.
    America is determined to maintain our alliance for freedom and peace 
with you and determined to seek the partnership of all like-minded 
nations to confront the threats still before us. We know the way. 
Together we have seen how we succeed when we work together.
    When President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill first met on 
the deck of the HMS Prince of Wales in 1941 at one of the loneliest 
moments in your nation's history, they joined in prayer, and the Prime 
Minister was filled with hope. Afterwards, he said, ``The same language, 
the same hymns, more or less the same ideals. Something big may be 
happening, something very big.''
    Well, once again, he was right. Something really big happened. On 
the basis of those ideals, Churchill and Roosevelt and all of their 
successors built an enduring alliance and a genuine friendship between 
our nations. Other times in other places are littered with the vows of 
friendship sworn during battle and then abandoned in peacetime. This one 
stands alone, unbroken, above all the rest, a model for the ties that 
should bind all democracies.
    To honor that alliance and the Prime Minister who worked so mightily 
to create it, I am pleased to announce here, in the home of British 
freedom, that the United States will name one of the newest and most 
powerful of its surface ships, a guided missile destroyer, the United 
States Ship  Winston Churchill. When that ship slips down the ways in 
the final year of this century, its name will ride the seas as a 
reminder for the coming century of an indomitable man who shaped our 
age, who stood always for freedom, who showed anew the glorious strength 
of the human spirit. I thank the members of the Churchill family who are 
here today with us, Lady Soames, Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill, and 
I thank the British people for their friendship and their strength over 
these many years.
    After so much success together we know that our relationship with 
the United Kingdom must be at the heart of our striving in this new era. 
Because of the history we have lived, because of the power and 
prosperity we enjoy, because of the accepted truth that you and we have 
no dark motives in our dealings with other nations, we still bear a 
burden of special responsibility.
    In these few years since the cold war we have met that burden by 
making gains for peace and security that ordinary people feel every day. 
We have stepped back from the nuclear precipice with the indefinite 
extension of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and we hope next year 
a comprehensive test ban treaty.
    For the first time in a generation, parents in Los Angeles and 
Manchester and, yes, in Moscow, can now turn out the lights at night 
knowing there are no nuclear weapons pointed at their children. Our 
nations are working together to lay the foundation for lasting 
prosperity. We are bringing down economic barriers between nations with 
the historic GATT agreement and other actions that are creating millions 
of good jobs for our own people and for people throughout the world. The 
United States and the United Kingdom are supporting men and women who 
embrace freedom and democracy the world over with good results, from 
South Africa to Central Europe, from Haiti to the Middle East.
    In the United States, we feel a special gratitude for your efforts 
in Northern Ireland. With every passing month, more people walk the 
streets and live their lives safely, people who otherwise would have 
been added to the toll of the Troubles.
    Tomorrow I will have the privilege of being the first American 
President to visit Northern Ireland, a Northern Ireland where the guns 
are quiet and the children play without fear. I applaud the efforts of 
Prime Minister Major and Irish Prime Minister Bruton who announced 
yesterday their new twin-track initiative to advance the peace process, 
an initiative that provides an opportunity to begin a dialog in which 
all views are represented and all views can be heard. This is a bold 
step forward for peace. I applaud the Prime Minister for taking this 
risk for peace. It is always a hard choice, the choice for peace, for 
success is far from guaranteed. And even if you fail, there will be 
those who resent you for trying. But it is the right thing to do. And in 
the end, the right will win.
    Despite all of the progress we have made in all these areas and 
despite the problems

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clearly still out there, there are those who say at this moment of hope 
we can afford to relax now behind our secure borders. Now is the time, 
they say, to let others worry about the world's troubles. These are the 
siren songs of myth. They once lured the United States into isolationism 
after World War I. They counseled appeasement to Britain on the very 
brink of World War II. We have gone down that road before. We must never 
go down that road again. We will never go down that road again.
    Though the cold war is over, the forces of destruction challenge us 
still. Today they are armed with a full array of threats, not just the 
single weapon of frontal war. We see them at work in the spread of 
weapons of mass destruction, from nuclear smuggling in Europe to a vial 
of sarin gas being broken open in the Tokyo subway to the bombing of the 
World Trade Center in New York. We see it in the growth of ethnic 
hatred, extreme nationalism, and religious fanaticism, which most 
recently took the life of one of the greatest champions of peace in the 
entire world, the Prime Minister of Israel. We see it in the terrorism 
that just in recent months has murdered innocent people from Islamabad 
to Paris, from Riyadh to Oklahoma City. And we see it in the 
international organized crime and drug trade that poisons our children 
and our communities.
    In their variety these forces of disintegration are waging guerrilla 
wars against humanity. Like communism and fascism, they spread darkness 
over light, barbarism over civilization. And like communism and fascism, 
they will be defeated only because free nations join against them in 
common cause.
    We will prevail again if, and only if, our people support the 
mission. We are, after all, democracies. And they are the ultimate 
bosses of our fate. I believe the people will support this. I believe 
free people, given the information, will make the decisions that will 
make it possible for their leaders to stand against the new threat to 
security and freedom, to peace and prosperity.
    I believe they will see that this hopeful moment cannot be lost 
without grave consequences to the future. We must go out to meet the 
challenges before they come to threaten us. Today, for the United States 
and for Great Britain, that means we must make the difference between 
peace and war in Bosnia.
    For nearly 4 years, a terrible war has torn Bosnia apart, bringing 
horrors we prayed had vanished from the face of Europe forever: the mass 
killings, the endless columns of refugees, the campaigns of deliberate 
rape, the skeletal persons imprisoned in concentration camps. These 
crimes did violence to the conscience of Britons and Americans. Now we 
have a chance to make sure they don't return. And we must seize it.
    We must help peace to take hold in Bosnia because so long as that 
fire rages at the heart of the European Continent, so long as the 
emerging democracies and our allies are threatened by fighting in 
Bosnia, there will be no stable, undivided, free Europe; there will be 
no realization of our greatest hopes for Europe; but most important of 
all, innocent people will continue to suffer and die.
    America fought two World Wars and stood with you in the cold war 
because of our vital stake in a Europe that is stable, strong, and free. 
With the end of the cold war, all of Europe has a chance to be stable, 
strong, and free for the very first time since nation-states appeared on 
the European Continent.
    Now the warring parties in Bosnia have committed themselves to 
peace, and they have asked us to help them make it hold, not by fighting 
a war but by implementing their own peace agreement. Our nations have a 
responsibility to answer the request of those people to secure their 
peace. Without our leadership and without the presence of NATO, there 
will be no peace in Bosnia.
    I thank the United Kingdom that has already sacrificed so much for 
its swift agreement to play a central role in the peace implementation. 
With this act, Britain holds true to its history and to its values. And 
I pledge to you that America will live up to its history and its ideals 
as well.
    We know that if we do not participate in Bosnia our leadership will 
be questioned and our partnerships will be weakened, partnerships we 
must have if we are to help each other in the fight against the common 
threats we face. We can help the people of Bosnia as they seek a way 
back from savagery to civility. And we can build a peaceful, undivided 
Europe.
    Today I reaffirm to you that the United States, as it did during the 
defense of democracy during the cold war, will help lead in building 
this Europe by working for a broader and more

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lasting peace and by supporting a Europe bound together in a woven 
fabric of vital democracies, market economies, and security cooperation.
    Our cooperation with you through NATO, the sword and shield of 
democracy, can help the nations that once lay behind the Iron Curtain to 
become a part of the new Europe. In the cold war the alliance kept our 
Nation secure and bound the Western democracies together in common 
cause. It brought former adversaries together and gave them the 
confidence to look past ancient enmities. Now NATO will grow and expand 
the circle of common purpose, first through its Partnership For Peace, 
which is already having a remarkable impact on the member countries, and 
then, as we agree, with the admissions of new democratic members. It 
will threaten no one. But it will give its new allies the confidence 
they need to consolidate their freedoms, build their economies, 
strengthen peace, and become your partners for tomorrow.
    Members of the House of Commons and Noble Lords, long before there 
was a United States, one of your most powerful champions of liberty and 
one of the greatest poets of our shared language wrote ``Peace hath her 
victories, no less renowned than war.'' In our time, at last, we can 
prove the truth of John Milton's words.
    As this month of remembrance passes and the holidays approach, I 
leave you with the words Winston Churchill spoke to America during 
America's darkest holiday season of the century. As he lit the White 
House Christmas Tree in 1941, he said, ``Let the children have their 
night of fun and laughter. Let us share to the full in their unstinted 
pleasure before we turn again to the stern tasks in the year that lies 
before us. But now, by our sacrifice and bearing, these same children 
shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live 
in a free and decent world.''
    My friends, we have stood together in the darkest moments of our 
century. Let us now resolve to stand together for the bright and shining 
prospect of the next century. It can be the age of possibility and the 
age of peace. Our forebears won the war. Let us now win the peace.
    May God bless the United Kingdom, the United States, and our solemn 
alliance.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:38 p.m. in the Royal Gallery of 
Westminster Palace. In his remarks, he referred to Lord MacKay of 
Clashfern, Lord Chancellor; Speaker of the House of Commons Betty 
Boothroyd; Viscount Cranborne, Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House 
of Lords; and Anthony Newton, Lord President of the Council and Leader 
of the House of Commons.