Full text: Theresa May’s Conservative conference speech

Thank you very much for that warm welcome. You’ll have to excuse me if I cough during this speech; I’ve been up all night supergluing the backdrop. There are some things about last year’s conference I have tried to forget. But I will always remember the warmth I felt from everyone in the hall. You supported me all the way – thank you.

This year marks a century since the end of the First World War. Just a few hundred yards from this conference centre stands a Hall of Memory, built to honour the sacrifice of men and women from this city in that terrible conflict. Inscribed within it are some familiar words: ‘AT THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN, AND IN THE MORNING, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.’

We do remember them. We remember the young men who left their homes to fight and die in the mud and horror of the trenches. We remember the sailors who shovelled coal into hellfire furnaces in the bowels of battleships. We remember the selflessness of a remarkable generation, whose legacy is the freedom we enjoy today.

I think of Hubert Grant – my father’s cousin in whose honour he was named. Hubert fought and died at Passchendaele at the age of just 19. Last year, at the service to mark the centenary of that battle, I took a moment to find his name on the Menin Gate, alongside thousands of his comrades. We will remember them.

But the builders of that Hall of Memory also wanted us to do something else. Alongside a commitment to remember, they inscribed a command that still calls to us today:

‘SEE TO IT THAT THEY SHALL NOT HAVE SUFFERED AND DIED IN VAIN.’

Those words express a determination that transformed our country. A determination that the men who returned from the quagmires of Passchendaele to their families, here in Birmingham and across the land, should have homes...